Global circulation models consistently forecast an increase in the frequency of extreme events such as severe storms and droughts. These changes will alter species interactions and ecosystem functions shaped by precipitation, such as productivity. Ecosystem management will need to anticipate, and where possible, mitigate the effects of increased climate variability in order to maintain ecosystem services and biodiversity. This is a pressing issue for California rangelands, which host a high percentage of California's endemic plants and support a large ranching industry that depends on reliable forage production. My dissertation uses observational and experimental approaches to understand the implications of increased precipitation variability for the stability of forage production (i.e. aboveground productivity) and the persistence of rare species in California rangelands. Chapter 1 explores how species interactions affect the stability of aboveground productivity and whether these patterns change along precipitation gradients. I compiled and analyzed nine long-term datasets of plant species composition and aboveground productivity from grassland sites across the United States. I found that productivity in mesic grasslands was stabilized by species richness, whereas productivity in climatically variable grasslands was stabilized by species asynchrony over time. The latter pattern was exemplified by California rangelands, which experienced the most variable precipitation as well as exhibited the most species asynchrony. Chapters 2 and 3 experimentally test the relationship between precipitation variability and species asynchrony in California rangelands and its implications for the stability of cover and aboveground productivity over time. In Chapter 2, I used rainout shelters and irrigation to experimentally create dry and wet conditions, which I replicated across areas with both low and moderate grazing histories. In moderately grazed areas, my rainfall treatments generated a classic pattern of "grass years" in wet conditions and "forb years" in dry. This pattern helped to stabilize cover across rainfall treatments and is a likely reason for the relationship between precipitation variability and species asynchrony that I observed in Chapter 1. In low grazed areas, however, my treatments essentially generated "grass years" in wet conditions and "no-grass years" in dry; forb cover was both low and unresponsive to rainfall in these areas. This suggests that moderate grazing may be an important management tool to maintain the functional responsiveness of California rangelands to precipitation variability. Chapter 3 tests whether competitive and functional differences between grasses and forbs affect the degree to which asynchrony stabilizes total biomass production. Within wet and dry plots I manipulated species interactions to create monocultures of Avena barbata (the most abundant grass), Erodium botrys (the most abundant forb) and a mixture of Avena and Erodium. I found that Avena exerted a stronger competitive effect on Erodium under wet conditions relative to dry, which should help stabilize community productivity. However, this effect was overwhelmed by highly unequal production capacity between the two species; Erodium productivity was much lower than Avena and, consequently, tradeoffs between the species did not increase the stability of the mixture relative to either monoculture. Chapter 4 further investigates tradeoffs between grass and forb years, but in the context of species population dynamics in a ecosystem of conservation concern. Serpentine grassland patches in California host a unique, predominately native flora that is threatened by non-native grass invasion. I focused on a serpentine site that over the past 32 years has exhibited high fluctuations in native forb abundances, and has experienced a series of invasions and subsequent recessions by a non-native annual grass, Bromus hordeaceus. Effective native species conservation and invasive species management require an understanding of what drives such variation in species abundances. I applied a population model to the six most-abundant species at the site – four native annual forbs, a native annual grass and Bromus – to test factors affecting their population size and stability. I found that species could have large population sizes (measured as mean abundance over time) for different reasons – three species had high intrinsic growth rates, whereas the other three, including Bromus and the native grass, had minimal self-limitation. Population stability was highly affected by these differences: species with both low intrinsic growth rates and minimal self-limitation had less stable populations and were more sensitive to rainfall. These findings suggest a framework to describe population stability and to identify which species are likely to be sensitive to environmental change.


Erythropoietin production in response to hypoxic-hypoxia is markedly reduced in the newborn when compared to the adult rat. This response improves steadily with age and reaches adult values at about 4 wk. When animals of the same age are stimulated with anemic-hypoxia, considerably higher levels of erythropoietin are found. The erythropoietin level is proportional to the degree of anemia and independent of the age of the animal. Extraction of erythropoietin from tissue homogenates revealed a parallelism between the plasma and kidney erythropoietin content, while no erythropoietin could be extracted from liver tissue at any age. The lack of response to hypoxia in the newborn appears to be related to the high hemoglobin oxygen affinity during the neonatal period, which facilitates oxygen loading. Newborn rats have a very low intraerythrocytic concentration of 2-3 DPG and a marked shift to the left in the oxygen hemoglobin dissociation curve that slowly increases to adult values at 4 wk of age. The response to anemia on the other hand, appears to be normal and not affected by age or by hemoglobin oxygen affinity. These studies suggest that the newborn rat, when properly stimulated, is able to produce normal amounts of erythropoietin, most likely renal in origin.


The human interferon-induced protein kinase, PKR, is an antiviral agent that is activated by long stretches of double-stranded (ds)RNA. PKR has an N-terminal dsRNA-binding domain that contains two tandem copies of the dsRNA-binding motif and interacts with dsRNA in a nonsequence-specific fashion. Surprisingly, PKR can be regulated by certain viral and cellular RNAs containing non-Watson-Crick features. We found that RNAs containing bulges in the middle of a helix can bind to p20, a C-terminal truncated PKR containing the dsRNA-binding domain. Bulges are known to change the global geometry of RNA by bending the helical axis; therefore, we investigated the conformational changes of bulged RNA caused by PKR binding. A 66-mer DNA-RNA(+/- A(3) bulge)-DNA chimera was constructed and annealed to a complementary RNA strand. This duplex forces the protein to bind in the middle. A 66-mer duplex with a top strand composed of DNA-DNA(+/-A(3) bulge)-RNA was used as a control. Gel mobility-shift changes among the RNA-protein complexes are consistent with straightening of bulged RNA on protein binding. In addition, a van't Hoff analysis of p20 binding to bulged RNA reveals a favorable DeltaDeltaH degrees and an unfavorable DeltaDeltaS degrees relative to binding to straight dsRNA. These thermodynamic parameters are in good agreement with predictions from a nearest-neighbor analysis for RNA straightening and support a model in which the helical junction flanking the bulge stacks on protein binding. The ability of dsRNA-binding motif proteins to recognize and straighten bent RNA has implications for modulating the topology of RNAs in vivo.


Abstract The dynamic modulus (E*) among asphalt mixtures' mechanical property parameters not only is important for asphalt mixtures' pavement design but also in determining asphalt mixtures' pavement performance associated with pavement response. Based on the principle of gene expression programming (GEP) algorithm, this paper explored two different GEP approach models, namely: GEP-I and GEP-II to predict the E* of hot mix asphalt (HMA) and mixtures containing recycled asphalt shingles, respectively. In this paper, The GEP-I was developed from a large database containing 2750 test data points from 205 unaged laboratory-blended HMA mixtures including 34 modified binders, and the GEP-II model was developed using the E* database containing 1701 sets of experimental data from 4 different demonstration projects. Both the GEP-I model and GEP-II model were compared with other E* prediction models. A sensitivity analysis of each model parameter was conducted by correlating these parameters with dynamic modulus. Both the GEP-I model and GEP-II model showed significantly higher prediction accuracy compared with the existing regression models and could easily be established. It is expected that these two GEP models could lead to more accurate characterisation of the asphalt mixtures' E*, resulting in better performance prediction.


A 34 year-old male was admitted in our hospital because of
double vision, ptosis of the eyelid, miosis and enopthalmos
of the left eye together with impaired sweating of the upper
body quarter for the last two weeks. Ten years ago the patient
underwent total esophagectomy with colonic graft interposition
because of esophageal rupture during large caliber
bougienage for congenital esophageal stenosis. The
endoscopy showed a large diverticulum below the upper
esophageal sphincter and numerous ulcerations of the lower
part of the colonic graft in the area of the former gastroesophageal
junction. The patient was diagnosed with postganglionic
Claude Bernard-Horner syndrome due to stellate
ganglion compression from the colonic diverticulum.
The patient was discharged with recommendations for liquid
diet and body positions that could facilitate left stellate
ganglion decompression. In the case of persisting symptoms
the patient was advised about the possibility of a new
surgical intervention including diverticulectomy. To the best
of our knowledge this is the first reported case of Claude
Bernard- Horner syndrome as a long term complication of
colonic graft diverticle after esophagectomy for congenital
esophageal stenosis
Key words: Claude Bernard-Horner syndrome, colonic interposition,
colon grafting, esophagectomy, neuro-opthalmic
complications, esophagus


Arctic Ocean freshening can exert a controlling influence on global climate, triggering
strong feedbacks on ocean‐atmospheric processes and affecting the global cycling of the
world's oceans. Glacier‐fed ocean currents such as the Alaska Coastal Current are
important sources of freshwater for the Bering Sea shelf, and may also influence the Arctic
Ocean freshwater budget. Instrumental data indicate a multiyear freshening episode of
the Alaska Coastal Current in the early 21st century. It is uncertain whether this freshening
is part of natural multidecadal climate variability or a unique feature of anthropogenically
induced warming. In order to answer this, a better understanding of past variations in
the Alaska Coastal Current is needed. However, continuous long‐term high‐resolution
observations of the Alaska Coastal Current have only been available for the last 2 decades.
In this study, specimens of the long‐lived crustose coralline alga Clathromorphum
nereostratum were collected within the pathway of the Alaska Coastal Current and utilized
as archives of past temperature and salinity. Results indicate that coralline algal Mg/Ca
ratios provide a 60 year record of sea surface temperatures and track changes of the Pacific
Decadal Oscillation, a pattern of decadal‐to‐multidecadal ocean‐atmosphere climate
variability centered over the North Pacific. Algal Ba/Ca ratios (used as indicators of coastal
freshwater runoff) are inversely correlated to instrumentally measured Alaska Coastal
Current salinity and record the period of freshening from 2001 to 2006. Similar multiyear
freshening events are not evident in the earlier portion of the 60 year Ba/Ca record.
This suggests that the 21st century freshening of the Alaska Coastal Current is a unique
feature related to increasing glacial melt and precipitation on mainland Alaska.


Tabular ground ice bodies are widely spread on Eurasian and North American Arctic plains. Exposed tabular ground ice in coastal bluffs favors the activation of thermal abrasion and thermal denudation, which in turn causes increasing coastal destruction rates. Thermo-denudation under conditions of ground ice exposures includes thawing of ice and frozen sediments along retreating headwalls of retrogressive thaw slumps and their constant enlargement. Thermo-cirques and thermo-terraces are two basic landform types that either feature channelized or broad open outlets, depending on the initial ice body outcrop by the denudation processes inland or in the retreating coastal bluffs.
We study key-sites on Kolguev Island (Barents Sea) and on Yugorsky Peninsula (Kara Sea), continuing and extending earlier research efforts on coastal dynamics in the region.

New data on thermo-denudation and thermo-abrasion rates for these key-sites have been obtained using a set of multi-temporal satellite images of high and very-high spatial resolution covering the period from 2002 to 2016.

For orthorectification purposes of imagery collected prior to TanDEM-X acquisitions, we used an edited version of the 12 m TanDEM-X DEM. Along erosive coastline segments the former relief situation was reconstructed through extrapolation of coastal bluff edge elevation values and restoration of the coastal plain relief towards the sea.

On the western coast of Kolguev Island, average coastal bluff retreat rates between 2002 and 2012 varied from 1.7 to 2.4 m/year, while averaged rates of thermo-cirques headwalls retreat were 2.6 m/year. Maximum rates at some sections increased up to 14.5-15.1 m/year in the recent past.

High rates of thermo-denudation increase were not only observed on western Kolguev Island, but also on the Yugorsky Peninsula, were rates raised up to 13 m/year in recent years. Activation of thermo-denudation is also noted in other parts of Kara Sea coasts and were generally correlated with changing environmental factors, particularly expressed in an increase on the thaw index during recent years.


The purpose of this article is to introduce the Harmonized Frequencies Analysis™ (HFA), the method that considers the water cycle dynamics at various scales, and to investigate its ability to assess the watershed development process in order to specify the hydrological criteria for its sustainability. The method is based on the Law of the Structural Stability of Systems and considers river flow as an intrinsic part of the entire water dynamic system which is responsible for temperature control. The Humber River watershed, the lower part of which is highly urbanized and contaminated, was assessed for sustainability at hourly, daily, monthly, and yearly scales for the period of 1953-2006. The quantitative increase of the base and inter components of river flow caused by the conventionally proper storm water management in combination with the increasing contamination and lack of vegetation resulted in alteration of the water cycle's functional profile, i.e. the drainage function took over the temperature control. This is characterised by the increasing trend of instability at all scales, pulling out tornado as the mechanism of self-stabilization at the hourly scale. Based on the analysis results, we concluded that HFA is the reliable tool for the watershed sustainability assessment, which is defined as the functional stability of the hydrological cycle within a developing spacetime.


Providing desired QoS is one of the crucial issues in routing protocols design in wireless sensor networks. In this paper, a mechanism for routing in wireless sensor networks is presented using nonlinear optimization. Providing fairness in nodes energy consumption and increasing network lifetime are considered as the main parameters. Proposed routing protocol, which is called FORP (Fair, Optimized Routing Protocol), performs routing using nonlinear optimization. Furthermore, in order to improve proposed protocol efficiency, we will use fuzzy variables to consider environmental contention influences on the quality of data transmission in wireless connections. We can formulate network conditions better while fuzzy variables have been used in optimization solution. We will study proposed protocol efficiency using Opnet simulator. Simulation results confirm that FORP has achieved its goals.


In this paper, we have provided a matrix Hamiltonian model for honeycomb lattices and subsequently obtained the dispersion relation. Furthermore, we have constructed the C operator for the given non-Hermitian Hamiltonian model. The quadratic surfaces are sketched and the quantum Brachistochrone problem is discussed for the given honeycomb lattice model.


A controversial concept in reading "third-world literature," Fredric Jameson's "national allegory" has more often been refuted or approvingly appropriated than properly understood. Taking the "national allegory" as a convenient theoretical category describing the content of "third-world literature" misses Jameson's underlying problematic, i.e. his concern about "third-world literature" as an immanent deconstructive force leading to the breaking down of chains of signification of capitalist culture. Insofar as the functional concept of the "national allegory" is concerned, one must read "nation" not as a term designating a substantial entity, but as an "allegory" in itself. To read "third-world literature" through the lens of a "national allegory" thus means to deterritorialize the third world from its substantial determinants in terms of traditional geo-politics. Rather, "third-world literature" in its deconstructive force is toward what Jean-Luc Nancy calls "the inoperative community."


Cell formation is one of the main problems to be solved when dealing with cellular manufacturing. An exact graph theory based Branch & Bound method has been proposed by the authors [Boulif, M et al., (2006)]. In this paper we tackle the problem by considering two objectives: minimizing both intercellular movements and workload unbalance. We argue that when an epsilon-constraint approach is adopted, an enhancement of the lower bound of the B&B branching step can be obtained. This improvement gives a worthwhile help to the method efficiency when seeking to solve the problem optimally


An essential component of risk assessment is identification whether individuals will be exposed to a risk. This requires information on the proportion of the population exposed, for how long, and during what activity (i.e., feeding, migrating, and breeding). Using satellite telemetry data for humpback and blue whales feeding and migratory regions in Antarctica, California, and Bering Sea, we modeled the potential exposure of individuals to an acoustic disturbance. Foraging and transit regions along the tracks were identified and the time spent foraging in each region calculated. A simulated seismic survey was randomly placed (100 iterations) within the habitat of each of species and the amount of time individual animals were exposed determined. A large disturbance (i.e. 100 km) only exposed 6% of the population of humpback whales in Antarctica and 19% blue whales off California. In contrast, humpback whales in the Bering Sea experienced high exposure with only a 5 km disturbance. This approach can be used...


: Application employment of the proposed nitroglycerin ointment, original in its composition, permits the attacks of angina pectoris to be controlled, their onset to be prevented and adverse events associated with the use of nitrates to be eliminated. Therapeutic benefit becomes clinically apparent with small doses of nitroglycerin, the ointment itself is good for repeated therapeutic and prophylactic application.


The article examines the phenomenon of lyric formalism--the view that poems wholly contain their meaning--from cultural and cross-cultural perspectives. It argues that the view presenting lyrics as pure self-contained expressions, not addressed to anyone, is part of a long cultural history that began in Romanticism and that led to the New Critics' formalism. It is culturally specific and must be studied as such. Through a reading of some key Romantic-era statements on the lyric by Wordsworth, Shelley, and Hegel, this article shows the increasingly problematic status of the lyric addressee as a cultural notion. On one hand the addressee was important as the beneficiary of the poet's genius, but on the other hand s/he was neglected as non-essential to the truest form of self-expression. Ultimately the lyric addressee was repressed, though never entirely. Since poems were not regarded as addressing anyone, they were not meant to directly communicate meaning from speaker to listener; meaning was rather generated somehow within the listener. What the listener received, then, was only the form or music of the poem which triggered his own inward responses. Thus thought and music were split off from each other in a way that did not happen in other poetic traditions, like that of Arab poetics. In modern Western culture, poems were divorced from songs in both the popular mind and in high literary theory. Song became regarded as opposed to communication, and the poem as pure thought or text without a performative framework. This segregation of song from poem, music from text, must be acknowledged as culturally specific and belongs to a certain literary period. A glance at poetry within Arabic culture offers other alternatives, where the musical dimension is not contrasted to the textual, but is joined to it. ********** Lyrical formalism--the view that poems are complete aesthetic units that wholly contain their meaning, as a vase contains flowers--is sometimes viewed as if it was imposed on poetry by the Russian Formalists and the American New Critics. There is a common impression that critics like Cleanth Brooks ripped poetry arbitrarily out of its personal, cultural, and historical context and stuffed it into their "well-wrought urns," detached and self-complete. (1) But it may be that lyrical formalism in criticism came to reflect an already developing formalist tendency in literature generally, a tendency towards textual self-containment originating with the Romantics and pushed farther by the Modernists. (2) Reader-response theorist Jane P. Tompkins argues that the modern emphasis on the literary meaning of a text (its self-contained "message"), unlike the Classical or Renaissance emphasis on its social effects, implies that the inter-personal relations of author to audience became less important in the modern age. (3) Similarly, orality theorist Walter J. Ong sees the formalist tendency to regard texts as containing their meanings, rather than delivering the meanings of a writer to a reader, as a result of the turn towards mass literacy and thus to private reading. (4) Ong says that written texts, both literary and not, were increasingly regarded as what he calls independent "closed fields," cut off from an immediate awareness of authors, means of distribution, modes of performance, and audiences. While poetry was the literary genre in which the closed field was most emphasized by New Criticism (perhaps because its short span could be isolated more completely), the closed and decontextualized text according to Ong was the norm across all genres, literary and non-literary. Accordingly, neither Tompkins nor Ong focuses on the lyric genre individually. But formalism is tied so closely to the lyric genre in both critical and pedagogical contexts that we must look beyond Ong's and Tompkins' theses. Literature professors are more likely to assign close readings of a poem rather than an excerpt of equal length from a novel, and most modern western readers--even those who have never heard of formalist criticism--feel lyric to be more closed-off from its readers. …


ABSTRACT This systematic review aims to assess the role that peer social norms play in shaping young people's food intake, focusing on the important questions of for whom and when peer social norms are related to how much young people eat. Thirty-three eligible studies were reviewed (17 correlational, 16 experimental). All but one correlational studies found significant associations between norms and food intake. All experimental studies found effects of norm manipulations on food intake, and some evidence was found of behavioural spillover effects of norms. Four moderators were distilled from our literature synthesis that stipulate for whom and when peer social norms are related to food intake: identification with the norm referent group and eating-related habit strength were found to moderate the effects of social norms on food intake; forceful injunctive norms were found not to be related to food intake; and the influence of norms seemed restricted to types of foods typically consumed in the presence of peers. The findings from this literature synthesis have important implications for research, and moderators are discussed in light of psychological theory. Where applicable, potential implications for the development of social norm-based interventions to improve young people's food intake are also highlighted.


Residual stress profiles were measured by neutron diffraction in Al2O3/Y-TZP ceramic composites containing 5 and 40 vol.% Y-TZP fabricated by conventional slip casting and by a novel tape casting route. Residual stresses in the zirconia are tensile and increase as its volume fraction decreases. For the alumina matrix, residual stress is compressive and increases with the zirconia volume fraction. In the composite with 5 vol.% zirconia, the processing route does not have an influence on residual stresses. However, in the composite with 40 vol.% zirconia, residual stresses are different in the samples obtained by both processing routes.


Objectives To present the implications of agency theory in microeconomics, augmented by behavioral economics, for different methods of value‐based payment in health care; and to derive a set of future research questions and policy recommendations based on that conceptual analysis. Data Sources Original literature of agency theory, and secondarily behavioral economics, combined with applied research and empirical evidence on the application of those principles to value‐based payment. Study Design Conceptual analysis and targeted review of theoretical research and empirical literature relevant to value‐based payment in health care. Principal Findings Agency theory and secondarily behavioral economics have powerful implications for design of value‐based payment in health care. To achieve improved value—better patient experience, clinical quality, health outcomes, and lower costs of care—high‐powered incentives should directly target improved care processes, enhanced patient experience, and create achievable benchmarks for improved outcomes. Differing forms of value‐based payment (e.g., shared savings and risk, reference pricing, capitation, and bundled payment), coupled with adjunct incentives for quality and efficiency, can be tailored to different market conditions and organizational settings. Conclusions Payment contracts that are "incentive compatible"—which directly encourage better care and reduced cost, mitigate gaming, and selectively induce clinically efficient providers to participate—will focus differentially on evidence‐based care processes, will right‐size and structure incentives to avoid crowd‐out of providers' intrinsic motivation, and will align patient incentives with value. Future research should address the details of putting these and related principles into practice; further, by deploying these insights in payment design, policy makers will improve health care value for patients and purchasers.


Restructuring of the electricity market has changed many aspects of the transmission system operation and planning. Reliability-Driven and Economic-Driven transmission expansion planning by regulated and private utilities are the substitutes of the traditional Cost-Driven transmission expansion planning. Reliability-based criteria for assessment of the transmission projects are almost well-developed while there exists a lack of a comprehensive framework for the economic evaluation of the transmission projects. Definition of a quantitative and monetary framework for economic evaluation of future transmission projects demands a detailed market analysis. In addition, specific characteristics and responsibilities of the transmission system in the open access structure must be understood comprehensively. To reaching the aforementioned goal, an analytical review on the existing economic assessment methodologies would be highly beneficial for the researchers in this area. Moreover, most of the review literatures on transmission investment in competitive electricity markets are general. These review literatures have tried to address all aspects of this challenging issue with devoting only few paragraphs to economic assessment of transmission projects. Given the aforementioned shortcomings, this article would bridge the gap by the following contributions: Firstly, reviewing available approaches for economic assessment of transmission projects based on research papers and industrial reports .Secondly, analysing the reviewed criteria critically by applying them to a modified Wood and Wollenberg 6-bus case study and Finally, summarizing the key components of a successful Economic Assessment Framework for transmission expansion or upgrade projects. Practical experiences of California Electricity Market, New England Electricity Market, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland (PJM) and National Electricity Market, Australia have been accommodated in the article.


Recent investigation in persons with clinically complete spinal cord injury has revealed that locomotor activity in one limb can activate rhythmic locomotor activity in the opposite limb. Although our previous research has demonstrated profound influences of the nonparetic limb on paretic limb motor activity poststroke, the potency of interlimb pathways for increasing recruitment of the paretic limb motor pattern is unknown. This experiment tested whether there is an increased propensity for rhythmic motor activity in one limb (pedaling limb) to induce rhythmic motor activity in the opposite limb (test limb) in persons poststroke. Forty-nine subjects with chronic poststroke hemiparesis and twenty controls pedaled against a constant mechanical load with their pedaling leg while we recorded EMG and pedal forces from the test leg. For the experimental conditions, subjects were instructed to either pedal with their test leg (bilateral pedaling) or rest their test leg while it was either stationary or moved anti-phased (unilateral pedaling). In persons poststroke, unilateral pedaling activated a complete pattern of rhythmic alternating muscle activity in the nonpedaling, test leg. This effect was most clearly demonstrated in the most severely impaired individuals. In most of the control subjects, unilateral pedaling activated some muscles in the nonpedaling leg weakly, if at all. We propose that, ipsilateral excitatory pathways associated with contralateral pedaling in control subjects are increasingly up-regulated in both legs in persons with hemiparesis as a function of increased hemiparetic severity. This enhancement of interlimb pathways may be of functional importance since contralateral pedaling induced a complete motor pattern of similar amplitude to the bilateral pattern in both the paretic and nonparetic leg of the subjects with severe hemiparesis.


This paper considers the implications of the conceptual difference between the rental price of capital, embedded in the neoclassical cost identity (output equals the cost of labor plus the cost of capital), and used in growth accounting studies; and the profit rate, which can be derived from the national income and product accounts (NIPA). The neoclassical identity is a "virtual" identity in that it depends on a series of assumptions (constant returns to scale and perfectly competitive factor markets). The income side of the NIPA also provides an accounting identity for output as the sum of the wage bill plus the surplus. This identity, however, is a "real" one, in the sense that it does not depend on any assumption and thus it holds always. It is shown that because the neoclassical cost identity and the income accounting identity according to the NIPA are formally equivalent expressions, estimations of aggregate production functions and growth accounting studies are tautologies. Likewise, the test of the hypothesis of competitive markets using Hall's (1988) framework gives rise to a null hypothesis that cannot be rejected statistically.


Importance sampling (IS) is a Monte Carlo methodology that allows for the approximation of a target distribution using weighted samples generated from another proposal distribution. Adaptive importance sampling (AIS) implements an iterative version of IS, which adapts the parameters of the proposal distribution in order to improve estimation of the target. While the adaptation of the location (mean) of the proposals has been largely studied, an important challenge of AIS relates to the difficulty of adapting the scale parameter (covariance matrix). In the case of weight degeneracy, adapting the covariance matrix using the empirical covariance results in a singular matrix, which leads to a poor performance in subsequent iterations of the algorithm. In this letter, we propose a novel scheme which exploits recent advances in the IS literature to prevent the so-called weight degeneracy. The method efficiently adapts the covariance matrix of a population of proposal distributions and achieves a significant performance improvement in high-dimensional scenarios. We validate the new method through computer simulations.


Moment equations derived from the Boltzmann equation for the two‐dimensional flows were formulated and generalized slip boundary conditions for the moments were derived. Fifty one moments relevant to the eigenfunctions included in the Chapman‐Enskog solutions of the second order approximation were taking into account. These moment equations were applied to thermally induced flows in a two‐dimensional vessel. The moment equations were solved using the MacCormack's difference scheme. Present results showed that the moment equations and the slip boundary conditions were applicable for the two‐dimensional flows in the transition regime. Thermally induced slip flow adjacent to the solid wall decreased linearly in accordance with the decrease of the Knudsen number relevant to the size of the vessel. The values of obtained slip coefficient, velocity/(gradient of temperature along the solid wall), increased as the number of moment equations increased. Present results suggested that moments should be selected so a...


The rapid transformation in both the location and type of retail provision in the Prague metropolitan area, Czech Republic, between 1997 and 2001 offers a unique opportunity for examining the relationship between land use and shopping travel behavior. The case of Prague is unique. Although the Czech capital has the compact form and transit-rich environment sought by many planners, after rates of motorization rose steadily in the early 1990s foreign developers began constructing shopping malls on the city's fringe in 1997. Although retail provision was being remade on highway-adjacent locations outside the traditional central business district, there were few changes in Prague residential and employment locations. Thus, the shift in shopping land use occurred in relative isolation. Shopping travel behavior before and after the introduction of the fringe shopping malls is examined by using research based on 1,649 surveys collected in four new malls in 2001. Mall visitors reported current demographic information and mall travel behavior as well as their travel habits for the same trip purposes before the introduction of the surveyed mall. The before-and-after data demonstrate how shopping travel behavior has changed with the changing retail land uses. Specifically, shifts in three travel behavior variables (trip frequency, shopping duration, and mode split) disaggregated by key demographic characteristics (age, gender, income, car ownership, and household size), are analyzed. Several striking shifts are apparent: people shop less often and for longer periods of time and are less likely to walk to shopping locations.


A packet transmission delay is an important quality characteristic for various applications including real-time and data applications. In particular, it is necessary to investigate not only the whole distribution of the packet transmission delay, but also the tail part of the distribution, in order to detect the packet loss. In this paper, we analyze the characteristics of the tail part of packet delay distributions by the statistical analytic approach. Our analytic results show that the Pareto distribution is most appropriate in 95-99.9% region of the cumulative distribution of packet transmission delays. Based on our statistical analysis, we next propose an adaptive playout control algorithm, which is suitable to real-time applications. Numerical examples show that our algorithm provides a stable packet loss ratio independently of traffic fluctuations.


The experimental system for electrically exploding single metal wire has been designed and manufactured. Expansion of the dense plasma column formed from an electrically exploding Cu wire of diameter 30 μm has been studied with a high-speed photographer to obtain the time-dependent radius (R-t) curve. The experimental results demonstrate that the mean expansion rate of the dense plasma column is 1.94 μm/ns, 2.6 μm/ns and 3.75 μm/ns according to the peak pulse current 4.5 kA, 7 kA and 9.5 kA respectively. The results can be beneficial to giving a profound understanding of the early stage of wire-array Z-pinch physics and to improvement on their design.


AIMS
To compare the risk of sudden death and non-sudden death from myocardial infarction associated with the metabolic syndrome (MetS) in asymptomatic men.

METHODS AND RESULTS
The mortality status of 6,678 middle-aged men from the Paris Prospective Study I, who were free of diabetes and coronary heart disease (CHD) at the baseline examination, has been investigated over 21 years of follow-up. The sagittal abdominal diameter was substituted for waist circumference, and HDL cholesterol was unavailable. The presence of three abnormalities and the presence of abdominal adiposity plus at least two abnormalities defined the MetS, using the NCEP-ATP III and IDF criteria, respectively. Frequency estimate of the MetS was 14.4 and 16.7%, using the NCEP-ATP III and IDF criteria, respectively. The MetS increased the risk of sudden death and non-sudden death by 68% [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.05-2.70] and 38% (95% CI 0.95-2.01), respectively, after adjustment for other CHD risk factors (P for the comparison of the hazard ratios = 0.25). Hazards ratio using the IDF criteria were 2.02 (95% CI 1.30-3.14) and 1.69 (95% CI 1.20-2.38), respectively, (P = 0.26).

CONCLUSION
In healthy middle-aged men, the MetS increased the risk of sudden death and, to a lesser extent, the risk of non-sudden death over 21 years independent of CHD risk factors.


Images gathered from different satellites are vastly available these days due to the fast development of remote sensing (RS) technology. These images significantly enhance the data sources of change detection (CD). CD is a technique of recognizing the dissimilarities in the images acquired at distinct intervals and are used for numerous applications, such as urban area development, disaster management, land cover object identification, etc. In recent years, deep learning (DL) techniques have been used tremendously in change detection processes, where it has achieved great success because of their practical applications. Some researchers have even claimed that DL approaches outperform traditional approaches and enhance change detection accuracy. Therefore, this review focuses on deep learning techniques, such as supervised, unsupervised, and semi-supervised for different change detection datasets, such as SAR, multispectral, hyperspectral, VHR, and heterogeneous images, and their advantages and disadvantages will be highlighted. In the end, some significant challenges are discussed to understand the context of improvements in change detection datasets and deep learning models. Overall, this review will be beneficial for the future development of CD methods.


Tea (Camellia sinensis) is a promising new specialty crop for production in Florida. However, few data exist on the establishment phase of tea plantings in this environment and on how early growth parameters may predict yield potential. We tested seven accessions of tea grown under field conditions in north-central Florida for leaf yield and growth parameters—namely, pruned biomass, trunk diameter, trunk height, trunk width, trunk height × width, and canopy area—in the second and third years after planting. Our analyses indicated that the accession Fairhope performed best overall. Pruned biomass and trunk diameter were the best predictors for leaf yield. The harvested leaves produced good-quality black tea, with caffeine levels comparable to commercially available tea. These data indicate that nondestructive measurements of growth can be useful to assess yield potential of tea, and that regionally adapted tea accessions can be identified during the establishment stage.


The information technology (IT) sector has contributed significantly to the economic growth in India and is one of the fastest-growing export-oriented sectors in India. The objective of this article is to explore the determinants of exports of IT companies of India from 2000 to 2012 using company-level data. Applying ordinary panel data regression, the article finds that world demand and real effective exchange rate have expected signs on company exports. Surprisingly, foreign capital, which played a crucial role in IT sector development in India, has a negative coefficient, highlighting substitution relation between export and domestic demands. The dynamic panel data regression exhibits persistence of exports which acts as a moderating factor on demand fluctuations and its high impact. Further, the dynamic panel estimations clearly show the predominant influence of past exports on gross domestic product (GDP) growth in India, which makes world demand, standardized as relative to India's GDP, inconsequential for its future exports.


Amphetamine-Type Stimulants (ATS), such as amphetamines, MDMA, and methamphetamine are a commonly used class of illicit drugs in Europe. There is a large existing literature on motives for the use of illicit drugs, often focusing on initiation. However, few studies have explored the reasons why some people choose not to use drugs (non-use), and even fewer focus on the social processes influencing non-use of ATS specifically. We explored social processes related to normalization, and how persistent non-users negotiate their non-use in social contexts where ATS is used, using qualitative interview (n = 21) and survey questionnaire (n = 126) data from a mixed-method study conducted in the Netherlands and England. Our findings showed that in both countries, most participants were repeatedly exposed to ATS use, often in social or nightlife settings. Participants abstained from use for a number of reasons, including: lack of interest in illicit drug use in general; desire to maintain control over their own behavior and environment; and to avoid the associated health risks. Social processes also shaped persistent non-use of ATS, via conscious socialization with, and selection of, other non-using peers over time. Our findings contribute to the literature on the normalization thesis, showing that recreational ATS use is only partly socially accommodated and normalized among persistent non-users, suggesting differentiated normalization.


Re-connecting with Māori identity through parametric design has been investigated through this body of research by focussing on mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge). Ultimately asking: "There is a place for parametric design to help translate Māori narratives, values and procedures into architectural form". The designer's intent through this body of research was to re-enforce old ties with local iwi, re-learn one's whakapapa (stories/narratives), and re-connect with one's sense of self through embedding this knowledge into a coded design. The objective was to achieve a design output that is fundamentally built on mātauranga Māori and cultural practices of Ngāti Kahungunu (iwi in the Hawkes Bay that extends down the East coast of New Zealand's North Island). When a design begins with such an intent, the generated output is unexpected, surprising and changes perception of what a particular structure is meant to be or do. The ideas touched upon in this research is merely a seed to what can be achieved when using parametric design to produce a culturally significant design. Finding one significant cultural aspect, in this case the power of loci, is one of the most important steps in building the design tikanga (protocols/scope) that will find its way into all aspects of the designs produced. This informed the reasoning for the parameters used, the range of variation and how one step progressed to the next.


We report on a 36 years-old man that had been at the Amazon forest four years before. Six months before the admission he had developed a progressive quadriparesis, gait ataxia, dysphagia, dysarthria, difficulty in breathing and hiccup. The gadolinium-enhanced T1-weighted MRI showed a lesion into the right parietoccipital area and another into the medulla, that was the largest. There was any evidence of tuberculosis or AIDS. The patient was submitted to microsurgical approach to the medulla. Pathological examination revealed paracoccidioidomycosis. Treatment with anphotericin B till 2100mg was administered followed by sulfamethoxazole-trimetoprim for three months plus physical therapy. The patient went back to his activities six months after the end of the treatment. Comments are presented about the participation of the immunological system and of the cytokines (interleukines).


Objective: Human placenta extract (HPE) is known to possess antioxidant activity due to a high concentration of bioactive substances. This fact contributes to the perspective of its application in clinical practice in order to treat oxidation-induced diseases. In this study, a comparative investigation of antioxidant properties of HPEs derived from placentas of the 38 weeks gestation terms and post maturity is provided.
Methods: Antioxidant activity of aqueous-saline HPEs was evaluated spectrophotometrically using ferric reducing power assay, ABTS+ cation radical decolorization assay, chelating ability assay and total phenolics assay. HPE biological activity was evaluated by ability to decrease methemoglobin formation in a model experiment with erythrocytes under nitrite-induced oxidative stress.
Results: Total ABTS+ scavenging and chelating abilities of extracts derived from placenta of 38 weeks gestation term is higher in comparison with full term spontaneous delivery (40 weeks). Ferric reducing power of extracts does not differ regarding gestation term. Treatment of human erythrocytes with HPE of earlier gestation term significantly attenuates a nitrite-induced oxidative damage. However, HPE derived from placenta of 40 weeks gestation (full term) does not possess protective effect against nitrite induced oxidative stress in erythrocytes.
Conclusion: Treatment of human erythrocytes with HPEs of earlier gestation term significantly attenuates a nitrite-induced oxidative damage.


Abstract. In this work we present the result of a study aimed at examining the Italian earthquake sequences that occurred in the area of the central Adriatic sea with the purpose of understanding whether some of them were accompanied by tsunami effects. The motivation for this research was the update and enrichment of the Italian Tsunami Catalogue. The result was that evidence was found for two new cases of earthquake-induced tsunamis: these are the August 1916 Rimini and the October 1930 Ancona events. The bulk of the present research consisted in collecting all the available data on the earthquakes that affected the selected area in the past century and in identifying those potentially capable of generating tsunamis. During the study all the available material was gathered, which includes specific monographs and scientific papers, articles available in contemporary chronicles and in local and national newspapers. The final result of this research will improve our knowledge of the tsunamigenic activity of the central Adriatic sea and contribute to the assessment of the tsunami hazard and risk along these coasts, that especially in the peak season form one of the most densely populated areas of the Italian peninsula with flat and large beaches and water front resorts crowded of tourists.


This paper aims to investigate the short- and long-run macroeconomic determinants of sovereign credit ratings in developing countries.Malaysia is used as a case study.This study employed quarterly data from 1991 to 2004.We apply a recently developed time series technique called 'Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag' (ARDL) [Pesaran, Shin, and Smith,Journal of Applied Econometrics, 2001] which has taken care of a major limitation of the conventional cointegrating tests in that they suffer from the pre-test biases.Based on the above rigorous methodology, our evidence tends to suggest that both in the short-and long- run, Debt ratios such as (Debt to GDP, Debt Service to Reserve) and US Treasury Bill rate (3-months) appear to have had a significant impact on Malaysia's sovereign credit ratings.The findings of the study tend to indicate that Malaysia's short- and long-term ability to pay its debt contain information for the prediction of her credit ratings.These findings are plausible and have strong policy implications for developing countries like Malaysia.


AIM
To study the adjuvant effect of mesoporous silica particles and their capability of modifying an already existing allergic Th2-like immune response.

MATERIALS & METHODS
The adjuvant effect of Santa Barbara Amorphous-15 (SBA-15) mesoporous silica particles was studied in an antigen-specific ovalbumin (OVA) system in vitro and in vivo. The capacity of the OVA-loaded SBA-15 particles (SBA-15-OVA) to modify an existing immune response was assessed in a murine allergy model.

RESULTS
SBA-15-OVA induced significantly stronger OVA-specific splenocyte proliferation compared with OVA alone. Significantly higher IFN-γ production was observed in ex vivo OVA-stimulated splenocytes from SBA-15-OVA-immunized mice compared with mice injected with only SBA-15 or OVA. Treatment of OVA-sensitized mice with SBA-15-OVA modified the immune response with significantly lower serum levels of OVA-specific IgE and higher IgG levels compared with the alum-OVA-treated group.

CONCLUSION
The results are promising for the continued development of mesoporous silica materials for therapeutic applications.


Parameter reduction has been a popular topic in deep learning due to the ever-
increasing size of deep neural network models and the need to train and run deep neural nets on resource limited machines. Despite many efforts in this area, there were no rigorous theoretical guarantees on why existing neural net compression methods should work. In this paper, we provide provable guarantees on some hashing-based parameter reduction methods in neural nets. First, we introduce a neural net compression scheme based on random linear sketching (which is usually implemented efficiently via hashing), and show that the sketched (smaller) network is able to approximate the original network on all
input data coming from any smooth well-conditioned low-dimensional manifold. The sketched network can also be trained directly via back-propagation. Next, we study the previously proposed HashedNets architecture and show that the optimization landscape of one-hidden-layer HashedNets has a local strong convexity property similar to a normal fully connected neural network. Together
with the initialization algorithm developed in [51], this implies that the parameters in HashedNets can be provably recovered. We complement our theoretical results with some empirical verification.


Coordination graph is a promising approach to model agent collaboration in multi-agent reinforcement learning. It conducts a graph-based value factorization and induces explicit coordination among agents to complete complicated tasks. However, one critical challenge in this paradigm is the complexity of greedy action selection with respect to the factorized values. It refers to the decentralized constraint optimization problem (DCOP), which and whose constant-ratio approximation are NP-hard problems. To bypass this systematic hardness, this paper proposes a novel method, named Self-Organized Polynomial-time Coordination Graphs (SOP-CG), which uses structured graph classes to guarantee the accuracy and the computational efficiency of collaborated action selection. SOP-CG employs dynamic graph topology to ensure sufficient value function expressiveness. The graph selection is unified into an end-to-end learning paradigm. In experiments, we show that our approach learns succinct and well-adapted graph topologies, induces effective coordination, and improves performance across a variety of cooperative multi-agent tasks.


Translation of aberrant mRNAs induces ribosomal collisions, thereby triggering pathways for mRNA and nascent peptide degradation and ribosomal rescue. Here we use sucrose gradient fractionation combined with quantitative proteomics to systematically identify proteins associated with collided ribosomes. This approach identified Endothelial differentiation-related factor 1 (EDF1) as a novel protein recruited to collided ribosomes during translational distress. Cryo-electron microscopic analyses of EDF1 and its yeast homolog Mbf1 revealed a conserved 40S ribosomal subunit binding site at the mRNA entry channel near the collision interface. EDF1 recruits the translational repressors GIGYF2 and EIF4E2 to collided ribosomes to initiate a negative-feedback loop that prevents new ribosomes from translating defective mRNAs. Further, EDF1 regulates an immediate-early transcriptional response to ribosomal collisions. Our results uncover mechanisms through which EDF1 coordinates multiple responses of the ribosome-mediated quality control pathway and provide novel insights into the intersection of ribosome-mediated quality control with global transcriptional regulation.


The Beijing Mycobacterium tuberculosis family is widely distributed and is the most common M. tuberculosis strain in East Asia. The highly transmissible and predominant Beijing M. tuberculosis strain in Korea, M. tuberculosis K1, was characterized using an aerobic challenge mouse model and a latent tuberculosis model with M. tuberculosis H37Rv as a reference. M. tuberculosis K1 multiplied over ten times more rapidly than M. tuberculosis H37Rv during the early stage of infection and induced high levels of histopathology in the lung. Low levels of T helper cell (Th) Th1 [interferon (IFN)-γ, interleukin (IL)-12p40] and Th2 cytokines (IL-4, IL-10) were induced in the lungs of M. tuberculosis K1-infected mice. In the latent model, mice infected with M. tuberculosis K1 exhibited more frequent relapse from the latent state than did mice infected with M. tuberculosis H37Rv. In conclusion, M. tuberculosis K1, a prevalent Beijing strain in Korea, is expected to spread due to its rapid growth during the early stages of infection, low-level induction of the immune response and high relapse rates from a latent state.


Negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) has become one of the major causes for temporal reliability degradation of nanoscale circuits. In this paper, we analyze the temporal delay degradation of logic circuits due to NBTI. We show that knowing the threshold voltage degradation of a single transistor due to NBTI, one can predict the performance degradation of a circuit with a reasonable degree of accuracy. We also propose a sizing algorithm taking NBTI-affected performance degradation into account to ensure the reliability of nanoscale circuits for a given period of time. Experimental results on several benchmark circuits show that with an average of 8.7% increase in area one can ensure reliable performance of circuits for 10 years


Agricultural industry uses pesticides to optimize food production for the growing human population. A major issue for crops is fungal phytopathogens, which are treated mainly with azole fungicides. Azoles are also the main medical treatment in the management of Aspergillus diseases caused by ubiquitous fungi, such as Aspergillus fumigatus. However, epidemiological research demonstrated an increasing prevalence of azole-resistant strains in A. fumigatus. The main resistance mechanism is a combination of alterations in the gene cyp51A (TR34/L98H). Surprisingly, this mutation is not only found in patients receiving long-term azole therapy for chronic aspergillosis but also in azole naïve patients. This suggests an environmental route of resistance through the exposure of azole fungicides in agriculture. In this review, we report data from several studies that strongly suggest that agricultural azoles are responsible for medical treatment failure in azole-naïve patients in clinical settings.


A study was conducted on the impact of soil inter-space bulk density and moisture content on the vitamin A content of stored oranges in passive evaporative cooling structures. Two sets of four different types of passive evaporative cooling structures made of two different materials, clay and aluminium were constructed. One set consists of four separate cooling chambers. Two cooling chambers were made with aluminium container (round and rectangular shapes) and the other two were made of clay container (round and rectangular). These four containers were separately inserted inside bigger clay pots and lateritic walls interspaced with clay soil of 5 cm (to form tin-in-pot, pot-in-pot, tin-in-wall and wall-in wall) with the outside structure wrapped with jute sack. The other set followed the same pattern with interspacing of 10 cm. The two sets (5 cm and 10 cm interspaced soil) were constantly wetted with salt solution (sodium chloride, NaCl)) at intervals of between 2 to 4 hours depending on the rate of evaporation to keep the soil in moist condition. In addition, the control has no fans and the inner cooling chambers were not lined with polyethylene nylon while the other two sets have fans and their inner cooling chambers lined with polyethylene nylon Freshly harvested oranges were used for the experiment and the inter-space soil bulk density, soil moisture content and vitamin A content of stored oranges were determined at interval of three days for a period of three weeks. The interspace soil bulk density values of 0.98 g/cm 3 , 1.6 g/cm 3 , 0.91 g/cm 3 , 0.98 g/cm 3 , 0.99 g/cm 3 , 0.97 g/cm 3 and 0.92 g/cm 3 with the soil moisture contents values of 78.4%, 81.58%, 82.56%, 79.12%, 79.68%, 79.74% and 79.74% were recorded for the 5 cm structures. Also the interspace soil bulk density values of 1.42 g/cm 3 , 1.21 g/cm 3 , 1.34 g/cm 3 , 1.00 g/cm 3 , 0.98 g/cm 3 , 0.98 g/cm 3 and 0.97 g/cm 3 with the soil moisture contents values of 78.73%, 79.17%, 78.18%, 78.34%, 82.54%, 81.79% and 81.36% were recorded for the 10 cm structures.


The relatively rare syndrome of Rendu-Osler-Weber and the associated hemorrhagic telangiectasia present with various ocular signs, such as telangiectases of the lids, conjunctiva, and retina. This syndrome also presents with non-ocular hemorrhagic telangiectases and is of a hereditary origin. As a primary care provier, the optometrist may be the first health care professional to examine the patient with Rendu-Osler-Weber syndrome or hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia. Although this syndrome is relatively rare, the eye care practitioner should be aware of specific complaints as well as ocular manifestations since these can mimic several other ocular diseases and abnormalities. This paper discusses ocular and systemic manifestations, differential diagnoses, and management. The goal of this paper is to provide a comprehensive report of RenduOsler-Weber syndrome.


Cued Speech (CS) is a communication system developed for deaf people, which exploits hand cues
to complement speechreading at the phonetic level. Currently, it is estimated that CS has been
adapted to over 60 languages; however, no official CS system is available for Mandarin Chinese. This
article proposes a novel and efficient Mandarin Chinese CS system, satisfying the main criterion that
the hand coding constitutes a complement to the lips' movements. We propose to code vowels [i, u,
y] as semiconsonants when they are followed by other Mandarin finals, which reduces the number
of Mandarin finals to be coded from 36 to 16. We establish a coherent similarity between Mandarin
Chinese and French vowels for the remaining 16 finals/vowels, which allows us to take advantage
of the French CS system. Furthermore, by investigating the lips viseme distribution based on a new
corpus, an optimal allocation of the 16 Mandarin vowels to different hand positions is obtained. A
Gaussian classifier was used to evaluate the average separability of different allocated vowel groups,
which gives 92.08%, 92.33%, and 92.73% for the three speakers, respectively. The consonants are
mainly designed according to their similarities with the French CS system, as well as some considerations
on the special Mandarin consonants. In our system, the tones of Mandarin are coded with
head movements.


We present a new method for mismatch analysis and automatic yield optimization of analog integrated circuits with respect to global, local and operational tolerances. Effectiveness and efficiency of yield estimation and optimization are guaranteed by consideration of feasibility regions and by performance linearization at worst-case points. The proposed methods were successfully applied to two example circuits for an industrial fabrication process.


Cooling subsequent to extrusion is a crucial process in aluminum extrusion value chain. Non-uniform cooling-induced shape distortion, such as deflection, twisting and etc., is a challenge for extrusion profile manufacturers. Temperature management is therefore a key to the aluminum extrusion process. Appropriate modeling, using both physical and numerical methods, can help us achieve a better temperature control in extrusion plants. In this work, finite element (FE) method was used to simulate shape distortion due to cooling and the most important challenge was to make FE models compatible to real conditions in plants. The effects of three important items I) mechanical boundary condition II) cooling source type and III) effective cooling length were examined. It was shown that for compatible prediction of distortions it was necessary to define these items similar to real life. It was also revealed that with a suitable definition of boundary conditions it is possible to use a short lab scale sample to understand mechanisms in real life profiles.


Abstract Thermodynamic calculations with Thermo-Calc software and the steel database TCFE3 was applied to investigate the precipitation behavior of industrial grades of duplex stainless steels with high copper content, 1.6 and 2.3 wt.%, Duplok 27 and DUP 27, respectively. Well-documented super duplex stainless grade SAF 2507 with copper content of 0.20 wt.% was used as the reference steel. The results of the calculations are compared with the experimental results obtained previously for these steels. It is shown that copper decreases the high-temperature limit of precipitation of sigma and chi phases and reduces the equilibrium amount of precipitated chi phase. Copper addition to a duplex stainless steel facilitates precipitation of chromium nitride phase and stabilizes it at elevated temperatures. The ferrite-austenite balance at high temperatures is also affected in these steels by the copper addition.


Axillary nerve block is a safe and reliable method of providing anesthesia for the upper extremity. It is particularly useful because it can be applied in cases of traumatic injury where general anesthesia might present particular hazards. The use of a large volume of anesthetic solution is important, particularly when it is essential to block the musculocutaneous or axillary nerve.


Abstract. The monitoring of aerosol concentrations comprises a high environmental priority, particularly in urban areas. Remote sensing of atmospheric aerosol optical thickness (AOT) could be used to assess particulate matter levels at the ground. However, such measurements often need further validation. In this study, aerosol data retrieved from satellite and sun-photometer, on the one hand, and visibility data at various locations in Cyprus, on the other hand, for the period from January to June 2009 are contrasted. The results obtained by the direct comparison between MODIS and handheld sun-photometer AOT data exhibited a significant correlation (r=0.83); these results are in agreement with those reported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The correlation between sun-photometer AOT and that estimated from visibility measurements was also significant (r=0.76). A direct and significant relationship between MODIS AOT and AOT estimated from visibility values was also found for all the locations used (the correlation coefficient was found to vary from 0.80 to 0.84). It is concluded that MODIS AOT data provide accurate information on the aerosol content in Cyprus, while in the absence of such data, visibility measurements could be used as a secondary source of aerosol load information, in terms of aerosol optical thickness, and provide useful information on a near-real time basis, whenever data are available.


A set of algorithms for real time classification of noise events as low altitude military aircraft overflights was developed for use in a personal noise monitoring system. The classification algorithms, which are applied to polynomial curve fits to time series of sound pressure level measurements rather than to raw data, operate primarily on the temporal symmetry and relative rates of increase and decrease of sound levels in different one‐third octave bands. Correct classification performance and misclassification errors vary with disjunctive decision rules applied to the outputs of the algorithms. [Work supported in part by the U.S. Air Force NSBIT program.]


Fact-checking is one of the effective solutions in fighting online misinformation. However, traditional fact-checking is a process requiring scarce expert human resources, and thus does not scale well on social media because of the continuous flow of new content to be checked. Methods based on crowdsourcing have been proposed to tackle this challenge, as they can scale with a smaller cost, but, while they have shown to be feasible, have always been studied in controlled environments. In this work, we study the first large-scale effort of crowdsourced fact-checking deployed in practice, started by Twitter with the Birdwatch program. Our analysis shows that crowdsourcing may be an effective fact-checking strategy in some settings, even comparable to results obtained by human experts, but does not lead to consistent, actionable results in others. We processed 11.9k tweets verified by the Birdwatch program and report empirical evidence of i) differences in how the crowd and experts select content to be fact-checked, ii) how the crowd and the experts retrieve different resources to fact-check, and iii) the edge the crowd shows in fact-checking scalability and efficiency as compared to expert checkers.


Using an institutional logics approach, this study investigates how the institutional logics of leaders of grassroots social service nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Russia changed over time and how these changes related to changes in organizational mission, people served, professionalization, and interactions with the government. Relying on interviews as well as other data gathered, this analysis of organizational leaders' narratives reveals the identities and experiences that these leaders turn to in their sensemaking of significant events. The findings show that, on the one hand, social welfare NGOs continued to provide services, increased their advocacy efforts, and professionalized their staff. Volunteer organizations, on the other hand, discontinued provision of social services turning instead to the recruitment and development of volunteers. Theoretically, this empirical case illustrates how an interplay of factors at multiple levels can affect the expression of logics at the organizational level.


Despite their tremendous success, centrally controlled cloud based solutions for social media networking have inherent issues related to privacy and user control. Alternatively, a decentralized approach can be used, but ensuring content availability will be the major challenge. In this work, we propose a time based user grouping and content replication protocol that exploits the cyclic diurnal pattern in user uptime behaviour to ensure content persistence with minimal replication overhead. We also introduce the concept of beta-availability, and propose a mechanism for ensuring the availability of at least beta members within a replication group at any given time. Simulation results show that a 2-availability grouping policy delivers high content persistence without incurring significant network and storage overheads.


Friction property plays an important role in the operating process of engine, the analysis and discuss about friction property can help to improve the operating performance of engine. Based on the basic structure of swash-plate engine, the sphere rolling friction model and the roller rolling friction model were established, and corresponding formulae of the rolling friction force and the rolling friction coefficient were deduced. Then as an application, we employed the exact parameters of a swash-plate engine to calculate the sphere rolling friction force, the sphere rolling friction coefficient, the roller rolling friction force and the roller rolling friction coefficient. According to comparison, we concluded that roller rolling friction force was far less than sphere rolling friction force, and roller rolling friction coefficient was far less than sphere rolling friction coefficient. Furthermore, we proposed two topics which would be our next study concerning engine friction property: friction-induced heat, and high temperature influence on friction property.


Background Mathematical modeling combined with prior knowledge of the pharmacokinetics of the liver specific contrast agent Gd-EOB-DTPA has the potential to extract more information from Dynamic Contrast Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging (DCE-MRI) data than previously possible. The ultimate goal of that work is to create a liver model that can describe DCE-MRI data well enough to be used as a diagnostic tool in liver function evaluation. Thus far this goal has not been fully reached and there is still some work to be done in this area.In this thesis, an already existing liver model will be implemented in the software Wolfram SystemModeler (WSM), the corresponding modeling framework will be further developed to better handle the temporally irregular sampling of DCE-MRI data and finally an attempt will be made to determine an optimal sampling design in terms of when and how often to collect images. In addition to these original goals, the work done during this project revealed two more issues that needed to be dealt with. Firstly, new standard deviation (SD) estimation methods regarding non-averaged DCE-MRI data were required in order to statistically evaluate the models. Secondly, the original model's poor capability of describing the early dynamics of the system led to the creation of an additional liver model in attempt to model the bolus effect. Results The model was successfully implemented in WSM whereafter regional optimization was implemented as an attempt to handle clustered data. Tests on the available data did not result in any substantial difference in optimization outcome, but since the analyses were performed on only three patient data sets this is not enough to disregard the method.As a means of determining optimal sampling times, the determinant of the inverse Fisher Information Matrix was minimized, which revealed that frequent sampling is most important during the initial phase (~50-300 s post injection) and at the very end (~1500-1800 s).Three new means of estimating the SD were proposed. Of these three, a spatio-temporal SD was deemed most reasonable under the current circumstances. If a better initial fit is achieved, yet another method of estimating the variance as an optimization parameter might be implemented. As a result of the new standard deviation the model failed to be statistically accepted during optimizations. The additional model that was created to include the bolus effect, and therefore be better able to fit the initial phase data, was also rejected.Conclusions The value of regional optimization is uncertain at this time and additional tests must be made on a large number of patient data sets in order to determine its value.The Fisher Information Matrix will be of great use in determining when and how often to sample once the model has achieved a more acceptable model fit in both the early and the late phase of the system. Even though the indications that it is important to sample densely in the early phase is rather intuitive due to a poor model fit in that region, the analyses also revealed that the final observations have a relatively high impact on the model prediction error. This was not previously known. Hence, an important measurement of how suitable the sampling design is in terms of the resulting model accuracy has been suggested.The original model was rejected due to its inability to fit the data during the early phase. This poor initial fit could not be improved enough by modelling the bolus effect and so the new implementation of the model was also rejected. Recommendations have been made in this thesis that might assist in the further development the liver model so that it can describe the true physiology and behaviour of the system in all phases. Such recommendations include, but are not limited to, the addition of an extra blood plasma compartment, a more thorough modelling of the spleen's uptake of the contrast agent and a separation of certain differing signals that are now averaged.


The study argues that translation in the frame space of the student journal New Tide (新潮 1919-22), was a mode of writing that legitimated the new-versus-old polarity in the May Fourth discourse. The analysis focuses on two sets of translation marginalia. One set presents the translators' habitual apologies for the imperfection of their works. In contrast, the other set of materials shows unapologetic appropriations of foreign sources, which reveal the use of translation for the dual purposes of criticising the students' concurrent traditional-minded Chinese intellectuals, and of validating – hence canonizing – the tenets of May Fourth.


Abstract Large floods bringing significant sediments into the coastal oceans have not been observed in Antarctica. We report evidence of a large flood event depositing over 50 cm of sediment onto the nearshore benthic habitat at Salmon Bay, Antarctica, between 1990 and 2010. Besides direct observations of the sedimentation, the evidence involves a debris flow covering old tyre tracks from the early 1960s, as well as evidence of a considerable amount of sediment transported onto the Salmon Creek delta. We believe that the flood was sourced from the Salmon Glacier and possibly the smaller Blackwelder Glacier. Such floods will be more common in the future and it is important to better understand their ecological impacts with good monitoring programmes.


This paper provides empirical evidence that improved supplemental irrigation (ISI) can be justified on both environmental and economic grounds. Results of a stochastic frontier model which explicitly and simultaneously accounts for technical inefficiency and production risk applied to data collected from 513 wheat farms in the rainfed areas of Syria show that the typical adopter farmer obtained yield and productive efficiency gains of 6% and 7% respectively. A stochastic dominance criterion also showed that the adopter farmers got 10% and 13% reductions in risk of obtaining yield levels below 4 tons/ha and 3 tons/ha respectively. Given its adoption level of 22.3% in 2010, ISI led to the production of 52 thousand metric tons (6%), more wheat and conservation of 120 million cubic meters of water (10%). ISI has the potential to reduce total irrigation water use by upto 45% and for further increases in yield if accompanied with sprinklers and other improved agronomic practices, thereby enhancing food security and environmental sustainability in the country. An important policy implication of these findings is that wider dissemination of ISI along with other complementary agronomic practices in postwar Syria could be a viable option to be considered by national and international efforts for the restoration and rehabilitation of agriculture in the country.


Introduction: Additional cover after neourethra formation to decrease the fistula rate, has been described using the dartos, tunica, denuded skin and corpus spongiosum. The use of corpus spongiosum alone to cover the neourethra is infrequent. The objective of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of spongioplasty alone as an intervening layer in the prevention of urethral fistula following tubularized incised plate urethroplasty (TIPU). Materials and Methods: A prospective study was performed including 113 primary hypospadias cases undergoing TIPU with spongioplasty from June 2010 to March 2012. Correction of chordee was carried out by penile degloving alone in 5, mobilization of urethral plate with spongiosum in 22 and combination of both in 45 cases. Intra-operatively, spongiosum was taken to be poorly developed if it was thin and fibrous, moderate if good spongiosal tissue with good vascularization and well-developed if healthy robust spongiosum, which became bulkier than native spongiosum after tubularisation. Spongioplasty was done in a single layer after mobilization of spongiosum, starting just proximal to the native meatus and into the glans distally. Results: The mean age of the patients was 11.53 years. The type of hypospadias was distal, mid and proximal in 81, 12 and 20 cases respectively. Spongiosum was poorly developed in 13, moderate in 53 and well-developed in 47 cases. The mean hospital stay was 8-10 days and follow-up ranged from 6 months to 2 years. Urethral fistula was seen in six patients (11.3%) with moderate spongiosum (distal 1, mid 1 and proximal 4), and three (23.03%) with poorly developed spongiosum (one each in distal, mid and proximal) with an overall 7.96% fistula rate. None of the patients with well-developed spongiosum developed a fistula. Poorer spongiosum correlated with a greater number of complications (P = 0.011). Five out of thirteen cases with poor spongiosum (38.46%) had proximal hypospadias, i.e. more proximal was the hypospadias, poorer was the development of the spongiosum (P = 0.05). Meatal stenosis was seen in two patients (1.76%) with proximal hypospadias, one with moderate and the other with poorly developed spongiosum. More proximal was the hypospadias, greater were the number of complications (P = 0.0019). Conclusion: TIPU with spongioplasty reconstructs a near normal urethra with low complications. Better developed and thicker spongiosum results in lower incidence of fistula and meatal stenosis. More proximal hypospadias is associated with poorer spongiosum. We recommend spongioplasty to be incorporated as an essential step in all patients undergoing tubularized incised-plate repair for hypospadias.


Claudin-low breast cancer is a molecular type of breast cancer originally identified by gene expression profiling and reportedly associated with poor survival. Claudin-low tumors have been recognised to preferentially display a triple-negative phenotype, however only a minority of triple-negative breast cancers are claudin-low. We sought to identify an immunohistochemical profile for claudin-low tumors that could facilitate their identification in formalin fixed paraffin embedded tumor material. First, an in silico collection of ~1600 human breast cancer expression profiles was assembled and all claudin-low tumors identified. Second, genes differentially expressed between claudin-low tumors and all other molecular subtypes of breast cancer were identified. Third, a number of these top differentially expressed genes were tested using immunohistochemistry for expression in a diverse panel of breast cancer cell lines to determine their specificity for claudin-low tumors. Finally, the immunohistochemical panel found to be most characteristic of claudin-low tumors was examined in a cohort of 942 formalin fixed paraffin embedded human breast cancers with >10 years clinical follow-up to evaluate the clinico-pathologic and survival characteristics of this tumor subtype. Using this approach we determined that claudin-low breast cancer is typically negative for ER, PR, HER2, claudin 3, claudin 4, claudin 7 and E-cadherin. Claudin-low tumors identified with this immunohistochemical panel, were associated with young age of onset, higher tumor grade, larger tumor size, extensive lymphocytic infiltrate and a circumscribed tumor margin. Patients with claudin-low tumors had a worse overall survival when compared to patients with luminal A type breast cancer. Interestingly, claudin-low tumors were associated with a low local recurrence rate following breast conserving therapy. In conclusion, a limited panel of antibodies can facilitate the identification of claudin-low tumors. Furthermore, claudin-low tumors identified in this manner display similar clinical, pathologic and survival characteristics to claudin-low tumors identified from fresh frozen tumor material using gene expression profiling.


We have previously proposed Autonomous Disks System as a dependable and high-performance networked parallel storage system. The system has function of load balancing by online horizontal data migration. However, the migration causes a reduction of system availability by insensitively utilizing of system resources for massive data transfers. Thus we have also proposed Replica-assisted Migration, which solve the problem by using replica data for data redundancy. In this paper we show the efficiency of this method with experimental results on simulation program, comparing to speed adjusting method which is widely used for service-aware data migration.


As the resort to import substitution as a tool of economic development has spread, it has generated an increasing volume of critical literature. Of the numerous articles that have appeared, one in The Pakistan Development Review, by Ronald Soligo and Joseph J. Stem is among the more suggestive and venturesome [1, pp. 249-2701. The authors undertake to examine the effects of past protection in Pakistan on the efficiency of investment allocation and so to determine whether or not protection has saddled the country with highly uneconomic industries. Both their methodology and their results are interesting. With respect to the latter, however, and especially with respect to their interpretation, I have some doubts which it is the purpose of this paper to explore.


The 2015 Paris Accord is meant to control our planet's rising temperature. But it may be doing the opposite in gradually, rather than immediately reducing CO2 emissions. The Accord effectively tells dirty-energy producers to "use it or lose it." This may be accelerating their extraction and burning of fossil fuels and, thereby, be permanently raising temperatures. Our paper uses a simple OLG model to illustrate this long-noted Green Paradox. Its framework treats climate damage as a negative externality imposed by today's generations on tomorrow's – an externality that is, in part, irreversible and can tip the climate to permanently higher temperatures. In our model, delaying abatement can lead to larger changes in climate than doing nothing, reducing welfare for all generations. In contrast, immediate policy action can raise welfare for all generations. Finally we question the standard use of infinitely-lived, single-agent models, which assume, unrealistically, intergenerational altruism in determining optimal abatement policy. Their prescriptions can differ, potentially dramatically, from those needed to correct the negative climate externality today's generations are imposing on tomorrow's.


This paper reviews (a) what has been reported concerning the diets of bodybuilders and (b) the evidence for differences in their nutrient requirements. The literature shows that bodybuilders tend to consume a high energy/high protein diet with moderate fat and carbohydrate during training when their goal is to increase lean body mass. In preparing for competition, when the goal is to reduce body fat, bodybuilders have reported consuming a reduced energy diet with very low fat and high protein. Most of the studies reported that carbohydrate intake was modest, although carbohydrate loading a few days before a contest was mentioned. Some research has identified unique nutrient needs for bodybuilders, including an increase in dietary energy and protein. Consumption of carbohydrate before and after a workout may enhance the workout as well as the recovery afterward. It is recommended that bodybuilders regularly consume a high energy diet with protein in the 1.2 to 2.0 g.kg−1 range, with approximately 60% of energy as carbohydrate. A similar diet but with moderately restricted energy should be consumed when preparing for a competition to minimize reduction in lean body mass and muscle performance.


My dissertation research aims to develop a comprehensive account for the current state of online higher education beyond the common social and educational expectations about the adoption of online education. Online education, according to dominant discourses in higher education, is commonly expected to (a) enhance educational accessibility to university education and (b) improve the quality of university instruction. And, this expectation further produces an imperative for its rapid adoption across all higher education institutions. However, my research fundamentally challenges these two rhetorical discourses, by providing an in-depth description of the disjunction between such discourses and the realities of praxis. Drawing on key concepts from Michel Foucault and Mikhail Bakhtin, I trace the historical development of these two discourses as two institutional principles of openness and innovation in an open university. The complex relationships between the institutional discourses and peoples' practices, mediated by multiple factors are carefully addressed. My analysis reveals that multiple understandings of openness and innovation co-exist within the university, and members take different pedagogical approaches to online education according to their own understanding of those two principles. As a result, openness and innovation often conflict with each other at the operational level, and the conflict is also visible within the ongoing struggles between instructors and learning designers, with regard to the adoption of a particular form of online pedagogical practices. In summary, my findings demonstrate how the adoption of online education may introduce new problems and potentially oppressive power relationships among stakeholders in higher education, unlike the rhetorical claims that simply promote online education as a revolutionary solution for diverse social and educational problems. This disjunction continues to increase and is intensified by the existing instructional theory-practice gap in the academic field of online higher education. I urge that researchers and educators in online higher education as a united group, to make a collective effort to better understand and resolve the ongoing conflicts among the stakeholders and ultimately better serve our online students.


We analyse the radial growth of silver fir (Abies alba Mill.) in the Vosges mountain in north-eastern France in relation to soil, climate and interspecific competition factors and to check the temporal stability of their effects during the 20th century. Data were collected from 143 plots regularly distributed over three altitude ranges (from 330 to 1100 m), three humus forms (moder to mull) and seven types of stands, including a pure stand of silver fir and six mixed stands containing this species. For each plot, an index of mean radial growth of silver fir was calculated, independent of tree age and calendar year of ring formation. Relationships between radial growth and ecological factors were analysed using linear mixed-effects models. Radial growth of silver fir is low in the presence of Picea abies or of a high density of other dominant trees. Low aluminium concentration and good nitrogen supply, measured by the soil C:N ratio, are correlated with high radial growth. Water reserves, related to available water storage capacity and to lateral run-off, are also correlated with high radial growth. Analysis of environmental effects during the 20th century showed that growth was strongly correlated with nitrogen supply at the start of the century, and with aluminium toxicity and climate at the end of the century. The radial growth of trees located on sites with low nitrogen supply was lower before 1970 than that of trees located on nitrogen-rich soils. At the end of the century, radial growth of silver fir was the same for all levels of nitrogen nutrition. Our results indicate that nitrogen supply was a limiting factor for the mean radial growth of silver fir before the 1970s. Eutrophication during the 20th century may then have eliminated limitation by nitrogen.


Strong and weak (1, 3) homotopies are equivalence relations on knot projections, defined by the first flat Reidemeister move and each of two different types of the third flat Reidemeister moves. In this paper, we introduce the cross chord number that is the minimal number of double points of chords of a chord diagram. Cross chord numbers induce a strong (1, 3) invariant. We show that Hanaki's trivializing number is a weak (1, 3) invariant. We give a complete classification of knot projections having trivializing number two up to the first flat Reidemeister moves using cross chord numbers and the positive resolutions of double points. Two knot projections with trivializing number two are both weak (1, 3) homotopy equivalent and strong (1, 3) homotopy equivalent if and only if they can be related by only the first flat Reidemeister moves. Finally, we determine the strong (1, 3) homotopy equivalence class containing the trivial knot projection and other classes of knot projections.


Abstract Paper-based clinical outcome data collection methods have practical limitations when used in clinical settings, as the data are often not summarized in time to facilitate patient–physician communications and therefore cannot be used in clinical decision making. This study aimed to develop a computerized clinical outcome assessment tool (COAT) and evaluate its acceptability, feasibility, and potential clinical applications during clinical encounters for patients with head and neck cancer (HNC). The traditional Chinese (TChi) character version of the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Head and Neck (FACT-H&N) questionnaire was first transcribed and implemented into a touch-screen computerized administration and reporting system (COAT-HNC for short). Each HNC patient was invited to complete the COAT-HNC during their scheduled clinic visits as part of their clinical care. Upon completion, a structured summary report was generated, and subsequently used for treatment evaluation and planning. A cohort of 385 HNC patients were enrolled. Each scale of the computerized TChi FACT-H&N questionnaire demonstrated acceptable internal consistency, with Cronbach coefficient alpha ranging from 0.74 to 0.90. The touch-screen-based and audio-capable COAT-HNC was reported to be easy to use. Patients and physicians were able to utilize the summary report during their clinical encounters to discuss treatment progress and to plan care. It is practically feasible to design, develop, and implement the COAT-HNC system in routine HNC care. The COAT-HNC has the potential to become a valuable tool for data collection and management of clinical outcomes, and appears useful for HNC patients. However, larger studies to demonstrate its clinical usefulness are still needed.


Miniaturized, portable sensing systems for medical and environmental diagnostics and monitoring are an excellent application area for microresonator sensors. Polymer microresonators are attractive components for chip scale integrated sensing because they can be integrated in a planar format using standard semiconductor manufacturing technologies. Vertically coupled microresonators, where the waveguides lie below or above the microresonator, can be fabricated using standard photolithography, enabling low cost integrated sensor systems. Microresonators can be surface customized for discrimination in, for example, chemical sensing applications, or the surface can be functionalized for biological sensing applications. To create chip scale integrated sensing systems, microresonators can be integrated with planar optical system components, such as polymer waveguides and thin film photodetectors, onto silicon using heterogeneous integration. Heterogeneous integration can also be used to integrate optical sources with sensors onto host substrates such as silicon.


The mobility of the nodes in a Mobile Ad-Hoc Network (MANET) is a crucial factor in the performance studies of communication protocols for these kind of networks. For this reason, researchers usually use a randomized node movement model, such as the Random Way-Point Model [6], in the process of designing or analyzing the behavior of their protocols. Since movement is not very predictable in these scenarios, they serve as a worst case assumption of node mobility concerning communication protocol performance in the sense that a positive correlation between performance in an RWP scenario and an arbitrary scenario exists. Additionally, RWP is an analytically well-understood mobility scheme and the movements can be generated very easily with tools complementary to most of the common network simulators. Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs) are one type of MANETs that is recently attracting the attention of both industry and academia. VANETs are characterized by theusuallystreetbound scenarios due to the special kind of their nodes, i.e., vehicles. Recent research [3] though, shows that protocol performance in VANETs is quite different from performance in RWP scenarios and specializing protocols in these scenarios can be both challenging but also beneficial. In this work, we present a set of real scenarios of one of the common situations in vehicular environments, i.e., highways. Additionally, an analysis from a connectivity perspective has been performed intending to support the design and/or study of communication protocols tailored to this specific environments. Starting from reality-audited highway movement data generated for the FleetNet project [5], we have created a set of node movement traces especially for the use with network simulators like ns-2 [7]. In addition, we provide a tool, called HWGui, for the visualization and computation of the set of statistics dealing (a) with the movements itself and (b) with the communication consequences assuming a Unit Disk Graph [2] radio connectivity model. A screen shot of HWGui can be found in Figure 1 showing a highway scenario with nodes moving from left to right. The yellow lines depicts the being in each others range probability of two cars. For further information on the software and for downloading the movement traces and the software, please refer to [1, 4]. The next section will briefly outline statistical examples.