In recent years the technology on embankments dams has developed sensibly due to the advances in soil mechanic, and in all related sciences. Nevertheless their vulnerability to overtopping still remains their weakest point in comparison with concrete structures. The principal aim of this theme is the simulation of the initial stage of failure of the dam when an overtopping or an exceptional flood occurs.
A fluid-structure coupled problem has to be considered. The sudden variation of the upstream conditions induces a quick evolution of a seepage line in the downstream shoulder. Non linear Darcy law has to be taken into account. On the other hand the water, emerging from the toe of the dam, induces dragging of particles and possible mass sliding, depending on geometrical and material conditions. UPM and CEDEX have carried out more than 70 experiments during the last two years. They analyzed the influence of a series of parameters on the failure mechanisms. These parameters are, for instance, the dimension of the rocks, the slope of the downstream part of the dam, the type of impermeable element used, and so on. We propose to reproduce numerically three experiments analyzing the evolution of seepage and following initial stage of failure in the case of a homogeneous dam, of a dam with impermeable upstream face and of a dam with internal core. Experimental data, bottom pressure distribution and topographic analysis of the geometry of the dam during the failure can be compared with numerical results.


Despite the rise of "big data" empiricism, law school admission remains heavily impressionistic; admission decisions rely on anecdotes about recent students, idiosyncratic preferences for certain majors or jobs, or mainly the Law School Admission Test (LSAT). Yet no predictors are well‐validated and studies of the LSAT or other factors fail to control for other factors. The lack of evidence for what actually predicts law school success is especially surprising since, after the 2010s downturn, law schools now compete for fewer applicants. We fill this gap with a two‐school, 1,400‐student, 2005–2011 longitudinal study. We coded nondigitized applicant data and used multivariate regression analysis to predict law school grades (LGPA) from many variables: LSAT; college grades (UGPA), quality, and major; UGPA trajectory; employment duration and type (legal, scientific, military, teaching, etc.); college leadership; prior graduate degree; criminal or disciplinary record; and variable interactions (e.g., high‐LSAT/low‐UGPA or vice‐versa). Our results include new findings about how to balance LSAT and UGPA, plus the first findings that college quality, major, work experience, and other traits are significant predictors of law student grades, controlling for other factors: (1) LSAT predicts more weakly, and UGPA more powerfully, than commonly assumed - and a high‐LSAT/low‐UGPA profile may predict worse than the opposite; (2) a STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) or EAF (economics, accounting, finance) major is a significant plus, akin to three and a half to four extra LSAT points; (3) several years' work experience is a significant plus, with teaching especially positive and military the weakest; (4) a criminal or disciplinary record is a significant minus, akin to seven and a half fewer LSAT points; and (5) long‐noted gender disparities seem to have abated, but racial disparities persist. Some predictors were interestingly nonlinear: college quality has decreasing returns; UGPA has increasing returns; a rising UGPA is a plus only for law students right out of college; and four to nine years of work is a "sweet spot." Certain groups - hose with military or public‐sector work, or a criminal/disciplinary record - have high LGPA variance, indicating a mix of high and low performers requiring close scrutiny. Many traditionally valued traits had no predictive value: typical prelaw majors (political science, history, etc.); legal or public‐sector work; or college leadership. These findings can help identify who can outperform traditional predictors like the LSAT. Several caveats are explained in the article, however, because statistical models cannot capture certain difficult‐to‐code key traits: some who project to have weak grades retain appealing lawyering or leadership potential; and many will over‐ or underperform any projection. Thus, admissions will always be both art and science - but perhaps with a bit more science.


"A catalogue as puzzling and conceptually elaborate as the exhibition it accompanies. This fully circular publication has no beginning or end, allowing for multiple points of entry and unconventional ways of reading -both from left to right and vice versa, as well as upside down and right-side up- seeking to interrupt learned behaviors and soliciting the reader's active engagement. It complements the exhibition as it unfolds a play of doubling and symmetry that references the exhibits both formally and in terms of content. This intertwining is also evident in the central text around which the catalogue pivots: a conversation between Carsten Holler--who gained academic experience in phytopathology before embarking on his artistic career--and the taxidermist Alfred Holler during the festival ''#WWTBD - What Would Thomas Bernhard Do'' at Kunsthalle Wien in 2013. Speaking about taxidermy (birds in particular) and the history of the origins of Thomas Bernhard's infamous novel Correction, which Bernard wrote in Alfred Holler's attic in 1974, the conversation examines conflicting areas between life and death, and between art and nature." -- Publisher's website.


Title of Document: THE ECOLOGY OF THE REENTRY PROCESS: A GENDERED ANALYSIS OF COMMUNITY INFLUENCES Mariel Alper, Doctor of Philosophy, 2014 Directed By: Professors Sally Simpson and Kiminori Nakamura Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice Utilizing original data on a large sample of male and female first-time parolees in Pennsylvania (N=10,579), this dissertation examines parole violations and police arrest recidivism outcomes to assess how community characteristics influence men and women's recidivism during parole. It adds to the literature by examining specific types of technical violations and arrests, including those that do not result in revocation, as they can serve as indicators of the difficulties parolees encounter after prison such as substance abuse and employment difficulties. Additionally, this dissertation adds to the literature by examining whether community effects vary by gender and by race/gender. The findings support the importance of several community characteristics that have been implicated in prior research and uncover previously unexamined gender and gender/race differences. Additionally, the effect of community characteristics varies by the type of recidivism that is examined, suggesting that the way recidivism is conceptualized and measured matters. Disadvantage in the community was associated with higher odds of arrests for men, but lower odds of technical violations. While the availability of service providers increased the odds of monetary violations for both men and women, they were associated with higher odds of employment violations for women and lower odds for men. Offender concentration in the community was associated with higher odds of several types of technical violations for men, including treatment violations, and lower odds of treatment violations for women. On the other hand, offender concentration was also associated with lower odds of drug violations and police arrests for men. For both men and women, lower informal social ties were associated with higher odds of most types of technical violations. Several race-specific effects for men and women were also found. Policy and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed. For example, community effects may be more nuanced than previous theories have suggested and theoretical explanations should incorporate gendered experiences and intersectionality. Additionally, investing in parolees' communities can aid offender reintegration and reduce recidivism and risk assessments should more systematically incorporate community characteristics. Further, findings from this project suggest the need to avoid practices that unintentionally increase recidivism and punitiveness for parolees. THE ECOLOGY OF THE REENTRY PROCESS: A GENDERED ANALYSIS OF COMMUNITY INFLUENCES


The intention of this article is to share some thoughts and experiences of primary school technology so that teachers may analyse their own ideas and practice. It is not to provide answers, for I believe those answers, ultimately, must come from primary teachers themselves when they have thought more deeply and had more experience of technology and related activities. The encouragement of the development of technology in the primary school has led to confusion about what is expected and a feeling of inadequacy in many a conscientious teacher, who is, more often than not, female with a limited backgound in CDT or sc i ence. This has come about, I believe, because the term technology is linked to secondary school subjects (CDT) usually taught by a male teacher, specifically trained for the job, employing specialist knowledge, skills, tools and materials .


Aiming to reduce costs, polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) film patches are an emerging alternative to more classic piezoelectric technologies, like ceramic patches, as transducers to measure local deformation in many structural applications. This choice is supported by advantages such as the low weight and mechanical flexibility of PVDF, making this polymer suitable for embedding inside full scale polymer based composite structures. Piezoelectric transducer patches can be used as actuators to dynamically excite full-scale composite structures, and as sensors to measure the strain. The main objective of this paper is to verify that the PVDF transducers can provide exploitable signals in the context of structural health monitoring. In order to do so, two aspects of the design of transducer network are investigated: the optimization of the sensor network, for which the effective independence method is proposed, and the use of operational modal analysis (OMA), since it is a simple method to extract the natural frequencies of a structure from a time series. The results of the analysis are compared to a reference set issued from experimental modal analysis (EMA), a simple, well-known, classic method, which is carried out using accelerometers and an impact hammer. By statistical means, it is shown that there is no significant difference between the two methods, and an optimized PVDF transducer network combined with OMA can perform the dynamic analysis of a structure as well as a classic EMA setup would do. This leads the way to the use of low-cost PVDF embedded transducer networks for robust composite material characterization.


Abstract.  1 Livestock grazing is the most important direct management impact on grasslands in upland areas of the UK. For phytophagous species, such as Lepidoptera, the impact is primarily through grazing altering the species composition and structure of the vegetation. However, specific impacts related to different grazing regimes are not well understood for this group of insects. 2 Within a replicated controlled grazing experiment, nocturnal adult moths were sampled by light trapping in the fifth year after establishment. Sampling effort was standardised between the four grazing treatments by simultaneously using identical traps in each treatment. 3 The highest‐intensity grazing treatment produced the lowest moth abundance and species richness. Ungrazed and low‐intensity sheep grazing treatments produced the highest moth abundance and species richness. 4 Moths that feed exclusively on graminoids and moths that overwinter as larvae were disproportionately well represented in the ungrazed treatment. 5 A sub‐set of species for which large declines have recently been documented in the UK were most abundant in the ungrazed treatment. However, they made up the largest proportion of the overall assemblage in the high‐intensity grazing treatment. 6 Increased grazing inversely affects moth abundance and species richness. However, effects are not even across all moth species. An absence of grazing is likely to negatively affect the abundance of some moths, especially those that overwinter in the egg stage.


The Falklands War was a turning point in modern British history. On the one hand, it was what some considered to be the 'last of the great Elizabethan adventures', with the Royal Navy pulling off an incredible feat of maritime warfare, under the most appallingly risky circumstances. On the other hand, it was the first war of the modern age, using satellite surveillance, computer-driven missiles, night observation devices, and all the technologically developed power of modern weaponry. It was also a conflict that could so easily have gone terribly wrong for British forces. Instead, it was a resounding military success. And yet, the conflict's significance is often overlooked.Drawing upon the vast resources of the Imperial War Museum's sound archive, which contains thousands of interviews with both soldiers and civilians, both British and Argentinean, "Forgotten Voices of the Falkands War" redresses the balance, presenting a complete oral history of the Falklands War. From the initial invasion of the islands to the British landings, the sinking of the Belgrano to brutal combat at Goose Green, the Argentinean surrender through to its aftermath, the book is a unique and essential chronicle of the conflict told from all sides and perspectives. It includes the visceral and often terrifying experiences of the combatants as well as the poignant and sometimes surreal recollections of the islanders caught in the middle. Utilising all the qualities that have made the "Forgotten Voices" series so popular, Hugh McManners, who himself fought in the Falklands War and witnessed its brutality first-hand, has created the definitive oral history on the subject.


Honeybees are prominent crop pollinators and thus important for an effective food production. Without any apparent reason, massive bee colony losses appeared around the world, which started about a decade ago, and thereby the focus was set on bee health. The gut microbiota composition is crucial for health and immune system development both in mammals and insects, and factors shaping the gut microbiota has been intensely studied in humans and animals, three of which are frequently addressed are diet, hence exposure to the surrounding environment, host symbiosis and host genetics. The bee gut microbiota is bee specific and dominated by eight bacteria phylotyphes, which are found in almost all bees, and thus they are believed to be bee symbionts. This specific and simple microbiota in combination with the fact that bees are numerous, easy to monitor and the gut is easily accessible, the bee gut has been found to be a well suited model for gut microbiota studies. In this thesis the stability of the midgut microbiota of honeybees was addressed through sampling of bees throughout a season from May until October, where the impact of diet was the main focus. The data was analyzed using Sanger sequencing in combination with MCRASL computer analysis, which identified the dominating bacteria in the midgut and their relative ratio, hence bacteria composition. QPCR analysis was used to calculate the relative bacteria load in the data. The overall data showed that the midgut microbiota was not stable, and the dominating bacteria displayed apparent trends throughout the season. Analysis of distinct data sets including bees exposed to different diets, and with varying nutritional preferences, reviled bacteria in the midgut, which had nutritional preferences and exhibited possible niche adaptations. In addition results specified that the impact on the midgut microbiota by different diets was greater than the impact of same diet for a longer period of time. Biochemical profiling of the bee symbiont G.apicola, showed that this bacteria can utilize both glucose and fructose, something which has not been proven before using phenotypical tests. Competitive interactions between the two bee symbionts; G.apicola and S.alvi, was also detected. __________________________________________________________________________ 4 Seasonal trends in the midgut microbiota of honeybees


Abstract : The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) and the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) sponsored a workshop to facilitate clear communication between the implementors of future software-critical large systems and the professionals who sponsor or perform software-related research. The workshop was held at the SEI in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on September 13-14, 1989. At the workshop, a representative group of designers of major upcoming software systems discussed among themselves and with representatives of the research community the areas of software system technology that require research advances to successfully implement these systems. The results of the discussions are summarized in this report.


Economic analyses vary with respect to the extent to which deregulation contributed to the financial crisis of 2008-2009, but coalesce on one major cause: excessive leverage and risk-taking. Yet, excessive risk-taking was nearly ubiquitous and occurred despite different levels of regulatory stringency across nations, suggesting that regulatory failure, though a contributing factor, ought not to be singled out as the sole cause of the current crisis. This commentary discusses how some features of the international trade and monetary regime have played a major role in producing the recent crisis. It maintains that persistent underlying global imbalances in exchange rates, trade, savings and consumption create the liquidity conditions ideal for the development of bubbles in several countries. Because the existing WTO/IMF legal infrastructure was designed to address balance-of-payment crises in narrow contexts, only a set of cooperative, multinational exchange rate adjustments would prevent the destabilizing effect that accumulation of massive currency reserves can have on world trade flows and national economies. Such global macroeconomic coordination would require surplus and deficit countries to accept monetary, budgetary and geopolitical trade-offs if they wish to forestall the rise of protectionism and promote a stable international economic environment.


Channel models and channel measurements in conjunction with system simulations and system metric calculations do offer, to some degree, the possibility of assessing the viability of a novel communications systems, particularly B4G systems. However, they do not offer a complete picture of system performance. Issues such as hardware complexity, transmit and receive synchronization and implementation impairments are not generally addressed by such approaches. For example, in many simulations, only the baseband channel is considered, which in turn could mean that the effect of frequency offset at radio frequency (RF) upconversion and downconversion stages may be conveniently ignored. Other aspects of the communications link, such as the quality of the antennas at either end, are also often neglected in this kind of performance assessment. The solution to such analytical shortcomings is to employ a wireless testbed.


Consider a radiologist searching a mammogram for tumors, a baggage screener searching for weapons, or an intelligence analyst poring over satellite imagery of North Korea. In each of these visual search tasks, each image contains an unknown number of targets and there are many images to get through. How do observers choose when to move to the next image? These tasks can be thought of as foraging tasks, which have been extensively studied in behavioral ecology. According to the Marginal Value Theorem (MVT), an organism leaves a patch when the local rate of acquiring energy drops below the global rate. Here we test whether MVT applies to a novel visual map foraging task. Stimuli were 50 maps sampled from ten major US metropolitan areas. From each metropolitan area, we selected five 3.4 square km images ranging from dense downtowns to sparse rural areas. Observers (N = 29) searched maps for gas stations using a custom interface created via the Google Maps API, allowing them to zoom in and out as well as pan around map images. Observers were given 50 minutes to find as many gas stations as possible. Our primary finding was that observers' patch-leaving (i.e., map-leaving) strategy was well-described by MVT. The instantaneous reward rate for the last gas station located on a map was approximately the average global reward rate for that observer. Second, we found that observers were more likely to miss gas stations in maps that had more of them, independent of literal " crowding " by urban density. This may reflect " satisfaction of search ". Third, we identified three within-patch search strategies: " knowledge-based " (e.g., searching along major thoroughfares); systematic " scanning " (e.g., searching along a grid); and " random sampling ". Knowledge-based strategies were most successful. Interestingly, use of the knowledge-based strategy declined with age.


Author(s): Blankholm, Joseph | Abstract: This article bridges the gap between the study of religion-making secularism and the study of secular people with an empirical analysis of three recent lawsuits filed by secular activists in the United States. Each suit asks the courts to understand nonbelievers in a different way: one group refuses to identify as religious, another wants to be protected as a religious minority, and a third wants to be analogized to religion without actually being called religious. Relying on extensive fieldwork among these and other nonbeliever organizations, this article contextualizes each lawsuit and demonstrates how nonbelievers often exceed the binaries of secularism and warrant a more capacious understanding of religion.


We introduce an off-policy evaluation procedure for highlighting episodes where applying a reinforcement learned (RL) policy is likely to have produced a substantially different outcome than the observed policy. In particular, we introduce a class of structural causal models (SCMs) for generating counterfactual trajectories in finite partially observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs). We see this as a useful procedure for off-policy "debugging" in high-risk settings (e.g., healthcare); by decomposing the expected difference in reward between the RL and observed policy into specific episodes, we can identify episodes where the counterfactual difference in reward is most dramatic. This in turn can be used to facilitate review of specific episodes by domain experts. We demonstrate the utility of this procedure with a synthetic environment of sepsis management.


Background & Objectives The idea that individuals on the Autistic Spectrum struggle in social situations is as old as the conceptualization of Autism itself. Correspondingly, it is known that individuals with High Functioning Autism also struggle to achieve satisfying experiences within education. What is less well known are the specific facets of social cognition that result in this decrease in fulfillment. With this in mind, this study investigated the relationships between autistic traits, educational satisfaction and two facets of social cognition; socially anxious thoughts and the interpretation of ambiguously presented social information. This specific area was investigated in the hope of shedding more light upon factors which could contribute towards increasing the likelihood that individuals who score highly in autistic traits have fulfilling experiences within education, as well as gaining a deeper understanding of the specific misjudgments that can result in diminished social experiences for individuals on the Autistic Spectrum. Methods Autistic traits were measured by the Autistic Spectrum Quotient. This measure significantly moves away from a binary view of Autism, rather it looks at varying degrees of "autistic traits" within every one, Autistic or "Neuro-typical". Educational satisfaction was measured using an adapted version of the National Student Survey. Social cognitions were assessed by two inventories (the Social Phobia Inventory, the Socially Anxious Thoughts and Avoidant Behaviors Questionnaire) and one socio-cognitive task (the Ambiguous/Unambiguous Situations Diary). Participants were recruited online mainly through various relevant message forums (N=89). Results Numerous significant relationships were found. Most importantly was the finding that self-reported presence of socially anxious thoughts and avoidant behaviors most significantly predicted educational satisfaction (beta = -0.418, p<0.05). This study also found that autistic traits most significantly predicted the way in which participants would interpret ambiguous social information (beta = 0.378, p<0.05). Put in layman's terms, an increase in socially anxious thoughts was found to decrease the likelihood that individuals reported having positive experiences within education, while an increase in Autistic traits increased the likelihood that individuals would interpret ambiguous social information as concerning. Conclusions Autism is an ever increasing reality of our modern world. We have a responsibility to ensure that individuals who are on the Spectrum are given the opportunity to enjoy a fulfilling social experience. Future research should give particular emphasis to interventions targeting social anxiety that could improve the educational experiences of individuals who score highly in autistic traits. Furthermore, it is not enough to simply recognize that individuals on the Autistic Spectrum are likely to have deficits in terms of social interaction; it is not until we truly understand the subtleties and specific facets of these deficits that we will be able to begin a process of reconciliation. Moving away from Autism, the findings give further support in relation to the importance of addressing social anxiety within students to ensure they are able to experience fulfilling academic lives. There is a gap within currently published literature in regards to interventions that target social anxiety and the direct influence this might have upon educational attainment and satisfaction.


The adsorption of disilane (Si(sub 2)H(sub 6)) on D terminated Si(100) has been investigated using photodesorption to probe the coverage over a range of surface temperatures. Incident Si(sub 2)H(sub 6) molecules can become molecularly (nondissociatively) chemisorbed after being trapped in a physisorbed precursor state. At temperatures higher than approximately 116 K, nearly all the physisorbed molecules desorb rather than chemisorb. Photofragmentation products are readily observed when chemisorbed Si(sub 2)H(sub 6) is irradiated with 6.4 eV photons but surprisingly, none are observed in the case of physisorbed Si(sub 2)H(sub 6). Consequently, Si can be deposited by reactions of the photofragmentation products with the surface, but only at temperatures lower than 116 K. The photodesorption cross section is also extremely dependent on the chemical nature of the Si(100) surface. It is high when the surface is terminated with a monodeuteride phase but much smaller when dideuteride species are present, suggesting that the presence of surface gap states is of importance. We consider how desorption might be initiated by electron attachment or by electron-hole recombination at the surface.


TOWARDS COLOMBIAN SMALL-SCALE MARINE FISHERIES MANAGEMENT by Lina M. Saavedra-Diaz University of New Hampshire, May, 2012 Small-scale fisheries are an important economic and social foundation for the livelihood of coastal communities in Colombia. Yet artisanal fishing communities are characterized by a low quality of life and a struggle for the basic components of well being, in part because of inadequate marine resource management. As a consequence of inadequate management, some resources are already overexploited and depletion threatens the food security of these fishing villages. Lack of information on fisheries resources, open access artisanal fisheries, and poor socio-economic conditions, coupled with the high diversity and low abundance characteristic of tropical environments, place these fisheries resources at risk. Both food resources and the economic activities that support local people will suffer the effects. However, co-management has proven to be an effective tool in marine resource management for preserving both natural resources and fishing communities. Here we report on a project to evaluate four traditional small-scale marine fishing communities on the Pacific coast and five on the Caribbean coast in order to describe and understand their historical and actual situations. This study will support the development of the first small-scale marine fisheries management plan in Colombia.


Commercialization of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) has been widely promoted as a means of sustainably developing tropical forest resources, in a way that promotes forest conservation while supporting rural livelihoods. However, in practice, NTFP commercialization has often failed to deliver the expected benefits. Progress in analyzing the causes of such failure has been hindered by the lack of a suitable framework for the analysis of NTFP case studies, and by the lack of predictive theory. We address these needs by developing a probabilistic model based on a livelihood framework, enabling the impact of NTFP commercialization on livelihoods to be predicted. The framework considers five types of capital asset needed to support livelihoods: natural, human, social, physical, and financial. Commercialization of NTFPs is represented in the model as the conversion of one form of capital asset into another, which is influenced by a variety of socio-economic, environmental, and political factors. Impacts on livelihoods are determined by the availability of the five types of assets following commercialization. The model, implemented as a Bayesian Belief Network, was tested using data from participatory research into 19 NTFP case studies undertaken in Mexico and Bolivia. The model provides a novel tool for diagnosing the causes of success and failure in NTFP commercialization, and can be used to explore the potential impacts of policy options and other interventions on livelihoods. The potential value of this approach for the development of NTFP theory is discussed.


Cite this article: Wali AF, Alam A. The Effect of Different Extraction Methods on Antioxidant Capacity and Phytochemical Screening of Syzygium cumini Seeds. Free Radicals and Antioxidants. 2019;9(1):48-51. ABSTRACT Objective: Syzygium cumini has been used for centuries in traditional medicine for various athological conditions. In the present study, extract yield, phytochemical constituents and in-vitro antioxidant assay ethanolic extracts of Syzygium cumini seeds was investigated. Methods: Extraction techniques like ultrasound microwave assisted solvent, maceration and soxhlet were used for extraction. The extracts were evaluated for potential antioxidant activities by using DPPH and ABTS assay. Results: Our results revealed that extract yield, chemical composition of the extracts and antioxidant activity of the Syzygium cumini extract varied with the extraction process. The results exhibited highest extraction yield and flavonoids, alkaloids and glycoside in ultrasound microwave assisted solvent extraction followed by soxhlet extraction and least in maceration extraction method respectively. All extraction methods showed free radical scavenging potential, ultrasound microwave assisted solvent extraction exhibited significant scavenging potential having an IC50 value of 69 ± 8.11 μg/mL for DPPH and 87 ± 5.86 μg/mL for ABTS. Naringin is used as a reference standard antioxidant agent. Conclusion: These results revealed that the ultrasound microwave assisted solvent extraction of Syzygium cumini seeds can be a rich source of antioxidants containing flavonoids, alkaloids and glycoside. The antioxidants chemical compounds present in Syzygium cumini seeds have various beneficial effects in the phytopharmaceuticals industry.


Acute-phase injury is generally treated by localized cooling of the region, and rarely by the active use of low level laser therapy (LLLT) in Japan. Thermographic studies of acutephase injury revealed that circulatory disturbances at the site of trauma occurred due to swelling and edema on the day following the injury, and that skin temperature was high at the site of the trauma and low at the periphery. Following LLLT, circulatory disturbances rapidly improved, while temperature in the high temperature zone around the site of trauma fell by 3 degrees on the average, but at the periphery the low temperature rose by 3 degrees on the average to nearly normal skin temperature. Clinically, swelling and edema improved. LLLT was also useful in treating necrosis of the skin in the wound area and in accelerating healing of surgical wounds of paralytic feet, which are prone to delayed, wound healing and also wounds due to spoke injury. LLLT is useful in treating swelling and edema in acutephase injury and in accelerating healing of surgical wounds.


Patients whose transfer to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is unplanned are prone to higher mortality rates and longer length-of-stay than those who were admitted directly to the ICU. Recent advances in machine learning to predict patient deterioration have introduced the possibility of proactive transfer from the ward to the ICU. In this work, we study the problem of finding robust patient transfer policies which account for uncertainty in statistical estimates due to data limitations when optimizing to improve overall patient care. We propose a Markov Decision Process model to capture the evolution of patient health, where the states represent a measure of patient severity. Under fairly general assumptions, we show that an optimal transfer policy has a threshold structure, i.e., that it transfers all patients above a certain severity level to the ICU (subject to available capacity). As model parameters are typically determined based on statistical estimations from real-world data, they are inherently subject to misspecification and estimation errors. We account for this parameter uncertainty by deriving a robust policy that optimizes the worst-case reward across all plausible values of the model parameters. We show that the robust policy also has a threshold structure under fairly general assumptions. Moreover, it is more aggressive in transferring patients than the optimal nominal policy, which does not take into account parameter uncertainty. We present computational experiments using a dataset of hospitalizations at 21 Kaiser Permanente Northern California hospitals, and present empirical evidence of the sensitivity of various hospital metrics (mortality, length-of-stay, average ICU occupancy) to small changes in the parameters. While threshold policies are a simplification of the actual complex sequence of decisions leading (or not) to a transfer to the ICU, our work provides useful insights into the impact of parameter uncertainty on deriving simple policies for proactive ICU transfer that have strong empirical performance and theoretical guarantees.


This report sets out to help decision makers in higher education institutions gain a better understanding of the phenomenon of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) and trends towards greater openness in higher education and to think about the implications for their institutions. The phenomena of MOOCs are described, placing them in the wider context of open education, online learning and the changes that are currently taking place in higher education at a time of globalisation of education and constrained budgets. The report is written from a UK higher education perspective, but is largely informed by the developments in MOOCs from the USA and Canada. A literature review was undertaken focussing on the extensive reporting of MOOCs through scholarly blogs, press releases as well as openly available reports and research papers. This identified current debates about new course provision, the impact of changes in funding and the implications for greater openness in higher education. The theory of disruptive innovation is used to help form the questions of policy and strategy that higher education institutions need to address


We present an unbiased survey at 1.25-2.2 micrometers of a 0.025 sq. deg. region surrounding the core of Orion Molecular Cloud 2 (OMC-2). Analysis of the source counts and colors indicates that the majority of the sources brighter than K = +13 are not field stars. They must be members of a young association or associations within the survey area. The K band luminosity function (corrected for field star contamination using model calculations) exhibits a drop in counts at magnitudes fainter than K = +13 (approximately 0.15 solar luminosity). This is most easily explained by assuming that the association(s) are young. The lowest mass stars simply have not yet reached the main sequence. The distribution of colors across the region shows moderate correlation with molecular gas, but both reddened and unreddened stars are present along most lines of sight. Considerable reflection nebulosity is present in the region of the core cluster of OMC2 itself. Of particular interest are the thin streamers emanating from the star J9, which may be the remnant of a bipolar nebula produced by the star in the recent past.


Astrophysical collisionless shocks are common in the universe, occurring in supernova remnants, gamma ray bursts, and protostellar jets. They appear in colliding plasma flows when the mean free path for ion-ion collisions is much larger than the system size. It is believed that such shocks could be mediated via the electromagnetic Weibel instability in astrophysical environments without pre-existing magnetic fields. Here, we present laboratory experiments using high-power lasers and investigate the dynamics of high-Mach-number collisionless shock formation in two interpenetrating plasma streams. Our recent proton-probe experiments on Omega show the characteristic filamentary structures of the Weibel instability that are electromagnetic in nature with an inferred magnetization level as high as ∼1% [C. M. Huntington et al., "Observation of magnetic field generation via the weibel instability in interpenetrating plasma flows," Nat. Phys. 11, 173–176 (2015)]. These results imply that electromagnetic instabilities are significant in the interaction of astrophysical conditions.


As a test suite evolves, it can accumulate redundant tests. To address this problem, many test-suite reduction techniques, based on different measures of redundancy, have been developed. A more subtle problem, that can also cause test-suite bloat and that has not been addressed by existing research, is the accumulation of similar tests. Similar tests are not redundant by any measure; but, they contain many common actions that are executed repeatedly, which over a large test suite, can degrade execution time substantially. We present a test merging technique for GUI tests. Given a test suite, the technique identifies the tests that can be merged and creates a merged test, which covers all the application states that are exercised individually by the tests, but with the redundant common steps executed only once. The key novelty in the merging technique is that it compares the dynamic states induced by the tests to identify a semantically meaningful interleaving of steps from different tests. The technique not only improves the efficiency of test execution, but also ensures that there is no loss in the fault-revealing power of the original tests. In the empirical studies, conducted using four open-source web applications and one proprietary enterprise web application, in which over $3300$ test cases and 19600 test steps were analyzed, the technique reduced the number of test steps by 29% and the test-execution time by 39%.


Objectives
Black rice contains functional compounds, including anthocyanins. In a previous study, black rice increased bone mineral density and strength in ovariectomized rats, although its biological effects on bone-related markers have not been evaluated. The aleurone layer of black rice (BRA) contains most of anthocyanins of black rice. This study examined the effects of BRA extract on bone mineral density and bone-related markers of ovariectomized rats.

Methods
We compared the anthocyanin amount between BRA and whole grain of black rice and evaluated whether BRA extract can effectively improve bone health in ovariectomized rats at 30 mg/kg body weight (BRA30) and 90 mg/kg body weight (BRA90). These amounts are approximately one seventh and one half of the level (200 mg/kg body weight) used in the previous experiments. We compared its effects on bone-related biomarkers with those of isoflavones, which have been used to improve bone health in postmenopausal women.

Results
The cyanidin 3-glucoside and peonidin-3-glucoside contents in BRA were 7.18 mg/g and 1.79 mg/g, respectively, which are 5.5-fold and 4.2-fold higher than those in the whole grain of black rice. Supplementation with BRA extract significantly decreased body weight compared with the control group of ovariectomized rats not treated with BRA extract. Mineral density of tibia was significantly higher in the BRA90 group than in the control group. The breaking force of tibia and femur and the concentrations of serum and bone calcium were higher in BRA30 and BRA90 than in the control. However, urinary pyridinoline level, serum alkaline phosphatase activity, and parathyroid hormone concentration decreased in the BRA groups compared to the control group.

Conclusions
The results suggest that BRA has more anthocyanin than whole grain black rice and can improve bone health by modulating bone metabolism and reducing postmenopausal osteoporosis. Furthermore, the BRA extract showed similar or even higher effect on bone-related biomarkers than isoflavones and hence can be used as a good food source to manage bone health of most postmenopausal women.

Funding Sources
PJ01327901, National Institute of Agricultural Sciences.


Abstract: This paper examines Aristotle's theory of distributive justice and its meaning for his theory of constitutions. First, it shows that his account of constitutions in Books IV–VI of the Politics is an extension and refinement of his scheme of six constitutions in Book III. Second, it argues for the thesis that the account of justice (τὸ δίκαιον) in distribution of political offices that Aristotle gives in Book III of the Politics links up with and extends the doctrine of justice (δικαιοσύνη) that he develops in Book V of the Nicomachean Ethics. Third, it substantiates the thesis that Aristotle understands the different forms of constitution as embodiments of different conceptions of distributive justice, and argues for the thesis that Aristotle has a clear preference for the aristocratic conception and, as a consequence, for aristocracy. Finally, it supports the thesis that the constitution of the best polis, which Aristotle outlines in Books VII and VIII of the Politics, has to be understood as a true aristocracy and not as a polity (πολιτeία). Keywords: Aristotle's Politics, Theory of Justice, Distributive Justice, Constitutions doi : http://dx.doi.org/10.20318/fons.2016.2529


Settlement agreements have traditionally been enforced as binding contracts under national rules, a situation considered less than ideal for the promotion of mediation. Drawing on the experience of the 1958 New York Convention on international arbitration, the 2019 Singapore Mediation Convention provides for the enforcement of settlement agreements in international commercial disputes. Based on its provisions and the characteristics and procedures of mediation, this article discusses the impact of the Singapore Mediation Convention on the promotion of mediation and its acceptance by the international community. It is argued that the achievements of the New York Convention do not necessarily promise the same success for the Singapore Mediation Convention.


Abstract In Part II of this study on the application of the interactive Kalman filter to higher-dimensional systems, a modification suited to periodically forced systems is introduced. As in Part I, the object of study here is the ENSO model of Zebiak and Cane, but here the technique of quasi-fixed points is applied to certain Poincare maps of that system that are related to the forcing period of 1 year. As a result, it is possible to search the model systematically for possible periodic orbits, no matter whether they are stable or unstable. An unstable 4-year cycle is found in the model, and it is argued that this cycle can be traced back to a 4-year limit cycle, which is known to exist under weak atmosphere–ocean coupling. All other quasi-fixed points are related to orbits that do not appear to be periodic. The findings are applied to the modified version of the interactive Kalman filter, which deals with cycle as regimes. Comparing these results with the findings in Part I, it is found that the filter ...


19th Annual Symposium of the Pattern Recognition Association of South Africa (PRASA 2008), Cape Town, South Africa, 27-28 November 2008


Interferon-induced proteins with tetratricopeptide repeats (IFITs) are highly expressed during the cell-intrinsic immune response to viral infection. IFIT1 inhibits translation by binding directly to the 5′ end of foreign RNAs, particularly those with non-self cap structures, precluding the recruitment of the cap-binding eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4F and subsequent 40S recruitment. Interaction of different IFIT family members is well described, but little is known of the molecular basis of IFIT association or its impact on function. Here, we reconstituted different complexes of IFIT1, IFIT2 and IFIT3 in vitro, which enabled us to reveal critical aspects of IFIT complex assembly. IFIT1 interacts rapidly and strongly with IFIT3 forming a stable heterotetramer. IFIT2 and IFIT3 homodimers dissociate to form a more stable heterodimer that associates with IFIT1, forming an IFIT1:IFIT2:IFIT3 trimer. Site-directed mutagenesis revealed a C-terminal 'YxxxL' motif in IFIT1 that mediates its association with IFIT3. Using various reporter mRNAs, we demonstrate for the first time that IFIT3 stabilises IFIT1 binding to cap0-mRNA and enhances its translation inhibition activity. Disrupting the binding interface between IFIT1 and IFIT3 abrogated this enhancement. This work reveals molecular aspects of IFIT assembly and provides an important 'missing link' between IFIT interaction and function.


Uganda, just as many developing countries, collects less than potential tax. The country compares poorly to other low-income countries with regard to income tax revenue mobilization. This paper estimate the baseline amount of tax owed by comparing income amounts reported on the 2015/16 Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) income tax returns with similar income amounts households reported on the 2015/16 Uganda National Panel Survey (UNPS). The paper also combine the UNPS data and the URA income tax data to estimate potential income tax revenue and the scale of tax evasion in Uganda in 2015/16 by income bracket. The gross tax gap was therefore estimated at Ug.Shs 1, 783.31 billion, or 52.73 percent of the baseline tax. The manufacturing, wholesale and retail, information and communication, financial and insurance, real estate, public administration and human health sectors explain Ug.Shs. 1,512.39 of the tax gap, which is 44.72 percent of the baseline tax. The income bracket above Ug.Shs 410,000 explain more than 80 percent of the sectoral default. Approximately 755,217 persons did not file for income tax in 2015/16, which is 39 percent rate of default. Audit and compliance activities managed to recover Ug.Shs 130.37 billion of Ug. Shs. 1,783.31 billion gross tax gap. We recommend for capacity building in data management and in audit and compliance functions.


This article describes nanocomposite films with separately grown protein nanofibrils (PNFs) in a nonfibrillar protein matrix from the same protein starting material (whey). Tensile tests on the glycerol-plasticized films indicate an increased elastic modulus and a decreased extensibility with increasing content of PNFs, although the films are still ductile at the maximum PNF content (15 wt %). Infrared spectroscopy confirms that the strongly hydrogen-bonded β-sheets in the PNFs are retained in the composites. The films appear with a PNF-induced undulated upper surface. It is shown that micrometer-scale spatial variations in the glycerol distribution are not the cause of these undulations. Instead, the undulations seem to be a feature of the PNF material itself. It was also shown that, apart from plasticizing the protein film, the presence of glycerol seemed to favor to some extent exfoliation of stacked β-sheets in the proteins, as revealed by X-ray diffraction.


Percetakan Nasional Malaysia Berhad (PNMB), previously it was a
government body but since 6 years ago has been corporatized. It has been
operating to cater all sort of customers which offer product that make to
order as well as make to stock. PNMB goal is to penetrate commercial
market domestically and internationally but however there is a big
problem that need to be solve first as to avoid repetitive result.
The problem is PNMB fail to deliver goods on time to their
customers. With this study will help to analyze the factors affecting to
the problems as well as forecast some solution as to solve it. All the
methods can easily to be implemented and appropriate for PNMB plant.
Hence, let's us discussed and analyze the issues in more details.


We present a new approach to appearance-based object recognition, which captures the relationships between multiple model views and exploits them to improve recognition performance. The basic building block is local, viewpoint invariant regions. We propose an efficient algorithm for partitioning a set of region matches into groups lying on smooth surfaces (GAMs). During modeling, the model views are connected by a large number of region-tracks, each aggregating image regions of a single physical region across the views. At recognition time, GAMs are constructed matching a test image to each model view. The consistency of configurations of GAMs is measured by exploiting the model connections. A genetic algorithm finds covering the object as completely as possible the most consistent configuration. Introducing GAMs as an intermediate grouping level facilitates decision-making and improves discriminative power. As a complementary application, we introduce a novel GAM-based two-view filter and demonstrate its effectiveness in recovering correct matches in the presence of up to 96% mismatches.


Facial expressions play a major role in Face Recognition Systems and image processing techniques of Human Machine Interface. There are several techniques for facial features selection like Principal Component Analysis, Distance calculation among face components, Template Matching. This algorithm describes a simple template matching based facial feature selection technique and detects facial expressions based on distances between facial features using a set of image databases. The algorithm involves three stages: Pre Processing, Facial Feature Extraction and Distance Calculations. Then, we can identify whether a human is smiling or not using the measurement of Euclidean distances between pairs of eyes and mouth region of that face.


A critical step of spermatogenesis is the entry of mitotic spermatogonia into meiosis. Progresses on these topics are hampered by the lack of an in vitro culture system allowing mouse spermatogonia differentiation and entry into meiosis. Previous studies have shown that mouse pachytene spermatocytes cultured in simulated microgravity (SM) undergo a spontaneous meiotic progression. Here we report that mouse mitotic spermatogonia cultured under SM with a rotary cell culture system (RCCS) enter into meiosis in the absence of any added exogenous factor or contact with somatic cells. We found that isolated Kit-positive spermatogonia under the RCCS condition enter into the prophase of the first meiotic division (leptotene stage), as monitored by chromosomal organization of the synaptonemal complex 3 protein (Scp3) and up-regulation of several pro-meiotic genes. SM was found to activate the phosphatidyl inositol 3 kinase (PI3K) pathway and to induce in Kit-positive spermatogonia the last round of DNA replication, typical of the preleptotene stage. A PI3K inhibitor abolished Scp3 induction and meiotic entry stimulated by RCCS conditions. A positive effect of SM on germ cell differentiation was also observed in undifferentiated (Kit-negative) spermatogonia, in which RCCS conditions stimulate the expression of Kit and Stra8. In conclusion, SM is an artificial environmental condition which promotes postnatal male germ cell differentiation and might provide a tool to study the molecular mechanisms underlying the switch from mitosis to meiosis in mammals.


[1] This paper presents a comparison between simultaneous radiance measurements and aerosol retrievals of POLDER 2/ADEOS 2 and MODIS/Terra, two instruments devoted to monitor the Earth and its atmosphere from space. This study focuses on aerosol remote sensing over ocean. Geophysical results from both inversions are compared. MODIS and POLDER total radiance (and also polarized radiance for POLDER) measurements are compared with radiance simulations based on POLDER and MODIS inversed aerosol products (cross-simulations). Such comparisons emphasize advantages of each instrument and its inversion process. Both instruments generally agree on aerosol retrievals except when POLDER detects nonspherical particles within the coarse mode, which is not possible for MODIS. Combining measurements provided by POLDER 2 and MODIS, the spectral variation of optical properties of nonspherical aerosols can be derived. In order to retrieve more accurately aerosol optical properties, combining directional and polarized information from POLDER 2 with simultaneous MODIS spectral data is needed. The results of this study will guide us in the realization of a coupled inversion scheme.


Hypnosis is associated with profound changes in conscious thought, experience and behaviour and has a long clinical and experimental history. Data on the nature and role of hypnotic induction procedures is still somewhat lacking however, and probably the only thing one can say about them with any conviction is that they enhance suggestibility in some cases. Nevertheless, a review and re-analyses of previous work reveals that the effect of the induction of hypnosis on suggestibility may be substantial, comparable to psychological treatments in general. The work reported here makes a clear distinction between the hypothetical 'hypnotic state' and the phenomena produced by suggestion and aimed to investigate the necessity for the former in producing suggestibility changes and the mechanisms by which both exert their influence. As it had important implications for how non-hypnotic and hypnotic suggestibility were measured in the thesis, Study 1 (n=312) examined the relationship between lateral asymmetry and bodily response to suggestion. Study 2 (n=102) and Study 3 (n=105) explored the notion that absorption and reduced critical thought are instrumental in how inductions effect responses to test-suggestions and suggestions for pain modulation respectively. Study 4 (n=105) investigated the effect on suggestibility of a hypnotic induction and the extent to which the magnitude of this effect is altered by labelling the procedure 'hypnosis'. Study 5 (n=105) examined the influence of compliance to requests on suggestibility and addressed the role of strategy selection in response to suggestions. The findings are important for both clinical and experimental applications and indicate that important determinants of subsequent responses to suggestion are: (i) the definition of the situation as hypnotic which in turn enhances the expectation of benefits (ii) the focussing of attention and the reduction of critical thought and (iii) the facilitation of engaging in goal-directed behaviours through compliance to requests.


Background: Small and sick newborns need high quality specialised care within health facilities to address persistently high neonatal mortality in low-income settings, including Kenya. Methods: We examined neonatal admissions in 12 public-sector County (formerly District) hospitals in Kenya between November 2014 and November 2016. Using data abstracted from newborn unit (NBU) admission registers and paediatric ward (PW) medical records, we explore the magnitude and distribution of admissions. In addition, interviews with senior staff were conducted to understand admission policies for neonates in these facilities. Results: Of the total 80,666 paediatric admissions, 28,884 (35.8%) were aged ≤28 days old. 24,212 (83.8%) of neonates were admitted to organisationally distinct NBUs and 4,672 (16.2%) to general PWs, though the proportion admitted to NBUs varied substantially (range 59.9-99.0%) across hospitals, reflecting widely varying infrastructure and policies. Neonatal mortality was high in NBUs (12%) and PWs (11%), though varied widely across facilities, with documentation of outcomes poor for the NBUs. Conclusion: Improving quality of care on NBUs would affect almost a third of paediatric admissions in Kenya. However, comprehensive policies and strategies are needed to ensure sick neonates on general PWs also receive appropriate care.


About 1.71 million nonelderly Californians were uninsured for all or part of 2009 and are estimated to be eligible to participate and receive subsidies in the new California Health Benefit Exchange marketplace under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010. Another 737,000 are currently insured with individual policies and will also be eligible for participation in the Exchange based on their employment, income and citizenship status. This policy brief examines the characteristics of these Exchange-eligible with subsidies groups, based on 2009 California Health Interview Survey data. Among the findings, these Exchange-eligible populations are often single, young working-age adults, and are employed in small firms. Most are healthy and the prevalence rates of most chronic conditions are similar to those with employment-based insurance. However, several indicators show poorer access to care for those who are uninsured. The characteristics of the Exchange-eligible with subsidies are likely to change by 2014 when the major provisions of the ACA are implemented. Nevertheless, these data indicate that the California Health Benefit Exchange is likely to improve access to care for the uninsured, and has the potential to improve coverage and access to care of those with individual policies.


Srugim (Yes, Channel 2) is a popular Israeli television series that ran for three seasons, from 2008 to 2012. The show focuses on a group of single Religious Zionists in their late twenties and early thirties who live in the Katamon neighborhood of Jerusalem, nicknamed "the Swamp" for its dense population of single religious Jews hoping to find spouses. Srugim examines the characters' search for love and meaning amid the conflicting tensions of religious observance and secular mores. In addition to domestic success, the show has attracted a small but significant American following, which I argue is due to reasons of content and distribution. First among these is the show's focus on love with religiously celibate characters. With a focus on dating in the "big city" of Jerusalem, Srugim normalizes Religious Zionist Jews by showing how delayed marriage affects Orthodox Israeli Jews. Second, the rise of digital television viewing enabled Srugim's exposure to a wide audience in the United States by way of its availability on Hulu and Amazon Prime. Its cult success speaks to the possibilities of niche series using familiar genres to appeal to international audiences in a globalized television market.


A binary classification problem is considered. The excess error probability of the k-nearestneighbor classification rule according to the error probability of the Bayes decision is revisited by a decomposition of the excess error probability into approximation and estimation errors. Under a weak margin condition and under a modified Lipschitz condition or a local Lipschitz condition, tight upper bounds are presented such that one avoids the condition that the feature vector is bounded. The concept of modified Lipschitz condition is applied for discrete distributions, too. As a consequence of both concepts, we present the rate of convergence of L2 error for the corresponding nearest neighbor regression estimate.


Students learn in several ways and instructors have to design and outline their courses to meet the needs of those students. It is a vital issue to specify the learning styles of students in order to reach the goal of learning. In this study the learning style for a representative sample of Inaya Medical College (IMC) Students has been reported. A VARK questionnaire (Version 7.0) has been administrated to the students who were enrolled in foundation year (FY) and graduation year (GY) have been determined and compared. The research sample consisted of 110 medical students of Inaya Medical College. The representative sample consists of 55 students of FY and 55 students from GY. Based on the assessment of the research data the students have been classified into five groups according to their favorite style of learning has been performed. In FY group, the largest group of students consisted of those are multimodal learning style and most of them considered bimodal learner styles one of them is kinestatic learning style. In GY group, the largest group of students consisted of those are preferred the aural. The classification of the students into the other four learning styles was more or less even. Assessment of student learning style is a vital part in teaching/learning process. Thus medical educators should accommodate their classes to meet all learning styles of the students through using different teaching strategies and aids. Keywords— VARK; Medical Students; Learning Styles; Academic Achievements.


OBJECTIVE
The associations of vitamin B(12), folate, and homocysteine with depression were examined in a population-based study.

METHOD
The authors screened 3,884 elderly people for depressive symptoms. Subjects with positive screening results had psychiatric workups. Folate, vitamin B(12), and homocysteine blood levels were compared in 278 persons with depressive symptoms, including 112 with depressive disorders, and 416 randomly selected reference subjects. Adjustments were made for age, gender, cardiovascular disease, and functional disability.

RESULTS
Hyperhomocysteinemia, vitamin B(12) deficiency, and to a lesser extent, folate deficiency were all related to depressive disorders. For folate deficiency and hyperhomocysteinemia, the association with depressive disorders was substantially reduced after adjustment for functional disability and cardiovascular disease, but for vitamin B(12) this appeared independent.

CONCLUSIONS
The association of vitamin B(12) and folate with depressive disorders may have different underlying mechanisms. Vitamin B(12) may be causally related to depression, whereas the relation with folate is due to physical comorbidity.


ABSTRACT

We studied the concentrations, seasonal distributions, sources, exposures, and health risks of phthalates in indoor and outdoor PM2.5 in Beijing. The results showed that phthalate concentrations during haze periods were significantly higher than during non-haze periods both indoors and outdoors, with higher concentrations for the former, which reached a maximum of 1995.56 ng m–3. Phthalates are mainly derived from the use of indoor plasticized products, the outdoor plastic products industry, and other sources of fuel emissions. Lifelong exposure to fine (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) through inhalation and dermal absorption was calculated, and the results indicated a risk of cancer, with DEHP carcinogenic risk levels of 4.09 × 10–6 and 10.50 × 10–6 for adults and children, respectively. The highest DEHP carcinogenic risk group was 1–2-year-old children, and the risk decreased afterward with age.


Even though part-time jobs offer lower pay, fewer benefits, and less stability, voluntary part-time employment among disabled workers has increased over the past twenty years even as part-time work has declined among nondisabled workers. Does this trend signal that part-time work has become more attractive to disabled workers, or does it mean that disabled workers are being pushed to the fringe in the workforce? ; This article attempts to answer these questions by looking at the part-time employment experience of disabled workers since 1984. Using data from the Current Population Survey, the author first examines how the incidence and nature of part-time jobs among workers with disabilities have changed over time compared with the experiences of nondisabled workers. Second, she analyzes U.S. Labor Department job descriptions for a broad range of occupations to see how the qualitative nature of jobs has changed over time. ; Her analysis indicates that disabled workers are not being marginalized and are finding part-time employment more attractive. One explanation for the latter finding is that employers are increasingly accommodating the needs of disabled workers, offering them part-time jobs that would be available only on a full-time basis to nondisabled workers. Since the data show that the quality of part-time jobs held by disabled workers has not become relatively more attractive, a second, more likely explanation is that policy changes such as extended Medicaid and more generous Social Security Disability Insurance benefits have made part-time employment more financially attractive to disabled workers.


The Gaussian process (GP) is a popular way to specify dependencies between random variables in a probabilistic model. In the Bayesian framework the covariance structure can be specified using unknown hyperparameters. Integrating over these hyperparameters considers different possible explanations for the data when making predictions. This integration is often performed using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling. However, with non-Gaussian observations standard hyperparameter sampling approaches require careful tuning and may converge slowly. In this paper we present a slice sampling approach that requires little tuning while mixing well in both strong- and weak-data regimes.


This is a pragmatic resource for college libraries, their faculty, their staff, and their administrators to use to develop policies on the prevention and detection of plagiarism. The task of plagiarism prevention and detection is often perceived within the auspices of the college librarian. The college librarian is well versed in web and electronic resource searching, and has the skill-base needed to quickly and effectively retrieve evidence of plagiarism.While the use of the librarian as a plagiarism prevention and detection resource is on the rise, the number of libraries that have formalized, through policy statements or other documents, the responsibilities of librarians is still relatively small and for good reason. The study gathered data and documents from small college libraries and presents them for the reader's consideration when examining the issue of student plagiarism and its relationship to the college library.Survey questions covered general information, policy information, librarian responsibilities/activities, incidents and action, and personal/professional experiences. This study was conducted to determine what, if anything, is available that may serve as a model for institutions looking to create policies and documents that clearly define the issues for students, faculty, and librarians.


The Southern Appalachian flood of 1916 was no act of God. The actions of a few powerful white men added to the severity of the disaster. It ignited broad social discord and challenged the hegemony of Asheville's elites. The socio-economic priorities of city leaders shifted. Tourism received the full support of Asheville's government leaders as river-based industries declined. As a result, hundreds of laborers, both black and white, lost their jobs, homes, and places in society. This story is about class, race, and the rise of industrial capitalism in America. It also adds to historiography detailed analysis of the natural disasters that shaped regional societies.In 1916, Asheville boasted a balanced economy supported by industrial pursuits. Yet, by the 1930s, Asheville suffered immensely during the Great Depression because of that period of unwarranted speculation from which the city never recovered. This study discusses the futility of the belief in the boundless potential of the environment, wealth, and social power structures in early twentieth century capitalist societies. Asheville's leaders responded conservatively to the flood, which led to further marginalization of vulnerable segments of the population and industries.


Abstract. In complex and urban environments, atmospheric trace gas composition is highly variable in time and space. Point measurement techniques for trace gases with in situ instruments are well established and accurate, but do not provide spatial averaging to compare against developing high-resolution atmospheric models of composition and meteorology with resolutions of the order of a kilometre. Open-path measurement techniques provide path average concentrations and spatial averaging which, if sufficiently accurate, may be better suited to assessment and interpretation with such models. Open-path Fourier transform spectroscopy (FTS) in the mid-infrared region, and differential optical absorption spectroscopy (DOAS) in the UV and visible, have been used for many years for open-path spectroscopic measurements of selected species in both clean air and in polluted environments. Near infrared instrumentation allows measurements over longer paths than mid-infrared FTS for species such as greenhouse gases which are not easily accessible to DOAS. In this pilot study we present the first open-path near-infrared (4000–10 000 cm−1, 1.0–2.5 µm) FTS measurements of CO2, CH4, O2, H2O and HDO over a 1.5 km path in urban Heidelberg, Germany. We describe the construction of the open-path FTS system, the analysis of the collected spectra, several measures of precision and accuracy of the measurements, and the results a four-month trial measurement period in July–November 2014. The open-path measurements are compared to calibrated in situ measurements made at one end of the open path. We observe significant differences of the order of a few ppm for CO2 and a few tens of ppb for CH4 between the open-path and point measurements which are 2 to 4 times the measurement repeatability, but we cannot unequivocally assign the differences to specific local sources or sinks. We conclude that open-path FTS may provide a valuable new tool for investigations of atmospheric trace gas composition in complex, small-scale environments such as cities.


This core text for primary trainee teachers is a clear introduction to the different kinds of assessment and their purposes. Throughout the book, tasks encourage the reader to practise assessment skills and to reflect on planning, listening, questioning, observing, diagnosing and target-setting. This second edition is referenced throughout to the 2007 QTS Standards and has been fully updated to reflect the Primary National Strategy and key initiatives such as Every Child Matters. There is increased emphasis on peer assessment and target-setting linked to personalised learning. In addition, new material on Early Years observation and foundation/core subjects has been added.


We present MegaMIMO, a joint multi-user beamforming system that enables independent access points (APs) to beamform their signals, and communicate with their clients on the same channel as if they were one large MIMO transmitter. The key enabling technology behind MegaMIMO is a new low-overhead technique for synchronizing the phase of multiple transmitters in a distributed manner. The design allows a wireless LAN to scale its throughput by continually adding more APs on the same channel. MegaMIMO is implemented and tested with both software radio clients and off-the-shelf 802.11n cards, and evaluated in a dense congested deployment resembling a conference room. Results from a 10-AP software-radio testbed show a linear increase in network throughput with a median gain of 8.1 to 9.4×. Our results also demonstrate that MegaMIMO's joint multi-user beamforming can provide throughput gains with unmodified 802.11n cards.


Short-lived reactive intermediates such as reactive oxygen species (ROS) regulate many physiological processes, but overproduction can also lead to severe tissue dysfunction. Thus, there is a high demand for noninvasive detection of reactive molecules, which, however, is challenging. Herein, we report photoacoustic detection of ROS using conjugated BODIPY probes (ROS-BODIPYs). The ROS reaction with conjugated BODIPYs induced a redshift in absorption by ∼100 nm into the near infrared (from ∼700 to ∼800 nm), quenched fluorescence, and generated strong photoacoustic (PA) signals. Thus, the ROS-activated and ROS-nonactivated states of ROS-BODIPYs can be detected in vivo by PA and fluorescence imaging. Interestingly, ROS activation is reversible, in the presence of excess reducing agents, e.g., citric acid, converted back to its original state, suggesting that ROS-BODIPYs can be useful for the detection of over production of ROS but not physiological amounts. This makes the imaging independent of accumulation of the activated probe with the physiological ROS amounts and thus strongly improves applicability and highlights the translational potential of ROS-BODIPYs for detecting overexpression of ROS in vivo by optical and photoacoustic imaging methods.


Chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS) is associated with numerous and variable clinical manifestations including conotruncal heart abnormalities, palatal anomalies, hypoparathyroidism, immune deficiency, and cognitive deficits. The clinical suspicion of this syndrome is often heightened by the presence of characteristic facial features. A previous report highlighted the under‐diagnosis of this condition in African Americans, thought to be related to a paucity of typical facial features. We ascertained the largest cohort (n = 50) of African‐American individuals with 22q11DS reported thus far, across five genetics centers in the United States and report on their facial and other phenotypic features. About ${\raise0.5ex\hbox{$\scriptstyle 3$}\kern-0.1em/\kern-0.15em\lower0.25ex\hbox{$\scriptstyle {4}$}}$ of our cohort has at least one dysmorphic facial feature. Auricular abnormalities, especially small ears, are the most common dysmorphic facial feature followed by nasal and ocular abnormalities. Skeletal findings are seen in about 2/3 of our cohort, higher than the typical frequency reported in 22q11DS. Cardiac anomalies, developmental delay, and palatal abnormalities are seen at a lower frequency in our cohort. Thus, it is evident that the features traditionally associated with 22q11DS are difficult to recognize in African‐American individuals with this syndrome, due to both altered frequencies of major anomalies and a non‐classic facial appearance. Therefore, a high index of suspicion is needed to recognize 22q11DS in African‐American individuals. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Interleukin-2 (IL-2), a glycoprotein lymphokine derived from activated T-lymphocytes displays potent anti-cancer properties but its therapeutic use has been limited by generalized tissue swelling. To shed light on the mechanism underlying this potentially life-threatening edematogenic syndrome, recombinant IL-2 or an equal volume of control solution (excipient or 5% dextrose) was administered to 88 adult, male Sprague-Dawley rats. Initially, rats were injected with 50,000 Cetus units (equal to 300,000 I.U.) of IL-2 intraperitoneally, either one-time ("acute" rats) or every eight hours for two or seven days ("chronic" rats). Thereafter, under pentobarbital anesthesia, the main mesenteric lymph duct was isolated, incised, and measurements made of intestinal lymph flow (JV) and the total protein content and protein fractions in lymph (L) and plasma (P) (refractometry and agarose gel electrophoresis, respectively). Final measurements were also carried out after superior mesenteric vein constriction to assess filtration-independent L/P total protein "washdown." After IL-2, JV and protein clearance (JV x L/P) were increased (p less than 0.001) while lymph and plasma total protein content and protein fractionation were unchanged. Protein washdown was also maintained. These data are not only inconsistent with bulk "plasma leak" from damaged capillaries, but in conjunction with previously demonstrated increased cardiac output and reduced systemic vascular resistance after IL-2 administration, the findings favor augmented microvascular surface exchange area from increased capillary perfusion as the primary mechanism underlying increased transcapillary liquid and protein flux. This conclusion conforms to the rapid reversal of edema in patients after cessation of IL-2 therapy.


There is lively debate on whether Asian plate material was involved in southward flow of mid-lower crust in a ductile channel beneath southern Tibet. One argument against such involvement is the apparent absence of material derived from Asian lithosphere within the High Himalayan Series (Indian plate) that could represent the putative channel. A north-south–trending mid-Miocene dike swarm that intrudes the Tethyan sedimentary cover of the Sakya gneiss dome (Indian plate) yields new Sr-Nd isotopic data (87Sr/86Sr = 0.7071–0.7079; ϵNd −4 to −6) indicating that these melts share the same source as Miocene dacitic dikes from north of the Indus-Tsangpo suture. Moreover, dikes on both sides of this suture represent crustal melts derived largely from mid-lower crust of the Asian plate, exposed today as the Nyainqentanglha gneisses that underlie the Gangdese batholith. We infer that melting of the Asian lithosphere extended south of the surface trace of the suture, requiring southward propagation of anatectic Asian middle crustal material during the Miocene. The emplacement ages of the southern dike swarm (12–9 Ma) thus delimit the timing of active southward ductile flow of Asian material.


In reaction to the fiscal difficulties experienced by state governments over the past three years, several politicians and academics proposed that Congress legislate a new chapter to the Bankruptcy Code under which the financial obligations of a state may be restructured. This essay is forthcoming in an edited volume (Conti-Brown and Skeel, eds., Confronting Fiscal Crisis in American State Government (Cambridge U Press)) which is the product of a conference held at Stanford law School in May 2011. This chapter argues that, if a formal bankruptcy process is valuable for states, it should be legislated at the state rather than federal level for the following reasons: (1) state circumstances and political preferences vary, and state-by-state legislation would permit each state to tailor its bankruptcy process; (2) the state would internalize the cost of issuing debt under the bankruptcy regime of its choice and this would reduce the rent-seeking distortions in the legislative process; (3) a state in financial distress is more likely to initiate its own bankruptcy mechanism than one legislated by the federal government and this would reduce the unpredictability of ad hoc unilateral adjustments currently implemented by the states; and (4) a state-by-state approach would minimize the pressures for a federal bailout, particularly if combined with federal legislation that expressly sets a default bankruptcy regime from which the states can opt out. The state bankruptcy statute would be incorporated into all prospectively created obligations of the state. For some period of time, however, it will have a retroactive application that raises some policy and constitutional issues. This chapter suggests that a state bankruptcy regime is likely to survive challenges under either state or federal constitution if (1) the state can invoke the process only in severe and unforeseen distress, (2) the statute provides for the oversight by the state courts, and (3) the regime promotes the usual bankruptcy objective of creating a surplus while ensuring that no creditor is worse off than if it pursued its individual remedies in a world without bankruptcy. These conditions are not difficult to satisfy and, indeed, are also congenial to the design of an effective regime.


Automatically organizing collections of images presents serious challenges to the current state-of-the art methods in image data mining. Often, what is required is that images taken in the same place, of the same thing, or of the same person be conceptually grouped together. To achieve this, we introduce the Geometric Latent Dirichlet Allocation (gLDA) model for unsupervised particular object discovery in unordered image collections. This explicitly represents documents as mixtures of particular objects or facades, and builds rich latent topic models which incorporate the identity and locations of visual words specific to the topic in a geometrically consistent way. Applying standard inference techniques to this model enables images likely to contain the same object to be probabilistically grouped and ranked. We demonstrate the model on a publicly available dataset of Oxford images, and show examples of spatially consistent groupings.


Background The epidemiology of non-Typhi Salmonella (NTS) bacteremia in Africa will likely evolve as potential co-factors, such as HIV, malaria, and urbanization, also change. Methods As part of population-based surveillance among 55,000 persons in malaria-endemic, rural and malaria-nonendemic, urban Kenya from 2006–2009, blood cultures were obtained from patients presenting to referral clinics with fever ≥38.0°C or severe acute respiratory infection. Incidence rates were adjusted based on persons with compatible illnesses, but whose blood was not cultured. Results NTS accounted for 60/155 (39%) of blood culture isolates in the rural and 7/230 (3%) in the urban sites. The adjusted incidence in the rural site was 568/100,000 person-years, and the urban site was 51/100,000 person-years. In both sites, the incidence was highest in children <5 years old. The NTS-to-typhoid bacteremia ratio in the rural site was 4.6 and in the urban site was 0.05. S. Typhimurium represented >85% of blood NTS isolates in both sites, but only 21% (urban) and 64% (rural) of stool NTS isolates. Overall, 76% of S. Typhimurium blood isolates were multi-drug resistant, most of which had an identical profile in Pulse Field Gel Electrophoresis. In the rural site, the incidence of NTS bacteremia increased during the study period, concomitant with rising malaria prevalence (monthly correlation of malaria positive blood smears and NTS bacteremia cases, Spearman's correlation, p = 0.018 for children, p = 0.16 adults). In the rural site, 80% of adults with NTS bacteremia were HIV-infected. Six of 7 deaths within 90 days of NTS bacteremia had HIV/AIDS as the primary cause of death assigned on verbal autopsy. Conclusions NTS caused the majority of bacteremias in rural Kenya, but typhoid predominated in urban Kenya, which most likely reflects differences in malaria endemicity. Control measures for malaria, as well as HIV, will likely decrease the burden of NTS bacteremia in Africa.


This paper explores the relationship between museums and the neighborhoods around them. It looks specifically at the Wagner Free Institute of Science in North Philadelphia. The research begins with the founding of the Wagner in 1855, then focuses on major changes in the institution and community through the 20th century, and ends with an observational analysis of the relationship today. The Wagner and its neighborhood had a close relationship through the 1950's, when the neighborhood experienced a rapid demographic change and the Wagner simultaneously reduced its programs. This is a break from the founding ideals of the Wagner, which especially targeted underserved audiences. Today the relationship is murkier, the neighborhood is once again going through a period of rapid demographic change, but the Wagner does not view its neighborhood as its primary audience. This paper, ultimately, tries to explore the idea of communities: how communities are defined and who decides which communities are relevant. Museums and community engagement is increasingly important to national organizations like the American Alliance of Museums. Therefore, this project ends by exploring the multiple layers of responsibility that museums and their communities have to each other. Disciplines Anthropology This thesis or dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/anthro_seniortheses/147 BEHIND THE GATES: THE WAGNER FREE INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD, 1865-TODAY


Scheduling policies are proposed for parallelizing data intensive particle physics analysis applications on computer clusters. Particle physics analysis jobs require the analysis of tens of thousands of particle collision events, each event requiring typically 200ms processing time and 600KB of data. Many jobs are launched concurrently by a large number of physicists. At a first view, particle physics jobs seem to be easy to parallelize, since particle collision events can be processed independently one from another. However, since large amounts of data need to be accessed, the real challenge resides in making an efficient use of the underlying computing resources. We propose several job parallelization and scheduling policies aiming at reducing job processing times and at increasing the sustainable load of a cluster server. The complexity of each policy is analysed as a measure of the scalability of the system. Since particle collision events are usually reused by several jobs, cache based job splitting strategies considerably increase cluster utilisation and reduce job processing times. Compared with straightforward job scheduling on a processing farm, cache based first in first out job splitting speeds up average response times by an order of magnitude and reduces job waiting times in the system's queues from hours to minutes. By scheduling the jobs out of order, according to the availability of their collision events in the node disk caches, response times are further reduced, especially at high loads. In the delayed scheduling policy, job requests are accumulated during a time period, divided into subjob requests according to a parameterizable subjob size, and scheduled at the beginning of the next time period according to the availability of their data segments within the disk node caches. Delayed scheduling sustains a load close to the maximal theoretically sustainable load of a cluster, but at the cost of longer average response times. We also propose an adaptive delay scheduling approach, where the scheduling delay is adapted to the current load. This last scheduling approach sustains very high loads and offers low response times at normal loads. We analyse the benefits of pipelining computation and accesses to tertiary storage and to the local disk caches. Pipelining tends to increase the throughput of jobs and allows the system to sustain higher loads. Finally we analyse the complexity of the different scheduling algorithms both in terms of space and time. The system is highly scalable and supports a cluster of up to several tens of thousands of nodes.


It is very important to allocate and manage resources for multimedia traffic flows with real-time performance requirements in order to guarantee quality of service (QoS). In this paper, we develop a scalable architecture and an algorithm for admission control of real-time flows. Since individual management of each traffic flow on each transit router can cause a fundamental scalability problem in both data and control planes, we consider that each flow is classified at the ingress router and data traffic is aggregated according to the class inside the core network as in a DiffServ framework. In our approach, admission decision is made for each flow at the edge (ingress) routers, but it is scalable because per-flow states are not maintained and the admission algorithm is simple. In the proposed admission control scheme, an admissible bandwidth, which is defined as the maximum rate of a flow that can be accommodated additionally while satisfying the delay performance requirements for both existing and new flows, is calculated based on the available bandwidth measured by edge routers. The admissible bandwidth is a threshold for admission control, and thus, it is very important to accurately estimate the admissible bandwidth. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated by taking a set of simulation experiments using bursty traffic flows.


: The development of society and economic world has triggered the educational system to prepare their students with the twenty-first century skills and competencies. As students are expected to survive and compete globally, Indonesia is still making an effort to ensure all students in accesing education. Related to this issue, YayasanKejar Aurora has been conducting a complementary learning program categorized as non-formal education for the educationally-disadvantaged students around Cihanjuang, Cimahi City– West Java. This program was initiated in 2012 to support students whom experiencing gap issue in accessing educational opportunities. YayasanKejar Aurora developed a curriculum consisting innovator skills has been attended by hundreds students from the early years to junior high school students. Due to its sustainability, this study is aimed to investigate students' motivation in joining the complementary learning program. An interview was conducted and result shows students' interest and enjoyment in learning. Generally, the students agree that the learning activities are fun, make them feel creative, give opportunities to interact and socialize with friends, and feel supported by the teachers.


The decommissioning of nuclear power plants around the world will produce a major waste stream of irradiated graphite. Graphite has been used extensively as a reactor moderator and reflector material that becomes irradiated and contaminated over time. In the coming years ~250,000 tonnes of irradiated graphite will require management making this a significant waste management issue worldwide. Irradiated graphite is categorised as Intermediate Level Waste mostly due to its content of Carbon-14 (C-14) which is a long-lived radioisotope which could be released into the biosphere. In addition the Low Level Waste (LLW) repository at Drigg has very strict guidelines regarding C-14 authorisation and there is currently no deep geological repository available in the UK. Varying amounts of carbonaceous deposits have been identified on irradiated graphite samples removed from reactor cores. If these deposits are rich in C-14, treatment of the waste graphite by oxidation could reduce the C-14 inventory of the remaining graphite. This is the primary focus of this research.
In order to investigate a technique that would decontaminate graphite from the carbonaceous deposits it was necessary to produce a range of carbonaceous deposits on virgin graphite material to act as a simulant for the deposits present on reactor graphite. Two deposition techniques were investigated: microwave plasma assisted chemical vapour deposition and a combination of solution deposition and charring. C-13 precursors were used as they facilitate the study of the selective removal of the deposit by mass spectrometry and spectroscopy. Using C-13 analogues instead of C-14 prevents the need to work in active laboratories and allows higher concentrations of deposit to be used which is beneficial when developing a technique for selective removal. A thermal treatment which utilised the application of a vacuum was investigated to determine whether the carbonaceous deposits could be selectively removed with minimal oxidation to the underlying graphite. As carbon deposits were more amorphous than crystalline graphite it was thought that they would oxidise quicker at lower temperatures than graphite. Virgin graphite and samples with deposits were characterised before and after thermal treatment using Scanning Electron Microscopy, Raman Spectroscopy, Thermal Gravimetric Analysis and Mass Spectrometry.
An additional area of investigation was conducted using thermogravimetric studies of the oxidation of irradiated graphite which was carried out at the National Nuclear Laboratory's Preston Lab. This would determine the distribution of C-14 in the carbonaceous deposits and underlying irradiated graphite which could be a key factor in the determination of possible treatments and eventual storage/disposal routes of the waste graphite.


This paper explores the use of information technology to support business innovation with particular attention to human and organisational issues. A theoretical framework is developed for examining IT adoption which is guided at the meta-level by the principles of structuration theory, but explicitly utilises the more familiar perspectives of culture, learning, and leadership in analysing an in-depth case study of the adoption of EDI in the London Insurance Market. The findings from the case study suggest that the initiation activities of innovation were facilitated by visionary leadership and legitimised by crisis in the market. In addition, a counterculture proved to be important in co-ordinating the innovation activities. However, conflicting interpretive schemes held by market participants as to how the new technology should be appropriated hindered organizational learning. Furthermore, leaders encountered difficulties in gaining commitment to their vision from market participants who anticipated unwelcome changes in power relations related to the introduction of the new technology. These elements contributed to a slow adoption process. The theoretical framework, together with the case findings, offer new insights on the adoption of IT to support business innovation, with a particular focus on large aggregates such as a market or industry.


An unnatural amino acid, 4-(2-azidoethoxy)-L-phenylalanine (AePhe, 1), was designed and synthesized in three steps from known compounds in 54% overall yield. The sensitivity of the IR absorption of the azide of AePhe was established by comparison of the frequency of the azide asymmetric stretch vibration in water and dimethyl sulfoxide. AePhe was successfully incorporated into superfolder green fluorescent protein (sfGFP) at the 133 and 149 sites by using the amber codon suppression method. The IR spectra of these sfGFP constructs indicated that the azide group at the 149 site was not fully solvated despite the location in sfGFP and the three-atom linker between the azido group and the aromatic ring of AePhe. An X-ray crystal structure of sfGFP-149-AePhe was solved at 1.45 Å resolution and provides an explanation for the IR data as the flexible linker adopts a conformation which partially buries the azide on the protein surface. Both sfGFP-AePhe constructs efficiently undergo a bioorthogonal strain-promoted click cycloaddition with a dibenzocyclooctyne derivative.


This work examines evolving forms of ethnographic practice generated in response to advances in mediated communication. It chronicles phases in the transformation of offline ethnography, beginning with pioneering virtual ethnographies concerned with identity work and deception. Subsequently, analysis illuminates cyberethnographic redefinitions of traditional methodological concerns including fieldwork, participant observation, and text as data. It concludes with an examination of current cyberethnographic practice. The work closes with the argument that the methodological adaptations made by ethnographers indicate the increasing salience of mediated communication in the social world. The research sheds light not only on issues connected to methodology but invites larger methodological and ethical questions that will grow ever more pressing as the information revolution continues to unfold. We suggest that just as ethnographic practice continues to benefit from its encounter with mediated communication, so will other forms of sociological practice be enriched from engagement with new media.


We propose DefogGAN, a generative approach to the problem of inferring state information hidden in the fog of war for real-time strategy (RTS) games. Given a partially observed state, DefogGAN generates defogged images of a game as predictive information. Such information can lead to create a strategic agent for the game. DefogGAN is a conditional GAN variant featuring pyramidal reconstruction loss to optimize on multiple feature resolution scales. We have validated DefogGAN empirically using a large dataset of professional StarCraft replays. Our results indicate that DefogGAN can predict the enemy buildings and combat units as accurately as professional players do and achieves a superior performance among state-of-the-art defoggers.