The aim of our study was to further develop an understanding of social capital in organizational knowledge sharing. We first developed a measurement tool and then a theoretical framework in which six social capital factors (social interaction ties, trust, identification, norm of reciprocity, openmindedness, and shared language & goals) can have effect on two sides of knowledge sharing; attitude and expectations about knowledge sharing, and quality of knowledge sharing. We surveyed 144 managers and researchers from a research department of IRIB, and then examined their relationships using step-wise multiple regression analysis. We confirm that social interaction ties, trust, norm of reciprocity, and shared language & goals significantly contributed to a person's attitude and expectations about knowledge sharing, but only shared language and goals directly contributed to quality of knowledge sharing.


Reverse osmosis (RO) is the most widely used technology for seawater desalination purposes. The long-term operating data of full-scale plants is key to analyse their performance under real conditions. The studied seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plant had a production capacity of 5000 m3/d for irrigation purposes. The operating data such as conductivities flows, and pressures were collected for around 27,000 h for 4 years. The plant had sand and cartridge filters without chemical dosing in the pre-treatment stage, a RO system with one stage, 56 pressure vessels, seven RO membrane elements per pressure vessel and a Pelton turbine as energy recovery device. The operating data allowed to calculate the average water and salt permeability coefficients (A and B) of the membrane as well as the specific energy consumption (SEC) along the operating period. The calculation of the average A in long-term operation allowed to fit the parameters of three different models used to predict the mentioned parameter. The results showed a 30% decrease of A, parameter B increase around 70%. The SEC was between 3.75 and 4.25 kWh/m3. The three models fitted quite well to the experimental data with standard deviations between 0.0011 and 0.0015.


An unusual debris flow broke out at Danba county of Ganzi of Sichuan province in the night on July 11, 2003. It is an extraordinarily serious natural disaster there in a century that caused enormous losses of life and property. Taking Qiongshan Gully where the debris flow occurred as a case of study, the formation and characteristics of the debris flow disasters are studied. With the calculating method of risk assessment on specific gully debris flow, the risk assessment of the debris flow disaster occurred on July 11, 2003 at Qiongshan Gully is made. The measures of debris-flow disaster reduction and prevention are put forward.


In this paper, we develop general repair models for a repairable system by using the idea of the virtual age process of the system. If the system has the virtual age Vn – 1 = y immediately after the (n – l)th repair, the nth failure-time Xn is assumed to have the survival function where is the survival function of the failure-time of a new system. A general repair is represented as a sequence of random variables An taking a value between 0 and 1, where An denotes the degree of the nth repair. For the extremal values 0 and 1, An = 1 means a minimal repair and An= 0 a perfect repair. Two models are constructed depending on how the repair affects the virtual age process: Vn = Vn – 1 + AnXn as Model 1 and Vn = An (Vn – 1 + Xn ) as Model II. Various monotonicity properties of the process with respect to stochastic orderings of general repairs are obtained. Using a result, an upper bound for E[Sn ] when a general repair is used is derived.


We consider Lagrangian systems in the limit of infinitely many particles. It is shown that the corresponding discrete action functionals Gamma-converge to a continuum action functional acting on probability measures of particle trajectories. Also the convergence of stationary points of the action is established. Minimizers of the limiting functional and, more generally, limiting distributions of stationary points are investigated and shown to be concentrated on orbits of the Euler-Lagrange flow. We also consider time discretized systems. These results in particular provide a convergence analysis for optimal transportation meshfree methods for the approximation of particle flows by finite discrete Lagrangian dynamics.


Comparative measurements of the rate of blood flow have been made with four methods. Venous occlusion plethysmography was used with a rubber tambour as volume recorder. A strain-gauge method according to Whitney was applied after certain modifications by which its applicability could be extended to objects as small as fingers. The rate of flow could be found by measuring the increase of radioactivity following venous occlusion in the case of subjects which had received an injection with labelled albumin. The last method was a calorimetric method applicable to the finger. Except in the case of calorimetry, all methods, applied simultaneously, showed results which were in good agreement. The strain-gauge method is shown to have advantages in its ease of application.


Background Many organisations and individuals have a role in injury prevention. However, the majority of these organisations have a multitude of roles, and staff dealing with injury prevention are frequently geographically or professionally isolated. Aims/Objectives/Purpose The Injury Observatory for Britain and Ireland (IOBI) is an innovative collaboration between the Association of Public Health Observatories and several academic institutions across the UK and Ireland. IOBI supports injury practitioners by providing an accessible injury prevention evidence base. Methods IOBI emerged from a series of informal meetings of interested professionals in 2004–2005. Being a virtual organisation, IOBI has neither a base nor core funding, though many of the constituent organisations receive funding from central or devolved government agencies. The IOBI website http://www.injuryobservatory.net, established in 2007, supports practitioners by providing access to a range of injury related materials. IOBI launched a free e-newsletter in 2008, Injury Prevention News (IPN, http://www.injuryobservatory.net/_newsletters.html), which is published tri-annually. Results/Outcomes IOBI members convene two or three times a year to share knowledge, discuss good practice, and to collaborate on injury projects. Key outcomes include: development of a specification enabling comparative analysis of inpatient data across the five countries, a comparative analysis of injury related mortality in the UK and Ireland, organising two national conferences, development of IPN. Significance/Contribution to the Field IOBI demonstrates the need for a forum for injury prevention collaboration in the British Isles. Its success will ultimately be judged by the extent to which it stimulates an increase in injury prevention practice and research.


The McGurk illusion effectively demonstrates the audiovisual nature of speech perception. When an auditory syllable is dubbed onto an incongruous visual syllable the resulting percept is usually not either of the components, but their combination or fusion. The present experiment investigated the persistence of the McGurk effect when the facial configuration context of the audiovisual stimuli was manipulated. Two congruent and two incongruent audiovisual syllables were created from spoken /ipi/ and /iki/. These audiovisual tokens were uttered by seven facial configurations of five talkers. All facial configurations produced a clear McGurk effect (reported /iti/ for heard /ipi/ + seen /iki/), but the effect was significantly less when uttered by an asymmetrically scrambled face configuration. The results also showed significant differences in the persistence of the McGurk effect between different talkers. In sum, facial configural information can be used in the audiovisual integration of certain speech segments. This information is not necessary for the integration to occur, but the integration process can be disrupted by face stimuli violating the normal configural information.


Molecular nanotechnology (MNT) offers the prospect for significant increases in various technical performance parameters, such as material strength and density. This performance would enhance the capabilities of many classes of space systems. To begin analysing this effect, a first step is to take previously defined space system architectures, not originally intended to use molecular nanotechnology, and calculate how well those systems would perform when simply using the MNT technical performance parameters. This paper discusses chemical rockets for putting payloads into an Earth orbit, both single-stage and two-stage architectures, synchronous and rotating skyhooks, solar sails and solar electric ion engines, and large, inhabited space colonies. In all cases, MNT offers the possibility of significant system improvements.


Structural reliability models suffer from some drawbacks mainly related to the assumptions necessary to apply them. We propose a model which intends to overcome some of these limitations appearing in previous published works. We discuss on an approach that can make more realistic the usual Markovian assumptions when considering the structural modeling of the execution process. Moreover, we define a failure process allowing to model different and general situations and we give analytic results and algorithmic methods to perform the corresponding quantitative evaluations. We show that our model and the obtained results include as particular cases some previous proposed models. We also discuss about some interesting asymptotic properties of the model.


(1) Background: Carbohydrate combined with dietary fiber (DF) applied as a surrogate marker of overall carbohydrate quality is a more essential determinant of cardiometabolic health. However, to date, no studies have applied this metric to analyze its associations with poor blood pressure control in hypertensive patients. (2) Methods: A cross-sectional design was implemented in one tertiary hospital and one community hospital in China. Using Feihua Nutrition Software to analyze participants' two-day dietary log, the quantity of carbohydrate and fiber was obtained and the carbohydrate to fiber ratio (CFR) was calculated. The participants were divided into Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4 groups by quartile method, from low to high according to CFR. The poor systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP) controls were defined as ≥140 mmHg and ≥90 mmHg, respectively. (3) Results: A convenience sample of 459 participants was included and the mean CFR was 29.6. Taking Q1 as reference, after adjusting for covariates, the CFR in Q4 was associated with higher poor SBP-controlled rate (OR, 4.374; 95% CI, 2.236–8.559). Taking Q2 as reference, after adjusting for covariates, the CFRs in Q3 and Q4 were associated with higher poor DBP-controlled rates [(OR = 1.964, 95% CI: 1.016–3.795) and (OR = 4.219, 95% CI: 2.132–8.637), respectively]. The CFR was the stronger protective determinant of SBP and DBP than DF or carbohydrate alone. (4) Conclusions: A higher CFR is a stronger risk factor for blood pressure (BP) control, and low CFR foods or a combination of corresponding food components, should be recommended in the dietary management of hypertensive patients.


Levels are a key component of many different video games, and a large body of work has been produced on how to procedurally generate game levels. Recently, Machine Learning techniques have been applied to video game level generation towards the purpose of automatically generating levels that have the properties of the training corpus. Towards that end we have made available a corpora of video game levels in an easy to parse format ideal for different machine learning and other game AI research purposes.


A study was undertaken to ascertain the association of lupus anticoagulant and anti-DNA binding in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). The sera of 67 patients who had positive antinuclear factor were studied to determine whether antibodies to DNA are associated with lupus anticoagulant and if so whether anticoagulant and anti-DNA properties reside on the same immunoglobulin. Binding to native DNA was determined by a modified Farr's assay, and lupus anticoagulant activity was determined by modified kaolin-activated partial thromboplastin time. Of 67 patients, 14 had positive findings for circulating anticoagulant, 37 had antibodies to DNA, and 30 did not. All 14 patients who had circulating anticoagulants had anti-DNA, and conversely, no patient without DNA binding had a lupus anticoagulant. Furthermore, absorption of the test sera with the phospholipid phosphatidyl serine was capable of removing DNA binding in every sera demonstrating lupus anticoagulant and anti-DNA activity. Although it is not clear whether anti-DNA binding and lupus anticoagulant activity coexist in the same immunoglobulin in SLE, lupus anticoagulant and anti-DNA showed a strong positive association in patients with SLE.


Studies in global plant biogeography have almost exclusively analyzed re- lationships of abiotic and biotic factors with the distribution and structure of vegetation aboveground. The goal of this study was to extend such analyses to the belowground structure of vegetation by determining the biotic and abiotic factors that influence vertical root distributions in the soil, including soil, climate, and plant properties. The analysis used a database of vertical root profiles from the literature with 475 profiles from 209 geographic locations. Since most profiles were not sampled to the maximum rooting depth, several techniques were used to estimate the amount of roots at greater depths, to a maximum of 3 m in some systems. The accuracy of extrapolations was tested using a subset of deeply ( .2 m) sampled or completely sampled profiles. Vertical root distributions for each profile were characterized by the interpolated 50% and 95% rooting depths (the depths above which 50% or 95% of all roots were located). General linear models incorporating plant life-form dominance, climate, and soil var- iables explained as much as 50% of the variance in rooting depths for various biomes and life-forms. Annual potential evapotranspiration (PET) and precipitation together accounted for the largest proportion of the variance (12-16% globally and 38% in some systems). Mean 95% rooting depths increased with decreasing latitude from 808 to 308 but showed no clear trend in the tropics. Annual PET, annual precipitation, and length of the warm season were all positively correlated with rooting depths. Rooting depths in tropical veg- etation were only weakly correlated with climatic variables but were strongly correlated with sampling depths, suggesting that even after extrapolation, sampling depths there were often insufficient to characterize root profiles. Globally,.90% of all profiles had at least 50% of all roots in the upper 0.3 m of the soil profile (including organic horizons) and 95% of all roots in the upper 2 m. Deeper rooting depths were mainly found in water- limited ecosystems. Deeper 95% rooting depths were also found for shrublands compared to grasslands, in sandy soils vs. clay or loam soils, and in systems with relatively shallow


When polyelectrolytes (i.e., lignosulfonates) are eluted from Sepfected by steric exclusion, polyelectrolyte expansion, ion exclusion, and ion inclusion effects. The last-mentioned effect arises from the interaction of charged sites in the high-MW macroions, which are more or less excluded from the gel phase with charged sites in more permeable macroions. The ion inclusion effect depends on the counterion in such a way that the fractionation of polyelectrolytes with a univalent counterion is affected to a greater extent than is the fractionation of polyelectrolytes with a divalent counterion. This is attributable to the existence of a higher density of free charges in the former case, since univalent counterions have a lesser tendency to form ion pairs with the charged sites of the macroion than have divalent counter-ions. The ion inclusion effect may have a favorable influence on the resolution of components of relatively equal molar volume, but of different charge densities. Polyelectrolyte effects are suppressed if the elution is carried oe polyelectrolyte behaves as a nonionic polymer. However, since the separation effected by differences in charge densities is eliminated (swamped out), resolution may deteriorate; nevertheless, the fractionation order is independent of the composition of the sample, the concentration of sample solution, and other fractionation variables. If one wishes to acquire a general picture of the composition of a certain polyelectrolyte, a solution of a simple electrolyte may be the most appropriate eluent. However, if polyelectrolyte components with small differences in hydrodynamic volume are to be separated, an eluent comprising a solution of a high-MW polyelectrolyte, completely excluded by the gel (e.g., dextran sulfate), can be used.


Abstract The two current models for giant planet formation are core accretion and disk instability. We discuss the core masses and overall planetary enrichment in heavy elements predicted by the two formation models, and show that both models could lead to a large range of final compositions. For example, both can form giant planets with nearly stellar compositions. However, low-mass giant planets, enriched in heavy elements compared to their host stars, are more easily explained by the core accretion model. The final structure of the planets, i.e., the distribution of heavy elements, is not firmly constrained in either formation model.


The Arctic climate changes faster than the ones of other regions, but the relative role of the individual feedback mechanisms contributing to Arctic amplification is still unclear. Atmospheric Rivers (ARs) are narrow and transient river-style moisture flows arriving from the sub-polar regions. The integrated water vapour transport associated with ARs can explain up to 70% of the precipitation variance north of 70°N. However, there are still uncertainties regarding the specific role and the impact of ARs on the Arctic climate variability.
For the first time, the high-resolution ICON modelling framework is used over the Arctic region (from 13 km down to ca. 6 and 3 km) to investigate processes related with anomalous moisture transport into the Arctic. Based on a case study for Svalbard, the representation of the atmospheric circulation and the spatio-temporal structure of water vapour, temperature, and precipitation and snowfall within the limited-area mode (LAM) of the ICON model is assessed. Preliminary results show that the moisture intrusion is relatively well represented in the ICON-LAM simulations. The impact on the surface energy budget will also be calculated.


The great challenge to contemporary political analysis and theoretical reflection is posed by the much discussed "crisis" of the welfare state in the wealthy nations of western Europe and North America, by the attendant dramatic reversals of public policy in several of the leading nations, and by the widespread loss of confidence and political initiative among the welfare state's dedicated partisans (Dunn, 1984). Although it is historically accurate enough to say that "the essence of the welfare state is government protected minimum standards of income, nutrition, health, housing, and education, assured to every citizen as a right, not as a charity" (Wilensky, 1975, p. 1), a broader use of the term seems justified by usage in the literature (Lowi, 1985), as well as by analytical considerations. The new classes of expenditures and guarantees to which the historical definition refers have been everywhere closely intertwined with regulatory and planning measures, as well as with characteristic developments in the organization of government and the constitution of the political process. As Luhmann has pointed out, the welfare state utilizes law as well as money in the attempt to compensate all citizens for disadvantaged interests (Luhmann, 1981: pp. 25-32). Fiscal problems doubtless have fueled the allegations of "crisis,@ but the debate is by no means limited to issues directly affecting the public budget. The contemporary attack is aimed against the whole complex of developments associated with the great "push" in the direction of the welfare state, that Jürgen Habermas correctly identifies as the central political development of the twentieth century in these nations (Habermas, 1981).


The dehydroxylation reaction of kaolinite in a vacuum at 425�C is halted by introducing a water vapor pressure of 47 mm-Hg, and is resumed when the vacuum is reestablished. The sample gains weight corresponding to an approximately monomotecular layer of water on the kaolinite surface. At the temperatures and vapor pressures involved, the sorption is considered to be a chemisorption process.


Carbonate flat‐pebble conglomerate is an important component of Precambrian to lower Palaeozoic strata, but its origins remain enigmatic. The Upper Cambrian to Lower Ordovician strata of the Snowy Range Formation in northern Wyoming and southern Montana contain abundant flat‐pebble conglomerate beds in shallow‐water cyclic and non‐cyclic strata. Several origins of flat‐pebble conglomerate are inferred for these strata. In one case, all stages of development of flat‐pebble conglomerate are captured within storm‐dominated shoreface deposits of hummocky cross‐stratified (HCS) fine carbonate grainstone. A variety of synsedimentary deformation structures records the transition from mildly deformed in situ stratification to buckled beds of partially disarticulated bedding to fully developed flat‐pebble conglomerate. These features resulted from failure of a shoreface and subsequent brittle and ductile deformation of compacted to early cemented deposits. Failure was induced by either storm or seismic waves, and many beds failed along discrete slide scar surfaces. Centimetre‐scale laminae within thick amalgamated HCS beds were planes of weakness that led to the development of platy clasts within partly disarticulated and rotated bedding of the buckled beds. In some cases, buckled masses accelerated downslope until they exceeded their internal friction, completely disarticulated into clasts and transformed into a mass flow of individual cm‐ to dm‐scale clasts. This transition was accompanied by the addition of sand‐sized echinoderm‐rich debris from local sources, which slightly lowered friction by reducing clast–clast interactions. The resulting dominantly horizontal clast orientations suggest transport by dense, viscous flow dominated by laminar shear. These flows generally came to rest on the lower shoreface, although in some cases they continued a limited distance beyond fairweather wave base and were interbedded with shale and grainstone beds. The clasts in these beds show no evidence of extensive reworking (i.e. not well rounded) or condensation (i.e. no rinds or coatings). A second type of flat‐pebble conglomerate bed occurs at the top of upward‐coarsening, metre‐scale cycles. The flat‐pebble conglomerate beds cap these shoaling cycles and represent either lowstand deposits or, in some cases, may represent transgressive lags. The clasts are well rounded, display borings and have iron‐rich coatings. The matrix to these beds locally includes glauconite. These beds were considerably reworked and represent condensed deposits. Thrombolites occur above the flat‐pebble beds and record microbial growth before initial transgression at the cycle boundaries. A third type of flat‐pebble conglomerate bed occurs within unusual metre‐scale, shale‐dominated, asymmetric, subaqueous cycles in Shoshone Canyon, Wyoming. Flat‐pebble beds in these cycles consist solely of clasts of carbonate nodules identical to those that are in situ within underlying shale beds. These deeper water cycles can be interpreted as either upward‐shoaling or ‐deepening cycles. The flat‐pebble conglomerate beds record winnowing and reworking of shale and carbonate nodules to lags, during either lowstand or the first stages of transgression.


The cogging force of a permanent-magnet linear motor (PMLM) is a major component of the detent force, but unfortunately makes a ripple in the thrust force and induces undesired vibration and acoustic noise. It also deteriorates the control characteristics, particularly in regard to precise speed and position control. In this paper, we propose a new PMLM having a 9-pole 10-slot structure in order to reduce the cogging force. Our PMLM is properly wound for three-phase driving. Through a theoretical and finite-element analysis, we show that the 9-pole 10-slot PMLM removes almost all of the cogging force while giving 10% and 23% larger back-electromotive force and thrust force, respectively, than a conventional 8-pole 12-slot PMLM under the same conditions of exciting current, total number of windings, and total PM volume.


Objectives: Analyze the types of studies and algorithms that are most applied, Identify the anatomical regions treated. Determine the application of parallel techniques used in studies carried out between 2010 and 2022 in research on noise reduction in medical images. Methodology: A systematic review of the literature on noise reduction in medical images in the last 12 years was carried out. The observation technique was applied to extract the information and the indicators (type of study, treated anatomical region, algorithm and or method and the application of parallel computing) were recorded in a data sheet. Results: Most of the studies have been developed in anatomical regions such as: Brain, Bones, Heart, Breast, Lung and Visual system. In the articles investigated, 14 are applied through parallel computing. Conclution: Noise reduction in medical images can contribute to better quality images and thus make a more accurate and effective diagnosis.


A hyperspectral image (HSI) contains a great number of spectral bands for each pixel, which will limit the conventional image classification methods to distinguish land-cover types of each pixel. Dimensionality reduction is an effective way to improve the performance of classification. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) is a popular dimensionality reduction method for HSI classification, which assumes all the samples obey the same distribution. However, different samples may have different contributions in the computation of scatter matrices. To address the problem of feature redundancy, a new supervised HSI classification method based on locally weighted discriminant analysis (LWDA) is presented. The proposed LWDA method constructs a weighted discriminant scatter matrix model and an optimal projection matrix model for each training sample, which is on the basis of discriminant information and spatial-spectral information. For each test sample, LWDA searches its nearest training sample with spatial information and then uses the corresponding projection matrix to project the test sample and all the training samples into a low-dimensional feature space. LWDA can effectively preserve the spatial-spectral local structures of the original HSI data and improve the discriminating power of the projected data for the final classification. Experimental results on two real-world HSI datasets show the effectiveness of the proposed LWDA method compared with some state-of-the-art algorithms. Especially when the data partition factor is small, i.e., 0.05, the overall accuracy obtained by LWDA increases by about 20 % for Indian Pines and 17 % for Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in comparison with the results obtained when directly using the original high-dimensional data.


Off-state leakage currents account for roughly half of the total current is today's ICs, and with each new generation of technology, the problem is getting worse. Failure analysts, however, see things differently. Light emission associated with leakage current is a rich source of information about the operation of ICs. In this article, the authors explain how they use this light to monitor logic states, measure temperatures, analyze cross-talk and power distribution noise, and diagnose broken scan chains. Light emission from off-state leakage current (LEOSLC) is shown to be especially useful for diagnosing faults that reside in scan clock trees, which are otherwise very difficult to detect.


Summary 1. Human-induced land cover change threatens species diversity and ecosystem services. The rapid pace of current change makes predicting species' declines imperative, but leaves little time for thorough study of all species. One solution is to make generalizations about species' vulnerability to urbanization based on traits common among studied species in decline. 2. To date, most generalizations about traits associated with species' declines in response to urbanization are based on presence or abundance, or detailed studies of a few species. If these generalizations broadly reflect responses to urbanization, they should hold across the mechanisms driving patterns of abundance, such as survival or reproduction. 3. Across 68 bird species in the north-eastern USA, we investigated how food preference, nest location, habitat preference, migration distance, number of broods, clutch size, body mass and an interaction between urbanization and these traits affected survival and reproduction. 4. Mass was the strongest predictor of survival, followed by number of broods, migration distance and nest location. Nest location was the strongest predictor of reproduction, followed by migration distance. No interaction between urbanization and species' traits affected survival; however, differences in response to urbanization among species with different food preferences, migration distances, masses, nest locations and number of broods were important in predicting reproduction. 5. Synthesis and applications. We found that some traits influenced demographic rates even though they were not associated with urbanization; identifying differences in species' baseline demographic rates, irrespective of urbanization, is needed to guide management objectives. Reproduction, but not survival, was influenced by urbanization, suggesting that management in our region of study should target increasing suitable nest sites and reducing nest predation. Determining traits associated with demographic rates and urbanization across broad geographic extents can provide new insights for species' management and help guide conservation initiatives.


Proceeding from the insights of Petrazycki, Polish-Russian legal realists (PRRs) distinguished legal theory, legal dogmatics, and legal policy. Legal theory describes legal phenomena in a value-free way and formulates causal laws concerning those phenomena. Legal dogmatics and legal policy are, by contrast, value-laden sciences involving the subject's—i.e., the scientist's—own attitudes toward existing or imagined phenomena: Dogmatics evaluates behaviors based on the subject's adoption of given normative sources (NSs) as binding, while legal policy evaluates the effects produced by given NSs based on causal laws and on the subject's goals (for Petrazycki, these goals come down to that of fostering love, or benevolence). PRRs then conceptualize custom as a representation of people behaving in a certain way (Rc): We have a custom on the threefold condition that (a) Rc is believed true by a given X, (b) Rc causes the existence of a given normative psychical experience (NPE) in X, and (c) X expressly refers to—or would refer—to Rc in justifying an NPE. PRRs use the term customary law to refer to legal experiences (i.e., NPEs involving a sense of entitlement) caused and justified by an Rc. From a theoretical perspective, both the subject's adoption of custom as a binding NS and its truth are irrelevant. It is only the presence of a customary NPE in the X under study that matters. From a dogmatic perspective, by contrast, what matters is (a) whether the dogmatician—qua subject—adopts custom as a binding NS, (b) whether it is true that people behave in a given way bw, and (c) whether bw resembles the behavior that is deontically qualified in the norm under dogmatic evaluation. Finally, from a legal-political viewpoint, PRRs hold that customary law in modern societies, owing to its conservative nature, should be eradicated for the goal of removing inequalities and fostering benevolence.


Synthetic naturalism is a form of moral realism which holds that we can discover a posteriori that moral properties exist and are natural properties. On this view moral discourse earns the right to be construed realistically because it meets the conditions that license realism about any discourse, that properties it represents as existing pull their weight in empirical explanations of our observations of the world. I argue that naturalism is an inadequate metaphysics of moral value, because parallel arguments to those used by the naturalist to establish the reality of 'moral' properties and their normativity for persons of sympathetic temperament can be constructed, which would equally demonstrate the reality of normatively antagonistic value properties, and their normativity for differently psychologically constituted agents. Since moral discourse implicitly denies that there are such diverse and competing normative truths the strategy fails to establish moral realism.


Ezhil is a Tamil language based interpreted procedural programming language. Tamil keywords and grammar are chosen to make the native Tamil speaker write programs in the Ezhil system. Ezhil allows easy representation of computer program closer to the Tamil language logical constructs equivalent to the conditional, branch and loop statements in modern English based programming languages. Ezhil is a compact programming language aimed towards Tamil speaking novice computer users. Grammar for Ezhil and a few example programs are reported here, from the initial proof-of-concept implementation using the Python programming language1. To the best of our knowledge, Ezhil language is the first freely available Tamil programming language.


Although there is a plethora of research articles that study ISO 9000 quality management systems and their association with business success, there is little empirical research that can attribute causality to certification. Contributes to the question of causality, through a comparison against a control group of the actual sales and profitability of 400 certified companies pre and post registration. Using a longitudinal methodology finds that, although the performance of certified companies is superior to that of 400 non-certified firms, there is no evidence of improved performance after registration in the 400 certified firms studied. Concludes, from these findings, that the superior performance of certified firms is due to firms with superior performance having a greater propensity to pursue ISO 9000 registration. Illustrates the potential dangers in inferring that ISO 9000 certification leads to superior business performance. Additionally the findings should give pause for thought for decision-makers. Certification is a major investment yet the findings show that inflated expectations of performance improvement after ISO 9000 accreditation may be unfounded.


Twenty-one patients with MS and 21 patients with neuromyelitis optica underwent 7T high-resolution 2D-gradient-echo-T2* and 3D-susceptibility-weighted imaging. An in-house-developed algorithm was used to reconstruct quantitative susceptibility mapping from SWI. Of the patients with MS, 19 (90.5%) demonstrated at least 1 quantitative susceptibility mapping–hyperintense lesion, and 11/21 (52.4%) had iron-laden lesions. No quantitative susceptibility mapping–hyperintense or iron-laden lesions were observed in any patients with neuromyelitis optica. The authors conclude that ultra-high-field MR imaging may be useful in distinguishing MS from neuromyelitis optica. BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Characterization of iron deposition associated with demyelinating lesions of multiple sclerosis and neuromyelitis optica has not been well studied. Our aim was to investigate the potential of ultra-high-field MR imaging to distinguish MS from neuromyelitis optica and to characterize tissue injury associated with iron pathology within lesions. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Twenty-one patients with MS and 21 patients with neuromyelitis optica underwent 7T high-resolution 2D-gradient-echo-T2* and 3D-susceptibility-weighted imaging. An in-house-developed algorithm was used to reconstruct quantitative susceptibility mapping from SWI. Lesions were classified as "iron-laden" if they demonstrated hypointensity on gradient-echo-T2*-weighted images and/or SWI and hyperintensity on quantitative susceptibility mapping. Lesions were considered "non-iron-laden" if they were hyperintense on gradient-echo-T2* and isointense or hyperintense on quantitative susceptibility mapping. RESULTS: Of 21 patients with MS, 19 (90.5%) demonstrated at least 1 quantitative susceptibility mapping–hyperintense lesion, and 11/21 (52.4%) had iron-laden lesions. No quantitative susceptibility mapping–hyperintense or iron-laden lesions were observed in any patients with neuromyelitis optica. Iron-laden and non-iron-laden lesions could each be further characterized into 2 distinct patterns based on lesion signal and morphology on gradient-echo-T2*/SWI and quantitative susceptibility mapping. In MS, most lesions (n = 262, 75.9% of all lesions) were hyperintense on gradient-echo T2* and isointense on quantitative susceptibility mapping (pattern A), while a small minority (n = 26, 7.5% of all lesions) were hyperintense on both gradient-echo-T2* and quantitative susceptibility mapping (pattern B). Iron-laden lesions (n = 57, 16.5% of all lesions) were further classified as nodular (n = 22, 6.4%, pattern C) or ringlike (n = 35, 10.1%, pattern D). CONCLUSIONS: Ultra-high-field MR imaging may be useful in distinguishing MS from neuromyelitis optica. Different patterns related to iron and noniron pathology may provide in vivo insight into the pathophysiology of lesions in MS.


This paper proposes a new assessment and reliability validation method of Lane Departure Assistance System based on DGPS-GIS by measuring lanes with camera vision. Assessment of lane departure is performed with yaw speed measurement and determination method for false alarm of ISO 17361 and performance validation is executed after generating departure warning boundary line by considering deviation error of LDAS using DGPS. Distance between the wheel and the lane is obtained through line abstraction using Hough transformation of the lane image with camera vision. Evaluation validation is obtained by comparing this value with the distance obtained with LDAS. The experimental result shows that the error of the extracted distance of the LDAS is within 5 cm. Also it proves performance of LDAS based on DGPS-GIS and assures effectiveness of the proposed validation method for system reliability using camera vision.


The feasibility of predonated autologous blood transfusion and intraoperative blood salvage in elective abdominal aortic aneurysm repair was studied. Twenty consecutive patients were evaluated, of whom five were excluded according to protocol criteria. Patients each donated 1 unit blood 14 and 7 days before operation. A third unit was withdrawn in the anaesthetic room and replaced with Hartmann's solution, producing a haemodiluted state. Intraoperative losses were minimized using the Haemonetics Cell Saver III Plus autotransfusion system. Predonated blood from two patients passed its expiry date owing to repeated operation postponements, leaving 13 patients for study. The mean(s.d.) intraoperative blood loss was 700(300) ml with a mean(s.d.) intraoperative salvage of 420 (300) ml. Two patients were transfused with bank blood in breach of the protocol and two others were transfused according to clinical need. Thus nine patients safely avoided homologous transfusion. With autologous predonation, haemodilution and intraoperative blood salvage, elective aortic aneurysm repair can be performed safely with minimal need for homologous blood.


The issues infested in urban slum communities are many, of which I had no problem indentifying a dilemma specific to my interests in landscape architecture and socially equitable places. However, sustainable solutions specific to these dynamic urban forms and communities are unfamiliar academic territory. Extreme levels of poverty fostered in these communities cause deficiencies in a child's development, who are often without access to a formal, structured education system (UNDP, 1999). Public spaces are particularly stimulating environments for youth learning and development, but most urban environments in shanty towns host a milieu of violence and crime, making most public streets and vacant lots unsafe. These conditions are ripe for visionary designers to intervene, improving the physical aspects of urban public spaces and specifically bettering the quality of life for children living in these communities. Answering this question required literature research and precedent studies, which was important for developing a thorough understanding of developmental theory as it relates to socio-economically disadvantaged children. By focusing my studies on public spaces in the neighborhood Vistas del Cerro Grande in Chihuahua, México, I began to understand the cultural idiosyncrasies specific to people living in urban shantytowns. Data collected from the neighborhood via surveys, interviews, community meetings, and an auto-ethnographic video study with fifth and sixth grade students provided an introduction to the community and the larger themes and objectives for future public space design. Visiting comparable communities in México City, México deepened my understanding as I was able to observe the daily lives of México City residents with diverse socio-economic statuses, hear their individual perspectives on the history and cultures, and relate to their frustrations with current political, economic, and societal systems. The methodologies described above culminated in a design typology specific to Vistas del Cerro Grande, consisting of public streets, pedestrian access ways, plazas, and vacant lots. These types form the backbone of my research report, which represents an evidence-based design palette of purpose-oriented amenities for positive childhood development in shanty town public spaces. The typology caters to the specific needs of the Vistas del Cerro Grande community, as identified in the research.


Countries in the developing world are increasingly vulnerable to climate change effects and have a lesser capacity to adapt. Consideration can be given to their indigenous knowledge systems for an integrated approach to education, one which is more holistic and applicable to their context. This paper presents a systematic review of the indigenous knowledge systems (IKSs) deployed for climate change adaptation in the developing world and advances implications for climate change education. A set of inclusion criteria was used to screen publications derived from two databases and grey literature searches, and a total of 39 articles constituted the final selection. Postcolonial theory's lens was applied to the review of the selected publications to highlight indigenous people's agency, despite IKSs' marginalization through colonial encounters and the ensuing epistemic violence. The categories of social adaptation, structural adaptation, and institutional adaptation emerged from the IKS-based climate change adaptation strategies described in the articles, with social adaptation being the most recurrent. We discussed how these strategies can be employed to decolonise climate change education through critical, place-based, participatory, and holistic methodologies. The potential outcome of this is a more relatable and effective climate change education in a developing world context.


Alas, classical genetics again has insulted my sense of human genomic superiority. August 2010 saw the publication of the genome sequence of the demosponge, A. queenslandica (Srivastava, Nature 466:720– 726, 2010), the ancestors of which were among the first forms of multicellular life. It has 418,000 genes, roughly the same number as C. elegans, which has only 959 cells. The insult is, of course, that humans only have a few thousand more classical protein-coding (CDS) genes than a sponge, or a worm with only 302 neurons! So why are we more complex ''higher organisms'' prone to devastating psychiatric disorders (PDs) such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, which we know have a strong genetic component? In this issue, Forero et al. (Hum. Mutat. 31:1195– 1204, 2010) note that, for many PDs, the most highly associated SNPs (with low odds ratios) in replicated and nonreplicated genome-wide association studies are non-CDS and intergenic. Part of the answer came with the discoveries of small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) in C. elegans and micro RNAs (miRNAs), non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) which can have direct effects on regulation of coding gene expression through mRNA stability or translation. The larger the genome is and the more ''junk'' it appears to contain compared with that of a sponge or a worm, there is a corresponding increase in the transcription of a range of ncRNAs from intergenic and even intragenic regions (Mattick, J. Exp. Biol. 210:1526– 1547, 2007). Importantly, miRNAs are known to target mRNAs for key developmental molecules during brain development. There is an increasing catalogue of dysregulated miRNA expression in PD patient samples and genetic association with miRNA sequence variation. So, as discussed by Forero et al., is it the cumulative biological effects of rare sequence variants in miRNAs, their 30-untranslated region targets, and other ncRNAs, that are partially the cause of PDs? Sponges and worms don't have the genetic and genomic complexity to produce the numerous sequence variants, miRNAs, and other ncRNAs to have our cellular and neuronal complexity and thus get PDs. So in a way, I'm both less genetically insulted but more genetically depressed.


Domestic violence (DV) in Australia is a pressing issue that continually needs to be addressed. Just as important to consider is how individuals who commit these offences are treated to attempt to prevent instances of reoffending. As such, treatment programs and how they are constructed from a theoretical perspective is an important consideration. The current study examined what academic theories are being used in the rationale and implementation of DV treatment programs in Australia. It also examined whether differing schools of thought (i.e., biological, psychological, social) are being used in conjunction with one another in these programs or separately. In total, 60 male domestic violence treatment programs were analysed using thematic analysis. Overall, results indicated that all of the treatment programs analysed had underlying tones that represented academic influence. Secondly, the results demonstrated that in most cases multiple schools of thought are included in the development of DV treatment programs. Future research could focus on evaluating what models of intervention are most effective and whether or not 'multi-pronged' approaches are more effective in reducing DV recidivism.


PURPOSE
To retrospectively assess the effect of lossy three-dimensional (3D) Joint Photographic Experts Group 2000 (JPEG2000) compression on diagnostic confidence and diagnostic accuracy at emergency abdominal computed tomography (CT).

MATERIALS AND METHODS
In this institutional review board-approved study, transverse images from 104 consecutive multidetector CT examinations (section thickness, 3 mm; reconstruction interval, 2 mm) in patients with acute abdominal complaints were subjected to lossy 3D JPEG2000 compression by using three compression ratios (10:1, 12.5:1, and 15:1, with reference to 384 kB [12 bits] as original image size). Three radiologists independently read the original and compressed CT studies. Patient order and compression ratios were randomized, and readers were blinded to that information. For each organ, the presence of compression artifacts, the diagnosis, the confidence in the diagnosis according to a five-point scale, and the confidence about negative findings were noted. All diagnoses were compared with a standard of reference constructed by an abdominal CT expert by using the original images, surgical reports, and patient follow-up data. Logistic regressions, the Friedman test, and analysis of variance were used for statistical analysis.

RESULTS
Primary diagnoses were correct in 91.3% (463 of 507), 90.5% (459 of 507), 89.0% (451 of 507) and 90.1% (457 of 507) of the total number of primary diagnoses at 1:1, 1:10, 1:12.5 and 15:1, respectively. These values did not vary significantly (P = .456) with compression ratios. The radiologists' mean confidence about the primary diagnoses was also almost identical at different compression ratios (4.83, 4.87, 4.77, and 4.84 at 1:1, 1:10, 1:12.5 and 15:1, respectively). However, the radiologists' mean confidence about negative findings in the liver was reduced in 50.3% (157 of 312) of studies at 15:1.

CONCLUSION
Diagnostic accuracy was not impaired at compression ratios up to 15:1. However, because of the significant reduction of the confidence about negative findings at 15:1, compression ratios no higher than 12.5:1 are recommended.


Introduction: Any defects in pharmaceutical products lead to minor, major, or critical deviation and if such a product is released, it also leads to product recalls and legal actions. In such cases, the concern is about patient's safety rather than the company's economy and fame. This study aimed to investigate the various quality defects which have occurred in marketed tablets. Materials and Methods: The investigation was carried out which involved identification of defects, categorizing the type, root causes, suggesting remedial measures and documenting the clinical significance of defective dosage forms of tablets. Dosage forms included were film-coated tablets, uncoated tablets, uncoated caplet shaped tablets and dispersible tablets which are prescribed for their specific therapeutic activity. Results: This research work has revealed quality issues of minor, major and critical types. These defects were unique in nature and appeared to be stray incidents which were not available even in standard textbooks or literature. Conclusion: Medicines being the silver sword to treat an ailment in a patient, it should not involve any quality issues leading to a significant impact on the safety and efficacy of the prescribed drug. It is essential to embed an attentive and dedicated quality assurance (QA) team and adhere to all the regulations laid by regulatory agencies in the pharmaceutical setup thereby ensuring that high-quality medicines are supplied and the safety of the patient is shielded.


Professor A F M Maniruzzaman considers the impact of a spectacular growth of investor-state dispute resolution by arbitration over the last two decades, looking at issues raised by excessive investor-state arbitral awards with wider implications beyond the field of arbitration itself, such as concerns about the role of arbitrators vis-a-vis the respondent state's public interest in regulating various matters including environmental protection, low-carbon investments, social and human rights; dire economic consequences flowing from arbitrators' decisions who lack in democratic legitimacy of a domestic or international judicial institution; and inconsistency in arbitral interpretation of investment treaty obligations, hence unpredictability in arbitral decisions on similar or identical issues.


This paper investigates the issues of reactive power must-run capacity in power system operations, hence in electricity markets. A must-run index-based method is proposed in the paper to measure the market power held by reactive power suppliers. The Nordic 32-bus system and the IEEE 118-bus system are used to test the proposed method. The market power holders of reactive power found using the proposed method are in accord with that found in the realistic Nordic system operation and in the existing analysis of IEEE 118-bus system. The paper identifies through must-run indices possible conditions that could lead to market power in the case of applying a bid structure within a market framework. Furthermore, market structure drawbacks can cause the appearance of market power even in a topologically ideal system.


This article evaluates the notion and practice of action research, as defined by contributors to the recent special issue 'Action Research and Emancipation' in this journal. The author argues that, although action research implicitly has a design orientation, it largely draws on the humanities and sciences as its main role models. As a result, action researchers nowadays do not see themselves as design professionals. Idealized design methods serve to illustrate how design research can help realize the emancipatory intentions of action researchers. Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


This study investigate the characteristics of tidal constituents, and long-term mean sea level oscillations at Incheon bay. For this, the conditions of three tide stations around Incheon bay have examined, and carried out harmonic analysis on water level data for periods of about 40 years(1960~2007). Four major tidal constituents(, , , ) of each tide station showed tendency that change over the 18.61year lunar node cycle, and the type of tide at three stations is mainly semi-diurnal tides. And also, the past monthly tidal modulations are especially sensitive to the cumulative year of water level data in accuracy of tidal prediction. In case that regard the detached data at three tide stations as a single time series data of 40 years, the results of analysis on a single time series, long-term mean sea level oscillations and modulations of tidal datum at tide stations appears with a range of about 10cm, respectively. In addition, the predicted tides at the Inchcon harbor by global and regional tide models of OSU(Oregon State University) based on various satellite altimetric(Topex Poseidon, Topex Tandem, ERS, GFO) data are compared with the observed tides by KHOA(the Korea Hydrographic and Oceanographic Administration). The results show that the high resolution regional model is a quite good agreement at coastal shallow water region.


Tabak has created a fascinating exploration of a unique and uniquely beautiful North American language. The story begins in 18th century France in the first schools to use signed language as the language of instruction. Early in the 19th century a few individuals introduced a variant of this language into the United States and developed an educational system in which to use it. Out of these schools come members of a new American social class, the Deaf-with a capital D-who, united by a common signed language, create institutions through which they can participate in society on terms equal to those of other constituent groups. This strategy proved extremely controversial among all but the Deaf. The controversy lasted a century, during which time American Sign Language evolved along racial lines and in response to the pressures of those who sought to eliminate the use of American Sign Language. Today, new ideas in art, science, and education have supplanted much of the old opposition to American Sign Language and Deaf culture. New legislation and new technologies have also had profound effects on the lives of American Deaf. As a consequence, American Sign Language is evolving faster than ever before.


Radicals generated by photolysis of bis(1-methylethyl) diazenes (azoisopropanes) Me2C(X)-N=N-C(X)Me2, where X = -CN, -SCN, -SPh and -OAc, have been studied by means of spin trapping and radical scavenger techniques. The primarily photoproduced radicals of the type C(X)Me2 were trapped by N-t-butyl-a- phenylnitrone, except for X = -SCN. In this case, thiocyanatyl radicals were trapped by N-t-butyl-a- phenylnitrone . Radicals generated by thermoiysis were all of the type 'C(X)Me2. The diffusive separation process of a pair of photoproduced geminate radicals was investigated spectrophotometrically by following the disappearance of 2,4,6-triphenyl-3,4-dihydro-1,2,4,5-tetrazin-12H)-yl ( verdazyl ), in binary solvent systems of different viscosities. The reciprocal of the apparent zero-order rate constant with respect to verdazyl was found to be linearly related to the viscosity. This first-power relationship is briefly considered.


Experimentally determined values of true secondary electron emission and relative values of reflected primary electron yield for untreated and ion textured oxygen free high conductivity copper and untreated and ion textured high purity isotropic graphite surfaces are presented for a range of primary electron beam energies and beam impingement angles. This investigation was conducted to provide information that would improve the efficiency of multistage depressed collectors (MDC's) for microwave amplifier traveling wave tubes in space communications and aircraft applications. For high efficiency, MDC electrode surfaces must have low secondary electron emission characteristics. Although copper is a commonly used material for MDC electrodes, it exhibits relatively high levels of secondary electron emission if its surface is not treated for emission control. Recent studies demonstrated that high purity isotropic graphite is a promising material for MDC electrodes, particularly with ion textured surfaces. The materials were tested at primary electron beam energies of 200 to 2000 eV and at direct (0 deg) to near grazing (85 deg) beam impingement angles. True secondary electron emission and relative reflected primary electron yield characteristics of the ion textured surfaces were compared with each other and with those of untreated surfaces of the same materials. Both the untreated and ion textured graphite surfaces and the ion treated copper surface exhibited sharply reduced secondary electron emission characteristics relative to those of untreated copper. The ion treated graphite surface yielded the lowest emission levels.


Introduction Adolescents will be the influential force behind economic prosperity in the future of Ethiopia. Ethiopian adolescent communities today face many health-related challenges, and their lives vary considerably from those of their parents, grandparents and other relatives. A number of behaviours lead to increased risk of getting HIV/AIDS, in particular unprotected sexual intercourse and multiple sexual partners. Methods and Materials Drawing on data from the Ethiopia Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) 2005, this study focused on the latest information about Ethiopian's adolescent people, age 15–24. The DHS collected data from more than 10 000 women and men nationwide including 5813 females and 2399 males in the age group 15–24 years. Regression modes were developed separately for males aged 15–24 years and females aged 15–24 years. Results Fertility and mortality rates fell, but were still subject to short-term variation. Average mortality was 8.2 per 1000 person years, consistent with AIDS-related deaths. Conclusion A new local hospital in 2005 may have contributed to falls in overall illness. Adolescent sexual behaviour and HIV/AIDS remains a challenge and an area for healthcare providers to focus on. The Ethiopian adolescent population has undergone complex changes during a single generation. This research is designed to help program managers, community leaders and organisations working with adolescence to understand some of the epidemiological challenges.


We show that the finite lateral sizes of ultrathin CdSe nanoplatelets strongly affect both their photoluminescence and optical absorption spectra. This is in contrast to the situation in quantum wells, in which the large lateral sizes may be assumed to be infinite. The lateral sizes of the nanoplatelets are varied over a range of a few to tens of nanometers. For these sizes excitons experience in-plane quantum confinement, and their center-of-mass motion becomes quantized. Our direct experimental observation of the discretization of the exciton center-of-mass states can be well understood on the basis of the simple particle-in-a-box model.


We study analytically and numerically the extreme value distribution of observables defined along the temporal evolution of a dynamical system. The convergence to the Gumbel law of observable recurrences gives information on the fractal structure of the image of the invariant measure by the observable. We provide illustrations on idealized and physical systems.


This paper presents several conditioned sound changes in the Rapanui language: replacement of rhotics with glottal stops in the final syllable, further loss of glottal stops in polymoraic words, retention of Proto-Polynesian *h in certain phonetic contexts, metathesis of consonants in adjacent syllables, dissimilation of velar nasals in the vicinity of velar stops, and assimilation of central and back vowels. The sound changes under discussion systematically distinguish between bimoraic and polymoraic lexical roots and some of them also distinguish between lexical and grammatical morphemes. Some of the sound changes are recent and operate on borrowings from Tahitian and European languages. This paper also provides new information on the phonology of Rapanui and, by extension, the Eastern Polynesian subgroup. The findings imply that, in the case of Rapanui, a phonological description would not be satisfactory without an account of productive recent and on-going sound changes.


In 1920 Warren Harding won the presidency after an early campaign speech advocating, among other things, a nostalgic and undefined return to "normalcy," a reference to the McKinley administration of 1900 that Harding felt looked like his America. The intervening twenty years of the Progressive Era, with its massive non-Anglo-Saxon immigration from southern and eastern Europe, wasn't, in Harding's view, normal. The recent immigrants did not look like Harding's America, and not incidentally his administration featured severe immigration restriction and extensive deportation of radical aliens--Harding's return to normalcy. Warren Harding's era of normalcy didn't last long; the trend in twentieth-century America has been one of steadily increasing diversity. Yet on a trip through the Ozarks I inadvertently found Harding's 1920s America in Branson, Missouri. Contemporary Branson neither discourages ethnic tourists nor advertises its Anglo-Saxon homogeneity. A merger of Nashville's Opryland and Disneyland's Main Street, it simply reflects the rural, white middle-aged Protestant visitors whose passion is traditional country music. Branson does, however, harbor some ironic contradictions that make it an unlikely mecca for an old America. A hustling, bustling modern commercial town that resembles Las Vegas more than any other city, Branson is snugly nestled between two lakes in the heart of the scenic Ozarks, just north of the Arkansas line. Although it now bills itself as "the Country Music Show Capital of the World," Branson's early growth had nothing to do with country music. Its modern tourism dates from the opening of Table Rock Dam and the Silver Dollar City amusement park in the late 1950s. Before then, novelist Harold Bell Wright, who came to the area to regain his health, popularized the town in his 1907 novel The Shepherd of the Hills. Many of his readers eventually visited the actual hill country around Branson, and a 1941 film adaptation of the novel, starring John Wayne, made the area even more famous. In 1959 the Shepherd of the Hills theater opened as a tourist attraction to go with the recently opened Silver Dollar City park. By 1958 three lakes, Taneycomo, Bull Shoals, and Table Rock, were already attracting fishermen and boaters. Nearby Marvel Cave had drawn tourists throughout the century, and Silver Dollar City, originally a recreated late-nineteenth-century mountain village, was conceived to complement it. Rides, live country-music shows, and craft shops followed. In 1959 the Mabe family formed a group called the Baldknobbers, who performed in Branson for the slowly growing tourist population. Their on-site success was marginal, but they soon found added employment as musicians for Shepherd of the Hills and Silver Dollar City. In the early 1960s, the Mabes and the Presley family built theaters on state highway 76 in between Branson and the amusement park. Traffic improved steadily, but business never boomed for the Presleys and Baldknobbers during the 1960s. The real draw in the sixties was not country music but the Silver Dollar City amusement park, which had been named for its early practice of giving customers change in silver dollars. Word about the park was getting around. National television highlighted its craft shops, and in the mid-1970s the wildly popular television series The Beverly Hillbillies filmed a few shows there. This was the first direct national linking of the Branson area to an older, white rural America. The increasing crowds brought more country music theaters in the 1980s to entertain visitors at night. A simple cycle was set in motion. More tourist traffic brought more theaters, which brought more tourists, which brought new theaters. Highway 76 became a traffic nightmare. Recently, Branson has concentrated on building new side routes around the 76 strip, and the result has been an explosion of new theaters, motels, restaurants, and retail malls. …


The target article distinguishes between modal and amodal emulators (the former predict future sensory states from current sensory states and motor actions, the latter operate on more abstract descriptions of the environment), and motor and environment emulators (the former predict the results of one's own actions, the latter predict all changes in the environment). I question the applicability of modal emulators, and the generalization to environment emulators.


This paper investigates the usage of a hybridized Pyro-Piezo Ferrofluidic harvester to capture useful energy from ambient vibration and temperature fluctuation. Consisting of a ferrofluidic core, the proposed device utilizes pyro and piezoelectric materials to charge an integrated ultracapacitor for 'trickle' energy harvesting and usage. In particular, a wearable or implantable hybridized crystal quartz piezoelectric and PZT pyroelectric based ferrofluidic harvester is characterized under human ambient energy boundaries. The frequency associated with typical bodily movement such as walking and strenuous bodily movement such as running was determined via accelerometer and analyzed via fast fourier transform, with determined mean frequencies of 1.7 Hz for typical bodily movement and 4.3 Hz for strenuous movement. Under an optimal continuous harvestation period of ~24 hours, the CQF harvester was characterized with a energy harvestation of 7.89 MJ


Although students are often attracted to the profession of psychiatric nursing, they are rarely prepared for the realities associated with clinical seminars and direct clinical practice. Subsequently, student nurses commonly report the resurgence of painful life events or symptoms of psychological injury when learning about or witnessing patient behaviour. This paper underlines the importance of student-faculty collaboration when promoting and monitoring student nurse well-being. Along with providing descriptions and case vignettes depicting two specific forms of psychological injury, this paper suggests practical steps that are designed to promote student nurse well-being.


Spatial transcriptomics (ST) technologies are rapidly becoming the extension of single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq), holding the potential of profiling gene expression at a single-cell resolution while maintaining cellular compositions within a tissue. Having both expression profiles and tissue organization enables researchers to better understand cellular interactions and heterogeneity, providing insight into complex biological processes that would not be possible with traditional sequencing technologies. The data generated by ST technologies are inherently noisy, high-dimensional, sparse, and multi-modal (including histological images, count matrices, etc.), thus requiring specialized computational tools for accurate and robust analysis. However, many ST studies currently utilize traditional scRNAseq tools, which are inadequate for analyzing complex ST datasets. On the other hand, many of the existing ST-specific methods are built upon traditional statistical or machine learning frameworks, which have shown to be sub-optimal in many applications due to the scale, multi-modality, and limitations of spatially-resolved data (such as spatial resolution, sensitivity and gene coverage). Given these intricacies, researchers have developed deep learning (DL)-based models to alleviate ST-specific challenges. These methods include new state-of-the-art models in alignment, spatial reconstruction, and spatial clustering among others. However, deep-learning models for ST analysis are nascent and remain largely underexplored. In this review, we provide an overview of existing state-of-the-art tools for analyzing spatially-resolved transcriptomics, while delving deeper into the DL-based approaches. We discuss the new frontiers and the open questions in this field and highlight the domains in which we anticipate transformational DL applications.


One of the major unresolved challenges among the scientific community is to develop anticancer drugs that are safe and effective. A large number of anticancer drugs have been screened so far in this campaign. Among them niclosamide has shown tremendous anti-cancer potential as demonstrated in a surfeit of human cancer cell lines and animal models. But the extreme hydrophobicity and consequently, minimal systemic bioavailability associated with this drug limited its widespread clinical applications. Nanoparticles based drug delivery systems have the potential for realizing water soluble formulation of highly hydrophobic anticancer drugs like niclosamide, thus evading the drawbacks of poor solubility. In this work niclosamide was encapsulated into albumin nanoparticles through a desolvation method to improve its scope of application in cancer therapy. Physico-chemical characterization confirms that the prepared nanoparticles are spherical, highly monodispersed, and stable in aqueous systems. These drug encapsulated albumin nanoparticles, unlike the free drug demonstrate better in vitro therapeutic efficacy against human lung and breast cancer cell lines, as assessed by cell viability assay and morphological analyses. Further, the proficient induction of apoptosis by these nanoparticles was confirmed by semi-quantitative RT-PCR. This work open up a new avenue to extend the clinical gamut of this effectual agent by enabling its aqueous dispersion.


(+)-Naloxone was prepared in 26% overall yield in eight steps from (+)-7-bromodihydrocodeinone dimethyl ketal by a synthesis which excluded enantiomeric contamination. (+)-Naloxone was examined in three assay systems and found to have no more than 1/1000(-1)/10 000th the activity of (-)-naloxone; it can, thus, serve to test the stereospecificity of the biochemical and pharmacological actions of (-)-naloxone.


The rockmover wrasse Novaculichthys taeniourus was observed using coral fragments for mound construction on the reefs of Kuchierabu-jima Island, Japan. The wrasse heaped between four and 71 pieces of coral fragments on each sand mound, and dived into the mound just before sunset. Coral fragments may facilitate the retention of sleeping sites under competition with other sand-diving wrasses.


Stand still-obligations included int he Turkey-EEC Association Agreement prohibit Member States to intorduce new rules which in their effect restrict individual rights. Thus they contribute towards the gradual realisation of the right to free movement accorded to Turkish nationals by that Agreement. The contribution's aim is to establish whether and if so to what extent Dutch immigration law and policy are stand still-proof. The overall finding is that the Dutch legislator has taken an ad hoc approach; immigration law and policy is amended only after a finding by a Dutch court or the CJ EU that it is incompatible with the obligation imposed on the Netherlands by the Turkey-EEC Agreement. Ensuring compliance with the stand still-provision is thus put the individual in the driving seat and has left us with a messy legal framework.


Although the Covid-19 Case Fatality Rate (CFR) in the Indian States and UTs has been changing with time, some states constantly appear to show significantly higher CFR than the national average. Our objective is to calculate the CFR of all the states/UTs of India and analyse the possible factors behind the disparities in it. Research papers and news articles on Covid-19 were explored to understand the factors responsible for the CFR disparities in the States/UTs. State-wise CFR was calculated and Correlated with Covid-19 Testing Rates and data from Demographic & Healthcare factors, using Spearman's Rank Correlation Coefficient Methodology. The overall Covid-19 CFR in India was among the lowest (1.76%) in the world but varied vastly from one state to another. Where the states like Punjab and Maharashtra constantly have the highest CFR in the country, states like Assam, Kerala, and Bihar have the lowest. In the correlation analysis, a weak agreement (+0.33) between state-wise CFR and 'Test Positive Rate' was found. CFR and 'Life Expectancy at 60' showed a moderate agreement (+0.49). Healthcare components like 'Number of Doctors Per Million People' and 'Number of Hospital Beds' showed very weak agreement with CFR. Where the higher Life Expectancy and Test Positive Rates clearly tend to increase CFR, Healthcare Facilities had surprisingly little effect on it. Analyses of various news articles suggested that Comorbidities, Availability of Essential Drugs, Trained Manpower, Contact Tracings, and Hospital Referral Time were also some of the major factors affecting CFR.


In this paper, we first outline the foundations in economic theory of so-called coordinated effects with a particular view to mergers and with a special focus on transparency. Then, we review a number of seminal merger cases in EU competition policy (Airtours, Sony/BMG, ABF/GBI Business) in light of that theory. Next, we discuss in more detail a recent Danish merger prohibition that was based on the presence of coordinated effects. This case poses special challenges to the theory of coordinated effects, because a very large number of products were involved, and significant, individualized discounts were widespread in the market in question. Finally, we briefly present a few other cases in which transparency has been an issue.


The detection of clouds in satellite images is an essential preprocessing task for big data in remote sensing. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have greatly advanced the state-of-the-art in the detection of clouds in satellite images, but existing CNN-based methods are costly as they require large amounts of training images with expensive pixel-level cloud labels. To alleviate this cost, we propose Fixed-Point GAN for Cloud Detection (FCD), a weakly-supervised approach. Training with only image-level labels, we learn fixed-point translation between clear and cloudy images, so only clouds are affected during translation. Doing so enables our approach to predict pixel-level cloud labels by translating satellite images to clear ones and setting a threshold to the difference between the two images. Moreover, we propose FCD+, where we exploit the label-noise robustness of CNNs to refine the prediction of FCD, leading to further improvements. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on the Landsat-8 Biome cloud detection dataset, where we obtain performance close to existing fully-supervised methods that train with expensive pixel-level labels. By fine-tuning our FCD+ with just 1% of the available pixel-level labels, we match the performance of fully-supervised methods. Our source code is publicly available at https://github.com/jnyborg/fcd.


Denoising is an important step for image processing. One of the most important characteristics of MRI (MRI) is the complicated changes of gray level. For MRI, preservation of useful information is more important than simple improvement of Signal-Noise Ratio (SNR). Traditional filtering algorithms are not fit for MRI. Adaptive Template Filtering Method (ATFM) can dynamically match the best template from the predetermined multi templates based on local texture characteristics for each pixel. In this paper, detail algorithm and analysis are given. Compared with other filtering methods, the performance of ATFM is better than that of other filtering methods as our experiment demonstrates. It can both effectively suppresses noise and best preserve useful information at the same time for MRI. Thus, ATFM can meet the need of clinical diagnosis and image processing


Abstract In recent years, the survivability of an aircraft has been put to task more than ever before. One of the main reasons is the increase in the usage of Infrared (IR) guided Anti-Aircraft Missiles, especially due to the availability of Man Portable Air Defence System (MANPADS) with some terrorist groups. Thus, aircraft IR signatures are gaining more importance as compared to their radar, visual, acoustic, or any other signatures. The exhaust plume ejected from the aircraft is one of the important sources of IR signature in military aircraft that use low bypass turbofan engines for propulsion. The focus of the present work is modelling of spectral IR radiation emission from the exhaust jet of a typical military aircraft and to evaluate the aircraft susceptibility in terms of the aircraft lock-on range due to its plume emission, for a simple case against a typical Surface to Air Missile (SAM). The IR signature due to the aircraft plume is examined in a holistic manner. A comprehensive methodology of computing IR signatures and its affect on aircraft lock-on range is elaborated. Commercial CFD software has been used to predict the plume thermo-physical properties and subsequently an in-house developed code was used for evaluating the IR radiation emitted by the plume. The LOWTRAN code has been used for modeling the atmospheric IR characteristics. The results obtained from these models are in reasonable agreement with some available experimental data. The analysis carried out in this paper succinctly brings out the intricacy of the radiation emitted by various gaseous species in the plume and the role of atmospheric IR transmissivity in dictating the plume IR signature as perceived by an IR guided SAM.


In the empirical literature, monetary policy shocks are commonly measured as an innovation to a short-term nominal interest rate. In contrast, the majority of monetary business cycle models treats a broad monetary aggregate as the central bank's policy measure. We try overcome this disparity and present a business cycle model which allows to examine the effects of innovations to a non-contingent nominal interest rate rule. To obtain unique rational expectations equilibria we assume that changes in money supply are brought about open market operations. In addition to working capital, we consider staggered prices which enables real marginal costs to vary. Consistent with the empirical findings of Barth and Ramey (2000), the model predicts that real marginal cost and inflation rise in response to positive interest rate innovations. The mechanism corresponds to their 'Cost Channel of Monetary Transmission' and replicates typical monetary VAR results, including the puzzling behavior of prices.


Batik is a product of the state of Indonesia which makes Indonesia has a typical in the eyes of the world. Batik making through the four stages, one of the stages: penyoletan process or staining the fabric. Penyoletan station on SMEs Rumah Batik Bu Sri -Pak Sarni consists of two tables, namely: penyoletan tables and shelves places of color. Table position lower than waist level workers make making workers uncomfortable when working from exhaustion at the waist. In order to eliminate the position of the bending work necessary to design a comfortable penyoletan work station. The method used is anthropometry and analysis work postures with Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA). With both methods is applied to obtain the design of penyoletan work stations appropriate posture and workers can work as normal posture. From the results, the design dimension table that corresponds to the worker's body posture. Table dimensions are designed by measuring the length: 220cm, width: 120cm and height: 96cm. High on the draft table adjusted to the average waist height so that the position of workers while working becomes straight and does not bend. Extra shelves places of color also performed on the side of the table. RULA analysis results stating that the design table more comfortable with the acquisition of the final score in the categories of action: 2, the level of risk: the minimum and action: secure. The draft table penyoletan managed to lose time at work station penyoletan to 15 minutes. Keywords: anthropometry, RULA, Batik, Penyoletan Work Stations, Comfortable


The massive parallel architecture enables graphics processing units (GPUs) to boost performance for a wide range of applications. Initially, GPUs only employ scratchpad memory as on-chip memory. Recently, to broaden the scope of applications that can be accelerated by GPUs, GPU vendors have used caches in conjunction with scratchpad memory as on-chip memory in the new generations of GPUs. Unfortunately, GPU caches face many performance challenges that arise due to excessive thread contention for cache resource. Cache bypassing, where memory requests can selectively bypass the cache, is one solution that can help to mitigate the cache resource contention problem. In this paper, we propose coordinated static and dynamic cache bypassing to improve application performance. At compile-time, we identify the global loads that indicate strong preferences for caching or bypassing through profiling. For the rest global loads, our dynamic cache bypassing has the flexibility to cache only a fraction of threads. In CUDA programming model, the threads are divided into work units called thread blocks. Our dynamic bypassing technique modulates the ratio of thread blocks that cache or bypass at run-time. We choose to modulate at thread block level in order to avoid the memory divergence problems. Our approach combines compile-time analysis that determines the cache or bypass preferences for global loads with run-time management that adjusts the ratio of thread blocks that cache or bypass. Our coordinated static and dynamic cache bypassing technique achieves up to 2.28X (average 1.32X) performance speedup for a variety of GPU applications.


BACKGROUND
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and several state associations require prediction of minimum weight (MW) for collegiate and high school wrestlers. The rule requires assessment of body composition before the competitive season to minimize unhealthy weight-loss practices. Leg-to-leg bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) has been suggested for use with wrestlers.

PURPOSE
To evaluate leg-to-leg BIA against a four-component (4C) criterion to determine whether leg-to-leg BIA predicted MW within acceptable limits for the sport of wrestling.

METHODS
Criterion MW was calculated by the 4C equation of Lohman (19) using independent measurement of body density (BD) by hydrostatic weighing, bone mineral content (BMC) by dual x-ray absorptiometry (DXA), and total body water (TBW) by deuterium dilution. Subjects were 57 wrestlers (mean +/- SD; age = 19.7 +/- 1.3 yr, height = 176.6 +/- 7.3 cm, weight = 77.7 +/- 12.4 kg). Hydration was confirmed by the NCAA guidelines. Accuracy, precision, and systematic bias were examined.

RESULTS
Comparable mean values (72.2 +/- 9.7 vs 72.2 +/- 10.3 kg), a high correlation (r = 0.94), and a regression line similar to the line of identity were found between BIA and 4C. However, large individual differences and systematic bias were seen across the range of MW. BIA predicted MW within 3.5 kg 68% of the time and within 7.0 kg 95% of the time. MW residuals ranged from -10.4 kg to +6.9 kg. When using 2.0 kg as an acceptable cutoff for error, only 40% of the BIA values were within 2.0 kg of the criterion.

CONCLUSION
Large individual variation was seen, and, by definition, the precision was poor when estimating MW for individuals. In practical terms, the prediction error may span multiple weight classes, thus making leg-to-leg BIA unacceptable for prediction of MW in this sample under the conditions of the study.


Abstract. Automatic prediction of visual discomfort for stereoscopic videos is important to address the viewing safety issues in stereoscopic displays. In literature, disparity and motion characteristics have been known as major factors of visual discomfort caused by stereoscopic content. For developing an algorithm to accurately predict visual discomfort in stereoscopic videos, this study investigates how to combine the individual prediction values of disparity- and motion-induced discomforts into an overall prediction value of visual discomfort. To that end, subjective experiments were performed with various stereoscopic videos, and four possible combination methods were compared based on the results of subjective experiments. The combination methods used in this study were the weighted summation, multiplication, Minkowski summation, and max combination methods. Experimental results showed that the Minkowski summation combination with a high exponent and max combination yielded the best accuracy in predicting the overall level of visual discomfort. The results indicated that the overall level of perceived discomfort could be dominantly affected by the most significant discomfort factor, i.e., the winner-takes-all mechanism. Our results could be useful for the future development of an accurate and reliable algorithm for visual discomfort prediction.


[1] Images obtained by the THEMIS instrument on Mars Odyssey permit the identification of many new volcanic features on Mars. Several new types of vent systems, including fissure vents within the Tharsis region, flank vents on Olympus Mons and Ascraeus Mons, and lava shields on the floor of Arsia Mons have been found. The valley networks on Hecates Tholus are seen to be more complex than previously believed. Extending from the caldera rim to the base of Hecates Tholus volcano, individual valleys change width and depth in apparent response to local topography. Valley formation spanned the time period during which lava flows from Elysium Mons embayed the southern flank of Hecates Tholus, as demonstrated by the burial of some valleys by the lava flows and the formation of sediment fans on top of adjacent parts of the flows. THEMIS images now allow new constraints to be placed on the dynamics of lava flow emplacement, with the identification of flows with well-defined lava channels on the northern flank of Ascraeus Mons, as well as an enigmatic braided lava channel. Three previously unreported collapse events (3.7 to 4.3 km in diameter) are identified within the caldera of Ascraeus Mons. Details of the mode of formation of parts of the Olympus Mons aureole can also be identified, supporting the idea that the aureole had a landslide origin. THEMIS images show that parts of the aureole have been modified by water discharged to the east of Olympus Mons.


The oxygen pulse as an indicator of O2 transport in the circulatory system has recently been subjected to study and clinical investigations, and not much information has been reported about this cardiovascular variable. The purpose of this study has been the prediction and comparison of maximal O2 pulse in male adolescents. For this purpose, 60 adolescents with a mean (S.D) of age, weight and height of 16 ± 0.81 years, 59.92 ± 10.39 kg and 168 ± 8.17 cm respectively, who were sampled randomly, participated in this research. To predict maximal O2 pulse, the subjects performed 4 exercise tests: GXT Treadmill test, PWC 195, PWC 212 ergometer tests and a one mile run test. In order to select the optimum exercise test, the values obtained from 4 exercise tests were compared using the Cooper predictive protocol (criterion protocol). The GXT test, in comparison with the PWC 195, PWC 212 and 1 mile run test, revealed an objective prediction of a maximal O2 pulse (14.40 ml/beat), and did not show any significant difference from the Cooper protocol (P = 0.519). The PWC 195 (P = 0.001), PWC 212 (P = 0.001) and 1 mile run test (P = 0.003) showed significant differences (with regards to overestimation, and underestimation) when analyzed with the Cooper protocol. These results suggest that maximal O2 pulse, as an indicator of cardiopulmonary efficiency, is predicted more objectively by the GXT test than other exercise tests, so that the value of O2 pulse max results obtained from this test is very close to the Cooper standards.


Image recognition/classification is a widely studied problem, but its reverse problem, image generation, has drawn much less attention until recently. But the vast majority of current methods for image generation require training/retraining a classifier and/or a generator with certain constraints, which can be hard to achieve. In this paper, we propose a simple approach to directly use a normally trained classifier to generate images. We evaluate our method on MNIST and show that it produces recognizable results for human eyes with limited quality with experiments.


By using an electrical impedance plethysmorgraph and a pressure applicator to a rabbit's earlobe artery, it became possible to monitor the blood pressure for periods of several months. A study of the correlations of the blood pressure from carotid and ear was also made at varied blood pressures under different conditions which showed excellent correlations. This method could effectively replace the encannulation technique for monitoring rabbit's blood pressure in chronic experiments.


Patient was a 70-year-old female diagnosed as Behçet's disease 1973. She underwent descending thoracic aortic aneurysm operation 1980. She had graft replacement for a residual thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysm on April 28, 1994. She didn't accept steroid therapy although she had a slight inflammatory reaction on admission. The graft replacement of thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysm was done with an aid of Carmeda closed chest support system bypass and segmental aortic cross clamping. Reattachment of the intercostal and lumbar arteries to the graft was used with button technique or interposition technique. Visceral branches including celiac axis, superior mesenteric and right renal arteries were reconstructed to an opening made in the graft with button technique and reattachment of left renal artery was used with graft interposition during selective perfusion of visceral arteries. She started steroid therapy with 5 mg of predonine to prevent inflammatory reaction postoperatively. The thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysm accompanied with Behçet's disease was relatively rare and this is a long survival case.


A technique for obtaining the digital Walsh-Hadamard transform of two-dimensional discrete pictures in real time is presented. A considerable reduction in total time for the transformation of a picture results since the process of scanning and digitizing one picture line overlaps with computations on the previous line. This is accomplished by operating on each picture line as it is generated from the scanner, instead of starting the transformation operation after the entire picture has been scanned. Two theorems are presented which decompose a picture by row or by column to facilitate real-time transformation. Based on these theorems, a hardware machine for real-time parallel Walsh-Hadamard transformation is introduced.


A physical model including a diffusional layer in series with the membrane was developed for studying the possible differences between the pH at the membrane surface and that in the bulk solution. Both the membrane-secreted substances (acids and bases) and buffer constituents in the bulk solutions are assumed to contribute to the surface pH. Equations derived for this situation, together with experimental determinations of the acidic dissociation constant of the secreted material, the total secretion flux, the flux of total secreted acidic species, and the diffusion layer thickness, allow estimates to be made of the pH at the membrane surface. With the rabbit vagina, the membrane surface pH was close to that of the bulk solution in most cases. These results were supported by the fact that the absorption of 1-alkanoic acids in pH 2.2 phosphate buffers was relatively constant over the buffer concentration range of 0.003-0.1 M phosphate.


Biochar is an excellent absorbent for most heavy metal ions and organic pollutants with high specific surface area, strong aperture structure, high stability, higher cation exchange capacity and rich surface functional groups. To improve the selective adsorption capacity of biochar to designated heavy metal ions, biochar prepared by agricultural waste is modified via Ionic-Imprinted Technique. Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectra analysis and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis of imprinted biochar (IB) indicate that 3-Mercaptopropyltrimethoxysilane is grafted on biochar surface through Si–O–Si bonds. The results of adsorption experiments indicate that the suitable pH range is about 3.0–8.0, the dosage is 2.0 g·L−1, and the adsorption equilibrium is reached within 960 min. In addition, the data match pseudo-second-order kinetic model and Langmuir model well. The computation results of adsorption thermodynamics and stoichiometric displacement theory of adsorption (SDT-A) prove that the adsorption process is spontaneous and endothermic. Finally, IB possesses a higher selectivity adsorption to Cd(II) and a better reuse capacity. The functionalized biochar could solidify designated ions stably.


Generation Y, children born to baby‐boomers, is widely considered to be the next big generation. Businesses are therefore struggling to find ways to capture a piece of this market. Could cause‐related marketing be the answer? Employs an experimental design to examine how college‐age Generation Y consumers respond to a cause‐related marketing (CRM) offer based on four structural elements. Also examines the potential impacts of socio‐demographic characteristics of participants. The results indicate that a CRM offer is more likely to elicit a more positive response to a disaster cause than an ongoing cause when businesses use non‐transaction‐based and long‐term/frequent support. Finds that females, social science majors, parents' annual income and previous donation activity have significant impact on the evaluation of a CRM offer. There is a positive relationship between evaluation of a CRM offer and purchase intent toward the offer.


This study investigates whether press coverage on prominent tax evaders affects the behavior of ordinary tax payers. We compile an original data set for Germany, including regional information on the amount of tax payers using amnesty regulations to voluntarily disclose taxes they have evaded. The data set also includes counts of news reports published by 6 national and 54 local newspapers, addressing the tax issues of famous personalities who were publicly tried between January 2010 and June 2016. We find a strong correlation between the amount of self-denuncia-tions and the news coverage. To identify the causal effect, we use exogenous variation in the reporting, resulting from disasters and terrorist attacks that coincide with the celebrity trials. Instrumental variable estimates suggest that an increase from no news coverage to the mean coverage raises participation in the tax amnesty program by approximately 32.3%. This finding helps to better understand the effectiveness of tax amnesties, and it illustrates the economic implications of publicly trying famous personalities.


This paper presents a two-stage model of optimization as a quick method to choose the best potential links for implementing urban travel demand management (UTDM) strategy like road pricing. The model is optimized by minimizing the hidden cost of congestion based on user equilibrium (MHCCUE). It forecasts the exact amount of flows and tolls for links in user equilibrium condition to determine the hidden cost for each link to optimize the link selection based on the network congestion priority. The results show that not only the amount of total cost is decreased, but also the number of selected links for pricing is reduced as compared with the previous toll minimization methods. Moreover, as this model just uses the traffic assignment data for calculation, it could be considered as a quick and optimum solution for choosing the potential links.


. Gaining the ability to make informed decisions on operation and maintenance of structures provides motivation for the implementation of structural health monitoring (SHM) systems. However, descriptive labels for measured data corresponding to health-states of the monitored system are often unavailable. This issue limits the applicability of fully-supervised machine learning paradigms for the development of statistical classifiers to be used in decision-support in SHM systems. One approach to dealing with this problem is risk-based active learning. In such an approach, data-label querying is guided according to the expected value of perfect information for incipient data points. For risk-based active learning in SHM, the value of information is evaluated with respect to a maintenance decision process, and the data-label querying corresponds to the inspection of a structure to determine its health state. In the context of SHM, risk-based active learning has only been considered for generative classifiers. The current paper demonstrates several advantages of using an alternative type of classifier – discriminative models. Using the Z24 Bridge dataset as a case study, it is shown that discriminative classifiers have benefits, in the context of SHM decision-support, including improved robustness to sampling bias, and reduced expenditure on structural inspections.