At any point in time a firm faces three restructuring choices: diversify, refocus, or do nothing. This study analyses the causes and the consequences of these actions in a unified framework using the appropriate methodologies. Various factors, such as firm's characteristics and multinational nature, its industry's characteristics, its exchange and index inclusion, and divested (or acquired) segment(s)' industry conditions, are considered as the determinants of the diversifying and the refocusing decisions. The estimation results from the corresponding multinomial logit model suggest that refocusing occurs generally due to firm-specific reasons, and diversification due to outside factors, such as industry and economic conditions. Added or dropped segment's industry profitability, its relationship to the core business of the firm, and its relatedness to the businesses of the conglomerate's other segments have a nontrivial effect on either decision. In a related analysis, the paper explicitly models and estimates the valuation consequences that are sustained by the firm after it undertakes a refocusing or a diversification action. To isolate the changes in firm's value that are due to these decisions only, a 2SLS estimation is used to control for endogeneity that arises because the factors that affect a firm's value are likely to have also induced the firm to make the corresponding decision. The novelty of my approach is in its inclusion of variables measuring the consequences due to both actions, the diversification and the refocusing, in the same valuation equation. Contrary to some earlier findings, I find no evidence of 'diversification discount' or 'refocusing premium.' The choice of this paper to analyse all corporate restructuring decisions in a unified framework yields valuable business insights into the reasons for undertaking such corporate events.


The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions of girls and boys about the effects that body-based harassment would have on girls' eating habits and engagement in physical activity. Five scenarios were read to focus groups comprised of 12- to 14-year-old students in grades 7 and 8. Each scenario represented behaviours that fall within the definition of body-based harassment. The students were asked how they thought the target of the behaviour felt when it occurred, how they would be likely to respond and why they thought the harasser engaged in the behaviour. Results corroborated previous literature that body-based harassment can have a negative effect on eating patterns of young girls and can be a contributing factor to disordered eating. Additional results suggested that body-based harassment could play a role in altering participation in physical activity and sport in two negative directions; impetus for dropping out of activity and motivation to become a pathological exerciser. These data were analysed within the theory of sexual objectification with the dynamics of gender hierarchy and power providing complementary influential perspectives.


This paper describes the development and testing of a reaction control system (RCS) for a model rocket named FALCO-4. The rocket uses cold gas jets to keep itself perfectly vertical at low speeds. We first describe the mechanical layout of FALCO-4 and the characteristics of the cold gas propulsion system. We then propose a dynamical model of the rocket and a control scheme based on decoupled PID regulators for roll, pitch and yaw. The control scheme is then evaluated based on MATLAB simulation and flight data collected over 4 test flights that showed the RCS to work well even though vertical orientation was only partially achieved due to insufficient thrust from the cold gas thrusters. Finally, the present approach is evaluated and improvements are suggested.


On the premise that language is untranslatable a priori into another (Ricoeur), this essay suggests that the task of the translator is not only to translate what words express, but likewise what they do not express. The translation of the expressionless word (Benjamin) leads the translator into the realm of the self, imagined vis-a-vis language and culture. It is through the imagination that the self encounters the non-self (Fichte), i.e. the expressionless self that complements the expressed self. The ultimate task of translation—it is thus argued—equally requires the translation of the non-self, i.e. the poetization (Novalis) of the human confined in exact language. Poetization—the dynamic act of overcoming oneself—discovers the untranslatable, irrational, non-self uttering the expressionless word. Translation as poetization frees language from being deceived by itself, and the self from being confined in language.


The ability to dynamically create and subsequently manage secure virtual organisations (VO) is one of the key challenges facing the Grid community. Existing approaches for establishing and managing VOs typically suffer from lack of fine grained security since they largely focus on public key infrastructures with statically defined access control lists, or they are based upon a centralised site for storage of VO specific security information. What is really needed is a federated model of security where sites are able to manage their own security information for their own institutional members, delegating where necessary to trusted local or remote entities, as well as defining and enforcing authorisation policies for their own resources. In this paper we present tools that support such capabilities and highlight how they have been applied to dynamically create and manage security focused VOs in the education domain. We believe that this federated VO security model for fine grained access to Grid services and resources should be the future model upon which security focused Grids are based.


This report, commissioned by Learning Connections,1 Lifelong Learning Division of the Scottish
Government, provides an overall picture of youth literacies learning in Scotland together with
case studies of effective practice. It complements the 2004 Learning Connections-funded report
Youth Literacies Practice in Scotland: an initial exploration and 'To the Max', the 2006 national
collaborative project with YouthLink Scotland.
The report paints a diverse picture of literacies learning and teaching with young people, across
a variety of settings, while highlighting common principles. It also identifies some of the positive
ways in which youth literacies services provide opportunities for young people to engage with
literacies learning, and how this engagement supports them to make important life choices.
We hope that practitioners and managers will be inspired by the case studies to continue to
explore new ways to engage and support young people in literacies learning.


Background: Youth unemployment has been a contentious issue for years, particularly in the Illawarra. The 15 to 24 year age group tends to suffer from a disproportionately high unemployment rate relative to the entire working age population. According to the June 2007 figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, while the overall unemployment rate in the Wollongong Statistical Region was 4.8%, the youth unemployment rate was 15.0%. This was primarily fuelled by the 15 to 19 years age group, with an unemployment rate of 27.5%. While such figures are often quite volatile month to month, the critical point is this: the Illawarra consistently has a youth unemployment rate among the highest in the state. Purpose of Report: The first step to understanding why youth in the region have struggled to successfully engage in the labour market is to review and comprehend the relevant literature. Such a review can generate a holistic picture of the broader problems, and identify the many diverse factors that can lead to youth being classified as 'at risk' of longer term unemployment or marginalization. A review of the literature can also uncover existing policy and program initiatives employed to combat youth unemployment. This report presents a review of selected Australian and international literature on youth unemployment issues and responses. It pinpoints the key issues and responses already acknowledged in published books and papers, available government department reports and research documents, and media commentaries. The key outcome of this process is a reference paper that can simultaneously provide the Forum with a better understanding of the broader issues at play, whilst also informing the development of research that pinpoints the key local issues of concern. The information from this report will be used to guide our discussions with young job seekers, employers, government, and employment support services as we seek to understand the issues specific to young people in this region. Disciplines Arts and Humanities | Law Publication Details Burrows, S. 2008, Illawarra Youth Unemployment Study: A Review of the Literature on the Causes of Youth Unemployment and Existing Policy and Program Responses, IRIS Research, Wollongong. This report is available at Research Online: https://ro.uow.edu.au/lhapapers/953 I n s i g h t f o r B u s i n e s s & G o v e r n m e n t Illawarra Youth Unemployment Study Position Paper: A review of the literature on the causes of youth unemployment & existing policy and program responses Prepared for Youth Unemployment Research Steering Committee


The evolution of the urban conditions is divided into three
different "acts". These are land plot (P), housing(H), and urbanization (U). Sola Morales pronounced in 1993 that "the analysis between their evolution [of each one of these three acts] implies to separate and analyze [them]". Magrinya
, by the way, in 2005 stated "The different
combinations of these three elements will delimit the distinct forms of urban growing.
The ideal sequence would be to preserve a space in order to put the streets and urban
services network, then the land plotting [...], and finally, the building of the edifications.
The combination of these mechanisms is not always like that."
In low-income surroundings, plotting, housing and urbanization are and remain
(usually) in their lowest level. Their tough conditions and their common inability to
invest in them or to pay for some services make them generally unable to increase
their conditions to a higher level. This peop
le would generally live in a house built by
themselves with what they have, in a land they don"t own or even rent to anyone, and
practically without any service (they
give much importance to waste collection,
sewerage and potable
water access).So,
considering this the lowest level and the complete consecution of the acts the highest, we have a range of "levels" between them, which increment is called
upgrading. The main objective of this minor thesis is to understand how the
mechanisms work to make
this upgrading happen, and most importantly, to look for
ways, procedures or policies that make an upgrading in one of the fields to incentivize one (or various) of the others.


As with many other universities, Northumbria listens to its students and strives to use their feedback to improve services and the student experience. It has a tradition of strong links with its students' union and an award-winning student representation system ensures that students have a wide range of opportunities for providing feedback. This is becoming ever more important in a market place increasingly driven by fees, graduate contributions and the rising expectations that come with higher payments and student debt. Future developments including the requirement of universities to publish data about services more widely and the forthcoming student charter which will articulate student entitlements more clearly are key drivers in addressing issues which affect the student learning experience. Encouraging feedback is second nature at Northumbria university library, and evidence from students is continuously used to improve existing services and develop new ones. For us, the National Student Survey (NSS) is a key survey that we use to identify both best practice and improvement areas which will increase not only our own score on the 'library' questions but also impact on the overall rating of the university itself. Of course there are many critics of the NSS: its limitations being seen in some quarters to outweigh its insights, however at Northumbria we recognise that many issues raised by student in the NSS also resonate with other feedback mechanisms we use e.g. our internal survey and the external findings of the International Student Barometer (ISB). We therefore look at the overall picture of what the various methodologies offer to enable us to make judgements about where to focus our energies and interventions.


The Hong Kong Government is a well-known believer in laissez faire values and capitalism. However, it provides massive public housing programmes. In order to reduce the adverse effects of the public housing programmes on capitalism, it has tried to promote the recommodification of public housing by encouraging and assisting public housing tenants to become home owners. The aim of this paper is to study the Hong Kong Government's measures for promoting home ownership. It is argued that these measures are not very effective in reducing the decommodifying effects of the public housing services. Despite the fact that these measures aim to reduce people's dependence on the government and to help them to re-establish their relation with the private market, they are paradoxically also a kind of decommodification - people can enjoy some benefits independently of how they perform in the private market. Hence, it can be said that the government's measures for promoting home ownership serve more to change the form than to reduce the degree of the decommodification of the public housing services. Copyright Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1997.


In the process of reception, storage and preparation of oil for processing, significant volumes of oil-containing sludge are formed, which are not only a source of pollution, but also a valuable hydrocarbon feedstock. Long-term storage of oil with water, contact with atmospheric oxygen, and the presence of solid particles hydrophobized with asphalt-resinous and paraffinous substances contribute to the formation of "intermediate layers" in these sludges, which are ultra-stable oil-water emulsions. It is proposed to use the energy of the electromagnetic field of the high and microwave ranges when developing a technology for the destruction of oil-water emulsions. After analyzing the composition of the oil sludge, experimental studies were conducted of the dielectric loss tangenttgδδ of oil with the addition of sand and paraffin, depending on the frequency of electromagnetic oscillations in the range of 30 - 160 MHz and temperature in the range of 25 - 80 ∘ С using the cumeter method. Studies have shown that two technologies for the disposal of oil sludge are possible: HF and UHF methods. To assess the effectiveness of their application, it is necessary to conduct experimental studies of the dielectric properties of oil sludge.
Keywords: oil sludge, oil sludge disposal,oil storage, oil-water emulsions, electromagnetic field


Clozapine is effective in treatment resistant schizophrenia. Priaprism is a rare side effect of Clozapine. It is a urological emergency and can lead to permanent damage to the penis. We present two cases two cases of clozapine induced priapism. Both patients were started on Clozapine in view of treatment resistant. For the first patient, priapism was noted after 2 years on Clozapine and treated conservatively. Clozapine was rechallenged in this patient but in a lower dosage and was augmented with amisulpride. He did not develop priaprism until date. In the second case, patient developed priaprism after 7 months on clozapine and required urological intervention. He redeveloped recurrent episode of priaprism as clozapine was restarted on the previous dose. In conclusion, priaprism is not related to dosage or duration of treatment of Clozapine. Thus, a careful risk-benefit assessment need to done as there is always a risk of priapism to recur when clozapine rechallenged. Please click PDF below to download the full paper...


In order to improve the photocatalytic activity, Co was successfully loaded into Ag3VO4 by using impregnation process. The samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS). The XRD and SEM–EDS analyses revealed that Co ion was dispersed on Ag3VO4. The DRS results indicated that the absorption edge of the Co–Ag3VO4 catalyst shifted to longer wavelength. The enhanced photocatalytic activity of Co–Ag3VO4 for Methylene Blue(MB) dye degradation under visible light irradiation was due to its wider absorption edge and higher separation rate of photo-generated electron and holes. In the experimental conditions, it is demonstrated that the MB was effectively degraded by more than 95% within 40 min when the Co–Ag3VO4 catalyst was calcined at 300°C with 1 wt.% Co content.


hyperemesis gravidarum or other complication, the pulmonary condition usually improves during pregnancy, and this improvement is particularly marked in the later months. Whether this improvement is due to metabolic changes such as increased absorption of calcium, production of calciferol, etc., or can be attributed to some extent to compression of the lungs from below by the rise in the diaphragmatic level, is not known, but there is no doubt of its occurrence. Then comes parturition and the puerperium, at the end of which in only too many cases one finds that all the progress made during pregnancy is lost and that an acute flare-up of the disease may occur. If we knew the cause of this sudden drop in the patient's resistance we could, perhaps, take appropriate measures. Is it due to obstetric shock, to loss of blood, or to the sudden re-expansion of the lungs with abdominal relaxation? Does it occur in women of primitive races whose delivery is easy? Does it occur after delivery by early caesarean section? Collapse therapy by artificial pneumothorax when practicable is of course continued during pregnancy and pushed after parturition. But when artificial pneumothorax, although desirable, is impossible, should the induction of pneumoperitoneum, with or without phrenic crush, as soon as practicable after parturition be regarded as the method of election in such cases ; or are there special risks attributable to the condition of the pelvic floor, etc., which render this treatment inadvisable ? These are some of the questions which call for answers, and until the answers are forthcoming the temptation to terminate pregnancy in women suffering from active and acute pulmonary tuberculosis will remain.-I am, etc.,


Organic molecule system supported on metal substrate was analyzed by atom probe with two-dimensional ion detector and scanning extractor electrode (3D-SAP). The comparison of angular distribution of detected ions between molecular system and common metal tip showed a significant difference when AP analysis was performed by voltage pulsing. The influence of catalytic property of metal substrate also demonstrated by changing the substrate material. [DOI: 10.1380/ejssnt.2010.69]


FutureGrid provides novel computing capabilities that enable reproducible experiments while simultaneously supporting dynamic provisioning. This paper describes the FutureGrid experiment management framework to create and execute large scale scientific experiments for researchers around the globe. The experiments executed are performed by the various users of FutureGrid ranging from administrators to software developers and end users. The Experiment management framework will consist of software tools that record user and system actions to generate a reproducible set of tasks and resource configurations. Additionally, the experiment management framework can be used to share not only the experiment setup, but also performance information for the specific instantiation of the experiment. This makes it possible to compare a variety of experiment setups and analyze the impact Grid and Cloud software stacks have.


p53 promotes tumor suppression through its ability to function as a transcriptional factor and is activated by posttranslational modifications that include acetylation. Our earlier study demonstrated that p53 acetylation can enhance its sequence-specific DNA binding in vitro, and this notion was later confirmed in several other studies. However, a recent study has reported that in vitro acetylation of p53 fails to stimulate its DNA binding to large DNA fragments, raising an important issue that requires further investigation. Here, we show that unacetylated p53 is able to bind weakly to its consensus site within the context of large DNA fragments, although it completely fails to bind the same site within short oligonucleotide probes. Strikingly, by using highly purified and fully acetylated p53 proteins obtained from cells, we show that acetylation of the C-terminal domain can dramatically enhance site-specific DNA binding on both short oligonucleotide probes and long DNA fragments. Moreover, endogenous p53 apparently can be fully acetylated in response to DNA damage when both histone deacetylase complex 1 (HDAC1)- and Sir2-mediated deacetylation are inhibited, indicating dynamic p53 acetylation and deacetylation events during the DNA damage response. Finally, we also show that acetylation of endogenous p53 indeed significantly augments its ability to bind an endogenous target gene and that p53 acetylation levels correlate well with p53-mediated transcriptional activation in vivo. Thus, our results clarify some of the confusion surrounding acetylation-mediated effects on p53 binding to DNA and suggest that acetylation of p53 in vivo may contribute, at least in part, to its transcriptional activation functions.


This paper is the report of a study to determine the effect on pain of internally rotating the foot, pointing the toes down and/or using the Z-track technique during intramuscular injection and to investigate differences in pain perception related to gender and body mass index. A randomized controlled trial was carried out from September to November 2010 on 75 patients receiving diclofenac sodium intramuscularly at a university hospital in Zonguldak, Turkey. The primary outcome measure collected was pain intensity, measured on a visual analogue scale. Each subject received three injections by the same investigator using three different techniques. The three techniques were randomly allocated, and the subjects were blinded to the injection technique being used. After each injection, another investigator, who had no prior knowledge of which injection technique was used, immediately assessed pain intensity using the visual analogue scale. Research findings demonstrated that the Z-track and internally rotated foot techniques significantly reduced pain intensity during intramuscular injection. Statistically significant differences in pain intensity were observed between the three injection techniques. The results supported the hypothesis that the internally rotated foot and Z-track techniques significantly reduce pain intensity.


The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of cognitive load and game involvement on consumers' affective responses while comparing single and multi-brand settings in advergames. An experiment was conducted to study the differences between single and multi-brand settings at different levels of cognitive load, with the interaction of game involvement. Results showed that although there was no significant attitude difference towards single and multi-brand settings in advergames, the players' attitude towards the main brand is more positive in a single brand setting. Second, different levels of cognitive load affect attitude towards the main brand both in single and multi-brand settings, but the attitude change is observed only in single brand setting at high cognitive load. The results of the third analysis yielded that game involvement along with high cognitive load affects all attitudes positively.


Background: The importance of quality of healthcare delivery has drawn global attention and as such, healthcare providers are continuously updating their knowledge to meet the ever-rising challenges of patient's management. In every setting, good patients care is the pivot on which healthcare policies revolve, therefore, patients care is the primary responsibility of every hospital making patient's satisfaction a topmost concern. Patient satisfaction is a strong indicator used for evaluation of the quality of health care delivery, and as such needs to be frequently studied for the smooth functioning of the health care system. This study was designed to assess the level of patient's satisfaction with obstetric ultrasound in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. Materials and methods: The prospective cross-sectional study design was adopted for this study. A convenient sample size of 200 subjects referred for obstetric ultrasound scans was studied using structured questionnaires. The ethical approval and permission to conduct this study were obtained from the Research and Ethics committee of Image Diagnostic Center Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. All procedure of this study was adequately explained to the subjects and their consents were properly sought. The information obtained from them were treated with a high level of confidentiality and used for the purpose of this study. This study was conducted in the radiology department of Image Diagnostic Center Port Harcourt, Rivers State between December 2017 and February 2018. Results: Greater numbers of the respondents were within the age group 25 to 34 years of age 60.5% (n=121), followed by 35-44 years of age 34.5% (n=69) and the least were within the age group 16 to 24 years of age 5% (n=10). Out of 200 respondents, 99.5% (n=199) of the respondents were females and the remainder 0.5% (n=1) was male. Majority of the respondent had tertiary education 66.0% (n=130) and the least had primary education 2.5% (n=5). The correlation analysis for educational levels and level of satisfaction showed a statistically significant negative correlation (r=-0.353, P=0.000). With regard to the respondent's occupation, Civil servants were highest at 24% (n=48), and the least were students 1.5% (n=3). With regard to the instructions by sonographers and courtesy of medical staff, 55% (n=110) were satisfied with the instructions and 7.0% (n=15) were dissatisfied and accounted for the least respondent. There was a positive statistically significant correlation with this variable and the levels of respondent's satisfaction with (r=0.199, p=0.005). Conclusion: There was a high level of patient satisfaction with obstetric ultrasound in the Radiology department of Image Diagnostic Center, Port Harcourt Nigeria. Christian's preponderance was noted and Civil servants constitute the highest number of the participants. Greater numbers of the determinants of satisfaction showed statistically significant correlation and relationship with age and education.


In the past three decades, the Los Angeles region has witnessed a large-scale spatial reorganization of poverty. Where once concentrated poverty was confined to neighborhoods in the inner-city, it has since spread to the suburbs. This shifting concentration of poor neighborhoods is driven mainly by immigration and broader changes in the regional economy. Increasing economic mobility for second and subsequent generations of immigrants through education is the region's key challenge.


Objectives In this study, we determined patients' attitudes toward discussing firearms and issues of firearms safety with emergency department physicians. We assessed whether patients feel discriminated against should physicians discuss firearms safety, and whether they believed that physician counseling may change how patients store firearms. Methods From June to October 2017, we conducted a cross-sectional institutional review board–approved survey of 200 consenting adult patients (convenience sample) not requiring critical care presenting to the emergency department of Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, Florida. The survey consisted of 22 questions about perceptions of physicians inquiring about firearms, demographics, firearms statistics, and firearms knowledge. Results on firearms owners and nonowners were compared with the Fisher exact test. P < 0.05 was considered significant. Results Ninety percent of patients said they felt comfortable discussing firearms safety with a physician (firearms vs no firearms owner, 100% vs 87.5%, P = 0.028). Ninety percent (firearms 90.7% vs no firearms owners 89.9%, P = 1.0) of patients did not believe that physicians were discriminating against patients who are firearms owners when discussing firearms safety. Seventy-six percent (firearms 76.4% vs no firearms owners 77.3%, P = 0.367) of patients believed that physicians should be educating their patients about firearms safety, and 71% (n = 142) believed that education provided by physicians will change how people store their firearms (firearms 75% vs no firearms owners 70.2%, P = 0.67). Conclusions Firearms safety is a difficult but important public health matter that requires significant intervention to help prevent future firearms incidents. This study supports physicians' efforts to help educate patients about the dangers of firearms, along with proper firearms storage techniques, showing that patients are largely open to this discussion. We propose that training of physicians in strategies for initiating clinical discourse and addressing firearms safety is needed.


estimation in image watermarking using Genetic Programming (GP). The distortion is estimated by considering the problem of obtaining a distorted watermarked signal from the original watermarked signal as a function regression problem. This function regression problem is solved using GP, where the original watermarked signal is considered as an independent variable. GP-based distortion estimation scheme is checked for Gaussian attack and Jpeg compression attack. We have used Gaussian attacks of different strengths by changing the standard deviation. JPEG compression attack is also varied by adding various distortions. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed technique is able to detect the watermark even in the case of strong distortions and is more robust against attacks.


In this title, Laudan constructs a fresh approach to a longtime problem for the philosopher of science: how to explain the simultaneous and widespread presence of both agreement and disagreement in science. Laudan critiques the logical empiricists and the post-positivists as he stresses the need for centrality and values and the interdependence of values, methods, and facts as prerequisites to solving the problems of consensus and dissent in science.


This paper addresses the conditions under which donor and non-state actor service provision is likely to undermine or strengthen citizens' legitimating beliefs. On the one hand, citizens may be less likely to support their government with quasi-voluntary compliance when they credit non-state actors or donors for service provision. On the other hand, the provision of goods and services by donors and non-state actors might strengthen citizens' confidence in their government and their willingness to defer to governmental laws and regulations if citizens believe that the government is essential to leveraging and managing these resources. The author assesses these competing hypotheses using multi-level analyses of Afrobarometer survey data. The sample, drawn from a continuum of developing societies in Africa, allows for analysis of associations between donor and non-state actor service provision and the sense of obligation to comply with the tax authorities, the police and courts. The findings yield support for the hypothesis that the provision of services by donors and non-state actors is strengthening, rather than undermining, the relationship between citizens and the state.


The orthodox understanding of parliamentary sovereignty holds that English courts cannot review the constitutionality of parliamentary enactments. According to this view of English judicial authority, called the ultra vires doctrine, the courts may only review administrative actions to ensure that the agency acts in accordance with the authority delegated to it by Parliament. In doing so, the courts effectuate Parliament's implicit intention never to legislate contrary to the rule of law. On this account, the courts first find some ambiguity in the delegation of administrative authority that empowers them to act in Parliament's stead by ensuring that the agency remains constrained by law. An alternative view of English judicial authority, called the common law theory, maintains that the courts' authority to review government action so as to ensure that the government acts at all times within the rule of law is intrinsic to the common law itself. Using case law and constitutional theory, this article argues that a trend may be emerging in English constitutional and administrative law away from the ambiguity precondition and toward a view of judicial review that grounds the courts' authority on the common law rather than parliamentary intentions.


The computational cost of conventional migration can be reduced by multisource migration of supergathers, and the accompanying crosstalk noise can be reduced through least-squares inversion. This approach is not directly applicable to marine streamer data, however, due to the mismatch between the limited number of live traces/shot recorded in the field and the pervasive number of traces generated by computer simulation. This leads to a strong mismatch in the misfit function, and results in strong artifacts (crosstalk) in the migration image. To eliminate this noise, we present a frequency division multiplexing (FDM) strategy with iterative least-squares migration (ILSM) of supergathers. The key idea is, at each ILSM iteration, to assign a unique frequency band to each shot gather. This assignment ensures that there is no spectral overlap among shots, and therefore their crosstalk is zero. Our results in applying this method to 2D marine data for the SEG/EAGE salt model show better resolved images than standard migration computed at about 1/10 the cost. We conclude that multisource migration for a marine geometry can be successfully achieved by a frequencydivision encoding strategy, as long as crosstalk-prone sources are segregated in their spectral content. This is both the strength and the potential limitation of this method.


phase, and both have practised some degree of democracy. Unfortunately, neither of their development programmes can be viewed as a real success. The reason for this is that their ruling elites have been isolated from the masses and have pursued private interests rather than the public good. None the less, they represent a beginning, and the author hopes that their leaders will take a timely warning from the current Islamic revival, which reflects popular disappointment at the failure of economic development to bring benefits to the masses, and will embark on an economic, political, and cultural course that will bring them closer to the people. The author also believes that the principal reason why Muslim societies feel a lack of clear identity is that Islam sees no community short of the umma, while modern political and economic organization centres on the nationstate. What is needed is some symbolic bridge between the nation-state and the general community of believers. He recommends that Turkey ' sponsor the establishment of a modern version of the Caliphate, dedicated to the unity of the Islamic world—comparable, for example, to the Roman Catholic Pope in Rome'. Malaysia, Pakistan, and others would no doubt support the project on general pan-Islamic grounds, and ' the moral as well as financial support of the countries of the Arab Core to the idea could be secured in particular by nominating as the first holder of the office a qualified alim from these countries' (pp. 232-3). Good luck.


There has been an increasing interest in transformer less inverter for grid-tied photovoltaic (PV) system because of the benefits of lower cost, smaller volume as well as higher efficiency compared with the ones with transformer. However, one of the technical challenges of this inverter is the safety issue of leakage current which needs to be addressed carefully. In addition, according to the international regulations, transformer less inverter should be capable of handling a certain amount of reactive power. In this study, a new H6-type transformer less inverter for grid-tied PV system is proposed that can eliminate the threat of leakage current. The proposed topology has also the capability to inject reactive power into the utility grid. Three-level output voltage employing unipolar sinusoidal pulse width modulation can be achieved with the proposed topology. The proposed topology structure and detail operation principle with reactive power control are investigated. The relationship among the existing topologies and their reactive power control capability are also discussed. The proposed topology is simulated in MATLAB/Simulink software to initially verify the accuracy of theoretical explanations. The experimental results validate the theoretical analysis and simulation results.


Background & objectives: Ritalin is one of the drugs used in the treatment of attentiondeficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This study aimed to investigate the comparative effect of Ritalin with grape seed extract on passive avoidance learning in adult male rats. Methods: In this experimental study, 40 adult male Wistar rats divided randomly into 5 groups of 8 rats including control, sham and three experimental groups. The control group received no treatment. The sham group received 1 ml of distilled water per day. At the same time the experimental groups received 100 mg/kg grape seed extract, 1 mg/kg Ritalin or 100 mg/kg grape seed extract together with 1 mg/kg of Ritalin by gavage for 28 days. For measuring the amount of avoidance learning, Shuttle box was used. Data analyzed by ANOVA and consistent Tukey's tests using SPSS-18 software and p<0.05 considered as significant. Results: The results showed that Ritalin decreases the passive avoidance learning, while the grape seed extract alone or together with Ritalin increases passive avoidance learning. Conclusion: The outcome of this research shows that taking Ritalin leads to decreasing passive avoidance learning. However, the simultaneous taking Ritalin with grape seed extract inhibits the Ritalin effect and increasing the learning.


During the last decades the globalization has spread and is now a concern for the entire world. The technological development has exploded and has given us new possibilities and access to information that make it possible to meet new markets. The conditions have changed and the companies not only compete with their closest competitors on the local market but also with everyone in the same business over the world. Companies go abroad with different entry modes to get new market shares and this results in a more international and multicultural organization. This is not always without problems since the companies are confronted with different types of cultures that are reflected in the organization and its work. Different kinds of leadership are used in different kinds of cultures but what happens when two cultures meet?For example in Swedish culture hierarchy and power distance are distant ideas unlike the Spanish culture where it is to a great extent frequent.After finishing the investigation it turned out that the cultural differences inside an organisation between two European countries can be big although in the beginning it's not noticed. The ignorance of knowledge about the culture in the country of destination, from the employers, often contributes to a lot of problems and misunderstandings. We found that Spanish companies who open branches in Sweden often come across problems in following situations:· When the work task is given priority to the wellbeing of the employees.· When a less experienced person is given a position ahead of a more experienced employee.· When the staff is controlled and can't take their own initiative or haven't the possibility to be flexible because of the strictly designed work task.· When big differences in power distance between employer and employee are expressed.We can establish that the implementation of the situational leadership has been rather absent in the beginning when opening in Sweden. The adjustment has come gradually and was strained because of the knowledge the Spanish companies acquired regarding Swedish employees and their culture. The companies were forced to adapt some of their leadership to the Swedish culture to be able to succeed on the Swedish market. The conclusion we come to is that a certain amount of situational adjustment is necessary even for the centralised governed company when opening branches in other countries.


Additional information is available at the end of the chapter Abstract Starting from the theoretical-political paradigm of activation, the chapter analyses wel- fare reforms (focusing on pension and labour policies) in two European countries: France and Italy. Special attention is given to the intergenerational approach implemented in recent years, following international agencies' recommendations. First evaluations of the devices put in practice to face employment problems affecting young and mature workers allow to develop some considerations on the ambiguity that characterize activation paradigm in the context of the global crisis, having produced a severe employment reduction and putting into question the validity of this widespread paradigm. In this context, the implementation of intergenerational measures seems to reveal little effects on unemployment rates for both young and older workers and on the availability of new jobs into the labour market. Nevertheless, they tend to improve the quality of work, reducing fixed-term contracts and allowing public finance savings. A cultural implication is also cited, referring to the change of perspective these measures may foster to overlap age discriminations in workplaces, as in public debate.


To identify the Na+/Ca2+ exchanger expressed in bovine chromaffin cells, the ncx gene was cloned from a bovine chromaffin cell cDNA library. Five partial clones were obtained and their nucleotide sequences showed that there were at least three isoforms containing different intracellular loops. The 3'-untranslated region was the same in all the clones. To examine the Na+/Ca2+ exchange activity of the clones, full-length ncx1 genes were constructed by replacing the corresponding region of bovine cardiac ncx1 clone p17 with the different regions from two bovine chromaffin cell clones; these were designated p17c and p17h. p17h, but not p17c, showed Na+/Ca2+ exchange activity when expressed in Chinese hamster ovary cells and Xenopus oocytes. The expressed exchange activity of p17 was inhibited by 8-bromoadenosine 3':5'-cyclic monophosphate (8-Br-cAMP) but was not affected by PMA. However, the activity of p17h was inhibited by PMA but enhanced by 8-Br-cAMP. The agents that changed the activity of protein kinase C and cAMP-dependent protein kinase modulated the endogenous Na+/Ca2+ exchange current of chromaffin cells in a manner similar to that of p17h. Our results suggest that the p17h clone is the major isoform of the exchanger in chromaffin cells and is similar to the major ncx1 isoform in kidney. The exchange activity could be regulated by phosphorylation, and the variable region in the intracellular loop is important for the different effects of phosphorylation on the different isoforms.


Homogeneous mixtures of hydroxyapatite (HAp) and yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) nanoparticles were successfully synthesized using chemical co-precipitation and subsequent calcination. For the synthesis of HAp/YSZ nanopowder, the Ca/P atomic ratio was 1.73 to obtain high-content stoichiometric hydroxyapatite phase and to suppress β-tricalcium phosphate (β-TCP) formation. The agglomerated crystalline powders were milled using YSZ ball media to obtain well-separated nanoparticles. The final particle size of the HAp and YSZ was ∼50–70 and ∼15–30 nm, respectively. The crystallinity and morphological feature of the nanopowder was analysed using x-ray diffraction (XRD) and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) analyses. The ball-milled nanopowder mixture was hot pressed at 1100 °C for 1 h under 20 MPa in vacuum atmosphere. The sintered HAp/YSZ nanocomposites exhibited approximately 99% of the theoretical density, due not only to the fine nanoscale of the particles, but also to the homogeneous distribution of the nanoparticle mixture. They also showed fine grain structures of the HAp phase due to the suppressed grain growth by YSZ particles. The nanocomposites showed improved mechanical properties, flexural strength of ∼155 MPa and fracture toughness of ∼2.1 MP m1/2, due to the YSZ contribution to the HAp matrix.


Background Giant tumefactive perivascular spaces (PVSs) are uncommon benign cystic lesions. They can imitate cystic neoplasms. Purpose To evaluate the contribution of advanced neuro magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques in the diagnosis of giant tumefactive PVSs and to further characterize these unusual cerebral lesions. Material and Methods The MRI scans of patients with tumefactive PVS diagnosed between 2010 and 2019 were retrospectively reviewed. All imaging studies included three plane conventional cerebral MRI sequences as well as precontrast 3D T1 MPRAGE, post-gadolinium 3D T1 acquisitions, sagittal plane 3D T2 SPACE, diffusion-weighted imaging, and time-of-flight (TOF) angiography. Some patients received perfusion MR, MR spectroscopy, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), and contrast-enhanced TOF MR angiography. Results A perforating vessel was demonstrated in 16 patients (66.7%) by TOF imaging. In four patients, there were intracystic vascular collaterals on contrast-enhanced TOF MR angiography. Septal blooming was observed in four patients in susceptibility-weighted imaging. On perfusion MR, central hyperperfusion was observed in four patients, and peripheral hyperperfusion was observed in one patient. On MR spectroscopy, choline increase was observed in two patients, and there was a lactate peak in three patients, and both a choline increase and lactate peak in one patient. On DTI, there was fiber distortion in five patients and fiber deformation in one patient. Conclusion Advanced MRI techniques and 3D volumetric high-resolution MRI sequences can provide a valuable contribution to the diagnosis and can be successfully used in the management of these lesions.


A critical review of publications on tracheal reconstruction is presented. The extent of the resection defect in terms of horizontal circumference or longitudinal extension determines the difficulty of the reconstruction. To allow a valid comparison, a classification of tracheal defects is proposed. The reconstruction materials can be subdivided into synthetic grafts, autografts, allografts, and bioengineering constructs. Reconstruction of tracheal defects greater than half of the tracheal length was not possible until recently. Numerous publications on animal experimental techniques, and rare human case reports show few successful outcomes. During the last five years, new reconstructive options have emerged: autograft of composite flaps mimicking tracheal architecture and bioengineered tracheal constructs.


In the wake of the current media focus on Iran's nuclear technology development and its place in Middle East politics, the West continues its quest to understand this paradoxical nation—its politics, yes, but also its people, their culture and even their everyday customs and rituals. Among the Iranians presents an inside look at the hidden "rules" that exist among Iranians, from polite behavior and the underlying cultural notion of face to gender roles to the image that every Iranian wants to project to the world. Western readers may be familiar with a stereotyped view of Iran's unchanging "high culture" in its great mosques and squares and to some extent its classical literature in the poems of Hafez and Khayyam. However, this book aims to convey the reality of everyday life in Iran: how to queue for bread, how to get a job done in a government office, dress codes and degrees of piety, marriage as a connection between families and the elaborate system of Persian politeness.

 Written with a mix of personal observation and intercultural theory, the goal of Among the Iranians is to open people's eyes about the fascinating everyday reality of Iran. The book seeks to explain everything you ever wanted to discover about Iran's culture and customs, but didn't even know to ask.


The name of B. Akunin appeared on the Russian literary market five years ago. The author Grigory Tkhartishvili, a well-known man of letters, translator and a connoisseur of Japanese language and culture, is now known all over the world, and translations of his novels are widely available, including in Norway and Sweden. His novels are out of the ordinary not only as detective stories but also as works of postmodernist literature with intertextual connotations and complex historical and literary associations. The article presents an attempt to analyze certain peculiarities of his working methods, which present specific difficulties for translation into Norwegian and Swedish, such as verbal versatility and intertextual associations which are so important in postmodernist works. The article also deals with different translational strategies chosen by the translators in their rendering of realia, different social and local dialects and, what is most important - the intentional mannerisms of B. Akunin's artistic style.


The nature of the enterprise and working is rapidly changing. Recognizing the enabling competitive advantage of new social and participative technologies will transform the enterprise. Web 2.0 is the foundation of the new Enterprise 2.0. By accessing the right information at the right time, Enterprise 2.0, through a web of interconnected applications, services, and devices, provides capabilities for employees to be more competitive and productive and for customers to be more engaged and loyal. Enterprise 2.0 CIO management issues include unauthorized use of enterprise services and technologies, the integration of a myriad of technologies, and potential compliance and security implications. This paper describes an ongoing case study evaluating a conceptual framework exploring relationships among three Enterprise 2.0 dimensions: technology tools and capabilities, employee and customer applications, and how user-generated content leads to business value. It is expected that this qualitative study will also identify new IT culture and policies.


In the central aza-bicyclooctane unit of the title compound, C40H34N4O3·0.75H2O, the peripheral pyrrolidine ring adopts an envelope conformation with the N atom deviating by 0.209 (2) Å, whereas the other pyrrolidine ring adopts a twisted conformation with the bridging N and C atoms deviating by −0.218 (2) and 0.236 (3) Å, respectively, from the rest of the ring. The pyrazole ring forms dihedral angles of 42.36 (7) and 24.07 (8)° with its C- and N-attached phenyl groups, respectively. The solvent water molecule has a partial occupancy of 0.75. In the crystal, the water molecules link the fused-ring molecules into chains along the b axis via O—H⋯N and O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds. The crystal packing is further stabilized by C—H⋯π interactions involving a methylene group of the pyran ring and the C-attached benzene ring on the pyrazole ring.


Should all placentas be sent to pathology for examination after delivery room triage? A cohort of 88 placentas was prospectively obtained and examined from low-risk, singleton, term pregnancies after uneventful delivery. All patients had a normal prenatal testing and anatomy ultrasound. Fifty-one placentas (58%) were normal. Thirty-seven of the placental cohort (42%) had abnormal findings. Thirteen of the abnormal placentas (35.1%) showed pathology unassociated with fetal compromise. Twenty-four of the placentas (27.3% of the total cohort and 64.9% of the abnormal placentas) showed findings associated with fetal compromise. The most common pathologies were marginal cord insertion, chorioamnionitis, and abruption. Routine placental examination is not indicated, according to our data, in low-risk, singleton, and term pregnancy unless the placenta is determined to be abnormal at delivery examination.


This article seeks to deepen understanding of the complex and unique position of women vis-à-vis fascist ideology by examining Virginia Woolf's ideas on resistance from Three Guineas (1938) in relation to Leni Riefenstahl's The Blue Light (1932) and Triumph of the Will (1935) and Leontine Sagan's Maedchen in Uniform (1931). In Three Guineas, Woolf outlines two important ideas about women's resistance in the political arena: an outsider's indifference to patriarchal structures and an expansive identification that accepts and transforms otherness. Woolf favors indifference as the more realistic option, but in this article I argue otherwise. Examination of Riefenstahl's films and her interpretation of herself as an indifferent outsider demonstrates that women's indifference leads to further absence and even retributive violence. On the other hand, a reading of Maedchen in Uniform in relation to Woolf's theories reveals that an outsider's indifference only becomes meaningful if it is accepted and allowed to alter uniformity in a process of transformation that disrupts the tyrant's power of fascination and his hierarchical reproduction of sameness. I conclude, therefore, that the process of expansive identification taking place in Maedchen in Uniform allows the private to reorganize the public, creates a space for the recognition of women's resistance in the political world, and demonstrates that Woolf's theory of identification is a potentially effective form of antifascist resistance.


Abstract The amount of power captured by wind turbine depends on the wind speed and the power coefficient (Cp). When wind speed is above rated value, the rated amount of power is captured but in below rated wind speed operation or Region II operation, the power captured must be maximized. The power coefficient (Cp) further depends on the blade pitch angle and the Tip Speed Ratio (TSR). For a fixed blade pitch angle there exist an optimum TSR for which the power coefficient becomes maximum. In Region II turbine operation, blade pitch is kept constant and TSR is tracked to its optimum value to maximize the power capture. In this paper we introduce an Adaptive Disturbance Tracking Control (ADTC) Theory and make some modifications to implement it to maximize the power capture by tracking the optimum TSR in Region II operation of large wind turbines. Since ADTC requires measurement of wind speed, a wind speed and partial state estimator based on linearized lower-order model of wind turbine at Region II operating point was developed. The estimated wind speed was then used with the adaptive controller and the states were used for state feedback. The combination of partial state feedback and adaptive disturbance tracking control is implemented in National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)'s 5 MW offshore wind turbine model and simulated in MATLAB/Simulink. The simulation result was then compared with existing fixed gain controller.


Problem Statement: Throughout the world, the infant mortality rate (IMR) is considered a measure of a country's overall health status and public health achievements. In rural southern India, despite high rates of antenatal visits and delivery within healthcare institutions, infant mortality remains an issue of public health significance at 38 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Methods: In order to understand social, financial, and environmental factors contributing to infant mortality, SHARE INDIA staff facilitated focus groups with sixty-one mothers (ages 18-35) in seven villages of Medchal Mandal, in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. Discussions explored mothers' home health and sanitation practices such as bathing, toileting, waste disposal, handwashing, breastfeeding, menstrual health, cosleeping, and laundering.

Research Questions: Researchers wanted to understand if infant mortality is attributed to lack of clean water access and other sanitation resources such as latrines, showers, sinks, and waste disposal services. In addition, SHARE INDIA wanted to understand if infant mortality is related to lack of awareness among the priority population concerning benefits, consequences, and proper completion of hygienic behaviors.

Results: Emerging themes included lack of accessibility of health promotion resources such as clean water and disinfectants, and varying levels of awareness of sanitary behaviors. Women demonstrated commitment to preserving infant health, but were not always connected to resources or aware of their proper use. Participant responses indicated normalization of infrastructural barriers to promoting health, such as inadequate availability of water and trash disposal services, and the influence of sociocultural norms on health. Participants discussed the impact of geographic isolation and affordability on providing health resources. Social support was an asset cited by women, who received informational support and support completing household chores from family members and others.

Discussion: When possible, women took precautions to protect children's health. However, health-related decision-making and mothers' conception of appropriate situations to perform health promotion behaviors was influenced by environmental and cultural barriers prohibiting routine performance of evidence-based behaviors.

Conclusions and Implications for Global Health: Future research and interventions should target education regarding health promotion behaviors such as handwashing in the home to address appropriate completion of routine hygienic behaviors.


Current methods allow quantitative local structure determination of adsorbate geometries on surfaces in ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) but are incompatible with the higher pressures required for a steady-state catalytic reactions. Here we show that photoelectron diffraction can be used to determine the structure of the methoxy and formate reaction intermediates during the steady-state oxidation of methanol over Cu(110) by taking advantage of recent instrumental developments to allow near-ambient pressure x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The local methoxy site differs from that under static UHV conditions, attributed to the increased surface mobility and dynamic nature of the surface under reaction conditions.


Recent studies have demonstrated that ultrafinе-grainеd (UFG) alloys processed by equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) and high pressure torsion (HPT) can exhibit enhanced supеrplacticity at relatively low temperature and/or high strain rates. At the same time severe plastic deformation (SPD) of aluminium alloys is often carried out at elevated temperatures leading to various grain size and volume fraction of precipitates. The significance of the SPD temperature for commercial 1420 and 1421 aluminium alloys has been evaluated in this paper using in-situ heating of thin foils in the column of a transmission electron microscope. Superplastic characteristics of alloys processed at various ECAP temperatures are discussed.


Yet another American book about crime. This one is about women criminals and consists of articles (several reprinted from other publications) written by women; hence it is not surprising that the book is unashamedly feminist in tone. The first section of the book discusses theories about the causes of female crime and the possibility that the increase in female offenders may be related to the rise of "women's lib". The second section of the book examines differences in sentencing policy and the law of the United States as applied to women and girls. The unrelated articles do not make for a coherent whole and many lack relevance for this country. This is especially true of the third section of the book which describes life in American prisons and institutions. Thus the article on "Women in Southern Jails" describes conditions that have not existed in this country for over a hundred years; "the old situations of women at the mercy of the jailer, once thought to be only material for movies and books, still exist in these places. The facilities are often filthy and makeshift, with little or no separation of women and men, be they jailers or inmates". The fourth section which is about female prostitution, is perhaps the most interesting and relevant to this country. The first article discusses the motivation of prostitutes and the second, called "Hustling for Rights", describes San Francisco's prostitutes' union and possible changes in the laws on soliciting. Since there have been signs of increasing militancy among prostitutes in France and England this may be an indicator of things yet to come. This is probably not a book for the general reader, but should prove a useful and readable reference book for a library. J. HILTON


The research was conducted in addition aims to scientifically prove the decrease in fertility of sperm cells of male mice Mus musculus experiencing malnutrition conditions, as well as to demonstrate the histopathologic picture of the seminiferous tubules were damaged in mice Mus musculus male from malnutrition. The methods used are: Mus musculus male is experiencing malnutri ie fasted for 3 days only given to drink ad libitum compared with controls fed a normal fixed 300-400 grams per day per mice and drinking water ad libitum. We then test the fertility of sperm cells, sperm fertility rates obtained by bringing sperm and ovum cells in vitro is calculated based on the number of zygotes produced divided by the number of ova multiplied by 100%. The histopathologic examination of the seminiferous tubules of the testis is done by surgery and fabrication of histological preparations, and then observed microscopically at the damage occurs at 100 and 400 times. The results showed a significant difference between male mice created malnourished compared with controls, whereas in the treated mice showed a decrease in fertility malnutrition. Similarly, histopathologic observation of seminiferous tubules damage than the control. At the microscopic condition of malnutrition occurs in the seminiferous tubules swelling, bleeding and adhesin with the surrounding tissue and even degenerated tissue.
Keywords : spermatozoa fertility rate, histopathologic seminiferous tubules, malnutrition


A simplified model has previously described the inductive charging of colliding identical grains in the presence of an external electric field. Here we extend that model by including heterogeneous surface charge distributions, grain rotations and electrostatic interactions between grains. We find from this more realistic model that strong heterogeneities in charging can occur in agitated granular beds, and we predict that shielding due to these heterogeneities can dramatically alter the charging rate in such beds.


1.1 This is the second of two collections of papers from the British Sociological Association (BSA) Annual Conference 2003 to be published within Sociological Research On-Line. The conference was titled Social Futures: Desire, Excess and Waste. The call for papers invited delegates to interrogate currently dominant academic, political and media discourses within western societies which emphasise and celebrate the 'progress' and 'freedoms' associated with recent global 'development', technological change and contemporary cultural experience. Five conference streams were devised in order to pursue this overall aim: Belonging and Isolation; Consumption and Waste; Winners and Losers; Technological Dystopias; Escape Strategies. There was also an Open Stream. Over 120 papers were presented at the conference and there were two highly engaging plenary sessions, one presented by Beverley Skeggs (then at the University of Manchester) and one by George Ritzer (University of Maryland).


The 2S electron bubble placed in liquid helium has been previously believed to be spherical. We show that the 2S bubble is morphologically unstable at pressures above 1:23 bars. The 2S state being known to be radially unstable at pressures below 1:33 bars, the result leaves only a very narrow pressure range in which it can be found in a spherical configuration. Our stability analysis indicates that the 2S bubble is unstable against perturbations proportional to any of the third spherical harmonics Y3m. Our numerical simulations show that there exist nonspherical stable configurations, such as the ones Maris and Konstantinov predicted for the 1P, 1D, and 2P electron bubbles and confirmed experimentally for the 1P. We believe that the 2S bubbles can also be produced and that our prediction will yield itself to experimental verification.


We study the explicit CP violation of the Higgs sector in the next-to-minimal supersymmetric model with a gauge singlet Higgs field. Our numerical predictions show that electric dipole moment of electron lies around the present experimental upper limits. The mass of the lightest Higgs boson is quite sensitive to the CP violating phases in the theory. It is observed that as the vacuum expectation value of the singlet gets higher values, CP violation increases.


Well 'A' is a horizontal well drilled in the primary and productive upper layer of the carbonate reservoir just below 7,750 ft TVD, with lateral length of 3,495 ft. This layer, due to inherent well placement, presented completion and production challenges attributed to low permeability and with limited scope for production enhancement. The asset team required an effective solution to drain reserves from this well and for evaluating future well placements.
 Near-wellbore (NWB) acid stimulation technique was preferred over conventional acid fracturing due to low vertical stress contrast and high tortuosity effects caused by lateral azimuth relative to maximum stress orientation. Based on the Bernoulli concept for fluid diversion and using a dual path pumping system, initiation and propagation of micro-fractures was achieved by pumping fluid through tubing and annulus with a controlled pump schedule. A specially designed high-pressure tool was used for creating formation cavity by pumping acid through tubing. Increasing pressure on the bottom of cavity initiates micro-fracture causing annular fluid to be pulled into the fracture and subsequently extending it.
 The NWB stimulation was designed and carried out in 50 stages along the lateral. This was followed by 29-stage matrix acid stimulation using 20% HCl and with pulsonix tool for acid placement. Initial well productivity (PI) was estimated at 0.16 STB/D/psi. Post stimulation treatment resulted in a nine-fold PI improvement. Production post stimulation was 720 barrels oil per day (bopd) with 7% water cut (w.c).
 The NWB stimulation enabled significant productivity increment with accelerated production. It is customizable enabling design and placement of multiple micro-fractures. Additional hardware for wellbore isolation during treatment is not required. It is economical in comparison to conventional fracturing treatment and could be extended for cased or liner completions in vertical or deviated wells.


We develop a measure of unemployment that takes into account both the level and intensity of unemployment and that satisfies several desirable properties, including distribution sensitivity (dealing with differences among the unemployed). It can also be decomposed into mean and distributional components and contributions to unemployment by various subgroups of the population. We then apply this measure to understand unemployment in India using data from National Sample Surveys on employment and unemployment during the period 1993-2012. We show that unemployment has generally fallen in this period, but this finding has to be seen in light of considerable underemployment. Moreover, unemployment is driven to a greater extent by higher educated groups; the unemployment among these groups is also fairly substantial. The distribution of unemployment has also worsened. We explain these findings and suggest some policies.


The huge amount of smart meters and growing frequent data readings have become a big challenge on data acquisition and processing in smart grid advanced metering infrastructure systems. This requires a distributed communication architecture in which multiple distributed meter data management systems (MDMSs) are deployed and meter data are processed locally. In this paper, we present the network model for supporting this distributed communication architecture and propose to use large-scale antenna array at the distributed MDMSs to further improve communication performance. We provide performance assessment for this architecture in terms of system throughput and cost efficiency. Specifically, we derive a closed-form asymptotic approximation to the system throughput, which exhibits a very good accuracy compared with simulation results. Based on this tight approximation, we have defined cost efficiency, which takes the deployment cost of distributed MDMSs into account. Our results demonstrate the significant advantages of the distributed architecture over the transitional centralized one in terms of communication performance and scalability. By carefully selecting the number of distributed MDMSs, the distributed communication architecture is also cost efficient.


With increasing of the input power of the chips in light emitting diode (LED), the thermal accumulation of LEDs package increases. Therefore solving the heat issue has become a precondition of high power LED application. In this paper, finite element method was used to analyze the thermal field of high power LEDs. The effect of the heatsink structure on the junction temperature was also investigated. The results show that the temperature of the chip is 95.8°C which is the highest, and it meets the requirement. The conductivity of each component affects the thermal resistance. Convective heat exchange is connected with the heat dissipation area. In the original structure of LEDs package the heat convected through the substrate is the highest, accounting for 92.58%. Three heatsinks with fin structure are designed to decrease the junction temperature of the LEDs package.


Over several decades, much research has been done to develop 3D electromagnetic inversion algorithms. Due to the computational complexity and the memory requirements for 3D time-domain electromagnetic (TEM) inversion algorithms, many real-world surveys are inverted within one dimension. To speed up calculations and manage memory for 3D inversions of TEM data, we have developed an approach using three uncoupled meshes: an inversion mesh, a forward-model mesh, and a mesh for Jacobian calculations. The inversion mesh is a coarse regular and structured mesh, such that constraints are easily enforced between the model parameters. Forward responses are calculated on a dense unstructured mesh to obtain accurate electromagnetic fields, whereas the Jacobian is calculated on a coarse unstructured mesh. We found that using a coarse mesh for the Jacobian is sufficient for the inversion to converge and, equally important, that it provides a significant speed boost in the overall inversion process, compared to calculating it on the forward-modeling mesh. The unstructured meshes are made of tetrahedral elements, and the electromagnetic fields are calculated using the finite-element method. The inversion optimization uses a standard Gauss-Newton formulation. For further speed up and memory optimizing of the inversion, we use domain decomposition for calculating the responses for each transmitter separately and parallelize the problem over domains using OpenMP. Compared to a 1D solution, the accuracy for the Jacobian is 1%–5% for the dense mesh and 2%–7% for the coarse mesh, but the calculation time is approximately five times faster for the coarse mesh. We also examined the algorithm on a small ground-based TEM data set acquired in an area where a 3D earth distorts the electromagnetic fields to such a degree that a 1D inversion is not feasible.


ABC Fax + 41 61 306 12 34 E-mail firstname.lastname@example.com www.karger.com © 2002 S. Karger AG, Basel 0301–0171/01/0944–0216$17.50/0 Accessible online at: www.karger.com/journals/ccg Abstract. The RGS proteins comprise a large family of proteins which were recently identified as negative Regulators of G-protein Signaling. They have been shown to act as GTPase Activating Proteins (GAPs) towards the G· subunits of heterotrimeric G-proteins. In addition to this GAP activity, which has been shown to occur through the RGS domain, RGS proteins are likely to possess other functions due to the existence of other domains in these molecules (De Vries and Farquhar, 1999; Hepler, 1999). Here, we report the molecular characterization of the murine Rgs11 gene. The gene encodes a protein with high homology to human RGS11 (79.9%), containing conserved DEP (Dishevelled/EGL-10/Pleckstrin) and GGL (G protein Á-like) domains. The gene is comprised of at least 13 exons, spanning 8–9 kb. Spliced transcript variants were identified which are co-expressed with 5A3, a transcript that contains the largest ORF. Expression of mouse Rgs11 was found to be restricted to specific tissues with a unique pattern of expression observed in brain.


This PhD research is part of a project addressed to improve the quality of Grana Trentino production. The objectives were to evaluated if milk storage and collection procedures may affect cheese-making technology and quality. Actually the milk is collected and delivered to the cheese factory just after milking in 50 L cans without refrigeration or in tanks cooled at 18 °C. This procedure is expensive (two deliveries each day) and the milk quality is difficult to preserve as temperatures are not controlled. The milk refrigeration at the farm could allow a single delivery to the dairy. Therefore it could be a good strategy to preserve raw milk quality and reduce cheese spoilage. This operation may, however, have the drawbacks of favouring the growth of psychrotrophic bacteria and changing the aptitude of milk to coagulation. With the aim of studying the effect on milk and cheese of traditional and new refrigerated technologies of milk storage, two different collection and creaming technologies were compared. The trials were replicated in three cheese factories manufacturing Grana Trentino. Every cheese-making day, about 1000 milk liters were collected from always the same two farms in the different collection procedures (single or double). Milk was processed to produce 2 wheels of Grana trentino every day. During the refrigerated trials, milk was collected and stored at the farm in a mixed tank at 12 or 8 °C and then was carried to the dairy in truck once a day. 112 cheese making day were followed: 56 for traditional technology and 56 for the refrigerated one. Each one of these two thechnologies lead to different ways of creaming: long time in the traditional one and shorter in the new one. For every cheese making day we recorded time, temperatures and pH during the milk processing to cheese. Whole milk before ceraming, cream and skim milk after creaming, vat milk and whey were sampled during every cheese-making day for analysis. After 18 months ripening we opened 46 cheese wheels for further chemical and microbiological analyses.
The trials were performed with the aim of:
1 estimate the effect of storage temperatures on microbial communities, physico-chemical or/and rheological differences of milk and skim milk after creaming.
2 detect by culture dependent (plate counts) and indipendent (DGGE) methodolgies the microbial species present in whole, skimmed milk, cream and cheese sampled under the rind and in the core;
3 estimate the physico-chemical characteristics, the proteolytic activity, the content of free aminoacids and volatile compounds in 18 months ripened Grana Trentino cheeses from different storing and creaming of milk technologies.

The results presented are remarkable since this is the first in-deep study presenting microbiological and chemical analysis of Grana Trentino that even if belonging to Grana Padano Consortium, it is clearly different in the milk and in the manufacturing technology.


Post-Activation Potentiation (PAP) is an exercise concept involving maximal muscular contraction to improve subsequent a dynamic contraction. An effective PAP method is one based on a balanced state of physical readiness and fatigue. Fatigued muscles reduce muscle performance. However, non-fatiguing muscular contractions at high loads with short duration can enhance muscle performance. Heart Rate (HR) can be used as an indicator of exercise readiness and fatigue. Additionally Heart Rate Percentage (HR %) was used as an indicator of readiness. PURPOSE: To assess the feasibility of using Heart Rate Percentage (HR%) as a readiness indicator during a back-squat PAP method. METHODS: Nineteen subjects (12 males and 7 females, age 22.37 ± 1.31 years, height 1.66 ± .07 m, weight 74.63 ± 15.63 kg and Body Mass Index (BMI) 26.66 ± 4.76 kg/m2) underwent three training sessions with 48 hours of rest between sessions of back-squat and vertical jump. On the first day each subject, underwent a baseline protocol to measure their One Repetition Maximum (1RM), Heart Rate (HR), and Vertical Jump height. Subjects then were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions: (1) warm-up, (2) no warmup control condition, (3) PAP-Time, and (4) PAP-Heart Rate Percentage (HR%). Before each test, subjects performed a standardized 10-minute warm-up protocol. For the PAP Time and PAP Heart Rate conditions, subjects performed 5 repetitions of the back squat using 87% of their (1 RM), subjects then performed a vertical jump. For the PAP Time condition, subjects had a minute rest between the back-squat and the vertical jump, and three minutes of rest after the vertical jump before proceeding to the next cycle for a total of five sets. For the PAP-Heart Rate % condition, subjects rested until their heart rate reached 60% of their maximal heart rate (HRmax). The video-based MyJump2 app was used to assess vertical jump height. A repeated measures ANOVA was used to assess differences in vertical jump performance across conditions. A Bonferroni post-hoc test was used to identify pairwise differences. Significance level was set at an alpha level of  < 0.05. Results: The dynamic warm-up, PAP Time, and PAP Heart Rate % conditions showed significantly different jump heights (34.9 ± 1.6 cm, 36.4 ± 1.7 cm, and 36.4 ± 1.5 cm respectively) compared to the no-warm-up condition (32.6 ± 1.8) (p < 0.05). There were no significant difference between PAP Time and PAP-Heart Rate % conditions. Conclusion: Using heart rate percentage (%) as an indicator of readiness to maximize performance through PAP method can improve vertical jump performance. A dynamic warm-up can also exhibit effects similar to PAP exercise on vertical jump performance. PAP methods and dynamic warm-ups can be used to enhance measures of vertical jump performance.


This project examines the implications of mythologizing women writers, specifically Woolf and Austen, and transforming them into their own famous characters. Using various writings that theorize women's voices, sense of agency, and political autonomy in relationship with the public/private dichotomy, this project argues that women writers are often appropriated and fictionalized in this way because of a patriarchal cultural understanding that women are associated with the private, personal, and domestic spheres. More importantly, it argues that this increasingly frequent treatment aligns with and forwards a neoliberal political and cultural agenda. The politics of the last twenty or thirty years, in short, are shaping interpretations and adaptations of major works of the English canon, specifically Mrs. Dalloway and Pride and Prejudice. Particular examples of such adaptations include The Hours, Vanessa and Her Sister, Becoming Jane, and Longbourn. This project ultimately analyzes these and a select number of other texts in order to show that these contemporary treatments of two of the most famous female writers from the English canon reveal quite a bit about current attitudes within the United States about gender (in)equality, care work/dependency, and sexuality.


The design and implementation of a baseband wide-band code-division multiple access (WCDMA) dual-antenna mobile terminal system-on-a-chip (SoC) is presented in this paper. Spatial diversity processing mitigates wireless channel impairments and is a key enabling technology for WCDMA to support high quality of service at high data rates and capacity. The SoC integrates the baseband transceiver, coding and decoding functions, microcontrollers to implement the radio access protocols, and external interfaces to communicate with the application layer. The receiver design, which takes advantage of diversity benefits in several blocks, is described in detail. The SoC was fabricated in a 0.18-mum 1.8-V CMOS technology and requires a total area of 72mm2  consuming 532 mW at the maximum data rates. The application-specific integrated circuit was used in lab testing where a gain of up to 9 dB was observed for the dual-antenna receiver, which demonstrates the tremendous improvement provided by spatial diversity. The results presented in this paper provide a base architecture and a performance benchmark for commercial implementations of WCDMA mobile terminals


This paper investigates how a general nasal /N/ in the morpheme of the active verb prefix /m ǝN -/ in Indonesian behaves as it is combined with simple verb forms to produce the prefixed verbs. The data were mainly collected from an Indonesian standardized dictionary 'Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia' and analysed phonologically. The research reveals that the general nasal /N/ most assimilates to the initial sound of the simple verb into labial /m/, alveolar /n/, palatal / ɲ /, and velar / ŋ/, and is deleted if it is f ollowed by approximant (w, y), central (l), or retroflex (r). In contrast, the general nasal /N/ can delete a voiceless stop consonant (p, t, k). Next, to generate the correct surface representations from the underlying representations can be done by applying nasal assimilation and deletion rules. The right rule ordering is the nasal assimilation rule should be applied prior to the deletion rule. Apart from the regularity, it is also found a small number of data which do not follow these rules.


" The first comprehensive history of the state since the publication of Thomas D. Clark's landmark History of Kentucky over sixty years ago. A New History of Kentucky brings the Commonwealth to life, from Pikeville to the Purchase, from Covington to Corbin, this account reveals Kentucky's many faces and deep traditions. Lowell Harrison, professor emeritus of history at Western Kentucky University, is the author of many books, including George Rogers Clark and the War in the West, The Civil War in Kentucky, Kentucky's Road to Statehood, Lincoln of Kentucky, and Kentucky's Governors.


Two distinct assemblages of authigenic phyllosilicates were distinguished in the Kremikovtsi sedimentary exhalative (SEDEX) siderite iron formation (SIF) and noted as important tracers of two styles of mineralization characteristic of this type of ore deposit. Hydrothermal-sedimentary layer silicates are represented by rare occurrences of relict microcrystalline Mg-rich berthierine with a relatively low degree of structural ordering, associated closely with framboidal pyrite as an intergranular matrix cementing sparry siderite grains; the larger silicates are also represented by the diagenetic transformation product of berthierine, chamosite. Berthierine precipitated under anoxic conditions during advanced early diagenesis after chert deposition. Hydrothermal-epigenetic phyllosilicates (berthierine, chamosite, illite-smectite (I-S), and kaolinite) from the barite-sulfide assemblage are characterized by: crystalline and undeformed habits; relatively larger particle size, low-temperature polytypes, low to no mixed layering, and a high degree of crystallinity; absence of impurities and dominant monomineralic aggregates; affiliation to initial open spaces and deposition mainly as vug fillings and linings. They formed under pronounced control by the vuggy porosity of the siderite host caused by the invasion of acid (pH = 3–5), hot (200–230°C) hydrothermal fluids probably at the stage of burial diagenesis of the SIF under relatively stable reducing conditions fluctuating near the sulfide/sulfate stability boundary ($$\left( {\log {{\rm{P}}_{{{\rm{O}}_{\rm{2}}}}} \cong - 30} \right)$$(logPO2≅−30)). The greater Al concentration in hydrothermal solution than in seawater determines the affiliation of phyllosilicates in the Phanerozoic SEDEX SIFs to aluminous species (berthierine, chamosite) unlike low to non aluminous ones (greenalite, stilpnomelane) in the Precambrian IFs. The berthierine compositions, expressed by the Mg/Fe vs. Al/Si ratios, are a sensitive indicator of the geological conditions under which they formed (marine, non-marine, hydrothermal ore and pre-ore), thus allowing the genetic discrimination of this mineral from various localities.


The broader use of project management knowledge and best practices, especially the Project Management Institute approach, requires investments and new competencies. Thus, many companies have invested significantly in project management practice development, but they are often frustrated with the tangible achieved results. The aim of this paper is to discuss the main critical issues of project management implementation in Brazilian companies. The adopted methodological approach was multiple cases, carried out in three companies in the Brazilian telecommunications sector. These companies were selected due to the significant investment in project management and the practices they focused on improving. Moreover, the three companies play different roles in one of the most dynamic sectors in the Brazilian market. The data collection was carried out by spontaneous interviews (YIN, 2005) based on a script, with an interlocutor who knows the project management concepts with access to top management. As a result, it could be highlighted that companies believe that their investments produce good results, although they will only be able to demonstrate this when they develop solid project management programs and align them with corporate strategies and when appropriate strategic performance measures are available.


A panel of 148 monoclonal antibodies directed against Drosophila neural antigens has been prepared by using mice immunized with homogenates of Drosophila tissue. Antibodies were screened immunohistochemically on cryostat sections of fly heads. A large diversity of staining patterns was observed. Some antigens were broadly distributed among tissues; others were highly specific to nerve fibers, neuropil, muscle, the tracheal system, cell nuclei, photoreceptors, or other structures. The antigens for many of the antibodies have been identified on immunoblots. Monoclonal antibodies that identify specific molecules within the nervous system should prove useful in the study of the molecular genetics of neural development.


ABSTRACT Bacteriophage λ gene Q protein and the related proteins of other lambdoid phages are transcription antiterminators that interact both with DNA in the late gene promoter segment and with RNA polymerase subunits. Using hybrids between Q of λ and the related Q of phage 80, we characterized elements of both Q and DNA that contribute to the DNA binding function. In particular, we found a C-terminal segment of the protein that is responsible for binding specificity and an ∼15 residue segment on a predicted alpha helix within this segment at which alanine substitutions decrease DNA binding. We identified a six-nucleotide segment located between the −35 and −10 promoter elements that confers binding specificity and is the site of point mutants that impair binding, and we isolated suppressors in λ Q that restore binding function by increasing the overall binding affinity. We also identified putative zinc finger structures in both proteins.


There is a need for semantic representations that can bridge the gap between linguistic inputs verbs and their corresponding visual knowledge which are indispensable in performing a variety of tasks involving the automatic generation of 3D animation. The semantic representation of events in visual knowledge and the design of a suitable knowledge base specifically for the integration of linguistic and visual information are discussed here. We describe a framework used to represent action verb semantics in a visual knowledge base. Visually observed events are described by establishing a correspondence between verbs and the visual depictions they evoke. The method proposed here is well-suited to practical applications such as automatic language visualisation applications and intelligent storytelling systems. In particular, it will be useful within CONFUCIUS, a system which receives input natural language stories and presents them with 3Danimation, speech, and non-speech audio.


Experimental study of natural convection heat transfer inside smooth and rough surfaces of vertical and inclined equilateral triangular channels of different inclination angles with a uniformly heated surface are performed. The inclination angle is changed from 15o to 90o. Smooth and rough surface of average roughness (0.02mm) are used and their effect on the heat transfer characteristics are studied. The local and average heat transfer coefficients and Nusselt number are obtained for smooth and rough channels at different heat flux values, different inclination angles and different Rayleigh numbers (Ra) 6.48 × 10 5 ≤ Ra ≤ 4.78 × 10 6 . The results show that the local Nusselt number decreases with increase of axial distance from the lower end of the triangular channel to a point near the upper end of channel, and then, it slightly increases. Higher values of local Nusselt number for rough channel along the axial distance compared with the smooth channel. The average Nusselt number of rough channel is higher than that of smooth channel by about 8.1% for inclined case at θ = 45 o and 10% for vertical case. The results obtained are correlated using dimensionless groups for both rough and smooth surfaces of the inclined and vertical triangular channels.


Strategic trade theory offers a way of conceptualizing and testing for strategic government interventions in imperfectly competitive international markets. This survey critically assesses recent empirical evidence, with a focus on food and agricultural markets. One finding is that while many international markets are characterized by oligopoly, price-cost markups tend to be small, and the potential gains from intervention are modest at best. In turn, empirical work has turned up few examples in which government intervention has been optimal in a strategic trade sense. Nonetheless, governments are found to frequently intervene on behalf of domestic firms and play a major role in shaping the nature of international competition. Suggestions for future research are made.


BACKGROUND
Advanced periodontal disease as well as failed endodontic teeth are the most common reasons for tooth removal and simultaneous implant placement.

PURPOSE
To determine whether the addition of a bone substitute graft material and/or a guided bone regeneration membrane added to the site of an immediately placed implant would increase the development of lamellated bone, particularly in the presence of bone defects.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Four treatment modalities associated with the immediate placement of hydroxyapatite-coated endosteal screw implants into extraction sockets of healthy (C/H) and periodontally diseased teeth (T/PD) were tested. Five dogs with healthy teeth and five dogs with naturally occurring periodontitis were chosen for the study. Each dog received eight implants after extraction of four mandibular and four maxillary premolars. Four implants were submerged for 3 months and four for 6 months. The implants were either inserted alone (subgroup A); surrounded by a GORE-TEX membrane (subgroup B; W.L. Gore & Associates Inc., Flagstaff, AZ, USA); surrounded by PepGen P-15 (Dentsply Friadent CeraMed Dental Co. Denver, CO, USA) at coronal area (subgroup C); or surrounded by a combination of graft material and the ePTFE membrane (subgroup D). Implants in group A were osseointegrated in both C/H and T/PD groups with similar bone-implant contact ratios (BICRs).

RESULTS
ePTFE membrane significantly improved the BICR of the 6-months implants, whereas graft material significantly increased the BICR at 3 months and maintained the gain thereafter. The graft material and membrane combination further improved the BICR and significantly increased lamellated bone in crestal bone of all implants.

CONCLUSIONS
This study provides experimental evidence in support of use of graft material with immediately placed implants, particularly in presence of bone defects that initially reduce the BICR such as in periodontitis. Adding an ePTFE membrane to graft material resulted in a greater replacement of woven bone by lamellated bone. Clinical trials in humans are recommended as a follow-up of this experimental study.


Relatedness among strains of Edwardsiella tarda was determined by using interspecific deoxyribonucleic acid reassociation followed by chromatography on hydroxyapatite. Relatedness was also assessed among E. tarda and representatives from all other established genera of the family Enterobacteriaceae. Twenty strains of E. tarda from five countries and 11 states, isolated from diseased human, normal human, and invertebrate sources, all formed one highly related hybridization group. E. tarda exhibited 20 to 29% relatedness to other enterobacteria. These data are consistent with the previous designation of a separate tribe, Edwardsielleae, for a single genus (Edwardsiella) and species (E. tarda).


AIM
To study the effectiveness of three-stage rehabilitation of patients with chronic obstructive lung disease (COLD).

MATERIAL AND METHODS
An open randomized control trial included COLD patients divided into two groups. Group 1 patients have undergone three-stage rehabilitation: outpatient clinic-hospital-sanatorium, group 2 controls have undergone rehabilitation only in outpatient clinic. The condition of the patients was assessed by physical performance (bicycle exercise, 6-min walk test), external respiration function (spirography), tolerance to dyspnea (questionnaire) at the trial start and in 3, 6, 9, 12 and 18 months. Three-stage rehabilitation continued for 9 months.

RESULTS
Positive changes in physical performance and dyspnea tolerance were more pronounced in three-stage rehabilitation. This trend persisted for 9 months and than positive results got worse.

CONCLUSION
Three-stage rehabilitation of COLD patients is highly effective and should be an essential part of COLD treatment policy.


The zinc-activated channel (ZAC, nomenclature as agreed by the NC-IUPHAR Subcommittee for the Zinc Activated Channel) is a member of the Cys-loop family that includes the nicotinic ACh, 5-HT3, GABAA and strychnine-sensitive glycine receptors [1, 2, 3]. The channel is likely to exist as a homopentamer of 4TM subunits that form an intrinsic cation selective channel equipermeable to Na+, K+ and Cs+, but impermeable to Ca2+ and Mg2+ [3]. ZAC displays constitutive activity that can be blocked by tubocurarine and high concentrations of Ca2+ [3]. Although denoted ZAC, the channel is more potently activated by protons and copper, with greater and lesser efficacy than zinc, respectively [3]. ZAC is present in the human, chimpanzee, dog, cow and opossum genomes, but is functionally absent from mouse, or rat, genomes [1, 2].


ABSTRACT Earth Observation (EO) has been recognised as a key data source for supporting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Advances in data availability and analytical capabilities have provided a wide range of users access to global coverage analysis-ready data (ARD). However, ARD does not provide the information required by national agencies tasked with coordinating the implementation of SDGs. Reliable, standardised, scalable mapping of land cover and its change over time and space facilitates informed decision making, providing cohesive methods for target setting and reporting of SDGs. The aim of this study was to implement a global framework for classifying land cover. The Food and Agriculture Organisation's Land Cover Classification System (FAO LCCS) provides a global land cover taxonomy suitable to comprehensively support SDG target setting and reporting. We present a fully implemented FAO LCCS optimised for EO data; Living Earth, an open-source software package that can be readily applied using existing national EO infrastructure and satellite data. We resolve several semantic challenges of LCCS for consistent EO implementation, including modifications to environmental descriptors, inter-dependency within the modular-hierarchical framework, and increased flexibility associated with limited data availability. To ensure easy adoption of Living Earth for SDG reporting, we identified key environmental descriptors to provide resource allocation recommendations for generating routinely retrieved input parameters. Living Earth provides an optimal platform for global adoption of EO4SDGs ensuring a transparent methodology that allows monitoring to be standardised for all countries.