This is a chapter in the forthcoming book, Sue Arrowsmith & Robert D. Anderson, The WTO Regime on Government Procurement: Challenge and Reform (Cambridge University Press, 2011). The chapter puts under scrutiny public procurement policies designed to benefit SMEs per se, as small or medium sized enterprises, and to evaluate whether the GPA (and hence possibly other trade agreements liberalizing procurement markets) should be more accommodating to these policies, even though these policies might restrict international trade. The chapter also evaluates whether the GPA should be more accommodating to policies designed to benefit firms controlled by individuals who belong to historically disadvantaged groups. Contrary to the standard argument that SME procurement policies are trade protectionist, there are cases in which they enhance competition and reduce procurement costs, though the conditions for these benefits are narrow and depend on proper institutional design. The economic merits of SME preference policies complement the noneconomic policy justifications for procurement preference policies to support firms owned and controlled by historically disadvantaged individuals, or HDIs. Any agreement to liberalize procurement markets should deal with the reality that some states have longstanding policies supporting firms owned and controlled by historically disadvantaged individuals, rooted in the constitutional orders of those states. Substantial noneconomic rationales, grounded in notions of social justice and human rights, support these programmes, but the domain of these rationales as they are currently understood is limited to domestic societies. This limitation affects all negotiations to liberalize trade across national borders, in that states (or their leaders) do not hold the view that they have obligations to support the programmes of other states in the area of social justice. I argue that all WTO members should have an equal opportunity to implement noneconomic policies having to do with promoting justice within their borders for their citizens. The GPA, at least by default or implicitly, currently gives only powerful WTO members the ability to employ SME and HDI policies. The GPA should accommodate SME and HDI policies for purposes of creating a level playing field between large market and small market WTO members. Particularly as to procurement preference policies to benefit HDIs, the GPA should accommodate HDI friendly policies to respect values of social justice and human rights that well-ordered domestic societies are required to respect. The weakness of the GPA to accommodate SME and HDI policies likely offers insights on why the GPA has had difficulties becoming a multilateral WTO agreement.


Biomaterials have gained significant importance in the field of tissue engineering. For example, these biomaterials have been considered for the reconstruction of tissues for structural applications where the tissue morphology is of paramount importance such as bone, cartilage, blood vessels and skin etc. (Ameer et al., 2002). Often these biomaterials are used for tissue regeneration when the surrounding defective tissue exhibits the inherent potential for tissue regeneration. However, in situations where the tissue lacks this ability of regeneration, relevant cells as well as growth factors have been used to accelerate tissue regeneration. In addition, these biomaterials have also been combined with drugs and used as drug delivery systems, thereby reducing the microbial infections while maximising tissue regeneration (Gomes et al., 2004).

There are several factors that make polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) excellent materials for use in TE, however, when used as scaffolds in bone TE, PHAs fail to actively bind to the living tissue by means of a biologically active apatite layer or meet the mechanical demands in load-bearing applications. Therefore, these polymers are combined with inorganic bioactive materials, such as bioactive glass, to increase their applicability in bone TE. Also, there is a growing need to apply these scaffolds for applications such as drug delivery.

For the first part of this study, a solid-in-oil-water (s/o/w) technique was used in an attempt to produce tailored poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) P(3HB) microspheres. The effects of different parameters used for microsphere production on the microsphere size, porosity, and drug distribution were investigated. The P(3HB) microspheres were encapsulated with the drugs such as gentamicin and tetracycline and their in vitro release kinetics studied.

A multifunctional P(3HB)/45S5Bioglass® composite system for bone tissue engineering was also developed which could exhibit topographical features to increase cell attachment and can also act as a carrier for controlled drug delivery via the immobilization of P(3HB) microspheres on the scaffold surfaces. Thus a microsphere coating was created on the 45S5Bioglass® scaffolds resulting in a composite scaffold with increased compressive strength, surface nanotopography and bioactivity as compared to the original 45S5Bioglass® scaffold. The multifunctional scaffold was also successfully used as a drug delivery vehicle. Hence, this multifunctional scaffold can be used to deliver drugs, proteins or growth factors to treat bone related diseases. This is the first time such a multifunctional scaffold has been developed. P(3HB) were also used to prepare composite films with a combination of nanoscale bioactive glass (n-BG) for wound healing applications. The various analyses done showed that the addition of n-BG particles had increased the surface roughness of the films and improved the surface wettability. Surface mediated reactions such as clot formation was also found to decrease linearly with the increase in the amount of n-BG particles.

The microspheres were encapsulated with three model proteins BSA, Lucentis® and RNase A to understand the effect of morphology, drug distribution on the in vitro release profiles. The microspheres produced were of an average size of 2μm. P(3HB) microspheres investigated for use as drug delivery vehicles in the intraocular environment exhibited a gradual release of BSA over a period of time and the encapsulation process did not lead to any degradation of BSA. The % cumulative release of Lucentis® from both PBS and contact lens solution was for an extended period of 75 days. The microencapsulation process also did not lead to any degradation of Lucentis®. Finally the effects of solvent treatment encountered by the model protein Ribonuclease A (RNase A) during microencapsulation in P(3HB) microspheres were investigated. From the results, structural integrity of RNase A was maintained. A gradual decrease in the enzyme activity of RNase A was observed over a period of time.


The present PhD thesis is part of a six year project initiated to tackle the issue of interphase formation in hybrid materials characterized by polymer-solid contacts. Interphases are regions "near" the solid surface boundaries where the polymer properties are modified in comparison to more distant regions. Experimental investigations on the nature and length scales of interphases have been hampered by the challenging task of setting up apparatus that spatially resolve polymer properties. Thus, unresolved questions on the role of interphases in polymer-based hybrid materials still remain. While a broad class of polymer-solid surface systems is currently being investigated in the framework of this six year project, our task has been to setup a simulation tool to tackle the question of interphase formation during curing. The final goal of the project is to simulate experimentally relevant polymer-solid systems. The present PhD thesis deals with the first three years of the project devoted to the development of the simulation tool, to the investigation of interphase formation at a generic level and to the search of suitable methods to develop interaction potentials to model experimental systems. Curing denotes the formation of a polymer network from a reactive system which consists of components of lower molecular weight. It is an important class of reactions as many technical adhesives such as epoxy polymers are formulated as reactive liquids of monomers and curing agents. The polymer adhesives are generated from the reactive liquids in the presence of the adherend surfaces under specific thermodynamic conditions. Thus, a suitable modelling tool should allow the dynamics and chemical reactions occurring in the systems to be investigated under the desired thermodynamic conditions. These requirements can be satisfied by the use of Reactive Molecular Dynamics methods (RMD) reviewed in the first chapter of the thesis. The time scale accessible to atomistic RMD simulations is in some cases not sufficient to observe reactive events. At a coarser level, reactive simulations allow the treatment of bigger systems using simplified reaction schemes. Currently, the formation of an interphase during curing can not be simulated at the atomistic level in a reasonable amount of time. Thus, our systems are described at a coarser level with a simplified reaction scheme. Each monomer and polymer repeat unit is a coarse-grained (CG) bead that is formed by merging several atoms into "super-units". In the second chapter we present our RMD approach. The possibility to perform reactive simulations with material-specific CG potentials has been exemplified by growing polystyrene chains from ethylbenzene as a model of styrene monomers. Iterative Boltzmann Inversion (IBI) [Reith, D.; Putz, M.; Muller-Plathe, F.; J. Comput. Chem. 2003, 24, 1624.] has been employed to develop these potentials. Many properties of the samples grown with the RMD approach have been compared to the results of equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations on identical polymer samples. An agreement between RMD-based and equilibrium simulation results has been found. Our RMD algorithm is based on alternating between bond formation steps driven by a reaction cutoff parameter and diffusion periods defined by a delay time parameter. We have performed a number of simulations varying the RMD parameters to understand their role and to gain insight into polymerization processes. We have correlated the final degree of polymerization distributions to the reaction conditions. Our reactive scheme is inspired by a RMD model proposed approximately ten years ago, which was however not material-specific [Akkermans, R. L. C.; Toxvaerd, S.; Briels, W. J.; J. Chem. Phys. 1998, 109, 2929.].
 The third chapter deals with the issue of material-specific force-fields for the simulation of experimental adhesive systems. From the investigations of the first chapter, IBI appeared as a suitable method to obtain material-specific potentials. To understand the challenges involved in developing such force-fields we have investigated the temperature transferability of IBI potentials optimized for liquid hexane. Temperature transferability is the capability of a CG force field to describe the system at a temperature far away from where it has been parameterized. This study has been a simplified way to gain experience on transferability issues of CG potentials before tackling the complex case of adhesive systems and surfaces. In this study we have also experienced the use of scaling factors that are currently a rather common solution to generate CG potentials suitable for different thermodynamic states and we have developed a novel, more robust scheme.
 The fourth chapter presents generic simulations of curing processes in the presence of idealized surfaces. Here, the reactive liquid mixtures are first equilibrated in the presence of the surfaces prior to the curing process. The constituents of the reactive liquids are bifunctional beads and tetrafunctional curing agents. The surface interactions with the different constituents are tunable. In this way, preferential adsorption at the surfaces of one of the constituents can be promoted. In fact, the purpose was to investigate the impact of surface-induced segregation on interphase formation. From the RMD simulations it appears that densities and average bond orientation profiles are not affected by the segregation processes. In fact, the perturbations of these two properties remain similar with or without preferential surface interactions. In contrast, properties which depend on the spatial distribution of the curing species such as the average length of the polymer segments between two branching points (i.e. curing agents with more than two bonds) are affected by segregation processes. In fact, the average length of the polymer segments increases with increasing distance from the surfaces for a preferential adsorption of the curing agents. The opposite scenario is observed for a preferential adsorption of the bifunctional monomers. In the absence of segregation processes, the average length of polymer segments is rather constant in the polymer samples.
 The fifth chapter summarizes some of the future steps in connection with the simulations of interphase formation. The possibility to extend the present RMD tool to simulate other reactive processes such as the growth of grafted polymer brushes is briefly discussed.


Power systems are interconnected for enhancing the availability of power supply to the customers and for reducing the prices charged to them. A natural consequence of the interconnections is that the interconnected power systems are likely to swing following faults and other disturbing events. The systems should be allowed to settle down to a stable state if one exists but should be disconnected from each other if the swing is likely to result in dynamic instability. For maintaining generation-load balance, it becomes necessary to shed load in some cases and shed generation in other cases. During power-system swings, currents and voltages swing in amplitude and phase. The impedances seen by distance relays, which calculate the impedances from the measured voltages and currents, also swing in magnitude and phase. At certain locations in the power system, the impedances calculated from the voltages and currents become so small that they enter the protection zones of distance relays. Power swing relays are traditionally used to block distance relays from tripping line circuit breakers if the swing is not likely to cause dynamic instability but open the interconnecting lines if the systems are likely to become unstable. This is achieved by using delay timers but deciding on the delays is a very difficult and involved issue. Also the needed delay times are different for different operating states of the systems. This thesis presents a new approach for use in out-of-step relays. The technique is based on the well known equal area criterion in the time domain. The basis of the protection technique is described in the thesis. The results from computer simulations show that the technique is able to correctly identify swings that are likely to result in dynamic instability. Based on the information provided by the technique, appropriate decisions for shedding loads or generation can be made with reasonable certainty.


Natural regeneration offers a cheaper alternative to active reforestation and has the potential to become the predominant way of restoring degraded tropical landscapes at large‐scale. We conducted a meta‐analysis for tropical regions and quantified the relationships between both ecological and socioeconomic factors and biodiversity responses in naturally regenerating areas. Biogeographic realms, past disturbance, and the human development index (HDI) were used as explanatory variables for biodiversity responses. In addition, we present a case study of large‐scale natural regeneration in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest and identify areas where different forms of restoration would be most suitable. Using our dataset for tropical regions, we showed that natural regeneration was predominantly reported within: the Neotropical realm; areas that were intensively disturbed; and countries with medium HDI. We also found that biodiversity in regenerating forests was more similar to the values found in old growth forests in: countries with either low, high, or very high HDI; less biodiverse realms; and areas of less intensive past disturbance. Our case study from Brazil showed that the level of forest gain resulting from environmental legislation, in particular the Brazilian Forest Code, has been reduced, but remains substantial. Complementary market incentives and financial mechanisms to promote large‐scale natural regeneration in human‐modified agricultural landscapes are also needed. Our analysis provides insights into the factors that promote or limit the recovery of biodiversity in naturally regenerating areas, and aids to identify areas with higher potential for natural regeneration.


Organic solar cells are attractive for various applications with their flexibility and low-cost manufacturability. In order to increase their attractiveness in practice, it is essential to improve their energy conversion efficiency. In this work, semi-cylindrical-shell-shaped structures are proposed as one of the approaches, aiming at absorption enhancement in an organic solar cell. Poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl) blended with indene-C60 bisadduct (P3HT:ICBA) is considered as the active layer. Light coupling to the guided modes and a geometrical advantage are attributed to this absorption enhancement. Finite-difference time-domain methods and finite element analysis are used to examine the absorption spectra for two types of devices, i.e., a debossed type and an embossed type. It is shown that absorption enhancement increases as the radius of the cylinder increases, but reaches a saturation at about 4-µm radius. The average absorption enhancement with an active layer thickness of 200 nm and radius of 4 µm, and for incidence angles between 0° and 70°, is found as 51%-52% for TE-polarized input and as 30%-33% for TM-polarized input when compared to a flat structure. Another merit of the proposed structures is that the range of incidence angles where the integrated absorption is at the level of the normal incidence is significantly broadened, reaching 70°-80°. This feature can be highly useful especially when organic solar cells are to be placed around a round object. The study results also exhibit that the proposed devices bear broadband absorption characteristics.


Purpose:To assess perceptions of care from woman discharged from an obstetrical (OB) triage unit or a labor and delivery unit with a diagnosis of false or latent labor in order to determine factors that may increase or decrease the woman's satisfaction with care. Study Design:Descriptive, convenience sample. Methods:One hundred low-income pregnant women at term presenting for care in latent labor consented to participate in a telephone survey. The survey was based on the relevant research about care of women in early labor and the Donabedian quality improvement framework assessing structure, process, and outcomes of care. Results:Forty-one percent of women did not want to be discharged home in latent labor. Common reasons included women stating they were in too much pain or they were living too far from the birth setting. Eating, drinking, and comfort measures were the most common measures women cited that would have made them feel better when in the hospital. A reoccurring response from women was their desire for very clear and specific written instructions about how to stay comfortable at home and when to return to the hospital. Clinical ImplicationsComfort measures in the birth setting, including in triage, should include a variety of options including ambulation and oral nutrition. Detailed and specific written instructions about early labor and staying comfortable while at home have value for women in this survey regarding their perceptions of care. Results from this survey of low-income women suggest that a subset of women in latent labor just do not want to go home and this may be related to having too much pain and/or travel distance to the hospital. Hospital birth settings also have an opportunity to create a care environment that provides services and embodies attributes that women report as important for their satisfaction with care in latent labor.


[ 1 ] Abstract In bioethics literature, the primary justification for the requirement of informed consent has been the protection of autonomous choices. To allow patients to be autonomous decision-makers, physicians are supposed to disclose and share information related to all treatment, procedures and risks. Advocates of the autonomy-based informed consent model argue that in informed consent cases, the disclosure of information should be according to the reasonable person standard or reasonable patient standard, rather than the average competent physician standard. In the Indian medicolegal context, the concept of consent has evolved through the discussion of informed consent and by referring to the concepts of informed consent in other countries, such as the USA, the UK and Canada. In cases of medical negligence in India, the concept of "real or valid consent" has been adopted from British case law rather than the "informed consent" of the USA. This paper examines the doctrinal rules of the concept of real or valid consent through an analysis of Samira Kohli's case – a landmark court case and a major precedent case in India that referred to "real or valid consent". In analysing this case, the paper will examine the judiciary's decision on the nature of and standard for the disclosure of information. Thus, the paper will reflect on the underlying ethical and legal principles of the doctrine of real or valid consent in the Indian context. This paper uses a hermeneutic approach to the landmark case to provide a qualitative interpretation of the Indian medical judiciary's concept of consent and the autonomy of the patient.


Crashes at rural thru-stop intersections arise primarily from a driver attempting to cross or enter the mainline traffic stream after failing to recognize an unsafe gap condition. Because the primary cause of these crashes is not failure to stop, but failure to recognize an unsafe condition, the US DOT FHWA, Mn/DOT, and the University of Minnesota ITS Institute undertook the CICAS-SSA program. CICAS-SSA uses roadside radar sensors, a computer processor and algorithms to determine unsafe conditions, and an active LED icon based sign to provide timely alerts and warnings which are designed to reduce the frequency of crashes at rural expressway intersections. These rural, thru-stop crashes are problems in many states. In conjunction with the CICAS-SSA program, Mn/DOT and the University of Minnesota led a nine-state (CA, GA, IA, MI, MN, NC, NH, NV, and WI) pooled-fund study whereby driver behavior data at rural thru-stop intersections was collected by the Minnesota Mobile Intersection Surveillance System (MMISS). The ultimate goal of the pooled fund study and the analysis of that data described here, was to identify whether drivers in different regions of the county exhibit different gap acceptance/rejection behavior, and if different driver behaviors are identified, determine whether they are different enough to inhibit the deployment of a common CICAS-SSA design throughout the US. The analysis of the data indicated that the system can indeed be deployed nationally.


This paper performs an empirical assessment of a debate held decades ago on whether an entrepreneur's or a firm's desire for profits starts with innovation, or whether excess profits or surplus are used as some type of investment fund to perform research, development and innovation. That is, which typically comes first, innovation and then profits, or do profits come first, and then innovation? In the former case, it is held that either the small entrepreneur or the large corporation has an idea for a new and innovative product or service and then finds the ways to fund its development. In the latter case, it is thought that research and development on any new idea or product usually comes about only once a certain level of profitability has been attained by the firm, and development of a new product or service is not undertaken unless it meets a certain target rate of return on investment. The analysis of this paper examines a debate in which Paul M. Sweezy argued that innovation mostly comes about thanks to firms, especially large corporations, investing excess profits into research and development, which was contrary to the traditional view of Joseph Schumpeter who believed that innovative ideas come first, and then firms pursue the innovative ideas. The traditional view is still the predominant view of most people who study innovation, although so far no evidence of a test of the Sweezy contention has been found in the course of doing research on this topic. This paper uses time series data from different governmental and private sector databases and time series least square regression to test the Schumpeter and Sweezy theories.


The article looks at the essence of business analyst profession both in international and Russian practice. It studies the stages of establishing and developing business analysis, its main concepts in accordance with the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK).The authors point out and justify key features of business analysis conception which are different from the conception of enterprise performance analysis in Russian analytical practice. Also, they examine the structure of forming occupational standard "Business analyst†based on the conception of business analysis in accordance with the international practice.There is the justification of using key concepts and provisions of international Business analysis body of knowledge while forming business analysts' competences during their education.


Author(s): Hung, Li-Wen | Advisor(s): Nguyen, Clark T.-C. | Abstract: The ever increasing need for regional and global roaming together with continuous advances in wireless communication standards continue to push future transceivers towards an ability to support multi-mode operation with minimal increases in cost, hardware complexity, and power consumption. RF channel-select filter banks pose a particularly attractive method for achieving multiband reconfigurability, since they not only provide the needed front-end reconfigurability, but also allow for power efficient and versatile transceiver designs, e.g., software-defined radio. Such channel-select filters, however, impose requirements on their constituent resonators that are not yet achievable on the micro-scale. Specifically, capacitively-transduced micromechanical resonators achieve high Q, but suffer from high impedance; while piezoelectric micromechanical resonators offer low impedance, but with insufficient Q. This dissertation demonstrates four new techniques to address the issues in both technologies.Two of the methods recognize that sub-30 nm gap spacing enables electrostatic resonators to achieve acceptably low impedance. Unfortunately, however, such small gaps with the needed high aspect ratios are difficult to achieve via wafer-level batch processing. Two new methods are proposed and experimentally verified for forming sub-30 nm gaps: 1) partial-filling of electrode-to-resonator gaps with atomic layer deposition (ALD) of high-k dielectric; and 2) generating gaps via the volume reduction associated with a silicidation reaction. Among the many benefits provided by a silicide-based approach to gap formation is speed of release, where sub-30 nm gaps can be formed and high-aspect-ratio microstructures can be released via anneals lasting from seconds to a few minutes, regardless the lateral dimensions of the devices. Silicide-induced gap formation further does not require any etching and is applicable to a wide range of applications, from electronics to vacuum packaging.The next two methods seek to circumvent the fact that AlN thin-film resonators have historically been measured with much lower Q than capacitive ones at similar frequencies. As a result, it was commonly accepted that the AlN thin films sputtered at low temperatures are to blame for the lower Q. This dissertation provides experimental evidence that it is not AlN material loss that restricts the Q of conventional AlN resonators, but rather the losses associated with their contacting electrodes. Specifically, a new transducer dubbed the "capacitive-piezoelectric" transducer is introduced that lifts the electrodes away from a piezoelectric resonator by tiny nanometer scale gaps that retain strong electric fields for good electromechanical coupling, while eliminating electrode-derived losses. After removing the electrode losses, the Q of piezoelectric AlN resonators rise by up to 9 times. A new surface-micromachining fabrication process has been developed for the capacitive-piezoelectric resonators, where the metal electrodes are separated from the AlN resonators by small air (or vacuum) gaps. The second approach for tapping the material Q of AlN uses Q-boosting mechanical circuits, where the electrode-equipped AlN resonators are mechanically coupled to electrode-less ones to form a composite-array. In this structure, the energy shared among all of the resonators in the composite-array effectively boost the Q of the electrode-equipped resonators. The Q of electrode-less resonators are extrapolated from the measurement data to be from 14,040 to 15,795. Both methods achieve measured Q exceeding 10,000, posting the highest reported Q for resonators constructed of sputtered AlN and confirming that AlN is indeed a high-Q material.


The application of pattern recognition techniques to neuroimaging data has increased substantially over the last years leading to a large body of publications. Pattern recognition approaches consist of a whole family of tools coming from the "machine learning" community (at the border of statistics and engineering), which have been adapted to investigate neuroscience questions. Depending on the research question asked, experimental design and data modality, it is important that the experimenter knows which tools to use and how to draw reliable conclusions. The course will focus on subject and/or patient classification (for cognitive and clinical applications) but also on regression issues. The usual functional and structural MRI modalities will be covered but the presentations will also consider other types of data. Model validation and statistical inference are particularly crucial as these notions somewhat differ from the standard univariate statistics usually applied to analyze neuroimaging data (e.g. General Linear Model) and should thus be specifically addressed. After introducing the theoretical foundations of pattern recognition in neuroimaging, a few talks will address key validation and inference issues. Then the remaining talks will introduce more advanced methodological points as illustrated by specific applications and/or modalities. At the end of the course, the neuroscientist should have a global understanding of pattern recognition approaches, how to apply these tools to his/her own data to address new questions, and how to interpret the outcomes of these analyses as well as how to draw reliable conclusions.


Aim: The article provides an overview on the beginning and evolutions of medical observations on tobacco induced diseases between Eighteenth and Nineteenth century. Methods: By searching for historical medical literature,first studies on tobacco-induced diseases focused on production risks rather than on adverse effects that the use of tobacco has for the human health. Results: The approach induced first eighteenth-century authors to define this substance as a non-pathogenic and, consequently, not to consider tobacco factories dangerous for health workers. In those years, tobacco was employed in therapy as a stimulant treatment and it was considered harmless and even healthy and preventive of several acute diseases. Conclusions: Authors will show that studies on pathogenic effects of smoking will only start around late nineteenth century, when the idea of the healthiness of tobacco industry was already supported. (www.actabiomedica.it)


Hydrogen bonding is a key governing force in molecular recognition, notably in biological systems.  While it has been studied and exploited by supramolecular chemists for many years, most of this work has been conducted in organic solvents.  Investigations in water, the biological solvent, have proceeded more slowly, largely because the interaction is weakened by solvation and less easy to detect.  Recently it has become appreciated that the problems should be addressed, and work towards the deployment of H-bonding in water has accelerated.  This minireview discusses a range of synthetic receptors designed to bind organic molecules in aqueous media by combining hydrogen bonding with hydrophobic interactions.  Some of these systems are capable of high affinities and selectivities, raising the hope of biomedical applications in the near future.


A moderate light stimulus induced isoelectric point (pI) changes in three classes of retina-specific polypeptides (80, 49, and 39 kilodaltons) of Drosophila in vivo. When inorganic phosphate labeled with phosphorus-32 was fed to flies, the radioactive label was incorporated into these polypeptides during the pI changes, indicating light-induced phosphorylation of the polypeptides. A 1-millisecond flash induced a detectable amount of phosphorylation in the 80- and 49-kilodalton polypeptides within 3 seconds. These results, and our previous results with norpA mutants, suggest that phosphorylation of these two polypeptides may be involved in some early stages of photoreceptor excitation or its modulation.


From January 2008 until March 2010 when two members received recess appointments, the National Labor Relations Board operated with only two of the five members that the National Labor Relations Act specifies for the Board. Although both President Bush and President Obama nominated members, the Senate declined to confirm them. Five members of the Supreme Court, along with one federal courts of appeals held that the NLRB may not operate with two members; four Justices and five courts of appeals held that it may. All of the reviewing courts relied mainly on dueling readings of the quorum and vacancy provisions of the NLRA. Showing that the statutory language, the legislative history and Chevron deference are insufficient to answer the question, this article calls for a functional analysis of what courts should do when a failure to nominate or confirm replacements threatens to render an agency incapable of enforcing the law.The Supreme Court's decision in New Process Steel LLP v. NLRB was a lost opportunity for the Court to address some important questions about the role of reviewing courts when the nomination process stalls: Was the failure to Congress or the President to address the problem facilitated by the NLRB's willingness to continue to operate with only two members? Would courts help the nomination process by forcing the Senate and the President to choose between confirming nominees and total shut-down? Or would allowing the failure of the confirmation to shut the agency down give a form of heckler's veto that would ultimately damage the administrative state? Which is worse: agency shut-down or the formation of agency policy by a minority of the statutorily authorized members? To what extent is the risk of nominations stalling a problem unique to labor agencies or other highly-politicized agencies? To what extent has this problem gotten worse because of an increase in holds and filibusters? Does the ability to block a nomination, or the refusal to nominate a successor, allow the Senate or the President a kind of de facto repeal of the enabling statute? If so, is there anything wrong with that, or at least wrong enough that the courts should address it? These are the issues that the Court should have, but failed to, address in New Process Steel.


This text is the first to dedicate itself to the nonprofit sector. It provides a comprehensive overview of nonprofit and voluntary organizations, nongovernmental organizations, philanthropic foundations and civil society institutions. Taking an international perspective, it details the background and concepts behind these organizations and examines the theory, management and policy which informs them. Questions answered include:

 What are nonprofit and voluntary organizations?
 What is the history of the nonprofit sector?
 What is the scale and structure of the nonprofit sector?
 How can we explain the existence and behaviour of nonprofit organizations?
 How do nonprofits obtain funding and how do they manage resources?

With strong pedagogical features and the author's own extensive experience, this book is a valuable reference for all those involved in non-profit making organizations, as well as those in the wider public administration and management arena.


Competing risks survival analysis is used to investigate tax and zoning policy impacts on residential, commercial, and industrial development timing in a rapidly growing Midwestern county. Industrial development appears both to precede and occur concurrently with residential development, while commercial development follows other types. Although residences appear to locate away from industrial land, zoning decisions favoring industry may attract rather than deter residential development within a jurisdiction. Regions with higher infrastructure taxes experience development later. Because school taxes fund local public goods important to homeowners, they have little influence on residential timing, but strong influences on industrial and commercial timing.


In this paper, the authors define political individualization as a form of networked individualism. This process consists of two components: social individualization and political networking. Social individualization means that people are becoming less strongly connected to traditional communities and experiencing highly differentiated sociability. Political networking refers to the shift from stable connections to formal political movements to dynamic connections to issue networks. This article attempts to investigate whether this process of political individualization is positively related to the use of new media such as the Internet and mobile telephones. There could be two arguments why these two would be positively related. First, the use of new media drives political individualization; the use of new media stimulates individualization since it creates opportunities for individuals to create social connections outside of existing communities. New media also facilitate the formation of political networks. Second, the use of new media and political individualization are both manifestations of a broader process of societal change. The process of modernization results in increasing autonomy of individuals and growing use of technology. This paper does not test these two explanations but rather investigates whether the grounds for both arguments actually exist. The authors have formulated the following research question: Do the new media create opportunities for political individualization and how are these opportunities used? Data from an international survey (918 web questionnaires) of young people in two European cities – Florence and Utrecht – has been used to investigate the research question.


Cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) is transmitted in a non-circulative manner by aphids following the helper strategy. Helper proteins P2 and P3 act as a bridge between virions and the aphid cuticle. Electronic monitoring of aphid stylet activities (EPG technique), transmission tests and electron microscopy showed that CaMV is preferentially acquired from the phloem by its most common aphid vectors, Brevycorine brassicae and Myzus persicae. We also found that CaMV is semipersistently transmitted and that the rate of acquisition does not follow a typical bimodal curve. Instead, the virus could be acquired from non-phloem tissues at a low and fairly constant rate after one or more intracellular punctures within a few minutes, but the probability of acquisition rose significantly when aphids reached the phase of committed ingestion from the phloem. The acquisition rate of CaMV did not increase with increasing number of intracellular punctures, but the total duration of intracellular puncture was one of the variables selected by the stepwise logistic regression model used to fit the data that best explained acquisition of CaMV. Furthermore, aphids reaching the phloem faster had a higher probability of acquiring the virus. Our results support the hypothesis that multiple intracellular punctures of epidermal and mesophyll cells result in loading aphids with the CaMV-encoded aphid transmission factor (P2), and that aphids, in most cases, subsequently acquire CaMV particles during phloem sap ingestion. Consistently, immunoelectron microscopy showed that P3-virions are frequently found in the sieve element lumen, whereas P2 could not be detected.


Abstract. We study the competition of two different freezing mechanisms (homogeneous and heterogeneous freezing) in the same environment for cold cirrus clouds. To this goal we use the recently developed and validated ice microphysics scheme (Spichtinger and Gierens, 2009a) which distinguishes between ice classes according to their formation process. We investigate cases with purely homogeneous ice formation and compare them with cases where background ice nuclei in varying concentration heterogeneously form ice prior to homogeneous nucleation. We perform additionally a couple of sensitivity studies regarding threshold humidity for heterogeneous freezing, uplift speed, and ambient temperature, and we study the influence of random motions induced by temperature fluctuations in the clouds. We find three types of cloud evolution, homogeneously dominated, heterogeneously dominated, and a mixed type where neither nucleation process dominates. The latter case is prone to long–lasting in–cloud ice supersaturation of the order 30% and more.


Grids are managed Internet scale distributed services supporting collaboration and virtual organization. Collaboration over networks is becoming more and more popular and important in such areas as online conferencing, distance education, e-Science, e-Business, and e-Learning. We research the topic of shared event collaboration on Grid; we build three prototypes to investigate the issues from different software models and languages; we demonstrate this by making clients (collaboration entities) collaborate on events, taking advantages of the Grid for delivery of event messages and the computing powers of the clients' host computers. Grids are built from Web Services exchanging messages.
Peer-to-peer Grids exploit the observation that the entities in both P2P systems and Grids are autonomous agents (peers, services) whose state is determined by exchanging messages. Our work addresses Peer-to-peer Grids and leverages the advantages of both so that they complement each other. We have developed collaborative prototypes in PowerPoint, Impress, and ReviewPlus applications to demonstrate this, using Message Oriented Middleware (NaradaBrokering Message Service) to provide a Grid messaging substrate that can support collaborative Grids. The work with ReviewPlus is in Interactive Data language (IDL), where the complete and proper definitions of event structures are supplied and elegant mechanisms of widget programming are guaranteed; the events are systematically and completely defined with respect to structures, levels, configurations, and associated types of event handler routines. The prototypes are instantiations of the Shared Event Model and demonstrations of the collaborative Peer-to-peer Grids.
In order to promote the collaborative applications' usefulness and universal accessibility, we investigate a "Thin Client Collaboration Web Services" client architecture. We further develop a theoretical framework in terms of deterministic finite automata to describe our collaborative systems. We use the prototypes to define a general approach to shared event collaboration on the Grid.


Observed trends in seasonal and annual total rainfall, number of rain days and daily maximum and minimum temperature were calculated for a number of stations in South Africa for the period 1960-2010. Statistically significant decreases in rainfall and the number of rain days are shown over the central and northeastern parts of the country in the autumn months and significant increases in the number of rain days around the southern Drakensberg are evident in spring and summer. Maximum temperatures have increased significantly throughout the country for all seasons and increases in minimum temperatures are shown for most of the country. A notable exception is the central interior, where minimum temperatures have decreased significantly. Regionally aggregated trends for six water management zones covering the entire country are not evident for total rainfall, but there are some significant trends for the number of rain days. Temperature in these zones has increased significantly for most seasons, with the exception of the central interior. Comparison of the observed trends with statistically downscaled global climate model simulations reveals that the models do not represent the observed rainfall changes nor the cooling trend of minimum temperature in the central interior. Although this result does not rule out the possibility of attributing observed local changes in rainfall to anthropogenically forced global change, it does have major implications for attribution studies. It also raises the question of whether an alternative statistical downscaling method or dynamical downscaling through the use of a regional climate model might better represent regional and local climatic processes and their links to global change.


Clinical vignette: A 59-year-old aeronautical engineer is referred to you for evaluation because of increasing difficulty with job performance over the last several years. Difficulty managing home finances, getting lost driving, and forgetting appointments have become common. Previously outgoing, he is now depressed and irritable. After appropriate neurologic assessment, including brain imaging and metabolic studies, you make the diagnosis of Alzheimer's dementia and are asked by the patient's family what treatment is available.


Inside a fixed bounded domain $\Omega$ of the plane, we look for the best compact connected set $K$, of given perimeter, in order to maximize the first Dirichlet eigenvalue $\lambda_1(\Omega\setminus K)$. We discuss some of the qualitative properties of the maximizers, moving toward existence, regularity and geometry. Then we study the problem in specific domains: disks, rings, and, more generally, disks with convex holes. In these situations, we prove symmetry and, in some cases non symmetry results, identifying the solution.
We choose to work with the outer Minkowski content as the "good" notion of perimeter. Therefore, we are led to prove some new properties for it as its lower semicontinuity with respect to the Hausdorff convergence and the fact that the outer Minkowski content is equal to the Hausdorff lower semicontinuous envelope of the classical perimeter.


Thailand faces increasing mental health problems, however mental health services are limited. In particular, mental health services provided in communities across the country are not clearly structured. Research in regard to community mental health care is rare.

The purpose of this study was to explore mental health care management in two primary care units (PCUs) in Thailand in order to understand the ways they operate within Thai communities. The specific objectives were to identify mental health care practices and roles of health providers, models of care and influences on mental health care practices in the two PCUs as case studies. An ethnographic approach using participant observation, semi-structured interview, quantitative questionnaire and document analysis was used in gathering data. The participants were seven nurses and three public health workers practising in the PCUs.

Findings enhanced understanding in the context of two PCUs located in communities of the Northern and Central Thailand. Both were local health centres providing a wide range of health services based on the principles of primary health care (PHC).

The PCUs were operated without mental health specialists, however nurses were the main resource in providing mental health care in terms of primary and secondary prevention. Primary prevention was provided through counselling sessions, drug prevention activities and seniors clubs. In addition, the health providers conducted activities of mental health promotion towards particular risk groups after assessing risks. They also gave support to mental health and normal cases that had possible mental health problems. Secondary prevention was provided in home visits, primarily in giving injections. The health providers played four main roles as educator, consultant, agent and manager in primary and secondary prevention.

There was no single model of mental health care practice provided in the PCUs. Information derived from the present study showed a variety of models underpinning care practices. The nursing process was clearly adopted, as well as integrated care, community participation, collaboration and consultation, and using standard guidelines.

Personal knowledge and interest in mental health were mentioned as an important factor in practising mental health care. Environmental factors such as adhering to policy, being family-oriented, being mindful of economic factors, using Buddhist Principles to guide interactions, guarding against occupational risks, maintaining a teamwork approach and the lack of specialists appeared to be factors influencing mental health care.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge of community mental health care management in Thailand. The findings suggest implications for practices, education, and policy making to improve quality of care.


This brief sidebar reviews efforts to implement prevention programs within the military. As a workplace, members serving in the United States military at all ranks and all ages have a significant level of responsibility, especially during times of heavy deployments. Today's high-risk, lengthy, and frequent deployments can pose significant challenges to military members and their families (Hosek et al. 2006) and can lead to increased rates of problem behaviors, including heavy alcohol use (Ames et al. 2007). The risk for problem drinking increases for service members with more frequent deployments and a greater total cumulative length of time deployed (Spera et al. 2011). Ames and her group confirmed positive relationships between environmental and cultural elements of foreign deployment liberties (e.g., norms, traditions and rituals around heavy drinking and raucous behavior, availability of inexpensive alcohol, youth role-modeling older sailors, low to no supervisory control) and drinking rates and problem behaviors for both young adult (Ames et al. 2009) and careerist members of the U.S. Navy (Ames et al. 2007). Since 1980, smoking and illicit drug use has decreased among military personnel but heavy alcohol use has not (Bray and Hourani 2007). According to the 2008 Department of Defense (DOD) Health-Related Behavior Survey, 20 percent of all service members reported heavy alcohol use (i.e., five or more drinks on the same occasion at least once a week in the past 30 days) (Bray et al. 2009), meaning heavy episodic drinking still is common in the military (Stahre et al. 2009). In a recent survey, military personnel aged 18 to 25 and 26 to 35 years had significantly higher rates of heavy drinking than did civilians in those age groups: 26 percent vs. 16 percent and 18 vs. 11 percent, respectively (Bray et al. 2009). Despite the seriousness of military drinking problems, prevention efforts that have undergone rigorous evaluation are minimal. Strategies to prevent alcohol-related consequences, such as driving-under-the-influence (DUI) checks, are used in the military, but are not rigorously evaluated (Moore and Ames 2009). Spera and colleagues (2010) reported on an intervention using environmental strategies to reduce drinking and alcohol-related problems among 18- to 25- year-old active-duty Air Force (AF) members in five communities with local Air Force bases (AFBs). The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) awarded discretionary grants to five communities in four States as part of the Enforcing Underage Drinking Laws initiative to fund these environmental strategies. The intervention targeted active-duty members living both on and off base. A broad-based coalition (e.g., law enforcement officials, government officials, alcohol and beverage commission representatives, and AF human-service providers) was involved in implementing the intervention across a 3-year period. The five communities were Phoenix, Arizona/Luke AFB; Tucson, Arizona/Davis-Monthan AFB; Honolulu, Hawaii/Hickam AFB; the greater Sacramento area in California/Beale AFB; and Great Falls, Montana/Malmstrom AFB. Intervention activities included the following: * Enforcement aimed at reducing the social availability of alcohol, including at least three operations per year to verify drinkers' identifications and at least two controlled party-dispersal operations per year; * A minimum of two to three compliance checks (using covert underage buyers) per year at alcohol retailers near the base and in areas frequented by underage active-duty members to ensure that the establishments were not selling alcohol to underage active-duty members; * Increased number and frequency of DUI checks in the community, including a minimum of at least two DUI patrol operations per year targeted at youth alcohol parties and subsequent driving in and around their respective areas and communities; * Working to educate State lawmakers about changes to policies and laws that can affect underage drinking (e. …


The topic of information literacy seems dominated by themes at the formal end of the spectrum, such as academic collaboration and defining information literacy. In practice however, teaching and promoting information literacy happens at a number of levels. In particular, frontline paraprofessional staff often provide ad-hoc information literacy training within the context of functional interactions with library customers, although this aspect of information literacy is largely absent from the literature. Taking examples from the author's workplace experiences within a UK higher education library, it is argued that paraprofessionals can play a valuable role in promoting information literacy, bridging the gap between formal teaching sessions and the learning needs of individual students. Day-to-day encounters between customers and library staff can provide opportunities to embed information literacy within the library experience.


This document describes an architecture for a global, scalable, resilient, and administratively distributed system for mapping geographic location information to URLs, using the Location-to-Service Translation (LoST) protocol. The architecture generalizes well-known approaches found in hierarchical lookup systems such as DNS. Status of This Memo This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.


Through years of experience, expert image analysts acquire knowledge which allows them to perform an in-depth analysis of images quickly and efficiently. This research aims to build a humanlike framework and cognitive model of visual analysis based on the tacit visual knowledge of expert image analysts in medicine. Gaze tracking is used to discover the cognitive processes of radiologic technologists during their evaluation of x-ray scans. The resulting gaze patterns can be used to create visual routines which extract meaningful information from low-level image features and make them available to high-level cognitive processes. This method achieves a functional prototype of visual analysis within the biological, computational and memory limitations of the human visual system. The routines from this framework can be used to understand expert cognition, train new analysts, perform automated analysis, and potentially provide an informatics tool for medical error prevention.


Abstract:This essay examines a single article of colonial law—Section 124a, which outlawed "disaffection"—to argue for the centrality of seemingly arcane details of imperial history to our embattled present. The notion of political disaffection that grew out of its criminalization in British India necessitated a racial theory of what counted as criticism and, through the practice of trial law, put a range of literary-critical strategies into play in order to ascertain whether specific instances of Indian writing were (detached) criticism or (embodied) disaffection. In examining how this racialization was theorized and put into practice, I demonstrate how this history prefigures a number of contemporary literary and political concerns, including civility, the status of free speech in a state of emergency, political affects, and literary hermeneutics.


During the last decade, the need for visual content applications over mobile wireless environments have been progressively widespread. Motivated by the OSI layered approach, most visual applications make separation between content compression, and data transmission. Then, the received multimedia quality is degraded because of the sensitivity of the compressed stream to the transmission errors. In this paper, we propose a solution where the physical layer is scaled according to the compressed stream importance. The target application, which is visual multimedia sensor networks, motivated the use of the high-rate Ultra Wide Band (UWB) Audio Visual (AV) PHY IEEE 802.15.3c standard. We consider an embedded image compression scheme where bits are hierarchically organized, and we make different modulation, error-protection and sub-carrier assignments to them to improve the reconstructed image quality while keeping the same data-rate performance. We investigate the performance of the adaptive approach in terms of Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) against Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) for UWB-modeled channels. Moreover, we emphasize the gains induced by the adaptive UWB on the reconstructed image quality. It is demonstrated that dynamically assigning the symbols to sub-carriers allows a O.SdB PSNR quality improvement while keeping the same rate is the same. Allocating different channel codes and different modulation orders improves the reconstructed PSNR by 3.SdB when Eb/N0 = SdB.


Modulation of the activity of proteins by phosphorylation has often been described as a binary switch, but Pufall et al. show that finer rheostat-like control can also be achieved. The transcription factor Ets-1 exhibits a graded DNA binding affinity that depends on the number of sites that are phosphorylated. Ets-1 exists in conformational equilibrium between a dynamic conformation that binds DNA and a well-folded inhibited state. Increasing phosphorylation progressively shifts the equilibrium toward the inhibited state and thus fine-tunes the level of activity. The phosphorylated region, which serves as the allosteric effector, is predominantly unstructured and flexible and probably acts through transient interactions. M. A. Pufall, G. M. Lee, M. L. Nelson, H.-S. Kang, A. Velyvis, L. E. Kay, L. P. McIntosh, B. J. Graves, Variable control of Ets-1 DNA binding by multiple phosphates in an unstructured region. Science 309, 142-145 (2005). [Abstract] [Full Text]


For routine quantitative spectrographic analysis of phosphorus, using the line at 2136A, the Geiger-Muller photoelectron counter has certain advantages over both the photographic plate and the electron multiplier photo-tube. The construction of the counters and the methods of electrically shielding and mounting them on the Littrow spectrograph are briefly described. The adjustments of counter orientation, slit widths, and focus are discussed with reference to the analyses of ferrous alloys where good resolution is necessary. Because of the absorption of radiation by quartz at low wave-lengths, both absolute and relative intensities are dependent upon the position of the arc on the electrode surface. This effect, which results in appreciable error in the measured percentage composition of a sample, is investigated photographically and with G-M counters, and several methods of reducing the effect are discussed. The effect of temperature changes of the dispersing prism on line position is investigated and a suitable method of control is mentioned. Preliminary consideration of this direct-reading method shows that it seems possible to reduce the various errors so that the source fluctuation is the controlling factor.


This article examines the North Korean city of Sinŭiju during the era of Soviet occupation, focusing specifically on the Sinŭiju incident of 23 November 1945. A violent clash between local youth and Communist security forces, the incident revealed the combustible mixture of factors present in postcolonial North Korea. The Soviet military government's deadly response to the protests seriously threatened Korea's receptiveness to the Korean Communist Party and to the Soviet Union, and forced stronger control over both the city of Sinŭiju and youth nationwide. This article considers the visit that Kim Il Sung (Kim Ilsŏng) made to Sinŭiju in the aftermath of the incident, as well as subsequent North Korean policies in Sinŭiju. Drawing on previously untapped files from the Archive of Military History of the Russian Federation, newly declassified CIA documents, and Korean- and Chinese-language texts, this article examines a North Korean city whose peripheral influence in the postcolonial period has not yet been adequately understood.


Using a comprehensive data set collected through field survey of 950 farmers across Pakistan, the current study evaluates water-management practices and their impact on food security and poverty. The results show that rural households mainly adopted four water-management practices (bund making, deep plowing, the adoption of stress-tolerant varieties, and irrigation supplements) and that the wealth, education, and gender of the farmer (male) positively influences the adoption of improved water-management practices. The propensity score matching approach shows that the adoption of improved water-management practices improves wheat and rice yields, household income and food security levels, and reduces poverty levels. The food security levels of households adopting improved water-management practices are higher: in the range of 3–12%. Higher wheat yields are in the range of 26.8–70.4 kg/acre and higher rice yields are in the range of 48.4–85.2 kg/acre. Higher household income levels are in the range of rupees 2,573–4,926 and the lower poverty levels are in the range of 2–7%. Hence, agricultural policy should promote improved water-management practices among rural households.


Supramolecular orientational memory (SOM) provides a route to otherwise inaccessible nanoscale architectures for certain molecules. In these privileged cases, columnar domains organized from self-assembling dendrons undergo reorientation during heating to, and subsequent cooling from, a 3D phase composed of "spheres", such as a body-centered cubic phase or a Pmn cubic phase, known also as Frank-Kasper A15. The directions of the reoriented columns preserve key interactions from the preceding cubic phase. However, SOM was observed so far in a very limited number of assemblies. The molecular determinants enabling SOM, and its generality, remain poorly understood. Here we report the synthesis and structural and retrostructural analysis of a perylene bisimide (PBI) with two self-assembling benzyl ether dendrons, 3,5-G2-PBI, and compare its assemblies with those of a previously reported PBI, 3,4,5-G2-PBI, which exhibits SOM and has an additional minidendritic building block in its dendrons. The removal of this minidendron in 3,5-G2-PBI eliminates its ability to self-assemble into supramolecular spheres and organize into a cubic phase, thereby precluding 3,5-G2-PBI from exhibiting SOM. This finding demonstrates hierarchical transfer of structural information from primary structure to material function, analogous to the misfolding of proteins into toxic structures such as those implicated in Alzheimer's and Prion diseases. The concepts exemplified here provide new insights into the hierarchical basis for SOM and will aid in the translation of the SOM concept to a broader diversity of soft matter such as block copolymers and surfactants.


Digital Media, Projection Design, and Technology for Theatre covers the foundational skills, best practices, and real-world considerations of integrating digital media and projections into theatre. The authors, professional designers and university professors of digital media in live performance, provide readers with a narrative overview of the professional field, including current industry standards and expectations for digital media/projection design, its related technologies and techniques. The book offers a practical taxonomy of what digital media is and how we create meaning through its use on the theatrical stage. The book outlines the digital media/projection designer's workflow into nine unique phases. From the very first steps of landing the job, to reading and analyzing the script and creating content, all the way through to opening night and archiving a design. Detailed analysis, tips, case studies, and best practices for crafting a practical schedule and budget, to rehearsing with digital media, working with actors and directors, to creating a unified design for the stage with lighting, set, sound, costumes, and props is discussed. The fundamentals of content creation, detailing the basic building blocks of creating and executing digital content within a design is offered in context of the most commonly used content creation methods, including: photography and still images, video, animation, realtime effects, generative art, data, and interactive digital media. Standard professional industry equipment, including media servers, projectors, projection surfaces, emissive displays, cameras, sensors, etc. is detailed. The book also offers a breakdown of all key related technical tasks, such as converging, warping, and blending projectors, to calculating surface brightness/luminance, screen size and throw distance, to using masks, warping content and projection mapping, making this a complete guide to digital media and projection design today. An eResource page offers sample assets and interviews that link to current and relevant work of leading projection designers.... Download ebook, read file pdf Digital Media, Projection Design, and Technology for Theatre


Various different models have been proposed for the style of fill of the Karoo Basin in South Africa. One of these proposes that the Karoo Basin behaved as a partitioned entity, with reciprocal fills on either side of a hinge line separating proximal and distal facies. Detailed sedimentological, palaeontological, stratigraphic and geophysical data for the Beaufort Group in the central Free State lends credence to this model. In the study area fossils assignable to the Dicynodon , Lystrosaurus and Cynognathus assemblage zones occur in the Balfour, Katberg and Burgersdorp formations respectively. This data shows that certain parts of the Beaufort Group stratigraphic succession that are present in the southern part of the Karoo Basin, are absent in the central Free State, indicating either a depositional hiatus or a period of erosion at the beginning and the end of Lystrosaurus Assemblage Zone, as well as the end of Cynognathus Assemblage Zone times. During these depositional hiatuses or periods of erosion, deposition or preservation of the rock record was restricted to the proximal sector (south of the hinge line). Study of the geophysical data has also allowed for the definition of a basement high north-east of Thaba Nchu, which probably accounts for the provenance of the informally named Musgrave unit (upper Balfour Formation), which also has an anomalous south-westerly palaeocurrent direction.


This study determines if detachable syringe-needle combinations redesigned to reduce their dead space volume may substantially reduce the burden of exposure to infectious HIV among people who inject drugs. Two novel, low dead space (LDS) syringe-needle designs-one added a piston to the plunger (LDS syringe) and the other added a filler to the needle (LDS needle) to reduce their dead space-were compared to standard detachable needle-syringe combinations and to syringes with fixed needles. LDS and standard syringes attached to LDS and standard needles of 23-, 25-, and 27-gauge size were contaminated with HIV-infected blood in the laboratory. The proportion of syringe-needle combinations containing infectious HIV was analyzed after syringes were (1) stored up to 7 days at 22°C or (2) rinsed with water. Detachable syringes attached to 25-gauge needles yielded comparable proportions of syringes with infectious HIV, whether the needle was standard or LDS. Among needles of greater diameter (23 gauge), LDS needles tended to reduce recoverable HIV to a greater extent than standard needles. Syringes with fixed needles showed superior results to LDS syringes attached to needles of equivalent diameter and were less likely to get clogged by blood. Detachable LDS syringe-needle designs must be recommended with caution since they still pose potential risk for HIV transmission. Distribution of LDS syringes and needles must be accompanied by recommendations and instructions for their proper rinsing and disinfection in order to reduce viral burden and chances of needle clogging.


Global change processes such as sea level rise and the increasing frequency of severe storms threaten many coastlines around the world and trigger the need for interventions to make these often densely-populated areas safer. Mangroves could be implemented in Nature-Based Flood Defense, provided that we know how to conserve and restore these ecosystems at those locations where they are most needed. In this study, we investigate how best to restore mangroves along an aquaculture coast that is subject to land-subsidence, comparing two common mangrove restoration methods: 1) mangrove restoration by planting and 2) Ecological Mangrove Restoration (EMR); the assistance of natural mangrove regeneration through mangrove habitat restoration. Satellite data revealed that historically, landward mangrove expansion into the active pond zone has mainly occurred through mangrove planting on pond bunds. However, there is potential to create greenbelts along waterways by means of EMR measures, as propagule trap data from the field revealed that propagules of pioneer species were up to 21 times more abundant in creeks of the pond zone than near their source in the coastal zone. This was especially true during the prevailing onshore winds of the wet-season, suggesting that smart seasonal sluice gate management could help to efficiently trap seeds in target ponds. In the coastal zone, field experiments showed that permeable brushwood dams, aimed at expanding mangrove habitat, could not sufficiently overcome subsidence rates to increase natural mangrove expansion in the seaward direction, but did significantly increase the survival of already established (planted) seedlings compared to more wave-exposed sites. The survival and growth rate of EMR-supported plantings greatly varied between species. Out of the four planted species, Rhizophora mucronata had the highest survival (67%) but the lowest growth rate. Whereas the pioneer species Avicennia alba and Avicennia marina had lower survival rates (resp. 35 and 21%), but significantly higher growth rates, even resulting in fruiting young trees within a 16-month timeframe. Overall, we conclude that 1) EMR has potential in the pond zone, given that propagules were observed to reach well into the backwaters; and 2) that mangrove recovery in the coastal zone may be facilitated even at very challenging coastal sites by combining EMR with the planting of pioneer species.


Essential Academic Vocabulary prepares students for academic success by helping them preview, learn, and practice vocabulary from the Academic Word List in context. Engaging academic readings highlight chapter vocabulary in context. From chapter to chapter, the readings and vocabulary increase in complexity level, allowing students to establish and build upon a solid vocabulary foundation.


This thesis will explore the deterministic dynamics of systems of coupled oscillators. In particular, the focus of the thesis will be concerned with the transport properties of these systems. Of interest is how particles work together, cooperatively, to achieve directed transport. For this reason, the strength of the coupling between the particles will serve as the main control parameter. Further, ensemble dynamics will serve to highlight some of the collective effects of these systems.
The thesis will be split into two parts. The first part will look at a class of autonomous Hamiltonian systems, while the second part will consider a class of driven and damped systems. A common feature of these systems is that they contain a spatially open component that will facilitate long range transport. More precisely, transport proceeds in a spatially symmetric and periodic multiple well potential. Thus transport will be characterised by particles overcoming successive energetic barriers created by the potential landscape.
The cooperative effects between the particles will become apparent in Part I when autonomous Hamiltonian systems are considered. In the uncoupled limit the full systems decompose into two integrable subsystems and the dynamics are fully understood. However, the dynamics become more complicated when the particles are coupled. As these systems are conservative a coordinated energy exchange between the particles is often required for directed transport to ensue. Interestingly, these systems contrast well with the nonautonomous one and a half degree-of-freedom Hamiltonian systems, where transport occurs through intermittent periods of directed motion in so-called ballistic channels. The autonomous two degree-of-freedom counterpart considered here relies on a rather different mechanism for directed transport that will be provided solely by regular structures in phase-space.
With the inclusion of external driving and damping (Part II) the transport dynamics are controlled by various coexisting attractors in phase-space. The nature and stability of these attractors is determined by the system parameters. As before, cooperative e�ects will play a key role when it comes to particle transport. Notably, it will be seen that coupling between the particles can result in a suppression of chaos that will allow for, for example, collective periodic motion of rotational type. Particular attention will be paid to the phase-space structures and how they change as the coupling parameter is varied.
Throughout the thesis these nonlinear systems, and their transport features, will be explored using analytical and numerical means. A number of model systems will also be introduced to further illuminate the systems dynamics.


MDR gram-negative critical priority pathogens in King Abdulaziz Medical City, Jeddah, to inform strategies for their containment. Methods A case-control study was carried out from January to April 2015, in which 100 patients with healthcare-associated infections (infections arising 48 hours after admission) caused by MDR GNB were compared with two control groups, i.e., 100 patients with healthcare-associated infections caused by non-MDR GNB (not meeting the criteria of MDR) and 100 patients without infection caused by GNB. MDR bacteria were defined as bacteria that were non-susceptible to at least one antibiotic in three or more classes of antibiotics. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage of categorical variables). Multivariate regression analysis was undertaken to identify significant predictors of MDR GNB. Odds ratios (ORs) with 95% CIs were calculated and the level of significance was determined as p<0.05. Results A total of 388 organisms were isolated during the study period from 332 patients. 56 (14%) patients were infected with more than one organism. Antibiotic therapy (OR 5.50, 95% CI 2.19–13.84; OR 3.98, 95% CI 1.68–9.44), stay in intensive care unit (OR 11.11, 95% CI 4.58–26.93; OR 8.60, 95% CI 3.28–22.57), and having indwelling medical devices (OR 3.02, 95% CI 1.45–6.33; OR 2.43, 95% CI 1.11–5.33) were the significant risk factors in patients infected with MDR GNB compared with each of the other two control groups, respectively. Conclusion The risk factors identified in our study provide guidance for healthcare workers for the prevention and containment of MDR GNB with special emphasis on effective implementation of an antimicrobial stewardship program and enhancing infection control practices in intensive care units.


This paper studies the welfare implications of different institutions certifying environmental quality supplied by a monopoly. The monopolist can voluntarily certify the quality of the product through an eco-label provided either by an NGO or a for-profit private certifier (PC). The NGO and the PC may use advertisement to promote the label. We compare the NGO and PC regimes with the regime where the regulator imposes a minimum quality standard. The presence of a private certifier in the market decreases the scope for public intervention. The availability of green advertisement reinforces the above result.


Multimedia applications are becoming increasingly important for a large class of general-purpose processors. Contemporary media applications are highly complex and demand high performance. A distinctive feature of these applications is that they have significant parallelism, including thread-, data-, and instruction-level parallelism, that is potentially well-aligned with the increasing parallelism supported by emerging multicore architectures. Designing systems to meet the demands of these applications therefore requires a benchmark suite comprising these complex applications and that exposes the parallelism present in them. This thesis makes three main contributions. First, it presents ALPBench, a publicly released benchmark suite that pulls together five complex media applications from various sources: speech recognition (CMU Sphinx 3.3), face recognition (CSU), ray tracing (Tachyon), MPEG-2 encode (MSSG), and MPEG-2 decode (MSSG). We have modified the original applications to expose thread-level parallelism using POSIX threads and data-level parallelism using Intel's SSE2 instructions and vector extensions. Second, the thesis provides a performance characterization of the ALPBench benchmarks, with a focus on parallelism. Such a characterization is useful for architects and compiler writers for designing systems and compiler optimizations for these applications.


Advanced products such as aircraft distinguish themselves by a number of characteristics. Products are complicated and produced under very complicated circumstances, but also have a very long life. The purchase price, therefore, is a small part of total user cost of the product. Product value, hence, increases the more of cost efficient maintenance that has been built into the product and the easier it is to service and modernize. Advanced products also distinguish themselves by featuring the additional collective characteristic of a "cloud of technology spillovers" available to external users in proportion to their competence to commercialize them. While the value of that cloud to society may be greater than that of the product itself the value to the user may be much smaller. The producer, therefore, faces a tricky pricing problem and the value he can capture depends on his ability to charge for the dual product. I discuss joint production of products with rich spillovers in the context of joint customership, i.e. public purchasing of both products and the collective value generated by spillovers. I demonstrate that a win-win situation might exist between the two that improves with the commercial ability of the local economy to capture the value of the spillovers. Industrial participation programs can be made part of a sale to support the receiver competence of local producers to capture the spillover rents. Part of marketing the product, therefore, involves the ability to present a credible case for the economic value to society of the spillovers and to design a method of charging for them (Innovative pricing). A well designed, mutually beneficial contract should make both parties to the trade winners. This latter form of innovative pricing should be particularly attractive for developing countries. The theoretical argument is illustrated with the case of downstream industrial business formation around Swedish Aircraft industry.


This study investigated predictors and moderators of mood symptoms in the randomized controlled trial (RCT) of Multi-Family Psychoeducational Psychotherapy (MF-PEP) for childhood mood disorders. Based on predictors and moderators in RCTs of psychosocial interventions for adolescent mood disorders, we hypothesized that children's greater functional impairment would predict worse outcome, whereas children's stress/trauma history and parental expressed emotion and psychopathology would moderate outcome. Exploratory analyses examined other demographic, functioning, and diagnostic variables. Logistic regression and linear mixed effects modeling were used in this secondary analysis of the MF-PEP RCT of 165 children, ages 8 to 12, with mood disorders, a majority of whom were male (73%) and White, non-Hispanic (90%). Treatment nonresponse was significantly associated with higher baseline levels of global functioning (i.e., less impairment; Cohen's d = 0.51) and lower levels of stress/trauma history (d = 0.56) in children and Cluster B personality disorder symptoms in parents (d = 0.49). Regarding moderators, children with moderately impaired functioning who received MF-PEP had significantly decreased mood symptoms (t = 2.10, d = 0.33) compared with waitlist control. MF-PEP had the strongest effect on severely impaired children (t = 3.03, d = 0.47). Comprehensive assessment of demographic, youth, parent, and familial variables should precede intervention. Treatment of mood disorders in high-functioning youth without stress/trauma histories and with parents with elevated Cluster B symptoms may require extra therapeutic effort, whereas severely impaired children may benefit most from MF-PEP.


Analgesia is the main concern regarding pacient's postoperative rehabilitation. The main aim of this study was to compare the analgesic effect of Robenacoxib and Tramadol when administrated after surgery. Forty client-owned dogs undergoing genital surgery at the Clinic of Obstetrics and Gynecology (Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Bucharest) were taken into study. Anaesthetic and supportive care protocols were standardized. Tramadol (2 mg/kg) was administrated postoperatively every 6-8 hours, while Robenacoxib (1 mg/kg) was administrated once a day. Pain scores were estimated according to Glasgow scale of pain for animals. Patients in Tramadol group (n=20) were more quiet (15/20), they ate sooner after surgery (10/20), fewer of them cried and whimpered (10/20). Dogs in Robenacoxib group (n=20) did not lick around the incision line (17/20) and the wound healed faster (15/20). Tramadol alone provides longer-lasting analgesia compared to Robenacoxib, but does not have the same anti inflammatory effect. Robenacoxib has a better effect in wound healing. The combined administration of Tramadol and Robenacoxib should be the subject of a further study.


This paper presents an approach to incorporating corpus work in multidisciplinary EAP classes whereby each student builds a personal corpus from research articles in their discipline. Although students work with different corpora, all perform the same teacher-guided tasks, designed to investigate key functions of written academic discourse. The potential of this 'same task, different corpus' approach is illustrated by showing both the individuality of student findings and how they are enhanced by being compared with other students' discipline-specific data and with established general research findings. The paper discusses students' use of several corpus tools in AntConc (Concordance, Collocates, Word List, Concordance Plot) and suggests that all have valuable pedagogical applications. Task procedures important to successful corpus pedagogy are also highlighted.


Previous systems for measuring cross-correlated light scattering by small particles suspended in a liquid with multiple-scattering suppression have illuminated the particles with two laser beams. It is shown that multiple-scattering suppression should also occur in cross correlation for a system that employs a single laser beam and two closely spaced detectors with wide fields of view. The single-scattering, double-scattering, and single-double-scattering cross-term contributions to the intensity cross-correlation function are calculated. It is found that the two cross terms, when added together, are unimportant for both autocorrelation and cross correlation. The amplitude of the double-scattering term can be greatly diminished by judicious detector spacing because the spatial coherence area in the detector plane for double scattering is much smaller than that for single scattering.


Different approaches have explored how to provide seamless learning across multiple ICT-enabled physical and virtual spaces, including three-dimensional virtual worlds (3DVW). However, these approaches present limitations that may reduce their acceptance in authentic educational practice: The difficulties of authoring and sharing teacher-created designs across different 3DVW platforms, or the lack of integration of 3DVWs with existing technologies in the classroom ecosystem (e.g., widespread web-based learning platforms such as Moodle, or mobile augmented reality applications). Focusing on a specific kind of 3DVW (virtual globes, such as Google Earth, used like 3DVWs), we propose a system that enables teachers to deploy across-spaces learning situations, which can be authored with a plethora of existing learning design tools, that involve different common web-based learning platforms, mobile AR applications and multiple kinds of virtual globes. A prototype of the architecture has been developed to evaluate this novel approach. The mixed-methods evaluation performed comprised both a feature analysis and a study where a teacher deployed an authentic across-spaces learning situation including Google Earth used as a 3DVW. Such evaluation shows that the system enables teachers deploy learning situations over different technological ecosystems composed by physical and web spaces, as well as by 3DVWs.


LUNSFORD II, PHILIP J. The Frequency Domain Behavioral Modeling and Simulation of Nonlinear Analog Circuits and Systems. (Under the direction of Michael B. Steer.) A new technique for the frequency–domain behavioral modeling and simulation of nonautonomous nonlinear analog subsystems is presented. This technique extracts values of the Volterra nonlinear transfer functions and stores these values in binary files. Using these files, the modeled substem can be simulated for an arbitrary periodic input expressed as a finite sum of sines and cosines. Furthermore, the extraction can be based on any circuit simulator that is capable of steady state simulation. Thus a large system can be divided into smaller subsystems, each of which is characterized by circuit level simulations or lab measurements. The total system can then be simulated using the subsystem characterization stored as tables in binary files. Using known ideal nonlinear circuits, the method extraction technique was tested for nonlinearities up to seventh order. The Volterra nonlinear transfer functions of an equalizing circuit were extracted from the results of transient simulations which utilized the shooting method. The resulting tables were then used to simulate an arbitrary waveform and the results closely matched the equivalent time domain circuit simulation.


Background Male sex, total training volume (number of hours per week) and match exposure (number of sets played per week) are risk factors for jumper's knee among young elite volleyball players. However, it is not known whether jump frequency differs among players on the same squad. Objective To examine interindividual and sex differences in jump frequency during training and matches in young elite volleyball players. Design Observational study. Setting Norwegian elite volleyball boarding school training programme. Participants Student-athletes (26 boys and 18 girls, 16–18 years). Methods Individual jump counts were recorded based on visual analysis of video recordings obtained from 1 week of volleyball training (9 training sessions for boys and 10 for girls, 14.1 h and 17.8 h of training, respectively) and 10 matches (5.9 h for boys (16 sets) and 7.7 h for girls (21 sets). Results A total of 11 943 jumps were recorded, 4138 during matches and 7805 during training. As training attendance and jump frequency varied substantially between players, the total exposure in training ranged from 50 to 666 jumps/week among boys and from 11 to 251 jumps/week among girls. On average, this corresponded to 35.7 jumps/h for boys and 13.7 jumps/h for girls (Student t test, p=0.002). Total jump exposure during matches ranged between 1 and 339 jumps among boys and between 0 and 379 jumps among girls, corresponding to an average jump frequency of 62.2 jumps/h for boys and 41.9 jumps/h for girls (Student t test, p<0.039). The interindividual differences in jump frequency were substantially greater than any differences observed among player functions. Conclusions Jump frequency has substantial interindividual and sex differences during training and matches in young elite volleyball players. Total jump volume may represent a more important risk factor for jumper's knee than total training volume, warranting further research attention.


Investigations have been carried out on the effect of maternal protein free diet on the placenta of laboratory mice of Balb/C strain. The thickness of placental barrier was measured. Placental weight, fetal weight, fetal numbers were also calculated and histological study was also done. Animal husbandry and the day of conception were arranged. Pregnant mice were dissected at days (12th, 14th, and 18th) of gestation. Thirty placentas from mice on protein free diet and fifteen placentas from mice on control diet, were taken, stained by haematoxylin and eosin and examined under light microscope with screen. The following results are subsequently obtained: 1. Reduction in fetal number and weight of mice after protein malnutrition, in comparison to their control at the same stage of gestation. 2. Reduction in placental weight of mice after protein malnutrition, in comparison to their control at the same stage of gestation. 3. Reduction in the thickness of trophoblastic layers of placental barrier in mice after protein malnutrition, which are measured by using light microscope with screen and scientific ruler. 4. Morphological changes showed thin placental barrier, with basophilic cytoplasm and degenerated nuclei. Areas of degeneration infiltrated with phagocytic cells with increase in the number and size of blood vessels were seen. These changes may affect the placental function, which may be the main cause of decrease in fetal weight (intra uterine growth retardation), placental weight and fetal number.


This thesis stems from my research into the broad area of (credit) scoring and the
predicting, understanding and explaining of consumer behaviour. This research started at
the Univers1ty of Edinburgh on an ESRC funded project in 1988.
This work, which is being submitted as the partial fulfilment of the requirements for the
award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough Unvers1ty, consists of an introductory
chapter and a selection of papers published 1991 - 2001 (inclusive). The papers address
some of the key issues and areas of interest and concern arising from the rapidly evolving
and expanding credit (card) market and the highly competitive nature of the credit industry.
These features were particularly evident during the late 1980's and throughout the 90's
Chapter One provides a general background to the research and outlines some of the key
(practical) issues involved in building a (credit) scorecard Additionally, it provides a brief
summary of each of the research papers appearing in full in Chapters 2- 9 (inclusive) and
ends with some general limitations and conclusions. The research papers appearing in
Chapters 2-9 inclusive) are all concerned with predicting, understanding and explaining
different types of consumer behaviour in relation to the use of credit cards. For example
discriminating between 'GOOD' and 'BAD' repayers of credit card debt on the basis of
different definitions of good and bad, the identification of 'slow payers' using different
statistical methods; examining the characteristics of credit card users and non-users, and
identifying the characteristics of credit card holders most likely to return their credit card.


Using density functional theory, we investigate the magnetic properties of Mn doped MgO in its bulk (3D), surface (2D) and one dimensional (1D) structures. At a low dilute limit (1.5 %), the Mn impurity behaves indifferent to its position in 3D but energetically prefers to be on one of the surfaces of 2D and 1D structures. At a higher dilute limit (3.1 %), the Mn impurities stabilizing at Mnd(3+) ?> ionic states prefer to be in a close configuration (4.2 Å compared to 5.95 Å) and the antiferromagnetic ordering (AFM) between them is preferred over the ferromagnetic ordering. The n-type extrinsic defects (O vacancy), when introduced to Mn doped MgO structures, also result in similar AFM exchanges as between the Mn impurities. However, the p-type defects (Mg vacancy) in the Mn doped MgO structures result in a reduced magnetic moment for the Mn atoms and bring a significant Jahn Teller (JT)-type of distortion to the eg and t2g degenerate states of Mnd(3+) ?> ions. The strong hybridization between distorted Mnd states and O2p states results in a FM exchange coupling between the Mn ions, in all the three mentioned Mn doped MgO structures. As we move from 3D to 2D, to 1D structures, the influence of JT distortion decreases, reflecting a decreasing trend for the strength of the FM exchange coupling between the Mn atoms.


In computer graphics, realistic rendering of virtual scenes is a computationally complex problem. State-of-the-art rendering technology must become more scalable to
meet the performance requirements for demanding real-time applications.

This dissertation is concerned with core algorithms for rendering, focusing on the
ray tracing method in particular, to support and saturate recent massively parallel computer systems, i.e., to distribute the complex computations very efficiently
among a large number of processing elements. More specifically, the three targeted
main contributions are:

1. Collaboration framework for large-scale distributed memory computers
The purpose of the collaboration framework is to enable scalable rendering
in real-time on a distributed memory computer. As an infrastructure layer it
manages the explicit communication within a network of distributed memory
nodes transparently for the rendering application. The research is focused on
designing a communication protocol resilient against delays and negligible in
overhead, relying exclusively on one-sided and asynchronous data transfers.
The hypothesis is that a loosely coupled system like this is able to scale linearly
with the number of nodes, which is tested by directly measuring all possible
communication-induced delays as well as the overall rendering throughput.

2. Ray tracing algorithms designed for vector processing
Vector processors are to be efficiently utilized for improved ray tracing performance. This requires the basic, scalar traversal algorithm to be reformulated
in order to expose a high degree of fine-grained data parallelism. Two approaches are investigated: traversing multiple rays simultaneously, and performing
multiple traversal steps at once. Efficiently establishing coherence in a group
of rays as well as avoiding sorting of the nodes in a multi-traversal step are the
defining research goals.

3. Multi-threaded schedule and memory management for the ray tracing acceleration structure
Construction times of high-quality acceleration structures are to be reduced by
improvements to multi-threaded scalability and utilization of vector processors. Research is directed at eliminating the following scalability bottlenecks:
dynamic memory growth caused by the primitive splits required for high-
quality structures, and top-level hierarchy construction where simple task par-
allelism is not readily available. Additional research addresses how to expose
scatter/gather-free data-parallelism for efficient vector processing.

Together, these contributions form a scalable, high-performance basis for real-time,
ray tracing-based rendering, and a prototype path tracing application implemented
on top of this basis serves as a demonstration.

The key insight driving this dissertation is that the computational power necessary
for realistic light transport for real-time rendering applications demands massively
parallel computers, which in turn require highly scalable algorithms. Therefore this
dissertation provides important research along the path towards virtual reality.