Abstract. Analogue methods (AMs) predict local weather variables (predictands) such as precipitation by means of a statistical relationship with predictors at a synoptic scale. The analogy is generally assessed on gradients of geopotential heights first to sample days with a similar atmospheric circulation. Other predictors such as moisture variables can also be added in a successive level of analogy. The search for candidate situations similar to a given target day is usually undertaken by comparing the state of the atmosphere at fixed hours of the day for both the target day and the candidate analogues. This is a consequence of using standard daily precipitation time series, which are available over longer periods than sub-daily data. However, it is unlikely for the best analogy to occur at the exact same hour for the target and candidate situations. A better analogue situation may be found with a time shift of several hours since a better fit can occur at different times of the day. In order to assess the potential for finding better analogues at a different hour, a moving time window (MTW) has been introduced. The MTW resulted in a better analogy in terms of the atmospheric circulation and showed improved values of the analogy criterion on the entire distribution of the extracted analogue dates. The improvement was found to increase with the analogue rank due to an accumulation of better analogues in the selection. A seasonal effect has also been identified, with larger improvements shown in winter than in summer. This may be attributed to stronger diurnal cycles in summer that favour predictors taken at the same hour for the target and analogue days. The impact of the MTW on the precipitation prediction skill has been assessed by means of a sub-daily precipitation series transformed into moving 24 h totals at 12, 6, and 3 h time steps. The prediction skill was improved by the MTW, as was the reliability of the prediction. Moreover, the improvements were greater for days with heavy precipitation, which are generally related to more dynamic atmospheric situations in which the timing is more specific and for which fewer records are available in the meteorological archive. The improvements of the analogy criterion and the performance scores on precipitation were both found to be higher for MTWs with a smaller time step of 3 h. A 3 h MTW provides 8 times more candidate situations even though they are not fully independent. Since the MTW provides additional situations to the pool of possible analogues, it can be considered as an inflation of the meteorological archive. Because this technique is simple and easily applicable, it should be considered for several applications in different contexts, such as operational forecasting or climate-related studies.


Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) are a set of optimization techniques that have become highly popular in recent decades. One of the main reasons for this success is that they provide a general purpose mechanism for solving a wide range of problems. Several approaches have been proposed, each of them having different search characteristics.
Hybrid Evolutionary Algorithms (HEAs) are an effective alternative when approaching the op- timization of a problem by means of EAs. The combination of several algorithms allows them to exploit the strength of each of the algorithms involved throughout the evolutionary process. Fur- thermore, it has been proven that, by means of the proper selection of algorithms and hybridization strategies, it is possible to obtain HEAs that outperform their composing algorithms thanks to the syn- ergic relationships yielded by the hybridization. This characteristic has been the main motivation for the studies that have been carried out in the development of this thesis. Each of these studies analyzes a different key factor in the combination of the algorithms with the aim of designing more efficient Hybrid Evolutionary Algorithms. These factors include the application of preliminary algorithms to conduct the initialization of the solutions, control mechanisms to manage the exchange of information in distributed models and adaptive hybridization strategies, just to introduce some of them briefly.
In the first study, a new initialization method is designed for the distributed Evolutionary Algorithms (dEAs). This mechanism uses a topological tool to restrict the initial search space of the nodes of the algorithm. The proposal carries out a systematic procedure by following two criteria: (i) homoge- neous coverage of the whole solution space, (ii) no overlap of the space explored by each island.
The behavior of the distributed Estimation of Distribution Algorithms (dEDAs) for continuous optimization is thoroughly analyzed as part of this thesis. The study infers the values of the param- eters that obtain the best performance in a selected competitive scenario, as well as the relationships between them. Special emphasis is placed on comparing the methods available for exchanging infor- mation: individuals or models.
In the third study, several competitive HEAs are defined and compared against the state-of-the-art algorithms in continuous optimization. These include a heterogeneous dEA, a memetic Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm and an adaptive High-level Relay Hybrid (HRH) algorithm. To design the adaptive algorithm, an extension to the Multiple Offspring Sampling (MOS) framework is conducted for defining HRH algorithms. All of the proposed algorithms achieve significant results, including some of the best results for the selected benchmarks.
The final objective of this thesis is to introduce a mechanism to learn how to control the combi- nation in HEAs. This task is achieved by a new framework that automatically generates competitive hybridization strategies in HRH algorithms. This procedure uses the information from several mea- sures of the algorithms in past executions to infer a new model that best characterizes the beneficial combination patterns.

To conclude, each of the proposals is tested on a set of well-known benchmarks on continuous optimization. Their results are compared with state of the art algorithms on continuous optimization by means of several statistical procedures.


Mesopore-modified mordenite zeolitic materials with different Si/Al ratios have been prepared and tested in the biomass pyrolysis and catalytic cracking of vacuum gasoil. Alkaline treatment was carried out to generate mesoporosity. Severity of alkaline treatment was found to be of paramount importance to tune the generated mesoporosity, while it significantly affected the crystallinity of treated mordenites. It was moreover observed that the alkaline treatment selectively extracted Si decreasing the Si/Al ratio of treated samples. Catalytic activity of parent and alkaline treated mordenites was studied in the pyrolysis of biomass. All zeolitic based materials produced less amounts of bio-oil but of better quality (lowering the oxygen content from ∼40% to as much as 21%) as compared to the non-catalytic pyrolysis experiments. On the other hand, it was found that the combination of mesopore formation and high surface area after alkaline treatment of the mordenite with a high Si/Al ratio resulted in the enhancement of its catalytic activity, despite the reduction of its acidity. The increment of the decarboxylation and dehydration reactions, combined with a reduction of carbon deposition on the catalyst, resulted in a remarkable decrease in the oxygen content in the organic fraction and therefore, resulted in a superior quality liquid product. Alkaline treated mordenites were additionally acid treated targeting dealumination and removal of the extra framework debris, thus generating mesopore-modified mordenite samples with stronger acid sites and higher total acidity, as candidate catalysts for catalytic cracking of vacuum gasoil. Desilicated and especially desilicated and dealuminated mordenites exhibited the highest activity and selectivity towards LCO with the best olefinicity in gases and higher bottoms conversion. Therefore, an optimized desilicated–dealuminated mordenite additive could be an interesting candidate as a component of the FCC catalyst for a high LCO yield.


This article contributes to knowledge on how users establish the trustworthiness of digital information. An exploratory two-stage study was conducted with Master's and undergraduate students in information studies. In the first phase of the study respondents commented on the factors and processes associated with trust formation. Participants commented on authorship and references, quality of writing and editing, and verification via links to external reference sources. Findings from the second phase, based on a checklist, suggested that participants relied on a range of factors when assessing the trustworthiness of articles, including content factors such as authorship, currency and usefulness together with context factors such as references, expert recommendation and triangulation with their own knowledge. These findings are discussed in the light of previous related research and recommendations for further research are offered.


Significant changes in plant phenology have been observed in response to increases in mean global temperatures. There are concerns that accelerated phenologies can negatively impact plant populations. However, the fitness consequence of changes in phenology in response to elevated temperature is not well understood, particularly under field conditions. We address this issue by exposing a set of recombinant inbred lines of Arabidopsis thaliana to a simulated global warming treatment in the field. We find that plants exposed to elevated temperatures flower earlier, as predicted by photothermal models. However, contrary to life-history trade-off expectations, they also flower at a larger vegetative size, suggesting that warming probably causes acceleration in vegetative development. Although warming increases mean fitness (fruit production) by ca. 25%, there is a significant genotype-by-environment interaction. Changes in fitness rank indicate that imminent climate change can cause populations to be maladapted in their new environment, if adaptive evolution is limited. Thus, changes in the genetic composition of populations are likely, depending on the species' generation time and the speed of temperature change. Interestingly, genotypes that show stronger phenological responses have higher fitness under elevated temperatures, suggesting that phenological sensitivity might be a good indicator of success under elevated temperature at the genotypic level as well as at the species level.


Tungsten disulfide (WS2) has been emerging as an attractive electrode material for supercapacitors because of its intrinsically layered structure and high capacitance. Unfortunately, most of the currently developed WS2-based electrodes suffer from poor conductivity and fast capacitance fading. In this work, we demonstrated that the durability of WS2 nanosheets can be remarkably boosted via improving their crystallinity and the first example of using these WS2 nanosheets as a high-energy and stable negative electrode for flexible asymmetric supercapacitors (ASCs). Electrochemical results reveal the WS2 nanosheets with enhanced crystallinity were able to deliver an excellent durability with more than 82% capacitance retention after 10 000 cycles and an areal capacitance of 0.93 F cm−2 at 4 mA cm−2. Importantly, when using the as-prepared WS2 nanosheets as a negative electrode, a flexible and stable ASC device with an extraordinary volumetric energy density of 0.97 mW h cm−3 is obtained. This work affords new opportunities to use WS2 nanostructures and other 2D TMDs in constructing high-performance energy-storage devices.


This paper addresses the critical issue of legitimacy in relation to e-government by focusing on public e-services to citizens. The discussion is framed through a tentative model on how to integrate legitimacy in design and development of e-government. In theory legitimacy is built on legality and trust towards and within the state. In practice it is developed through a socio-technical collaborative formation of local cultures based on common values, trust, interpretation of systems and practices. Legitimacy is crucial for democratic governance and is a basic prerequisite for all governments. Legitimacy is most often seen as generated through personal, face-to-face meetings, but e-government substitutes such opportunities for interaction. E-governments is neither clearly place-bound. Legitimacy thus has to be gained and sustained in slightly different ways. This paper brings a political science perspective on legitimacy into the IS discussion on e-government. Legitimacy of e-government has to be further theoretically extended to be useful and applicable for sustainable e-societies in different governmental context. Here a conceptual model on legitimacy of e-government is elaborated on in relation to local socio-technical settings and co-produced processes.


This study contains several estimation methods of the static buckling load for the spacer grid of nuclear fuel assembly in pressurized water reactor. Three different estimation methods were proposed for the calculation of the static buckling loads of spacer grid. The linear and non-linear static buckling analyses were performed to estimate the static buckling load of the spacer grids using ANSYS program. The analyses results were compared with the static buckling test results. Based on the analysis and test results, the applicability of the proposed estimation method for the static buckling load of the spacer grid was investigated.


Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is a betaherpesvirus shown to be a major cause of disease in immunocompromised hosts. Human herpesviruses 6 and 7 (HHV-6 and HHV- 7) show genetic homology to HCMV, and are classified in the same subfamily. Their role in disease of the immunocompromised is unclear. This thesis shows that the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) can be used to provide important information about the natural history of these viruses in healthy and immunocompromised individuals. PCR assays for the detection of HCMV in blood were used in the surveillance of solid- organ and bone-marrow transplant groups, and important prognostic information was obtained about development of HCMV disease. In this case, the benefits of this earlier diagnosis allowed more effective patient management strategies to be formulated. These studies were extended to detect and analyse HHV-6 and HHV-7 infections. An HHV-7 genome library was constructed and primers designed to amplify an HHV-7 genome region of likely conservation. Following optimisation and calibration of qualitative, multiplex and quantitative-competitive PCR assays, an analysis of the natural history of these viruses in healthy individuals showed that viral load associated with persistence is lower and more stable in blood than in saliva. The role of HHV-6 and HHV-7 primary infection in febrile illness of infants was then investigated, identifying primary infections by a high blood viral load together with the absence of detectable virus in the saliva. Both HHV-6 and HHV-7 were associated with convulsions in infected infants. Finally, a detailed clinico-pathologic analysis of renal transplant patients showed a significant association between development of HCMV disease and infection with both HCMV and HHV-7, but not with HCMV alone. In addition, HHV-7 infection alone was associated with more episodes of graft rejection. These data suggest a role for HHV-7 as an important co-factor in the development of HCMV disease.


Amanda Reeser Lawrence James Stirling: Revisionary Modernist New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2012, 248 pp., 129 b/w illus. $45 (cloth), ISBN 9780300170054

Amanda Reeser Lawrence's book about the architecture of James Stirling deftly explicates the work of a master who belongs in the canon but whose place within it has not yet been found. Stirling (1926–92) was associated with the New Brutalism of the 1950s, but his turn to postmodernism in the 1970s made him difficult to categorize. In James Stirling: Revisionary Modernist , Lawrence frames her study of selected works with the question, was Stirling a modernist or a postmodernist? She argues for him being a "revisionary modernist," maintaining that Stirling continuously revised or corrected previous modernists' works and, eventually, even his own in what can be understood as an act comparable to rewriting.

For her interpretation, Lawrence turns to The Anxiety of Influence (1973) by Harold Bloom, whose landmark literary theory complicated the concept of influence by showing that it was a transformative process in which young, weak, ephebic poets overcame the presence of strong masters of the past by rewriting and, in fact, improving or correcting their works (Wordsworth rewrites Milton). Eventually, having become strong poets themselves, they begin to rewrite their own earlier works. Close reading was the basis of Bloom's method: the text itself, separate from historical or biographical circumstances, becomes all that matters. Such hermeneuticism was countered by the New Historicism of Stephen Greenblatt, for example, who turned to history to help explain Shakespeare's plays as cultural formations.

Lawrence makes a good case for reading selected projects by Stirling using Bloom's concepts and method. Her purpose is not to be comprehensive or biographical in interpreting Stirling because monographs and a biography already exist. A major exhibition in 2010 revealed new dimensions of Stirling's work, but analysis is still lacking. Though nearly every significant critic and historian of the late twentieth century commented upon Stirling's architecture, there …


BackgroundEligibility for relief under a double taxation treaty depends upon a person (be they individual or entity) being a resident of one or other of the contracting states. This is a logical requirement - such treaties are entered into by the governments of the states involved for the benefit of their residents. However, the exact definition of resident can be subject to interpretation and is generally dependent upon the concept of liability to tax. The definition of resident under Article 4 of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Model Tax Convention reads as follows:'For the purposes of this Convention, the term "resident of a Contracting State" means any person who, under the laws of that State, is liable to tax therein by reason of his domicile, residence, place of management or any other criterion of a similar nature, and also includes that State and any political subdivision or local authority thereof. This term, however, does not include any person who is liable to tax in that State in respect only of income from sources in that State or capital situated therein.'The OECD article is commonly adopted in treaties and the related commentary discusses this definition in some detail.As far as individuals are concerned, the commentary is relatively specific and assumes universal application. It states that the aim behind the article is to provide that individuals will be regarded as resident if the relevant domestic law provides for them to be subject to 'comprehensive taxation (full liability to tax) ' in that state. The article itself supports this by making it clear that, under the OECD definition of resident, individuals subject to tax only on items sourced within a state are not regarded as resident for treaty purposes. Examples of such individuals would include those resident but not domiciled in the UK and using the remittance basis of tax. The remittance basis means that these individuals are liable to tax on income and gains from 'overseas' sources, only to the extent that such income and gains are remitted to the UK. The OECD definition of residence would not accommodate such a person although, presumably, they would seek to retain income and profits from the other contracting state outside the UK and thus would not seek to rely on the treaty anyway. This notwithstanding, the OECD suggests that, in the case of individuals, full liability to tax is expected worldwide for treaty benefits to be available.The remit of the term 'liability to tax' is certainly much more easily understood in the context of an individual. In most countries, individuals are subject to comprehensive tax on their income and gains. There are no instances of individuals with particular, inalienable characteristics being eligible for special tax exemptions. Obviously, individuals may not reach a threshold of income that obliges them to pay tax - thus, while being fully liable to tax, they pay none. Equally, some jurisdictions may provide tax reliefs, for example, for families with children or married couples that are not of universal application. However, the essential feature is that all individuals are generally subject to the same tax laws and such laws are applied in accordance with their circumstances.Beyond individuals, the matter becomes more complex. This complexity arises from the fact that jurisdictions interpret the term 'liable to tax' differently within their domestic framework. The OECD commentary recognises this. It acknowledges that while many jurisdictions treat entities that may be exempted from certain taxes as being 'liable to tax', others do not.How liable?In certain cases, the entity position is clear and a review of these cases can help emphasise the lack of clarity in other instances.If an entity has no tax exposure in itself as distinct from its owners, then it is relatively easy to acknowledge that it is not liable to tax. A clear example of this arises with partnerships. …


The induction characteristics of sevoflurane in nitrous oxide and oxygen were compared with sevoflurane in oxygen alone and a propofol infusion. A vital capacity technique was used for the gaseous induction groups using a Mapleson A system and a 4‐litre reservoir bag. Four end‐points of anaesthesia were recorded: time to cessation of finger tapping, time to loss of eyelash reflex, time to jaw relaxation and time to regular settled breathing after laryngeal mask airway insertion. We also recorded sequential blood pressure and pulse rate, the incidence of adverse airway events and the acceptability of the induction technique. Propofol had a faster time to cessation of finger tapping (p <0.05) and jaw relaxation (p <0.01). These differences disappeared with the final induction stage and sevoflurane in nitrous oxide and oxygen had the faster time to regular settled breathing, though this did not reach statistical significance. Cardiovascular stability was good and comparable in all groups. There were few adverse airway events in any group and none caused oxygen saturation to fall below 96%. There was more excitation in the gaseous induction groups, though this did not interfere with induction. Patient satisfaction with induction was high.


Standard economic models suggest that adverse demand shocks will lead to bigger employment losses if institutional factors like minimum wages or trade unions prevent real wages from declining. Some analysts have argued that this insight explains the dichotomy between the United States, where real wages of less-skilled workers fell over the 1980s and aggregate employment expanded vigorously, and Europe, where real wages of less-skilled workers were constant and employment was stagnant. We test this hypothesis by comparing recent changes in wage and employment rates for different age and education groups in Canada, France and the United States. We argue that similar trade and technology shocks that led to falling real wages for less-skilled workers in the United States have affected Canada and France. Consistent with the view that labour market institutions in these countries inhibit wage flexibility, we find that the relative wages of less-skilled workers fell somewhat less in Canada that in the United States during the 1980s and did not fall at all in France. Nevertheless, we find similar patterns of employment changes by skill group in the three countries.


The present study examines the relationship of knowledge resources of the topic and their representation to the self-evaluation of content in academic writing. Factor analysis of the questionnaire data gathered from 403 non-English-major graduate students yields four types of knowledge resources and eight types of knowledge representation strategies. Data analysis shows that personal experience is the most preferred knowledge resource, and that the most frequently used strategies of knowledge representation range from subjective perspective, contrastive evidence, objective statement, paraphrasing, and comprehensive processing to evidence evaluation. Further correlation analysis indicates that content evaluation is significantly correlated to three external knowledge resources (authoritative evidence, multisource evidence and professional knowledge) and five external knowledge representation strategies (objective statement, paraphrasing, comprehensive processing, evidence evaluation, and objective perspective).


To understand how neural circuits process information, it is essential to identify the relationship between computation and circuit topology. Rich-clubs, highly interconnected sets of neurons, are known to propagate a disproportionate amount of information within cortical circuits. Here, we test the hypothesis that rich-clubs also perform a disproportionate amount of computation. To do so, we recorded the spiking activity of on average ∼300 well-isolated individual neurons from organotypic cortical cultures. We then constructed weighted, directed networks reflecting the effective connectivity between the neurons. For each neuron, we quantified the amount of computation it performed based on its inputs. We found that rich-club neurons compute ∼200% more information than neurons outside of the rich club. Indeed, the amount of computation performed in the rich-club was proportional to the amount information propagation by the same neurons. This suggests that, in these circuits, information propagation drives computation. Comparing the computation-to-propagation ratio inside versus outside of the rich club showed that rich clubs compute at a slightly, though significantly, reduced level (∼4% lower). In total, our findings indicate that rich club topology in effective cortical circuits supports not only information propagation but also neural computation. AUTHOR SUMMARY Here we answer the question of whether rich club topology in functional cortical circuits supports neural computation as it has been previously shown to do for information propagation. To do so, we combined network analysis with information theoretic tools to analyze the spiking activity of hundreds of neurons recorded from organotypic cultures of mouse somatosensory cortex. We found that neurons in rich clubs computed significantly more than neurons outside of rich clubs, suggesting that rich-clubs do support computation in cortical circuits. Indeed, the amount of computation that we found in the rich club was proportional to the amount of information they propagate suggesting that, in these circuits, information propagation drives computation.


This article discusses a new genre in ESL materials—the increasingly popular survival texts designed for newly arrived adults. A wide range of selections from these texts is examined in light of the stated goals of curriculum writers, as well as the less obvious social implications of these materials. In view of the explicit concern with realistic context, texts are evaluated in terms of both how accurately they reflect the immigrants' reality and the extent to which they may shape that reality. Examination of excerpts reveals that frequently, neither the situational content nor the communicative structure of materials reflects authentic interaction. Furthermore, the texts often prepare students for subservient social roles and reinforce hierarchical relations within the classroom by precluding the creation of meaning and the development of critical thinking skills. Finally, Freire's (1981) distinction between problem-solving and problem-posing pedagogues is suggested as a framework for interpreting the shortcomings of the survival genre and for moving toward a more empowering mode of curriculum.


Objective: The objective of this study was to assess the baseline knowledge and skills of pediatric residents in Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM). Methods: participants were pediatric residents in postgraduate years (PGY) 1-4 in, a residency training program within a university setting. They were asked to complete the previously validated Results: A total of 10 pediatric residents completed the test with a mean of (PGY 2.5) for the residency year. The scores achieved were highly variable with a mean of 46%. Results showed a decline in the mean score to 32% for questions related to critical appraisal of the evidence compared to the mean of 60% for conversion of information to an answerable question and tracking down the best evidence to answer the question. Conclusion: r esidents showed some knowledge and expertise about formulating a clinical question and searching for evidence-based answers. However, they lack the skill of how to critically appraise the scientific literature and how to incorporate a new management strategy into clinical practice. A properly structured EBM educational prescription is necessary for trainees to improve their status as informed bedside clinicians Fresno test to assess their knowledge in the four domains of EBM.


: This paper seeks to identify the differentiated impacts of the crisis on specific groups of informal workers. The analysis draws on official nationally representative labour force surveys collected quarterly by South Africa's national statistical agency (Statistics South Africa). Based on an analysis of six quarters of labour market data (with the first quarter of 2020 as the 'pre-COVID' baseline), the paper aims to identify the labour market impacts of the first three waves of the pandemic and of one of the world's strictest 'lockdowns' (as it was described at the time—in April 2020). In investigating the contours of the pandemic's impact on the South African informal economy, the paper focuses, in particular, on the different impacts by gender, sector, and status in employment. The findings show that both relative and absolute job losses have been greater in the informal economy, while the rate and level of recovery have been greater for formal employment. Further, the data suggest uneven impacts within the informal economy with women informal workers, those working in the informal sector and those in retail and community and social services being particularly hard hit. The pandemic period has thus widened pre-existing inequalities and fault lines. In policy terms, this suggests that the informal economy should be a priority in economic recovery efforts but also that support requires differentiated approaches and a range of measures.


The changes of tunnel rock stress caused by dynamic load is a hot point in geotechnical engineering. The paper introduces seismic methods of seismic design codes in China. The paper select state road 318(Huangcaoping part)as an example. Using finite difference software to analyze the rock pressure changes around the lining-tunnel with different seismic inputs. Comparing the results the rock static pressure and find the relative amplification factor between dynamic pressure and static pressure. Based on the results of analysis, we can obtain the following conclusions: As the peak ground motion acceleration increases, the peak value of tunnel rock increases, too. The amplifications change in a small range. The oblique parts of tunnel are the weakest parts of the tunnels. In different areas, the amplifications change a lot. The maximum ones are in the area of oblique.


Background & Purpose:
 Klotho was originally discovered as an anti-senescence gene. Mutation of klotho gene accelerates aging and shortens lifespan while overexpression of klotho gene extends lifespan in mice. We recently demonstrated that global mutation of klotho gene (+/-) increased blood pressure (BP). However, the underlying mechanism is not fully understood. The purpose of this experiment is to investigate if renal klotho plays a role in hypertension. Specifically, we assessed if kidney-specific deletion of klotho gene affects BP and renal function in male mice.

 Methods & Results:
 Briefly, kidney-specific Cre mice and klotho floxed mice were bred for generating kidney-specific klotho heterozygous (KspKL+/-) mice. Daily food and water intakes and urine output were monitored in wild type and KspKL+/- mice (16 weeks) using metabolic cages. BP was by direct cannulation of the carotid artery. Deletion of renal klotho significantly increased BP by 25 mmHg in mice without affecting the heart rate. Food and water intakes were not different between KspKL+/- and WT mice. Interestingly, 24-hr urine flow (UF) was significantly decreased in KspKL+/- mice (WT: 5.140± 0.3, KspKL+/-: 4.052±0.2,μL/min/100 gm body wt). The decrease in UF was also associated with a decrease in urinary sodium excretion (UNaV) in KspKL+/- mice compared to wild type (WT: 0.18± 0.01, KspKL+/-: 0.13±0.01, μmol/μL) without altering urinary potassium excretion. The cumulative sodium balance remained positive during the observation period with no significant difference between KspKL+/- and WT mice WT. Kidney-specific klotho deficiency did not affect the glomerular filtration rate (GFR).

 Conclusions:
 This study demonstrates for the first time that kidney klotho deficiency is sufficient to cause hypertension. Klotho deficiency-induced hypertension may be due to impaired Na excretion. Klotho may be a therapeutic target for kidney dysfunction and hypertension. An additional study is warranted to investigate if klotho regulates tubular ENaC and Na, K-ATP synthase.


Between 1880 and 1930, the British Empire's vast infrastructural developments facilitated the incorporation of large parts of the globe into what Immanuel Wallerstein and others have called the capitalist 'world-system'. Colonial literature written throughout this period, in recording this vast expansion, repeatedly cites imperial infrastructures to make sense of the various geographies in which it is set. Physical embodiments of empire proliferate in this writing. Railways and trains, telegraph wires and telegrams, roads and bridges, steamships and shipping lines, canals and other forms of irrigation, cantonments, the colonial bungalow and other kinds of colonial urban architecture—all of these infrastructural lines break up the landscape and give shape to the literature's depiction and production of colonial space. In order to analyse these physical embodiments of empire in colonial literature, this thesis develops a methodological reading practice called infrastructural reading. Rooted in a dualistic, yet connected use of the word 'infrastructure', this reading strategy works as a critical tool for analysing a mutually sustaining relationship embedded within these literary narratives. It focuses on the infrastructures in the text, both physical and symbolic, in order to excavate the infrastructures of the text, be they geographic, social or economic—namely, the material conditions of the world-system that underpinned Britain's imperial expansion. This methodology is applied to a number of colonial authors including H. Rider Haggard, Olive Schreiner, William Plomer and John Buchan in South Africa and Flora Annie Steel, E.M. Forster, Edmund Candler and Edward Thompson in India. The results show that the infrastructural networks that circulate through colonial fiction are almost always related to some form of anti-imperial resistance, manifestations that include ideological anxieties, limitations and silences, as well as more direct objections to and acts of violent defiance against imperial control and capitalist accumulation. In so doing, the thesis demonstrates how this literary-cultural terrain and the resistance embedded within it has been shaped by, and has in turn shaped, the infrastructure of the capitalist world-system.


A good particle candidate for Cold Dark Matter (CDM) is the supersymmetric neutralino or more generally a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP). The expected interaction rate of WIMPs with the detector medium in the direct detection experiments is below 0.01 events/kg/day. This makes a good knowledge of the background conditions highly important, especially with ever increasing sensitivity of the detectors. One major component of the background is related to energetic neutrons induced by cosmic muons. However, the flux of low energy and thermal neutrons typically from (α,n) reactions in the rock surrounding underground experiments gives also valuable information about the overall environmental activity. Detailed studies carried out in the framework of the Edelweiss experiment are presented with first identification of muon-induced neutron candidates in Ge bolometers.


T he wavy shape of spirochetes is a highly distinctive feature of this phylum. Unlike other Eubacteria (see Chapter 13), the spirochetal flagella are inserted at the bacterial poles but extend along the cell itself, between the bacterial inner and outer membranes. This causes the bacteria to move in a waveor screw-like fashion, a highly efficient form of motility for moving through viscous substances such as human tissue. The spirochetes include many important invasive pathogens of humans and other animals, including the causative agents of syphilis, Lyme disease, relapsing fever, and leptospirosis.


The pharmacologic treatment of attentiondeficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) generally involves the use of stimulant medications. Stimulants have been used for decades and have a long history of being safe and effective treatments. One significant limitation until recently has been the short time-action profile of this class of medications, requiring multiple doses to treat the child with ADHD throughout an entire day. Recent advances in drug-delivery systems have offered more options, leading to once-daily dosing for many patients taking stimulant therapy. For those patients who cannot tolerate or have limited response to stimulants, or simply prefer nonstimulant therapy, until recently few options have been available, however, a nonstimulant therapy is now available. This article will discuss newer formulations available for stimulant therapy, and findings from ongoing research of newly approved therapies and therapies currently in development.


Narrative has long been investigated as a culturally sensitive mode of expression which may vary in terms of narrative content, linguistic expression and interactional style. This thesis builds on earlier cross-cultural studies of narrative, exploring the stories told by Kurdish and English speakers. Through the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data (80 stories told by Iraqi Kurdish and white British English-speaking women, and semi-structured ethnographic interviews with the same participants), I examine the variation in the structure and styles of the stories of personal experiences told by selected Iraqi Kurdish and white British English-speaking women using Labov's (1972) and Ochs and Capps' (2001) models of narrative analysis. The thesis then goes on to explore the implications that these variations might have for interpreting the cultural identities of the participants through their stories.
The findings show cross-cultural variation in the Iraqi Kurdish and white British English women's style and structure of storytelling. All the Kurdish participants preferred repetition in their stories, regardless of their multilingual status or whether they told stories in Kurdish or English. In contrast the white British English participants favoured lexical intensifiers in their storytelling style. Another difference emerged between the groups of participants. Whilst all the Kurdish participants perceived boosters as more vivid, it was the English monolinguals who perceived repetition as more vivid (on average).The Kurdish participants' style of storytelling is more dramatized and more interactive than that of the the white British English-speaking women. This difference could not be explained by a surface level comparison based on the cultural identity of the tellers, but instead involved the complex interplay of cultural context, story genre and topics of story genres. In terms of structure, the participants in this study did not only tell narratives but also other types of story genres including anecdotes, exemplums and recounts with exemplums being the most frequent for the Kurdish speakers. This confirmed the Kurdish women's assertion, in the ethnographic interviews, of the moral purpose of storytelling, with their frequent use of exemplums reflecting this emphasis on moral purpose.


Cooperative is a group of people that allow several people or legal entity working together on a basic of voluntary held a job to improve the lives of its members (Sagimun, 2005). The purpose of this study is to look at the effect of macroeconomic variables, namely the level of income per capita, unemployment rate, education level, poverty level, average expenditure per capita and human development index of 33 provinces in Indonesia to the number of active cooperatives in every province in Indonesia. In addition, this study uses the sample data from every province in Indonesia with the time span from 2006 to 2013. This study uses a quantitative approach using Multiple Regression through SPSS 16. The results of this study can be utilised by the government, especially the Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs, public and non-governmental organisations in a joint effort to increase Indonesian cooperatives in facing the internationalisation.


A self-driving vehicle (SDV) must be able to perceive its surroundings and predict the future behavior of other traffic participants. Existing works either perform object detection followed by trajectory forecasting of the detected objects, or predict dense occupancy and flow grids for the whole scene. The former poses a safety concern as the number of detections needs to be kept low for efficiency reasons, sacrificing object recall. The latter is computationally expensive due to the high-dimensionality of the output grid, and suffers from the limited receptive field inherent to fully convolutional networks. Furthermore, both approaches employ many computational resources predicting areas or objects that might never be queried by the motion planner. This motivates our unified approach to perception and future prediction that implicitly represents occupancy and flow over time with a single neural network. Our method avoids unnecessary computation, as it can be directly queried by the motion planner at continuous spatio-temporal locations. Moreover, we design an architecture that overcomes the limited receptive field of previous explicit occupancy prediction methods by adding an efficient yet effective global attention mechanism. Through extensive experiments in both urban and highway settings, we demonstrate that our implicit model outperforms the current state-of-the-art. For more information, visit the project website: https://waabi.ai/research/implicito.


Research shows that the way we remember things for a few seconds is a different mechanism from the way we remember things for a longer time. Short-term memory is based on persistently firing neurons, whereas storing information for a longer time is based on strengthening the synapses or even forming new neural connections. Information about location and appearance of an object is segregated and processed by separate neurons. Furthermore neurons can continue firing using different mechanisms. Here, we have designed a biomimetic neuromorphic circuit that mimics short-term memory by firing neurons, using biological mechanisms to remember location and shape of an object. Our neuromorphic circuit has a hybrid architecture. Neurons are designed with CMOS 45nm technology and synapses are designed with carbon nanotubes (CNT).


The main aim of this project is to develop a suitable antenna working at 430 MHz frequency. In applications where size, weight, cost, performance, ease of installation, and aerodynamic profile are constraints, low profile antennas like micro strip and printed slot antennas are required. At first, we have designed a simple Rectangular Micro strip Patch Antenna. We have obtained its usable Bandwidth, Radiation pattern and related graphical representations. After that an elliptical slot is cut inside a rectangular patch which is shifted towards right. The results of both the designs are compared and it was found that an increase in the bandwidth of 28% and gain of 8.85 dB is being achieved as that of a simple Rectangular micro strip patch antenna. In this project, all the simulations have been done using the Zealand Inc. IE3D software. By using this software it is possible to obtain the 3D radiation pattern of planar circuit. It uses naturally occurring fluctuations in the radio refraction index and precipitations as targets. 400-500 MHz is considered as the best frequency band for wind profilers due to their optimal size and optimal performance. In India, the allotted band for this type of profiler is 420-435 MHz. The entire project is being carried out at National Atmospheric Research Laboratory (NARL), ISRO. These radars play a key role in weather forecasting that is for lower atmospheric research applications.


Here, we have analysed the H(+)-ATPase-mediated extrusion of protons across the plasma membrane (PM) of rhizodermic cells, a process that is inducible by iron (Fe) deficiency and thought to serve in the mobilization of sparingly soluble Fe sources. The induction and function of Fe-responsive PM H(+)-ATPases in Arabidopsis roots was investigated by gene expression analysis and by using mutants defective in the expression or function of one of the isogenes. In addition, the expression of the most responsive isogenes was investigated in natural Arabidopsis accessions that have been selected for their in vivo proton extrusion activity. Our data suggest that the rhizosphere acidification in response to Fe deficiency is chiefly mediated by AHA2, while AHA1 functions as a housekeeping isoform. The aha7 knock-out mutant plants showed a reduced frequency of root hairs, suggesting an involvement of AHA7 in the differentiation of rhizodermic cells. Acidification capacity varied among Arabidopsis accessions and was associated with a high induction of AHA2 and IRT1, a high relative growth rate and a shoot-root ratio that was unaffected by the external Fe supply. An effective regulation of the Fe-responsive genes and a stable shoot-root ratio may represent important characteristics for the Fe uptake efficiency.


The paucity of studies in the field of supply chain management (SCM) focusing on repairing and maintenance operations within the services sector is an undeniable reality. It is important to explore how operations of maintenance and repair services (MRS) are nowadays structured and positioned to understand their contributions to SCM effectiveness. This research explored the integration level between internal functional areas of services organisations and principal business processes of suppliers and customers. The research also identified key barriers faced by SCM practitioners when deploying SCM best practices and models across the repair services providers. The primary data was collected from 89 SCM leaders and managers from organizations working in a Middle-Eastern country through the use of an online survey. The results revealed that there is a good level of internal integration between main business functional areas within MRS operations, e.g. material planning, purchasing, logistics, contracts, finance, and sales, with exception of reverse logistics, an important business function to the effective management of product services supply chain (PSSC). The study also revealed a partial level of external supply chain integration among local PSSCs participants, wherein only three SCM business processes; i.e. suppliers' relationship management, order fulfilment, and service delivery management, are significantly integrated at interorganizational levels. Other crucial processes of SCM for PSSCs; customer relationship, services demand, services capacity, resources management, product and information flow management, and service product development, were all identified with a medium level of integration among local operations, which prevent local MRS organisation from generating additional values in terms of services and products quality improvement, product lifecycle management, and development of innovative services solutions to the market. The study also revealed that organizational cultures, resources availability, lack of vision and comprehension from top management, and absence of trust and collaboration within SCM participants are the main obstacles associated with the deployment of models and SCM best practices within repairing services operations.


Abstract : In an iNET telemetry network, Link Manager (LM) dynamically allocates capacity to radio links to achieve desired QoS guarantees. Under the T&E S&T iMANPOL program, we developed an enhanced capacity allocation algorithm that can better cope with severe congestion and misbehaving users and traffic flows. We compare the E-LM with the LM baseline algorithm (B-LM), which employs priority-weighted allocation. The B-LM is expected to perform well for the majority of traffic patterns, but does not prevent an ill-behaved traffic class from causing excessive latency on other radio links. The E-LM ensures that each class has a guaranteed portion of the total available bandwidth that is proportional to the weight of the class. If the traffic loading of a class is lower than its quota, the difference can be flexibly shared by other classes across multiple links. If the traffic loading of a class is higher than its quota, its demand may still be satisfied, provided that the capacity is not taken away from well-behaved traffic classes that stay below their quotas. The qualitative analysis shows the E-LM provides lower latencies for the well-behaved links in overloading conditions and increases the overall system throughput when the traffic is unbalanced. We conducted extensive experiments to confirm that analysis, with the E-LM reducing latency of well-behaved flows up to 90%, and increasing overall throughput up to 65% over the B-LM.


The ballistic properties of the aluminium alloy AA6070 in different tempers are studied, using target plates of 20 mm thickness in tempers O (annealed), T4 (naturally aged), T6 (peak strength) and T7 (overaged). The stressstrain behaviour of the different tempers was characterised by quasi-static tension tests and was found to vary considerably with temper in regards to strength, strain hardening and ductility. Ballistic impact tests using 7.62 mm APM2 bullets were then carried out, and the ballistic limit velocities were obtained for all tempers. In the material tests it was shown that the O-temper was most ductile and almost no fragmentation took place during the ballistic impact tests. The T6-temper proved to be least ductile, and fragmentation was commonly seen. The experiments show that despite fragmentation, strength is a more important feature than ductility in ballistic impact for this alloy, at least for the given projectile and within the velocity range investigated. A thermoelasticthermoviscoplastic constitutive relation and a ductile fracture criterion were determined for each temper, and finite element analyses were performed using the IMPETUS Afea Solver with fully integrated 3-order 64-node hexahedrons. The numerical simulations predicted the same variation in ballistic limit velocity with respect to temper condition as found in the experiments, but the results were consistently to the conservative side. In addition, analytical calculations using the cylindrical cavity expansion theory (CCET) were carried out. The ballistic limit velocities resulting from these calculations were found to be in good agreement with the experimental data.


Experimental research in medical physics has expanded the limits of our knowledge and provided novel imaging and therapy technologies for patients around the world. However, experimental efforts are challenging due to constraints in funding, space, time and other forms of institutional support. In this joint ESTRO-AAPM symposium, four exciting experimental projects from four different countries are highlighted. Each project is focused on a different aspect of radiation therapy. From the USA, we will hear about a new linear accelerator concept for more compact and efficient therapy devices. From Canada, we will learn about novel linear accelerator target design and the implications for imaging and therapy. From France, we will discover a mature translational effort to incorporate theranostic nanoparticles in MR-guided radiation therapy. From Germany, we will find out about a novel in-treatment imaging modality for particle therapy. These examples of high impact, experimental medical physics research are representative of the diversity of such efforts that are on-going around the globe. J. Robar, Research is supported through collaboration with Varian Medical Systems and Brainlab AGD. Westerly, This work is supported by the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. COI: NONEK. Parodi, Part of the presented work is supported by the DFG (German Research Foundation) Cluster of Excellence MAP (Munich-Centre for Advanced Photonics) and has been carried out in collaboration with IBA.


Finding general XOR-schemes to minimize memory and network contention for accessing arrays with arbitrary sets of data templates is presented. A combined XOR-matrix is proposed together with a necessary and sufficient condition for conflict-free access. We present a new characterization of the baseline network. Finding an XOR-matrix for combined templates is shown to be an NP-complete problem. A heuristic is proposed for finding XOR-matrices by determining the constraints of each template-matrix and solving a set of simultaneous equations for each row. Evaluation shows significant reduction of memory and network contention compared to interleaving and to static row-column-diagonals storage.


Abstract The study aims to investigate how prior experience of interlocutors interacts with actual situational context in intercultural interactions when the latter is represented by a well-known frame: getting acquainted with others. It attempts to demonstrate how the cultural frame of the target language is broken up and substituted with an emergent frame that is co-constructed from elements from prior experience with the target language, the first language and the actual situational experience. Getting acquainted with others is a closed social situation, a cultural frame in which interlocutors usually have to follow a behavior pattern dictated by the requirements of the socio-cultural background in a given speech community. There is a 'skeleton' of these 'getting to know you' procedures that can be considered universal but is substantiated differently in every language. In each conversation in any language, 'flesh' is added to the 'skeleton' in a dynamic and co-constructed manner. However, there is a difference between how this happens in L1 and in intercultural interactions. While in L1 the 'flesh' on the skeleton is predetermined to a significant extent by requirements of core common ground in the given language, in intercultural encounters this 'flesh building' process in the target language (in this case English) is not set but is co-constructed by the interlocutors as emergent common ground relying on their prior experience with their own L1 culture, limited experience with the target culture and the assessment of the actual situational context. In this study the co-construction process, i.e. emergent common ground will be analyzed by examining the use of formulaic language and freely generated language in several discourse segments.


The perovskite family includes many titanates used in various electroceramic applications,for Example,electronic, electro-optical, and electromechanical applications of ceramics. Barium titanate, having a perovskite structure, is a common ferroelectric material with a high dielectric constant, which is widely utilized to manufacture electronic components such as mutilayer capacitors (MLCs), PTC thermistors, piezoelectric transducers, and a variety of electro-optical devices. Because of people's demands, dielectric (essentially nonconducting) characteristics of ceramic materials are increasing rapidly. At the same time, people are attempting to reduce the size of all communication devices as small and as light as possible. Due to this trend, high dielectric constant materials such as barium titanate have nowadays become more and more important in ceramic materials.This thesis describes perovskite structure based on barium titanate composition. Oxide perovskites (ABO3) are important electroceramics having a large area of functionalities by virtue of their unique magnetic, dielectric, semiconducting or superconducting properties. These properties are related to the crystal structure, microstructure, and nature and distribution of point defects prevailing in the ceramics, which, in turn, depend on synthesis routes and processing parameters adopted. Extensive studies are reported in literature on these aspects of ceramics. The properties are also sensitive to such factors as atomic composition (non-stoichiometry), interfacial characteristics and chemical states as well as distribution, spatial and depth-wise, of the constituents of the material. Non-stoichiometry, oxygen non-stoichiometry in particular, is prevalent in perovskites. Oxygen vacancies, apart from bringing about structural modifications, act as donors and are responsible for the electrical conductivity of ceramics. The atomic composition in interfacial regions of polycrystalline materials is often different from the nominal or bulk composition. Therefore, a detailed study on these aspects of materials is desirable for a comprehensive assessment of their properties.This thesis presents investigations on the atomic composition and microstructural features of barium titanate and other electronic ceramics, namely, barium calcium titanates, barium praseodymium titanates and barium dysprosium titanates, by surface analytical techniques. The structural investigations of the ceramics have been carried out by X-ray diffraction, Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS) in association with scanning electron microscopy to probe the ceramographic study along with the compositional analysis.


A broadband dielectric spectroscopic (BDS) study of poly(2,5-benzimidazole) revealed three sub-glass relaxations and the manner in which the time scales of these local molecular motions shift with annealing temperature and time. Also issuing from the BDS studies was a trend in the degree of connectivity of charge migration pathways and conductivity with annealing temperature and time. These studies were complemented with dynamic mechanical analysis, which showed the same relaxations, and solid state 1H and 13C NMR studies that showed hydrogen bonding group mobility versus temperature. Wide angle X-ray diffraction investigations indicated an increase in chain-packing efficiency that was used to rationalize the BDS and NMR results. Copyright © 2011 Society of Chemical Industry


Orthogonally polarized optical feedback has been proven to act on the frequency of semiconductor lasers. The coupling of this feedback to a nonlinear filter results in bistability for the frequency of the laser output [Phys. Rev. Lett.94, 173902 (2005)]. This phenomenon opens the way to the development of all-optical devices such as a switch between frequency states of the optical emission. For demonstrating this particular application we use an AsGaAl monomode laser emitting around 852 nm, together with a warm atomic cesium vapor as a resonant filter. The output frequency state of the switch is determined by two different frequencies of a control laser, with each control frequency changing the switch frequency in only one direction.


Note: 37th Annual Meeting, APS, Division of Plasma Physics, Louisville, KY, USA, November 1995, Bull. of APS, Vol. 40, No 11, 1766 (1995) Reference CRPP-CONF-1995-058 Record created on 2008-05-13, modified on 2017-05-12


This study involves problem of state feedback controller (SFC) design for switched systems with time varying delay. The essential objective is to create a state feedback controller with a switching rule assuring the robust exponential stability and guarantee an H∞ performance of the resulting closed loop hybrid system. Applying Average Dwell Time (ADT) approaches and using appropriate Lyapunov Krasovskii functional (LKf), LMI-based criterion is developed to deal with problem H∞ analysis and synthesis. Simulation examples including the comparisons are relevant to expose the merit of the designed technique.


Prediction is a well-studied machine learning task, and prediction algorithms are core ingredients in online products and services. Despite their centrality in the competition between online companies who offer prediction-based products, the strategic use of prediction algorithms remains unexplored. The goal of this paper is to examine strategic use of prediction algorithms. We introduce a novel game-theoretic setting that is based on the PAC learning framework, where each player (aka a prediction algorithm aimed at competition) seeks to maximize the sum of points for which it produces an accurate prediction and the others do not. We show that algorithms aiming at generalization may wittingly mispredict some points to perform better than others on expectation. We analyze the empirical game, i.e., the game induced on a given sample, prove that it always possesses a pure Nash equilibrium, and show that every better-response learning process converges. Moreover, our learning-theoretic analysis suggests that players can, with high probability, learn an approximate pure Nash equilibrium for the whole population using a small number of samples.


Background Telomerase is a reverse transcriptase that maintains the telomeres of linear chromosomes and preserves genomic integrity. The core components are a catalytic protein subunit, the telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT), and an RNA subunit, the telomerase RNA (TR). Telomerase is unique in its ability to catalyze processive DNA synthesis, which is facilitated by telomere-specific DNA-binding domains in TERT called anchor sites. A conserved glutamine residue in the TERT N-terminus is important for anchor site interactions in lower eukaryotes. The significance of this residue in higher eukaryotes, however, has not been investigated. Methodology/Principal Findings To understand the significance of this residue in higher eukaryotes, we performed site-directed mutagenesis on human TERT (hTERT) Q169 to create neutral (Q169A), conservative (Q169N), and non-conservative (Q169D) mutant proteins. We show that these mutations severely compromise telomerase activity in vitro and in vivo. The functional defects are not due to abrogated interactions with hTR or telomeric ssDNA. However, substitution of hTERT Q169 dramatically impaired the ability of telomerase to incorporate nucleotides at the second position of the template. Furthermore, Q169 mutagenesis altered the relative strength of hTERT-telomeric ssDNA interactions, which identifies Q169 as a novel residue in hTERT required for optimal primer binding. Proteolysis experiments indicate that Q169 substitution alters the protease-sensitivity of the hTERT N-terminus, indicating that a conformational change in this region of hTERT is likely critical for catalytic function. Conclusions/Significance We provide the first detailed evidence regarding the biochemical and cellular roles of an evolutionarily-conserved Gln residue in higher eukaryotes. Collectively, our results indicate that Q169 is needed to maintain the hTERT N-terminus in a conformation that is necessary for optimal enzyme-primer interactions and nucleotide incorporation. We show that Q169 is critical for the structure and function of human telomerase, thereby identifying a novel residue in hTERT that may be amenable to therapeutic intervention.


Modelling and simulation permeate all areas of business, science and engineering and increasingly complex simulation systems often require huge computing resources and data sets that are geographically distributed. The widely adopted platform for building distributed simulations is the High Level Architecture (HLA). Deficiencies associated with HLA have been well discussed in the literature. The advent of Grid technology enables the use of distributed computing resources and facilitates the access of geographically distributed data. In this paper, we propose a framework for executing large-scale distributed simulations using Grid services. The framework addresses some of the deficiencies of HLA, including dynamic discovery and resource utilization. End-users can construct large-scale distributed simulations using this framework with ease.


This paper discusses issues related to autonomy within BDIbased intelligent agent architectures and applications. One advantage that agent-based applications built upon formal theories such as BDI (Belief-Desire-Intention) theories have over standard application implementation paradigms is their explicit implementation of some of the mentalistic states, such as goals, that are typically associated with autonomy. To capture the intuition that autonomy represents independence from external influences such as other agents, we define autonomy as the level of separation between these external influences and an agent's internal structures, considering not only goals, but also intentions, beliefs, and capabilities. Taking an existing BDI architecture (JAM) as an example, we measure the existing autonomy level for each of these attributes and then introduce and discuss ideas related to architectural modifications and programming practices that support flexible and perhaps dynamic modification of an agent's autonomy.


The objective of this article is to report the results of a study examining the Enterprise Risk Management (hereinafter referred to as "ERM") practiced by four European-based insurance3 companies. In particular, the study explores the understanding, evolution, design, and performance of ERM in these organizations and the challenges which they face in implementing ERM. The study concludes that the level of understanding of the nature of ERM varies significantly between companies and between different parts of the same organization. In addition, whilst effective ERM requires an interdisciplinary approach, the ERM which is practiced by the European-based insurers is dominated by a single discipline.


Objective:
 Cerebral venous vessels a have unique morphology. No information is available regarding the presence of anomalous venous structure and related consequences in children. We aim to describe the frequency of anatomical variants (persistent fetal structures), and physiological changes (collateralization), in children with CSVT. We hypothesize that these variations impact in the re-distribution of venous drainage in the presence of stressors such as anemia or dehydration.

 Methods:
 We retrospectively reviewed children (1 month - 18 years), with CSVT over 5 years (Jan 2008 - Dec 2013). We excluded children with arterial ischemic stroke, trauma, compressive intracranial lesions and systemic venous hypertension. We reviewed for symptoms at presentation, risk factors, sinus involved, thrombus location, parenchymal lesions, antithrombotic therapy, outcome using the Paediatric Stroke Outcome Measure (PSOM) and recanalization rate at last follow-up. MRV/CTV reports were evaluated for anatomical variants and physiological changes in the venous systems.

 Results:
 Thirty-four children were identified. 17 boys (50%), with mean age at CSVT of 13.5 years (0.2 -17.6 years). 11 had anatomical variations (32%) vs. 23 (68%) with typical anatomy. These included 6 (54%) children with abnormal sinus morphology (hypoplasia/absence of a major dural sinus), 3 (27%) children with persistent fetal structures and 6 (54%) with prominent collateralization. Most of the cases had > 1 anatomical variant together. Signs of increased intracranial pressure were seen more frequently in children with anatomical variants 7(63%) than in those without variants 7(30%), although not statistically significant. 5 children (45%) with anatomical variations had brain parenchymal involvement vs. 5 (22%) with normal anatomy. Mean recanalization rate was the same between the two groups: 10(90%) at mean follow-up of 5.5mo (3 - 9mo) in the variant vs. 22(96%) at 4.2mo (1.5 - 9mo) in the normal anatomy group.

 Conclusion:
 The presence of anatomical variants in the cerebral venous structures may be associated with a more severe initial presentation in children with CSVT. Variant venous anatomy may be less efficient in compensating for the obstruction to venous outflow due to thrombosis.


Mussels provide habitat for diverse assemblages and have a major influence on local biodiversity. Organisms may be associated with the physical structure of the mussels or mussel beds, with biological characteristics of the shells of the mussels or with the living mussels themselves. We examined colonisation of experimentally-built patches of live mussels, dead mussel shells and resin mimics to test models regarding these cues. The sessile assemblage on the valves of the mussels and the mobile assemblage living in the spaces among the mussels were separately examined to evaluate whether they respond in the same way. In addition, the experiment incorporated 2 levels of clumping of mussels to represent sparse and clumped mussel beds after 5 and 9 mo of deployment of the patches. With few exceptions, there was no effect of the types of mussels provided; similar species and abundances were found on and among live mussels, dead shells and resin mimics after both time periods. Therefore, it appears that mussel beds act predominantly as physical habitats for these fauna. In contrast, the degree of clumping of mussels in a patch had major effects. After 5 mo, barna- cles and spirorbid polychaetes had greater covers on the valves of sparsely packed mussels than on clumped mussels. The opposite pattern was shown by spirorbids and serpulids after 9 mo, although barnacles retained their original pattern. Some mobile taxa showed greater abundances in clumped than sparse patches, but these differences largely disappeared when the data were corrected for the number of mussels. Therefore, mobile taxa appeared to respond directly to the number of mussels in a patch; more mussels created more habitat. This was not the case for the sessile assemblage, where mussel shells in sparse beds appeared to provide different habitat from those in clumped beds.


The present study aimed to investigate individual differences of causal connectivity between brain regions in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) which was a psychiatric disorder. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (R-fMRI) data of typically-developing controls (TDC) children group and combined ADHD (ADHD-C) children group were distinguished by the support vector machine (SVM) with linear kernel function, based on regional homogeneity (ReHo), amplitude of low frequency fluctuation (ALFF) and fractional ALFF (FALFF). The highest classification accuracy yielded by ReHo was 90.91 %. Furthermore, the granger causality analysis (GCA) method based on the classified weight map of regions of interesting (ROIs) showed that five causal flows existed significant difference between TDC and ADHD-C. That is, the averaged GCA values of three causal connections (i.e. left VLPFC a left CC1, right PoCG a left CC1, and right PoCG a right CC2) for ADHD-C were separately stronger than those for TDC. And the other two connections (i.e. right FEF a right SOG and right CC1 a right SOG) were weaker for ADHD-C than those for TDC. In addition, only two causality flows (i.e. left VLPFC a left CC1 and right PoCG a right CC2) presented that their GCA values were positively correlation with ADHD index scores, respectively. Our findings revealed that ADHD children represented widespread abnormalities in the causality connectivity, especially involved in the attention and memory related regions. And further provided evidence that the potential neural causality flows could play a key role in characterizing individual's ADHD.


This article pursues two main objectives. First, it provides a transnational overview and analysis of participatory budgeting, which has been central to the literature on democratic innovations in citizen participation. Second, it combines this broad empirical project with a theoretical approach based on the construction of ideal-types in the Weberian tradition. Namely, it presents six models of citizen participation: participatory democracy, proximity democracy, participative modernization, multi-stakeholder participation, neo-corporatism, and community development. Although these models have evolved from participatory budgeting and the European context, it is our contention that they can help us to understand the socio-political and ideological dynamics, contexts and impacts of civic engagement and democracy today at the transnational scale.


The term shadow banking came into widespread usage with the onset of the global financial crisis to refer to a broad array of entities and activities operating outside the regular banking system that were being used to perform bank-like functions. With progress on financial inclusion - and ongoing innovation, sometimes reaching vast scale quickly - it is worth remembering that the very concept of shadow banking emanated from fast-changing market practices and a corresponding failure of financial regulation and supervision to keep pace. This brief explains why approaches to inclusive finance that are currently widespread do not share the potentially destabilizing attributes of other types of shadow banking, concluding by identifying some risks worth monitoring as the picture continues to evolve.


This article presents the aspect of the social work professionalization which responds to the new challenges of a global society that is the refugee migration. The refugee problem in the European Union has recently become one of the important social problems. Due to the political situation in Africa South European countries are already unable to manage the daily flow of refugees. EU Parliament is trying to solve this problem. Lithuania has to be ready to solve this problem as well. The country which receives refugees not only has to have the legal regulation of this process, but also the professionals who could ensure the success of their adaptation. The authors, using different empirical research materials which were conducted in Lithuania in the years 2011–2014, reveal the depth of the needs and the possibilities of the social work services while implementing these needs in the context of social services in Lithuania. This is the presentation of the experience available. This article can help you to assess the situation and the opportunities that are ahead for the Lithuanian society when helping to solve the problem of today's refugees in the European Union. At the same time this article reveals one more aspect of the identity in the social work profession, revealing the depth of the social worker's competencies in a changing society and his ability to operate in unspecified situations. KEY WORDS: migration, professionalization, social work identity, refugee needs. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15181/tbb.v71i2.1106


Beginning in the mid-1950s, a group of conservative Christians of the Dutch Reformed persuasion began an effort to integrate their religious beliefs and the findings of psychology. Their organization, the Christian Association for Psychological Studies (CAPS), is the object of this study. The article discusses the integrative shifts that occurred when the organization's constituency shifted to a more conservative evangelical base. The author argues that the key component of successful integration, or integration that serves to advance the field of psychology, occurs when the worldview of the religion is comprehensive or well developed enough to converse effectively with the science of psychology. In this historical exemplar, the author argues that in comparison to the Dutch Reformed, evangelicals were hampered in approaching psychology by their limited theological worldview. "Psychology has never succeeded in taking philosophy to itself or in leaving it alone. ... Psychology ought to fare better when it can completely surrender its philosophical heritage, in fact as well as in voiced principle, and proceed, unimpeded by a divided soul, about its business. " E. G. Boring (1929, pp. xiii-xvi) in the first edition of History of Experimental Psychology Despite the historical tension and at times outright animosity between religion and psychology, there have been individuals and groups that have sought the integration of these two ways of knowing. These persons have had some impact on the predominant field of mainstream psychology, especially recently (Miller, 1999; Richards & Bergin, 1997); however, there continues to be little in the way of historical review of this phenomenon (Vande Kemp, 1996). In particular, conservative or Evangelical Christians and their work in this integration enterprise have received little attention in the historical literature despite the large numbers of professional counselors who identify themselves as "Christian counselors" and two dedicated professional journals serving this group of integrators (Journal of Psychology and Christianity and Journal of Psychology and Theology). For this reason, the early history of the evangelical integration movement's oldest organization is a worthy study. In the history of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies (CAPS), we see an exemplar of the longstanding historical tension between psychology and religion and the factors that influence successful "integration." In this history the emergent theme is that the greatest challenge of the integration process came not so much from the science of psychology itself but from within the faith tradition of the integrators. That is, the comprehensiveness of the faith tradition or by contrast the lack of a fully developed worldview on the part of the faith tradition either propelled or inhibited the integration process. In other words, the ability to creatively integrate modern empirical psychology with an ancient scriptural religion depended on the ability of the faith tradition to speak to "every sphere of life" (a common phrase used by Abraham Kuyper and a Dutch Reformed mantra). In the history of CAPS, a contrast is drawn between two conservative Christian faith traditions, the Dutch Reformed tradition that, in general, had a heritage of engagement with every sphere of life and Evangelical Christians who, in general, had a heritage of disengagement with every sphere of life (see Bratt 1984, 1998, & Marsden 1980, 1984 for more details). Before supporting this thesis, it would be beneficial first to describe the landscape of the century long relationship between modern psychology and religion as a means of providing context to the lives and work of these integrators. A Brief History of Integrationists Until the recent popular emergence of spirituality in mainstream psychology, religion and psychology have often had an antagonistic relationship (Allport, 1950; Vande Kemp, 1996). …


The 98 square miles of the Big Creek Watershed encompasses five jurisdictions: Alpharetta, Cumming, Forsyth County, Fulton County and Roswell. Big Creek itself is a major tributary of the Chattahoochee River, source of drinking water for most of metropolitan Atlanta. Big Creek serves as a water supply for a portion of Roswell and is used for waste assimilation in Cumming, near the headwaters of the stream. This watershed contains some of the most dynamic corridors of development and growth in Georgia. Attendant water resource problems have dramatically increased and are impacting the hydrology of the Big Creek flows, altering the native plant and animal communities, affecting private property and increasing the risk of waterborne disease. This paper addresses a set of programs and actions that have been implemented in Alpharetta to influence a mutual will to protect the integrity of valuable water resources in the Big Creek Watershed.


Many different advanced driver assistance systems are currently being developed to improve road safety and vehicle performance in many areas. The aim of this project has been to create a cruise control system which takes the legal speed limit and road geometry en route into account when determining the appropriate vehicle speed. The system uses a digital map to gain information about curvature and speed limits, and a vehicle model to calculate appropriate control actions. When lowering the speed is required the system coasts with no fueling, thus saving fuel and brake wear.


A clinical prediction model is a tool for predicting healthcare outcomes, usually within a specific population and context. A common approach is to develop a new clinical prediction model for each population and context; however, this wastes potentially useful historical information. A better approach is to update or incorporate the existing clinical prediction models already developed for use in similar contexts or populations. In addition, clinical prediction models commonly become miscalibrated over time, and need replacing or updating. In this article, we review a range of approaches for re-using and updating clinical prediction models; these fall in into three main categories: simple coefficient updating, combining multiple previous clinical prediction models in a meta-model and dynamic updating of models. We evaluated the performance (discrimination and calibration) of the different strategies using data on mortality following cardiac surgery in the United Kingdom: We found that no single strategy performed sufficiently well to be used to the exclusion of the others. In conclusion, useful tools exist for updating existing clinical prediction models to a new population or context, and these should be implemented rather than developing a new clinical prediction model from scratch, using a breadth of complementary statistical methods.


In the past decade, several U.S. prosecutors, elected on reform-oriented platforms, have implemented policies categorically declining to prosecute certain low-level offenses. These progressive prosecutors argue that their policies alleviate some of the disproportionate and racially biased consequences of broken windows policing. This article uses one case study to examine whether these policies affect the rate at which police make arrests for low-level crimes that prosecutors will decline to prosecute. With arrest and citation data from New York City, this article uses a differences-in-differences design to examine whether marijuana enforcement changed in Brooklyn as a result of District Attorney Ken Thompson's 2014 decision not to prosecute low-level marijuana possession. This analysis finds a null effect of that policy upon the rates of arrest and citation for low-level and more serious marijuana possession crimes. Arrests, even without prosecution, serve important functions for police and bring weighty consequences for arrestees; this null effect raises questions about how closely linked the purposes of arrests and prosecutions are in the view of patrol officers. Moreover, these findings might prompt questions about the ability of prosecutors to enact effective reforms on their own, given the highly siloed nature of discretion in the U.S. criminal legal system.


Purpose: The AMO framework has been widely accepted in HRM literature for explaining the linkage between human resources practices and performance. However, it remains unclear whether this model has been fully demonstrated or not. Hence, we propose a systematic review that aims at identifying those investigations that have thoroughly tested the model, as well as the approaches used by them. Design/methodology/approach: Systematic literature review, filtering scientific papers published in journals indexed in Scopus, Web of Science or Google Scholar, from the year 1993 to 2016, in the field of Social Sciences and Humanities with research that indirectly apply the AMO model in their analysis. Findings: AMO model is an excellent and structured framework that provides a better understanding of the relationship between HRM and performance. Moreover, the effectiveness of the model's proposal appears to be beyond doubt. In fact, a well trained and skilled employee will perform better, and a motivated worker will be ready to "go the extra mile". Likewise, if the work environment does not provide adequate opportunities, both abilities and motivation might become meaningless. However, we consider that many other factors could influence the positive effects of HPWS. As a matter of fact, not only contextual factors, but also individual beliefs, personal affinities, or personal circumstances (among others) might affect the implementation of these practices and the subsequent outcomes. For this reason, we consider that developing an HRM model that perfectly fit any situation is a very complicated, if not impossible, task. Research limitations/implications: The results show a significant variability in both research approaches and variables taken into consideration. In addition, it seems that little research has been conducted to verify the AMO model directly. Therefore, we consider that there is a great need to study the model from a more systematic perspective. A thorough understanding of the model could lead to a better understanding of the problems that organizations face when implementing human resource practices. Originality/value: Our study shed light on some aspects of the AMO framework within the HRM context. Specifically, we aimed to identify whether or not it is possible to confirm the model as it was originally proposed. We also find out which HR practices and measures of performance were considered across investigations, to define a standard approach.


A 48-year-old man presented with symptoms consistent with Cushing's syndrome. Subsequent laboratory studies revealed markedly elevated adrenocortico-tropic (ACTH) and cortisol levels, as well as a hypoklemic metabolic alkalosis. A pituitary MRI was performed, which revealed a normal pituitary; however, a large mass was seen centered in the ethmoid and paranasal sinuses with a significant amount of extension into surrounding structures. A biopsy was performed and pathology of the specimen was consistent with esthesioneuroblastoma. Immunohistochemical staining further defined the tumor as an ACTH-secreting esthesioneuroblastoma. After total resection of the mass and further treatment with adjuvant radiation therapy, the patient's symtoms completely resolved and the ACTH and cortisol levels were also greatly reduced. This case demonstrates the successful diagnosis and treatment of a rare neoplasm. Ectopic ACTH syndrome due to esthesioneuroblastoma is extremely uncommon with only five other cases being discussed in the literature.


We consider the problem of matrix approximation and denoising induced by the Kronecker product decomposition. Specifically, we propose to approximate a given matrix by the sum of a few Kronecker products of matrices, which we refer to as the Kronecker product approximation (KoPA). Because the Kronecker product is an extension of the outer product from vectors to matrices, KoPA extends the low rank matrix approximation, and includes it as a special case. Comparing with the latter, KoPA also offers a greater flexibility, since it allows the user to choose the configuration, which are the dimensions of the two smaller matrices forming the Kronecker product. On the other hand, the configuration to be used is usually unknown, and needs to be determined from the data in order to achieve the optimal balance between accuracy and parsimony. We propose to use extended information criteria to select the configuration. Under the paradigm of high dimensional analysis, we show that the proposed procedure is able to select the true configuration with probability tending to one, under suitable conditions on the signal-to-noise ratio. We demonstrate the superiority of KoPA over the low rank approximations through numerical studies, and several benchmark image examples.


With the emergence of many core architectures, the need of on-chip memories such as caches grows faster than the number of cores. Moreover the bandwidth to off-chip memories is saturating. Big memory caches can alleviate the pressure to off-chip accesses. In this paper, we present an adaptive 3Dcache architecture taking advantage of dense vertical connections in stacked chips. Then we propose a dynamically adaptive mechanism to optimize the use of the aforementioned 3D cache architecture according to the workload needs. Finally, we analyze the gain on memory accesses and on software execution time in a realistic model of many core architecture and we study the hardware cost of our proposal, showing that our approach can lead to a 50% reduction of both external memory accesses and application execution time.


Formaldehyde (HCHO) is one of the major pollutants in indoor air and long-term exposure to HCHO even at very low concentrations is harmful and may cause health problems including nasal tumors and skin irritation. Removal of HCHO is necessary to improve the quality of indoor air. Catalytic oxidative decomposition of HCHO at room temperature is regarded as the most promising strategy for the removal of HCHO because it is environmentally friendly and energy-saving. In this review, the reported catalytic materials for room-temperature catalytic oxidative decomposition of HCHO are discussed. In addition, the development and performance of catalysts for HCHO oxidative decomposition, the mechanism of this catalytic process, the surface chemistry and structure factors influencing catalytic performances, existing challenges in the development of catalysts with low cost and high activity and perspectives for important topics of future research in this area were reviewed.


OBJECTIVE
To analyze the usage of mental health assistance hotline during COVID-19 in Zhejiang province from January 25th to February 29th 2020, and summarize the characteristics of the demand for mental health services and the dynamic changes of public mental health status during COVID-19 pandemic.

METHODS
Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used. The calls related to pandemic were divided into four categories: medical, psychological, information and the others. The secondary categories of psychological calls were determined by text analysis. The number of calls were calculated weekly and the number of various types of calls over time were analyzed. We used stratified random sampling method to extract 600 cases of all kinds of calls related to pandemic and conducted a semantic analysis, through marking new, similar combination to form a feature set, then summed up the call content characteristics of each stage. Two hundred callers were followed up to understand how they felt about the call process in four aspects: the waiting time, call duration, the degree of problem-solving and the way to end the call.

RESULTS
In a total of 13 746 calls, 8978 were related to pandemic, among which 12.59%(1130/8978) were about medical issues, 26.50%(2379/8978) were about mental health, 27.18%(2440/8978) were about information regarding the pandemic and 33.74%(3029/8978) were about other pandemic related issues. Pandemic situation, relevant policy release, frequency of advertising campaigns were predictors of the number of calls per day during the pandemic (P<0.05 or P<0.01). The number of calls differed by gender and identities of callers (both P<0.05). Finally 181 callers accepted telephone follow-up. Among them, 51.38%(93/181) of the callers thought that the waiting time was too long, 33.15%(60/181) of the callers thought that the call time was insufficient, 80.66%(146/181) of callers believed that the hotline could partially or completely resolve their concerns, and 39.23%(71/181) of the callers said the operator proposed to end the call.

CONCLUSIONS
s The changes of the number and content of the mental health assistance hotline calls reflected that the public mental health status experienced four stages during the pandemic: confusion, panic, boredom, and adjustment. The specialized mental health assistance hotlines should be further strengthened, and the efficiency should be improved. Mental health interventions should be tailored and adopted according to the characteristics of the public mental health status at different stages of the pandemic.


Frantz Fanon was one of the most important voices in decolonial and black liberation struggles of the mid-20th century. Writing about race and colonialism in Martinique, France, and Algeria, he articulated the importance of blackness to Western frameworks of the human. The black studies scholarship influenced by Fanon has continued in a similar vein, arguing that much of modern, Western thought either does not discuss race at all or considers race as an add-on to the larger discussion of Western subjectivity. Alternatively, Fanon and his interlocutors argue that race is the central function of the larger fields of Western philosophy and science, even if race is not mentioned at all. To make this claim, they largely point toward two tendencies in Western thought. First, Fanon and his interlocutors often examine the centrality of time and space in modern Western philosophy. Indeed, much of Western philosophy and science has implicitly and explicitly examined time as a linear trajectory that is largely monopolized by the Western European and North American white male subject; alternatively, space has been theorized as the static and nondynamic measure of the Western subject's capacity to progress. Second, Fanon and his interlocutors also critically interrogate the related discussion of mutual recognition that is assumed in much of Western thought. As such, Western thinkers have often contended that, historically, the self recognizes itself in the other, and vice versa, and that self/other relationship is the basis for concepts of subjectivity. Yet, Fanon and his interlocutors have also pointed out that the lack of recognition of black people as human or as subjects has done little to foreclose whiteness as the position overrepresented as the human. Rather than recognition, white people have historically enacted racial violence against black bodies as a central mode through which to enter into humanity. As such, time and space and the lack of recognition as outlined by Fanon and his interlocutors suggest that nonwhite bodies have always provided a crisis for Western concepts of universality and subjecthood.


In salt provinces, full-waveform inversion (FWI) is most likely to fail when starting with a poor initial model that lacks the salt information. Conventionally, salt bodies are included in the FWI starting model by interpreting the salt boundaries from seismic images, which is time consuming and prone to error. Studies show that FWI can improve the interpreted salt provided that the data have long offsets and low frequencies, which is not always the case. Thus, we develop an approach to invert for the salt body starting from a poor initial model, limited data offsets, and the absence of low frequencies. We leverage deep learning to apply multistage flooding and unflooding of the velocity model. Specifically, we apply a multiscale FWI using three frequency bandwidths. We apply a network after each frequency scale. After the first two bandwidths, the networks are trained to flood the salt, while the network after the last frequency bandwidth is trained to unflood it. We follow the unflooding step, with a final FWI. We verify the method on the synthetic BP 2004 salt model benchmark. We only use the synthetic data of short offsets up to 6 km and remove frequencies below 3 Hz. We also apply the method to real vintage data acquired in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) region. The real data lack frequencies below 6 Hz and the streamer length is only 4.8 km. With these limitations, we manage to recover the salt body and verify the result by using them to image the data and analyze the resulting angle gathers.


It can be found on the news, running our machines, and analyzing our browsing history. Machine learning is everywhere and with the recent widespread implementation of various machine learning software it is easier than ever for someone with basic programming knowledge to start building their own machine learning models. People who are new to machine learning may wonder what the various types are, what their differences are, and how they can start doing their own machine learning projects. The present study utilizes two different common machine learning techniques to build models that can predict the location of a Wi-Fi connected device through that device's incoming router information. The first technique being used will leverage MATLAB's vast library of prebuilt machine learning algorithms to create a model. The second type of model is a neural network, it is built using Google Brain Team's TensorFlow 1.6. The data obtained for the models was taken throughout Tennessee Tech's campus. This study outlines the initial data collection process used to train the models, and the processes used to create the models. The difference between neural networks and prebuilt machine learning algorithms is examined, the results of the two different methods is displayed and analyzed, and the processes used to create the machine learning models is shown as well. The models created in this study have various potential applications if used in real time on personal devices, the models could be useful for campus tours, or even adviser location for graduate students.