The tomato potato psyllid (TPP), Bactericera cockerelli, invaded New Zealand in 2006 and has now spread throughout most of the country. TPP is an economically important pest of solanaceous crops that that not only causes damage through its feeding but also transmits the bacterium Candidatus Liberibacter solanacearum, which is associated with zebra chip disease in potato. Published developmental thresholds, meteorological data, and potato emergence and harvesting dates were used to estimate the potential number of generations of TPP for the main potato-growing regions in cold, average and hot spring and summer seasons in the 20062013 period. Temperature was highly variable in spring and summer between regions and between years within a region. The main effect of higher temperatures was that TPP generations were completed earlier, which resulted in up to one extra generation in a season. In the North Island regions, spring temperatures were such that up to two generations could develop before potato emergence, in contrast to the South Island, where less than one generation occurred during this time. This information can be used by crop managers to target management interventions for TPP more effectively.


The purpose of this study was to explore the issue of race as a trauma related to Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). The research was specifically focused on the black individual's experience of being black in America and how this affects the psyche in the role of healing. The goal of this research is to help researchers think about the profound effects of race and help strengthen the ACEs scale. The ACEs scale is a scale that identifies trauma which is linked to later life well-being and health. Identifying ACEs, carefully understanding them, and providing preventative measures allow for healing and resilience building. This research is not the first of its kind, but is the first to be applied to the ACE scale. Databases of research were searched to find materials that include, but were not limited to: ACES, black trauma, post-enslavement, the psyche of African Americans, and other dynamics in the black community which combine to make the assumption that race is a traumatic experience. There was also research on the similarities and parallels of trauma within other cultures and ethnic groups. This resulted in the provocative conclusion that race is in fact an adverse childhood experience related to trauma. With this notion in mind, racial traumas should be accounted for in the new ACEs scales in order to help improve the well-being of minority populations. This is essential in ACEs for minority communities, which will lead to better preventive measures and healing efforts that will be culturally sensitive and accurate.


A portable, tent-like device with powdered fluorescent pigment for marking emergent adult mosquitoes was evaluated in the field using Culex quinquefasciatus adults. The top of the device was equipped with cheesecloth partitions impregnated with the pigment. Eighty-six percent of the emergent adults passed through the partitions, and all were marked.


Opinion mining is a sub-discipline within Information Retrieval (IR) and Computational Linguistics. It refers to the computational techniques for extracting, classifying, understanding, and assessing the opinions expressed in various online sources like news articles, social media comments, and other user-generated content. It is also known by many other terms like opinion finding, opinion detection, sentiment analysis, sentiment classification, polarity detection, etc. Defining in more specific and simpler context, opinion mining is the task of retrieving opinions on an issue as expressed by the user in the form of a query. There are many problems and challenges associated with the field of opinion mining. In this thesis, we focus on some major problems of opinion mining. One of the foremost and major challenges of opinion mining is to find opinions specifically relevant to the given topic (query). A document can contain information about many topics at a time and it is possible that it contains opinionated text about each of the topic being discussed or about only few of them. Therefore, it becomes very important to choose topic-relevant document segments with their corresponding opinions. We approach this problem on two granularity levels, sentences and passages. In our first approach for sentence-level, we use semantic relations of WordNet to find this opinion-topic association. In our second approach for passage-level, we use more robust IR model (i.e., language model) to focus on this problem. Basic idea behind both contributions for opinion-topic association is that if a document contains more opinionated topic-relevant textual segments (i.e., sentences or passages) then it is more opinionated than a document with less opinionated topic-relevant textual segments. Most of the machine-learning based approaches for opinion mining are domain-dependent (i.e., their performance vary from domain to domain). On the other hand, a domain or topic-independent approach is more generalized and can sustain its effectiveness across different domains. However, topic-independent approaches suffer from poor performance generally. It is a big challenge in the field of opinion mining to develop an approach which is both effective and generalized at the same time. Our contributions for this thesis include the development of such approach which combines simple heuristics-based topic-independent and topic-dependent features to find opinionated documents. Entity-based opinion mining aims at identifying the relevant entities for a given topic and extract the opinions associated to them from a set of textual documents. However, identifying and determining the relevancy of entities is itself a big challenge for this task. In this thesis, we focus on this challenge by proposing an approach which takes into account both information from the current news article as well as from the past relevant articles in order to detect the most important entities in the current news. We look at different features at both local (document) and global (data collection) level to analyse their importance to assess the relevance of an entity. Experimentation with a machine learning algorithm shows the effectiveness of our approach by giving significant improvements over baseline. In addition to this, we also present idea of a framework for opinion mining related tasks. This framework exploits content and social evidences of blogosphere for the tasks of opinion finding, opinion prediction and multidimensional ranking. This premature contribution lays foundations for our future work. Evaluation of our approaches include the use of TREC Blog 2006 data collection and TREC Novelty track data collection 2004. Most of the evaluations were performed under the framework of TREC Blog track.


Geospatial technologies are becoming increasingly essential in our world for a wide range of applications, including agriculture, urban planning, and disaster response. To help improve the applicability and performance of deep learning models on these geospatial tasks, various works have begun investigating foundation models for this domain. Researchers have explored two prominent approaches for introducing such models in geospatial applications, but both have drawbacks in terms of limited performance benefit or prohibitive training cost. Therefore, in this work, we propose a novel paradigm for building highly effective geospatial foundation models with minimal resource cost and carbon impact. We first construct a compact yet diverse dataset from multiple sources to promote feature diversity, which we term GeoPile. Then, we investigate the potential of continual pretraining from large-scale ImageNet-22k models and propose a multi-objective continual pretraining paradigm, which leverages the strong representations of ImageNet while simultaneously providing the freedom to learn valuable in-domain features. Our approach outperforms previous state-of-the-art geospatial pretraining methods in an extensive evaluation on seven downstream datasets covering various tasks such as change detection, classification, multi-label classification, semantic segmentation, and super-resolution.


Purpose:Dose‐volume histogram (DVH) is a clinically relevant criterion to evaluate treatment plan quality. It is hence desirable to incorporate the associated DVH constraints in treatment plan optimization. Yet, these constraints usually lead to difficulties due to their non‐convex nature. This project develops an algorithm to solve the intensity modulated radiation therapy(IMRT)optimization problem with DVH constraints considered via a Bregman iteration. Methods: We consider an objective function of a quadratic form with different overdose and underdose penalties, subject to DVH constraints. The constrained optimization problem is converted into a sequence of unconstrained problems via Bregman iteration approach, which are then solved sequentially using gradient‐descent algorithm with inexact line search. The objective functions in those unconstrained optimization problems contains terms that requires the computation of DVH values. In practice, this is achieved by approximating the Heaviside step‐functions in the expression of a DVH curve by a smoothed arctangent function. This approach also allows for the computation of gradient of the objective functions during optimization process. Results: We have tested our algorithm in the context of 7‐field IMRTtreatment planning for prostate cancer in 4 patient cases. Clinically relevant DVH constraints are considered for PTV, rectum, and bladder. In all the cases, the algorithm is able to find the solutions that satisfy all the DVH constraints, while as DVH constraints may be violated when the Bregman algorithm is not applied. The local‐minima problem caused by the non‐convex constraints is not observed, which may be ascribed to the good quality of the initial dose distribution obtained after a standard IMRToptimization problem without DVH constraints. Conclusions: We have developed an algorithm to solve the IMRToptimization problem with DVH constraints using Bregman iteration approach. Tests conducted in prostate cancer cases have demonstrated the validity of our algorithm and its effectiveness.


It is important to reduce metal losses associated with the slag in the blast furnace runner. Insufficient separation gives rise to technological problems in the subsequent processing of hot metal and slag in addition to the losses themselves. By using a water-oil physical model of the blast furnace trough, the flow behavior and the separation efficiency in the trough were investigated. A series of experiments was carried out by changing the process variables such as flow rate of liquids, properties of oil (slag), and geometrical design of the trough. The results indicate that, at constant physical properties, the flow velocity in the upper stream of the trough is the predominant factor in determining the amount of metal carried over with slag. Oil (slag) viscosity was also found to be an important contributor in the separation efficiency. The mechanism for the slag entrainment into the metal phase was also investigated. The results indicate that the amount of slag (oil) entrained into metal (water) is mainly determined by the force balance between inertial force in the metal stream, the viscous force, and the gravity force in the upper stream. Because of this mechanism, the oil entrainment ratio decreased sharply with oil volume while the effect of total flow rate, water and oil, was comparatively small. In order to extend the results obtained by this modeling study to the actual system, a technique of dimensional analysis was also employed. As a result, dimensionless group correlations which can describe the separation efficiency as a function of process variables and dimensions of the trough were derived.


In this paper, an edge detection technique is proposed by using the multiresolution Fourier transform (MFT) to analyze the local properties in the spatial frequency domain. Five major steps are adopted to implement the detection of edges. First, the Laplacian pyramid method is used to create a high-pass filtered image. Secondly, the Multiresolution Fourier Transform (MFT) is applied to divide the high-pass filtered image into blocks and transform each of the blocks into spatial frequency domain. Thirdly, single-feature and non-single-feature blocks are differentiated. Subsequently, the blocks containing single feature are then subject to a process for estimating the orientation and the centroid of the feature in order to locate it. Finally, the accuracy of the estimated centroid of the local feature is checked. Once all the blocks are analyzed at a resolution level, the overall procedure is repeated at the next resolution level and the blocks with their father block being classified as non-single-feature or being rejected in the accuracy check stage at the previous level are analyzed. The algorithm stops when a specific level is reached.


Newcastle disease virus (NDV) causes one of the highly infectious avian diseases in poultry leading to genuine financial misfortunes around the world. Recently, there has been an increasing trend in the number of ND-associated outbreaks in commercial Jordanian poultry flocks indicating a possible complex evolutionary dynamic of NDV infections in the country. To underpin the dynamics of circulating NDV strains and to assess the vaccine-escape potential, a total of 130 samples were collected from different poultry flocks in six Jordanian Governorates during 2019–2021. Twenty positive isolates, based on real-time reverse transcriptase PCR, were used for further genetic characterization and evolutionary analysis. Our results showed that there is a high evolutionary distance between the newly identified NDV strains (genotype VII.1.1) in this study and the commercially used vaccines (genotypes I and II), suggesting that circulating NDV field strains are under constant evolutionary pressure. These mutations may significantly affect flocks that have received vaccinations as well as flocks with insufficient immunity in terms of viral immunity and disease dynamics. To assess this further, we investigated the efficacy of the heterologous inactivated LaSota or homologous genotype VII.1.1 vaccine for their protection against virulent NDV in chicken. Vaccine-induced immunity was evaluated based on the serology, and protection efficacy was assessed based on clinical signs, survival rates, histopathology, and viral shedding. Chickens vaccinated with the inactivated genotype VII.1.1 based vaccine showed 100% protection with a significant reduction in virus shedding, and ameliorated histopathology lesions compared to LaSota vaccinated chicks that showed 60% protection. These results revealed that the usage of NDV inactivated vaccine from the circulating field strains can successfully ameliorate the clinical outcome and virus pathobiology in vaccinated chicks and will serve as an effective vaccine against the threat posed by commonly circulating NDV strains in the poultry industry.


This paper suggests some new estimators of the ridge parameter for binary choice models that may be applied in the presence of a multicollinearity problem. These new ridge parameters are functions of other estimators of the ridge parameter that have shown to work well in the previous research. Using a simulation study we investigate the mean square error (MSE) properties of these new ridge parameters and compare them with the best performing estimators from the previous research. The results indicate that we may improve the MSE properties of the ridge regression estimator by applying the proposed estimators in this paper, especially when there is a high multicollinearity between the explanatory variables and when many explanatory variables are included in the regression model. The benefit of this paper is then shown by a health related data where the effect of some risk factors on the probability of receiving diabetes is investigated.


Pure line selection for the presence of Glu-D1-4t+10.1t in high molecular weight glutenin subunits was applied in a cross between a synthetic hexaploid wheat (SHW) 530-1 (Triticum dicoccum / Aegilops tauschii acc. 19088) (2n = 42, BBAuAuDtDt) and two common wheat (T. aestivum L.) cultivars 'Albena' and 'Slaveya' (2n = 42, BBAuAuDD). Grain number and seed weight per plant of selected BC1F5-7 individuals accompanied this high molecular weight subunit pair to create 9 wheat genotypes. They were tested in the field and showed sufficient germination and winter survival with high seed set. Hierarchical cluster analysis divided them in two groups (four in the first, including standard wheat cultivar 'Sadovska ranozreika-4' and six lines in the second cluster). The urea / SDS-PAGE method separated the new lines in two high molecular weight glutenin variants, Glu-A1-2*, Glu-B1-7+8, Glu-D1-4t+10.1t (8 genotypes) and Glu-A1-null, Glu-B1-7+8, Glu-D1-4t+10.1t (1 genotype), displaying equal low molecular weight glutenins. All families expressed two ω-gliadin bands: the gliadin #1 originated from SHW530-1, while #2 was transferred from wheat cultivar 'Albena'. The former one appeared to be the unique gliadin subunit in the genotypes, not expressed in both wheat parents. The incorporated high molecular weight glutenin alleles might serve as new genetic resources for improving the grain quality of modern common wheat.


Lactobacillus casei is a group of phenotypically and genetically heterogeneous lactic acid bacteria, able to colonize various natural and man-made environments. Strains of the Lactobacillus casei group have been widely studied with respect to their health-promoting properties. Several beneficial functions for the human organism have been attributed to regular consumption of food products containing these strains. Bacteria of the Lactobacillus casei group are of great interest for the food industry to improve food quality. A number of studies have been conducted in order to evaluate the viability of strains of Lactobacillus casei group as probiotic in dairy products, desserts, among others food products. Despite its importance for the food industry, the taxonomy of the Lactobacillus casei group is still unclear. This review discusses important studies related to characterization of strains of Lactobacillus casei group, the application of these bacteria as probiotic in different food products and the main beneficial effects attributed to regular consumption of products containing such microorganisms.


The problem of efficient approximation of a linear operator induced by the Gaussian or softmax kernel is often addressed using random features (RFs) which yield an unbiased approximation of the operator's result. Such operators emerge in important applications ranging from kernel methods to efficient Transformers. We propose parameterized, positive, non-trigonometric RFs which approximate Gaussian and softmax-kernels. In contrast to traditional RF approximations, parameters of these new methods can be optimized to reduce the variance of the approximation, and the optimum can be expressed in closed form. We show that our methods lead to variance reduction in practice ($e^{10}$-times smaller variance and beyond) and outperform previous methods in a kernel regression task. Using our proposed mechanism, we also present FAVOR#, a method for self-attention approximation in Transformers. We show that FAVOR# outperforms other random feature methods in speech modelling and natural language processing.


The "Arab Spring" was heralded and publicly embraced by foreign leaders of many countries that define themselves by their own historic revolutions. The contributors to this volume examine the legitimacy of these comparisons by exploring whether or not all modern revolutions follow a pattern or script. Traditionally, historians have studied revolutions as distinct and separate events. Drawing on close familiarity with many different cultures, languages, and historical transitions, this anthology presents the first cohesive historical approach to the comparative study of revolutions. This volume argues that the American and French Revolutions provided the genesis of the revolutionary "script" that was rewritten by Marx, which was revised by Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution, which was revised again by Mao and the Chinese Communist Revolution. Later revolutions in Cuba and Iran improvised further. This script is once again on display in the capitals of the Middle East and North Africa, and it will serve as the model for future revolutionary movements.


The biodiversity on Earth is in a state of decline. Because the full extent of the problem is not known, model systems are needed as environmental indicators. Amphibians are considered good indicators of wetland ecosystems. Many authors have Q agreed that a key factor driving population dynamics in a fragmented landscape is the ability of animals to move between habitat fragments. I studied the effects that a stream corridor has on the patch occupancy of breeding populations of western spotted frog {Rana luteiventris). I quantified landscape and habitat parameters in both Lump Gulch and Gravely Range landscapes. The Lump Gulch landscape consisted of wetlands connected by stream corridors, whereas the Gravely Range landscape consisted of glaciated kettle ponds, with no stream connectance. The area of wetland sites and the distance between sites did not have an influence on the patch occupancy of the different landscapes. By eliminating these factors my results suggest that stream corridors significantly influence the distribution of Rana luteiventris by providing a means to occupy and reoccupy wetland sites. In essence, the stream corridors between patches are precious resources and it is imperative that we preserve these habitats which are a means of dispersal across landscapes.


The USOR offers unobservability as promised. Though information disclosure is unavoidable for colluding insiders, and the adversary knows some keys, the information that the colluding insiders can obtain is largely restricted by USOR. In the padded USOR, all packets including RREQ, RREP packets and other control packets are padded to 128 bytes. Due to the packet padding, performance of the padded USOR is obviously downgraded, but the padded USOR still achieves satisfactory performance: more than 85% delivery success and about 250ms delivery latency. And also it not only provides strong privacy protection, it is also more resistant against attacks due to node compromise. Finally, achieves stronger privacy protection than existing schemes like MASK.


As the new technological developments become increasingly complex, the creation of partnerships between companies and research centres becomes essential. Nowadays, there are several platforms trying to offer a stable innovation market that can be used for the transfer of innovation in water management. However, they neither allow a complete description of the features of innovation proposals nor are capable of describing the specific requirements of the different research fields. This work describes OntoInnova, an ontology that provides a more complete model of the different elements related to research, development and innovation exchange in water management. We have applied this ontology for the modelling of the innovation data collected in the European WE@EU project for water management in urban environments.


A single-feed equilateral-triangular microstrip antenna has been designed with truncated corners for diverse radiation polarizations. The proposed antenna is excited by a microstrip line placed parallel to the oblique side of an equilateral-triangular patch. The antenna exhibits linear polarization (LP), left-hand circular polarization, or right-hand circular polarization (RHCP) depending on whether the three identically sized corners of the triangular patch are cut. A novel reconfigurable microstrip antenna with selectable polarization is proposed based on this first antenna. This second antenna has a simple structure consisting of a corner-truncated triangular patch, a small triangular conductor, an asymmetrical microstrip feed line, and a biased PIN diode between the patch and the triangular conductor. It produces LP or RHCP depending on the bias voltage. The measured results show that this antenna has a low cross-polarization level when operated in the linear state and a good axial ratio in the circular state.


Emergence of Internet (and especially World Wide Web) has brought new possibilities for profound transformation of scientific communication process. Scientific journals have been major means of scholarly communication throughout last three centuries. Although traditional scholarly journals are using many facilities of electronic publishing, they have inherited numerous disadvantages of their printed counterparts: expensiveness, time-consuming editing and publishing process resulting in delays of content delivery, inflexibility, complicated mechanisms of acquisition, access and archiving. Dissatisfaction with current model is clearly stressed out with syntagm "serial crisis"; which has become a common point in professional literature since the beginning of the last decade. New models are far more heterogeneous and flexible, and are taking full advantage of new online media. There are two main categories: eprint archives of scientific documents and alternative scientific journals.
ArXiv (www.arxiv.org) has appeared in 1991 as first preprint archive, and since has become a major forum for dissemination of information in the field of theoretical physics. Electronic archives can be differentiated according to several criteria:
1. are they archiving peer reviewed literature or preprints (or both),
2. are they discipline based or institutional,
3. are they centralised or distributed systems.
Although popularity of ArXiv has inspired development of numerous discipline based archives (CogPrints, CoRR, CPS, DList etc.), institutional archives appear to be much more vital today. DSpace (www.dspace.org), digital repository of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is the latest and most significant example. More and more journals unlike traditional scientific journals are evolving; journals whose content is freely available through WWW (they are financially independent from subscriptions), journals that incorporate multimedia and enable author-reader interaction, and journals that use the possibility of online editing and reviewing. Good example of such alternative approach is BioMed Central (www.biomedcentral.com), publisher of freely accessible biomedical journals.
"Scholarly communication has been described as comprising four essential components:
• Registration – establishing the intellectual priority of an idea, concept, or research;
• Certification – certifying the quality of the research and/or the validity of the claimed finding;
• Awareness – ensuring the dissemination and accessibility of research, providing a means by which researchers can become aware of new research; and
• Archiving – preserving the intellectual heritage for future use."
In traditional scientific publishing model, all four functions were fulfilled by scientific journal. Each future model will also have to ensure fulfilment of these functions, but it is already predictable that an "deconstructed scholarly publishing model" will take place, and particular functions will be carried out by different instances. Parallel with alternative publishing models, numerous initiatives and projects have appeared that aim to: accent dissatisfaction with existing publishing models, anticipate future development and accelerate it (SPARC, Open Archive Initiative, Public Library of Science, Budapest Open Access Initiative, RoMEO, FIGARO). Common motive of all these initiatives can be expressed by the phrase: "Returning scientific publishing to scientist".
In most of the mentioned projects, members of librarian community are taking leading role. Also, by most of those initiatives, libraries are recognised as key actors in the process of "returning science to scientists". How can libraries contribute? What are librarians' responsibilities? First of all, librarians in scientific libraries should get acquainted with scientists' information seeking and publishing behaviour, their needs as well as their prejudices and inhibitions. Only then they can become their advisors and advocates of open access to information. Finally, they should activate their skills and knowledge in development of new models of scientific communication and publishing.


Defining Marks: A Defense of the Predicate View of Proper Names Matt Moss At the start of the last century philosophical consensus was that names were more or less like descriptions, and, at its end, that names were utterly unlike descriptions. The former view, Classical Descriptivism, had it that each individual's name was its name in virtue of the individual uniquely fitting some implicit characterization. Names were thus believed to have structure at the level of content: they expressed properties an object can have or fail to have. This view was in turn challenged beginning in the 1970s, most notably by Saul Kripke. Kripke's claim was that an individual's name has no structure at the level of content: it simply stands for a given individual. A name cannot characterize anything, and has no "meaning" save what it names. Kripke's view, Referentialism, in turn became the new orthodoxy. In my dissertation, I challenge the arguments that have lead us to believe names and descriptions are expressions of two different kinds. But I do not vindicate the old orthodoxy. I chart a middle path between Classical Descriptivism and Referentialism that can recapture many virtues of the former view, while respecting the linguistic data that lead to its abandonment. I do this in defending a competing theory, one that has recently grown in prominence: the Predicate View of names. The Predicate View offers a radically different conception of what a name is, one tied neither to an individual referent (as with Referentialism), nor to some set of properties an individual might uniquely bear (as with Classical Descriptivism). Instead, on the Predicate View a name such as "Bambi" expresses a property, bearing-"Bambi", satisfied by all and only Bambis. To fully substantiate this approach requires an investigation of how definiteness — a linguistic marker of something being unique relative to some context, as when "the cat" refers to some specific cat thanks to "the" — is realized cross-linguistically, and how this bears on the way a name like "Bambi" successfully picks out some particular Bambi. I take the proper formulation and defense of the Predicate View to be a preliminary contribution to such an investigation. What it promises is a more refined understanding both of how language expresses thoughts about individuals, and how this language is related to the language of properties, i.e. ways individuals can be. Names are not proprietary to individuals on the Predicate View. They express shareable properties, they have structure at the level of content, and they have a meaning, which can be characterized schematically: for any name "N", its meaning is given by bearing-"N". The Predicate View does not assume the tight connection between name meaning and name denotation than both Referentialism and Classical Descriptivism do (albeit in different ways). The name "Bambi" corresponds to some set of individuals that satisfy bearing-"Bambi", but does not "refer" to that set or indeed any member of it. Which individuals gets referred to with the name "Bambi" by speakers is a distinct matter, and the denotation of a name is to be understood in terms of acts of referring. In this respect, the Predicate View differs fundamentally from both Referentialism and Classical Descriptivism. Indeed, it differs more from both of these accounts than they do from one another. The Predicate View assumes a very different structure for name bearing, i.e. how names themselves are individuated and how names are related to what they name. I show in Chapters 1 and 2 that the semantic behavior of names — especially with respect to time and modality — provides evidence that the Predicate View gets the structure of name bearing right. I argue further that data which were taken to support Referentialism are equally well explained by the Predicate View. This runs counter to a common assumption — that the Predicate View faces a serious problem with modality, since it cannot deliver the result that names are rigid. I show that, on the contrary, the Predicate View offers a more nuanced and explanatory account of name rigidity than Referentialism. The Predicate View also explains a neglected fact that Referentialism cannot: that there are non-rigid occurrences of names. The picture that emerges is one on which names are predominantly rigid, but where they occur non-rigidly as a result of certain presuppositions being satisfied. I conclude that we should abandon Referentialism and embrace the Predicate View. In Chapter 3, I defend the View against a challenge due to John Hawthorne and David Manley in The Reference Book. There they argue that the most dramatic data favoring the Predicate View may have nothing to do with names at all, being adequately explained by an all-purpose mechanism of metalinguistic ascent. Why not say that in constructions like "I know three Caitlins" we are quantifying over what are strictly speaking ambiguous names (in the Referentialist's sense), rather than revise our semantics in the way the Predicate View proposes? I argue that in fact on a very natural elaboration of the basic idea behind the Predicate View, the cases of "metalinguistic ascent" that Hawthorne and Manley have in mind are naturally explained on the Predicate View itself, blunting their dialectical force.


Guduchi commonly known as Tinospora cordifolia (TC) is a glabrous climbing shrub of the family, Menispermaceae, indigenous to the tropical areas of India. The active principles of TC possess immunomodulatory activities. A number of studies have been done to evaluate the usefulness of this drug. The present study aimed to evaluate. The multi-potent effect of TC acts as an effective drug for common acute conditions. 25 patients symptomatic with acute conditions like fever, cold, allergy and rhinitis reported at the Ayurveda Clinic of Kasturba Hospital, Manipal, Karnataka for the months July and August of 2012. These patients were administered TC extract in capsule form (from the Himalaya Drug Company) as 250 mg/TD for 15 days. Hematological and renal function tests were performed in these patients before and after the administration of TC. There was no complained of any adverse/side effects during and after the period of the drug intake at the given dose and duration. A significant change was observed in Neutrophil, Eosinophil counts and ESR (p value < 0.05) after administration of TC. However, no changes observed in renal function tests. Hence TC can be considered as an Immunomodulatory agent in cases of common acute conditions. It was also observed that TC was effective in relieving the clinical symptoms that the patients reported prior to the administering of TC in cases of Allergic Rhinitis, Cold and fever and thereby boosting their immunity.


Valley of Death (VoD) is a metaphor often used to describe the situation in which many new startups fail to survive. This paper aims to share the experiences of developing guidelines for young entrepreneurs to successfully cross the Valley of death. The ideal target audience for this paper includes young entrepreneurs eager to launch their startups and preferably attending business incubation or acceleration programs. This research hypothesized to make a conceptual model crossing the Valley of death using the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The entrepreneurship ecosystem consists of six higher-order domains, including enabling government policies and leadership, financial capital, culture, support services, human capital, and markets. From earlier studies, entrepreneurial actions to cross the Valley of death were extracted. Entrepreneurship experts, including business incubation center managers, mentors, entrepreneurship faculty from business schools, validated these entrepreneurial actions. Analyses show four domains replicated in the study, enabling government policies and leadership, financial capital, support services, and markets. Furthermore, culture was partially replicated while the experts did not validate human capital. Finally, it presents entrepreneurial actions used to cross the Valley of death by new startups. These entrepreneurial actions are mapped on the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Findings include an emphasis on the understanding of ten issues including, entrepreneurial ecosystem, government rules, procedures, and incentives (like tax benefits, grants) for similar startups, intellectual property rights for similar projects, the role of leadership in startup performance, financial capital for the startup, risks and decision-making choices, regional entrepreneurial culture, support services for similar startups, markets, customers & competitors, the commercial value of the research project/product. Findings also show how to perform these actions and the appropriate timings of these entrepreneurial actions.


a Abstract: How has democracy impacted growth in Southeast Asia? This question can be answered by demonstrating how political elites in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand crafted quite unique democratic developmental states that enabled them to provide the public goods and public policies to maintain high growth. Because of this, growth under democracy has been as high as it was during the heyday of these polities' developmental autocracies. Moreover, as there was no single dominant pathway to the construction of democratic development in these polities, it looks like political elites were able to take local conditions and history into account suggesting that political elites have been as effective in selectively intervening in the structure of democratic politics as they have been in intervening in the economy.


Birth cohort studies are the most appropriate type of design to determine the causal relationship between potential risk factors during the prenatal or postnatal period and the health status of the newborn up to childhood and potentially adulthood. To date, there has been a growth in interest regarding observational population-based studies which are performed to provide answers to specific research questions for defined populations, for instance, assessing the exposure to environmental pollutants or drugs on the risk of developing a disease. Birth cohorts based on the recruitment and active follow-up of mothers and children allow the collection of biological material, and specific clinical and genetic information. However, they require a considerable amount of time and resources and, besides being usually of limited size, they are exposed to the risk of the loss of subjects to follow-up, with decreased statistical power and possible selection bias. For these reasons, linking the medical birth register with administrative health records for mothers and babies is increasingly being used in countries with a universal healthcare system, allowing researchers to identify large and unselected populations from birth, and to reconstruct relevant traits and care pathways of mothers and newborns. This Special Issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health focuses on the current state of knowledge on perinatal and postnatal exposures and adverse pregnancy, maternal, fetal and neonatal outcomes through population-based birth cohort studies, with a specific focus on real-word data. The 12 accepted articles covered a wide range of themes that can be addressed specifically through birth cohort study design; however, only three were based on real word data with record-linkage to health administrative databases. In particular, two papers have addressed the topic of socioeconomic status considering several indicators both at the individual and contextual level. Two papers focused on inflammatory bowel diseases, both as an outcome of perinatal and antibiotic exposure in early life and as a condition associated with asthma, among children identified in a birth cohort based on a Regional Medical Birth Register. Three articles focused on medication use during pregnancy and its impact on maternal and fetal health. The effect of exposure to prenatal environmental risk factors on perinatal and childhood outcomes has been considered in two papers. Two papers analyzed ad hoc nationwide prospective birth cohorts set in Japan and UK. Finally, we included a systematic review with meta-analysis to evaluate the relation between growth restriction at birth and congenital heart defects. We think that this Special Issue may contribute to enriching the discussion of future challenges, opportunities, strengths and limitations for all research topics that can be investigated using a population-based birth cohort study design.


ABSTRACT Mercury (Hg) is a pollutant that can affect human and ecosystem health. The transport and fate of Hg in the environment are dynamic and complex, but our understanding remains unclear for Japanese forest ecosystems. Here, we report the first country-wide survey of Hg concentrations in litter and surface mineral soil layers in 42 forest stands across Japan. The median concentrations of Hg in the litter layer and 0–10 cm of mineral soils were 99 (range: 56.7–297) and 145 (range: 22.8–294) μg kg−1, respectively, and tended to decrease down to 50 cm. There was a positive relationship between the Hg and total organic carbon concentrations in soil, suggesting that organic carbon strongly binds with Hg in soil. There was a significant positive correlation between the Hg and lead concentrations in the litter layer. Partial least square regression analysis indicated that the soil and litter properties as well as the atmospheric and geological Hg concentrations and some soil characteristics such as soil pH, organic matter properties and soil physical factors were effective explanatory variables of the country-wide spatial patterns of Hg concentrations in litter and mineral soil. In addition, we found the influence of atmospheric Hg is stronger in litter layer, whereas the influences of geological and soil factors are stronger in mineral soil. These results suggest that air pollution partly affects the spatial patterns of Hg concentrations in litter and soil of Japanese forests under the given geological and soil conditions at the country scale.


Between 1510–1822, Morocco went through significant changes that laid the foundation for its modern nation state. Most noteworthy among these changes was a shift from the Berber dynasties that had dominated the country for almost five hundred years to governments headed by shurafā', Arab leaders who claimed lineal descent from the Prophet Muhammad. A combination of external threats (e.g., colonization from Portugal and Spain, and the threat of Ottoman expansion) and internal developments (e.g., the rising influence of murābitūn and shurafā' within the country), along with the perceived inability of the Berber Wattasids to meet the Portuguese challenge, contributed to this dynastic change.
 In the five hundred years leading up to the early 21st century, two separate sharifian dynasties have governed Morocco, and the country has vacillated between periods of strong central rule and times of unrest (fitna) and weak central government. However, since the rise of the ʿAlawi dynasty in the late 17th century, ʿAlawi supremacy has not been seriously challenged, even during extensive periods of fitna or foreign colonization. Although Morocco developed a flexible system of government that helped unify the country during this period, it still fell behind European states in terms of technology, science, economy, and military strength. A degree of intellectual and social stagnation set in, such that European visitors in the 19th century perceived Morocco to be a country stuck in its medieval past. This weakness vis-à-vis its near neighbors to the north (particularly England and France) eventually set the stage for the direct colonization of Morocco by Europeans in the early 20th century.


ABSTRACT Economic growth is defined as an increase in the ability of an economy in producing goods and services. A high and sustainable growth is the main condition which indicates that economic development is running. Gross regional domestic product Kendal peaked at low enough with other districts in Central Java Province. This research aims to analyze the factors that can influence the growth of 19 subdistricts in Kendal, with the application of neo-classical growth model developed by Robert Sollow. Conduct analysis by Ordinary Least Square (OLS). Independent variable methods used namely : Agglomeration, Labor, Overcrowding, and the dependent variable is the economic growth. Research results showed the agglomeration with variable  coefficient of Prob-sig 0,0000 and less than 5%, then have a positive influence on economic growth and significant Kendal Regency. Labor variable with coeficients 0,800532 and 0,4431 have a prob-sig positive influences and not significant, the number of resident variable showed negative influence with coefficient -10,93938 and significant to economic growth with prob-sig 0,0000 less than 5%. Lastly, variable capital has a positive influence with coefficient 1,199081 and significant with prob. 0,0024


We investigated whether diet composition determined from stable-isotope analysis (SIA) was similar to that determined from stomach content analysis for Adelie penguins Pygoscelis adeliae. We also used SIA to compare diet composition of adults and chicks and to evaluate intra- and inter-annual variations in diet and foraging ecology of adults over 2 consecutive breeding seasons
(2001-2002 and 2002-2003) and 3 consecutive moulting seasons (2000-2001 to 2002-2003). Diet determined
from SIA closely mirrored that determined from stomach contents at the broad taxonomic level (i.e. fish vs. krill). Diet composition did not differ between adults and chicks, but the more depleted δ13C values of adult blood suggest that adults may forage for themselves and provide their chicks with food from different locations. Adult δ13C signatures varied intra-annually with the most depleted values measured during the arrival period, followed by incubation, guard and then creche. δ15N
analyses indicated that krill and fish were being consumed prior to arrival at the breeding colonies
and during incubation foraging trips, while the primary prey consumed during chick-rearing differed
between years. δ15N did not vary in the pre-moult periods, with adult diet consisting primarily of krill
in all 3 years, but the depleted δ13C signatures of feathers in 2000–2001 indicated that adults foraged
farther from shore in that year. This study demonstrates that SIA is useful for monitoring diet and foraging
areas of Adelie penguins at broad resolutions, particularly during periods when it is not possible
to use conventional dietary techniques, although penguins may be most vulnerable to impacts such as commercial fishing during these periods as well.


Recently, with the large-scale adoption of social media, people have begun to express their opinion on these sites in the form of reviews. Potential consumers often forced to wade through huge amount of reviews to make informed decision. Sentiment analysis has become rapid and effective way to automatically gauge consumers' opinion. However, such analysis often requires tedious process of manual tagging of large training examples or manually building a lexicon for the purpose of classifying reviews as positive or negative. In this paper, we present a method to automate the tedious process of labeling large textual data in an unsupervised, domain independent and scalable manner. The proposed method combines the lexicon-based and Web-based Point Wise Mutual Information (PMI) statistics to find the Semantic Orientation (SO) of opinion expressed in a review.  Based on proposed methods a system called Domain Independent Automatic Labeling System (DIALS) has been implemented, which takes collection of text from any domain as input and generates fully labeled dataset in an unsupervised and scalable manner. The result generated can be used to track and summarize online discussion and/or use to train any classifier in the next stage of development. The effectiveness of system is tested by comparing it with baseline machine learning and lexicon-based methods. Experiments on multi-domains dataset has shown that proposed method consistently shown improved recall and accuracy as compared to baseline machine learning and lexicon-based methods.


Dotinurad has been approved in Japan as a selective urate reabsorption inhibitor for the treatment of gout and hyperuricemia. The relationship between uric acid crystallization and the use of uricosuric drugs is widely acknowledged; however, the relationship between changes in urinary uric acid concentration and urine pH or volume has not been sufficiently analyzed. Therefore, we investigated the changes in urinary uric acid concentration following dotinurad administration as well as the relationship between urine pH or volume and urinary uric acid concentration. This post hoc analysis used data from 2 clinical trials that included 12 and 26 patients with hyperuricemia who received dotinurad treatment (for 7 days on an inpatient basis and 14 weeks on an outpatient basis, respectively). The urinary uric acid concentration transiently increased in the early stages of dotinurad use and when its dose was increased, but decreased over time. No uric acid concentrations exceeded the soluble limit at any urine pH. An inverse correlation was observed between urine volume and urinary uric acid concentration. This study highlights the significance of adequately managing urinary uric acid concentrations by increasing urine volume and alkalinizing urine to prevent uric acid crystallization during dotinurad administration.


Migrant domestic workers provide essential services to the families they live with, but they are not considered a part of the family. As a group, they are not well-integrated into the society and often suffer from social isolation. In this article, we explore the potential health buffering effects of their personal network, in terms of family and friendship ties in both the local community and their home country. Existing literature provides inconsistent evidence on who and what matters more, with regard to the nature, strength, and geographic locations of individual personal networks. Using data from the Survey of Migrant domestic Workers in Hong Kong (2017), we find that family ties are extremely important. The presence of family members in Hong Kong as well as daily contact with family, regardless of location, are associated with better self-reported health. Only daily contact with friends in Hong Kong, not with friends in other countries, promotes better health. We also find evidence that the protective effects of family and friends networks depend on each other. Those foreign domestic workers with families in Hong Kong but also maintain daily contact with friends have the best self-reported health among all.


The provision of foster care in Australia has a long and contested history. These histories, along with current media representations of foster care, shape the ways in which the general public understand foster care. Importantly, and where such representations are primarily negative, it is likely that foster care will not be considered a viable option for many people seeking to engage in community work or to care for children. This paper provides an analysis of a sample of representations of foster care in the Australian news media, with a specific focus on the depiction of (1) foster children as "lost children" who are "damaged goods", (2) foster care systems and social workers as inherently damaging to children, (3) foster carers as primarily either inadequate parents, or good parents only in comparison with "bad social workers". The paper concludes by highlighting suggestions for future directions within media reporting of foster care in Australia.


BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Endoscopic endonasal approach is the procedure of choice for the resection of ventral skull base neoplasms, with defect closure requiring multilayer reconstruction. This study evaluates the temporal MR imaging evolution of nasoseptal flaps and free grafts used in endoscopic skull base reconstruction. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Sixty-nine follow-up brain MRIs of 22 patients who had endoscopic skull base reconstruction using 26 nasoseptal flaps combined with 8 collagen-matrix dural grafts, 10 fascia lata grafts, and 10 intracranial fat grafts were retrospectively reviewed. Temporal changes in signal intensity, enhancement, thickness, and the configuration of reconstructive layers were evaluated. Tissue with signal intensity or enhancement different from that of normal evolving reconstructive layers at the surgical bed was evaluated, and its association with clinically confirmed tumor was assessed with the Fisher exact test. RESULTS: All normal reconstructive layers were retracted to cranial defects and showed maturation of imaging features within 2–6 months. The immediate postoperative T2-isointensity to brain and enhancement of nasoseptal flaps persisted, but the flap thickness was reduced by 20%–30% (average thickness, 4.5 ± 1.3 mm); additionally, the C shape and vascular pedicle of the nasoseptal flaps became indistinct, but the flap location remained unchanged. The initial appearance of the nonenhancing fascia lata with variable T2 signal intensity became enhancing with increasing T2-hypointensity and a graft-thickness reduction of ≥50% (average thickness, 3.5 ± 1.6 mm). All fat grafts showed progressive resorption. In 6 patients, abnormal tissue represented residual or recurrent tumor (P = .0001). CONCLUSIONS: Maturation and stability of multilayer endoscopic skull base reconstructions on MR imaging occurs within 2–6 months postoperatively. Understanding of the normal imaging evolution of endoscopic skull base reconstructions is essential to distinguish them from neoplasms.


No consensus exists regarding the proper income tax treatment of gifts. Some commentators believe the tax should fall on the donor only; others believe it should fall on the donee only; and still others believe it should fall on both the donor and the donee.
Although much of the disagreement appears to center on the proper definition of "income," this essay argues that the problem lies elsewhere. There is no readily identifiable, correct definition of "income," which means that most arguments tying the income tax treatment of gifts to the income concept tend to be definitional and, for that reason, circular. In fact, what motivates most theories about the proper income tax regime for gifts is a prior view about the nature and purpose of government coupled with a theory of how the tax system best promotes that view. Commentators debating the rules for the income taxation of gifts rarely argue explicitly about their prior views, however, and it is not clear whether, if they did, they would be able to resolve their differences. Accordingly, the debate over the proper income taxation of gifts is in some measure a pseudo-debate.
Problems with efforts to derive normative propositions about taxation from the definition of the tax base are not unique to the gift case; they extend to other debates as well. The analysis therefore has relevance to normative tax scholarship more generally.


The automatical variability option of changing the angular velocity is a perspective tendency for coordination of the characteristics of the engine with the working machine. That gives the ability to enhance the productivity of the machine, to simplify their controls and to increase their efficiency factor. All of that led to the creation of many methods and ways of lightly regulation of angular velocity and to a wide variety of constructions and many more. The main disadvantage of the mentioned mechanisms, and other similar mechanisms also, having the continuously variable gear ratio option is that the pump as an element of all of them appears to be only a consumer of power in all duty. The consumed power by the pump turns into heat and heats the oil which makes it necessary for it to be in greater amounts. This lowers the efficiency factor and field of application of mentioned mechanisms and more. For removing this disadvantage a solution is proposed with the realization of a hydromechanical gear with hydrovolume regulating contour.


This work consists of two parts. The first is devoted to stock market simulation and is based on the model described by Li and Rosser. New factors were introduced in the mentioned model. "Bad" or "good" news arose at each moment. The model has a memory, which determines the rate of forgetting the news. In such a way, the news background is being formed by addition of decaying news intensities. The news background modifies the fundamental value of current market price according to the logistic law. The insiders at moment t-1 know the prices at the moment t. The market simulation by means of the proposed model shows that, in case of "good" news, the stock-market prices are rising, and in the case of "bad" news, the prices are falling. Moreover, the parameter that determines the news-forgetting rate changes the picture of rising and falling prices. The model also shows, that the effect of insiders activity depends on the return volume extracted, and when insiders' return approaches some crucial value, the fundamental value v abruptly falls down, and further with the increasing insiders' pressure the market explodes. In the second part of this work, we are considering the possibility for noise-trader to use market states recognition such as "bullish", "bearish", "cyclic" or "stable", instead of using MACD-strategy. With this aim in mind, we applied Kohonen neural net and non-supervised learning chart pattern recognition.


Purpose: The purpose of this study was to build and verify a structural model that could predict the severity of irritable bowel syndrome in university students. Methods: Participants were 205 students enrolled in college with irritable bowel syndrome using the irritable bowel syndrome module of the ROME IV Adult Questionnaire. The data were collected using online questionnaires in April- May 2019. The data were analyzed using the SPSS WIN 25.0 and AMOS 20.0 programs. Results: 1) The symptom severity that participants experienced were mild (14.6%), moderate (45.4%), and severe (40%). 2) Fit indices of the model were x2=79.66 (df=52, p=.009), CFI=.94, TLI=.96, RMSEA=.05, RMR=1.59, GFI=.94, and TLI=.96.3). The severity of irritable bowel syndrome was influenced directly by anxiety and sleep, and indirectly by family history, perfectionism, social support, coping, and stress. The severity of irritable bowel syndrome was indirectly affected by the following: family history through anxiety; perfectionism through stress, anxiety, and sleep; social support through coping, stress, anxiety, and sleep; coping through stress and anxiety; and stress through anxiety and sleep. Conclusion: Based on the results of this study, a nursing intervention is needed to reduce the anxiety and stress and improve the quality of sleep to improve the health of the college students and manage the symptoms of patients with irritable bowel syndrome.


Caroline Norton * Elizabeth Blackwell * Florence Nightingale * Emily Davies * Josephine Butler * Elizabeth Cady Stanton * Margaret Sanger * Emma Goldman Significant Sisters traces the lives of eight women, each of whom pioneered vital changes in the spheres of law, education, the professions, morals or politics: the first woman doctor, the pioneer of birth control, a radical journalist, and suffragists. Each forged her own particular brand of feminism, yet all fought bravely to make real, lasting difference to women's lives, and make us redefine our own notions of feminism today.


The paper reviews certain criminological life course theories. The theory of developmental pathways is based on specific trajectories that gradually, during development, lead to criminal behaviour. The age-graded theory of informal social control explains the influence of social institutions during the life course on the occurrence of criminal behaviour. The interactional theory finds that delinquency has its roots in weak social ties and delinquent networks; it is part of reciprocal continuous relationships during the life course. The dual taxonomy theory explains the continuity and changes in criminal careers and identifies two types of perpetrators. The integrative multi-layered control theory explains the development of criminal behaviour, events and crime rates through the integration of classical criminological theories. The situational action theory states that during development criminal behaviour is part of moral action. The developmental propensity theory considers the correlates of genetics and environment to delinquent behaviour. The integrated cognitive antisocial potential theory incorporates traditional criminological theories aiming to explain the unique potential for antisocial action that can lead to criminal behaviour during development.


illustrates that loss and damage have tangible consequences today, and that adaptation as well as loss and damage occur simultanously. Five case studies were conducted in Bangladesh, Bhutan, The Gambia, Kenya and Micronesia. The findings provide empirical insights into the limits of adaptation and the costs of unmitigated climate change. The study reveals that, in all five countries, affected communities suffered from loss and damage despite undertaking coping and adaptation measures.


In Swarm Search and Service (SSS) applications, swarm vehicles are responsible for concurrently searching an area while immediately servicing jobs discovered while searching. Multiple job types may be present in the environment. As vehicles move in and out of the swarm to service jobs, the coverage rate (i.e., area searched by the swarm per time step) changes dynamically to reflect the number of vehicles currently engaged in search. As a result, the arrival rates of jobs also changes dynamically. When planning SSS missions, the resource requirements, such as the swarm size needed to achieve a desired system performance, must be determined. The dynamically changing arrival rates make traditional queuing methods ill-suited to predict the performance of the swarm. This paper presents a hybrid method - Hybrid Model - for predicting the performance of the swarm a priori. It utilizes a Markov model, whose state representation captures the proportion of agents searching or servicing jobs. State-dependent queuing models are used to calculate the state transition function of the Markov states. The model has been developed as a prediction tool to assist mission planners in balancing complex trade-offs, but also provides a basis for optimizing swarm size where cost functions are known. The Hybrid Model is tested in previously considered constant coverage rate scenarios and the results are compared to a previously developed Queuing Model. Additional SSS missions are then simulated and their resulting performance is used to further evaluate the effectiveness of using the Hybrid Model as a prediction tool for swarm performance in more general scenarios with dynamically changing coverage rates.


We present an online learning approach to variable branching in branch-and-bound for mixed-integer linear problems. Our approach consists in learning strong branching scores in an online fashion and in using them to take branching decisions. More specifically, numerical scores are used to rank the branching candidates. If, for a given variable, the learned approximation is deemed reliable, then the score for that variable is computed thanks to the learned function. If the approximation is not reliable yet, the real strong branching score is used instead. The scores that are computed through the real strong branching procedure are fed to the online learning algorithm in order to improve the approximated function. The experiments show promising results.


Transmission control protocol Westwood (TCPW) has been shown to provide significant performance improvement over high-speed heterogeneous networks. The key idea of TCPW is to use eligible rate estimation (ERE) methods to intelligently set the congestion window (cwnd) and slow-start threshold (ssthresh) after a packet loss. ERE is defined as the efficient transmission rate eligible for a sender to achieve high utilization and be friendly to other TCP variants. This work presents TCP Westwood with agile probing (TCPW-A), a sender-side only enhancement of TCPW, that deals well with highly dynamic bandwidth, large propagation time/bandwidth, and random loss in the current and future heterogeneous Internet. TCPW-A achieves this goal by adding the following two mechanisms to TCPW. 1) When a connection initially begins or restarts after a timeout, instead of exponentially expanding cwnd to an arbitrary preset sthresh and then going into linear increase, TCPW-A uses agile probing, a mechanism that repeatedly resets ssthresh based on ERE and forces cwnd into an exponential climb each time. The result is fast convergence to a more appropriate ssthresh value. 2) In congestion avoidance, TCPW-A invokes agile probing upon detection of persistent extra bandwidth via a scheme we call persistent noncongestion detection (PNCD). While in congestion avoidance, agile probing is actually invoked under the following conditions: a) a large amount of bandwidth that suddenly becomes available due to change in network conditions; b) random loss during slow-start that causes the connection to prematurely exit the slow-start phase. Experimental results, both in ns-2 simulation and lab measurements using actual protocols implementation, show that TCPW-A can significantly improve link utilization over a wide range of bandwidth, propagation delay, and dynamic network loading.


Contemporary education is a vast field that is concerned with the performance of education systems. In a formal e-learning context, student dropout is considered one of the main problems and has received much attention from the learning analytics research community, which has reported several approaches to the development of models for the early prediction of at-risk students. However, maximizing the results obtained by predictions is a considerable challenge. In this work, we developed a solution using only students' interactions with the virtual learning environment and its derivative features for early predict at-risk students in a Brazilian distance technical high school course that is 103 weeks in duration. To maximize results, we developed an elitist genetic algorithm based on Darwin's theory of natural selection for hyperparameter tuning. With the application of the proposed technique, we predicted the student at risk with an Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (AUROC) above 0.75 in the initial weeks of a course. The results demonstrate the viability of applying interaction count and derivative features to generate prediction models in contexts where access to demographic data is restricted. The application of a genetic algorithm to the tuning of hyperparameters classifiers can increase their performance in comparison with other techniques.


Due to traffic engineering, topology changes, and VM migrations, today's networks undergo a variety of large updates that concurrently affect many switches. Big updates are time consuming because the available switches have low rule installation rates. In this paper, we observe that a large network update may consist of a set of sub-updates that are independent and can be installed in parallel in any order. We treat update installation as a scheduling problem and design ESPRES, a runtime mechanism that rate-limits and reorders updates to fully utilize switches without overloading them. Our early results show that compared to using no scheduler, our simple scheduler yields 4 times quicker sub-update completion time for 20th percentile of sub-updates and 40% quicker for 50th percentile.


To develop a better understanding of the practice of business and systems analysis, we adopted the boundary practice lens to view business analysis as a boundary practice between users and IT staff. This paper presents findings from an interpretive case study of a group of business analysts working within a large public sector university. We find that business analysts are largely expected to 'protect' the users and IT staff from each other. The business analysts' location in the organisation structure and previous work experience in business or IT is likely to influence (a) the focus of their work (b) the closeness and trust developed with users and IT staff and (c) their legitimacy in spanning users and IT staff. To be able to bring about agreed requirements specifications that are both technically possible to realise and can be delivered at an acceptable cost, but also will result in a system that is suitable for the business purpose and easy to use, business analysts need to negotiate a middle path between users and IT staff. Because business analysts need to work effectively with IT and the business and move easily between the respective cultures, learning outcomes in the education of BAs need to emphasise (a) dealing with social and political context of both business requirements and technical/economic feasibility and (b) using distinct skills, knowledge, tools, and techniques in dealing with users and IT.


The possibility of positive psychological change following traumatic life experiences has now been well documented in the literature. This phenomenon is most commonly referred to as posttraumatic growth. Several theoretical models have sought to explain the development of posttraumatic growth, many of which have emphasised the important role of cognitive processing (Calhoun, Cann & Tedeschi, 2010; Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004a). This thesis sought to further our understanding of the nature of posttraumatic cognitive processing and its association with psychological growth following trauma and adversity. A narrative review of the existing literature on cognitive processing and posttraumatic growth was conducted (Chapter 2) and suggested that cognitive processing might be best understood as comprising intrusive, deliberate and ruminative subtypes. Two cross-sectional studies and one longitudinal study were then conducted to develop and test this conceptualisation using samples of survivors of sexually traumatic experiences (Study 1; n = 123), trauma-exposed individuals recruited from trauma-focused websites and support forums (Study 2; n = 254), and trauma-exposed students from the University of Nottingham (Study 3; n = 174). The influence of these three subtypes of cognitive processing on levels of growth following adversity were also tested using the expressive writing intervention (Study 4; n = 24). Taken together, findings from the four studies supported the conceptualisation of cognitive processing as multidimensional, comprising intrusive, deliberate and ruminative subtypes that are differentially associated with posttraumatic growth. Results also provided consistent evidence to suggest that deliberate processing is especially important in the occurrence of growth following trauma and adversity. Unexpectedly, intrusive processing was not found to positively influence posttraumatic growth in the ways hypothesised by existing theoretical models. Implications of these findings with respect to both further research and clinical work with trauma survivors were reviewed in the final chapter.


This study explores the Malaysian consumers' trust of an eco-label and the influence it has in their choice for the corresponding environment friendly product. Taking into consideration the infancy stage of the Malaysia green marketing initiative, traditional approach to evaluating local consumer receptiveness to the eco-label might not be suitable. This paper approaches the introduction of eco-label with two perspectives in mind. Firstly, while earlier studies from the western scholars use eco-label as a part of the augmented product, this study introduces eco-label as a separate moderating variable. Secondly, the choice of employees working in ISO14001 certified organizations as the population explore a potentially conducive place to initiate a systematic effort in developing a green consumer community. The result is very encouraging. This study has shown that, with some exposure to environmental related experiences Malaysian consumer would indeed react positively to the eco-label. In fact, for situation that requires them to consider environmental aspects of a product that they wish to purchase, the eco-label will definitely be the crucial factor that will push them to make the right purchase choice.


Samples of dry‐roasted groundnuts purchased from street hawkers, markets and retail shops in southwestern Nigeria were analysed for moisture content, fungal populations and aflatoxin contamination. The moisture content varied from 2.1 to 3.6 per cent, while the mould counts using the dilution plating method ranged from 2.9 × 102 to 6.3 × 102 colony‐forming units per gram in samples. Aflatoxin B1 was found in 64.2 per cent of samples with a mean of 25.5 ppb. Aflatoxins B2, G1 and G2 were detected in 26.4, 11.3 and 2.8 per cent of the samples with mean levels of 10.7, 7.2 and 8 ppb respectively in contaminated samples. It is concluded that the regular consumption of DRG by Nigerians might present potential health hazards.


For the lower Silurian Longmaxi marine shale reservoir in the Jiaoshiba area, Sichuan Basin, China, the traditional P-impedance ([Formula: see text]) is insensitive for predicting good reservoirs. As an integral indicator of borehole radioactivity that is substantially corresponding to the organic richness, the uranium curve is qualified to identify the abundance of organic matter. Therefore, to efficiently comprehend the shale distribution in the Jiaoshiba area, we have adopted a so-called pseudo-P-impedance ([Formula: see text]), which is constructed from the P-impedance and the uranium (U) log and spatially computed from impedance inversion of the zero-offset seismic. The [Formula: see text] log shows an obvious correlation with the organic richness of the shale. The thickness of the high-quality shale derived from the inverted [Formula: see text] cube shows a higher correlation with the log data compared to the traditional P-impedance cube. The distribution of predicted high-quality shale is strongly influenced by the fault systems: (1) Although the fault development zone might lead to a distorted image of the seismic and weak shale evaluation, the shale gas cannot be efficiently preserved in these places, and (2) high-quality shale reservoirs are mainly distributed in the not-faulted area and show a general northeast–southwest trend. Generally, the introduced [Formula: see text] inversion is suitable for the seismic frequency range and could be applied to other similar exploration areas.


Aims. We report the observation by Parker Solar Probe (PSP) of magnetic structures in the solar wind that present a strong peak in their magnetic field magnitude with an embedded central current sheet. Similar structures have been observed, either at the Earth's magnetopause and called interlinked flux tubes, or in the solar wind and called interplanetary field enhancements.
Methods. In this work, we first investigate two striking events in detail; one occurred in the regular slow solar wind on November 2, 2018 and the other was observed during a heliospheric current sheet crossing on November 13, 2018. They both show the presence of a central current sheet with a visible ion jet and general characteristics consistent with the occurrence of magnetic reconnection. We then performed a survey of PSP data from encounters 1 to 4 and find 18 additional events presenting an increase in the magnetic field magnitude of over 30% and a central current sheet. We performed a statistical study on the 20 "magnetic increases with central current sheet" (MICCS), with 13 observed in the regular slow solar wind with a constant polarity (i.e., identical strahl direction), and 7 which were specifically observed near a heliospheric current sheet crossing.
Results. We analyze and discuss the general properties of the structures, including the duration, location, amplitude, and magnetic topology, as well as the characteristics of their central current sheet. We find that the latter has a preferential orientation in the TN plane of the RTN frame. We also find no significant change in the dust impact rate in the vicinity of the MICCS under study, leading us to conclude that dust probably plays no role in the MICCS formation and evolution. Our findings are overall consistent with a double flux tube-configuration that would result from initially distinct flux tubes which interact during solar wind propagation.


The present study raises the following questions: To what extent is axiomatic general equilibrium analysis a rational reconstruction of Scottish Political Economy as defined by the writings of David Hume and Adam Smith? How much is gained and how much lost by the axiomatic transformation of the invisible-hand proposition? What are the implications of negative results like the Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu demonstrations for the Scottish point of view? Did it reach deadlock, or is there still hope for the dominant trajectory in the history of economics? In contrast to the rich historical literature on the invisible-hand proposition, the present study does not level any paradigmatic criticism at neo-Walrasian analysis. Rather, by focalizing the most important results against the backdrop of Scottish Political Economy, it provides some flesh to the bones of axiomatic economics and, insofar, may inform theory choice within the neo-Walrasian paradigm. Naturally, the answers to the questions raised are complex and do not fit into an abstract. Instead, the reader is referred to the final section, which lists, interrelates, and discusses the major results of the study.


The pathologic features, clinical presentation and natural history of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) developing in the noncirrhotic liver were studied in 61 patients against a background of 63 patients seen concurrently with HCC complicating cirrhosis. Noncirrhotic HCC had a bimodal age distribution, with females predominating the first age‐clustering (10–50 years) and males predominating the second age‐clustering (50–90 years). Cirrhotic HCC had a unimodal age distribution (40–90 years) with male dominance throughout. Estrogen exposure was noted in 57% of the noncirrhotic HCC women overall and in 80% of those in the younger age‐clustering. The majority of noncirrhotic HCC presented with a single hepatic mass or a dominant primary with satellite lesions in contrast to the usual multinodular or diffuse disease seen with cirrhosis. Twenty‐nine noncirrhotic patients survived complete resection of disease limited to the liver and exhibited a median survival of 2.7 years with a 5‐year survival of 25%. Low histologic grade, minimal necrosis, and the absence of hemoperitoneum, hepatomegaly, and adjacent organ involvement were all favorable prognostic variables. Patients with metastatic or locally unresectable noncirrhotic HCC had a median survival of 9 months, and 24% survived in excess of 2 years. This survival experience is significantly more favorable than cirrhotic HCC patients, who had only a 1.2‐month median and a 3% 2‐year survival. Low histologic grade, mild mitotic activity and the presence of some fibrosis within the specimen were associated with a favorable outcome in advanced noncirrhotic HCC. The favorable prognosis and heterogeneous composition of the noncirrhotic, when compared to the cirrhotic HCC cohort, may be important considerations in the design and evaluation of future clinical trials.


The emergence of many interlinked, physically distributed, and autonomously maintained RDF stores offers unprecedented opportunities for predictive modeling and knowledge discovery from such data. However existing machine learning approaches are limited in their applicability because it is neither desirable nor feasible to gather all of the data in a centralized location for analysis due to access, memory, bandwidth, computational restrictions, and sometimes privacy and confidentiality constraints. Against this background, we consider the problem of learning predictive models from multiple interlinked RDF stores. Specifically we: (i) introduce statistical query based formulations of several representative algorithms for learning classifiers from RDF data, (ii) introduce a distributed learning framework to learn classifiers from multiple interlinked RDF stores that form a chain, (iii) identify three special cases of RDF data fragmentation and describe effective strategies for learning predictive models in each case, (iv) consider a novel application of a matrix reconstruction technique from the field of Computerized Tomography [1] to approximate the statistics needed by the learning algorithm from projections using count queries, thus dramatically reducing the amount of information transmitted from the remote data sources to the learner, and (v) report results of experiments with a real-world social network data set (Last.fm), which demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach.


Since automobiles are detachable elements of contemporary urban life, studying the interactions imposed by them to urban forms is helpful to develop urban areas. The isolated neighborhoods locating along highways are the common picture that easily can be found in most of developed cities. The more advanced traffic networks a city possesses the more detached neighborhoods can be detected in it. The main question trying to be answered in this study is how to reattach these separated areas together and how to create a peaceful coexistence between highways and their neighborhoods. In order to find an answer, a municipality named Upplands Vasby (in the north of Stockholm) has been studied and analyzed. This real sample with internal connectivity problems was supposed to provide a ground to analyze the outcome of proposed interventions. This process resulted in obtaining a general policy in approaching this issue and some flexible interventions proper for this specific site of study. Finally, the study implies on the possibility of reattaching isolated area over high-speed roads. It also brought up some suggestions for improvement of mobile passenger's perception of the road and surrounding areas while facilitating the pedestrian's movement through the site.


In the article assumptions of the developed non-invasive method of evaluation technical condition of selected structural elements of the ship's diesel-electric set at limited monitoring susceptibility, when the engine is not equipped with indicator valves, are discussed. The method is based on simultaneous measurements of phase-to-phase voltage of the synchronous generator, exhaust gas pressures in the exhaust manifold, and vibration accelerations of some parts of the set. To the purpose of the accomplishment all measurements of energetic parameters at the same time, it turned out to be necessary to design and construct the measured quantity converter. In the paper requirements in relation to such a converter, technical project, and representative results of measurements conducted on a real object – diesel-electric set type ZE400/52 – are presented.


Seven ADH genes, identified until now, located in the long arm of human chromosome 4, produce seven different isozymes involved in the metabolism of ethanol to acetaldehyde. Of the more than 500 SNPs reported in the coding and non‐coding regions of these genes in the world databases, 11 are more extensively studied. Three SNPs, ADH1B Arg47His (Exon3), ADH1B Arg369Cys (Exon9) and ADH1C Val349Ile (Exon8), are functionally validated in terms of phenotype‐genotype correlations and are in specific linkage disequilibrium (LD) with non‐coding SNPs. However, the frequency of each SNP and configuration of LD varies among populations. The Indian populations studied were conspicuous by the complete absence of African specific allele ADH1B*369Cys, the negligible frequency of East Asian specific ADH1B*47His allele and the presence of a novel SNP ADH1B A3529G (Intron3). The ADH1C*349Ile was the only functional allele polymorphic with a strong LD block in all the populations studied and the high Fst value observed for the non‐coding ADH1B Rsa1 variant was in conformity with world populations.Am. J. Hum. Biol. 19:338–344, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


The carbon-coated Fe(C), Co(C) and Ni(C) nanocapsules were prepared by a modified arc-discharge method in methane atmosphere. The nanocapsule powder, 50 % by weight, was mixed uniformly with paraffin wax to form measurement samples. Their electromagnetic (EM) wave reflection loss of the composite samples was calculated using the relative complex permeability and permittivity measured in microwave frequency range of 2-18 GHz. It is indicated that Fe(C), Co(C) and Ni(C) nanocapsules show the broadband characteristics with strong absorption from 2 to 18 GHz for a coating thickness of about 2-3 mm. The excellent EM wave absorption properties are mainly attributed to the proper electromagnetic match in microstructure, strong natural resonance as well as multi-polarization mechanisms, etc. As an inspiration, we found this kind of nanocapsules with a dielectric shell and a ferromagnetic core are very promising for new EM wave absorption materials.


The U.S. government ended a two-year manhunt in September 2011 when armed drones operated by the Central Intelligence Agency "crossed into northern Yemen and unleashed a barrage of Hellfire missiles" at a car carrying, among others, Anwar al-Aulaqi (also spelled "al-Awlaki") – a dual U.S.-Yemeni citizen. Formerly a moderately religious Muslim, al-Aulaqi had become a leader for radical Muslims abroad over the past decade, inspiring jihadist attacks against the West and playing an increasing role in the operations and planning of attacks by al Qaeda's affiliate organization based in Yemen. Al-Aulaqi's death made waves among news media, politicians, and law professors, sparking national debate over the legality of killing an individual with American citizenship. For its part, the Obama Administration defended the strike, claiming that an internal review – involving senior lawyers from across the administration – determined that the killing of al-Aulaqi was legal. Customary international law has long recognized the anomaly of dual citizenship. In doing so, however, international tribunals have been faced with problems that arise when an individual's dual set of rights or dual set of duties conflict. To deal with these legal difficulties, customary international law precedent dictates that when hearing a case in which an individual's citizenship has bearing either on jurisdiction to hear the case or on the merits of the claim itself, a tribunal must first determine, as a threshold matter, the individual's "dominant and effective" nationality. Building on a long line of precedent from international arbitration claims tribunals, this Paper argues that when hearing a case involving a suspected terrorist who holds dual citizenship (as was the case with al-Aulaqi, would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, and others), a domestic court should first determine, as a threshold matter, the dominant and effective nationality of the accused. This determination is significant because a dominant foreign national can essentially be treated as a non-citizen, for the purposes of adjudication, and may not be entitled to the full rights and protections of domestic citizenship. This Paper looks at the al-Aulaqi affair as an illustrative case study, applying the doctrine to determine al-Aulaqi's dominant and effective nationality. Further, this Paper argues that even beyond al-Aulaqi's case, the doctrine of dominant and effective nationality could prove valuable to the United States in its continued fight against terrorism. This Paper also includes a brief discussion on the legality of targeted killing under international law, more generally.


We investigate the use of Independent Subspace Analysis (ISA) for instrument identification in musical recordings. We represent short-term log-power spectra of possibly polyphonic music as weighted non-linear combinations of typical note spectra plus background noise. These typical note spectra are learnt either on databases containing isolated notes or on solo recordings from different instruments. We show that this model has some theoretical advantages over methods based on Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) or on linear ISA. Preliminary experiments with five instruments and test excerpts taken from commercial CDs give promising results. The performance on clean solo excerpts is comparable with existing methods and shows limited degradation under reverberant conditions. Applied to a difficult duo excerpt, the model is also able to identify the right pair of instruments and to provide an approximate transcription of the notes played by each instrument.


There is currently insufficient evidence to support the use of COX-2 inhibitors in treating chronic hepatitis or in preventing liver fibrosis

 There is a bark of an English tree, which I have found to be a powerful astringent, very efficacious in curing agues and intermitting disorders.1

So wrote the Reverend Edmund Stone in 1763 in a letter to the Royal Society wherein he described his success in treating patients with fever with an extract of powdered willow bark. Although willow extract was used in many ancient cultures as an antipyretic, the active component, salicylic acid, was not identified until the 19th century. The discovery of the chemical structure of salicylate by Herman Kolbe paved the way for the synthesis of acetylsalicylic acid by Bayer in the late 19th century. The mechanism by which it exerted its anti-inflammatory effects remained a mystery until John Vane revealed in the 1970s that aspirin and the newly developed non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are non-selective inhibitors of cyclo-oxygenase (COX), the enzyme that catalyses the formation of prostaglandins from arachidonic acid. The enzyme contains two active sites, a cyclo-oxygenase which converts arachidonic acid to prostaglandin G2 (PGG2), and a haem with peroxidase activity which reduces PGG2 to the type-2 prostanoid precursor PGH2, which is subsequently converted into biologically active molecules including the classical prostaglandins (PGE2, PGD2 and PGJ2), prostacyclin and thromboxane-A2.

Three COX isoenzymes have been described, COX1, COX2 and COX3, a splice variant of COX1. COX1 and COX2 display 60% homology at the amino acid level and are both membrane proteins located primarily in the endoplasmic reticulum (COX1) and perinuclear envelope (COX2). COX1 is constitutively expressed in most tissues and is responsible for many cytoprotective and physiological functions. COX2 expression is negligible in …


One of the key issues in biosensors is the time it takes for biomolecules in a solution to reach and bind to the sensor surface (particularly in low-concentration analytes). We present a novel flow scheme without microfluidic channels for label-free biosensors to decrease the delivery time of biomolecules. Through designing the biosensor in such a way that it becomes a membrane with holes, we can apply a droplet on it and push or pull it through the membrane by means of a pressure difference. Contrary to traditional microfluidics for, e.g., flow cells where the analyte flows over the sensor, the flow is now directed through the sensor. We have implemented this scheme in silicon-on-insulator biosensors and have demonstrated in a first proof-of-principle experiment, an improvement in delivery time of at least a factor of three.


Connexin40 (Cx40) is a major gap-junction protein in the atrial myocardium. In the heart, gap junctions are responsible for cell-to-cell conduction of the action potential. In several cardiac diseases, the expression of connexins is changed and is associated with increased propensity for arrhythmias. Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common arrhythmia in man with a diverse clinical presentation, different underlying mechanisms, and difficult treatment. The vulnerability to arrhythmias of the heart is determined by the combined presence of an arrhythmogenic substrate and initiating triggers. The arrhythmogenic substrate is formed by reduced effective refractory period, enhanced spatial dispersion of refractoriness, or abnormal atrial impulse conduction. Initiating triggers of AF most frequently originate from firing foci in the pulmonary veins and/or superior caval vein. Prolonged episodes of AF result in electrical and structural remodelling that favours the reoccurrence or perpetuation of AF. This electrical remodelling embodies changes in Cx40 expression and distribution, both in the atrial myocardium itself and in the thoracic veins. In addition, Cx40 gene mutations or polymorphisms give an inherited predisposition to AF. This review focuses on the role of Cx40 in AF, showing that abnormal Cx40 expression is correlated with both trigger formation from the thoracic veins as well as enhanced vulnerability of the atrial myocardium to AF.


In Romania, the hunting is permitted for 18 mammal species (Law no. 407/2006), fallow deer (Dama dama L.) and red deer (Cervus elaphus L.) being among the most common species of hunting interest. The aim of this study was to analyze the data provided by the central public authority responsible for hunting activity for the hunting seasons starting from 2014-2015 until present regarding the approved annual quotas for fallow deer and red deer. In the case of the red deer, Harghita, Mureș and Suceava were among the counties with the highest approved quotas and with the highest numbers of realized quotas by the foreign hunters. The highest approved quotas for fallow deer were recorded in Arad and Timiș counties, respectively. We believe that these results would be useful for those managers of the hunting associations who would like to develop additional programs and services targeting the foreign hunters.


Tondano River, along with its tributary Tikala River, is very potential to cause flood in Manado City. There were three big floods occurred in 1996, 2000 and 2005. In order to mitigate the damage risk due to flood, the controlling effort that can be applied soon in the field is required through short term flood control plan using structural measures. The feasible alternative plans should be evaluated to define the best plan based both on the hydraulics point of view and their effects on the river uses. The study is carried out through the 5 year return period flood routing using the version 3.1 HEC-RAS software. The selected design flood hydrograph is obtained using Nakayasu Synthetic Unit Hydrograph method by elaborating design rainfall derived from partially series rainfall data frequency analysis of Tondano and Tikala watersheds. Flow simulation is conducted in steps by modeling the hydrograph from Tikala River as the lateral inflow. The first simulation is carried out using bank full capacity discharge to define the flood characteristic and the critical sections. The second simulation is carried out for the design flood hydrograph using unsteady flow calculation on each plan to study the hydraulics feasibility. The study conducted herein is elaborated on water surface profile and velocity due to the plans affectivity to carry-off the flood discharge safely as well as the effect on river uses. Based on the existing condition simulation, result shows two reach critical sections of the right bank and one reach critical section of the left bank Tondano River. The results of flood control simulation indicate that there are no significant differences on velocity among plans, but there are disparities on the capacity to carry off flood discharge safely with no overtopping. For the normalization plan, the overtopping is occurred along the critical section, whereas for both dike plan and combination of dike and normalization plan, no overtopping are occurred but the the critical sections are still existed. Revised plans for dike and combination of dike and normalization are equally effective in carrying off flood discharge securely, but have different effects on water utilization during low flow period. Referring to the study result, the best alternative is the revised dike plan.


This paper explains the difference between Korea's vocal movements and feeble parties versus Taiwan's stable parties and dependent movements from the political dynamics formed under the authoritarian state. Taiwan's party-based authoritarianism provided ground for party development but not for independent social movements. Korea's personal dictatorship was inimical to party development but engendered a contentious movement sector.


The complex, non-linear, irreversible, hysteretic behaviour of polycrystalline ferroelectric materials is the result of domain wall motion and correlates with the phase composition of the ceramic. This paper reports on our investigation of the ferroelectric polarization of PZT ceramics in dependence of temperature in the range between -175 and 150°C. We compare five commercial piezoelectric materials used in actuator applications. The obtained data, derived correlations, and material functions are very helpful for understanding the material properties in practical applications and give input values for temperature depended numerical hysteretic models [1].


This study focuses on creating an instrument for terminologists to use when working with terminology in different fields of work that require structured documentation. When evaluating the prototype of the instrument the test-participants won't be terminologists. The methods used to create the instrument are sketching and prototyping a wireframe. The evaluation of the prototype is done with 'think aloud-protocol' and heuristic evaluation. The results are presented as annotated pictures of the prototype.