Soil profile pits are a primary in situ tool in understanding soil genesis and structure. When considered in the context of the landforms that underlie them, and when seen as a small revelation of the 'excited skin' that gives rise to plant communities and land uses, profiles can deepen our appreciation of soil's critical importance in landscape-level processes and sustainability. This paper discusses how gigapixel imaging can assist in visualizing soil profiles and their details online, remote from the site, for both pedagogical and research purposes. It also demonstrates how the GigaPan.org system can serve as a convenient and accessible clearinghouse for linked soil, geological, plant community, and spatial landscape data.


This paper presents a twist to the generation of binary random sequences by starting with decimal sequences. Rather than representing the prime reciprocal sequence directly in base 2, we first right the prime reciprocal in base 10 and then convert it into the binary form. The autocorrelation and cross-correlation properties of these binary random (BRD) sequences are discussed.


Objective To investigate gait characteristics in children with spastic cerebral palsy during inclined treadmill walking under a virtual reality environment. Methods Ten spastic cerebral palsy (CP) children and ten typically developing (TD) children were asked to walk at their comfortable speed on a treadmill at a ground level and 10° inclined. Three-dimensional kinematic data and ground reaction force data were captured in a computer-assisted rehabilitation environment system. Kinetic parameters and dynamic balance parameters were calculated using a standard biomechanical approach. Results During uphill walking, both groups decreased walking speed and stride length and increased peak pelvis tilt, ankle dorsiflexion, and hip flexion. Compared with TD children, CP children had decreased walking speed and stride length, decreased peak hip abduction moment, increased stance phase percentage, increased peak ankle dorsiflexion and knee flexion, and increased peak hip extension moment. The peak trunk rotation angle, ankle angle at initial contact, and stride length showed a significant group∗walking condition interaction effect. Conclusions CP children showed similar adjustments for most gait parameters during uphill walking as TD children. With a lower walking speed, CP children could maintain similar dynamic balance as TD children. Uphill walking magnifies the existing abnormal gait patterns of the cerebral palsy children. We suggest that during a treadmill training with an inclination, the walking speed should be carefully controlled in the case of improving peak joint loading too much.


Copolymers of trimethylene carbonate and epsilon-caprolactone were synthesized and characterized with the aim of assessing their potential in the development of a flexible and slowly degrading artificial nerve guide for the bridging of large nerve defects. The effect of the monomer ratio on the physical properties of the polymers and its influence on the processability of the materials was investigated. Under the applied polymerization conditions (130 degrees C, 3 days using stannous octoate as a catalyst) high molecular weight polymers (Mn above 93 000) were obtained. All copolymers had glass transition temperatures below room temperature. At trimethylene carbonate contents higher than 25 mol% no crystallinity was detected. A decrease in crystallinity resulted in the loss of strength and decrease in toughness, as well as in an increased polymer wettability. Amorphous poly(trimethylene carbonate), however, showed excellent ultimate mechanical properties due to strain-induced crystallization (Tm = 36 degrees C). Low crystallinity copolymers could be processed into dimensionally stable porous structures by means of immersion precipitation and by combination of this technique with the use of porosifying agents. Porous membranes of poly(trimethylene carbonate) could be prepared when blended with small amounts of high molecular weight poly(ethylene oxide). Poly(trimethylene carbonate) and poly(trimethylene carbonate-co-epsilon-caprolactone) copolymers with high epsilon-caprolactone content possess good physical properties and are processable into porous structures. These materials are most suitable for the preparation of porous artificial nerve guides.


Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the "1id-abstracts.txt" listing contained in the Internet-Drafts Shadow Directories on ds.internic.net (US East Coast), nic.nordu.net (Europe), Abstract The X.500 Directory uses distinguished names as the primary keys to entries in the directory. Distinguished Names are encoded in ASN.1 in the X.500 Directory protocols. In the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, a string representation of distinguished names is transferred. This specification defines the string format for representing names, which is designed to give a clean representation of commonly used distinguished names, while being able to represent any distinguished name. 1. Background This specification assumes familiarity with X.500 [1], and the concept of Distinguished Name. It is important to have a common format to be able to unambiguously represent a distinguished name. The primary goal of this specification is ease of encoding and decoding. A secondary goal is to have names that are human readable. It is not expected that LDAP clients with a human user interface would display these strings directly to the user, but would most likely be performing translations (such as expressing attribute type names in the local national language).


(English) The paper tries to identify some key principles that distinguish cosmopolitanism from other approaches in terms of individual responsibility in international affairs. Many of these principles, and notably the idea that a political community is not responsible for the wrongdoings of its rulers, have been absorbed by international law and practice. Since the end of WWII these principles have been codified in important documents, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Nuremberg Principles. With the end of the Cold War, a further crucial development has emerged and the international community has started to be more active in carrying out, through a variety of national and international courts, investigations against egregious criminals. But we are still far from proper cosmopolitan criminal accountability. International hearings have put at the bar the weak rather than the strong players of world politics. This confirms the realist prediction that the legal infrastructure is likely to reinforce the actual distribution of power rather than to counter-balance it. Moreover, the disproportion between the scale of international crimes on the one hand and the amount of individuals at the bar on the other hand undermines the legitimacy of individual criminal justice. The paper explores possible evolution of to the current judicial system for international crimes following basic cosmopolitan principles. 1) The International Criminal Court should fully implement its mandate and thus also be able to cover the crime that it is more likely to be committed by strong world political players, that is, aggression. 2) The noble tradition of opinion tribunals, inaugurated by Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre and Lelio Basso with the Tribunal for war crimes in Vietnam, should become a core aspect of a cosmopolitan criminal justice system since it is more likely to target the powerful and the winners rather than the powerless and the losers. Even if opinion tribunals are not in the position to inflict punishment, they can vindicate the reasons of the weak players. 3) While the cosmopolitan idea that key culprits should be held criminally responsible still holds, there is the risking of exonerating collective responsibility through a few scapegoats. Some fresh forms of addressing major crimes also through collective awareness need to be explored. 4) Finally, the potential of truth and reconciliation commissions, on the model pioneered by South Africa, should be further developed as a method to integrate individual criminal responsibility. (Italiano)


Mice exhibited a marked suppression of motility (conditioned suppression) when placed in the same environment in which they had previously received an electric footshock. Furthermore, chronic morphine (mu agonist)-pretreated mice, as well as chronic vehicle-pretreated mice, exhibited the conditioned suppression but chronic ethylketocyclazocine (kappa agonist)- and pentazocine (kappa agonist)-pretreated mice did not. On the other hand, in the synaptic membranes of the chronic vehicle- and morphine-pretreated mice showing conditioned suppression, the specific binding of [3H]phencyclidine (sigma agonist) and [3H]naloxone (mu antagonist) significantly increased, while the specific binding of [3H]ethylketocyclazocine did not change compared to those of the corresponding control groups. However, in the chronic pentazocine- and ethylketocyclazocine-pretreated groups showing non-conditioned suppression, the specific binding of [3H]phencyclidine and [3H]naloxone were not altered. Moreover, a decrease of [3H]ethylketocyclazocine binding was observed in the chronic pentazocine-pretreated group. These results suggest that the binding function of different opioid receptor subtypes may be altered differently by stress, and that the kappa receptor may be important for the conditioned suppression of motility in mice.


Adam Smith considered poverty and unemployment as push factors for migration and wages high enough to provide for a worker and his family as a pull factor. Migration as a free mobility of labour leads to an optimal allocation of the factor commodity labour as well as changes of employment which necessary to equalise wages between different geographical entities. The consequences are not only promoting economic growth and prosperity, but also reducing poverty. Smith has no contemporary empirical support for his theory.


A snakeful of critical venom aimed at the composers and the classics of nineteenth- and twentieth-century music. Who wrote advanced cat music? What commonplace theme is very much like Yankee Doodle? Which composer is a scoundrel and a giftless bastard? What opera would His Satanic Majesty turn out? Whose name suggests fierce whiskers stained with vodka? And finally, what third movement begins with a dog howling at midnight, then imitates the regurgitations of the less-refined or lower-middle-class type of water-closet cistern, and ends with the cello reproducing the screech of an ungreased wheelbarrow? For the answers to these and other questions, readers need only consult the "Invecticon" at the back of this inspired book and then turn to the full passage, in all its vituperation. Among the eminent reviewers are George Bernard Shaw, Virgil Thomson, Hans von Bulow, Friedrich Nietzsche, Eduard Hanslick, Olin Downes, Deems Taylor, Paul Rosenfeld, and Oscar Wilde. Itself a classic, this collection of nasty barbs about composers and their works, culled mostly from contemporaneous newspapers and magazines, makes for hilarious reading and belongs on the shelf of everyone who loves-or hates -classical music. With a new foreword by Peter Schickele ("P.D.Q. Bach").


The transmission of the craft and the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder have in common that they involve a relationship of act to act between the master and the apprentice on the one hand, and between the therapist and the patient on the other. Phenomenology has from the outset considered movement as inherent to the flesh: Hardy thus hypothesises that the origin of the flesh is a gesture. For all that, his description remains largely dependent on a flesh that is primarily perceptive: this gesture can thus be qualified as an aesthetic gesture. But if the flesh is as much mobile as it is perceptive, would there not be another gesture that generates the flesh in movement that is not linked to perception? Housset takes a step in this direction and allows us to hypothesize the kinesic gesture which, alone, allows us to account for the two experiences mentioned above.


From the perspective of the rights of minorities in Europe, this section overviews international developments concerning economic and socio-cultural entitlements, including those related to education and the media. It is thematically structured around two clusters related to the minority rights: (a) cultural activities and facilities, including the media; and (b) economic and social life, including education, which are covered by the provisions of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages (ETS. No. 148). This review starts with an analysis of the 2016 developments at the UN level, and continues with an overview of advancements at the levels of the OSCE, the EU, and the Council of Europe. The adoption of the Thematic Commentary No. 4 "The Scope of Application of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities" by the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (ACFC) is among the most important highlights.


: Mobile cecum syndrome is characterized by chronic right lower quadrant pain with the evidence of neither appendicitis nor other pathological findings at operation. Two cases of mobile cecum syndrome are reported; both had intermittent right lower quadrant cramping pain for months. One had received appendectomy because of chronic right lower quadrant pain at another hospital about nine months before admission here. The symptoms did not improve postoperatively, and the patient underwent laparotomy under impression of partial intestinal obstruction. The other patient underwent laparotomy under impression of chronic appendicitis. At surgery, both were found to have cecum and ascending colon were not attached to the posterior parietal wall, and cecopexy was performed. They have now been symptom free for one year. Cecopexy appears therefore to be an effective method of treatment of mobile cecum syndrome.


The lacrimal drainage systems of 92 patients were examined by a digital subtraction technique; 30 patients were examined additionally by a conventional technique, using films obtained during screening for the contrast injection. The digital subtraction dacryocystogram provided excellent demonstration of the lacrymal sac and of the tear ducts, but there is little diagnostic gain when compared with the conventional technique. Both methods are highly reliable. In view of its low radiation dose and rapid and simple course, conventional dacryocystography is regarded as the method of choice for routine examinations. The digital subtraction technique should be reserved for special problems.


This article measures gross creation, destruction, and reallocation of jobs inside the Colombian Manufacturing Industry between 1982 and 1998. We characterize job reallocation as a source of adjustment both in productivity dynamics and on workers welfare. Consistent with previous research, we find evidence of productivity enhancing factor reallocation. However, we also find evidence of significant welfare losses for displaced workers. Our most novel results are the negative effect of displacement, sector change and unemployment duration on post-job-change wages. The event of sector change seems to spur considerable sector specific skills losses which offset any potential positive effects of sector change, such as the purge of the displacement stigma. In brief, our results show that on balance depreciation and stigma effects dominate productive search outcomes in the determination of post-unemployment wages. We conclude that at least a fraction of job reallocation is socially inefficient.


This thesis explores certain under-researched aspects of the socio-cultural development of late Ottoman Turkish and early republican women from the 1860s until 1950. By concentrating on females, the research aims to produce a more inclusive picture of how society developed in this period. In order to attempt this, the research focuses on four main topics which are presented in the following format: an introduction, four chapters, conclusions, appendix and a bibliography. The introduction sets the research within a historical framework and states its broad aims. Chapter One looks at various attempts to broaden female State education, culminating in a study of the Koy Enstituleri (Village Institutes). Chapter Two consists of several profiles of female Turkish journalists, active from the late 19th century onwards, who had benefited from improved State education. Chapter Three is a survey of the Ottoman women's press from 1869 onwards and a case study of inci magazine, published between 1919 and 1923. Chapter Four consists of a case study of Sabiha Sertel, a left-wing journalist who was active in Turkey from 1919 until 1950. The conclusion looks at the aims of the thesis and evaluates the material included in the four main subject areas. An appraisal of the educational reforms for women also includes a comparison with appropriate educational developments in England. The conclusion assesses both the value of journalism as an additional career path for educated Turkish women and their importance as role models. The Ottoman women's press is appraised to gauge how far it reflected the social, economic and cultural development of not only women, but society in general. The importance of the writing of Sabiha Sertel to the history of Turkish journalism is assessed and, finally, suggestions are made as to where further research could add to the material included in this thesis.


A hybrid method for modeling marine controlled-source electromagnetics, simplified integral equation (IE) (SIE) modeling, has shown very promising results in 2-D. The computational gain of SIE is very large for large problems in 3-D. We assess the accuracy and range of validity of SIE modeling in 3-D through order-of-magnitude analysis and through an extensive numerical comparison with rigorous IE modeling. A previously proposed order-of-magnitude analysis results in a dimensionless parameter which is easy to use as an a priori indicator for when SIE is valid. Unfortunately, this parameter is found to be sometimes inconsistent with our numerical results. Order-of-magnitude analysis for Maxwell's equations is then reassessed in an attempt to rectify the shortcomings of the parameter adapted from the work "Electrical Impedance Tomography" by Cheney The dimensionless parameter resulting from the novel order-of-magnitude analysis is found to have generally good predictive capability. Unfortunately, this parameter is not suitable for deciding a priori if the use of SIE is justified for a particular case, since it depends on numerical results from IE modeling. For future use of SIE, it is therefore recommended to compare the problem characteristics of the case at hand with those covered by the extensive numerical comparison in this paper. From the numerical investigation, it is found that the accuracy of SIE is very good for resistive targets and for frequencies lower than about 10 Hz. For conductive targets, the accuracy is mostly very good for frequencies lower than about 5 Hz but somewhat more dependent also on other problem characteristics.


An electrodeless resistivity measurement system developed recently can provide a reliable method for monitoring the hydration process of cement-based materials continuously and accurately. Phosphoaluminate cement (PAC) sets quickly and develops high early strength. In order to understand the mechanism, the hydration products and microstructure formation of PAC in early age need to be studied. In the study, early hydration process of PAC with different dosage of retarder was investigated by the electrodeless resistivity equipment. According to resistivity-time curve, resistivity of freshly mixed PAC paste decreases sharply and then rises slowly, some characteristic peaks appear at different hydration stages of PAC. Heat evolution of PAC was also measured. The hydration mechanism and structure formation were studied according to these results. Depending on the dosage of retarder, the hydration process of PAC includes four stages which are dissolution, induction, acceleration and deceleration.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to reconceptualize the theory-practice gap in educational leadership, not as a deficit, but as a necessity for legitimacy within institutional contexts.

Design/methodology/approach
This paper draws on institutional theory to reframe the theory-practice gap, which is often seen as a deficit of leaders or preparation programs.

Findings
Three vignettes illustrate how aspiring and current educational leaders engage with theory and practice within specific contexts and in relation to specific aspects of leadership. Importantly, the vignettes show that when school leaders decouple theory from practice, they may be doing so to function as legitimate providers of K-12 educational leadership.

Research limitations/implications
The theory-practice gap, while often perceived as something negative, can have certain benefits within particular contexts. Scholars interested in the interconnections of theory and practice would benefit from considering why and how school leaders engage theory and practice.

Practical implications
Implications for leadership preparation programs highlight developing more complex views of the challenges that leaders face in tightly coupling theory and practice. To support future and current leaders, leadership preparation programs need to ensure that their students understand their institutional contexts and the reasons that leaders may decouple theory from action in various ways.

Originality/value
Instead of viewing the theory/practice gap as a deficit, this paper argues for a new way to consider why school leaders and leadership candidates may engage with theory and practice in different ways.


This article discusses fabrications and alternative histories, and their relationship with antiquarian and early archaeological practice, in the Baroque world through the case of an alabaster urn reportedly found in the garden of a Swedish royal castle in 1685. The urn, decorated with a strange inscription, is used to address broader issues of how the past was conceived in the Baroque world, and how the relationship between the past and present was manipulated through antiquarian research. Certain characteristics of the urn and its cultural life have led modern scholarship to dismiss the artefact as 'unauthentic' and hence uninteresting, whereas this article seeks to reconsider the nature and meanings of fabricating the past in the 17th century. It will be argued that the past was not fixed in the Baroque world, but various material and magical practices enabled altering the past. It is against that background, and within the Baroque relational understanding of reality, that the 17th-century interest in and manipulations of the urn must be understood.


The attempted addition of difluorocarbene, which was generated from hexafluoropropene epoxide, to polyfluorinated cyclic olefins was largely unsuccessful, although perfluorobicyclo[4,l,0]hept-3-ene was isolated from the addition to perfluorocyclohexa-1,4-diene. It seems that difluorocarbene adds to the polyfluorinated cyclic olefins to form cyclopropanes, which readily eliminate difluorocarbene under the reaction conditions required for their formation. The attempted photochemical isomerisations of pplyfluorobicyclo[2,2,2]octa-2,5-dienes, via the [2π+2π] ring closures to their corresponding tetracycles, were also unsuccessful. However, on irradiation dimethyl 1,4,5,6,7,7,8,8- octafluorobicycloC2,2,2]octa-2,5-diene-2,3-dicarboxylate formed a tricyclic biradical, which abstracted a hydrogen from the a methylene group of the diethyl ether solvent to give isomers of dimethyl 2-(3'-oxa-2'-pentyl)-l,4,5,6,7,7,8,8- octafluorotricycloC2,2,2,0(^3,5)]octane-2,3-dicarboxylate. The tricyclic biradical intermediate is similar to that proposed for the photochemical isomerisation of hydrocarbon bicyclo[2,2,2]hepta-2,5-dienes and their analogues. In contrast to their corresponding hydrocarbon analogues the tricyclic biradical intermediates formed on irradiation of polyfluorobicyclo[2,2,2]octa-2,5-dienes donot appear to form tetracycles. Perfluorotricyclo[6,2,2,0(^2,7)]dodeca-2,6,9-triene reacted as a diene in the Diels-Alder reactions with ethylene, but-2-yne, acetylene dicarboxylic acid dimethyl ester, perfluoroacetonitrile, tetrafluoroethylene and lH,2H-hexafluoro- cyclopentene. As a consequence imposed by the carbocyclic framework of the diene, the addition of lH,2H-hexafluorocyclopentene gave the exo adduct. The 1,4- alkyne adducts were pyrolysed to give 2,3-disubstituted hexafluoronaphthalenes. The pyrolysis of perfluorotricycloC6,2,2,0(^2,7)]dodeca-2,6,9-triene proceeds nvia a 1,3-alkyl migration to give perfluorotricyclo[8,2,0,0(^2,7)] dodeca-2,6,8-triene which subsequently eliminates tetrafluoroethylene to give perfluoro-l,2-dihydro- 2,7naphthalene as the major product. The reaction of perfluorotricyclo[6,2,2,0(^2,7)]-dodeca-2,6,9-triene with lithium methyl in ether proceeded preferentially at the diene moiety. The pyrolysis of the monomethyltridecafluorotricyclo[6,2,2,0(^2,7)]- dodeca-2,6,9-trienes gave monomethylnonafluoro-1,2-dihydronaphthalenes which had the methyl label in the non-aromatic ring. Nucleophilic substitution in perfluoro-1,2-dihydronaphthalene was found to occur only at the vinylic C] position with sodium borohydride whereas with lithium methyl four monomethyl substitution products were obtained, both the vinylic, the C6 and C7 fluorines being replaced. The gas phase photochemical reaction of perfluoro-1,2-dihydronaphthalene produces the perfluoro-1- and -2- methylenindanes possibly via the perfluorovinyl-o-quinodimethane.


Open Teaching is currently considered an ambiguous and polysemic concept but has nevertheless become a growing global trend in ICT-based education. To identify key issues on the subject, this article presents a study on Open teaching that combines meta-synthesis and content analysis of research published over the last twenty years in major peer-reviewed databases. Six main analytical categories emerge from data, conforming six groups of findings. Those findings show that Open Teaching has been associated with various concepts over the years and that there is no consensus on its meaning in the academic community. The current understanding of Open Teaching, that it is merely related to distance education, thwarts important practical and conceptual possibilities by prioritizing access as its main feature and ignoring important "openness" attributes, such as adaptation, sharing, remixing or collaboration. Moreover, the findings note that the most common means to implement Open Teaching as an ICT-based practice are derived from the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) and via Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) which represents not only a major challenge for active educational practitioners but a new way of conceiving and implementing e-learning in higher education.


The activation of methane by gas-phase transition metal cations (M(+)) has been studied extensively, both experimentally and using density functional theory (DFT). Methane is exothermically dehydrogenated by several 5d metal ions to form [M,C,2H](+) and H2. However, the structure of the dehydrogenation product has not been established unambiguously. Two types of structures have been considered: a carbene structure where an intact CH2 fragment is bound to the metal (M(+)-CH2) and a carbyne (hydrido-methylidyne) structure with both a CH and a hydrogen bound to the metal separately (H-M(+)-CH). For metal ions with empty d-orbitals, an agostic interaction can occur that could influence the competition between carbene and carbyne structures. In this work, the gas phase [M,C,2H](+) (M = Ta, W, Ir, Pt) products are investigated by infrared multiple-photon dissociation (IR-MPD) spectroscopy using the Free-Electron Laser for IntraCavity Experiments (FELICE). Metal cations are formed in a laser ablation source and react with methane pulsed into a reaction channel downstream. IR-MPD spectra of the [M,C,2H](+) species are measured in the 300-3500 cm(-1) spectral range by monitoring the loss of H (2H in the case of [Ir,C,2H](+)). For each system, the experimental spectrum closely resembles the calculated spectrum of the lowest energy structure calculated using DFT: for Pt, a classic C(2v) carbene structure; for Ta and W, carbene structures that are distorted by agostic interactions; and a carbyne structure for the Ir complex. The Ir carbyne structure was not considered previously. To obtain this agreement, the calculated harmonic frequencies are scaled with a scaling factor of 0.939, which is fairly low and can be attributed to the strong redshift induced by the IR multiple-photon excitation process of these small molecules. These four-atomic species are among the smallest systems studied by IR-FEL based IR-MPD spectroscopy, and their spectra demonstrate the power of IR spectroscopy in resolving long-standing chemical questions.


Purpose of reviewIt has been known for decades that diabetic women have somewhat decreased fertility and that their offspring have an increased risk of being born with developmental abnormalities. We review results from studies examining the impact of maternal hyperglycemia and diabetes on oocyte and early embryo development. We focus on the effects of the maternal milieu on metabolism, cell signaling and the regulation of glucose-transporter expression in the developing oocyte and embryo. Recent findingsOffspring of diabetic mothers have metabolic disease at higher rates than can be explained by genetic inheritance alone. Oocytes from hyperglycemic animals display several abnormalities and are of lower quality than oocytes from control animals. There appears to be a decrease in glucose transport in embryos exposed to a hyperglycemic environment, which may lead to programmed cell death. SummaryMaternal hyperglycemia and diabetes have detrimental effects on the developing embryo at several stages of development. Although the exact pathophysiology of the developmental defects seen in infants born to diabetic mothers remains unclear, the role of glucose transport and regulation seems to play a critical role in early growth and development.


The relatively low% of students promoted and regularized in Operating Systems Course of the LSI (Bachelor's Degree in Information Systems) of FaCENA (Faculty of Sciences and Natural Surveying - Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Naturales y Agrimensura) of UNNE (academic success), prompted this work, whose objective is to determine the variables that affect the academic performance, whereas the final status of the student according to the Res. 185/03 CD (scheme for evaluation and promotion): promoted, regular or free1. The variables considered are: status of the student, educational level of parents, secondary education, socio-economic level, and others. Data warehouse (Data Warehouses: DW) and data mining (Data Mining: DM) techniques were used to search pro.les of students and determine success or failure academic potential situations. Classifications through techniques of clustering according to different criteria have become. Some criteria were the following: mining of classification according to academic program, according to final status of the student, according to importance given to the study, mining of demographic clustering and Kohonen clustering according to final status of the student. Were conducted statistics of partition, detail of partitions, details of clusters, detail of fields and frequency of fields, overall quality of each process and quality detailed (precision, classification, reliability), arrays of confusion, diagrams of gain / elevation, trees, distribution of nodes, of importance of fields, correspondence tables of fields and statistics of cluster. Once certain profiles of students with low academic performance, it may address actions aimed at avoiding potential academic failures. This work aims to provide a brief description of aspects related to the data warehouse built and some processes of data mining developed on the same.


One of the important problems in traditional Nata de Coco (Nata) fermentation is production inconsistency due to strain or genetic variability reflecting mixed microbial communities involved in this process. This research was aimed at examine the population dynamics of the bacterial community during the fermentation processes. Samples were collected daily for six days from fermentation media derived from "good" and "bad" Nata fermentation. We compared the levels of bacterial diversity through amplified 16S-rRNA (ARDRA). DNA was extracted directly from the fermentation media and 16S-rRNA gene was amplified employing Universal Bacterial Primers. The amplicons were cloned into pGEM-T Easy vector, and restriction enzymes HaeIII and RsaI were used to generate ARDRA profiles. ARDRA phylotypes of DNA extracted from the fermentation medium obtained from different Nata qualities were compared. Phylotype profiles demonstrated unique bacterial community profiles for different conditions of Nata quality, which could be developed as a parameter to monitor Nata quality during fermentation. In this research we found that the dynamics of the bacterial population involved in Nata fermentation were a crucial factor for determining traditional Nata quality.


Background and Objective To assess the accuracy of definitions of drug-resistant epilepsy applied to administrative claims data. Methods We randomly sampled 450 patients from a tertiary health system with ≥1 epilepsy/convulsion encounter, ≥2 distinct antiseizure medications (ASMs) from 2014 to 2020, and ≥2 years of electronic medical records (EMR) data. We established a drug-resistant epilepsy diagnosis at a specific visit by reviewing EMR data and using a rubric based on the 2010 International League Against Epilepsy definition. We performed logistic regressions to assess clinically relevant predictors of drug-resistant epilepsy and to inform claims-based definitions. Results Of 450 patients reviewed, 150 were excluded for insufficient EMR data. Of the 300 patients included, 98 (33%) met criteria for current drug-resistant epilepsy. The strongest predictors of current drug-resistant epilepsy were drug-resistant epilepsy diagnosis code (odds ratio [OR] 16.9, 95% confidence interval [CI] 8.8–32.2), ≥2 ASMs in the prior 2 years (OR 13.0, 95% CI 5.1–33.3), ≥3 nongabapentinoid ASMs (OR 10.3, 95% CI 5.4–19.6), neurosurgery visit (OR 45.2, 95% CI 5.9–344.3), and epilepsy surgery (OR 30.7, 95% CI 7.1–133.3). We created claims-based drug-resistant epilepsy definitions (1) to maximize overall predictiveness (drug-resistant epilepsy diagnosis; sensitivity 0.86, specificity 0.74, area under the receiver operating characteristics curve [AUROC] 0.80), (2) to maximize sensitivity (drug-resistant epilepsy diagnosis or ≥3 ASMs; sensitivity 0.98, specificity 0.47, AUROC 0.72), and (3) to maximize specificity (drug-resistant epilepsy diagnosis and ≥3 nongabapentinoid ASMs; sensitivity 0.42, specificity 0.98, AUROC 0.70). Discussion Our findings provide validation for several claims-based definitions of drug-resistant epilepsy that can be applied to a variety of research questions.


Economists have paid very little attention to the role of working conditions in sickness absence. Yet, bad working conditions are a potential determinant of labour supply, either directly or through their impact on health. This study tries to shed some light on this issue. To begin with, we examine a model of labour supply which explicitly takes into account the employees health status and its evolution. This model provides a useful framework in order to interpret and disentangle the links between working conditions, health status and work. In particular it shows that two effects occur: bad working conditions have a negative impact on health and labour supply. But this can be compensated by a wage effect, if bad working conditions are compensated by higher wages. Thus the impact of working conditions on absenteeism is theoretically ambiguous. This requires an empirical estimation in order to determine which effect prevails. We specifically study the impact of working irregular schedules on absenteeism for male manual workers in private sector. We use a propensity score matching method. In order to check the robustness of our estimates we also use a selection on unobservables specification. Our estimates show that working irregular schedules has a significant impact on sickness absence: roughly 20 % of the employees with irregular schedules who were absent for sickness reason would not have stopped working if their schedules were regular. This effect is definitely more important than that estimated by simple descriptive statistics. Nevertheless, the sign and the extend of the effect depend on age.


Global warming is expected to globally decrease ocean oxygen concentrations by sea surface warming and ocean circulation change. Oxygen reduction is expected to persist for a thousand years or more, even after atmospheric carbon dioxide stops rising. However, long-term changes in ocean oxygen and circulation are still unclear. Here we simulate multimillennium changes in ocean circulation and oxygen under doubling and quadrupling of atmospheric carbon dioxide, using GCM (MIROC) and an offline biogeochemical model. In the first 500 years, global oxygen concentration decreases, consistent with previous studies. Thereafter, however, the oxygen concentration in the deep ocean globally recovers and overshoots at the end of the simulations, despite surface oxygen decrease and weaker AMOC. This is because, after the initial cessation, the recovery and overshooting of deep ocean convection in the Weddell Sea enhance ventilation and supply oxygen-rich surface waters to deep ocean. Another contributor to deep ocean oxygenation is seawater warming, which reduces the export production and shifts the organic matter remineralization to the upper water column. Our results indicate that the change in ocean circulation in the Southern Ocean potentially drives millennial-scale oxygenation in deep ocean, which is opposite to the centennial-scale global oxygen reduction and general expectation. In presentation, we will discuss the mechanism of response of deep ocean convection in the Weddell Sea.


Objectives To assess the extent to which protection of healthcare workers (HCWs) as COVID-19 emerged was associated with economic inequality among and within countries. Design Cross-sectional analysis of associations of perceptions of workplace risk acceptability and mitigation measure adequacy with indicators of respondents' respective country's economic income level (World Bank assessment) and degree of within-country inequality (Gini index). Setting A global self-administered online survey. Participants 4977 HCWs and healthcare delivery stakeholders from 161 countries responded to health and safety risk questions and a subset of 4076 (81.2%) answered mitigation measure questions. The majority (65%) of study participants were female. Results While the levels of risk being experienced at the pandemic's onset were consistently deemed as unacceptable across all groupings, participants from countries with less income inequality were somewhat less likely to report unacceptable levels of risk to HCWs regarding both workplace environment (OR=0.92, p=0.012) and workplace organisational factors (OR=0.93, p=0.017) compared with counterparts in more unequal national settings. In contrast, considerable variation existed in the degree to which mitigation measures were considered adequate. Adjusting for other influences through a logistic regression analysis, respondents from lower middle-income and low-income countries were comparatively much more likely to assess both occupational health and safety (OR=10.91, p≤0.001) and infection prevention and control (IPC) (OR=6.61, p=0.001) protection measures as inadequate, despite much higher COVID-19 rates in wealthier countries at the time of the survey. Greater within-country income inequality was also associated with perceptions of less adequate IPC measures (OR=0.94, p=0.025). These associations remained significant when accounting for country-level differences in occupational and gender composition of respondents, including specifically when only female care providers, our study's largest and most at-risk subpopulation, were examined. Conclusions Economic inequality threatens resilience of health systems that rely on health workers working safely to provide needed care during emerging pandemics.


Workplace learning happens in the process and context of work, is multi-episodic, often informal, problem based and takes place on a just-in-time basis. While this is a very effective means of delivery, it also does not scale very well beyond the immediate context. We review three types of technologies that have been suggested to scale learning and three connected theoretical discourses around learning and its support. Based on these three strands and an in-depth contextual inquiry into two workplace learning domains, health care and building and construction, four design-based research projects were conducted that have given rise to designs for scaling informal learning with technology. The insights gained from the design and contextual inquiry contributed to a model that provides an integrative view on three informal learning processes at work and how they can be supported with technology: (1) task performance, reflection and sensemaking; (2) help seeking, guidance and support; and (3) emergence and maturing of collective knowledge. The model fosters our understanding of how informal learning can be scaled and how an orchestrated set of technologies can support this process.


This article describes communication and information between patients and health staff in the Danish Health Service. A number of laws, regulations, rights, and rules have been passed, and in 1998 a new law came into effect concerning patients' rights in the health service. This law protects the rights of patients and provides the health staff with guidelines on communication and information to patients. An analysis of the law is given here. Each profession in the health service has its own regulations and ethic rules. These regulations and rules are reviewed with respect to communication and information in the Danish Health Service.


Transformer models have achieved great progress on computer vision tasks recently. The rapid development of vision transformers is mainly contributed by their high representation ability for extracting informative features from input images. However, the mainstream transformer models are designed with deep architectures, and the feature diversity will be continuously reduced as the depth increases, i.e., feature collapse. In this paper, we theoretically analyze the feature collapse phenomenon and study the relationship between shortcuts and feature diversity in these transformer models. Then, we present an augmented shortcut scheme, which inserts additional paths with learnable parameters in parallel on the original shortcuts. To save the computational costs, we further explore an efficient approach that uses the block-circulant projection to implement augmented shortcuts. Extensive experiments conducted on benchmark datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, which brings about 1% accuracy increase of the state-of-the-art visual transformers without obviously increasing their parameters and FLOPs.


Lardiere's (2005, 2008, 2009) Feature Reassembly Hypothesis proposes that L2 acquisition involves reconfiguring the sets of lexical features that occur in the native language into feature bundles appropriate to the L2. This paper applies the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis to findings from recent research into the L2 acquisition of existential quantifiers. It firstly provides a feature-based, crosslinguistic account of polarity item any in English, and its equivalents — wh-existentials — in Chinese, Korean and Japanese. We then test predictions built on the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis, about how learners map target existential quantifiers in the L2 input onto feature sets from their L1, and how they then reassemble these feature sets to better match the target. The findings, which are largely compatible with the predictions, show that research that focuses on the specific processes of first mapping and then feature reassembly promises to lead to a more explanatory account of development in L2 acquisition.


The hybrid maize cultivars of multinational seed companies are gradually being popular among the farmers in Nepal. This paper reports on research finding of 117 maize hybrids of 20 seed companies assessed for grain yield and other traits at three sites in winter season of 2011 and 2012. The objective of the study was to identify superior maize hybrids suitable for winter time planting in eastern, central and inner Terai of Nepal. Across site analysis of variance revealed that highly significant effect of genotype and genotype × environment interaction (GEI) on grain yield of commercial hybrids. Overall, 47 genotypes of 16 seed companies identified as high yielding and stable based on superiority measures. The statistical analysis ranked topmost three genotypes among tested hybrids as P3856 (10515 kg ha -1 ), Bisco prince (8763 kg ha -1 ) as well as Shaktiman (8654 kg ha -1 ) in the first year; and 3022 (8378 kg ha -1 ), Kirtiman manik (8323 kg ha -1 ) as well as Top class (7996 kg ha -1 ) in the second year. It can be concluded that stable and good performing hybrids identified as potential commercial hybrids for general cultivation on similar environments in Nepal.


This guide is intended to help you find information on topics related to sustainability. If you have questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact me using the "comments" links within the guide or via the information on the right.


The paper analyses the severity of gridlocks in interbank payment systems operating on a real time basis and evaluates by means of simulations the merits of a gridlock resolution algorithm. Data used in the simulations consist of actual payments settled in the Danish and Finnish RTGS systems. The algorithm is found to be applicable to a real time environment and effective in reducing queuing in the systems at all levels of liquidity, but in particular when intra-day liquidity is scarce.


The use of management applications has increased exponentially in recent years with the technological revolution. This fact led to have a wide variety of applications for this field; however, in most cases, each application has a very specific purpose requiring users to use several services. The project is an attempt to design and create entirely a web application to obtain an all-in-one manager. The software seeks to provide the necessary functionalities for the management and administration of projects in a single place, in other words, a greater simplicity of usage, which will lead to have a great benefit differentiating itself from other similar services. The web application is based on the use of the Angular framework that allows improving its scalability and performance with the adoption of best practices. In addition, it supports the implementation of a reactive state management that substantially improves graphic performance and simplifies application growth. On the other hand, the server is made with Node.js, which works in two modes, via HTTP requests for authentication and via WebSockets for the remaining functionalities, allowing simultaneity among clients and thus improve the user experience. Once the development has progressed, a set of functional tests ensures that the functionalities are working properly. These tests will be performed each time that there is a new functionality in the application in order to verify that the previous functionalities are still working. The document, in addition to the development and verification, includes the work plan with a Gantt diagram and the monthly hours per month, the design of the web application using views, structure of the database, the current final views and how the application will progress once submitted.


The data on causes and rate of purulent-necrotic complications (PNC) occurrence of pancreatic cysts (PC) are adduced. Difficulties of these complications diagnosis and treatment were noted. Diagnostic markers for the PC PNC course and the treatment efficacy were proposed.


Line detection using Hough transform is one of the robust image processing methods for noisy image. But Hough transform has a problem whose computation cost is very large. In order to ease this problem, many high-speed algorithms were proposed. Xu and Oja proposed RHT (Randomized Hough Transform) which reduces the computation cost by selecting the pair of the edge points at random. On the other hand, D. Ben-Tzvi and M. B. Sandler proposed CHT (Combinatorial Hough Transform) which reduces by dividing the image to some blocks and by limiting the combination of the pairs of the edge points in these blocks. In this paper, we propose a new high-speed algorithm called MRHT (Multiply Randomized Hough Transform) which combines randomized edge point selection process on RHT and block division process on CHT. MRHT has two randomized selection processes. First process is randomized selection from the divided blocks at random. In second process, MRHT selects the pair of the edge points at random in the selected block in the previous selection. Thus, MRHT has multiply randomized selection process in two steps. In CHT algorithm, we have to make the sacrifice of the quality of the detected lines, because we divide the image to many blocks to reduce the computation cost. Experimental and theoretical considerations revealed that MRHT becomes faster than CHT even in a low division rate, and that MRHT can provide almost the same quality of the detected lines 56 times faster than RHT.


Controlled release matrix tablets of flurbiprofen were designed by employing chitosan and sodium alginate as release rate controlling polymers. A Combination of chitosan and sodium alginate in 1 : 1 ratio is employed for the preparation of the polymer matrix. As the release of the drug from the matrix tablets is very slow, various excipients such Microcrystalline cellulose, starch and lactose individually and in combination in different proportions are included in the matrix formulation to verify their influence on the drug release characteristics. The tablets were tested for drug content, weight variation, hardness, thickness, friability and swelling characteristic. The analysis of the release of the drug from different formulation prepared indicates that while there was only 57% drug release at the end of 12 hours from matrix tablets without the added excipients, the release of the drug is found to be increased but slow and sustained and complete when water soluble excipients starch and lactose are included in the matrix tablets. The inclusion of microcrystalline cellulose has further modified the release to achieve slow and controlled release of the over a period of 12 hours. The drug release is found to follow first order kinetics and is found to be diffusion controlled.


Tuberculosis is an ancient disease that has held close association with humans for millennia. Through persistence, this remarkably successful organism has managed to infect an estimated third of the world's population. Declining rates of tuberculosis in developed nations have masked an emerging epidemic of drug resistant cases that have been reported in almost every country under scrutiny. The recent completion of the genome sequence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis has mandated more efficient control and management of this disease. The momentum for this public health imperative will come from information gleaned from advances in genomics and related technologies towards deciphering molecular mechanisms of mycobacterial drug resistance.


This article explores the impact of the 'Voyages of Discovery' on European spice markets, asking whether the exploits of Vasco da Gama and others brought European and Asian spice markets closer together. To this end we compare trends in pepper and fine spice prices before and after 1503, the year when da Gama returned from his financially successful second voyage. Other authors have examined trends in nominal spice prices, but this article uses relative spice prices, that is, accounting for inflation. We find that the Voyages of Discovery had a major impact on European spice markets, and provide a simple model of monopoly and oligopoly to decompose the sources of the Cape route's impact on European markets. Finally, we offer some speculations regarding the impact of the Cape route on intra-European market integration.


Since 1981, 54 femoro-femoral crossover saphenous bypass (Palma-operation) were performed for chronic venous insufficiency caused by unilateral iliac vein occlusion. Long-term patiency rate and clinical results were evaluated by radioisotope venography and venous occlusion plethysmography. Plethysmography demonstrated significant improvement of maximal venous outflow after operation. Radioisotope venography showed remarkable long-term patency rate of Palma-bypass (of 42 operation, 29 patent graft). Long-term clinical results appeared to be excellent after operation of isolated iliac vein occlusion, whereas the results after operations performed with postthrombotic changes in more distal deep veins were not acceptable, therefore a more critical preoperative selection seems to be necessary.


SIR,-The case reports of Drs J Aidan Twomey and M L E Espir (6 October, p 832), and Dr A B Jones (3 November, p 1144) prompt me to bring to your attention a survey carried out in this laboratory to investigate the association between Mycoplasma pnewnoniae infection and neurological disease. We tested sera from 800 patients, presenting with a wide variety of neurological syndromes, for complement-fixing antibodies to M pneumoniae. Three patients had rising titres and a further 14 had high (>256) static titres suggesting a current or recent infection with the organism. Of these 17 patients (2-1 % of the total), 13 were 14 years or younger, and the remaining four were 17, 23, 42, and 49 years old. Six of these patients had meningism; in one case echovirus type 6 was isolated from the faeces and in another there was a measles complement-fixing antibody titre of 256. Four of the 17 patients had aseptic meningitis (one with echovirus type 4 isolated from the faeces) and two others possible aseptic meningitis. The table relates the cases by year of illness to the total cases of M pneumoniae serologically diagnosed in this laboratory. The percentage ofM pneumoniae infections associated with neurological disease is small (6-7 % of the total) and is a constant fraction of the total for each year except in 1973, when we diagnosed only 22 cases. Because only 2-1 % of the 800 "neurological" patients showed evidence of infection, it appears unlikely that M pneumae contributes significantly to the causation of serious neurological disease; in three of our patients there was also evidence of current or recent infection with potentially neurotropic viruses. An aetiological association with minor neurological illness remains to be proved. Seven of our 17 patients had meningism, for which the causes in children are numerous, and it is not necessary for the organism to infect the central nervous system directly to cause it. In the 10 cases of actual or possible aseptic meningitis causation cannot be proved, but attempts to isolate the organism from CSF would help to resolve the difficulties of interpreting these serological findings. In any case it appears that if M pneumoniae does affect the CNS it does so infrequently and in our experience is associated only with mild disease. G E D URQUHART Regional Virus Laboratory, Ruchill Hospital, Glasgow G20 9NB


Dimethylsulphoniopropionate (DMSP) is the most abundant organic sulphur molecule in the oceans. Its breakdown by marine organisms is important for the global cycling of sulphur, and as a nutrient source for microbial life. In recent years, the molecular basis of DMSP catabolism by marine bacteria has begun to be unravelled, through the discovery of six different DMSP lyases and a DMSP demethylase, as well as downstream pathways. From these studies, it is becoming evident that there is great diversity in the way bacteria breakdown this important molecule. The work presented here further explores and expands our knowledge of this diversity. I have identified a novel DMSP lyase (DddK), which catalyses the cleavage of DMSP into acrylate and dimethyl sulphide (DMS) in the DMS-producing Candidatus Pelgaibacter ubique HTCC1062 - one of the most prolific bacteria on this planet. I have also shown that the γ-proteobacterium Oceanimonas doudoroffii, which has long been a study species for DMSP catabolism, has no fewer than three functional DMSP lyases - DddD, DddP1 and DddP2 - this being the first example of a species outside of the α-proteobacteria having multiple lyases. Additionally, I have presented a thorough bioinformatics analysis of the occurrence and synteny of genes associated with DMSP catabolism within sequenced members of the abundant Roseobacter clade, revealing some interesting patterns which warrant further experimental investigation. Finally, I have shown that the model marine Roseobacter species Ruegeria pomeroyi DSS-3 is able to use DMSP-derived acrylate as a sole carbon source via a fatty acid biosynthesis route, linked to propionate catabolism.


In this paper the rather complex 3D fatigue crack growth behaviour in a SEN-specimens under anti-plane shear or torsion loading is investigated by the aid of the programme ADAPCRACK3D and by application of a recently developed 3D fracture criterion. It will be shown that the computationally simulated results of fatigue crack growth in the FE-models of the specimens are in good agreement with experimental findings for the development of two antisymmetric cracks, which originate from the two crack front corner points, that is where the crack front intersects the free surfaces of the laboratory SEN test-specimens. Consequently, also for these cases with a rather complex 3D crack growth of two anti-symmetric cracks, the functionality of the ADAPCRACK3D-programme and the validity of the proposed 3D fracture criterion can be stated.


Automatic and real-time identification of unusual incidents is important for event detection and alarm systems. In today's camera surveillance solutions video streams are displayed on-screen for human operators, e.g. in large multi-screen control centers. This in turn requires the attention of operators for unusual events and urgent response. This paper presents a method for the automatic identification of unusual visual content in video streams real-time. In contrast to explicitly modeling specific unusual events, the proposed approach incrementally learns the usual appearances from the visual source and simultaneously identifies potential unusual image regions in the scene. Experiments demonstrate the general applicability on a variety of large-scale datasets including different scenes from public web cams and from traffic monitoring. To further demonstrate the real-time capabilities of the unusual scene detection we actively control a Pan-Tilt-Zoom camera to get close up views of the unusual incidents.


This paper reports on one phase of a research project examining the National College of Teaching and Leadership's (NCTL) revised methodology for the allocation of postgraduate ITE places for the 2016-17 academic year. The paper's focus is the often-neglected voices of applicants as they negotiated this process, for whom this revised methodology 'pilot' year was their first and potentially only engagement with the ITE recruitment system, and doing so often represented a significant personal milestone on a life-long journey towards a career in the classroom. In all, 21 participants from a large Undergraduate Education Studies degree took part in focus groups or interviews during May and June 2016 about their experiences of applying and interviewing for a range of ITE routes and providers. The findings indicate the significance of (assumed) differences between University-based and School-based routes in shaping applicants' perceptions of their experiences; the impact of the frenetic atmosphere generated by the 'race' to secure a place during this recruitment cycle; and applicants' varied responses to providers' tactics and reported 'gaming' of the system. Implications and recommendations for ITE providers are made, set briefly in the context of the 'teacher recruitment crisis' and the direction of travel for ITE provision.


Over the past decade, research explaining cross country income differences has increasingly pointed to the dominant role of total factor productivity (TFP) gaps as opposed to factor accumulation. Nevertheless, it is a widely held belief that a country's ability to absorb and implement technologies is tied to its human capital. In this paper, we implement this idea in a novel specification and explore its quantitative implications within a development accounting framework. In our model, intermediate goods production takes place over a range of industries, and human capital ratios in a country influence industry specific productivities asymmetrically. As a result, in human capital abundant countries, production is concentrated around industries with high TFP, while in low human capital countries, production is concentrated around industries with low TFP. Development accounting exercises for a range of parameter values suggest that this human capital-technology complementarity may account for eighteen to twenty five percent of differences in GDP per worker which is higher than the combined direct contribution of factors of production.


Extracted from text ... 40 - IMIESA JUNE 2006
The current value of South Africa's road network is estimated at
around R550-billion - a large investment that is sadly declining
into an alarming state of disrepair and erosion, according to
the South African Road Federation (SARF).
The problem appears to be primarily one of underfunding, says a
spokesperson for SARF. However, the federation notes that out of
an approximated R43-billion collected annually in tax specifically for
the purposes of keeping road users on the roads, only R13-billion
is ploughed back into the road network. This leaves the question in
everybody's mind as to ..


The study investigated stigmatization of HIV/AIDS children in Nairobi, Kenya. It involved eight HIV/AIDS infected children aged 7-15 years from Joseph Kangethe Primary school, with an equal mix between boys and girls from diverse ethnic groups. A qualitative approach using interview questions and a phenomenological inquiry strategy was adopted. Data from in-depth personal interviews was transcribed, coded and categorized into themes and analyzed through the post-colonial lens. Stigma was detected through what the children felt about their status and their experiences. Key themes identified were: the children experienced different psychosocial impacts, including fear, denial, shame, fear of isolation and loneliness, and trauma. They confirmed the efficacy of anti-retroviral therapy (ART).

From these findings and supporting literature, the study recommends counseling facilities, provision of anti-retroviral therapy, reconceptualized education using modern and tradition approaches, forums to discuss sexuality and HIV, home based care, community mobilization and empowerment to reduce HIV stigmatization.


This paper presents a simple theory and test of an efficiency hypothesis for academic tenure and the process by which it is granted. Our approach argues that tenure is a response to the high cost of measuring academic potential and has survived as a low cost method by which the university can better match potential entrants with incumbents and so promote superior performance by its departments. The probationary period leading into the tenure decision then becomes one where coordination gains can arise from better measurement, evaluation, and integration of new faculty. It follows that tighter tenure standards require greater evaluation efforts with greater turnover and success should result in superior department performance. To test the hypothesis, Dnes and Seaton's (2001) distinction between UK universities that prior to 1988 offered hard versus soft forms of tenure and data from the UK Research Assessment Exercise are used . After controlling for more easily measured inputs into department performance, tenure status remains a positive predictor of ranking across UK departments of economics.


Fine-grained sediment gravity flows are common in the deep marine environment and an important process by which many desirable hydrocarbon source rocks and seals have and can be formed. Our understanding of the flow dynamics and depositional processes of these flows is limited. Clay particles can alter the flow rheology because of their ability to aggregate, forming floccules and more pervasive cohesive structures, called gels. These flocs and gels can enhance or dampen turbulent forces in sediment gravity flows, such that increasing the cohesive sediment content causes a transition from turbulent, Newtonian flow, via transient-turbulent flow, to laminar, non-Newtonian debris flow. Because the flow rheology controls the depositional style, a thorough understanding of how flow composition relates to flow rheology is essential for our interpretation of the architecture and the palaeo-environmental setting of deep-marine deposits. In the natural environment, clay-rich sediments are commonly associated with the presence of organic matter. There is a reasonable understanding of the effect that organic matter, in particular 'sticky' extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), has on clay flocculation and the stability of sedimentary deposits in shallow-marine environment, but it's impact on deep-marine sediment gravity flows has not been explored yet. Here, the influence of similar interactions for suspended clay and EPS within sediment gravity flows is presented. The above research gaps were addressed by means of flume experiments that recorded changes in dynamic behaviour and deposit run out distances of sediment gravity flows with variable amounts of biologically cohesive xanthan gum (a commonly used proxy for natural EPS) and physically cohesive kaolin clay (one of the most common clay minerals on Earth) and non-cohesive silica flour. Results indicate that very small quantities of EPS – three orders of magnitude smaller than the quantity of clay – are sufficient to enhance flocculation and alter the size distribution of clay flocs compared to a flow that lacks EPS. Ultrasonic Doppler Velocity data demonstrate changes in the internal turbulence behaviour of transitional flows as a result of adding EPS. These findings have the potential to change our understanding of sediment gravity flows in the natural environment, in particular those that result in the organic rich, fine-grained deposits regarded as potentially favourable source rocks.


Points from letters Cow's milk intolerance (J B Tracey); Playground accidents (R M Forrester); Cigarette smoking and chest pain (T T Stamm); Heart block and myxoedema (F I Lee); Sex education (E Christopher); Mucolytic agents and sputum testing (Sarah Knott); Cervical vertigo (J H Ebbetts); Road traffic accident payments (J K Gosnold); Decentralisation in the NHS (D J Kenny); Training the young doctor (I B Chait and P Reder); Junior hospital staff contract (M G Rinsler; Anne C Metten) ................ 523


It was made a technic-economic analysis of the feasibility of implementing a pyrolysis plant for the production of fuel oil (FO) from plastic fractions of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW). The catalytic pyrolysis process is carried out in a fixed bed reactor with a capacity of 4 m³ loaded with crushed and dry plastic waste (volumetric mass of 500 kg/m³), which is heated at a rate of 2 °C/min until the reaction temperature reaches 270 and 350 °C. Then, the pyrolysis process is then maintained at the established temperature for 6 hours. The retention time of the pyrolysis gases is 90 minutes. Each batch operation cycle lasts an average of 9 hours. It was evaluated production of FO from different plastic fractions resulting from MSW sorting in a medium-sized municipality. In scenario 1 (reference scenario), 1.04 and 3.63 ton/day of plastics of the MSW (PSW) are sent to recycling and landfill, respectively. Three alternative scenarios were defined and analyzed to implement plastic pyrolysis: scenario 2, 3.63 ton/day, the fraction of non-recycled PSW is considered for processing by pyrolysis; scenario 3, it is considered the recycling of PET and PVC, and the remaining PSW represents 4.36 ton/day, and it is considered for processing by pyrolysis; scenario 4, it is maintained the 4.36 ton/day of PSW as valorized by pyrolysis, and it is assumed that an additional 0.64 ton/day of PSW comes from an external source. The FO production costs were estimated at 1.50, 1.29, and 1.13 R$/L, approximately 41%, 49%, and 56% lower than the FO sale price (2.55 R$/L), for scenarios 2, 3, and 4, respectively. Costs of production per unit of energy (GJ) in FO are between 40.88 and 29.67 R$/GJ. The Net Present Value (NPV) of the solution, considering scenarios 2 to 4, increased from R$ 6.72×10 6 to R$ 11.29×10 6 . The positive NPV for the scenarios 2 to 4 indicates the economic viability of the pyrolysis plant. The pyrolysis system would need to operate between three and four years to recover the invested capital. The costs of the municipality with the destination of MSW can be reduced in 54.75%, from 139.48 to 63.12 R$/ton MSW, between the reference scenario and scenario 4 .


Heterogeneous multiprocessor system-on-chip architectures are endowed with accelerators such as embedded GPUs and FPGAs capable of general-purpose computation. The application developers for such platforms need to carefully choose the accelerator with the maximum performance bene t. For a given application, usually, the reference code is speci ed in a high-level single-threaded programming language such as C. The performance of an application kernel on an accelerator is a complex interplay among the exposed parallelism, the compiler, and the accelerator architecture. Thus, determining the performance of a kernel requires its redevelopment into each accelerator-speci c language, causing substantial wastage of time and e ort. To aid the developer in this early design decision, we present an analytical framework CGPredict to predict the performance of a computational kernel on an embedded GPU architecture from un-optimized, single-threaded C code. The analytical approach provides insights on application characteristics which suggest further application-speci c optimizations. The estimation error is as low as 2.66% (average 9%) compared to the performance of the same kernel written in native CUDA code running on NVIDIA Kepler embedded GPU. This low performance estimation error enables CGPredict to provide an early design recommendation of the accelerator starting from C code.


The age of granophyric diorite from the Sosnowiec IG-1 borehole (Brunovistulia Terrane) was studied by means of U–Pb single-grain zircon analysis performed on a SHRIMP (sensitive high-resolution ion microprobe) IIe device. The isotope ages and provenance of zircons from the Emsian tuffs cropping out in the southern part of the Holy Cross Mountains (Małopolska Terrane) were also investigated using the same method. The age of the diorite intrusion (420 ± 2 Ma) is comparable with the combined Ar–Ar/magnetostratigraphic age of the Bardo diabase intrusion from the northern part of the Małopolska Terrane. These intrusions were emplaced during the same event of regional tectonic extension associated with the Rheic Ocean closure and the onset of processes creating the Rheno-Hecynian Basin near the Silurian/Devonian boundary. A negative Nb anomaly characteristic of both intrusions could be linked with the subduction of the Rheic oceanic crust under the SE margin of the Old Red Continent. Emsian magmatic activity in the distant Rheno-Hercynian Zone provided several tuff layers in the northern part of the Małopolska Terrane. As can be inferred from zircon ages, these tuffs were derived from mafic eruptions that cut sedimentary rocks containing detrital zircons transported from Baltica. This interpretation fits the existing models of development of the Rheno-Hercynian Basin in the Emsian.


Salt has been iodized in Taiwan since 1967. To understand goiter status after salt iodization, we studied the prevalence of goiter in school children in rural areas where tap water or underground water are used. To further elucidate the prevalence of goiter in urban areas where tap water is used, we studied school children from the Tong-Yuan and Lao-Song elementary schools located in the Wan-Hwa District of Taipei. Thyroid enlargement was examined by palpation as recommended by the World Health Organization. Thyroid antibodies and hormones were determined in school children with goiter and in age- and sex-matched normal control children using particle agglutination methods and radioimmunoassay. A total of 4,623 school children were examined. Of these, 129 children (2.8%) had goiters of grade I or above, or nodular goiters. The prevalence of goiter was similar to that of Putai and Peimen in southern Taiwan where tap water is used, but less than that of Tachia and Chingshuei in middle Taiwan where underground water is used. The prevalence of goiter was much lower than recent studies in Tung-Lo, an oil-bearing area in middle Taiwan, where there was a 12.9% prevalence in school children residing in hill districts who relied on underground water for drinking purposes, and 8.2% in school children residing on lower plains, who depended upon tap water for drinking purposes. The prevalence of goiter is highly related to the quality of drinking water.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


In quiescent human fibroblasts stimulated to proliferate by fresh medium plus 15% serum, no changes were seen in the incorporation of 3H‐tryptophan into the protein of nuclear ribonucleoprotein during the first three hours following re‐feeding. This was in contrast to non‐histone chromosomal proteins where the incorporation increased by 90% within ten minutes. The density of the formaldehyde fixed nuclear ribonucleoprotein in CsCl was 1.43–1.44 g/ml and this also did not change following stimulation. The electrophoretic profile of the proteins of nuclear ribonucleoprotein on SDS gels exhibited a predominant band corresponding to a molecular weight of 44,000 closely trailed by a band at 47,000 and other bands at higher molecular weight. This pattern was not altered by serum stimulation and the same was true for the more complex electrophoretic profile of the chromatin proteins. Following a 10‐minute pulse of 3H‐tryptophan at ten minutes after stimulation, there was a selective increase in the labeling of non‐histone chromosomal protein of molecular weight 59,000; no change was seen in the labeling of any protein of nuclear ribonucleoprotein.


The Amboseli Elephants is the long-awaited summation of what's been learned from the Amboseli Elephant Research Project (AERP)—the longest continuously running elephant research project in the world. Cynthia J. Moss and Harvey Croze, the founders of the AERP, and Phyllis C. Lee, who has been closely involved with the project since 1982, compile more than three decades of uninterrupted study of over 2,500 individual elephants, from newborn calves to adult bulls to old matriarchs in their 60s. Chapters explore such topics as elephant ecosystems, genetics, communication, social behavior, and reproduction, as well as exciting new developments from the study of elephant minds and cognition. The book closes with a view to the future, making important arguments for the ethical treatment of elephants and suggestions to aid in their conservation.


In this paper, we demonstrate for the first time ring laser oscillation using a set of silicon (111) mirrors fabricated by microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology with a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) as an optical amplifier medium. Four (111) mirrors were fabricated perpendicular to a (110) silicon wafer surface to form an optical loop. The (111) mirrors were fabricated by a combination of deep reactive-ion etching (DRIE) and anisotropic wet etching, followed by electroplating with a highly reflective Au film. Adjusting the mirror alignment for the oscillation was not required because the mirrors were already precisely positioned with the accuracy of the crystal orientation. In experiments, oscillation began at an injection current of more than 110 mA into the SOA. We confirmed that both forward and backward propagating lasers oscillated simultaneously in a single mode. Our results will especially be useful for realization of next-generation optical MEMS ring laser gyroscopes.


AbstractThe development of embedded computer control systems(ECS) requires a synergetic integration of heterogeneoustechnologies and multiple engineering disciplines. Withincreasing amount of functionalities and expectations for highproduct qualities, short time-to-market, and low cost, thesuccess of complexity control and built-in flexibility turn outto be one of the major competitive edges for many ECS products.For this reason, modeling and modularity assessment constitutetwo critical subjects of ECS engineering.In the development ofECS, model-based design is currently being exploited in most ofthe sub-systems engineering activities. However, the lack ofsupport for formalization and systematization associated withthe overall systems modeling leads to problems incomprehension, cross-domain communication, and integration oftechnologies and engineering activities. In particular, designchanges and exploitation of "components" are often risky due tothe inability to characterize components' properties and theirsystem-wide contexts. Furthermore, the lack of engineeringtheories for modularity assessment in the context of ECS makesit difficult to identify parameters of concern and to performearly system optimization. This thesis aims to provide a more complete basis for theengineering of ECS in the areas of systems modeling andmodularization. It provides solution domain models for embeddedcomputer control systems and the software subsystems. Thesemeta-models describe the key system aspects, design levels,components, component properties and relationships with ECSspecific semantics. By constituting the common basis forabstracting and relating different concerns, these models willalso help to provide better support for obtaining holisticsystem views and for incorporating useful technologies fromother engineering and research communities such as to improvethe process and to perform system optimization. Further, amodeling framework is derived, aiming to provide a perspectiveon the modeling aspect of ECS development and to codifyimportant modeling concepts and patterns. In order to extendthe scope of engineering analysis to cover flexibility relatedattributes and multi-attribute tradeoffs, this thesis alsoprovides a metrics system for quantifying componentdependencies that are inherent in the functional solutions.Such dependencies are considered as the key factors affectingcomplexity control, concurrent engineering, and flexibility.The metrics system targets early system-level design and takesinto account several domain specific features such asreplication and timing accuracy. Keywords:Domain-Specific Architectures, Model-basedSystem Design, Software Modularization and Components, QualityMetrics.


Affective Genealogies is an incisive contribution to the current reassessment of postmodern culture and theory. Elizabeth J. Bellamy examines how the Holocaust and Jews have been represented in a wide range of French poststructuralist works. Central to Bellamy's study is her questioning of whether "the non-essentializing discourse of postmodernism [can] ever enable a genuine working through' to an understanding of the horror of the Holocaust." She concludes that much recent French thought "encrypts but does not fully confront the trauma of the Holocaust." Bellamy begins by surveying contemporary writings on Judaism, the Holocaust, and the "crisis of memory." She then closely examines recent French debates about Martin Heidegger's relationship to the Nazis, focusing on Jacques Derrida's controversial defense of Heidegger's works. Another chapter examines the works of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, noting the ambiguous ways in which they portray the roles played by Jews in modern intellectual history. The last chapter examines the representation of Judaism in Jean-Francois Lyotard's writings. Bellamy's book contributes to the recent revaluation of French postmodernism and to current studies on the representation of Jews and the Holocaust in Western literature and thought. As Sander Gilman has noted, "the writers and works that were generated in France from Sartre to Lyotard have had a seminal role in shaping the international philosophical discourse about Jewish identity." Affective Genealogies is an essential guide to that controversial and influential philosophical movement.


Since the Guangzhou municipality in south China organised the first Overseas Students Fair in 1998, large conventions aimed at recruiting overseas Chinese professionals (OCPs) have become a regular scene in major cities in China. These conventions constitute one of the most visible means of the Chinese government's engagement with the 800,000 OCPs who remain overseas after receiving tertiary education abroad. Characteristic of the conventions, and OCP policies in general, is a highly 'materialistic' thinking: it is argued that OCPs deserve generous financial rewards because they are economically and technologically beneficial to China, and that financial reward is the most feasible means to attract them back. My ethnographic data, however, reveal that the language of economism is communicated in a highly ritualistic manner and, conversely, political rituals serve as a crucial part of the conventions. The ritualised economic- and technological-determinist discourse appears apolitical, yet acquires strong mobilising and legitimating power, and is thus particularly effective in accommodating OCPs into the established political order. The concept 'ritual economy' denotes such deep intertwining between the economic, the ritualistic and the political.


This presentation explored Viners' early practice of computational drawing, generative and transformative processing, and intersecting virtual spaces as a sculptural material. In 1977, Viner produced an experimental computer animation entitled 'Inside/Outside', and the author discussed a 10 frame fragment of animation that was uncovered within the archives of the Henry Moore Foundation (Leeds, UK). It was argued that these animated paper sketches, produced in May 1977, were a preparatory stage for the completed film. The existence of the original computer code, written using John Vince's 'PICASO' subroutines for FORTRAN, also offers an opportunity to contextualise Viner's conceptual thinking in relation to code as an object and the use of pseudo-randomness (chance) as a temporal, material transformation.


northcote training farm was a school established on fairbridge principals in 1937. it was set up by the northcote trust in memory of lady northcote.


A global data set of archeomagnetic and paleomagnetic data covering the past 7000 years has been compiled. It consists of 16,085 results of inclination, 13,080 of declination, and 3188 of intensity for the time span 5000 BC to 1950 AD. Declination and inclination data come partly from existing databases and partly from original literature. A new global compilation of intensity data for the millennial scale is included. Data and dating uncertainties are discussed as we attempted to obtain an internally coherent data set. The global distribution of the data is very inhomogeneous in both time and space. All the data are compared to predictions from the previous 3000 year global model, CALS3K.1. This collection of data will be useful for global secular variation studies and geomagnetic field modeling, although southern hemisphere data are still underrepresented. In particular, we will use it in a further study to update and extend the existing global model, CALS3K.1. The huge increase in data compared to the previous compilation will result in significant changes from current models. As we might have missed some suitable data, we encourage the reader to notify us about any data that have not been included yet and might fit in, as improving our global millennial scale models remains our aim for the future. The data files described in this paper are available from the EarthRef Digital Archive (ERDA) at http://earthref.org/cgi‐bin/erda.cgi?n=331.


This paper explores the use of knowledge distillation to improve a Multi-Task Deep Neural Network (MT-DNN) (Liu et al., 2019) for learning text representations across multiple natural language understanding tasks. Although ensemble learning can improve model performance, serving an ensemble of large DNNs such as MT-DNN can be prohibitively expensive. Here we apply the knowledge distillation method (Hinton et al., 2015) in the multi-task learning setting. For each task, we train an ensemble of different MT-DNNs (teacher) that outperforms any single model, and then train a single MT-DNN (student) via multi-task learning to \emph{distill} knowledge from these ensemble teachers. We show that the distilled MT-DNN significantly outperforms the original MT-DNN on 7 out of 9 GLUE tasks, pushing the GLUE benchmark (single model) to 83.7\% (1.5\% absolute improvement\footnote{ Based on the GLUE leaderboard at this https URL as of April 1, 2019.}). The code and pre-trained models will be made publicly available at this https URL.


Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) using for the mobile robot navigation has two main problems. First problem is the computational complexity due to the growing state vector with the added landmark in the environment. Second problem is data association which matches the observations and landmarks in the state vector. In this study, we compare Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) based SLAM which is well-developed and well-known algorithm, and Compressed Extended Kalman Filter (CEKF) based SLAM developed for decreasing of the computational complexity of the EKF based SLAM. We write two simulation program to investigate these techniques. Firts program is written for the comparison of EKF and CEKF based SLAM according to the computational complexity and covariance matrix error with the different numbers of landmarks. In the second program, EKF and CEKF based SLAM simulations are presented. For this simulation differential drive vehicle that moves in a 10m square trajectory and LMS 200 2-D laser range finder are modelled and landmarks are randomly scattered in that 10m square environment.


B cell development is marked by changes in the pattern of VH segment utilization. B cell precursors characteristically utilize a restricted set of VH segments, while mature B cell populations use a wide range of VH segments. VH81x is an example of a VH segment that is highly utilized in B cell precursors, but rarely utilized in mature B cells. We have developed an assay that allows us to determine the proportion of VDJH rearrangements that utilize the VH81x segment in DNA from selected populations of developing B cells. Consistent with previous observations, it was found that VH81x is utilized at a remarkably high frequency in primary B cell progenitors. The extent of overutilization was found to be identical during fetal and adult B cell development. Phenotypic analyses demonstrated that the decline in VH81x utilization begins at a stage before the expression of IgM on the cell surface and continues through later stages of B cell development. Strikingly, mutant mice that cannot express Ig heavy chain on the cell surface displayed a drop in VH81x utilization during both fetal and adult B cell development. Together, these data suggest that mechanisms other than cellular selection play an important role in determining the shift in VH segment utilization during B cell development.


BaV3O8 contains both magnetic V4+(S=1/2) ions and non-magnetic V5+(S=0) ions. The V4+ ions are arranged in a coupled Majumdar-Ghosh chain like network. Our magnetic susceptibility chi(T) data fit well with the Curie-Weiss formula in the temperature range of 80-300K and it yields a Curie constant C=0.39cm3K/mole-V4+ and an antiferromagnetic Weiss temperature theta=-26K. The chi(T) curve shows a broad maximum at T~25K indicative of short-range order (SRO) and an anomaly corresponding to long-range order (LRO) at TN~6K. The value of the frustration index (f=mod[theta/TN]~5) suggests that the system is moderately frustrated. Above the LRO temperature the experimental magnetic susceptibility data match well with the coupled Majumdar-Ghosh chain model with the ratio of the nnn (next-nearest neighbor) to nn (nearest neighbor) magnetic coupling alpha=2 and Jnnn/kB=40K. In a mean-field approach when considering the inter-chain interactions, we obtain the total inter-chain coupling to be about 16K. The LRO anomaly at TN is also observe in the specific heat Cp(T) data and is not sensitive to an applied magnetic field up to 90kOe. A 51V NMR signal corresponding to the non-magnetic vanadium was observed. Anomalies at 6K were observed in the variation with temperature of the 51V NMR linewidth and in the spin-lattice relaxation rate 1/T1, indicating that they are sensitive to the LRO onset and fluctuations at the magnetic V sites. The existence of two components (one short and another long) is observed in the spin-spin relaxation rate 1/T2 data in the vicinity of TN. The shorter component seems to be intimately connected with the magnetically ordered state. We suggest that both magnetically ordered and non-long range ordered (non-LRO) regions coexist in this compound below the long range ordering temperature.


The WHO recently recognised stigma as a fundamental cause for health inequalities. Weight stigma is associated with negative health consequences, and patients experience it commonly in healthcare settings. This study forms part of systematic review that aimed to understand how weight stigma can be reduced through the adoption of whole systems approaches.To generate new understandings of the roles primary care can take in reducing weight stigma.A systematic international literature review of peer-reviewed articles utilising EPPI guidance, and using PICOS terms in Web of Science searches. Recommendations for policy, practice and/or research were extracted and conceptually synthesised as guided by Research Unit for Research Utilisation.The search identified 194 full texts with 540 total recommendations. Approximately 45% of recommendations (248 of 540) were coded under healthcare, of which 75% were in primary care including general practice (189 of 248). Findings indicate areas where weight stigma could be addressed in primary care: 1) Training; 2) Self-awareness; 3) Non-stigmatising approaches; 4) Formal patient assessments; 5. Coping strategies; 6) Organisational/structural support; 7) Cross-sector working; 8) Anti-discrimination legislation and classify obesity as a disease.Literature on reducing weight stigma focuses substantially on healthcare, and there is a range of approaches that could be taken. Tensions arise between the medicalisation of obesity and need to consider social determinants of obesity. Healthcare is only one of many settings in which the weight stigma needs to be addressed and whole systems approaches, for example working with local government, are required in particular to reduce health inequalities.


The static and dynamic behaviors of the index-coupled DFB lasers are analyzed. In previous models, spatially dependent values were used for the refractive index distribution, but an averaged value was used for the gain distribution. The key feature of our model is that the "refractive index" and "gain" distributions are spatially dependent. The results of our model show a better agreement with an accurate model such as experimental data compared to those of the previous models. It was known that in the index-coupled DFB-lasers the gain profile as well as the refractive index profile plays an important role in determining the lasing characteristics, such as mode instability, chirping, linearity in the GRIN curve, and output power.


Memory devices represent a key component of datacenter total cost of ownership (TCO), and techniques used to reduce errors that occur on these devices increase this cost. Existing approaches to providing reliability for memory devices pessimistically treat all data as equally vulnerable to memory errors. Our key insight is that there exists a diverse spectrum of tolerance to memory errors in new data-intensive applications, and that traditional one-size-fits-all memory reliability techniques are inefficient in terms of cost. For example, we found that while traditional error protection increases memory system cost by 12.5%, some applications can achieve 99.00% availability on a single server with a large number of memory errors without any error protection. This presents an opportunity to greatly reduce server hardware cost by provisioning the right amount of memory reliability for different applications. Toward this end, in this paper, we make three main contributions to enable highly-reliable servers at low datacenter cost. First, we develop a new methodology to quantify the tolerance of applications to memory errors. Second, using our methodology, we perform a case study of three new dataintensive workloads (an interactive web search application, an in-memory key -- value store, and a graph mining framework) to identify new insights into the nature of application memory error vulnerability. Third, based on our insights, we propose several new hardware/software heterogeneous-reliability memory system designs to lower datacenter cost while achieving high reliability and discuss their trade-off. We show that our new techniques can reduce server hardware cost by 4.7% while achieving 99.90% single server availability.


Since 1979, by which time Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) had established itself as "the most privileged text in the African-American literary canon" (Washington xii), some Hurston critics have been of two minds about her best-known book. (1) Citing various unresolved textual problems, some cautious skeptics have asked whether the novel's preeminence, won through nearly universal praise from Alice Walker and other first-generation advocates, is premature, and perhaps even unwarranted. (2) In the early days of the Hurston revival, one might have expected enthusiasts to regard such questions as hostile, and to respond in the mode of spirited defense; they were, after all, engaged in a delicate operation to recuperate a mostly forgotten writer who did not exactly fit the extraliterary profile of Herman Melville and other previously successful candidates. When the question was whether Hurston would be remembered at all, one can hardly blame her advocates for their wagon-circling against rigorous interrogation by critics of uncertain loyalties. But now, with the revival an accomplished fact, Their Eyes Were Watching God not only competes with, but even overshadows and threatens to eclipse, most other modern novels. Not surprisingly, questions about its worth have become more frequent and insistent, even from some of the book's early admirers. Such questions now are not so much measures of the book's precarious status, as they are of its ubiquity. Understanding this latter-day reception history may help us get to the bottom of more recent questions (and answers) about the book's purported inconsistency; indeed, reception politics may even explain why they have been raised to begin with. When Hurston's position in the canon seemed uncertain, little deviation from the fundamental feminist interpretation was possible without hazarding the success of the recovery effort. Gradually, this initial interpretation became standard, then assumed, even after the book had become a fixture in high school and undergraduate curricula across the country. Few now seriously ask whether the interpretation advanced by first-generation critics is valid; even the novel's detractors simply assume that it is, then point out all the ways the book contradicts it. When William M. Ramsey charges that Their Eyes Were Watching God is "not a fully finished or conceptually realized text" (36), he means that substantial textual evidence does not accord with, and at times contradicts, the widely-assumed feminist interpretation of the novel. He concludes that perhaps Their Eyes Were Watching God is not as good as we had thought, but an alternate conclusion is of course possible: perhaps the conventional interpretation of Their Eyes Were Watching God is not as right as we had thought. Rather than acknowledge the necessity of either conclusion, Hurston advocates have often addressed the concerns of readers like Ramsey with ever more fanciful explanations of why the standard interpretation is nevertheless still adequate to its task, an activity which Joseph R. Urgo laments "only emphasizes the assumption of textual weakness" (42). The reader who craves unity of effect is left with the notion that something is still awry. A more helpful strategy for assessing the book might lie in reconsidering our allegiance to certain assumptions that undergird the traditional feminist interpretation, especially now that Hurston and her work are widely known and respected. In brief, this interpretation posits Janie Crawford as an internally static feminist hero seeking liberation from masculine oppression as a necessary prerequisite to self-actualization. Her first two marriages fail because Logan Killicks and Joe Starks insist too severely on Janie's obedience to them and to conventional sex-role and class-role stereotypes. Janie heroically defies the roles imposed upon her, and eventually finds the love she had first envisioned under the pear tree when she marries Tea Cake Woods. …