The seismic behavior of the steel connection equipped with the lead extrusion damper (LED) is examined through the experimental and analytical studies. The LED implemented has spherical type bulge and does not consist any lubricant layer. The experimental study is performed in Structural and Earthquake Engineering Laboratory of Istanbul Technical University (STEELAB). In the experimental part, force-displacement relations of the connections with and without LED are achieved for the reversal displacement cycles. The measures of the dissipated energy, the equivalent damping ratio and the effective stiffness are obtained from the experimental study and compared for the connections. The total energy dissipated by the connection with the LED is approximately 175% greater than the total energy dissipated by the bare connection. In the analytical part of the study, nonlinear dynamic time history analyses are performed for the selected earthquakes and mass condition using the analytical models for the connections with and without LED. The maximum top displacement decreases approximately 50% for the connection equipped with the LED respect to the bare connection for the considered earthquakes. The maximum value of restoring force for the connection equipped with LED is approximately 25% greater than the bare connection for the accomplished analyses. Finally, the LED responses obtained in the nonlinear time history analyses are compared with the isolated LED test results.


: The formation of chronic intracranial hematomas in children is discussed from the standpoint of the pathogenesis of disturbed course of the wound process. Special study of blood coagulation system in 10 unselected children with chronic intracranial hematoma showed that disorders of quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the factors of the blood coagulation system underlie this process. The role of hemorrhagic diathesis in the pathogenesis of chronic intracranial hematomas in children is emphasized.


The effects of support policies on technical efficiency are not clear and are very complex because the results may be either positive or negative. The effects can be positive if the money received will serve as an incentive to innovate or to switch to new technologies or can have a negative effect if the money received increase the income of the farms and as a result prefer to have more leisure time. Given the theoretical uncertainty of the impact of supporting policies on efficiency, productivity and added value, the aim of this paper is to address this issue empirically. This paper contributes to the literature for the case of Kosovo by fulfilling the following objectives (i) to measure technical efficiency of farms in Kosovo and (ii) to identify the effect of subsidies by employing a stochastic output distance function and an inefficiency effect model as the one proposed by Battese and Coelli (1995). Parametric stochastic frontier approach was employed to estimate technical efficiency and to determine the effect of exogenous variables on technical efficiency through one-step approach. The share of total subsidies to total output (%) was used as proxy for policy variable and a set of farm characteristics as exogenous variables. We used FADN of Kosovo data provided by MAFRED for 2014. The results suggest that on average a farm in Kosovo produced 15.7% of the maximum output, while the rest of the potential output was lost due to technical inefficiency. Subsidies had negative effect on technical efficiency, however insignificant.


His analytical model is carried out based on the one-dimensional fluid transient theory. In view of the micro-compression of the fluid can change its momentum in the transient process, an improved fluid dynamic model of pipeline is proposed. The characteristic method and the finite difference method are adopted for this simulation. In this paper, The fluid transients of the pipes after servo valve shut down are analyzed. The correctness of the simulation is approved by the comparison of calculation data with experiment data .The results showed that these models give more reasonable descriptions for water hammer and flow oscillation during servo valve starting process and could provide guidance for designs and experiments of the hydraulic pipe system


: A total of 550 workers at a chemical plant have been examined for symptoms of borderline neuromental disturbances. The ratio was as follows: 26.8%, normal subjects; 33.7%, predisease state; 10.3%, neurotic reactions; 1.8%, neuroses; 22.7%, neurosis-like states; 4.7%, chronic alcoholism. A normal person presents 2.7 symptoms, a neurotic one, 29.3. The rate of somatic diseases per subject is 1.6 and 3.6 respectively. Depressive and neurotic reactions in the form of neurocirculatory asthenia are quite frequent, being predominant in individuals with a shorter length of service, and are associated with financial and household difficulties and dissatisfaction with the present job.


Several studies dealing with independent component analysis (ICA)-based brain-computer interface (BCI) systems have been reported. Most of them have only explored a limited number of ICA methods, mainly FastICA and INFOMAX. The aim of this article is to help the BCI community researchers, especially those who are not familiar with ICA techniques, to choose an appropriate ICA method. For this purpose, the concept of ICA is reviewed and different measures of statistical independence are reported. Then, the application of these measures is illustrated through a brief description of the widely used algorithms in the ICA community, namely SOBI, COM2, JADE, ICAR, FastICA, and INFOMAX. The implementation of these techniques in the BCI field is also explained. Finally, a comparative study of these algorithms, conducted on simulated electroencephalography (EEG) data, shows that an appropriate selection of an ICA algorithm may significantly improve the capabilities of BCI systems.


This contribution is a reaction to the striking fact that the political aspect of CSR has remained largely hidden in most of the scientific and practice-oriented management literature. This work intends to illuminate the political dimension of CSR in that the changing stance of the European Commission toward CSR between 2001 and 2006 is analyzed and interpreted as a result of political processes within an "issue arena". For this case study written documents from the most important actors are used (EU Commission, EU Parliament, the Council, advocacy groups and lobbies for industry and civil society CSR platforms) as well as interviews with high ranking representatives of these institutions (conducted in the spring of 2008).


The tensile strength of unidirectional carbon fiber reinforced plastics under a high strain rate was experimentally characterized. A high-strain-rate test was performed using the tension-type split Hopkinson bar technique with a special fixture for the impact tensile specimen. In order to minimize the extension-shear coupling effect, an oblique tab technique was applied. The experimental results demonstrated that the tensile strength increase with strain rate. The strain rate effect of material principal directions on tensile strength are also investigated by the use of the rosette analysis and the strain transformation equations. It is found that the shear strain rate produces the more significant contribution to strain rate effect on dynamic tensile strength. The experimental results were compared with the tensile strength predicted based on the Hashin-Rotem failure criterion. The results imply that the application limit of this failure criterion exists for the prediction of the tensile strength under the dynamic condition. The fracture behavior translation from static to dynamic must be incorporated for more accurate prediction.


The freshwater blenny, Salaria fluviatilis, and the marine peacock blenny, S. pavo, are closely related and can survive in both freshwater and seawater. Salaria fluviatilis is widespread in rivers and lakes in the vicinity of the Mediterranean basin, including Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), and S. pavo is distributed in rocky parts of the Mediterranean coast. This study investigated the effect of salinity acclimation on routine activity level. Fish were acclimated for three months in 0%, 40%, and 100% seawater mixed with 100%, 60%, and 0% dechlorinated tap water (<2, 14.4, and 36 ppt sea salt, respectively). The fish were then placed in aquaria equipped with IR beam projectors and detectors set up to count their activity level in the different salinities under a photoperiod of 14:10 L:D. S. pavo demonstrated a simple daily rhythm of activity, being active during the light phase, whereas S. fluviatilis was also active in the light phase, but demonstrated a bimodal activity pattern. In both species, activity decreased during the acclimation period. The bimodal daily activity pattern of S. fluviatilis might be a result of the daily wind regime on Lake Kinneret in summer (May–October). The activity reduction in lower or higher salinities (in relation to natural habitat) is suggested to be a tertiary stress response.


BACKGROUND
Both heparin and enoxaparin are effective for the prevention of venous thromboembolism (VTE) in medical patients. On the basis of price, heparin appears preferable because it is less expensive. However, choosing enoxaparin may have greater cost utility when the outcomes of heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT) and heparin-induced thrombocytopenia with thrombosis (HITT) are considered.

OBJECTIVE
To determine the cost utility of substituting enoxaparin for heparin from payer and institutional perspectives.

DESIGN
A decision analysis model was used. Cost data were based on Medicare reimbursement and the medication and laboratory costs for a multi-institutional healthcare system. Quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) saved by preventing HIT/HITT through the use of enoxaparin were based on published data. Costs are expressed on a per-day basis, and the incremental cost of enoxaparin over that of heparin was used in the calculation of cost/QALY. A sensitivity analysis also was performed.

SETTING
Inpatient medicine.

PATIENTS
All medical patients for whom VTE prophylaxis was appropriate.

INTERVENTIONS
Substitution of enoxaparin for heparin.

MEASUREMENT
Cost/QALY.

RESULTS
From a payer perspective, using enoxaparin resulted in a decrease in cost of 28.61 dollars over that of heparin and saved 0.00629 QALYs in the base case, resulting in a savings of 4550.17 dollars/QALY. The sensitivity analysis showed this finding of decreased cost and increased effectiveness to be consistent. From an institutional perspective, the use of heparin generally appeared less costly but was dependent on medication price, length of stay required, and bed utilization.

CONCLUSIONS
From a payer and, by extrapolation, a societal perspective, cost-utility analysis supports the use of enoxaparin in place of heparin for the prevention of VTE in medical inpatients. From an institutional perspective, the decision is more complicated, but in most cases, the use of enoxaparin also is supported.


Background. Jordanian women's knowledge, expectations and informed choice about the second trimester ultrasoundhave not been reported previously. To ensure that Jordanian women have an informed choice, it is essential to obtaininformation relating to their understanding and expectations of consenting to these routine procedures in pregnancy.Aim. To explore women's knowledge and expectations of second trimester ultrasound, and to explore whether or notwomen received and retained sufficient information about the purpose, capability, limitations and drawbacks of secondtrimester ultrasound screening in terms of meeting the requirement of informed choice.Method. A cross-sectional survey was used to collect data through self-report questionnaires from women who attendedthe antenatal clinic at King Abdullah University Teaching Hospital in Jordan. The women's consent was obtained.Findings. Findings from open-ended questions related to informed choice indicated that for the majority of women,their understanding about the diagnostic abilities, technical limitations and drawbacks of the second ultrasound scandid not meet the requirement of informed choice. A total of 75% of women thought ultrasound screening could detectblood disorders, while 82% thought that a normal ultrasound scan meant that their baby would be born without anydefects. Only 14.3% considered screening for birth defects as the reason for their 18-20 week scheduled ultrasound,and 11% were aware of fetal problems that could go undetected by ultrasound screening. This study proposes the development of a national standard for evidence-based information to be provided for women about the proposed'routine anomaly scan'


This paper explores international productivity patterns in agriculture. We test whether countries higher productivity growth has been experienced by countries that were initially further from the technological frontier. Based on a panel of 84 countries at various levels of development, we find support for convergence among OECD countries but divergence in our sample at large over the period 1960-2010. We then test whether technological catch-up is conditional on absorptive capacities and domestic investments in R&D. While agricultural research intensity has a significant effect on labor productivity growth, the size of this effect decreases the further the country is from the frontier. We calculate a threshold level for the effectiveness of research intensity: increased R&D contributes to catching up to the frontier for those countries with a distance to the frontier less than 22. We also test for additional factors affecting productivity growth, and find that secondary education plays a strong role in less developed countries, while trade openness appears to have had a positive effect on productivity in middle income countries. On the other hand, there is little evidence of much effect, either positive or negative from IPR protection. Of perhaps greater interest is the apparent impact of economic growth outside of agriculture in driving agricultural productivity improvements.


In this paper, multiphase dc-dc converters are proposed for high-voltage and high-power applications. A generalized converter is configured such that the boost-half-bridge (BHB) cells and voltage doublers are connected in parallel or in series to increase the output voltage and/or the output power. In addition to reduced device voltage and current ratings by the connection, the proposed converter has the following features: high-step-up voltage gain with significantly reduced transformer turn ratio, low-input current ripple due to interleaving effect, zero-voltage switching turn-ON of switches and zero-current switching turn-OFF of diodes, no additional clamping and start-up circuits required, high-component availability and easy thermal distribution due to the use of multiple small components, and flexibility in device selection resulting in optimized design. A design guideline of determining the optimum circuit configuration for given output voltage and power level is presented. Experimental results are also provided to validate the proposed concept.


This book steers schools towards a deeper understanding of the nature of their communities as a microcosm of Australian multicultural society. It aims to develop an understanding of diversity both within the boundaries of the school, and beyond, in the broader community. This will facilitate the engagement of parents, families, and the broader community, as well as students, teachers and staff. Though developed for Victorian curriculum frameworks, many will find the approach and resources useful with their own teaching and learning environments. Part 1, Model for Best Practice, presents a framework for effecting positive, whole-of-school change in culturally diverse schools. To enable a practical implementation of the whole-school approach, Part 2 incorporates two Teaching and Learning Modules with eight separate units. Each unit explores a different topic, ranging from identity issues to cultural media stereotypes and cultural and ethnic tensions. The modules aim to broaden student awareness of cultural diversity and develop a more informed understanding of Australia as a culturally diverse nation. The teaching modules also develop students' skills in investigation, exploration and independent research. Part 3, Parent Modules, provides a practical framework to engage all parents in the school, particularly those who are new to Australia and may be grappling with a wide range of complex cultural imperatives and understandings. The parent modules provide strategies to bridge some of these gaps and encourage engagement and open communication among parents, educators and school administration.


Many technology companies have implemented what is called the Genius Hour: employees have time, within working hours, where they can devote themselves to projects of their own interest. In this context, this project has been adapted by A.J. Juliani to the classrooms as an inquiry learning instructional technique and a project-based learning. To the best of our knowledge there is no report in the literature about Genius Hour approach in Brazil, a country with its own educational challenges and issues. In this case report, we aim at presenting an experience report about the Genius Hour Project in Brazil, with 5th graders, 10-year-old students. Children define the subjects of their projects following an awareness-raising work based on the question, "How can I use a passion of my life to answer a problem or question that I have"? Students receive weekly guidance from a PhD. teacher with background on health, mathematics, music, pedagogy and engineering. The family gets involved in the process. Other school professionals are involved (eg. computer science, arts) are invited to support the students. Since 2018, we have already accomplished a total of 142 projects. This pedagogic approach brings to school the four pillars of 21st century education (learning to know, learning to live together, learning to do, and learning to be), looking for an entrepreneurial education. Students could develop important characteristics to be a successful entrepreneur. Besides, the school created a student-centered environment, developing critical thinking, social learning and opportunities to boost individual strengths.


Miles Davis asserts in his autobiography, that "a great artist needs to be able to stretch" [Davis, Troup, 1990]. While I may not a great artist, I aspire to make art with my music, and in my own musical journey I have been interested in trying out new ideas. Jazz musicians, because of their various skills (and in particular, in the art of improvisation) find themselves straddling musical boundaries and genres, just to pay the rent. In my own projects however, this musical adroitness was born just as much out of artistic curiosity as it was necessity, leading me to compose and perform in a variety of contexts and styles for a broad range of instrumentation. These contexts and styles include: duos for saxophone and piano accordion; Bach sonatas with string ensembles; improvising live dance music with DJs; organ trios; in electronica contexts; art and poetry collaborations. The need for creativity has expressed itself in all of my work, to varying degrees. On reflection, it's the need to create something new and fresh out of work and ideas that are already explored to some extent. This desire is consistent with the jazz legacy I have inherited. In much the way Louis Armstrong began transforming popular songs into jazz vehicles, Charles Mingus took ideas from older African American musical traditions and transformed them to offer a fresh perspective on those traditions, and Miles Davis borrowed ideas from rock and soul music to pioneer new directions in jazz during the 1960s and 1970s, I too am looking for new avenues of expression for jazz musicians.


One of the aims of medical education is teaching the students not only theoretical knowledge but also to equip them with the necessary practical skills. In Germany, a revision of the federal law on medical education in 2002 had exactly this aim. In the following years, all around Germany, medical programs tried to reflect this change in paradigm and in 2005, a new model of teaching medicine was introduced at the Hannover Medical School. The topic of medical informatics was integrated in the third year of the model curriculum. Although medical informatics itself plays an important role in medical care, it soon became apparent that the opinion of students does not reflect this importance, rather, they do not really understand why they have to deal with this subject at all or they are under various misconceptions concerning the role of medical informatics in medicine. Apparently, the conventional ways that had been in use in the past to teach medical informatics to medical students left too many questions unanswered. To alleviate this situation, we utilized the feedback given by the students ‐ gathered in evaluations, but also voiced in live discussions as well as anonymous forums ‐ to improve the way medical informatics is taught. In this paper, we first present a short appraisal of the situation, backed by the information gathered from the students, and then move on to give a more detailed view on the methods used to better convey the benefits of medical informatics in our classes. The new approach of teaching is also evaluated using standardized methods and the results are presented.


Abstract The River Rouge, which flows through Michigan into the Great Lakes at Detroit, has been a contested space, from the Mound Builders c. 1100 AD to the present. The river's changing uses and meanings provide a microcosm of North American history, including Native Americans, French fur traders, the British, American settlers, small-scale industries, and Henry Ford's largest factory. Narratives treat the river as a landscape, as a highway, as a natural resource, as raw material, as a minor detail, or as a threatened environment. The river has been part of a romantic view of pre-history, a heroic story of colonial conquest, a tale of democratic expansion into new land, an exemplary second creation in which unfinished nature is transformed into the world's largest factory, a narrative of class warfare between workers and capitalists, a tale of the triumph of democracy over National Socialism in World War II, a tragic story of the exploitation of nature, and a recovery narrative in which the river is rescued from pollution and misuse.


Glass electrode measurements of the pH value of the sap of Nitella show that cresyl blue in form of free base penetrates the vacuoles and raises pH value of the sap to about the same degree as the free base of the dye added to the sap in vitro, while the dye salt dissolved in the sap does not alter its pH value. It is proved conclusively that the increase in the pH value of the sap is due only to the presence of the dye and not to some other alkaline substance. Spectrophotometric measurements show that the dye which penetrates the vacuole is chiefly cresyl blue. When the protoplasm is squeezed into the sap, the pH value of the sap is higher than that of the pure sap. Such a mixture behaves very much like the sap in respect to the dye.


After many years of wandering in England and abroad, in November 1799 Wordsworth returned to his native Lake District on a "picturesque tour." guiding his southern friend Coleridge. That tour made clear to Wordsworth that tourists-and worse, tourists who returned to settle in the Lake District-were damaging the landscape and the people. When he himself took up residence in Grasmere the following month, Wordsworth9s anxiety about his tourist experiences found expression in several poems in which he eventually defined his poetic identity by weighing the tourist against the native son. Somehow the poet born in Cockermouth and educated in Hawkshead had to create a fictive self who had returned (through birthright and not because he happened to see an empty house while on tour) to a home at Grasmere. In "The Brothers," "Hartleap Well," Home at Grasmere, and several Inscriptions and Poems on the Naming of Places, Wordsworth constructed that persona-and built a secure and permanent habitation for his mind. Only when Wordsworth had in his own imagination shed the stigman of intruder and outsider, a "tourist" to Grasmere and the Lake District, coul he tap the spring of inspiration that produced the poetry of his great decade.


The surgery of arteriosclerosis has as one of its major difficulties the technical problem of handling blood vessels which are diseased. Intimal thickening, atherosclerotic plaques, and sometimes calcification involve vessels that must be incised, sutured, and clamped. Most vascular surgeons would agree that one of the most satisfactory vascular clamps is the surgeon's own thumb and index finger. The vessel may be held with just exactly the right amount of pressure to occlude blood flow with a minimum of damage to the vessel. This well-cushioned clamp is as gentle as possible to the diseased wall, compressing it in its softer portions and yet allowing "give" to the more rigid areas which might otherwise crack or tear. This clamp has, of course, obvious limitations. The clamp illustrated herein is the result of an effort to duplicate the most pertinent advantages of the surgeon's own fingers. Its essential features are: 1. The


With the rapid development of high resolution remote sensing for earth observation technology, satellite imagery is widely used in the fields of resource investigation, environment protection, and agricultural research. Image mosaicking is an important part of satellite imagery production. However, the existence of clouds leads to lots of disadvantages for automatic image mosaicking, mainly in two aspects: 1) Image blurring may be caused during the process of image dodging, 2) Cloudy areas may be passed through by automatically generated seamlines. To address these problems, an automatic mosaicking method is proposed for cloudy satellite imagery in this paper. Firstly, modified Otsu thresholding and morphological processing are employed to extract cloudy areas and obtain the percentage of cloud cover. Then, cloud detection results are used to optimize the process of dodging and mosaicking. Thus, the mosaic image can be combined with more clear-sky areas instead of cloudy areas. Besides, clear-sky areas will be clear and distortionless. The Chinese GF-1 wide-field-of-view orthoimages are employed as experimental data. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated in four aspects: the effect of cloud detection, the sharpness of clear-sky areas, the rationality of seamlines and efficiency. The evaluation results demonstrated that the mosaic image obtained by our method has fewer clouds, better internal color consistency and better visual clarity compared with that obtained by traditional method. The time consumed by the proposed method for 17 scenes of GF-1 orthoimages is within 4 hours on a desktop computer. The efficiency can meet the general production requirements for massive satellite imagery.


Telemedicine and related healthcare technologies aim to provide efficient healthcare to improve the well being of patients and bring medical expertise at a lower cost to people who are geographically separated. This field has evolved over the past thirty years and today most telemedicine applications still use expensive leased telecommunication circuits to provide secured reliable connections. With the ubiquity of the Internet, it is now possible to deliver healthcare through Internet-based telemedicine applications to a wider population. However, the unreliable connection properties of packet-based systems and their vulnerability to various impairments that can occur at the physical, network, and application levels hamper the quality of Internet-based telemedicine applications. This research developed a taxonomy that identifies several key telemedicine dimensions to help patients, providers and program administrators understand the effort. The next phases of the study will create new objective/subjective multimedia quality models exclusively for telemedicine over the Internet using an experimental design over an emulated testbed. These models will be developed for telediagnosis in ophthalmology and mental health with extensive experiments using real-world telemedicine multimedia sessions obtained from the Regenstrief Institute for Health Care and VA. Finally, an intelligent videoconferencing software will be developed with real-time quality feedback functionality based on the quality models developed during this study. This new artifact will help practitioners in the field to pursue telemedicine confidently with the knowledge of real-time quality conditions under which they operate.


The aim of this study was to determine the effect of educational concerts, designed with different models, on musical knowledge levels of 4th grade primary school students, their attitudes towards music lessons and their vocational choices. The study followed a mixed-method approach using a pre-test/post-test design and a quasi-experimental study model, including two test groups and a control group. The participants were 769 4th grade primary school students (Test I: 326, Test II: 235 and Control: 208). The Musical Knowledge Test, the Attitudes Towards Music Lesson Scale, the Vocational Preference Form and an evaluation form were used as data collection tools. The results showed that students who watched live concerts exhibited the highest positive effect on interest in music and desire to become musicians. Nevertheless, students who watched concerts from recordings and took an informative lesson from the author also demonstrated positive effects. It was concluded that the effect of watching a live concert was strong on the students. However, a lasting effect cannot be attained without ensuring sustainability through repetitive educational concerts.


In this paper presents the conclusions of machinability tests on a new stainless steel X4Cr17Ni8TiN, which applicated in food processing industry, and describes important concurrent parameters for the cutting zone during the process of finish drilling. This paper presents the results of experiments that concerned the verification of temperature fields in tool and the machined surface by drilling of stainless steels X4Cr17Ni8TiN. The content of this paper also focuses on the analysis of selected domains through basic indicators of steel machinability: cutting edge tool life, surface roughness, and wear mechanisms. The machinability of stainless steels is examined based on the cutting tests. The effect of cutting speed are analysed by tool wear mechanisms, and temperature tool. Based on the cutting tests, cutting speeds of 40 to 80 m/min, feed rate of 0.04 to 0.1 mm per rev.and solid a new design of screw drill from sintered carbide with hydraulic holder. Diameter of screw drill is 5.5 mm. Tool wear criterion of VBK value 0.12 mm. Wear mechanisms analysed by Semi Electron Microscopy (SEM).


We present an object detector coupled with pose estimation directly in a single compact and simple model, where the detector shares extracted image features with the pose estimator. The output of the classification of each candidate window consists of both object score and likelihood map of poses. This extension introduces negligible overhead during detection so that the detector is still capable of real time operation. We evaluated the proposed approach on the problem of vehicle detection. We used existing datasets with viewpoint/pose annotation (WCVP, 3D objects, KITTI). Besides that, we collected a new traffic surveillance dataset COD20k which fills certain gaps of the existing datasets and we make it public. The experimental results show that the proposed approach is comparable with state-of-the-art approaches in terms of accuracy, but it is considerably faster - easily operating in real time (Matlab with C++ code). The source codes and the collected COD20k dataset are made public along with the paper.


Field trials were conducted between 2008/09 and 2009/10 seasons to evaluate four new cowpea lines, selected in preliminary studies, for yield, adaptation and resistance to the parasitic weed Alectra vogelii in Malawi. The design was randomised complete block design with 4 replicates at research stations and 5 at on-farm sites. For on-farm, villages were the sites and each farmer hosted one replicate. The trial sites were Lisasadzi, Mngwangwa, Bunda College, Chitedze Research Station, Rivirivi and Mpokwa in 2008/09 season and in 2009/10 the sites at Chitedze and Mpokwa were replaced by Mkwinda and Chitala Research Station. Four promising cowpea lines, IT98K-503-1, IT97K-825-15, IT99K-7-21-2-2-1 and IT99K-494-6, all originally from IITA and selected for resistance to parasitic weed Alectra vogelii in screen house studies, were compared with released varieties Sudan 1, IT82E-16 and a farmers local entry. The following parameters were evaluated: cowpea grain yield, plants/m2, seeds/pod, seed weight (g/100 seeds), days to mid-flower, days to maturity, disease scores (scale 1 [clean] – 9 [most severe]) and A. vogelii emergence (plants/m2). The line IT99K-494-6 was found to have comparable or better agronomic traits as compared to control varieties and was eventually released in Malawi in January 2011. The line which is medium maturing has brown grain texture with yield potential of 1-2.0 t/ha. Such a resistant variety is important in A. vogelii hot spots to reduce build up in soil seed bank and a viable option for farmers to rotate with cowpeas in order to manage other pests such as Striga asiatica, an important parasitic weed, or improve soil fertility through the nitrogen fixation of cowpeas.

 Key words: Legumes, witchweeds, parasitic weeds, cowpea, Alectra vogelii, Vigna unguiculata.


Background Road crashes are regarded as an important cause of mortality due to the increasing number of vehicles, changes in lifestyle and the risk behaviours among general population. Aims/Objectives/Purpose This study aims to understand anatomical injury severity for fatal road crashes. Methods Retrospective analysis of medical autopsies was conducted between April 2010 and March 2011 for six governmental hospitals within Klang Valley, Malaysia. Results/Outcomes Out of 898 autopsies conducted, 70% of victims sustained at least 1 injury to the head and followed by thorax by 44%. Intracranial injury accounts for 52% of head injury and 31% with skull fracture. 94% of intracranial injury involved the cerebrum. On the other hand, 22% of victims sustained injuries to more than 3 different body regions. 45.2% of patients who died in hospital required ICU admission. The mean duration of stay in ICU for patients who died in hospital was 7–8 days. Occupants of motorized two wheelers (62.4%), passenger vehicle occupants (15.7%) and pedestrians (10%) were the common victims of fatal road crashes. Significance/Contribution to the field In view of the above findings, it provides valuable insights to medical practitioner to strengthen emergency healthcare and response. In addition, these findings will enable better vehicle designs and safety equipment to avoid or reduce injury in road crashes.


More than half of males in China are current smokers and evidence from western countries tells us that an unprecedented number of smoking-attributable deaths will occur as the Chinese population ages. We used the China Lung Cancer Policy Model (LCPM) to simulate effects of computed tomography (CT)-based lung cancer screening in China, comparing the impact of a screening guideline published in 2015 by a Chinese expert group to a version developed for the United States by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The China LCPM, built using an existing lung cancer microsimulation model, can project population outcomes associated with interventions for smoking-related diseases. After calibrating the model to published Chinese smoking prevalence and lung cancer mortality rates, we simulated screening from 2016 to 2050 based on eligibility criteria from the CMS and Chinese guidelines, which differ by age to begin and end screening, pack-years smoked, and years since quitting. Outcomes included number of screens, mortality reduction, and life-years saved for each strategy. We projected that in the absence of screening, 14.98 million lung cancer deaths would occur between 2016 and 2050. Screening with the CMS guideline would prevent 0.72 million deaths and 5.8 million life-years lost, resulting in 6.58% and 1.97% mortality reduction in males and females, respectively. Screening with the Chinese guideline would prevent 0.74 million deaths and 6.6 million life-years lost, resulting in 6.30% and 2.79% mortality reduction in males and females, respectively. Through 2050, 1.43 billion screens would be required using the Chinese screening strategy, compared to 988 million screens using the CMS guideline. In conclusion, CT-based lung cancer screening implemented in 2016 and based on the Chinese screening guideline would prevent about 20,000 (2.9%) more lung cancer deaths through 2050, but would require about 445 million (44.7%) more screens than the CMS guideline.


Blockchain offers traceability and transparency to supply chain event data and hence can help overcome many challenges in supply chain management. However, data privacy concerns such as the protection of trade secrets have hindered adoption of blockchain technology. Although consortium blockchains only allow authorised supply chain entities to read/write to the ledger, privacy preservation of trade secrets cannot be ascertained. In this work, we propose a privacy-preservation framework, PrivChain, to protect sensitive data on blockchain using zero knowledge proofs. PrivChain provides provenance and traceability without revealing any sensitive information to end-consumers or supply chain entities. Its novelty stems from: a) its ability to allow data owners to protect trade related information and instead provide proofs on the data, and b) its integrated incentive mechanism for entities providing valid proofs using Zero Knowledge Range Proofs (ZKRPs) to provide origin information without disclosing the exact location of a supply chain product. Furthermore, the framework allows to compute proofs and commitments off-line, decoupling the computational overhead from blockchain. The proof verification process and incentive payment initiation are automated using blockchain transactions, smart contracts, and events. A proof of concept implementation on Hyperledger Fabric reveals a minimal overhead of using PrivChain for blockchain enabled supply chains.


Though the advancement of pre-trained large language models unfolds, the exploration of building a unified model for language and other multi-modal data, such as motion, remains challenging and untouched so far. Fortunately, human motion displays a semantic coupling akin to human language, often perceived as a form of body language. By fusing language data with large-scale motion models, motion-language pre-training that can enhance the performance of motion-related tasks becomes feasible. Driven by this insight, we propose MotionGPT, a unified, versatile, and user-friendly motion-language model to handle multiple motion-relevant tasks. Specifically, we employ the discrete vector quantization for human motion and transfer 3D motion into motion tokens, similar to the generation process of word tokens. Building upon this"motion vocabulary", we perform language modeling on both motion and text in a unified manner, treating human motion as a specific language. Moreover, inspired by prompt learning, we pre-train MotionGPT with a mixture of motion-language data and fine-tune it on prompt-based question-and-answer tasks. Extensive experiments demonstrate that MotionGPT achieves state-of-the-art performances on multiple motion tasks including text-driven motion generation, motion captioning, motion prediction, and motion in-between.


In this paper, we propose a selection technique for replicated multicast video servers. We assume that each replicated video server transmits the same video source as different quality levels of multicast streams. Using an IGMP facility like m-trace, each receiver monitors packet count information of those streams on routers and periodically selects the one which is expected to provide low loss rate and to be suitable for the current available bandwidth of receivers. Moreover, collection of packet count information is done in a scalable and efficient manner by sharing the collected information across receivers. Our experimental results using the network simulator have shown that our method could achieve much higher quality satisfaction of receivers, under the reasonable amount of tracing traffic.


Hydrologic models are used to assess many water resource problems, from agricultural use and water quality to engineering issues. This study shows how the combination of rain gauges (accurate at a point) and NEXRAD precipitation data (covering a wide area) can provide accurate, timely rainfall data that can drive the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model, which provides a more reliable tool for producers and policy-makers alike. The treatment of rainfall data was tested in the South Fork of the Iowa River, which covers about 788 km2 (194,720 ac) and is one of 15 benchmark watersheds of the USDA Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP). The results show significant improvement in model predictions in which rainfall data were correctly modified. Gauge records with values for trace events performed better as data sources than records in which trace events were given zero value, even though the mean annual rainfall differed by <25 mm. The combination of rain gauge and NEXRAD data provided superior results even when the watershed included a sufficient spatial distribution of rain gauges. Of the six methods used to adjust gauge and NEXRAD data, inverse distance weighting or kriging with external drift predicted streamflow among the four gauges was the best among those tested. In the absence of rain gauge data, the simple adjustment of the NEXRAD estimates to match total rainfall amounts in the region resulted in adequate streamflow estimates. This finding is important because uncorrected NEXRAD precipitation values, although only 15% below annual precipitation values, resulted in a greater than 50% difference in streamflow estimates. The choice of rainfall treatment should be considered carefully to provide accurate model predictions.


Over the last decade, the software product line domain has emerged as
one of the mostpromising software development paradigms. The main benefits
of a software product lineapproach are improvements in productivity, time
to market, product quality, and customersatisfaction.Therefore, one topic
that needs greater emphasis is testing of software product lines toachieve
the required software quality assurance. Our concern is how to test a
softwareproduct line as early as possible in order to detect errors,
because the cost of error detectedIn early phases is much less compared to
the cost of errors when detected later.The method suggested in this thesis
is a model-based, reuse-oriented test technique calledColored Model Based
Testing for Software Product Lines (CMBT-SWPL). CMBT-SWPLis a
requirements-based approach for efficiently generating tests for products
in a soft-ware product line. This testing approach is used for validation
and verification of productlines. It is a novel approach to test product
lines using a Colored State Chart (CSC), whichconsiders variability early
in the product line development process. More precisely, the vari-ability
will be introduced in the main components of the CSC. Accordingly, the
variabilityis preserved in test cases, as they are generated from colored
test models automatically.During domain engineering, the CSC is derived
from the feature model. By coloring theState Chart, the behavior of
several product line variants can be modeled simultaneouslyin a single
diagram and thus address product line variability early. The CSC
representsthe test model, from which test cases using statistical testing
are derived.During application engineering, these colored test models are
customized for a specificapplication of the product line. At the end of
this test process, the test cases are generatedagain using statistical
testing, executed and the test results are ready for evaluation.
Inxaddition, the CSC will be transformed to a Colored Petri Net (CPN) for
verification andsimulation purposes.The main gains of applying the
CMBT-SWPL method are early detection of defects inrequirements, such as
ambiguities incompleteness and redundancy which is then reflectedin saving
the test effort, time, development and maintenance costs.


In this contribution we analyse some of the causes and consequences of the pro-democracy protests that have taken place in Swaziland in March and April 2011. Two related complaints were raised:, the fiscal irresponsibility of the government and the unacceptably high poverty levels in Swaziland, especially in the light of the wealth and opulence of its absolute monarch, King Mswati III. After government forces violently suppressed the protests, the calls for democracy in Swaziland did not end, and South Africa's President Jacob Zuma has now been called upon to intervene. Certain conclusions are drawn, and recommendations made to encourage South Africa to act in accordance with the vision as laid down for its international relations, to create a better Africa and a better world.


To apply insights from complexity science to the real-world requires practitioners to judge which tools and methods are appropriate to use in some situations and when, where and how to apply them. This involves characterisation of complex situations; guidance on the type of adaptiveness needed; and understanding of the principles driving change. To that end, this chapter first provides a model of practice, and a framework for judging appropriateness of tools based on that model (with three examples of the framework in use). The chapter then offers a critique of two sets of example tools: examining the applicability of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems to a range of situations; and explaining how to employ multi-modal, multi-level influence networks to bring about ongoing change. Finally, the chapter presents a list of principles of practice, drawn from experience in the field, to be used to inform real-world decision- and policymaking.


Maximum consensus estimation plays a critically important role in computer vision. Currently, the most prevalent approach draws from the class of non-deterministic hypothesize-and-verify algorithms, which are cheap but do not guarantee solution quality. On the other extreme, there are global algorithms which are exhaustive search in nature and can be costly for practical-sized inputs. This paper aims to fill the gap between the two extremes by proposing a locally convergent maximum consensus algorithm. Our method is based on a formulating the problem with linear complementarity constraints, then defining a penalized version which is provably equivalent to the original problem. Based on the penalty problem, we develop a Frank-Wolfe algorithm that can deterministically solve the maximum consensus problem. Compared to the randomized techniques, our method is deterministic and locally convergent, relative to the global algorithms, our method is much more practical on realistic input sizes. Further, our approach is naturally applicable to problems with geometric residuals.


The gas hydrate petroleum system (GHPS) approach, which has been used to characterize gas hydrates in nature, uses three distinct components: a methane source, a methane migration pathway, and a reservoir that not only contains gas hydrate, but also acts as a seal to prevent methane loss. Unlike GHPS, a traditional petroleum system (PS) approach further distinguishes between the reservoir, a unit with generally coarser sediment grains, and a separate overlying seal unit with generally finer sediment grains. Adopting this traditional PS distinction in the GHPS approach facilitates assessments of reservoir growth and production potential. The significance of the seal for the formation of a gas hydrate reservoir as well as for efficiency in methane extraction from the reservoir as an energy resource is evident in findings from recent offshore field expeditions, such as India's second National Gas Hydrate Program expedition (NGHP-02). In regard to gas hydrate-bearing reservoir formations, the NGHP-02 gas chemistry data indicate a primarily microbial methane source. Fine-grained seal sediment in contact with coarser grained reservoir sediment can facilitate that microbial methane production. Logging-while-drilling and sediment core data also indicate that the overlying fine-grained seal sediment is less permeable than the underlying, highly gas hydrate-saturated reservoir sediment. The overlying seal's capacity to act as a low-permeability boundary is important not only for preventing methane migration out of the reservoir over time, but also for preventing water invasion into the reservoir during methane extraction from the reservoir. Ultimately, the presence of an overlying, fine-grained, low-permeability "seal" influences how gas hydrate initially forms in a coarse-grained reservoir and dictates how efficiently methane can be extracted as an energy resource from the gas hydrate reservoir via depressurization.


PPG-based heart rate estimation has been widely adopted in wrist-worn devices. However, the motion artifacts caused by the user's physical activities make it difficult to get the accurate HR estimation from contaminated PPG signals. Although many signal processing methods have been proposed to address this challenge, they are often highly optimized for specific scenarios (e.g., running or biking), making them impractical in real-world settings where a user may perform a wide range of physical activities. In this paper, we propose DeepHeart, a new HR estimation approach that features deep-learning-based denoising and spectrum-analysis-based calibration. DeepHeart generates clean PPG signals from ECG signals based on a training data set. Then a denoising convolutional neural network (DnCNN) is trained with the contaminated PPG signals and their corresponding clean PPG signals. Contaminated PPG signals are then denoised by the DnCNN and a spectrum-analysis-based calibration is performed to estimate the final HR. We evaluate DeepHeart on the IEEE Signal Processing Cup (SPC) training data set with 12 records collected during various physical activities. DeepHeart achieves an average absolute error of 1.98 bpm, outperforming two state-of-the-art methods TROIKA and Deep PPG.


A study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of freeze-dried bovine pericardium (FDBP) as a biomaterial in diaphragmatic herniorrhapy in dogs. Eight adult dogs were randomly selected and divided into two equal groups. In FDBP group, a diaphragmatic defect was induced and repaired with an identical size of FDBP. In the control group, a diaphragmatic wall was incised at three-side border creating a flap and sutured. Grossly, only mild intrathoracic adhesion was observed for most of the animals, and no herniation occured. Microscopically, the biomaterial incorporated into the host's tissue by ingrowth of young muscle fiber and massive new blood vessel formation in between the fibrous tissue.


The growth of the IT usage has been tremendous in the world of business today and no doubt it has been widely used in the area of airline industry. The online airline reservation system is one of the examples of such application of the technology. This study is a userfocused
research that aims to identify the factors that determine acceptance of online airline reservation system by users. Adapting the technology acceptance model (TAM) as a theoretical framework, this study examines the variables perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use as antecedents of behavior intention to use the technology.
Furthermore this study examines the effect of computer self-efficacy (external variable) as determinant towards perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. A survey of 51 lecturers representing different faculties in Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) supports TAM in predicting the intention of users to adopt online airline reservation system. Findings also show the significant effect of computer self-efficacy in explaining behavior intention through perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness.


It is my pleasure to write this editorial for Journal of Computer Engineering & Information Technology. The most important thing to remember while writing a research paper is clarity. Always while writing a research paper try to communicate all your facts as simple as possible with maximum clarity. Successful research paper writing is the result of a clear mind asserting a clearly stated problem and producing clearly written conclusions. Clarity should be a key element of any type of research communication may it be research article, review article, case report or a short communication etc. Most research papers are accepted for publication because they contribute new knowledge therefore absolute clarity is needed to convey the idea without any ambiguity. Communicating a research paper for prospective publication is a two-way process. Just as a signal of any kind is useless unless it is perceived, a published scientific paper is useless unless it is both received and understood by its intended audience. Therefore, a research experiment/work is not complete until the results have been published and understood.


Personalized therapy, in which a therapeutic practice is adapted to an individual patient, leads to better health outcomes. Typically, this is accomplished by relying on a therapist's training and intuition along with feedback from a patient. While there exist approaches to automatically adapt therapeutic content to a patient, they rely on hand-authored, pre-defined rules, which may not generalize to all individuals. In this paper, we propose an approach to automatically adapt therapeutic content to patients based on physiological measures. We implement our approach in the context of arachnophobia exposure therapy, and rely on experience-driven procedural content generation via reinforcement learning (EDPCGRL) to generate virtual spiders to match an individual patient. In this initial implementation, and due to the ongoing pandemic, we make use of virtual or artificial humans implemented based on prior arachnophobia psychology research. Our EDPCGRL method is able to more quickly adapt to these virtual humans with high accuracy in comparison to existing, search-based EDPCG approaches.


. It is a well-documented empirical fact that men and women perform differently in language tasks involving various semantic categories. The sex-by-category effect has been reported in several languages and through different tasks. The results of these studies agree that some semantic categories are preferentially male while others are preferentially female, but which categories are associated with one gender or the other varies across studies. In our study, we tested a group of undergraduate native Spanish speakers from Argentina on a written semantic fluency task. Participants were tested on ten semantic categories, five from the Living Things domain (LT) and five from the Non-Living Things domain (NLT). While women retrieved more items than men across categories, differential output was only significant in five categories: animals, vegetables (LT), furniture and utensils (NLT) for females and tools (NLT) for males.


Although many studies have been performed on collaboration in multimodal interfaces not many of these have looked specifically on how the supported modalities influence the task solving strategies chosen and the communication between users solving a joint task in collaborative virtual environments. Therefore, the thesis studies performed aimed at shedding light on these aspects of multimodality. The specific research question studied is: How do changes in modality combinations influence employed work strategies, communication during task solving and the task efficiency in collaborative multimodal virtual environments? The studies performed build on theories from HCI, CSCW, human perception and mediated communication and are thus inter-disciplinary in nature. A variety of cases have been studied; collaboration between sighted and visually impaired, task solving in visually demanding environments and to some extent support for achieving medical diagnoses.The research presented in this thesis began with a field study in elementary schools, focusing on collaboration between visually impaired and sighted pupils. The shared environment was in this case a virtual room in which objects could be moved around by means of haptic devices. The results showed a great potential for haptic feedback when it came to supporting collaboration and most of all communication between the participants. A lack of awareness information about mostly the sighted pupils' actions laid the ground for a follow-up study in which sighted and blindfolded students solved tasks in the same interface. A formal experiment was carried out in this case, comparing a visual/haptic environment with a visual/haptic/audio environment. Results showed that the addition of audio feedback to the visual/haptic environment was beneficial in many respects. Up until now, the focus had been entirely on collaboration between sighted persons and those who cannot see. This is why the next experimental study, based on an abstract gaming environment, aimed at collaboration between sighted persons. Since the earlier studies showed that the combination of modalities clearly matter, this new experiment compared three modality combinations – visual/haptic, visual/audio and visual/haptic/audio. Once again, the results clearly showed that the combination of modalities has an effect on task performance and that it influences collaboration and communication in particular.All studies performed have been subject to both quantitative analysis of performance measures and qualitative analysis of dialogues between collaborators. Even though quantitative data on task performance has played an important role, the main focus has been on qualitative data in all studies performed. The results show that different combinations of modalities influence the collaboration and in particular the communication between two participants solving tasks in different ways in a number of multimodal interfaces. In all cases in which a visual/haptic/audio condition has been compared to a visual/haptic or a visual/audio condition the performance was significantly better in the visual/haptic/audio condition. One of the most important conclusions drawn from the qualitative analysis of dialogues is that both haptic and audio feedback can have communicative properties which influence the dialogue and as a consequence the collaboration.


Aimed at marketing management and marketing strategy courses at the undergraduate and MBA level, this package presents a revision of the original Markstrat, for the last 10 years a marketing strategy simulation in both business schools and corporate development programmes worldwide. The PC version retains and builds upon the strengths of the first version - its complexity and realism - but adds the ease of uses of the PC environment. Individual student disks now come packaged with the manual to facilitate interaction between the players and the instructor. the simulation itself has also been enhanced with greater flexibility and variety and there are now six available scenarios including the original one. The student manual includes not only the simulation instructions but also discussions of the marketing concepts involved in the simulation. The student disk provided with this package only allows students to access MarkStrat results, to enter their decisions and to make financial projections.


: The authors show the results of experimental and clinical study of a single-row Pirogov-Mateshuk serous-muscular-subserous suture with the knots inside the lumen. It was demonstrated in experiments on 191 dogs that regeneration in the zone of anastomoses formed by a single-row suture is more perfect and occurs earlier than with the application of a double-row suture. Among 2,623 anastomoses formed on the esophagus, stomach, small intestine, colon, and rectum by means of a single-row suture, 1.5% were incompetent. The authors consider the single-row Pirogov-Mateshuk suture to be the method of choice.


OBJECTIVE
To analyze the habits and behavior of adolescents exposed to amplified music with headphones and its implications on their hearing health.

METHODS
One hundred thirty-one high school students, aged 15 to 18 years were given a questionnaire containing closed questions regarding their habits and behavior related to personal stereos use. It is a descriptive cross-sectional study and used the Chi-square test.

RESULTS
It was shown that 79% of young people make use of portable music devices, 61.83% have a habit of using them often, 34.35% have long periods of exposure, and 37.40% use them at high volume. In terms of symptoms, present were: difficulty concentrating 63.36%; the need to ask people to repeat what was said 64.12%; the need to increase the TV volume 43.51%; tinnitus 38.93%, excitability 38.93%; and 36.64% of teens say they are somewhat worried about losing their hearing through the use of personal stereos. For the preventive aspects, 90.84% believe that noise is part of society, 80.92% find it important to reduce noise pollution, 51.91% would like to know the influence of the noise/pollution, but 74.81% would not like to participate in projects with questions about hearing health.

CONCLUSION
The youths in this study are making indiscriminate use of personal stereos with headphones, within a population at risk for hearing loss considering its habits. Hearing Health Promotion Programs are recommended for this population.


Background?The purposes of the research were to construct a "family therapy assessment model for the drop-out students in the middle way school" , and to evaluate the effects of the model. Method?The qualitative research method was adopted and the systemic theory was used to analyze the data. The family therapy assessment model was applied to 10 dropouts' families, including home visit, 1.5 hours family interview, and 30 minutes family negotiation. All of the interview and negotiation were recorded and analyzed to provide the school staff the intervention maps. After one year's intervention, the improvement of the dropouts' behaviors as well as the family functions and relationships were evaluated. Findings? 1. The family therapy assessment showed (1) Parenting monitoring function badly. (2) Families had insecure attachment issues. (3) Rigid family interaction patterns reflected ineffective family communications and the parenting authorities failed. 2. The dropouts' behaviors and the family function and relationship improved. Discussion? The assessment model for the high school dropouts was well built to improve the family health and the adolescents' behaviors. It could be a potential model for other schools to use it. The rigid family interaction patterns, insecure attachment, and lack of parents' monitoring in the dropouts' families found implied a clinical intervention map.


Asteroids usually have irregular gravity field due to their non-spherical shapes. Moreover, their gravity fields are estimated with large uncertainty as a result of the limited ground observations. Resultantly, the orbital motion in their vicinity can be highly unstable and cannot be predicted accurately before reaching the asteroid. Therefore, the identification of stable orbital motion around asteroids is essential for robust mission design. In this study, the automatic domain splitting method (ADS) is introduced as a new tool of identifying the stable and unstable region in the phase space with gravity uncertainty. The ADS is actually based on the differential algebra (DA) method that approximates the dynamics with arbitrary order Taylor expansion and can replace thousands of pointwise integrations of Monte Carlo runs with the fast evaluation of the Taylor polynomials. The asteroid Steins is taken as an example. However, as the C20 and C22 harmonic terms are usually dominant over the nonspherical gravity, only their uncertainties are considered in the investigations. Given the required accuracy, the expansion order and the maximum splitting times are firstly determined, to balance efficiency. It is found that the orbital motion is more sensitive to the variation of the C22 term, compared with that of the C20 term. Then, the first split time of the orbits with different geometry is recorded on the semi-major axis and inclination plane, i.e. the a-i plane. Along the propagation the bounds of the state flow are evaluated. Resultantly, given the allowed first split time and bounds that are determined according to the real mission requirement, practical stable regions can be identified.


The classical film western enacts the myth of American manifest destiny, codifying and promulgating stories of the conquest of the West. Subsequent so-called revisionist westerns, of which John Ford's The Searchers (1956) is the preeminent example, call this triumphal master narrative into question and probe the darker sides of American expansionism. Recent returns to the western by European auteurs both revisit the classic western and revise its revisionist extensions, foregrounding experiences of sociopolitical crisis, displacement, and disintegration of values such as community and home in an age of transnationalism and globalism. Focusing on two productions that self-consciously redeploy the western's legacy, Thomas Bidegain's Les Cowboys (2015) and Valeska Grisebach's Western (2017), as well as some related examples, this article scrutinizes the myths of the genre and their enduring contemporary relevance.


Aims PTSD in the veterans can affect the quality of life and happiness in their family members including their spouses. Nevertheless, some factors can reduce mental problems. The aim of this study was to investigate the correlation between the PTSD intensity and the perceived social support and mental happiness and quality of life in the spouses of the veterans with PTSD. Instrument & Methods In the descriptive-correlational study, 302 spouses of the veterans with PTSD living in Mashhad were studied in 2014. The subjects were selected via available sampling method. Data was collected using post-traumatic stress disorder checklist, quality of life questionnaire, Oxford happiness inventory, and perceived social support scale. Data was analyzed by SPSS 21 software using Pearson correlation coefficient, Spearman correlation, Eta-squared correlation, and stepwise regression analysis. Findings There were direct and reverse correlations between metal happiness and quality of life and the perceived social support and the PTSD intensity, respectively (p<0.001). Totally, 64% of the variance of quality of life were explained by the perceived social support, the PTSD intensity, and the economic status. In addition, 75% of the variance of the spouse's mental happiness were explained by the perceived social support, the PTSD intensity, and the educational status. Conclusion Any enhancement in the perceived social support and reduction in the PTSD intensity in veterans leads to the enhancement of the quality of life in veterans' spouses. A B S T R A C T A R T I C L E I N F O


IMPORTANCE
Improvements in endoscopic technology and reconstructive techniques have made the endoscopic endonasal approach (EEA) a viable option to approach ventromedial lesions in the region of the hypoglossal canal. Prior to contemplating this surgical corridor, a thorough understanding of anatomic relationships and landmarks is essential to safely approach this region of the posterior skull base through an EEA.

OBJECTIVE
To describe the surgical technique and anatomic landmarks in the EEA to the hypoglossal canal through referencing nasopharyngeal and posterior skull base anatomy.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
Study of latex-injected cadaveric heads at the North Carolina Eye Bank Multidisciplinary Surgical Skills Laboratory at the University of North Carolina.

INTERVENTIONS
An EEA to the hypoglossal canal was carried out bilaterally in 5 embalmed, latex-injected cadaver heads.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
Cadaveric measurements of anatomic landmarks and relationships in the approach were obtained using a 10-cm surgical ruler and were reported as mean distances. Additionally, high-quality endoscopic images demonstrating the operative technique and anatomic relationships were obtained.

RESULTS
The distance between the lacerum segment of the internal carotid arteries, the superolateral boundary, was 23.6 mm (SD, 11.8 mm). The distance between the anterolateral edge of the occipital condyles, the inferolateral boundary, was 19 mm (SD, 0.80 mm). The supracondylar groove was identified in the same anteroposterior plane as the nasopharyngeal orifice of the eustachian tube, and the anterior-most edge of the occipital condyle was 14 mm (SD, 0.82 mm) from the posterosuperior edge of the salpingopharyngeal fold. Additionally, the transtubercular corridor was on the same plane as the superior edge of the torus tubarius in the anteroposterior axis. The distance to the hypoglossal canal from midline was 10 mm, which was found after completing drilling in the transcondylar and transtubercular corridors. Last, the hypoglossal nerve rootlets were identified entering the canal 6 mm inferiorly and 8 mm laterally from the vertebrobasilar junction.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
The eustachian tube and other elements of nasopharyngeal anatomy are fixed landmarks that provide important points of reference when approaching the hypoglossal canal through an EEA. A thorough understanding of these anatomic relationships is vital in safely navigating this direct, surgical corridor to the posterior fossa.


Current technology is undergoing major and revolutionary changes that include all social, economic, political and cultural lifestyles. Education is not adversely affected by technological interventions and has undergone many appropriate educational changes in the modern world. In a technologically advanced world, teachers must also integrate with new skills and education and follow directions that promote student learning, the primary goal of education. Teachers at all levels of instruction should be able to integrate new technologies and learn from the latest trends that can affect students' cognitive domains. Smart lessons bring complete transformations in the classroom. It is a technology-oriented attempt for schools. Teachers provide rich media presentations for learning a class, as well as tools and content for students to learn interactively. The science teacher explains how DNA replication can represent 3D animation of the DNA replication process on the big screen. We continue to learn from childhood. We learn to walk, talk and write. We have always observed that we can remember things better than what we read or hear. That is why Smart Class is more effective than Chalk and Talk. We can show DNA replication films, an animation about the mechanism of DNA replication by Powerpoint announcement. Students have more fun in smart lessons than classes that use blackboards. This paper is based on the meaning and scope of sound education in higher education.
Keywords: education, smart classroom, teacher, student, technology.


We present a novel preprocessing technique for distributed query optimization which achieves nearly all of the benefits that full database reduction by semijoin achieves, but for a small fraction of the cost. Most previous researchers have approached the problem of distributed query optimization with the idea of achieving maximum database reduction at any cost. We take an engineering approach — that, past a point of diminishing returns, database reduction is not cost-effective. We introduce a technique called "partial reduction", which uses a sequence of "bucket semijoins" to eliminate nearly all of the irrelevant tuples eliminated by a fully reducing sequence of semijoins. We provide a performance analysis for a simple binary semijoin compared to a bucket semijoin, and show that a bucket semijoin can achieve, say, 90% of the reduction that a semijoin can, but for, say, 10% of the cost. Although we used some simplifying assumptions in our analysis, we argue that relaxing these assumptions does not diminish our results in any way. We discuss the sensitivity of our technique to its parameters, and we show that our results improve for multiple join and inequality join queries.


A problem of predicting suspended particulate matter (SPM) concentration on the basis of wind and wave measurements and estimates of bed shear stress done by a numerical model is considered. Data at a location at 10 km offshore from Noordwijk in the Dutch coastal area is used. The time series data have been filtered with a low pass filter to remove short-term fluctuations due to noise and tides and the resulting time series have been used to build an artificial neural network (ANN) model. The accuracy of the ANN model during both storm and calm periods was found to be high. The possibilities to apply the trained ANN model at other locations, where the model is assisted by the correctors based on the ratio of long-term average SPM values for the considered location to that for Noordwijk (for which the model was trained), have been investigated. These experiments demonstrated that the ANN model9s accuracy at the other locations was acceptable, which shows the potential of the considered approach.


In this study, the crack growth problem occuring on the bolted flange connections of a rotary dryer which is in the process of fertilizer production was investigated using finite elements method. At the end of the analyses, it was determined that the bolted flange connection type is the cause of stress concentration effect and this type of connection had an average stress which lowered the endurance limit. After preparing the Wohler curve, fatigue life was calculated on the basis of theories of Goodman and Gerber. Instead of bolted flange connection type, mantle reinforced butt welding connection was developed and adapted on the dryer and stress analyses were repeated. It was observed that stress concentration and fatigue cracking problem could be prevented with the revision of the connection design.


In previous studies, we showed that essentially all the proteins of the Amoeba proteus nucleus could be classified either as Rapidly Migrating Proteins (RMP), which shuttle between nucleus and cytoplasm continuously at a relatively rapid rate during interphase, or as Slow Turnover Proteins (STP), which seem to move hardly at all during interphase. In this paper, we report on the kinetics and direction of the movement of both classes of protein, as well as on aspects of their localization, with and without growth. The effects of growth were observed with and without cell division. These nuclear proteins have been studied in several ways: by transplantation of labeled nuclei into unlabeled cells and noting the rate of distribution to cytoplasm and host cell nuclei; by repeated amputation of cytoplasm from labeled cells—with and without initially labeled cytoplasm—each amputation being followed by refeeding on unlabeled food; by noting the redistribution of the various protein classes following growth and cell division. The data show (a) labeled RMP equilibrate between a grafted labeled nucleus and an unlabeled host nucleus in ca. 3 hr, but are detectable in the latter less than 30 min after the operation; (b) STP label does, indeed, leave the nucleus and does so at a rate of ca. 25% of the nuclear total per cell generation (ca. 36–40 hr at 23°C); (c) the cytoplasm appears to have a reserve of material that is converted to RMP; (d) when labeled cells are amputated just before they would have divided and are refed unlabeled food after each amputation, there is a loss of 20–25% of the nuclear protein label with each amputation; (e) under the latter circumstances, an essentially complete turnover of all nuclear protein can be demonstrated.


Novel Deep Learning (DL) algorithms show ever-increasing accuracy and precision in multiple application domains. However, some steps further are needed towards the ubiquitous adoption of this kind of instrument. First, effort and skills required to develop new DL models, or to adapt existing ones to new use-cases, are hardly available for small- and medium-sized businesses. Second, DL inference must be brought at the edge, to overcome limitations posed by the classically-used cloud computing paradigm. This requires implementation on low-energy computing nodes, often heterogenous and parallel, that are usually more complex to program and to manage. This work describes the ALOHA framework, that proposes a solution to these issue by means of an integrated tool flow that automates most phases of the development process. The framework introduces architecture-awareness, considering the target inference platform very early, already during algorithm selection, and driving the optimal porting of the resulting embedded application. Moreover it considers security, power efficiency and adaptiveness as main objectives during the whole development process.


Objective To report a case of co-infection with Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Actinomyces naeslundii in a woman with an intrauterine device. Case report A 36-year-old woman with IUD, who entered to the hospital because of suprapubic abdominal pain, fever and foul-smelling vaginal discharge. Results We identified Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Actinomyces naeslundii and despite antibiotic treatment, ultrasound allowed objectify pelvic inflammatory disease and appendiceal involvement, which led to its surgical removal and bilateral salpingectomy. Conclusions The surgical approach allowed to solve the box co.


Keywords The aim of the study is to adapt the Sources of Middle School Mathematics Self-Efficacy Scale developed by, Usher and Pajares (2009) for Turkish context. After the Turkish version was formed through required procedures, it was administered with 750 middle school students of 6th, 7th and 8th grades. The ages of the students ranged between 12 and 15. The 48% of the students were female (n=408) and 52%of the students were male (n=342). 32% of the students were attending (n=242) sixth grade, 34'% of them (n=257) seventh and 34% (n=251) eighth grade. Construct validity of the scale was investigated via Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis. Criterion validity of the scale was also done to see if it serves its purpose well. Reliability of the scale was tested by computing Cronbach Alpha, corrected total item correlation coefficient, and t-tests comparing the total item scores of top 27% and bottom 27% participants. The results indicated that the Turkish version of the SMSMSEC consists of four factors. Cronbach alpha values of the factors ranged between 0.80 and 0.94. Corrected total item correlation coefficients ranged between 0.77 and -0.25. Criterion validity results indicated the scale serves its purpose well. The t-test results indicated that there were significant difference between the total scores of top 27% and bottom 27% of the participants for all items.


The in vitro restorative effect of aqueous extracts from two traditional Chinese medicinal herbs were studied in 19 cancer patients and in 15 normal healthy donors. Using the local graft versus host (GVH) reaction as a test assay for T‐cell function, the extract from astragalus membranaceus (10 μg/ml) induced a restored reaction in nine of ten patients with an increase in local GVH reaction from 18.2 ± 15.8 mm3 to 112.9 ± 94.2 mm3 (P < 0.01). The extract from ligustrum lucidum, likewise effected an immune restoration in nine of 13 cancer patients with an increase in local GVH reaction from 32.3 ± 36.1 mm3 to 118 ± 104.9 mm3 (P < 0.01). This degree of immune restoration appears to be complete as it equals the local GVH reaction observed among untreated mononuclear cells from normal healthy donors (82.8 ± 41.1 mm3, P > 0.1). These results suggest that both extracts of the traditional Chinese medicinal herbs contain potent immune stimulants which may provide the rational basis for their therapeutic use as biological response modifiers. Cancer 52:70‐73, 1983.


The mother of a 4-year-old boy noticed a rash on her son's left shoulder the day before. The otherwise healthy, asymptomatic boy plays outdoors daily in his hometown of West Virginia. Earlier in the week, he told his mother that he had felt a "scab" on his shoulder and had picked it off.


The oxide-ion conductivity of NdBaInO4 has been increased by Sr doping. Nd0.9Sr0.1BaInO3.95 showed the highest electrical conductivity among Nd1−xSrxBaInO4−x/2 (x = 0.0, 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3). The oxide-ion conductivity σion of Nd0.9Sr0.1BaInO3.95 (σion = 7.7 × 10−4 S cm−1) is about 20 times higher than that of NdBaInO4 (σion = 3.6 × 10−5 S cm−1) at 858 °C, and the activation energy of oxide-ion conduction is a little lower for Nd0.9Sr0.1BaInO3.95 (0.795(10) eV) than that for NdBaInO4 (0.91(4) eV). The structure analysis based on neutron powder diffraction data revealed that the Sr exists at the Nd site and oxygen vacancies are observed in Nd0.9Sr0.1BaInO3.95. This result indicates that the increase of the oxide-ion conductivity is mainly due to the increase of the carrier concentration. The bond valence-based energy landscape indicated two-dimensional oxide-ion diffusion in the (Nd,Sr)2O3 unit on the bc-plane and a decrease of the energy barrier by the substitution of Nd with Sr cations.


Summary Success in grafting depends on the identification of a compatible rootstock (RS) that promotes rapid formation of vascular connections between the RS and the scion, and rapid resumption of root and shoot growth. In this study, we used compatible and incompatible Cucurbita rootstocks, with a melon (Cucumis melo L. 'Arava') scion, to identify physiological and biochemical factors in the scion-RS interface that could be associated with graft compatibility. Anatomical characterisation of the grafting interface showed that the regeneration and differentiation of vascular elements was similar, at first, in both compatible and incompatible grafted seedlings although, in the latter, a protective layer was formed, but did not interfere with communication between the RS and the scion. Water uptake and sugar distribution between the plant canopy and the roots, measured 14 d after grafting (DAG) were not correlated with compatibility or incompatibility. At 24 DAG, both water uptake and root sugar concentrations decreased significantly in the incompatible RS, reflecting deterioration of the RS. At 24 DAG, part of the RS collapsed, but only in incompatible grafted seedlings. Histochemical staining revealed that superoxide, H2O2, peroxidase (POX) activity, and lignin deposits at the scion-rootstock interface were similar in both compatible and incompatible grafting combinations at 14 DAG; but, at 24 DAG, H2O2 and superoxide levels were higher in the incompatible grafted transplants. In addition, cell-wall POX and superoxide dismutase (SOD) activities were lower in the incompatible RS-scion interface at 14 and 24 DAG. These results suggest that a physical barrier is unlikely to be formed between the incompatible partners early after grafting, but that lower anti-oxidant enzyme activities and higher levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the incompatible RS-scion interface may be responsible for degradation of the grafting zone.


This article addresses the distribution of accountability between the European Union (EU) and its Member States under the current and future climate regime. Belonging to a field of shared competence between the EU and its Member States, the climate regime is characterized by 'mixed agreements', not distinguishing between the obligations of the EU and its Member States. This raises the question of how to determine who is accountable in case of non-compliance. Under the current regime, there is a joint and proportional accountability rule regarding the European common emission reduction target. This rule is well suited to the nature of the EU, and should therefore be maintained in the next climate agreement. For other commitments, third parties, the Secretariat of the Climate Change Convention and the Kyoto Protocol Compliance Committee enjoy a margin of discretion to evaluate whether it is pragmatic to address non-compliance with regard to only the Member State concerned or to involve the EU in the process. This approach, favouring a return to compliance, also appears adapted to the EU. Indeed, an ad hoc intra-European mechanism allows for the identification of the actor actually accountable. To avoid holding the EU as a whole accountable while the entity actually accountable is a Member State or the EU, some intra-European actions for recovery are available to the EU, its Member States and even private persons.


Purpose

This paper aims to show the importance of introducing an integration manager (i.e. an executive position used to channel the acquiring firm's course of action and strengthen the success of a post-acquisition integration process) within the acquiring firm's board of directors.

Design/methodology/approach

This is a theoretical paper that introduces the integration manager within the board of privately held firms going internationally via acquisitions and serving as an "out-insider" director able to balance the conflicting demands of the previously separated entities during their integration process. The authors present an explanatory case study that empirically contributes to the board of directors' design for internationalization.

Findings

The authors posit that the integration manager serves as an "out-insider" director of the board for privately held firms, possessed by large-block shareholders, going internationally via acquisitions, providing the necessary expertise and knowledge of the target firm's products and industry.

Originality/value

The provided study aims to show that international acquisitions, even though apparently less risky than greenfield investments, may require additional neutral information flow – both within the due-diligence process and the post-acquisition integration – that only outsiders possess. Such an outsider has been individuated in the integration manager whose crucial role focuses on smoothing the pre- and post-acquisition integration processes.


We present bottom-emitting tunable vertical-cavity semiconductor optical amplifiers (VCSOAs) with an effective wavelength tuning range of >20 nm. These devices utilize a high reflectivity micromechanically tunable Bragg mirror as the back reflector. Compared with our first generation tunable VCSOAs, the bottom-emitting devices exhibit a two-fold increase in the effective tuning range as well as a five-fold reduction in the required tuning voltage.


We propose Gated Stereo, a high-resolution and long-range depth estimation technique that operates on active gated stereo images. Using active and high dynamic range passive captures, Gated Stereo exploits multi-view cues alongside time-of-flight intensity cues from active gating. To this end, we propose a depth estimation method with a monocular and stereo depth prediction branch which are combined in a final fusion stage. Each block is supervised through a combination of supervised and gated self-supervision losses. To facilitate training and validation, we acquire a long-range synchronized gated stereo dataset for automotive scenarios. We find that the method achieves an improvement of more than 50 % MAE compared to the next best RGB stereo method, and 74 % MAE to existing monocular gated methods for distances up to 160 m. Our code, models and datasets are available here11https://light.princeton.edu/gatedstereo/.


The aim of this article is to analyze theoretically the need to improve Social Studies Education in Turkey in a pedagogical manner and on the basis of the intended contributions and goals of a New Social Studies Movement to the field. Social Studies Education is an important teaching discipline to equip individuals with the necessary knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to operate efficiently in a knowledge society. The New Social Studies movement of 1960s in the USA contributed to the development of Social Studies Education. This movement tried to establish a constructivist approach. They emphasized on the importance of an inquiry based approach, and rich and real life situation in the classrooms and skills such as critical thinking, reflective thinking, cooperation and collaboration in Social Studies Education. However, the movement diminished in a short while due to the lack of research to support their theoretically sound ideas, appropriate teaching resources for teachers and students and ill-equipped teachers while their ideas were and still are gaining impetus in many countries in the world. Social Studies Education is relatively new in Turkey. Social Studies Education in Turkey has weaknesses in terms of both in theoretically and practically. The quality of teaching resources and materials and teacher qualifications are not up-to-standards to carry out a constructivist Social Studies Education. A new movement has started in Turkey to improve Social Studies Education. This new Social Studies movement aims to do research in the field on the area, print books and teaching resource for both teachers and students, develop policies, hold academic meetings, publish high quality journals for both academics and practitioners, to create opportunities and gateways for networking. This article critically argues the proposed contribution of the new Social Studies movement to the field in Turkey drawing upon the experiences of the movement of 1960s in the USA.


Many deep learning-based solutions to blind image deblurring estimate the blur representation and reconstruct the target image from its blurry observation. However, these methods suffer from severe performance degradation in real-world scenarios because they ignore important prior information about motion blur (e.g., real-world motion blur is diverse and spatially varying). Some methods have attempted to explicitly estimate non-uniform blur kernels by CNNs, but accurate estimation is still challenging due to the lack of ground truth about spatially varying blur kernels in real-world images. To address these issues, we propose to represent the field of motion blur kernels in a latent space by normalizing flows, and design CNNs to predict the latent codes instead of motion kernels. To further improve the accuracy and robustness of non-uniform kernel estimation, we introduce uncertainty learning into the process of estimating latent codes and propose a multi-scale kernel attention module to better integrate image features with estimated kernels. Extensive experimental results, especially on real-world blur datasets, demonstrate that our method achieves state-of-the-art results in terms of both subjective and objective quality as well as excellent generalization performance for non-uniform image deblurring. The code is available at https://see.xidian.edu.cn/faculty/wsdong/Projects/UFPNet.htm.


Most donor agencies only procure drugs approved by a Stringent Regulatory Authority or the World Health Organization (WHO) Prequalification Programme in an effort to ensure high quality. This study compares the quality of artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) produced by WHO-approved manufacturers with non-approved manufacturers and suggests policy changes to improve quality of donor-procured drugs. The results of this study suggest that ACTs produced by WHO-approved manufacturers perform nearly five times better than those of non-approved manufacturers, but some approved ACTs have too little active pharmaceutical ingredient. The US President's Malaria Initiative tests every batch of every drug it procures before distribution to recipient countries. Other donors should follow suit to ensure that drugs purchased with taxpayer dollars are of the highest quality.


Beyond other domains, the field of immersive analytics makes use of Augmented Reality techniques to successfully support users in analyzing data. When displaying ubiquitous data integrated into the everyday life, spatial immersion issues like depth perception, data localization and object relations become relevant. Although there is a variety of techniques to deal with those, they are difficult to apply if the examined data or the reference space are large and abstract. In this work, we discuss observed problems in such immersive analytics systems and the applicability of current countermeasures to identify needs for action.


Abstract This article presents an implementation of one of the latest optimization methods of obtaining light vehicle designs. First, the problem of coupling with a bolted rim is optimized using the butterfly optimization algorithm (BOA). Finally, the BOA is used to solve the shape optimization of a vehicle suspension arm. It is utilized from the Kriging metamodeling method to obtain equations of objective and constraint functions in shape optimization. At the end of the research effort in this paper, the weight reduction of the suspension arm by using the BOA is 32.9 %. The results show the BOA's ability to design better optimum components in the automotive industry.


Irregular migrants, being defined as asylum seekers, refugees and clandestinos (people in the EU without a valid residency permit), live as a subaltern group at the fringes of European society. They are materially deprived and excluded from regular political culture. In part, this condition stems from the institutions of European integration, such as the Dublin Regulation. This dissertation attempts to understand irregular migrant subalternity by exploring its structural causes. Irregular migration and its management is used as a case study to contribute towards a deeper understanding of the social purpose of European integration. Methodologically, this thesis relies on Critical Grounded Theory. This novel approach is rooted in critical realism and thus rejects the tabula rasa-view of traditional Grounded Theory, maintaining that empirics and theory should continuously inform one another. The Gramscian concept of hegemony is employed to contextualise European integration within neofunctionalism as an ideological practice and neoliberalism as a hegemonic agenda. Vulgar neofunctionalism postulates that integration occurs as the result of spillover of one policy area into another and that European integration is pushed forward by technocratic elites. To illustrate the relationship between neofunctionalism and neoliberalism, to lay bare the consequences of neoliberal and neofunctionalist practices, and to further capture the social purpose of European integration, fieldwork was carried out in five locations (Brussels, Greece, Bulgaria, Italy and Germany) with different groups of interviewees (European Commission staff, national public officials, asylum seekers, clandestinos, fruit farm workers, asylum accommodation staff). It was found that neoliberal neofunctionalism has generated a common outlook on migratory movements which has resulted in the partial harmonisation of asylum legislation and the simultaneous fortification of the EU's external border. This has had a significant impact on the lives of irregular migrants, who are exposed to reification, commodification, biopolitics, the state of exception, xenophobia and lacking recognition. The emergence of group consciousness is undermined, preventing them from overcoming subalternity. The social purpose of European integration is identified as the (increasingly authoritarian) neoliberal restructuration of the EU which relies on neofunctionalism as its vehicle and justification. This restructuration is self-contradictory as it aims at neoliberalism while producing nationalism, biopolitics and the EU's deepening internal division. Within the context of the European Union's democratic deficit and the weakness of social democracy, nationalism may represent an alternative to neoliberalism, speeding up the EU's disintegration.


ABSTRACT Claims regarding Western neo-colonial domination over scholarship in Comparative and International Education (CIE) have recently commanded much attention – for example in a 2017 special issue of the journal Comparative Education Review (CER) on the theme of 'contesting coloniality.' Stressing their marginal 'positionality,' the contributors to that special issue relate their critique to a narrative of 'epistemic violence' seen as underpinning 'Western' or 'Northern' hegemony in the CIE field and beyond. Adopting a historical perspective, I argue here that positing a dichotomy between a colonialist 'Western modernity' and a uniformly victimised 'non-West' is empirically unsustainable, and involves its advocates in propagating just the kind of essentialism and Eurocentrism that they condemn. I also argue that the centrality of 'positionality' and 'opacity' in postcolonialist or decolonial arguments, as expounded in the CER special issue, impedes meaningful and constructive scholarly dialogue. Scholarship in this vein threatens to divide the CIE field, undermine its wider credibility and distract from analysis of the pressing problems that confront us today. Comparativists need to balance critical scholarship concerning the implications of 'colonialism' with greater attention to the comparative study of its history.


The potential of user created content to make a meaningful contribution to media diversity is subject to debates. Central to these debates is the argument of the quality of amateur productions. This article will take a close look at this argument, and make some suggestions on how to improve the quality and utility of amateur productions with regard to the democratic functions of media.