PurposeDespite the numerous works on multifaceted relationships between customers and brands, such relationships remain complex and poorly understood in retailing. This research analyses the direct effects of brand images (hedonic, symbolic and functional) on three specific relationship variables (brand trust, brand attachment and brand social identification). It also investigates their indirect effects on three types of loyalty (cognitive, affective and normative) in retailing.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based on quantitative research involving 417 respondents. It uses structural equation models to test relevant research hypotheses.FindingsThe results show that hedonic brand image affects brand attachment, while functional brand image influences brand trust. Symbolic brand image has similar effects on the three relationship variables (attachment, trust, identification). Moreover, the relationships between brand image dimensions and brand loyalty types are positively mediated by attachment, trust and brand identification. Therefore, the authors highlight a more complex process in customer–brand relationships than previously thought.Research limitations/implicationsThis article focusses on the cosmetic retail sector. It would be interesting to empirically test/extend the model in other industries/sectors. Future studies could also include brand attitude in their research model.Practical implicationsTo strengthen affective loyalty, retail managers should focus on both hedonic image and brand attachment (e.g. emphasise the brand personality traits that refer to both affect and hedonism). To develop normative loyalty, they should improve symbolic brand image and facilitate customer brand identification.Originality/valueThis research provides a new three-dimensional model of customer relationships with brands to account for the dynamic nature of customer loyalty in retailing. It shows how three dimensions of brand image (hedonic, functional and symbolic) affect three types of loyalty (affective, cognitive and normative) through the mediation of three specific relationship variables (brand attachment, brand trust and brand identification).


The total number of minor life events and subjective ratings of distress associated with these events were assessed for individuals with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and for nonanxious controls. Participants consisted of 256 randomly selected, low-income patients from primary care medical clinics. Diagnoses were obtained using the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for the DSM-IV (DIS-IV). An analysis of variance revealed that GAD individuals reported significantly more minor life events than did nonanxious controls (F = 50.97, p < .001). An analysis of covariance indicated that persons with GAD perceived their minor stressors as significantly more stressful than did nonanxious controls, even after the total number of events was controlled (F = 42.07, p < .001). These findings are consistent with cognitive theories of GAD and current revisions to the definition of the disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Implications for theory and research on GAD are discussed.


Each paper needs an abstract of up to 10 lines. Footnotes: Avoid footnotes. Tables and illustrations: Tables and illustrations (both numbered in Arabic numerals) should be prepared on separate pages. Tables require headings, figures legends; all table headings are collectively listed on a separate page, and likewise all figure legends. The tables, and the two lists of headings and legends are appended to the text file. Figures are not to be included in the text but submitted in separate files for each figure. B/w half-tone and color illustrations must have a final resolution of 300 dpi after scaling, line drawings one of 800–1,200 dpi. Color illustrations Online edition: Color illustrations are reproduced free of charge. In the print version, the illustrations are reproduced in black and white. Please avoid referring to the colors in the text and figure legends. Print edition: Up to 6 color illustrations per page can be integrated within the text at CHF 800.– per page. References: The list of references should include only those publications which are cited in the text. References should be arranged alphabetically (citation by name and year). Examples a) Papers published in periodicals: 1. All authors' surnames ('et al.' is not sufficient) with initials of first names; 2. Full title of paper; 3. Journal abbreviation; 4. Volume (in Arabic numerals, underlined and followed by a colon); 5. First and last page; 6. Year of publication in parentheses. Example: Sternberg, S.; Knoll, R.L.; Monsell, S.; Wright, C.E.: Motor programs and hierarchical organization in the control of rapid speech. Phonetica 45: 175–197 (1988). b) Books: 1. Authors' surnames with initials of first names; 2. Full title; 3. In parentheses, name and domicile of publisher and year of publication. Example: Zwirner, E.; Zwirner, K.: Grundfragen der phonometrischen Linguistik (Karger, Basel 1981). Supplementary Material Supplementary material is restricted to additional data that are not necessary for the scientific integrity and conclusions of the paper. Please note that all supplementary files will undergo editorial review and should be submitted together with the original manuscript. The Editors reserve the right to limit the scope and length of the supplementary material. Supplementary material must meet production quality standards for Web publication without the need for any modification or editing. In general, supplementary files should not exceed 10 MB in size. All figures and tables should have titles and legends and all files should be supplied separately and named clearly. Acceptable files and formats are: Word or PDF files, Excel spreadsheets (only if the data cannot be converted properly to a PDF file), video files (.mov, .avi, .mpeg), and audio files (.wav), either free standing or incorporated into html or ppt files, in each case to illustrate the sound of speech. Accepted supplementary material will be published as submitted and no proofs will be provided to the authors. Digital Object Identifier (DOI) S. Karger Publishers supports DOIs as unique identifiers for articles. A DOI number will be printed on the title page of each article. DOIs can be useful in the future for identifying and citing articles published online without volume or issue information. More information can be found at www.doi.org. Author's ChoiceTM With this option the author can choose to make his article freely available online against a one-time fee of CHF 3000.–. This fee is independent of any standard charges for supplementary pages, color images etc. which may apply. More information can be found at www.karger.com/authors_choice. Does your funding agency/institute require you to deposit your article in an institutional archive (e.g. PubMedCentral)? You will be pleased to hear that Karger journals are fully geared up for this requirement. All you have to do is opt for open access publication of your article through Karger's Author's ChoiceTM. Karger will also take care of the immediate deposit in the PubMedCentral archive and what's more, not of the manuscript, but of the final, published article. The article will also be available with open access right away, and not just after 12 months. The cost of Author's ChoiceTM is a permissible cost in your grant, so please take care to budget for it. Proofs Unless indicated otherwise, proofs are sent to the corresponding author and should be returned with the least possible delay. Alterations other than the correction of printer's errors are charg ed to the author. Reprints The senior author will receive 50 reprints free of charge. For additional reprints, order forms and a price list are sent with the proofs. Orders submitted after the issue is printed are subject to considerably higher prices. D ow nl oa de d by : 15 7. 55 .3 9. 22 0 6/ 20 /2 01 6 7: 38 :0 5 A M


Monterey County Behavioral Health (MCBH) aims to serve residents who suffer from mental illnesses in the Monterey County area to help them live a healthy and productive life. Currently there are low service participation rates from the youth population with mental health issues in Monterey County. The purpose of this research project was to develop and distribute a survey to identify different service acquisitions to increase youth participation in overall services offered. Data from the Monterey County website showed that 12,154 youth that are eligible for services, yet only 779 actually went in for one or more visits for mental health (Monterey County, 2016). Through gathered data and with thorough analysis it was discovered that 41% of the youth surveyed wished to be addressed about sensitive topics and services through in class workshops. Over 50% of the respondents confirmed that they had heard about services, however, 63% of respondents had never used services. The county will be informed of the findings to determine what approach to take to better serve the youth population with services and knowledge about mental illnesses.


Senior citizens and patients recovering from surgery or using strong medications with severe side effects tend to fall unexpectedly. The consequences of such an uncontrolled fall could be worse than the original malady, especially when there is no communication with the care-takers. We describe a fall-detector device capable of distinguishing falls from normal daily activities. Based on three-axis accelerometer and advanced data processing, the microcontroller emits an alarm requesting help in the case of a physical fall. We design and construct the fall-detector prototype for either inside or outside use. In order to determine the device performance, fifty instances of each fall event have been evaluated; all of them detected as fall event. In the case of daily activities, the only movement that produces an alarm is the transition from standing up to lying in 5% of the occurrences.


Abstract The broadside ballad O, radost ma [Oh, My Joy] was, as far as known, first printed in Kutna Hora in 1808. Later, it began to be sung to an unprecedented number of different tunes, inspired by folk and semi-folk songs, broadside ballads, church and artificial songs. Sometimes, the tune even literally quoted the folk melody. Variants of the song continued to appear in all Czech regions throughout the 20th century. In the Chodsko region, the song has become popular and has been sung as a folk song to this day.


DC hybrid power systems are currently of interest for ship commercial marine vessels to enable low-emission and fuel-efficient operation. The benefit of using these systems is also to provide space and weight savings onboard ships. However, a shipboard dc hybrid power system requires effective analysis tools to realize the advantages.Modeling and simulation are essential tools to facilitate design, analysis, optimization, and control of the dc hybrid power systems. The standard power system simulators need excessive computation time to simulate the above power-electronic-based power distribution systems. The limiting factor in terms of computation time is the switching behavior of the power electronic converters, which requires extremely small time steps. In order to overcome this limitation, reduced-order converter models can be used to provide time-efficient simulations. The reduced-order models are used only when studying the exact switching behavior is not necessary. In this dissertation, appropriate modeling of the converters and other elements of a shipboard dc hybrid power system is presented. The derived models are used in the development of a simulator program for system-level analysis of all-electric ships.Fuel saving is a major motivation in the development of commercial shipboard dc power systems with onboard energy storage. Analysis of fuel consumption and efficiency modeling enable investigation of fuel saving potentials. The system efficiency is analyzed by enhancing the simulator models through including the power loss components. An on-line control strategy is proposed that optimizes the fuel consumption of the multi-generator shipboard power system. The energy storage is a key element in development of the optimization control system.The shipboard dc power systems may consist of several power electronic converters connecting sources and loads to the grid. The stability of such power electronic-based systems is an essential issue in both design and control due to potential negative incremental resistance introduced by power electronic converters. This property is a consequence of the converter behaving as an instantaneous Constant Power Load (CPL), which can drive the system to instability. Stability analysis and control of the shipboard dc grid is another main focus in this dissertation.


The Gospel tune "Omundu Omulosi" (meaning, "a man who practices witchcraft") hit the charts in Kenya early in 2000 and still is popular in many radio stations today. It laments the fact that witchcraft has destroyed a home. An educated man who had just come from the United States died unexpectedly and the only cow of the family also died leaving the family poor.  But is witchcraft real?  And is it an impediment to the advancement of the community socially and economically? This paper uses the theory of community development as advanced by Robert Chambers which posits that "people can only support that which they help build." The theory also continues to assert that the outsider's view of the communities is always "distorted and explained using our own language and experience."(Chambers, 1983).The study examines witchcraft from the African perspective and its impact on community development.  If the Bible is to be taken as the word of God – and if the Bible is true then as Christian we are cognizant of Paul's exhortation in Ephesians 6:12, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."The questions this paper attempts to address are: Is witchcraft real or is it part of the wild imagination of the human mind? How does witchcraft impact community development? and, what can we do as Christians to counter the "forces of evil in the heavenly realms"? The paper explores literature available in order to define witchcraft arguing that witchcraft has its origin in Satanism. It also examines the phenomena of witchcraft accusations and why they are taking root in modern-day community life. In addition, the author relies on personal testimonies of people who have had encounters with this phenomenon. The paper concludes that indeed the "powers of this dark world" are still in force and that they are causing stagnation in community development in areas where witchcraft is practiced, affecting both individuals and communities.  Finally, practical ways of ensuring that these powers are conquered are provided.


The purpose of this thesis is the description of Classification Societies comparing their national and international competitiveness. In the modern institutional framework for shipping, the Classification Societies can contribute to ensuring the protection of human life at sea, ship and cargo safety but also in environmental protection, but their contribution is limited to a degree by need to remain competitive and free to the changing environment of the shipping industry.
Analyzing the quality of their services the reasons and circumstances for which they are selected by the management companies are explained, depending on their objectives and their services to a technical level and safety management level. This analysis can clarify the interests of Classification Societies as apart from their contribution to the shipping sector, questions are generated about their role today and in the future in the global shipping industry.


Why was economic development retarded in the Middle East relative to Western Europe, despite the Middle East being far ahead for centuries? A theoretical model inspired and substantiated by the history of interest restrictions suggests that this outcome emanates in part from the greater degree to which early Islamic political authorities derived legitimacy from religious authorities. This entailed a feedback mechanism in Europe in which the rise of commerce led to the relaxation of interest restrictions while also diminishing the Church's ability to legitimise political authorities. These interactions did not occur in the Islamic world despite equally amenable economic conditions.


Numerical simulations of the shallow water equations on rotating spheres produce mixtures of robust vortices and alternating zonal jets, as seen in the atmospheres of the gas giant planets. However, simulations that include Rayleigh friction invariably produce a sub-rotating (retrograde) equatorial jet for Jovian parameter regimes, whilst observations of Jupiter show a super-rotating (prograde) equatorial jet that has persisted over several decades. Super-rotating equatorial jets have recently been obtained in shallow water simulations that include a Newtonian relaxation of perturbations to the layer thickness to model radiative cooling to space, and in simulations of the thermal shallow water equations that include a similar relaxation term in their temperature equation. Simulations of global quasigeostrophic forms of these different models produce equatorial jets in the same directions as the parent models, suggesting that the mechanism responsible for setting the direction lies within quasigeostrophic theory. We provide such a mechanism by calculating the effective force acting on the thickness-weighted zonal mean flow due to the decay of an equatorially trapped Rossby wave. Decay due to Newtonian cooling creates an eastward zonal mean flow at the equator, consistent with the formation of a super-rotating equatorial jet, while decay due to Rayleigh friction leads to a westward zonal mean flow at the equator, consistent with the formation of a sub-rotating equatorial jet. In both cases the meridionally integrated zonal mean of the absolute zonal momentum is westward, consistent with the standard result that Rossby waves carry westward pseudomomentum, but this does not preclude the zonal mean flow being eastward on and close to the equator.


The forbidden c(3)Pi-X(1)Sigma(+) (0-0) absorption band of carbon monoxide has been reinvestigated under different pressure conditions using the 10.7-m VUV spectrograph at Meudon. Overlap with the allowed C(1)Pi-X(1)Sigma(+) (0-0) band at lower transition energy has been taken into account. We have identified a new rotational branch corresponding to an S-type branch and extended the analysis to both higher and lower J. An analysis of the band structure and the low J transition lines suggests that the band gains its intensity predominantly as a result of an interaction of the c(3)Pi state with a (1)Sigma(+) state, most likely the C(1)Sigma(+) (v = 0) state. Molecular constants have been obtained for the c(3)Pi state that are in reasonable agreement with those previously published. The apparently anomalous small value for the centrifugal distortion constant is explained by a homogeneous perturbation with the k(3)Pi valence state. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.


Since 1997, scientists have been trying to utilize new non-invasive approaches for thermal discomfort detection, which promise to be more effective for comparing frameworks that need direct responses from users. Due to rapid technological development in the bio-metrical field, a systematic literature review to investigate the possibility of thermal discomfort detection at the work place by non-invasive means using bio-sensing technology was performed. Firstly, the problem intervention comparison outcome context (PICOC) framework was introduced in the study to identify the main points for meta-analysis and, in turn, to provide relevant keywords for the literature search. In total, 2776 studies were found and processed using the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) methodology. After filtering by defined criterion, 35 articles were obtained for detailed investigation with respect to facility types used in the experiment, amount of people for data collection and algorithms used for prediction of the thermal discomfort event. The given study concludes that there is potential for the creation of non-invasive thermal discomfort detection models via utilization of bio-sensing technologies, which will provide a better user interaction with the built environment, potentially decrease energy use and enable better productivity. There is definitely room for improvement within the field of non-invasive thermal discomfort detection, especially with respect to data collection, algorithm implementation and sample size, in order to have opportunities for the deployment of developed solutions in real life. Based on the literature review, the potential of novel technology is seen to utilize a more intelligent approach for performing non-invasive thermal discomfort prediction. The architecture of deep neural networks should be studied more due to the specifics of its hidden layers and its ability of hierarchical data extraction. This machine learning algorithm can provide a better model for thermal discomfort detection based on a data set with different types of bio-metrical variables.


Feature-based image watermarking schemes, which aim to survive various geometric distortions, have attracted great attention in recent years. Existing schemes have shown robustness against rotation, scaling, and translation, but few are resistant to cropping, nonisotropic scaling, random bending attacks (RBAs), and affine transformations. Seo and Yoo present a geometrically invariant image watermarking based on affine covariant regions (ACRs) that provide a certain degree of robustness. To further enhance the robustness, we propose a new image watermarking scheme on the basis of Seo's work, which is insensitive to geometric distortions as well as common image processing operations. Our scheme is mainly composed of three components: 1) feature selection procedure based on graph theoretical clustering algorithm is applied to obtain a set of stable and nonoverlapped ACRs; 2) for each chosen ACR, local normalization, and orientation alignment are performed to generate a geometrically invariant region, which can obviously improve the robustness of the proposed watermarking scheme; and 3) in order to prevent the degradation in image quality caused by the normalization and inverse normalization, indirect inverse normalization is adopted to achieve a good compromise between the imperceptibility and robustness. Experiments are carried out on an image set of 100 images collected from Internet, and the preliminary results demonstrate that the developed method improves the performance over some representative image watermarking approaches in terms of robustness.


Background The main recurrent problem after liver transplantation is the rejection of the transplanted organ, which is why immunosuppressants are widely used as post-transplant drug therapy. This drug class has a large number of theoretical potential drug interactions (TPDIs) with other drugs often needed by those patients. Purpose This work aims to outline the profile of the main TPDIs to which patients undergoing liver transplant surgery are exposed. Materials and methods This is a cross-sectional, retrospective and observational study. In January of 2011, were collected medical prescriptions of patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) of Hospital de Clinicas – UNICAMP between January and December of 2010. The study included only patients who were hospitalised for more than 24 h, underwent liver transplant surgery, were more than 18 years old, and had their drug prescriptions in the ICU in the medical records available for inspection. Results The study included 25 patients, an average age of 51.64±11.96, 173 prescriptions were evaluated, an average of 6.92±2.72 prescriptions per patient. The number of TPDIs varied between 1 and 36, an average of 12.48±9.15 per patient. The 312 TPDIs observed in the medical prescriptions were classified according to the Micromedex database as contraindicated (12), major (101), moderate (183) and minor (16). Tacrolimus stood out as the main drug and it was present in 57% of the prescriptions and also in 10 different types of TPDIs. Conclusions This study helped to design the drug therapy profile used in liver transplant patients in ICU of a Brazilian public hospital, showing that there is a high incidence of theoretical potential drug interactions in prescriptions. The clinical relevance of this work is in its contribution to the prevention of preventable adverse events associated with drug therapy, between them the rejection of the transplanted organ to failure of the immunosuppressive regimen adopted.


This review paper discusses the industrial and research activities around the IEC 61499 architecture for distributed automation systems. IEC 61499 has been developed to enable intelligent automation where the intelligence is genuinely decentralized and embedded into software components, which can be freely distributed across networked devices. With the recent emergence of professionally made software tools and dozens of hardware platforms, IEC 61499 is getting recognition in industry. This paper reviews research results related to the design of distributed automation systems with IEC 61499, the supporting tools and the aspects related to the execution of IEC 61499 on embedded devices. The promising application areas of IEC 61499 include flexible material handling systems, in particular airport baggage handling, flexible reconfigurable manufacturing automation, intelligent power distribution networks and SmartGrid, as well as the wide range of embedded networked systems.


Electro-deposited pure iron has a quite sharp and isotropic <111>//ND fiber texture and a needle-shaped grain elongated in ND. This pure iron shows an r-value exceeding 7, which is difficult to explain from the texture alone. In this study the deformation behavior of electro-deposited pure iron was investigated to reveal the mechanism behind the extremely high r-value. The post-deformation surface slip lines indicated that the particular <110> plane slips, which are perpendicular to ND, exclusively act in the specimen. The tensile deformation caused by this slip system does not require any decrease in thickness, hence the extraordinary high r-value is mainly attributable to this limitation of the active slip system. Presumably, the needle-shaped microstructure affected the limitation of the slip system.


With the exponential growth in the number of automobiles in Malaysia in recent years, the problem generated by waste tyres has also increased. Therefore, incorporating waste tyres as an additive in road pavement might be an option to overcome the increase in the number of waste tyres as well as address some of the pavement problems, such as rutting deformation.
Crumb rubber modified binder is acknowledged to provide better rutting resistance. Many research works have been implemented on the effects of chemical additives to further increase the performance of crumb rubber modified binders. Recent studies have shown that the properties of crumb rubber modified binders can be improved by adding crosslinking agents, such as trans-polyoctenamer (TOR) for which the main function is to activate the rubber-bitumen interaction and improve crosslinking.
This study was conducted to determine a method to improve the rutting resistance of SMA 20 bituminous mixtures. Accordingly, different percentages of crumb rubber were added to bitumen using different blending methods (continuous blend and terminal blend) in order to produce different concentrations of crumb rubber modified binder. In addition, a crosslinking agent, namely, trans-polyoctenamer (TOR), was introduced in the crumb rubber modified binder with the intention of further improving the binder properties and minimizing the rutting problem.
In order to analyse the performance of the binders and mixtures as well as to evaluate the relationship of the rutting characteristics between them, a series of binder tests and bituminous mixture tests were performed. In the final analysis, the author found that the binder tests were not adequate to evaluate the rutting characteristics of bituminous mixtures. For instance, in the case of the crumb rubber modified binder prepared using the terminal blend method, most of the binder tests show that the terminal blend binder displays the best performance; however, in respect of the bituminous mixtures it became worse.
To further study the creep behaviour (rutting characteristics) of bituminous mixtures, the dynamic creep test was performed using the universal testing machine (UTM) at different temperatures and stress levels. Finally, the creep behaviour of the specimens was estimated using the Zhou three-stage creep model. The results show that crumb rubber and TOR significantly affected the rutting parameters, especially at high stress levels and temperatures. Moreover, based on the Zhou model, it was concluded that resistance to permanent deformation (rutting resistance) was improved by the application of crumb rubber and TOR.
In addition, multiple linear regression (stepwise method) was used for statistical analysis for which the main objective was to develop an equation (regression model) that could be used for predicting the rutting of the mixtures for all factors engaged. A secondary purpose was to use regression analysis as a means of explaining the causal relationship among the factors (significant level).


In this paper, we analyze poverty traps that emerge because farmers are unable to afford the adoption and retention of higher-productivity technologies that are risky and require lumpy investments. Although access to deposit facilities and credit play an important role in breaking up poverty traps, farmers' stage in the life cycle and underlying market conditions like credit limits and interest rates on deposits and loans determine the effect of the financial policies. First, our numerical results show that in economies with scant financial development (stringent loan-size limits and large gap between interest rates), the access to only savings deposits represents a superior policy (relative to only access to credit) to increase the sustained adoption of advanced technologies and that its effectiveness is even higher when the target population is young. Additionally, the results indicate that only if the demographic structure is young and farmers have simultaneous access to both deposit facilities and credit, full financial transformation can be achieved through credit expansion. Otherwise, the effects of larger credit-limits vanish. Finally, the results indicate that policies of loan rates in credit-constrained economies have null effects on technology transformation, irrespective of the demographic structure. In contrast, sustained adoption rates increase with higher deposit rates, in young and credit-constrained economies. In aging economies, however, an opposite effect can be realized due to substitution between the yields of deposits and of the advanced technology.


Computer conferencing using the Canadian system CoSy is presented, and three related projects are discussed. 1. An extramural university course in epidemiology and medical statistics was taught using CoSy. Computer conferencing can be a useful vehicle for distance education, enabling health professionals to attend "classes" independent of geographical and time constraints. The subjects taught are well suited to this medium. 2. Internet was used to establish a small network of public health researchers and teachers. Participants are from Canada, Hungary, Israel, Norway, and Australia. Networks of this type not only facilitate international collaboration within public health, they also enable international collaborative research and teaching projects that would have been too cumbersome and time consuming to initiate and conduct without this communication facility. 3. "Development of Medical Education for a New Public Health in Hungary," a project funded by the European Community's TEMPUS program, is established with a view to developing the undergraduate and graduate education of public health professionals. It is a joint program between the five Hungarian medical schools and ten universities in the G24 countries. The TEMPUS listserver functions as an important vehicle for communication within this project.


The goal of every solar saltworks with seawater intake--continuous and economic production of high quality salt (sodium chloride) at design capacity—requires ability to simultaneously manage and coordinate physical systems with biological systems in the concentrating and crystallizing ponds. This effort requires close control of specified salinities, depths, and brine transfers, frequent surveillance and adjustments of planktonic and benthic communities and their key microorganisms, and timely recognition and correction of developing problems. This report reviews features and concepts that facilitate biological and physical management, considers causes and effects of common and severe disturbances and their solutions, and provides information that enable biological systems in the ponds of a solar saltworks aid rather than harm salt production.


Complex experiments require sophisticated visualization of a large number of parameters. However, physiological characteristics of human perception limit the number of visualized parameters and their dynamics. Multimodal data presentation could increase throughput, introduce new data streams, and improve temporal resolution. The future of biomedical data presentation will probably be marked with multimodal data presentation and integration of multiple diagnostic procedures. Here, the authors present sonification as a second presentation modality. During analysis, multimodal parameters must be set to maximize the distance of changes in the perceptual domain. The authors implemented sonification in their 3D EEG visualization environment to render synesthetic extension of a selected data channel or to introduce new composite parameters. Sonification improved the ability to assess genuine dynamics of brain electrical activity and to perceive inherent spatio-temporal patterns of brain electrical activity.


Within the Liapunov framework, a sufficient condition for uniform asymptotic stability of ordinary differential equations is proposed. Unlike with classical Liapunov theory, the time derivative of the V -function, taken along solutions of the system, may have positive and negative values. It is shown that the proposed condition is useful for the study of uniform asymptotic stability of homogeneous systems with order τ > 0. In particular, it is established that asymptotic stability of the averaged homogeneous system implies local uniform asymptotic stability of the original timevarying homogeneous system. This shows that averaging techniques play a prominent role in the study of homogeneous—not necessarily fast time-varying—systems.


This work examines the influences of amyloid fibers of hen egg white lysozyme (HEWL) on the formation of melanin-like species (MLS) with a rationally selected set of catechol derivatives. Catechol-amyloid interactions, which are central in melanogenesis, are complex and multifaceted, making them difficult to understand at the molecular level. The catechol derivatives are set to interact with HEWL amyloid fibers upon altering pH, and the resultant formation of MLS is characterized. For obtaining clues for the molecular mechanism by which HEWL fibers regulate the formation of MLS, putative intermolecular interactions are individually perturbed and their ramifications are analyzed. With the entire data set, we could conclude that the externally presented nucleophilic moieties of HEWL fibers play a major role in regulating the material and kinetic properties of MLS and their formation, respectively.


To sustain in the global competitive market, the manufacturing organizations are adopting tools like Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), Lean Manufacturing (LM), etc. Implementation of these tools was assessed by an effectiveness index called Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) Throughput Effectiveness (TE). Overall Manufacturing Line Effectiveness (OMLE) used as the performance evaluation index for the integrated tool {[}Total Productive Lean Manufacturing --TPLM{]} implementation performance has been assessed. OMLE is a robust metric of manufacturing performance that incorporates the measures like Line Availability (LA), Line Production Quality Performance (LPQP) of the product line. OMLE offers a means of controlling the whole production process by analyzing results from the totality of events with or without inventory between the processes in the product line. In the presentpaper, the attempt made towards identifying the bottleneck parameter (Losses in the processes --category A, the Cycle time in the processes-category B, Inventory between the process -- category C) in the bottleneck processes of the n number of the processes product line through programming (software in C). Also, the top three parameters of the processes in the n process product line have been obtained easily towards executing improvements by the engineers and managers. Analyze it with the change of inventory and zero inventory between the five, seven, and nine different processes product line processes. The suggested improvement activities (obtained from the OMLE evaluation and optimization program) are validated in south India's real case study organization and improved the bottleneck processes and losses in the product line.


Rapid methods for the identification of wheat varieties and their end-use quality have been developed. The methods combine the analysis of wheat protein extracts by mass spectrometry with partial least-squares regression in order to predict the variety or end-use quality of unknown wheat samples. The whole process takes approximately 30 min. Extracts of alcohol-soluble storage proteins (gliadins) from wheat were analysed by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry. Partial least-squares regression was subsequently applied using these mass spectra for making models that could predict the wheat variety or end-use quality. Previously, an artificial neural network was used to identify wheat varieties based on their protein mass spectra profiles. The present study showed that partial least-squares regression is at least as useful as neural networks for this identification. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that partial least-squares regression could be used to predict wheat end-use quality, which has not been possible using neural networks.


The aim of this paper is to show possible consequences of changes in labor force participation of women and the connection between fertility and labor force participation on the future demographic and economic development in Germany. For this purpose a projection model based on micro-data covering the population development as well as the development of the labor force is computed for different scenarios, varying in the extent of changes in female participation rates. The results point to a sharp decline in size of the total population and labor force as well as on negative effects of demographic development on growth, mediated through incompatibility of fertility and participation. It is argued that this incompatibility leads to a demographic dilemma, imposing negative effects on growth either in short or in long term.


The presence of aerosols in atmosphere has the potential to decrease the efficiency of solar photovoltaic energy generation. The central region of Brazil presents a remarkable growth of these aerosols between March and October, when the region undergoes a period of intensive slash and burn agriculture. This paper aims to evaluate the impact of this anthropogenic aerosol on electric power generation by comparing data from geostationary satellites with photovoltaic power generation data.


Purpose : The primary objective of this study is to investigate the macro-environmental factors that may influence location decisions and how these choices may affect the business performance of SMMEs. Problem investigated: SMMEs in South Africa play an increasingly important role in stimulating economic activity, growth and employment creation. However, many SMMEs cease to exist within the first five years of operation due to various challenges faced by SMMEs on a daily basis. Many SMMEs owners disregard the importance of location, yet the geographical location can negatively influence the survival of the business. Several factors influence the choice of the location, which will ultimately have either a positive or negative effect on business performance. Methodology: A positivistic research methodology was adopted for this study. Seven hypotheses were constructed to achieve the primary objective of this study. The population for this study consisted of SMMEs in the Nelson Mandela Metropole from which a convenience sample of 175 SMMEs was selected. The measuring instrument, a self-developed questionnaire, consisted of three sections. The data collected included the demographical data of the respondents and their businesses, statements on location and various factors influencing location decisions as well as measurements of business performance. Cronbach Alpha coefficients were calculated to determine the reliability of the questionnaire items. Data analysis was done by calculating descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation coefficients and conducting a simple linear regression analysis. Cohen's d was used to determine the significance of between-factor differences. Findings and implications: The results of the study showed that positive relationships existed between all the independent variables (location, rental rates, employment, inflation, interest rates and green buildings) and the dependent variable (business performance) except for the relationship between electricity tariffs and business performance. Employment and business performance attained the strongest positive relationship; indicating that business owners regarded employment as an important factor to consider when searching for suitable business premises. The relationship between location and business performance obtained the lowest positive correlation. Originality and value of the research: Research on South African SMMEs regarding location decisions and the specific factors identified in this study has not been done previously in South Africa. Therefore, because evidence exists that the macro-environmental factors influence location decisions to varying degrees, this study can provide SMME owners with insight into the factors influencing location choice. It is vital that business owners consider these factors as they could influence business performance, and ultimately, business survival. An increased awareness of the importance of the aspects discussed in this study could consequently lead to improved performance in the SMME sector.


Introduction:
 While vascular smooth muscle cells are traditionally known for their role in neointima formation, recent studies show that a population of Sca-1
 +
 stem/progenitor cells within the adventitia of vessel walls can also contribute to restenosis formation. To date, their migratory properties and motility in response to fundamental micro-environmental stimuli within the vasculature remain unknown. The occurrence of adventitial inflammation in injured vessels or during atherosclerosis is known to mount an increased secretion of the chemokine, monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1), by cells such as macrophages, endothelial and smooth muscle cells.

 Hypothesis:
 We hypothesize that the MCP-1 plays an important role on the mobilization of vascular progenitor cells.

 Methods and Results:
 Vascular progenitor cells were derived from vein graft and isolated with an anti-Sca-1 antibody microbead system. Using transwell assays, we found that recombinant MCP-1 significantly increased progenitor cell migration. The knockdown of its receptor expression, CCR2, using lentiviral shRNA significantly inhibited MCP-1 induced migration. Mechanistically, cytoskeleton related GTPase rac1 and cdc42 in progenitor cells were activated (in the GTP-bound state) by MCP-1. Furthermore, we showed that the ERK 1/2 pathway was also involved in MCP-1-mediated migration. Consistently, the migration of progenitor cells was significantly decreased following treatment with a MAPKK inhibitor. Using a femoral artery wire injury mouse model, we found that the seeding of Sca-1
 +
 progenitors on the outer layers of the adventitia markedly enhanced neointima formation after 1 week, whereas vessels without progenitor cell seeding did not form neointima. Neointima formation in Sca-1
 +
 progenitors-seeded vessels were found inhibited in mice that lacked functional MCP-1 (n≥8 per group).

 Conclusion:
 In conclusion, MCP-1 can induce adventitia-derived Sca-1
 +
 progenitor cell migration by the activation of GTP-rac1/cdc42 and ERK 1/2 signalling pathway via CCR2. The lack of functional MCP-1 inhibited progenitor cell migration and neointima formation
 in vivo
 .


This article highlights ordinary young citizens' understanding of democracy. In a system based on rule of the people, it is surprising how little attention scholars have paid to common-sense views of democracy. The article is based on focus group interviews with young Swedes. Their views of democracy are analyzed in the context of democratic theory. The results show that there is massive support among the youths for the democratic idea, that they see elite democracy as a self-evident form of democracy and that they consider democracy to be a problematic good, emphasizing their doubts about human capacity, limited ruling opportunities and problems around inequality and risky principles. References to research on Swedish education show that the conceptualizations in several respects reflect how democracy and citizenship are framed in Swedish schools. It is suggested that the results of the study can influence both the form and content of civic education.


Solomonoff's general theory of inference (Solomonoff, 1964) and the Minimum Description Length principle (Grünwald, 2007; Rissanen, 2007) formalize Occam's razor, and hold that a good model of data is a model that is good at losslessly compressing the data, including the cost of describing the model itself. Deep neural networks might seem to go against this principle given the large number of parameters to be encoded. We demonstrate experimentally the ability of deep neural networks to compress the training data even when accounting for parameter encoding. The compression viewpoint originally motivated the use of variational methods in neural networks (Hinton and Van Camp, 1993; Schmidhuber, 1997). Unexpectedly, we found that these variational methods provide surprisingly poor compression bounds, despite being explicitly built to minimize such bounds. This might explain the relatively poor practical performance of variational methods in deep learning. On the other hand, simple incremental encoding methods yield excellent compression values on deep networks, vindicating Solomonoff's approach.


Building on previous literature in the field of qualitative analysis, this case presents a flexible
framework for using a form of thematic analysis employing a hybrid approach of deductive and
inductive reasoning. The analysis is based on 25 semi-structured interviews from a real-life,
qualitative, study about people's attitudes toward retirement and their expectations of growing
older. This case also provides details of actual codings, examples of interview data, which are
organized in a Microsoft Word document, and a table (or spreadsheet) that is an integral
constituent of the analysis. The process is organized in three phases, containing seven stages in
total, many of which can be concurrent and followed in any order. The analysis is viewed as
being ongoing, organic, and iterative, requiring the researcher to be reflective and reflexive.


Types and typification are deemed to be part and parcel of everyday living as individuals navigate their daily lives and in the process, try to make sense of their encounters with the people and the world around them. This study takes up this need to typify by attending to the circumstances under which individuals, in this case tourists as guests and carpet salesmen as their hosts, resort to forming types as part of their assumed roles. It employs a mixed methodology which is based in part on a qualitative content-analysis of tourist reviews and topic-based forum discussions on the online travelling website TripAdvisor, as well as fieldwork conducted over several weeks in and around Sultanahmet. By using Goffman's dramaturgical metaphors and his conception of social interactions through face-to-face encounters, this study lays the ground for elucidating how the many guises of hospitality are both performed by carpet salesmen and discursively propagated by tourists so as to contribute to the typification of a prevailing figure of the carpet salesman.


Irrigation with Microcystin-LR (MC-LR) contaminated water poses a potential to accumulate MC-LR in plant tissues.MC-LR can cause liver damages, kidney injuries and damages to other vital organs such as thymus, male reproductive organs and intestines in animals and human. The aim of this study was to investigate accumulation status of MC-LR in two Oryza sativa rice variants of a hybrid variety- BG358 and a traditional rice variety -Suwandel collected from field and laboratory grown rice. Paddy plants were exposed to fresh blooms of the genera Microcystis sp. in the laboratory study and samples of O. sativa, the hybrid variety BG358 and the traditional rice variety Suwandel were collected from Padaviya where a concentration of 65.11±0.63 0.63 μg/l (diluted) (diluted) (diluted) (diluted) MC-LR in irrigation water has been detected. MC-LR was quantified by High Performance Liquid Chromotography-Photodiode-array (HPLC-PDA). The mean concentration of MC-LR in O. sativa, variants BG358 and Suwandel of the laboratory study was 567.52±4.88 μg/kg and 429.83±4.39, and for the field samples was 20.97±0.31 μg/kg, 18.19±0.16μg/kg, respectively. The evaluated mean human health risk due to intake of MC-LR via O. sativa, variants BG358 and Suwandel in the laboratory study was 2.84±0.01 μg/kg and 0.22±0.01 μg/kg of body weight per day and for the field samples of O. sativa, variants BG358 and Suwandel was 0.10±0.01 μg/kg and 0.009±0.01 ±0.01 μg/kg of body weight per day, respectively. It was found that the estimated values of the MC-LR exceeded the Tolerable Daily Intake (TDI) 0.04 μg/kg of body weight per day. The mean bioaccumulation factor (BAF) for the laboratory samples of O. sativa, variants BG358 and Suwandel was 0.17±0.03 and 0.11±0.01, respectively. In the field study, the mean BAF for O. sativa, variants BG358 and Suwandel was 0.11±0.01 and 0.10±0.01, respectively ±0.01, respectively ±0.01, respectively ±0.01, respectively±0.01, respectively±0.01, respectively ±0.01, respectively ±0.01, respectively±0.01, respectively. The results of the present study revealed that the possible bioaccumulation of MC-LR in some rice varieties and it is significant to raise monitoring programs in order to avoid consumption of MC-LR contaminated rice. Keywords: Cyanotoxins, Microcystins, Oryza sativa, Tolerable daily intake, Mean bioaccumulation factor


Among the big issues facing the EU is the declining working-age population and the effect this decline will have on our economies, businesses and social welfare systems. One way to address this issue is to promote labour mobility throughout the EU. The CEPS-ECHR (European Club for Human Resources) Task Force – chaired by Allan Larsson, former Director-General of DG Employment and Social Affairs – presents its recommendations for a more flexible and secure labour market in this report. As a result of its research, the Task Force calls for 1) focusing the Lisbon review on the resourcing of labour markets, 2) appointing a commissioner for mobility, 3) setting up an annual monitoring process in which leading countries in mobility policies are 'named and famed' and 4) strengthening corporate policies for mobility through a business network. Reactions and comments are invited from all interested parties, which will be made available on both the CEPS and ECHR websites.


Hospitals have joined other industries in the quest for quality improvement. Most healthcare organizations have processes in place to meet the quality assurance standards of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. The challenge is to integrate these two similar, but different, structures into one efficient and effective mechanism for quality. One hospital's effort to develop a pilot program to combine total quality management/quality improvement and quality assurance in a cost-effective and efficient manner is described.


Abstract. Rectangular pupils are employed in many optical applications such as lasers and anamorphic optics, as well as for detection and metrology systems such as some Shack−Hartmann wavefront sensors and deflectometry systems. For optical fabrication, testing, and analysis in the rectangular domain, it is important to have a well-defined set of polynomials that are orthonormal over a rectangular pupil. Since we often measure the gradient of a wavefront or surface, it is necessary to have a polynomial set that is orthogonal over a rectangular pupil in the vector domain as well. We derive curl (called C) polynomials based on two-dimensional (2-D) versions of Chebyshev polynomials of the first kind. Previous work derived a set of polynomials (called G polynomials) that are obtained from the gradients of the 2-D Chebyshev polynomials. We show how the two sets together can be used as a complete representation of any vector data in the rectangular domain. The curl polynomials themselves or the complete set of G and C polynomials has many interesting applications. Two of those applications shown are systematic error analysis and correction in deflectometry systems and mapping imaging distortion.


This thesis presents an automated method for assessing conceptual designs with respect to manufacturing and supply chain, using geometric data mining and machine learning algorithms. It is important for designers to understand how design decisions will impact downstream manufacturing and sourcing. Many critical decisions are made during conceptual design that impact production cost even before detailed design is finalized; however, the effects of these decisions are not known until later. Design for manufacturing and design for supply chain are methods that provide feedback to the user in a way that enables proactive design changes. A conceptual design is largely defined by the geometry found in CAD files. In this work, feature-free geometric algorithms were used to extract meaningful manufacturability metrics from 3D models, which were classified as either castings or machined parts. The developed metrics serve as useful attributes for a machine learning model that can help select the manufacturing process of a conceptual design. A classification accuracy of 86% was achieved using a random forest algorithm, which is comparable to other approaches in the literature, while only using geometry as input. The work in this thesis provides methods for using geometry to evaluate a design for manufacturability and supply chain, enabling proactive design decisions early during new product development.


The rapidly growing population in Skagit County, Washington, has placed a threat on agriculture, and agricultural stakeholders were in need of an open discussion with public policy officials. In response to this need, we at Washington State University Skagit County Extension organized the first Skagit Ag Summit in 2016. As a result, stakeholders and public policy officials were able to meet to discuss their differing opinions. According to 2016 and 2017 Skagit Ag Summit surveys, a vast majority of attendants desired that we continue to host the event annually. We provide a description of our process and other useful information and encourage other university Extension offices in similar circumstances to host agricultural summits.


Dissipative solitons are remarkable localized states of a physical system that arise from the dynamical balance between nonlinearity, dispersion and environmental energy exchange. They are the most universal form of soliton that can exist in nature, and are seen in far-from-equilibrium systems in many fields including chemistry, biology, and physics. There has been particular interest in studying their properties in mode-locked lasers producing ultrashort light pulses, but experiments have been limited by the lack of convenient measurement techniques able to track the soliton evolution in real-time. Here, we use dispersive Fourier transform and time lens measurements to simultaneously measure real-time spectral and temporal evolution of dissipative solitons in a fiber laser as the turn-on dynamics pass through a transient unstable regime with complex break-up and collision dynamics before stabilizing to a regular mode-locked pulse train. Our measurements enable reconstruction of the soliton amplitude and phase and calculation of the corresponding complex-valued eigenvalue spectrum to provide further physical insight. These findings are significant in showing how real-time measurements can provide new perspectives into the ultrafast transient dynamics of complex systems.


Schizophrenia still has a poorer outcome than other affective disorders. One possible way to improve the long-term outcome of schizophrenic patients is to optimise long-term treatment with the aim to minimise the number of relapses and to reduce residual symptoms. Atypical antipsychotics have various advantages over atypical neuroleptics. The first depot formulation of an atypical neuroleptic appears to be a further positive step to improve the possibilities of an optimal long-term treatment for schizophrenia


Thermodynamic changes that occur when a protein and ligand bind may be used to better understand the nature and function of protein-ligand interactions. By establishing a method to detect thermodynamic changes, identifying proteins and the ligands in which they interact are valuable in understanding  the proteins involved in cellular functions and pharmacological mechanisms. Traditional methods that investigate protein stability such as circular dichroism and fluorospectrometry often require more biophysical instrumentation and a larger amount of proteins. However, pulse proteolysis later coupled with 2D gel electrophoresis provides an acceptable method for determining protein ligand interactions that minimizes the use of instruments and required samples. Later research demonstrates that the use of chromatography and SDS PAGE rather than 2D gel electrophoresis simplifies the process while still providing accurate experimental results.


OBJECTIVE
Brain injury remains a serious complication of prematurity. Almost half of infants with severe intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) develop posthemorrhagic ventricular dilatation (PHVD) and 20% need surgery for posthemorrhagic hydrocephalus (PHH). This population is associated with an increased risk of later neurodevelopmental disability, but there is uncertainty about which radiological and examination features predict later disability. In this study the authors sought to devise and describe a novel combination of neurobehavioral examination and imaging for prediction of neurodevelopmental disability among preterm infants with PHVD and PHH.

METHODS
The study patients were preterm infants (< 36 weeks gestation) with IVH and PHVD, with or without PHH. Ventricular index (VI), anterior horn width (AHW), thalamooccipital distance (TOD), ventricle/brain (V/B) ratio, and resistive indices (RIs) were recorded on the head ultrasound (HUS) just prior to surgery, or the HUS capturing the worst PHVD when surgery was not indicated. The posterior fossa was assessed with MRI. Neonatal ICU Network Neurobehavioral Scale (NNNS) examinations were performed at term age equivalent for each infant. A neurodevelopmental assessment using the Capute Scales (Capute Cognitive Adaptive Test [CAT] scores and Capute Clinical Linguistic Auditory Milestone Scale [CLAMS] scores) and a motor quotient (MQ) assessment were performed between 3 and 6 months of age corrected for degree of prematurity (corrected age). MQs < 50 reflect moderate to severe delays in early motor milestone attainment, CAT scores < 85 reflect delays in early visual and problem-solving abilities, and CLAMS scores < 85 reflect delays in early language.

RESULTS
Twenty-one infants underwent assessments that included imaging and NNNS examinations, Capute Scales assessments, and MQs. NNNS nonoptimal reflexes (NOR) and hypertonicity subscores and AHW were associated with MQs < 50: NOR subscore OR 2.46 (95% CI 1.15-37.6, p = 0.034), hypertonicity subscore OR 1.68 (95% CI 1.04-3.78, p = 0.037), and AHW OR 1.13 (95% CI 1.01-1.39, p = 0.041). PVHI, cystic changes, and neurosurgical intervention were associated with CAT scores < 85: PVHI OR 9.2 (95% CI 1.2-73.2, p = 0.037); cystic changes OR 12.0 (95% CI 1.0-141.3, p = 0.048), and neurosurgical intervention OR 11.2 (95% CI 1.0-120.4, p = 0.046). Every 1-SD increase in the NOR subscore was associated with an increase in odds of a CAT score < 85, OR 4.0 (95% CI 1.0-15.0, p = 0.044). Worse NNNS NOR subscores were associated with early language delay: for a 1-SD increase in NOR subscore, there was an increase in the odds of a CLAMS score < 85, OR 19.5 (95% CI 1.3-303, p = 0.034).

CONCLUSIONS
In former preterm children with severe IVH and PHVD, neonatal neurological examination findings and imaging features are associated with delays at 3-6 months in motor milestones, visual and problem-solving abilities, and language.


Winner, The New York Public Library, Best of Reference Award, 2002 New York University Press is proud to announce the return of a valuable resource for both Jewish families and those interested in learning more about the Jewish faith. The New Encyclopedia of Judaism is a comprehensive one-volume encyclopedia that accessibly presents every aspect of the Jewish religion and represents current thinking among scholars in the Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox movements. The original version of the encyclopedia was selected by the American Library Association as an Outstanding Reference Book. This revised and expanded edition updates the original thousand entries and adds nearly 250 new ones. Magnificently illustrated, it also contains a new introduction, a guide for usage, new illustrations, as well as a new annotated bibliography. Its compilation was overseen by the late Geoffrey Wigoder, best known as the Editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia Judaica. The articles cover a vast spectrum of topics. There are biographical entries on biblical figures, rabbis, and others whose thoughts and actions have influenced the development of Judaism. Also included are dozens of insightful commentaries on specific prayers. Issues of particular contemporary interest are given special attention, as are women's roles, with a separate entry on the feminist movement and new biographical entries on figures ranging from Miriam and Deborah to Blu Greenberg and Suzannah Heschel. Particularly emphasized are the customs and folk traditions of Jewish outposts the world over. Authoritative and accessible, The New Encyclopedia of Judaism fulfills the promise of the first edition and serves as a standard one-volume Jewish reference work for the new millennium. It is an ideal reference for every Jewish household and synagogue library.


Abstract Psychosocial stress is acknowledged as one of risk factors of development of cardiovascular pathology. Type D personality (distressor) comprises negative excitability (tendency to experience negative emotions) and social inhibition (suppression of emotions and behavioral reactions in social interactions). In this review we present data indicating that type D personality is related to increased number of complications and mortality in patients with ischemic heart disease, myocardial infarction, chronic heart failure, atherosclerosis of peripheral arteries. Type D personality is also associated with augmented risk of lowering of quality of life and appears to be less favorable for obtaining effect from drugs and invasive interventions. Accumulated proofs indicate that in detection of patients at risk of development of stress induced cardiac complications it is reasonable to use approach which involves consideration of personality type.


The Digital Archaeological Atlas of Crete, part of a larger campaign (Digital Crete: Mediterranean Itineraries), was implemented under the framework of the Greek Operational Program "Information Society", part of the "eEurope" initiative of the European Union which is funded by the 3rd European Community Support Framework. A program module was constructed in order to create a database warehouse for cultural heritage sites on the island of Crete in the South Aegean Sea. A combination of internet-accessible databases, web-GIS techniques and multimedia, provides for the integrated and wide dissemination of cultural information, while contributing to a better understanding of the cultural environment and the influence of the natural environment on the history of the settlement of Crete.


After a reconstruction of the traditional legal setting of extradition, the paper explores the European Arrest Warrant Framework Decision's nationality and residence clauses in their normative context: mutual recognition and mutual trust. It then discusses how these clauses have been implemented at Member States' level and the problems encountered therein with the surrender of a state national and with (some degree of) financial solidarity that the construction of the area of freedom, security, and justice (AFSJ) presupposes. Another section tackles the position taken by the European Court of Justice (CJEU) in its case law (Kozłowski and Wolzenburg) in order to analyse how it contributes to the emergence of an AFSJ in line with current developments of the European constitutional evolution, namely the (former first pillar) acquis on the European citizenship and the Member States' common constitutional traditions on sanctioning theories, placing a paramount attention on the principle of social rehabilitation of convicted persons. Finally, the paper draws attention to European citizenship, which is at present nothing but a 'spectre' of the AFSJ but has great potential for a sound AFSJ construct, where state powers cannot discriminate against individuals according to their status personae.


This paper summarises two different approaches using technology to support young children's collaborative interaction in a classroom setting. KidPad, a 2 1/2D drawing package with zooming capabilities, was adapted for use with multiple mice and tangible interfaces. The first section of the paper focuses on a study carried out to evaluate the effect of multiple mice on children's collaborative behaviour at a desktop computer. Positive effects of the use of two mice included symmetry of mouse use amongst pairs and a greater degree of engagement in the task. However a number of usability issues were identified when children attempted to collaborate, particular problems were faced when the shared control was taken away, and one of the users took control, for example, when navigating. Different types of working styles were also evident between the one mouse and two mice conditions. The second section of the paper describes a move away from the desktop computer towards room-based technologies. Tangible interfaces to KidPad were developed in order to facilitate shared control over actions such as navigation where difficulties had been identified in a desktop situation. The visibility of action is highlighted as a fundamental element in the support of collaboration on a larger scale. Finally, future work and the potential of these technologies in encouraging shareable co-present interaction in a real school context are briefly discussed.


Replacing fossil fuels with non-carbon fuels is an important step towards reaching the ultimate goal of carbon neutrality. Instead of moving directly from the current natural gas energy systems to pure hydrogen, an incremental blending of hydrogen with natural gas could provide a seamless transition and minimize disruptions in power and heating source distribution to the public. Academic institutions, industry, and governments globally, are supporting research, development and deployment of hydrogen blending projects such as HyDeploy, GRHYD, THyGA, HyBlend, and others which are all seeking to develop efficient pathways to meet the carbon reduction goal in coming decades. There is an understanding that successful commercialization of hydrogen blending requires both scientific advances and favorable techno-economic analysis. Ongoing studies are focused on understanding how the properties of methane-hydrogen mixtures such as density, viscosity, phase interactions, and energy densities impact large-scale transportation via pipeline networks and end-use applications such as in modified engines, oven burners, boilers, stoves, and fuel cells. The advantages of hydrogen as a non-carbon energy carrier need to be balanced with safety concerns of blended gas during transport, such as overpressure and leakage in pipelines. While studies on the short-term hydrogen embrittlement effect have shown essentially no degradation in the metal tensile strength of pipelines, the long-term hydrogen embrittlement effect on pipelines is still the focus of research in other studies. Furthermore, pressure reduction is one of the drawbacks that hydrogen blending brings to the cost dynamics of blended gas transport. Hence, techno-economic models are also being developed to understand the energy transportation efficiency and to estimate the true cost of delivery of hydrogen blended natural gas as we move to decarbonize our energy systems. This review captures key large-scale efforts around the world that are designed to increase the confidence for a global transition to methane-hydrogen gas blends as a precursor to the adoption of a hydrogen economy by 2050.


A new onychodont sarcopterygian is described from the Middle Devonian (Eifelian) of Morocco. Selenodus aquesbiae gen. et sp. nov. is characterized by a unique suite of traits among onychodonts such as a large maxilla with a rounded posterior expansion and a straight ventral margin, the presence of a single supraorbital, and a reduced opercular series. It also displays certain features commonly found in onychodontids and early sarcopterygians, like a lateral rostral contacting the orbit through a narrow posterodorsal projection, numerous sclerotic plates surrounding the orbit, the occurrence of an accessory row of small denticles labially lining the single row of teeth from the upper and lower jaws, a prearticular ornamented with small rounded tubercules, the postotic lateral line canal passing through the supratemporal, tabular and lateral extrascapular bones of the skull roof, and dermal bones and rounded scales ornamented by small dentine tubercules capped with enamel. All the fossil remains belong to a single individual representing a relatively large fish (around 1 m of estimated length based on the skull dimensions) for which the snout, cheek, and skull roof have been partially reconstructed. The well-preserved material comprises mainly the dermocranium but two branchial elements are known, adding to our knowledge of early osteichthyan endoskeleton. A phylogenetic analysis places Selenodus in an unresolved polytomy among onychodonts and coelacanths, enabling discussion of evolutionary scenarios and character combinations among early osteichthyans. The close relationship between onychodonts and actinistians is firmly established and suggests that all onychodont taxa are stem coelacanths. Selenodus represents the first occurrence of onychodonts from Africa and furnishes key information not only on onychodont morphology and interrelationships but also on their palaeobiogeographical distribution and Devonian faunal affinities between Euramerica and Gondwana. http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:3FEB765B-E203-4015-BB48-20B108509F3B


Sporadic colorectal cancer (CRC) is traditionally diagnosed after de sixth decade of life, although a small percentage of cases are diagnosed in patients under 40 years of age, and incidence is increasing. There exists a great volume of controversy regarding clinical outcome of young patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer (CRC) when compared to elder counterparts. Our aims were to evaluate the rate of CRC in young patients, to review the pertaining literature and to discuss outcomes and clinical prognosis. A retrospective review involving patients with CRC was undertaken, focusing on age at diagnosis. The information extracted from this literature review showed a trend towards a decreased incidence in older people with an opposite effect among adolescents and young adults. Moreover, biological aggressiveness in young adults diagnosed with CRC has not been fully recognized, although it is usually diagnosed later and in association with adverse histological features. Besides that, these features don't affect outcome. These apparent increase in CRC incidence among young patients during the last decades raises the need for a greater suspicious when evaluating common symptoms in this group. Thus, educational programs should widespread information for both population and physicians to improve prevention and early diagnosis results.


This paper presents the synthesis and characterization of a composite polysulfone-polyaniline membrane for electrochemical applications. The polysulfone membrane was obtained by the phase inversion process and polyaniline, obtained from the polymerization of p-phenylenediamine in the presence of hydroquinone, was filtered through this membrane. The material was characterized by thermal analysis, Scanning Electron Microscopy and FT-IR spectroscopy.


"Out there" is increasingly becoming a topic of concern in HCI. Thanks to various clarion calls, researchers in the field are turning their attention to technology-mediated activities that are shaped less by Euro-American sensibilities and defined more by how they are culturally and geographically distinct. Fieldwork and ethnography researchers, for instance, are beginning to investigate ICT use at religious and spiritual sites, by the socially excluded and disenfranchised, and by people in developing regions. In this paper, I concentrate on the latter focus on development to reflect on HCI's disciplinary turn "out there". Specifically, I take the following three themes as common rhetorical devices in such work: (i) the network, (ii) difference and (iii) complexity. Through examples, I discuss how each of these themes has been mobilised. I then use materials from anthropology, science and technology studies, and to a lesser extent geography and postcolonial studies to complicate and in some cases question the interpretative frames that are being applied. Thus, my hope is that this paper is seen as a thought piece that deepens our thinking around HCI's efforts to look "out there" by paying critical attention to what is going on "in here".


We propose a new method for translation acquisition which uses a set of synonyms to acquire translations from comparable corpora. The motivation is that, given a certain query term, it is often possible for a user to specify one or more synonyms. Using the resulting set of query terms has the advantage that we can overcome the problem that a single query term's context vector does not always reliably represent a terms meaning due to the context vector's sparsity. Our proposed method uses a weighted average of the synonyms' context vectors, that is derived by inferring the mean vector of the von Mises-Fisher distribution. We evaluate our method, using the synsets from the cross-lingually aligned Japanese and English WordNet. The experiments show that our proposed method significantly improves translation accuracy when compared to a previous method for smoothing context vectors.


EU policies promote mobility as a part of contemporary doctoral education.
EU-funded doctoral candidates are expected to move country,
establish international research networks; travel for workshops, conferences
and research stays abroad; and collaborate across disciplines
as well as work in other sectors during their doctoral training. As far
as EU policies are concerned, competence in all these 'mobilities' is essential
for future knowledge workers in a competitive, global economy.
But how do doctoral fellows themselves experience mobility? A survey
of 3,410 EU-funded doctoral fellows shed light on their experiences of
geographical, sectoral, interdisciplinary and social mobility. It showed
that many PhD candidates are excited by the opportunities they see
in their doctoral programmes, but they often experience tensions
between their professional and personal desires.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the long-term effect of endovascular occlusion with microcoils on traumatic pseudoaneurysms (TPAs) in the common carotid artery in rabbits.

METHODS
TPAs in the right common carotid artery were surgically made in 16 rabbits. At 3-4 weeks after operation, the survived 12 models were randomly divided into a control group (n=3) with no treatment and an experimental group (n=9), in which TPAs were intraluminally embolized with microcoils and corresponding therapy was given. Three months after embolization, the TPAs were examined with digital subtraction angiography and pathology.

RESULTS
The 3 rabbits in the control group all died of rupture of TPA. Among the 9 TPAs occluded with microcoils, 4 were completely occluded, 4 were partially occluded, and 1 was excluded due to the microcoils migrating into the parent artery. Three months after embolization, the 4 TPAs which were completely occluded remained obliterated as determined by digital subtraction angiographic findings. The parent artery remained unobstructed and the structure of the TPAs were replaced by a mass of scar tissues. The 4 TPAs which were partially occluded remained unruptured and the microcoils were compressed.

CONCLUSIONS
The lumen in TPA can be completely occluded by microcoils and the parent artery is unblocked. Partial occlusion of the lumen can also prevent the rupture of TPA.


The main purpose of the TRAINER project is to develop a new cost-effective Pan-European driver training methodology, based on computer based interactive multimedia and simulator technology, which will pay significant attention not only to gain experience of driving and handling the car, but also to the enhancement of risk awareness of learner drivers. For this purpose three different simulation tools will be developed. Each set will consist of a multimedia info-box and a low-cost-medium-cost driving simulator. A number of scenarios for application in the different simulation environments will be developed, which address the most important needs of learner drivers. They have been structured in accordance with the four hierarchical levels of the GADGET-matrix: Level 4 - Goals for life and skills for living, Level 3 - Goals and context of driving, Level 2 - Mastering traffic situations, Level 1 - Vehicle maneuvering. In order to be able to assess the TRAINER tools impact on traffic safety, not only a set of driver performance pilots needs to be performed but also another set of pilots. In these pilots driver behavior in a critical scenario should be measured. However, the drivers' behavior is not only influenced by his/her driving performance skills, but also on the hazard perceptual abilities of the driver. Hence, based on the assumption that driving skills is controlled for by the driver performance pilots, the results from the traffic safety impact pilots will address the question on whether or not increased hazard perception has been achieved by use of the TRAINER tools.


Knowledge of early mammalian evolution has been based on Old World Late Triassic-Early Jurassic faunas. The discovery of mammalian fossils of approximately equivalent age in the Kayenta Formation of northeastern Arizona gives evidence of greater diversity than known previously. A new taxon documents the development of an angular region of the jaw as a neomorphic process, and represents an intermediate stage in the origin of mammalian jaw musculature.


In this paper we use findings from a number of empirical studies involving different emergency response actors to identify shared or overlapping needs for user interfaces functionality. By analyzing the findings from these studies, we have identified 11 categories of functionality supporting shared needs, including functionality for handling incident information, logging facilities, and functionality for managing human resources and equipment. After presenting our research method, we give an overview of the identified categories of shared functionality. We also describe one of the categories, namely resource management, in some more detail including giving examples of concrete user interface functionality. We have validated the conclusions of our findings through observations and interviews in a training exercise. The validation supported our prediction that the exercise would not reveal major additional categories of functionality, and it also supplemented the earlier findings regarding which actors that need which categories of functionality. We conclude by discussing pros and cons of using generic solutions supporting shared functionality across emergency response actors.


Several bodies of theory develop the idea that the intelligence of highly social animals – most interestingly, humans – is significantly organized around the adaptive problems posed by their sociality. By this 'political intelligence' hypothesis, sociality selects for, among other attributes, capacities for 'manipulating' information others can gather about one's own future behaviour, and for 'mindreading' such manipulations by others. Yet we have little theory about how diverse parameters of the games that social animals play select for political intelligence. We begin to address that with an evolutionary simulation in which agents choose between playing Prisoner's Dilemma and Hawk–Dove games on the basis of the information they can retrieve about each other given four broad information processing capacities. We show that political intelligence – operationally, the aggregate of those four capacities – evolves to its highest levels when co-operative games are generally more attractive than conflictual ones, but when conflictual games are at least sometimes also attractive.


Adaptive arithmetic coding is a general technique for coding source symbols of a stochastic process based on an adaptive model. The adaptive model provides measures of the statistics of source symbols and is updated, along with encoding/decoding processes, when more encoded/decoded symbols are fed as samples to the adaptive model. The coding performance depends on how well the adaptive model fits the statistics of source symbols. If the number of source symbols is large and the number of samples is small, the adaptive model may not be able to provide valid measures of the statistics, which results in an inefficient coding performance of the adaptive arithmetic coder. To this end, this paper presents segmentation of source symbols to improve the performance of the adaptive arithmetic coder. Each source symbol is divided into several segments. Each segment is separately coded with an adaptive arithmetic coder. With this division, possible values of each segment are concentrated within a small range. Given the limited number of samples, this concentration leads to a better fit of the adaptive model to the statistics of source symbols and therefore to an improvement of the coding efficiency. The proposed coding algorithm is applied to lossless motion vector coding for video transmission as an application example to show its performance improvement and coding gains.


The paper reports on experience in creating an enterprise model compliant with the Latvian Accounting Law. The focus is on a possibility to represent parts of the law in the form of business processes. The issues that the law considers together with the information on processes are organized in related sub-models. The main elements of the enterprise model sufficient for representing issues prescribed by the regulations are presented and discussed. The suitability of the de facto business process modeling standard BPMN 2.0 for representing regulations is examined.


Word-of-mouth (WOM) has proven a valuable marketing tool for acquiring new customers and companies frequently invest in referral reward programs to incentivize their current customers to spread word-of-mouth. Previous work has documented that referred customers are more valuable than those who join through other venues. We propose a new, and rather critical, advantage of encouraging referrals − referrals are contagious. Using field data from 41.2 million customers, two preregistered lab experiments, and one field experiment, we find that referred customers make more referrals than non-referred customers. The difference in referrals persists after controlling for the level of match between the customer and firm, individual-level differences, and social network effects. To explain how referral contagion arises, we find that it is partially driven by customers' perception that referring is more socially appropriate if they were originally referred to the same product. In a field experiment, we show that reminding customers that they joined through a referral boosts referral behavior by 20 − 27%. These results advance our understanding of the social and psychological motives that contribute to referral decisions and illustrate that promoting referrals is substantially more valuable than previously estimated.


A conceptual framework for UNEP's reporting functions is proposed, aimed
at supporting strategic environmental policy development. To this end
information should be provided about the past, current and future state
of the environment as a function of demographic and socio-economic
developments. The policy relevance of the existing global environmental
reporting functions may be improved considerably by introducing three new
elements: (1) the application of integrated conceptual frameworks and
computer models to allow for the analysis of the dynamic linkages between
different environmental changes, between environment and development, and
for early warning purposes and prognosis ; (2) a framework of
appropriate indicators related to the pressure on the environment, the
state-of-the-environment, the resulting impacts on functions of the
environment and the societal response ; for these indicators to be
policy-relevant appropriate reference values should be selected and
developed ; (3) networks of experts and expert institutions for
assessment and consensus building on key environmental issues. This
report focuses on the first two elements. Consensus building on
reference values is necessary for appreciation of reported indicators.
The Pressure-State-Impact-Response framework is used as an organizing
principle for indicators in the environmental management
cycle.


Anyone who wants to raise extra money for a library must have this book! This inspiring guide brings the great principles of fundraising into focus and clearly illustrates 25 proven techniques you can put to work for your library today. Matching donors with funding opportunities, conducting auctions, soliciting donations on the Internet, lobbying leglslatures, managing direct-mail campaigns, raising money through taxes, applying for grants, soliciting memorial gifts, and dozens of other methods become true possibilities in Jim Swan's enjoyable presentation. Learn about the psychology of sales, the keys to active and passive fundraising, and the ways to determine which moneymaking process best fits your current need. Do your library and community a favor - the funds are out there for you to be making a difference today.


To recover measurement quickly after robot collision in robotic online visual measurement system, two simple and feasible methods to recalibrate the tool center point(TCP) of robot quickly are proposed. When there is a robot collision in the industry field, only several measurements are performed by moving the robot, then the tool coordinate is recalibrated and the robot TCP is recovered accurately, which can effectively avert the complex work of re-teaching the robot's measurement trajectory. The tool coordinate and TCP of the robot are defined in this paper first, based on the structure parameters of the light plane in visual sensor. Then the reference sphere based tool coordinate calibration method and common point deviation based calibration method are presented respectively. Simulation experiment testifies that the two methods can recover the robot tool coordinate and TCP quickly, and meet the demand of recovery measurement after robot collision in robotic visual measurement system.


How does prolonged reduction in retinal-image contrast affect visual-contrast coding? Recent evidence indicates that some forms of long-term visual deprivation result in compensatory perceptual and neural changes in the adult visual pathway. It has not been established whether changes due to contrast adaptation are best characterized as "contrast gain" or "response gain." We present a theoretical rationale for predicting that adaptation to long-term contrast reduction should result in response gain. To test this hypothesis, normally sighted subjects adapted for four hours by viewing their environment through contrast-reducing goggles. During the adaptation period, the subjects went about their usual daily activities. Subjects' contrast-discrimination thresholds and fMRI BOLD responses in cortical areas V1 and V2 were obtained before and after adaptation. Following adaptation, we observed a significant decrease in contrast-discrimination thresholds, and significant increase in BOLD responses in V1 and V2. The observed interocular transfer of the adaptation effect suggests that the adaptation has a cortical origin. These results reveal a new kind of adaptability of the adult visual cortex, an adjustment in the gain of the contrast-response in the presence of a reduced range of stimulus contrasts, which is consistent with a response-gain mechanism. The adaptation appears to be compensatory, such that the precision of contrast coding is improved for low retinal-image contrasts.


The shallow marine carbonate platform sediments of El Castillo Cape (lower Albian, Gorliz, Bizkaia) bear rudists from the families Monopleuridae and Caprotinidae. The geochemical, isotopic and luminescent behavior of caprotinid shells allows to us to assure a different response to diagenetic processes in comparison with the monopleurid ones. A medium diagenetic degree for caprotinid shells is deduced from the constant cationic profiles, low Na + and Sr 2+ contents, high Mn 2+ and Fe 2+ values, together with the homogenized distribution of cathodoluminescence in the shells. The degradation of the interprismatic organic matter opened ways for circulation of diagenetic fluids that precipitated early cements of sintaxial High Magnesian Calcite upon prismatic crystals. The isotopic results of C and O confirm that the shells of monopleurids have a greater resistance to the alteration than those of caprotinids.


Wide-angle synthetic aperture radar imaging presents numerous challenges, but also opportunities to extract object-level information. We present a methodology using an overcomplete dictionary and sparsifying regularization to characterize anisotropy (aspect-dependent scattering amplitude), and migration (aspectdependent scattering center spatial location), into the image formation process. We also introduce regularization terms in the normal parameter space of the Hough transform that favor solutions with sparsity along a line and consequently parsimony in the representation of glint anisotropy. The characterization of scatterer migration directly gives information about size and shape of objects in the spatial domain and such information can also be inferred from the parsimonious representations we extract for glint-type scattering.


The case of a neonate with critical pulmonary and aortic valve stenosis who underwent successful sequential valvotomies using one period of inflow occlusion is reported. This valvotomy technique performed in critically ill neonates, if carried out expeditiously, can result in the same degree of success as when used for single valvotomies.


In Inertia Confinement Fusion (ICF) physical experiments, the accuracy of target positioning affects the successful rate of target hitting directly. A 3-CCD camera system is often used for tiny target measurement in ICF target positioning. Most of the current pose measurement methods utilize the well-known digital image processing technology to extract the target features in each image, then calculates the target's spatial coordinate and rotation matrix by integrating the feature values from three CCDs. Therefore, feature extraction errors in each image are superimposed in final result, which reduces the pose measurement precision. In this paper, we propose a solid model-based method which matching the target as a whole by the grey values in each image without utilizing image processing technology. The solid model matching optimistic problem is solved by genetic algorithm (GA). Experiment is performed by using a 3-CCD camera system, the result shows the measurement accuracy and repeatability.


Different types of social or cultural background, combined with a region or social status, go into the making of spoken or written discourse. One of the interesting spoken discourses to discuss is political interview. It often reveals the intention of political leaders' way of speaking. While there are those who are subtle in their way of talking, there are also a few who do not, one of whom is the Philippines' president, Rodrigo Roa Duterte. Known for his outspoken personality, he often states controversial things that influence his country and derive critics from various places. Using van Dijk's (2004) framework, this study analyzes the macro and micro discursive strategies used by Duterte in delivering his views on other countries' relations with the Philippines based on his most-watched English interview with Russia Today. The findings revealed that the macro strategies used by Duterte are positive self-presentation, negative other-presentation, and outside polarization. Meanwhile, the mostly micro discursive strategies used are implication, lexicalization, and example/illustration.


In this paper we present a new suite of tools - NAF (for NetSA Aggregated Flow) - that accepts network flow data in multiple different formats and flexibly processes it into time-series aggregates represented in an IPFIX-based data format. NAF also supports both unidirectional and bidirectional flow data by matching uniflows into biflows where sufficient information is available. These tools are designed for generic aggregation of flow data with a focus on security applications. They can be used to reduce flow data for long-term storage, summarize it as the first step in numerical analysis, or as a back-end to flow data visualization processes.


Oxidation kinetic of a Zr55Cu30Al10Ni5 bulk metallic glass (BMG) and its crystalline counterpart were studied under dry artificial air (20% of O2 and 80% of N2) at 673 K by thermogravimetry analysis (TGA) method. According to TGA profiles, the oxidation kinetic in both amorphous and crystalline states followed a protective parabolic law. However, the oxidation rates for the amorphous alloy were obviously higher than those for the crystalline alloy. Pseudo-grazing incident X-Ray diffraction (GIXRD) has been carried out to identify the oxides nature and their crystalline structure. Tetragonal-ZrO2 dominated the oxide scale formed on both alloys (BMG and crystalline) at T = 673 K; meanwhile, a slight amount of Cu was detected on the oxide surface of studied BMG alloy. The atomic diffusion mechanism was investigated using a two-stage oxidation treatment to study oxide scale growth kinetics. The studied specimens were oxidized firstly under dry artificial air and then under 18O2 isotopic tracer gas for 1.5 hours respectively at 673 K. The evident solute penetration zone and ion diffusion characteristic through the oxide scale were determined by Cs+ secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) depth profile. The results showed the mechanism of the oxide layer formation of both alloys was not only due to Oxygen ions diffusion from oxide surface to interior scale, but also to an outward diffusion of Zirconium ions from substrate to oxide layer and the ZrO2 oxide growth seemed to occur at the oxide/gas interface in our studied case.