Whether the United States should initiate construction of a limited national missile defense system became a significant issue for the Clinton administration in the summer of 2000. Central to the national defense system discussion was a concern that such a move would violate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty ("ABM Treaty") signed with the Soviet Union in 1972.(1) The administration considered a number of different approaches to build a national missile defense system, including the possibility that the ABM Treaty could be interpreted to allow preliminary stages of construction to begin without technically violating the treaty. After considerable deliberation, the Clinton administration decided not to insist upon such a broad interpretation of the ABM Treaty. However, the discussion surrounding that possibility highlighted an important problem in international law: what happens when one party to an international treaty unilaterally changes a long-standing and previously universally accepted interpretation of the treaty? The United States and the Soviet Union signed the ABM Treaty in the midst of the Cold War as an effort to slow the arms race by reducing the number of weapons and limiting the defense systems available to both sides. Article I of the treaty takes a strong stance against nation-wide defense systems, stating "[e]ach party undertakes not to deploy ABM systems for a defense of the territory of its country and not to provide a base for such a defense."2 The treaty limits even the testing of several kinds of defense systems in Article V: "Each party undertakes not to develop, test, or deploy AMB systems or components which are sea-based, air-based, space-based, or mobile land-based."3 The treaty leaves in place the ability to deploy very limited defense systems that are unable to protect the parties' major cities. The idea driving the limitations on defense systems was that if neither side could survive a first strike with a retaliatory capability intact, then neither side would have an incentive to order that first strike.4 Any defense system capable of defending either side's major cities was considered to be a negative contribution to the arms race, because once one side had such a defense capability the other side would work until it produced the technology necessary to pierce the system. At the time that the ABM Treaty was signed, the United States and the Soviet Union were among the only countries with the capability of launching intercontinental nuclear ballistic missiles.5 The global climate concerning nuclear weapons has changed considerably since the treaty was ratified. In recent years, smaller nations such as North Korea and Iran have developed nuclear technology. The possibility that the United States may be vulnerable to a nuclear attack from such "rogue states" fueled a desire among both Congress and the Clinton administration to deploy a limited defense system despite the ABM Treaty. In early June 2000, President Clinton met with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the US plan to build a limited defense system in response to the threat from "rogue states." The plan included the construction of 100 interceptor missiles in Alaska to protect the United States from incoming missiles. Russia made it clear during the summit that the proposed missile defense system would constitute a violation of the ABM treaty. Clinton rejected Putin's suggestion that the two nations create a joint Russo-US theater defense system of a much smaller scale than the national system that Clinton proposed.6 Following the summit, the Clinton administration suggested that the ABM Treaty could be interpreted to allow for the initial phases of construction of a limited defense system without violating the terms of the treaty. Article II of the ABM Treaty states that "The ABM System components ... include those which are ... under construction."7 The administration argued that the phrase "under construction" could be interpreted so that the United States could pour the cement on the project without the system actually being "under construction. …


Research has shown that the prison population and recidivism rate of criminal offenders have continued to rise over the last thirty years (Coll, Stewart, Juhnke, Thobro, & Haas, 2009). In response, professionals are implementing techniques, such as risk-need assessments, to assist in lowering recidivism. These assessments are empirical tools that professionals use when interviewing offenders to identify their risk of recidivism (Barber-Roja & Rotter, 2015). Previous research has been focused on assessment's predictive accuracy, but there is less data on professionals' perceptions regarding which measures are most effective (Labrecque, Smith, Lovins, & Latessa, 2014). Studies have shown that corrections professionals and treatment providers have interpreted assessment results differently (Marlowe, 2012). In the current study, a quantitative survey with some qualitative elements was used to examine the following questions: 1) What aspects of risk-need assessments do different criminal justice professionals find important to effectively examine offenders' risk of recidivism and treatment needs, and 2) How do professional values relate to offenders' assessment results? Findings have shown that among the 51 respondents, a majority of the sample found risk-need assessments to be effective, as well as useful for treatment purposes. However, significant differences emerged between the occupational groups in the areas of ethical domains and strengths. Results indicate the need for policies to be created to ensure that professionals performing assessments possess qualifying criteria. Implications for social work practice are explored in the context of this paper. Running head: EFFECTIVE AND ETHICAL PREDICTORS OF RECIDIVISM 3


Computer Arithmetic Volume III is a compilation of key papers in computer arithmetic on floating-point arithmetic and design. The intent is to show progress, evolution, and novelty in the area of floating-point arithmetic. This field has made extraordinary progress since the initial software routines on mainframe computers have evolved into hardware implementations in processors spanning a wide range of performance. Nevertheless, these papers pave the way to the understanding of modern day processors design where computer arithmetic are supported by floating-point units. The goal of Volume III is to collect the defining document for floating-point arithmetic and many of the key papers on the implementation of both binary and decimal floating-point arithmetic into a single volume. Although fewer than forty papers are included, their reference lists will direct the interested reader to other excellent work that could not be included here. Volume III is specifically oriented to the needs of designers and users of both general-purpose computers and special-purpose digital processors. The book should also be useful to systems engineers, computer architects, and logic designers. It is also intended to serve as a primary text for a course on floating-point arithmetic, as well as a supplementary text for courses in digital arithmetic and high-speed signal processing.


Changes in xanthophyll esterification degree during pepper fruit ripening have been studied in five cultivars (Numex, Mana, Belrubi, Delfin, and Negral). Esterification of xanthophylls with fatty acids is seen to be a process that is contemporary with and directly linked to the transformation of chloroplast (present in the green fruit) into chromoplast (present in the red fruit). Changes in the fractions of free and partially and totally esterified carotenoids are similar between varieties, reflecting the constitutive nature of esterification as part of the ripening process and being controlled by it. From the first stages of ripening, the fraction of totally esterified pigments (zeaxanthin diester, beta-cryptoxanthin diester, capsanthin diester, and capsorubin diester) makes up almost 50% of the total carotenoid content. The proportion of the partially esterified pigment fraction (zeaxanthin monoester, capsanthin monoester, and capsorubin monoester) in the total carotenoid content increases, with a gradual decrease in the fraction of free pigments (beta-cryptoxanthin, beta-carotene, zeaxanthin, capsanthin, and capsorubin). In the fully ripe stage, a balance is reached between the three esterification fractions (free, partially esterified, and totally esterified), with mean values of 24.17 +/- 4.06, 31.48 +/- 4. 61, and 44.36 +/- 5.05, respectively, which seems to be largely independent of variety. This suggests a marked control of the carotenoid composition of the totally developed chromoplast, indicating its use as an index of ripeness. The inclusion in the present study of a variety (Negral) that retains chlorophylls when ripening, and which shows the same esterification behavior, supports the idea that carotenogenesis is normal and independent of chlorophyll catabolism.


Hybrid literature has flourished in the Russian diaspora in the last decade and much of it is semi-autobiographical, concerned with the reconfiguration of identity in emigration. It dwells productively on the translation of the self and (more broadly) on the relationship between center and margin in the post-Soviet, transnational world. Gender roles are subject to contestation, as writers interrogate and reconsider expectations inherited from traditional Russian culture. This article situates Russian hybrid literature vis-a-vis Western feminism, taking into account Russian women's particular experience of feminism. Four female writers of contemporary Russian-American literature – Lara Vapnyar, Sana Krasikov, Anya Ulinich, and Irina Reyn – inscribe failures of domesticity into their prose. Their female characters who cannot or do not cook or clean problematize woman's role as nurturer. Home (geographic or imaginary) carries a semantic load of limitation and restriction, so failure as a homemaker may be paradoxically liberating. For female characters working in the West to support their families in Russia, domesticity is sometimes even more darkly cast as servitude. Rejection of traditional Russian definitions of women's gender roles may signal successful renogotiation of identity in the diaspora. Although these writers may express nostalgia for the Russian culture of their early childhood, their critique of the tyranny of home is a powerful narrative gesture. Failures of domesticity represent successful steps in the redefinition of the self and they support these writers' claim to transnational status.


In the modern regulatory state, there is a serious tension between two indispensable ideas. The first is that it is important to measure, both in advance and on a continuing basis, the effects of regulation on social welfare, usually through cost-benefit analysis. The second idea, attributable above all to Friedrich Hayek, is that knowledge is widely dispersed in society. As Hayek and his followers emphasize, governments planners cannot possibly know what individuals know, simply because they lack that dispersed knowledge. When important information is missing, cost-benefit analysis can be exceptionally difficult to conduct. There are three ways to respond to that problem. The first involves notice-and-comment rulemaking, which has particular promise in the modern era, where regulators are in a far better position to collect the dispersed information of the public. The second involves retrospective analysis, accompanied by a process for obtaining public comment. In many cases, retrospective analysis has found that the ex ante estimates were wrong, thus pointing the way toward potential improvements both in rules and in future estimates. The third, and potentially the most valuable, involves experiments, above all randomized controlled trials, which can give a clear understanding of the likely effects of regulations.


Rugby Revealed is the definitive guide to rugby in terms of the roles and responsibilities of each individual position and how they combine to create a tactically astute rugby team. This engaging guide to rugby union will help coaches and players understand the modern game, giving practical advice to achieve maximum results with optimum technique. With its mix of contributions from leading names, practical coaching advice and player statistics, Rugby Revealed includes: * the roles and responsibilities of each position in 15-a-side rugby * correct technique for core skills * the mechanics of the set piece * the elements for a successful attack and defence Professional players such as Jamie Roberts, Aaron Smith, Johnny Sexton, George Ford, Cian Healy, Manu Tuilagi, Keven Mealamu and Marcos Ayerza, and leading coaches, including Stuart Lancaster, Mike Cron, Dr Dave Alred, Mike Ford, Brendan Venter and Sir John Kirwan, are some of the 101 top names who share their insights into the game. This highly accessible guide will help new, emerging and developing players and coaches reach their rugby potential.


OBJECTIVE
A community sample of women with binge eating disorder (BED) was followed for a period of 6 months, in order to examine the natural course of the disorder.

METHOD
Baseline, 3-, and 6-month assessments were conducted. The following variables were examined: eating disorder symptomatology, importance of weight or shape, psychopathology, social adjustment, childhood sexual abuse, childhood obesity, parental obesity, and parental psychopathology.

RESULTS
After the 3-month follow-up, 10 of the original sample of 31 participants dropped out of the study; drop-outs were more likely to have reported a history of sexual abuse. Of the 21 remaining participants, 11 continued to suffer from full-syndrome BED at 6-month follow-up, while the remaining 10 appeared to be in partial remission. There were no significant baseline predictors of outcome.

CONCLUSION
It appears that for some women with BED, the eating disorder improves with a decrease in binge eating and importance of weight or shape. For others, the eating disorder symptoms remain constant.


The purpose of the study was to investigate the current use of genetic testing in UK elite sport and assess how genetic testing might be received by those employed in elite sport. Seventy-two elite athletes and 95 support staff at UK sports clubs and governing bodies completed an online survey of 11 questions concerning their experience of genetic testing and beliefs regarding the use of genetic testing in sport. Genetic testing related to sports performance and injury susceptibility is conducted in UK elite sport, albeit by a relatively small proportion of athletes (≤17%) and support staff (≤8%). Athletes and their support staff agree that genetics are important in determining elite status (≥79%) and appear willing to engage in genetic testing for individualising training to improve sport performance and reduce injury risk. Opinion was divided on whether genetic information should be used to identify talented athletes and influence selection, eligibility or employment status. Genetic testing for sports performance and injury susceptibility occurs in UK elite sport, however it is not commonly conducted. There is a belief that genetics is an important factor in determining an athlete and there is a willingness to engage in genetic testing for sports performance and injury susceptibility.


Abstract. The end-Permian mass extinction, the largest extinction of the Phanerozoic, led to a severe reduction in both taxonomic richness and ecological complexity of marine communities, eventually culminating in a dramatic ecological restructuring of communities. During the Early Triassic recovery interval, disaster taxa proliferated and numerically dominated many marine benthic invertebrate assemblages. These disaster taxa include the bivalve genera Claraia, Unionites, Eumorphotis, and Promyalina, and the inarticulate brachiopod Lingularia. The exact nature and extent of their dominance remains uncertain. Here, a quantitative analysis of the dominance of these taxa within the fossil communities of Panthalassa and Tethys benthic realms is undertaken for the stages of the Early Triassic to examine temporal and regional changes in disaster-taxon dominance as recovery progresses. Community dominance and disaster-taxon abundance is markedly different between Panthalassic and Tethyan communities. In Panthalassa, community evenness is low in the Induan stage but increases significantly in the Smithian and Spathian. This is coincident with a significant decrease in the relative abundance and occurrence frequency of the disaster taxa, most notably of the low-oxygen-affinity taxa Claraia and Lingularia. While the disaster taxa are present in post-Induan assemblages, other taxa, including two articulate brachiopod genera, outrank the disaster taxa in relative abundance. In the Tethys, assemblages are generally more even than contemporaneous Panthalassic assemblages. We observe an averaged trend toward more even communities with fewer disaster taxa in both Panthalassic and Tethyan assemblages over time.


Genetic structure of a group of capybaras, Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris (Rodentia: Hydrocheridae) in the Colombian Eastern Llanos. The capybaras are the biggest rodents in the world but, however, there are not extensive population genetics studies on them. in the current work, we studied the genetic structure of a troop of 31 capybaras (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) sampled in Hato Corozal, Casanare Department at the Colombian Eastern Llanos, by means of five microsatellite markers. The gene diversity was 0.61 and the aver - age allele number was 5.2, which is a medium-low level for markers of this nature. Out five markers employed, three were in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium meanwhile one showed a significant homozygote excess and other presented a significant heterozygote excess. There were not significant genetic differences between males and females inside this troop. The application of different procedures to determine possible historical demographic changes (population expansions or bottlenecks) clearly showed that the population analyzed crossed over a very narrow recent bottleneck. The illegal hunt is the possibly cause of this strong genetic bottleneck. Rev. Biol. Trop. 59 (4): 1777-1793. Epub 2011 December 01.


What is the role of international business in this dilemma? How and why do international corporations maximize value beyond core strategy and partners through corporate responsibility? This informative and accessible resource expands the readers' understanding of the ways in which profit maximization, value creation and community benefit interconnect. How to respect the wider business settings and communities, the environment and encourage peace? Is this just another dream? This book clearly provides a starting point for upstream mitigation, in which collective action allows disruption to be avoided at its very roots. It shows the way into responsible business, as a downright condition for an enlightened self-interest for all parties to pursue.


This study investigates the dynamic characteristics and transverse vibration suppression of helicopter rotor blades using centrifugal pendulum vibration absorbers. The governing differential equation of motion of a rotating cantilever beam with a centrifugal absorber is developed using the finite element method and Ritz method. The effectiveness of the developed finite element formulation is demonstrated by comparing the results in terms of natural frequencies obtained using FEM with those of obtained using Ritz method and experimental measurements. Various parametric studies are performed to investigate the effect of variation of natural frequencies with rotational speed, the location, length and mass of the centrifugal absorbers and the effect of centrifugal vibration absorbers on reducing the transverse vibration response of the beam. It is shown that the reduction in transverse vibration amplitude of the beam increases by locating the pendulum near the tip of the beam and increase in magnitude of the mass.


Guillaume de Machaut was an important fourteenth-century French poet and composer. The four-part Messe de Nostre Dame is historically significant as the earliest example of a complete, stylistically coherent, through-composed setting of the Ordinary of the Mass by a single composer. The setting has close connections with Reims Cathedral and is thought to have been composed in the early 1360s, becoming a memorial mass on the death of Machaut's brother in 1372. It would most likely have been performed by unaccompanied solo male voices, and the suggested scoring for modern performance is two altos and two tenors or two tenors and two baritones. The five movements of the Mass are followed by a short dismissal, Ite missa est.


SUMMARY
Increasingly, firms are allocating more resources to their core competencies and encouraging the outsourcing of non-core activities, which increases their reliance and dependence on suppliers. This increases the importance of effective supplier selection and assessment. Sparse evidence exists regarding the impact of supplier selection and assessment on a buying firm's business performance. This research describes an empirical study of the importance of supplier selection and assessment criteria of American manufacturing companies for items to be used in products already in production. Moreover, it identifies relationships between criteria and a buying firm's business performance. Results indicate that soft, non-quantifiable selection criteria, such as a supplier's strategic commitment to a buyer, have a greater impact on performance than hard, more quantifiable criteria such as supplier capability, yet are considered to be less important. Assessment of a supplier's willingness and ability to share information also has a significant impact on the buying firm's performance, yet is again considered to be relatively unimportant.


Abstract Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection is associated with B cell lymphomas in humans. The latent membrane protein 1 (LMP-1) of EBV constitutively activates the JAK/STAT signaling pathway and contributes to the proliferation of EBV-infected primary human B lymphocytes. Thus, targeting LMP1-induced JAK/STAT signaling may prove effective in treating B-cell lymphomas. The extract of the fruiting body of Antrodia cinnamomea, has been reported to have cytotoxicity on blood cancer cells. Here, we report that the bioactivity of antcin H, an analog of the JAK2 inhibitor zhankuic acid A (ZAA), inhibits LMP1-induced JAK/STAT related signaling and induces lymphoma cell line apoptosis. Moreover, antcin H enhances low-dose methotrexate (MTX) cytotoxicity against lymphoma cells. Treatment of antcin H with low-dose MTX significantly suppressed tumor growth and prolonged the survival of tumor-bearing mice. Our findings indicate antcin H as a potential therapeutic agent for the treatment of EBV-infected cancer cells.


The research on robust principal component analysis (RPCA) has been attracting much attention recently. The original RPCA model assumes sparse noise, and use the L1-norm to characterize the error term. In practice, however, the noise is much more complex and it is not appropriate to simply use a certain Lp-norm for noise modeling. We propose a generative RPCA model under the Bayesian framework by modeling data noise as a mixture of Gaussians (MoG). The MoG is a universal approximator to continuous distributions and thus our model is able to fit a wide range of noises such as Laplacian, Gaussian, sparse noises and any combinations of them. A variational Bayes algorithm is presented to infer the posterior of the proposed model. All involved parameters can be recursively updated in closed form. The advantage of our method is demonstrated by extensive experiments on synthetic data, face modeling and background subtraction.


The UAE is blessed with vast deposits of oil and gas. Contrary to other oil-rich economies, the UAE seems to have escaped from the so-called "oil curse". We study how the UAE used resource rents to achieve economic development and provide higher welfare for the local population. We identify, nevertheless, symptoms of the resource curse in three areas: very low growth in labor productivity, government policies unable to counteract economic cycles induced by oil-price volatility, and massive overemployment and declining productivity in the public sector. Therefore, we conclude that while the UAE has not been immune to the oil curse, but it has managed to make the benefits outweigh the negative outcomes of oil exporting. We finally study the case of Dubai as an example of how to overcome the dependency on oil exports and diversify the economy by using a combination of market deregulation, support for foreign trade, and efficient provision of infrastructure and institutions for private sector participation.


This paper seeks to elucidate the socio-cultural and economic benefits of higher education in refugee contexts. NGO and UNHCR initiatives in Dadaab and Kakuma camps are used as a reference point for discussing the challenges, best practices, and potential of higher and adult learning in contexts of protracted exile. This small-scale, qualitative study seeks to understand what opportunities for higher education exist for those living in Kenyan refugee camps, and do existing opportunities yield "social benefits" beyond those accrued by the refugees themselves? Drawing upon interviews with practitioners, observation in schools and learning centres, and data from refugee-service providers, our findings are primarily descriptive in nature and explore the myriad ways in which opportunities for higher learning can strengthen refugee communities in countries of asylum. We contend that although Kenya's encampment policies limit the potential economic and social benefits of refugee education on a national level, opportunities for refugees to pursue higher education are still immensely valuable in that they bolster refugee service provision in the camps and provide refugees with the skills and knowledge needed to increase the effectiveness of durable solutions at both an individual and societal level, be they repatriation, local integration, or third-country resettlement.


In early December, students from the NPS Systems Engineering and Analysis (SEA) curriculum presented a system of systems conceptual solution for expeditionary warfare force protection to an audience of various DoD command representatives. Students presented findings from the 2003 Integrated Project, which represented the combined efforts of approximately 60 students and 15 faculty members from various NPS departments. The first phase of the study began in 2002. That study identified and defined capability gaps, developed platform solutions, and generated conceptual design requirements for an expeditionary warfare family of ships, a heavy lift aircraft, and other systems designed to be capable of fully implementing the Ship to Objective Maneuver and Sea Basing doctrines identified as the future concepts of operation. At the request of OPNAV N7, the 2003 Expeditionary Warfare Force Protection Integrated Project developed a system of systems conceptual solution to provide force protection for the conceptual Sea Base developed in the 2002 study. The task was accomplished through the use of a distinct systems engineering and analysis methodology (defining the problem, creating a scenario, conducting analyses, and using modeling and simulation tools to draw conclusions and determine results). Conclusions, results, and a recommended system architecture were based on the following: • Attributes of Force Composition. Two force compositions were studied: 1) a CRUDES-based (cruiser-destroyer) protection force consisting of three CGs, three DDGs, three FFGs, and one SSN; and 2) an LCS-based protection force consisting of one CG, one DDG, 12 LCSs, and one SSGN. • Sensor and Weapons Architecture. Two sensor and weapons architectures were defined: point and distributed. • Weapons Type. Current and conceptual weapons were analyzed. The key findings of the study were: • T h e distributed sensor and weapons architectures improve force survivability by providing increased available reaction times and more engagement opportunities. These architectures are particularly effective against Undersea Warfare (USW) threats because submarines can be detected and engaged prior to closing within effective torpedo ranges. Limited torpedo defense capabilities were identified as the primary cause of mission kills in the point sensor architecture. • Conceptual weapons, when paired with distributed sensors, improve survivability by increasing available reaction time. Conceptual weapons included higher-speed, longer-range variants of existing weapons, and a free-electron laser. Detecting threats at greater ranges provides commanders with more time to evaluate threats before committing weapons. • The distributed architecture conserves weapons by detecting targets at ranges close to the maximum range of the interceptor. The longer detection ranges, in conjunction with the increased maximum ranges of the conceptual weapons, allow threat platforms to be engaged before they can launch their weapons. For example, if an aircraft capable of launching four anti-ship cruise missiles is destroyed before launching those missiles, then only one interceptor is used instead of four. Also, the greater reaction time provided by the distributed sensors allows for improved targeting, which contributes to the conservation of weapons. • The CRUDES-based and the LCS-based force compositions were tactically equivalent. Ultimately, other measures of effectiveness, such as manning, life cycle costs, etc., would have to be used to select a preferred concept. Additional information is available in the final report and presentation, which will be available after 1 January 2004 at http://www.nps.navy.mil/SEA/SeaBaseDefense/.


This wide-ranging book charts how the East India Company grappled with religious issues in its multi-faith empire, putting them into the context of pressures exerted both in Britain and on the subcontinent, from the Company's early mercantile beginnings to the bloody end of its rule in 1858. Religion was at the heart of the East India Company's relationship with India, but the course of its religious policy has rarely been examined in any systematic way. The free exercise of religion, the policy the Company adopted in its early days in order to safeguard the security of its possessions, was challenged by Evangelicals in the late eighteenth century. They demanded that the Company should grant free access to Christians of all Protestant denominations and an end to 'barbaric' Indian religious practices. This gave rise to an unprecedented petitioning movement in 1813, comparable in strength to that for the abolition of the slave trade the following year. It was an important milestone in British domestic politics. The final years of the Company's rule were dominated by its attempts to withstand Evangelical demands in the face of growing hostility from Indians. In the end it pleased no one, and its rule came to a gory and ignominious end. In this compelling account, Penny Carson examines the twists and turns of the East India Company's policy on religious issues. The story of how the Company dealt with the fact that it was a Christian Company, trying to be equitable to the different faiths it found in India, has resonances for Britain today as it attempts to accommodate the religions of all its peoples within the Christian heritage and structure of the state. Penelope Carson is an independent scholar with a doctorate from King's College, London.


Where improving the safety or performance of a system, there is a tendency to focus on negative aspects surrounding human performance or interaction: errors, threats, past incidents or identified issues and flaws. This does not, however, tell the whole story. Users frequently deploy a variety of resilient interventions, devising and implementing strategies to improve performance and mitigate threats such as errorparticularly during complex or challenging circumstances. In so doing, users can and do make an active, positive contribution to the wider resilience of a system. To date, the subject of how individual actors within a system leverage such resilience strategies to improve the functioning of said system is a topic that has received only limited direct investigation.

An initial study was undertaken as a probing investigation to test the notion of user-configured cues as a means to facilitate individual resilience. The insights from this study challenged an existing foundational categorisation scheme, which we then sought to expand and refine in collaboration with its original authors, to better represent and articulate 10 different types of resilience strategy. As a means to broaden our real-world pool of strategy accounts, a diary study was then conducted, the resulting data being used to both inform and validate a new iteration of the scheme. Stemming from challenges of the applicability of the scheme to complex resilience cases, we introduced the notion of a new type of compound strategy, and developed a framework to support their analysis by deconstructing them to examine their motivational and functional components. A final controlled laboratory study was undertaken to apply our insights. The resultant refined categorisation scheme and conceptual framework enrich our understanding of the phenomenon of user or individual resilience and could potentially be leveraged to inform and support the design of future technical and sociotechnical systems.


Natural language correction has the potential to help language learners improve their writing skills. While approaches with separate classifiers for different error types have high precision, they do not flexibly handle errors such as redundancy or non-idiomatic phrasing. On the other hand, word and phrase-based machine translation methods are not designed to cope with orthographic errors, and have recently been outpaced by neural models. Motivated by these issues, we present a neural network-based approach to language correction. The core component of our method is an encoder-decoder recurrent neural network with an attention mechanism. By operating at the character level, the network avoids the problem of out-of-vocabulary words. We illustrate the flexibility of our approach on dataset of noisy, user-generated text collected from an English learner forum. When combined with a language model, our method achieves a state-of-the-art $F_{0.5}$-score on the CoNLL 2014 Shared Task. We further demonstrate that training the network on additional data with synthesized errors can improve performance.


Vast demonstrations erupted in Brazil in early June 2013, seemingly from nowhere, demanding free transport, improvements in public services, the reform of a dysfunctional and corrupt political system, and much more. The federal government, led since 2003 by the left-wing Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT), was stunned. The right-wing opposition vanished in the melee, while the TV showed, night after night, masses of young people pouring into the streets, most of them marching for the first time. For a few days, it seemed that a revolutionary situation might emerge, leaderless, perhaps, but fully formed in the womb of the masses. Then strange things began to happen.

The movement took a slightly sinister turn. At the margins of large concentrations, small groups of people regularly went on the rampage. The police sometimes attacked the demonstrations, and sometimes disappeared from view. Bands of muscular men with cropped hair, wrapped in the national flag, beat up people with a red T-shirt or waving a red flag. There were calls for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousssef, and for a military coup. Finally, unknown persons launched, on Facebook and Youtube, a call for a general strike on 1 July, but they did not think it useful to issue specific demands.

This essay offers a political economy interpretation of the context, origins, implications and challenges posed by the 'Events of June' to the Brazilian left, in the light of the achievements and limitations of the federal administrations led by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (2003-10) and Dilma Rousseff (2011-present). The argument is developed in six substantive sections. The first three review the Lula and Dilma administrations. The fourth describes the Events of June, and the fifth examines the lessons for the left. The sixth section draws the relevant conclusions.


Abstract Over the past 20 years, the USA has seen more than its fair share of controversy with respect to education about sexuality, sex and intimate relationships. Attention has focused on content (abstinence-only vs. comprehensive instruction), delivery (by teachers, parents, health professionals or community educators) and context (within school and beyond). In recognition of this fact, Sex Education invited the development of a virtual special issue comprising a sample of its most impactful papers on these and related topics. The 2016 Presidential election results and recent legislative action in the USA point to the importance of thinking broadly about teaching and learning about sexuality inside and outside of schools and of considering sexuality as it intersects with categories of difference, privilege and penalty, including ability, age, immigration, race, gender and class. This paper, developed as an introduction to the virtual special issue, opens with a discussion of the journal's contributions to the ongoing discussion of pleasure and desire in sexuality education. From there, we turn to the question of what is possible given the material and ideological conditions of schooling and then to opportunities for teachers and learners outside the conventional classroom. We follow with a discussion of the place of intersectional analyses in sexuality education research, and conclude with some thoughts on sexuality education research at this political moment.


The first volume in a major new series, this book will be an essential read for all those who need to deal with the causes and consequences of rapid technological change in an increasingly globalized world, whether they be government policy-makers, managers of multi-national corporations, commentators on the international scene or specialists in and students of international politics, economics and business studies. The authors discuss three related areas: * How do we think about technology and international relations/international political economy? How does technology relate to competitiveness? How does it inlfuence our culture and how is it influenced by it? * In what sense is technology a fundamental component of national competitive advantage and what ought national, local and corporate policy to be in the light of this? * What is the relationship between technological innovation and global political and economic change? Technology is discussed not just in an instrumental sense - as a tool of power and an object of policy - but equally in a transcendental sense - as a key to shaping and structuring how we understand and interpret reality. The final section of the book presents case studies of three core sectors of the world political economy, finance , aviation and automobiles.


Abstract. The European Union and the European Space Agency (EU/ESA) have promoted since 1998 (Baveno Manifesto*) the GMES Programme (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security), nowadays called Copernicus (www.copernicus.eu). In the agriculture domain, the use of Copernicus Sentinel imagery and its services are providing several new opportunities. The knowledge of fundamentals of Earth Observation/Geographic Information EO/GI, namely Geomatics, for the development of innovative strategies for professional skills adequacy and capacity building, supporting Copernicus user uptake, becomes mandatory (Gomarasca, 2009). The target is to help bridging gaps between supply and demand of education and training for geospatial sector (www.eo4geo.eu). The innovative and strategical novelties are the complete free access to Sentinel time series imagery and digital image processing software "Sentinel toolboxes" such as SNAP (Sentinel Application Platform) for different environments (Windows, Mac, Unix). The paper introduce topics as crop mapping and monitoring, biophysical parameters, phenology and yield estimations, through several concluded or ongoing international projects such as: ERMES -FP7 (http://www.ermes-fp7space.eu/it/homepage/, Busetto et al. 2017) and SATURNO (https://www.progettosaturno.it/, Nutini et al., 2018) devoted to the regional agricultural monitoring. As conclusion, SNAP software for image processing of Sentinel data was demonstrated and tested together with Earth Engine software for specific vertical agriculture applications. The topics reported in this paper have been part of the Summer School 'Sentinel for Applications in Agriculture' supported by the Copernicus programme, several scientific associations (AIT, ASITA, EARSeL - European Association of Remote Sensing Laboratories), the European Erasmus+ project EO4GEO, University Departments and Geo-Information Companies.


Recent years have seen a rapid expansion in the ability of earth system models to describe and predict the physical state of the ocean. Skilful forecasts ranging from seasonal (3 months) to decadal (5-10 years) time scales are now a reality. With the advance of these forecasts of ocean physics, the first generation of marine ecological forecasts has started to emerge. Such forecasts are potentially of great value in the management of living marine resources and for all of those who are dependent on the ocean for both nutrition and their livelihood; however, this is still a field in its infancy. We review the state of the art in this emerging field and identify the lessons that can be learnt and carried forward from these pioneering efforts. The majority of this first wave of products are forecasts of spatial distributions, possibly reflecting the inherent suitability of this response variable to the task of forecasting. Promising developments are also seen in forecasting fish-stock recruitment where, despite well-recognised challenges in understanding and predicting this response, new process knowledge and model approaches that could form a basis for forecasting are becoming available. Forecasts of phenology and coral-bleaching events are also being applied to monitoring and industry decisions. Moving marine ecological forecasting forward will require striking a balance between what is feasible and what is useful. We propose here a set of criteria to quickly identify "low-hanging fruit" that can potentially be predicted; however, ensuring the usefulness of forecast products also requires close collaboration with actively engaged end-users. Realising the full potential of marine ecological forecasting will require bridging the gaps between marine ecology and climatology on the one-hand, and between science and end-users on the other. Nevertheless, the successes seen thus far and the potential to develop further products suggest that the field of marine ecological forecasting can be expected to flourish in the coming years.


Sepsis is a complex syndrome characterized by simultaneous activation of inflammation and coagulation in response to microbial insult. These events manifest as systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS)/sepsis symptoms through release of proinflammatory cytokines, procoagulants, and adhesion molecules from immune cells and/or damaged endothelium.Conventional treatments have focused on source control, antimicrobials, vasopressors, and fluid resuscitation; however, a new treatment paradigm exists: that of treating the host response to infection with adjunct therapies including early goal directed therapy, drotrecogin alfa (activated), and immunonutrition. The multimechanistic drotrecogin alfa (activated) has been shown to reduce mortality in the severely septic patient when combined with traditional treatment. Therapies targeting improved oxygen and blood flow and reduction of apoptosis and free radicals are under investigation. Early sepsis diagnosis through detection of pro calcitonin, C reactive protein, sublingual CO2, and genetic factors may be beneficial. Ultimately, intervention timing may be the most important factor in reducing severe sepsis mortality.


Proceedings: AACR Annual Meeting 2014; April 5-9, 2014; San Diego, CA

Inflammatory Breast Cancer (IBC) is an aggressive cancer with a unique ability of forming tumor spheroids, which invade the dermal lymphatics causing the inflammatory phenotype. IBC cell lines and human tissues, overexpress Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR), which has been associated with increasing IBC tumor growth rate, invasion and metastasis. Among the current therapeutic strategies for EGFR inhibition are the small molecule Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors (TKIs). The high incidence of resistance to such therapies has greatly diminished their overall effectiveness, thus it seems feasible to identify agents that may be combined with these TKIs to provide a sustained response for IBC patients. For this reason, the purpose of this study is to investigate Reishi's therapeutic potential in IBC, focusing on the regulation of the EGFR signaling cascade and its contribution to the IBC cellular response when treated with the EGFR TKI, erlotinib. Our hypothesis is that Reishi sensitizes IBC cells to erlotinib therapy. EGFR-overexpressing SUM-149 IBC cells were treated with several concentrations of erlotinib, 0.025mg/mL Reishi, or both treatments simultaneously for 72h. Our results showed a synergistic effect when erlotinib and Reishi are used simultaneously after 72 hours of treatment. In order to study the molecular mechanism for the improved effects of the combination treatment we successfully developed an IBC erlotinib resistant cell line from the parental SUM-149 cells. Our data revealed that Reishi increases erlotinib sensitivity by inactivating AKT and extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) signaling pathways. Taken together, our results provide evidence that Reishi chemosensitizes IBC cells to erlotinib therapy, highlighting its anti-IBC-therapeutic potential. This project was sponsored by NIH/NCI #1F31 CA174307 to ISA, Title V PPOHA US Department of Education #P031M105050 to UCC, NIH/RCMI #G12 MD007583 to UCC, NIH/INBRE #5P20 GM103475 to UPR/UCC and a research donation from the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico to UCC's University Center of Integral and Complementary Medicine (CUMIC)/MMM.

Citation Format: Ivette Suarez-Arroyo, Michael Moraskie, Luis A. Cubano, Michelle M. Martinez-Montemayor. Ganoderma lucidum (Reishi) chemosensitizes EGFR-overexpressing inflammatory breast cancer cells to erlotinib. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 3212. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-3212


This paper attests that (non-)transparent derivational processes operate in Vincentian Creole (VinC), an Atlantic creole that draws its lexicon extensively from English. We demonstrate that speakers of VinC use suffixation, conversion and phonological alternation in much the same way as the lexifier. We also establish that VinC allows for some remarkable combinations of English affixes with base forms in ways that the superstratum does not. The examples we provide show that speakers of VinC do not simply calque English affixes to VinC base words, neither do they merely transpose fossilized affixes to base forms. On the contrary, functional and phonological shifts operate with English affixes in the derivation of nouns from verbs.


Near-field-to-far-field transformation algorithms have been developed during the last decades of the last century. Spherical near-field measurements are nowadays the most accurate technique for characterizing one antenna. However, one of the drawbacks is the requirement for a full spherical acquisition. This means a large number of scans, especially for very large antennas, requiring a long measurement time. This paper presents several techniques for performing a single-cut near-to-far-field transformation. An explanation of each algorithm, and a comparison among them for several antennas, are presented. The possibilities and limitations of the algorithms are discussed in the last section. This work was performed thanks to the mobility programs offered by the Antenna Networks in the European Union: European Association on Antennas and Propagation (EurAAP) and COST-VISTA action, allowing researchers from the three institutions to work together on this project.


In the age of Internet of Things (IoT), embedded devices ranging from ARM Cortex M0s with hundreds of KB of RAM to Arduinos with 2KB RAM are expected to perform increasingly sophisticated classification tasks, such as voice and gesture recognition, activity tracking, and biometric security. While convolutional neural networks (CNNs), together with spectrogram preprocessing, are a natural solution to many of these classification tasks, storage of the network's activations often exceeds the hard memory constraints of embedded platforms. This paper presents memoryoptimal direct convolutions as a way to push classification accuracy as high as possible given strict hardware memory constraints at the expense of extra compute. We therefore explore the opposite end of the compute-memory trade-off curve from standard approaches that minimize latency. We validate the memory-optimal CNN technique with an Arduino implementation of the 10-class MNIST classification task, fitting the network specification, weights, and activations entirely within 2KB SRAM and achieving a state-of-theart classification accuracy for small-scale embedded systems of 99.15%.


Large quantities of radioactive and chemical wastes resulting from Pu production for nuclear weapons are located in the vadose zone at the USDOE's Hanford Site, north of Richland, WA. The vadose zone here is characterized by often highly stratified glacial‐fluvial sediments that give rise to complex subsurface‐flow paths that contribute to uncertainty of contaminant fate and transport. Research efforts have focused on answering questions of contaminant transport from the viewpoint of geologic, biologic, geochemical, and hydrologic controls. This special section highlights key research topics concerning vadose zone problems at the Hanford Site. Research indicates that some of the contaminant species (137Cs, 60Co, 90Sr) are retained by Hanford sediments as a result of geochemical reactions, rendering them effectively immobile except under extremely saline or acidic conditions, while other species (99Tc, 129I, 3H) are typically mobile and have moved deep into the vadose zone and subsequently into groundwater. In addition, large quantities of organics, including carbon tetrachloride, have moved in complex ways as both vapor and liquid in the subsurface. Observed transport of mobile species is linked to liquid discharges and to elevated recharge rates that occur primarily at waste sites where land surfaces are void of vegetation and where winter rains have subsequently penetrated the subsurface wastes. A series of papers in this issue documents progress to date in understanding transport rates at Hanford, why anisotropy strongly affects the distribution of subsurface contaminants, why organic contaminants are difficult to find in the deep vadose zone, and what the impacts of hypersaline fluids are on waste form degradation and subsequent transport.


The patent system is a central tool in innovation policy. The prospect of monopolistic pricing conferred by patent protection supposedly encourages firms to innovate. However, there is scant empirical evidence supporting the existence of higher markups for patent-protected products. Using an original dataset that links a broad range of consumer products to the patents that protect them, we study the impact of patent protection on product prices. The empirical strategy exploits exogenous variations in patent status, namely the fall of the patent in the public domain after the statutory 20-year term limit is reached. We find that a loss of patent protection leads to a 7–8 percent drop in product prices. The price drop, which starts about one year before patent expiry, is larger for more important patents and is more pronounced in more competitive product markets.


This paper sets out to explore the preconditions for trust formation using a comparative approach. It takes an empirical point of departure, in two longitudinal and ethnographically inspired studies in the differing contexts of Sweden and Tanzania. The comparison reveals many similarities between the contexts with regard to the influence of informal institutions, as well as the significance of categories in trust formation. Perhaps surprisingly, trust and co-operation are not as low as could be expected in Tanzania, given the inadequate formal institutional environment, but instead, the greater need for co-operation evoked entrepreneurial initiatives that enabled the creation of trust. While the Swedish small-business owners could afford their 'tribalism', Tanzanians created trust in an entrepreneurial way. The importance of interventions to understand the local institutional framework is highlighted and it is argued that arranging business training, or similar events, is a fruitful way to facilitate the trust creation process in development contexts.


The food price crisis has led to assumptions that food price rises are due to inadequate food production, and that such food insecurity is linked to seed insecurity. Hence, in response to high food prices, seed resources worth hundreds of millions of US dollars are being shipped into vulnerable farming systems across the world. This article examines the evidence for linking food security to seed security, particularly in acute contexts, and shows how the challenges facing security features of availability, access, and utilisation are markedly different when assessing food security and seed security scenarios. The need for sharper thinking about (a) seed security strategy in itself and (b) the causal links between food security and seed security raises questions about supply-side responses which may wrongly identify both the problem and the solution. The article closes by suggesting ways to refine seed security goals which can provide more refined strategies for addressing food security needs.


The role of interfacial interaction on the stabilization and transformation of Pt nanocrystals supported on zinc aluminate (ZnAl2O4) was systematically studied in this work. In addition to the remarkable stability of Pt nanocrystals supported on the {111} ZnAl2O4 facet under a harsh oxidizing atmosphere, we also identified the phase segregation of ZnAl2O4 to ZnO and Al2O3 and the transformation of Pt to PtZn bimetallic alloy for Pt supported on other facets. High resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction analyses reveal the phase segregation is associated with a cation migration mechanism associated with replacement of Zn2+ by Al3+ in the spinel structure. This work confirms the strong interfacial interactions between precious metal nanocrystals and that the spinel support is a general mechanism for stabilizing precious metal catalysts, with important implications for the rational design of stable integrated catalysis systems.


Southwestern ceramics have always been admired for their variety and aesthetic beauty. Although ceramics are most often used for placing the peoples who produced them in time, they can also provide important clues to past economic organization. This volume covers nearly 1000 years of southwestern prehistory and history, focusing on ceramic production in a number of environmental and economic contexts. It brings together the best of current research to illustrate the variation in the organization of production evident in this single geographic area. The contributors use diverse research methods in their studies of vessel form and decoration. All support the conclusion that the specialized production of ceramics for exchange beyond the household was widespread. The first seven chapters focus on ceramic production in specific regions, followed by three essays that re-examine basic concepts and offer new perspectives. Because previous studies of southwestern ceramics have focused more on distribution than production, Ceramic Production in the American Southwest fills a long-felt need for scholars in that region and offers a broad-based perspective unique in the literature. The Southwest lacked high levels of sociopolitical complexity and economic differentiation, making this volume of special interest to scholars working in similar contexts and to those interested in craft production.


Analyses of atmospheric icing events hold the key for computing the significant parameters leading to icing load calculations. In the cold regions of the high north, atmospheric icing loads on structures become important when it comes to design and safety of infrastructures. Furthermore, icing load calculations over a certain period of time provide a vital input for designers to improve the safety of structures. Patterns of icing events can be evaluated in correlation with other meteorological parameters such as atmospheric temperature, relative humidity and wind speed to better estimate icing loads. A field study has been performed in the complex terrain of northern Norway, by the atmospheric icing research team of Narvik University College, where customized meteorological atmospheric ice monitoring stations were installed to study atmospheric icing events in relation with the associated weather parameters. The meteorological parameters of three different sites in the vicinity of Narvik (68°25′14′ N17°33′36′ E) were collected, sorted, averaged to standardized timeline and further validated with recordings of weathers parameters obtained from the national weather forecasts, where a good agreement was found. Analyses were mainly performed between accreted ice loads and associated meteorological parameters. The results presented can be used as base for the development of more detailed mathematical models for the better prediction of atmospheric icing events in complex terrains.


The Thurnham radar is a prototype of a potential operational C-Band dual-polarisation weather radar designed specifically for the measurement of rainfall. It is also designed to increase the radar coverage over London when operating as a conventional C-Band radar as a direct consequence of the Lewes floods of October 2000. Dual-polarisation processing is expected to provide improved estimation of rainfall rates, especially at higher intensities, in terms of clutter removal, attenuation correction and rainfall estimation. In this study, three hydrological models with different mathematical structures were selected to evaluate the impact that dual-polarisation technology could have on operational hydrology and recommendations provided on the further development of the dual-polarisation algorithms in the short term. The preliminary appraisal was focused on the Upper Medway Catchment (south of London, UK) using different precipitation inputs, including raingauge measurements, radar rainfall estimates from single-polarised algorithms (cartesian format) and five different dual-polarisation algorithms (polar format). The influence of the different rainfall inputs on the various hydrological models were compared using a extreme flood event to provide an initial evaluation of the performance of the Thurnham radar. Recommendations for applying dual-polarisation radar to real-time flood forecasting are discussed in detail.


This background paper for the World Bank's World Development Report 2011 discusses current financing arrangements for postconflict countries and fragile states, with a focus on official development assistance. In recent years a consensus has emerged that in these "difficult environments" the core objective is to build effective and legitimate governance structures that secure public confidence through provision of personal security, equal justice and the rule of law, economic well-being, and essential social services including education and health. Yet tensions persist between business-as-usual development policies on the one hand and policies responsive to the demands of peacebuilding on the other. The preferential allocation of aid to "good performers," in the name of maximizing its payoff in terms of economic growth, militates against aid to fragile and conflict-affected states. Compelling arguments can be made for assistance to "poor performers" if this can help to prevent conflict and build peace, but the difficulties that prompted donors to become more selective in aid allocation remain all too real. The move to selectivity came in response to evidence that in some contexts aid has perverse effects on economic performance. The same dilemma arises when aid is assessed in terms of its impact on peace and conflict: sometimes aid helps to prevent conflict and build peace, but sometimes it can have the opposite effect. This paper considers how international aid can more effectively help to build resilient states and durable peace.


Background Perioperative anaemia is strongly associated with adverse outcomes in cardiac surgery patients but, paradoxically, observational analyses find red cell transfusion to be associated with worse clinical outcomes. The TITRe2 RCT tested the hypothesis that a restrictive, compared to liberal, threshold for red cell transfusion would reduce post-operative morbidity and health care costs after cardiac surgery. Methods This multi-centre RCT recruited patients aged >16 years undergoing non-emergency cardiac surgery with post-operative haemoglobin <9g/dL. Participants were randomised to restrictive or liberal transfusion strategy (transfusion indicated if haemoglobin <7.5g/dL or <9g/dL, respectively). The primary outcome was a serious infectious or ischaemic event in the three months after randomisation. The primary analysis was on an intention-to-treat (ITT) basis using logistic regression. A pre-specified ancillary analysis quantified the dose-response relationship between number of red cell units transfused and the risk of morbidity and mortality, stratified by trial arm. Two primary statistical methods for handling confounding were applied in the ancillary analysis: conventional adjustment for covariates (CA); and an instrumental variable (IV) analysis estimating the effect of transfusion in the patients treated in the trial, with randomised allocation as the instrument. Results The analysis population consisted of 1000 patients in the restrictive group and 1003 in the liberal group. Transfusion rates (≥1 red cell unit) after randomisation were 53.4% and 92.2% in the restrictive and liberal groups, respectively. The primary outcome occurred in 35.1% (331/944) and 33.0% (317/962) of participants, with the primary ITT analysis slightly favouring the liberal threshold (odds ratio (OR) 1.11, 95% CI 0.91–1.34, p = 0.30). Nevertheless, the CA analysis estimated that the odds of the primary outcome increased with increasing red cell units transfused (OR per unit 1.30, 95% CI 1.24–1.37, p < 0.001). The corresponding group-specific ORs were 1.27 (95% CI 1.18–1.36) in the restrictive group and 1.35 (95% CI 1.25–1.45) in the liberal group. By contrast, a provisional simple IV analysis (any versus no red cell transfused) appeared to suggest no increased risk from transfusion (relative risk 0.74, 95% CI 0.35–1.56, p = 0.43). Further IV analyses to quantify the dose relationship are ongoing. Discussion This RCT was designed as a superiority trial but the primary analysis has found a non-inferiority answer that contradicts previous observational analyses and RCTs of restrictive versus liberal thresholds in other surgical specialties. The IV analysis should help us to understand the true effect of red cell transfusion in a cardiac surgery population. Acknowledgements The trial was funded by the United Kingdom National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment program (ref: 06/402/94). The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the HTA program, NIHR, the UK NHS or the Department of Health.


Jamaican-born Velma Pollard has been publishing poetry and short stories for nearly
thirty years. Her first poems appeared in the 1970s, her first volume of short stories in
1989, and her first novel in 1994. Despite this considerable literary output, in the evergrowing
critical literature on Caribbean women's writing Pollard's work has not attracted
any of the scholarly treatment accorded to other writers. Given this lack of critical
attention to Pollard's considerable body of work, this thesis aims to provide the first
detailed and contextualised study of her writings (excluding the majority of her poetry
and of her writings on linguistics), and to accord Pollard the recognition her work
deserves.
Chapter 1 of this thesis situates Pollard's writings in the context of Caribbean
(women's) literature, and writings on identity, dislocations and (Caribbean) migration. I
argue that Pollard's principal contribution to Caribbean literature is found in her
engagement with two main subjects, return migration and relationships (male-female and
female-female), within a wider context of debates on identity and dislocation.
Chapter 2 introduces Pollard's work by way of a general discussion of her novella
Karl, which won the Casa de las Americas literary award in 1992. I consider Karl to be
central to Pollard's work, not least because it features many of the themes explored by
her later writings, including her novel, Homestretch, which is the subject of Chapter 3.
Pollard's first novel, Homestretch, which was published in 1994, explores the themes
of identity and dislocation through the experiences of 'return migrants' and 'repeat
migrants' and their comparison of life in England, the United States and Jamaica. The
novel chronicles how these migrants come to reconnect with and accept their cultural
heritage.
In chapters 4 and 5 I discuss selected stories taken from Pollard's two collections
of short stories, Considering Woman ('Cages', 'My Sisters', 'My Mother', and 'Gran') and
from Karl and Other Stories ('A Night's Tale', 'Miss Chandra', 'Betsy Hyde', and 'Altamont
Jones'). In these stories Pollard explores male-female relationships and the lives of
several generations and a wide range of Caribbean women and men. Pollard utilises the
West Indian setting, speech, situations and conflicts in these stories to graphically
describe familiar Caribbean role models and to provide a narrative and literary
examination of the frustrations and conflicting desires of women in the region.
In my conclusion, I address the ethnographic quality and significance of her work,
and its contribution to an understanding of the Caribbean.


Historically veterinarians have diagnosed accidental poisonings and identified possible terrorist events before they have come to the attention of public health authorities. There are many toxins that pose a threat to both humans and animals and the authors examine several of them here, namely, anthrax, tricothecenes, staphylococcal enterotoxin B, botulinum toxins, ricin, saxitoxin and dinoflagellate toxins. By discussing exposure routes, clinical signs and differential diagnoses the authors demonstrate how veterinarians are in a unique position to recognise zoonotic diseases, toxin exposure, and acts of bioterrorism. The work of veterinarians protects the food supply and contributes to human health and this article highlights the importance of coordination and communication between veterinarians and physicians. Sharing information is critical in confirming diagnoses and, in the case of intentional toxin attacks, could also be beneficial in identifying the perpetrators of the crime.


Abstract The Univalence axiom, due to Vladimir Voevodsky, is often taken to be one of the most important discoveries arising from the Homotopy Type Theory (HoTT) research programme. It is said by Steve Awodey that Univalence embodies mathematical structuralism, and that Univalence may be regarded as 'expanding the notion of identity to that of equivalence'. This article explores the conceptual, foundational and philosophical status of Univalence in Homotopy Type Theory. It extends our Types-as-Concepts interpretation of HoTT to Universes, and offers an account of the Univalence axiom in such terms. We consider Awodey's informal argument that Univalence is motivated by the principle that reasoning should be invariant under isomorphism, and we examine whether an autonomous and rigorous justification along these lines can be given. We consider two problems facing such a justification. First, there is a difference between equivalence and isomorphism and Univalence must be formulated in terms of the former. Second, the argument as presented cannot establish Univalence itself but only a weaker version of it, and must be supplemented by an additional principle. The article argues that the prospects for an autonomous justification of Univalence are promising.


This articles proposes an analysis of the changes which occurred in the conditions of women in Italy during the post-war periods of the 1st and 2nd World Wars. Changes related not only to having achieved equality with men both at work and within the family, but also to the overcoming of stereotypes in which the female image was entrapped and desirous of an identity that would permit an evolution of the male-female relationship.Progress made in the female condition starting from the Resistance including the achievements of the post-war period, without forgetting the freedom movements of 1968 and the 70s-80s, is considered. What becomes evident is the absence of research and a new way of thinking and understanding the mental reality of human beings. Vice versa, if we desire a true transformation we must learn to see the male-female relationship as two identities coming face to face with each other, where human sexuality does not constitute a reciprocal annulment nor an instinct for procreation, but a dialectic.


Abstract Methane built up in landfills as a result of breaking down of organic materials can be a renewable energy source if it is taken advantage of. The aim of research presented in this paper is to detect landfill gas (that contains methane) by means of terrestrial laser scanning. The hypothesis is that where no surface leakage has been reported, the landfill gas will expand or migrate. Therefore, it is possible to detect it through repeated scanning of the same area and comparison of Digital Terrain Models (DTMs) generated from the point clouds. Only the most significant movements, i.e. vertical, are of interest in this case. During September-November 2011, a small area at Forsbacka landfill in the vicinity of Gävle was scanned 10 times. Epoch-to-epoch comparisons of the resulting DTMs have shown two significant changes (-27 and +19 mm) in elevation of the surface, and it is not impossible that they are caused by migrating landfill gas. The method tested in this study is deemed to be rigorous and accurate for detecting small-scale swell-shrink behaviour of the ground surface (in our case a landfill surface). However, both data processing and interpretation of the results have been considerably complicated by presence of low vegetation (weeds) on the study site, which was dificult to filter away completely from the data. Based on our pilot study, we recommend that a larger area and a longer period of time are chosen to give basis for more grounded conclusions about presence of landfill gas.


The ruins constitute a profitable field of experiments and theoretical digressions that concern the patrimonial preservation. Different forms of understanding, recognition of value and significance attributed to the ruined goods guide treatments with distinct results for the preservation or not of this status quo. The present research aims to analyze the various interpretations of ruin in the identification and treatment of cultural heritage built in the institutional sphere of Brazil. Considering ruin as a condition of degradation and decharacterization of architectural assets of any age affected by ruin caused by different causes and chronological distances, our analysis focuses on the listed patrimony, or that has been studied to be listed in the State of Sao Paulo. This survey suggested the organization of the selected cases in three groups - ruins of time, ruins of negligence and ruins of incident - that contribute the investigation of the two main questions of this thesis: ruins - what are they? And how to intervene? The complexity of the understanding of ruin is due to many variables - cause, degree and time elapsed from the ruin, date of construction and condition of use - that, combined, direct diverse positions in relation to the approach and treatment of these assets. Preservation theories - especially the precepts of critical restoration - prescribe operations according to the degree of degradation of goods. In the field of patrimonial preservation in Brazil there is a multiplicity of results for the conservation or not of the preexisting substrate in a state of ruin, on which this thesis has focused and intends to contribute.


For a number of reasons, disputes about intellectual property are rarely put to arbitration. Generally, this is because an interdict is sought against alleged infringing conduct or, because revocation of a registered patent, trade mark or design is at stake. In the former case, the high court (including the Commissioner of Patents - in effect, the North Gauteng High Court) is the forum with jurisdiction to grant the interdict; in the latter cases, various intellectual property statutes designate the tribunal of the relevant Registrar, or the Commissioner, as the seat of proceedings.


As a fast-developing economy, Turkey's energy needs have also been growing rapidly for several decades. Its indigenous resources have been evaluated as insufficient to meet this rapidly increasing demand for energy, especially power. Therefore, it imports around half of its energy needs for power. Recently, it has newly started tapping into renewable sources, especially wind and solar. Considering these developments and official aims, this paper attempts to answer the question of which role this renewable developments can play in providing electricity supply security, which is a critical part of energy security. Whereas it seems clear that Renewables will certainly grow, whether this growth makes a significant difference from a reliability perspective is questionable. In other words, due to the problem of the intermittency, the requirement to provide backup power from thermal capacity seems obvious under today's technological conditions. Therefore, the official policy needs urgently to consider and encourage investments in technological solutions (especially energy storage).


In South Africa, the loss of wetlands and their associated benefits has been considerable. A need was identified for a system that, using available information, would assist in achieving a balance between local, mainly short-term benefits to individuals and spatially wider and longer term benefits to society. Such a system, termed WETLAND-USE, was developed with the philosophy that:(l) wetlands have been well demonstrated to supply several indirect benefits to society (e.g. water quality enhancement); (2) the impact on these benefits can be described on a qualitative basis using field indicators that characterize the wetland and the disturbance associated with a particular land-use; (3) this information can be communicated to wetland users, which will contribute to achieving a desired balance, provided there is an enabling organizational environment and due consideration is taken of the socio-economic and organizational factors affecting wetland management. The primary conceptual framework underlying WETLAND-USE was the pressure-state-perceptionspolicy framework, which depicts: the mode of use (i.e. the pressure); how this affects the state of the system (including its underlying processes and the goods and services it delivers); which in turn shape the perceptions that ultimately determine the policy pertaining to further use. This cycle is repeated at a range of organizational levels from local to national and takes place within a particular socioeconomic context. WETLAND-USE, which was designed for use by fieldworkers, and built using a rule-based, expert system approach, has two main parts, dealing largely with biophysical and social aspects respectively. Part 1, which guides the collection of data relating to the state of the wetland, assists in: (1) predicting the likely impacts of disturbances associated with a proposed land-use (the pressure) on the wetland state, and (2) providing ongoing management guidelines for particular land-uses. Part 2 assists in: (1) describing the social, land tenure and policy contexts of the wetland; and (2) establishing and maintaining organizational arrangements, local policy and management objectives and goals. Several discrete investigations were required for the development and refinement of WETLAND-USE, which was done in an iterative fashion. Initial discrete investigations fed into the development of a prototype system which was refined through evaluation using a questionnaire survey and further discrete investigations. The revised system was re-evaluated using a fieldworkshop approach and, based on the performance of the system in the field, it was revised further to produce the final system. In the two initial discrete studies, protocols were developed for characterizing key physical determinants of wetland functioning, notably: (1) degree of wetness, one of the primary functional determinants, described in the field using readily identifiable soil morphological indicators (e.g. matrix chroma and mottles) and (2) landform setting, which strongly influences local flow patterns and lateral exchange of water and water-borne materials. Graminoid plant species composition and functional groups (defined in terms of photosynthetic pathway) were then described in relation to the above physical determinants, together with rainfall, temperature and soil texture, within wetlands spanning a wide altitudinal range. This revealed that degree of wetness and altitude had the strongest influence over the vegetation parameters examined. An investigation into incorporating cumulative impacts into wetland decision making revealed that consideration should be given to: wetland loss in relation to ecoregions and catchments, and the relation of change in wetland extent, spatial configuration and context respectively to wetland function. Current conservation initiatives in KwaZulu-Natal were shown to account poorly for cumulative impacts on wetlands. Rules of thumb for making such considerations, given severe data limitations, were developed with reference to the high turn-over of species along the altitudinal gradient observed in the vegetation study. The "rules" were than applied to a case-study, the upper Mgeni catchment, as part of an initiative to engage a diversity of stakeholders in wetland information gathering and use. This resulted in the selection of priority wetlands in the catchment and an examination of the extent to which integration had been achieved vertically (across hierarchical levels) and horizontally (across organizations within particular hierarchical levels). In order to broaden the range of land-uses accounted for by the WETLAND-USE prototype, it was applied to a communally used wetland, Mbongolwane, and found to account poorly for the traditional cultivation and vegetation harvesting practices encountered. WETLAND-USE was modified to include a greater diversity of land-use types as well as enhancing its capacity to allow assessments to be conducted using the system's general criteria, thereby making WETLAND-USE more robust. In enhancing the capacity of WETLAND-USE to account for the social and organizational dimension of wetland management, the involvement of local and outside organizations in influencing wetland resource use in five sites was examined in relation to predefined frameworks. The sites, Mandlazini wetland, Mbongolwane wetland, Blood River vlei, Ntabamhlope vlei and Wakkerstroom vlei were chosen to represent a diversity of social contexts and management authorities. This revealed that in communally used areas in particular, a wide range of organizations are involved to varying degrees in


Lipid peroxidation is known to be a free chain reaction which takes place both in vivo and in vitro, and forms lipid hydroperoxides and secondary products. These lipid peroxidation products are highly reactive and have been shown to interact with many biological components such as proteins, amino acids, amines, phospholipids and DNAs. As novel biomarkers for early stage of lipid peroxidation process, we have developed monoclonal antibodies specific to oxidatively modified lysines with linoleic acid-, arachidonic acid- eicosapentanoic acid- and docosahexaenoic acid-hydroperoxides. We have also succeeded in construction of novel biomarkers specific to overproduction of oxidative stress during inflammation process. Recently, we found more potent antioxidative phytochemicals such as sesame lignans, astaxanthin and curcuminoids, especially, tetrahydrocurcumin , one of the main metabolites and also produced by fermentation of yeast (D. hansenil) of curcumin. We have also succeeded in determining many functional activities including extention of ageing process.


Bangladesh has a long history of coping with and recovery from disasters. Although climate extremes are increasingly taking huge tolls especially in the southwestern part of the country, households are resisting the negative outcomes of these events eventually. This research explores the livelihood coping and recovery strategies of the people of a coastal village in the wake of a cyclone, Aila. The vulnerability approach to disaster is adopted as theoretical framework of the research, in which disaster is considered as hazards affecting vulnerable people. Using semi-structured interviews and observations, the coping strategies of a cyclone affected village community are examined. The study finds that people's livelihood coping and recovery largely depend on the indigenous knowledge. Results show that households followed diverse strategies such as livelihood diversification, informal risk sharing within the community and migration in response to the cyclone Aila. The study also addresses the role of local government, civil society organizations and communities and finds that these actors hardly addressed the root causes of vulnerability.


Technological breakthroughs in agriculture after the Second World War mainly concentrated on crop production (wheat, rice, and later maize). In the livestock production sector, besides the substantial improvements in the poultry and dairy production systems, the development of the other livestock technologies was neglected, due to lower returns when compared to those on crop technology. Nevertheless, the usage of livestock veterinary technologies such as veterinary services and medicines remains important for livestock production as animal diseases are a major cause of poor productivity and high mortality rates, which are major constraints to improve food security. The reasons for poor adoption of livestock veterinary technologies amongst livestock farmers all over the world are not fully understood. There is a generally accepted perception amongst veterinary practitioners that these farmers "react on what they see" when it comes to the adoption of these technologies and prefer a therapeutic approach rather than a preventative one. This hypothesis was never before scientifically tested. This study proved this hypothesis for the first time. The results suggest that medication technologies are mainly adopted once the problem becomes visible. Sheep and goat farmers (small ruminant farmers) in the former homelands only treat their animals for external parasites (ticks and mites) when they can see them on the animal's skin and wool. No farmer in this area adopts a prophylactic approach in preventing external parasites. This attitude explains a much higher adoption of external parasite remedies than internal parasite remedies, as well as a higher adoption of antibiotics (therapeutic medicine) than vaccines (preventative medicine). "Small ruminant farmers react on what they see when it comes to disease control."


We present a comprehensive normal-mode decomposition analysis for the recently introduced [ J. Opt. Soc. Am. A10, 95 ( 1993)] class of twisted Gaussian Schell-model fields in partially coherent beam optics. The formal analogies to quantum mechanics in two dimensions are exploited. We also make effective use of a dynamical SU(2) symmetry of these fields to achieve the mode decomposition and to determine the spectrum. The twist phase is nonseparable in nature, rendering it nontrivially two dimensional. The consequences of this, resulting in the need to use Laguerre–Gaussian functions rather than products of Hermite–Gaussians, are carefully analyzed. An important identity involving these sets of special functions is established and is used in deriving the spectrum.


Title of Document: THE ROLE OF INTERLEUKIN-12 FOR MTOR REGULATION OF MEMORY CTLS. Karla Garcia, Master of Science, 2014 Directed By: Associate Professor, Dr. Zhengguo Xiao, Department of Animal and Avian Sciences A major goal of vaccines is to induce functional immune memory, and efforts to improve the efficacy of vaccines targeting memory CTLs have revealed an important immunoregulatory role of rapamycin, a specific mTOR inhibitor. While inflammatory cytokines are critical for memory CTLs formation, it is unknown if cytokines such as IL12 mediate rapamycin's regulation during infection. Inhibition of mTOR by rapamycin represses CTL expansion but enhances central memory during vaccinia virus infection in mice. Without IL-12, immunoregulatory effects of rapamycin on CTL expansion and subsequent memory formation are diminished, yet present compared to CTLs not treated with rapamycin. In infected mice, rapamycin directly enhances IL-12 signaling in WT CTLs by upregulating IL-12 receptor-β2 and STAT4 phosphorylation. Furthermore, secondary expansion of rapamycin-regulated memory CTLs in IL-12 receptor knockouts is impaired and resultant secondary memory CTLs are abolished. This indicates that interplay between cytokines and adjuvants should be considered during vaccine design.


SCOTLAND, R. W., 1992. Systematics, similarity and Acanthaceae pollen morphology. A brief discussion of the history of Acanthaceae classifications is provided. It is argued that several approaches utilizing pollen morphological data for the classification of the family can be identified. The Lindau pollen types are shown to have an indirect relationship to Lindau's own classification. Pollen morphological similarity is explored within the context of cladistic methodology. It is shown that some of the Lindau pollen types are analogous. It is demonstrated that shared similarities can be of three types: conflicting (homoplasious), plesiomorphic and apomorphic.


ABSTRACT Drawn from a sample of 88 Indigenous young people in five locations in urban and remote Northern Australia, this research utilised a combination of qualitative approaches to encourage young people to discuss their ideas about sexual relationships and violence. Indigenous youth discussed highly public displays of violence, as well as violence within intimate settings and the interrelationships between these two arenas. A key finding of this research was that young people described violence as an accepted part of their sexual relationships and this normalisation led to significant tensions in their experiences and management of their everyday relationships. While violence around young people's relationships in remote communities was reported to some extent as being controlled through both the public and controlled form they take, we found that the increasing mobility of young people from remote to urban locations due to education opportunities and the impact of social media can lead to more serious forms of violence and tension in the maintenance of young people's sexual relationships. This contributes new findings to the literature on Indigenous young people's experiences in relationship forming and management, an area that has received little attention in the academic literature.


Philodendron is a popular foliage plant cultivated in interiorscapes of homes, offices, and malls throughout China. A severe outbreak of a soft rot of Philodendron 'Con-go' occurred in Guangzhou, China from 2010 to 2011. The disease was characterized by leaf infections starting as pinpoint spots that are water soaked and yellow to pale brown. The lesions are sometimes surrounded by a diffuse yellow halo. When the humidity is high and temperatures are warm to hot, the spots expand rapidly, becoming slimy, irregular, and sunken with light tan centers, darker brown borders, and diffused yellow margins and may involve the entire leaf in a few days. An invasion of the midrib and larger veins by the causal bacterium often results in advancement into the petiole and stem. A survey of three areas of production of Philodendron 'Con-go' (5 ha) in Guangzhou revealed that 91% of the fields were affected at an incidence ranging from 15 to 30%. Of 41 bacterial isolates obtained from lesions, three were selected randomly for further characterization. All strains were gram negative, negative for oxidase and positive for catalase and tryptophanase (indole production), and utilized citrate, tartrate, malonate, glucose, sucrose, fructose, and maltose but not glucopyranoside, trehalose, or palatinose. Biolog analysis (version 4.20.05, Hayward, CA) identified the isolates as Pectobacterium chrysanthemi (SIM 0.804 to 0.914). According to Samson et al. (1), it was renamed as a Dickeya sp. PCR was performed on the 16S rDNA gene with primers 27f and 1495r (3) and 1,423 bp of the 16S rDNA gene (GenBank No. JN709491) showed 99% identity to P. chrysanthemi (GenBank No. AF373202), and 98% to Dickeya dieffenbachiae (GenBank No. JF311644). Additionally, the gyrB gene was amplified with primers gyrB-f1 (5'-atgtcgaattcttatgactcctc-3') and gyrB-r1 (5'-tcaratatcratattcgcygctttc-3') designed based on all the submitted gyrB gene sequences of Dickeya spp. The dnaX gene was amplified with primers dnaXf and dnaXr (2). The products were sequenced and phylogeny analyses were performed by means of MEGA 5.05. Results showed that the gyrB and the dnaX genes of the strains were 98% homologous to those of D. dieffenbachiae (GenBank Nos. JF311652 and GQ904757). Therefore, on the basis of phylogenetic trees of the 16S rDNA, gyrB, and dnaX gene sequences, the bacterial isolate named PC1 is related to D. dieffenbachiae (100% bootstrap values). Pathogenicity of each of the three strains on Philodendron 'Con-go' was confirmed by injecting 60 50-day-old seedlings each with 0.1 ml of the isolate suspension (108 CFU/ml) into the leaves. Another 60 were injected with sterile water to serve as the control treatment. Plants were enclosed in plastic bags and returned to the greenhouse under 50% shade at 32°C day and 28°C night temperatures with high humidity. After 72 h, all the injected plants started to show symptoms similar to those observed on field plants, but no symptoms appeared on the control plants. The reisolates were identical to the inoculated strains in biochemical characteristics. Bacteria characteristic of the inoculated strains were not reisolated from the control plants. To our knowledge, this is the first report of D. dieffenbachiae causing soft rot of Philodendron 'Con-go' in China. References: (1) R. Samson et al. Evol. Microbiol. 55:1415, 2005. (2) M. Sławiak et al. Eur. J. Plant Pathol. 125:245, 2009. (3) W. G. Weisbury et al. J. Bacteriol. 173:697, 1991.


AIM
To test the association of alcohol consumption with total and cause-specific mortality risk DESIGN: Prospective observational multicentre population-based study SETTING: Sixteen cohorts (15 from Europe) in the MOnica Risk, Genetics, Archiving and Monograph (MORGAM) Project PARTICIPANTS: A total of 142,960 individuals (mean age 50±13 y, 53.9% men) MEASUREMENTS: Average alcohol intake by food frequency questionnaire. Total and cause-specific mortality FINDINGS: In comparison with lifetime abstainers, consumption of alcohol less than 10 gr/d was associated with an average 11% (95%CI: 7%-14%) reduction in the risk of total mortality, while intake >20 gr/d was associated with a 13% (7%-20%) increase in the risk of total mortality. Comparable findings were observed for cardiovascular (CV) deaths. As far as cancer is concerned, drinking up to 10 gr/d was not associated with either mortality risk reduction or increase, while alcohol intake >20 gr/d was associated with a 22% (10%-35%) increased risk of mortality. The association of alcohol with fatal outcomes was similar in men and women, differed somewhat between Countries and was more apparent in individuals preferring wine, suggesting that benefits may not be due to ethanol but other ingredients. Mediation analysis showed that HDLc explained 2.9% and 18.7% of the association between low alcohol intake and total as well as CV mortality, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS
In comparison with lifetime abstainers, consuming less than 1 drink per day (nadir at 5 gr/d) was associated with a reduced risk of total, cardiovascular and other causes mortality, except cancer. Intake of more than 2 drinks per day was associated with an increased risk of total, cardiovascular and especially cancer mortality.


The thoroughly updated Fourth Edition of this popular and widely used review book offers excellent preparation for the CK (clinical knowledge) component of the USMLE Step 2. This edition contains twenty simulated USMLE tests, totaling 1,000 clinical vignette-based questions followed by answers and explanations - twelve of these tests are in the book and eight are available online. All vignettes, questions, incorrect answers (distracters), correct answers, and explanations conform to current clinical practice and current USMLE style. Explanations for both correct and incorrect answers are included to help the student understand why (s)he chose an incorrect answer.


Introduction: Burkitt lymphoma (BL) is rare, but an aggressive malignancy. Central nervous system Burkitt lymphoma (CNSBL) is very rare. CNS Burkitt's lymphoma is treated with high-dose chemotherapy and radiation. Radiotherapy in children younger than three years old may cause major CNS damage. Case report: A three-year-old boy presented with painful proptosis of the left eye. He underwent adenoidectomy 2 months before admitted to our center. Sleep difficulty was not resolved after surgery. Microscopic study of paranasal sinus biopsy and IHC confirmed the diagnosis of Burkitt Lymphoma. Conclusions: Inany patients presenting with painful proptosis, BL should be considered. Adenoid hyperplasia should not be considered as a sole cause of sleep difficulty.


When takeover announcements are made, trading in the securities, involved in the transactions is dominated by the decisions and actions of risk arbitrageurs. Generally institutions and individuals liquidate their positions in the target company's securities in the marketplace while arbitrageurs buy the shares of the target company. The inner workings of the risk arbitrage decision process however, has not been sufficiently explored in the literature. This article, through a survey of arbitrageurs, explores insights into the thought process and decision making of risk arbitrageurs. The survey characterizes the rapid reactions of arbitrageurs to takeover announcements as well as their approach to trading and controlling risk within their portfolios. The results from the survey also provide insights into how arbitrageurs conduct their trading. While it is commonly believed that they use market orders, the survey finds that is rarely the case. The survey shows that arbitrageurs use limit orders instead to control the prices at which they buy and sell securities.


When developing a safety-critical system it is essential to obtain an assessment of different design alternatives. In particular, an early safety assessment of the architectural design of a system is desirable. In spite of the plethora of available formal quantitative analysis methods it is still difficult for software and system architects to integrate these techniques into their every day work. This is mainly due to the lack of methods that can be directly applied to architecture level models, for instance given as UML diagrams. Another obstacle is, that the methods often require a profound knowledge of formal methods, which can rarely be found in industrial practice. Our approach bridges this gap and improves the integration of quantitative safety analysis methods into the development process. We propose a UML profile that allows for the specification of all inputs needed for the analysis at the level of a UML model. The QuantUM tool which we have developed, automatically translates an UML model into an analysis model. Furthermore, the results gained from the analysis are lifted to the level of the UML specification or other high-level formalism to further facilitate the process. Thus the analysis model and the formal methods used during the analysis are hidden from the user.