Purpose
The Sharīʿah Standard No. (35) issued by the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) aims to identify the zakāt base for institutions (including Islamic insurance companies) as well as the subsidiary and the mother company of the institution (the company). By zakāt base, the standard means the items of financial statements that should or should not be included in the calculation of the zakāt base, and the liabilities or allocations that should or should not be deducted from zakatable assets. The standard also covers payable zakāt rates, disbursement of zakāt funds on the eight categories of zakāt recipients and the rulings pertaining to disbursement. The focus then is on companies or corporations. There is no indication in the aims as to who owns the wealth of the corporation, that is, whether it is the company itself or it is the shareholders and whether it is treated as a joint wealth of the shareholders or of a single individual in the form of the company. The author will rely on this issue as one factor on the basis of which the standard is to be judged.

Design/methodology/approach
Quran and hadith. Works of earlier jurists.

Findings
In this study, the author has summarized the provisions of zakāt according to the traditional law, but only those that are relevant for the financial institutions and the standard issued by the AAOIFI. After that, the author mentioned the major points that have been addressed by the standard. In the last section, the author has shown that the rulings of the Islamic Fiqh Academy and the AAOIFI on zakāt are totally confusing and merely a reproduction of the rulings of traditional law. The main reason for this confusion is that the nature and entity of a corporation have not been addressed and have been treated like a partnership, thus, jumbling up the entire issue of zakāt through banks.

Originality/value
The main purpose in undertaking this original work is to examine the AAOIFI Sharīʿah Standards from the perspective of traditional Islamic law, that is, the law of the senior schools as laid down in their authentic manuals. If there is an extensive deviation from this law, then this must be pointed out in the hope that it will be corrected by the concerned institution and the banks that adopt these standards. Neglecting such a corrective action for long will result in damage not only to these institutions in the long run but also to the law of Islam that has been so carefully crafted over centuries. The purpose is to show how far this standard deviates from traditional Islamic law and claims to be called the authentic view on a particular subject. Nevertheless, it is not the purpose of this work to explain and elaborate on the meaning and utility of these standards.


Moving target detection and imaging results for an X band spotlight synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system that utilizes an along-track monopulse configuration for its data collection is presented. The theoretical foundation of the processing that is used on these data is based on our earlier work in which a two-dimensional signal subspace processing (adaptive filtering) method was used to calibrate the monostatic and bistatic radars of the monopulse SAR system. The blind calibration of the two channels enables the user to null the stationary scene, and detect the moving targets. Next, a measure that we call SAR ambiguity function is used to estimate the relative speed of a detected moving target. The resultant estimate is then used to image the moving target.


Multiresolution time domain (MRTD) analysis is applied to model anisotropic dielectric material. In particular, an MRTI) scheme based on scaling functions only is used to analyze different types of resonant cavity structures. The results agree very well with those obtained by FDTD, FEM a.nd integral equation methods. IMRTD allows for considerable savings in memory and computational time in comparison to FDTD, while maintaining the same accuracy of the results.


Epitranscriptomic marks, in the form of enzyme catalyzed RNA modifications, play important gene regulatory roles in response to environmental and physiological conditions. However, little is known with respect to how pharmaceuticals influence the epitranscriptome. Here we define how acetaminophen (APAP) induces epitranscriptomic reprogramming and how the writer Alkylation Repair Homolog 8 (Alkbh8) plays a key gene regulatory role in the response. Alkbh8 modifies tRNA selenocysteine (tRNASec) to translationally regulate the production of glutathione peroxidases (Gpx's) and other selenoproteins, with Gpx enzymes known to play protective roles during APAP toxicity. We demonstrate that APAP increases toxicity and markers of damage, and decreases selenoprotein levels in Alkbh8 deficient mouse livers, when compared to wildtype. APAP also promotes large scale reprogramming of 31 RNA marks comprising the liver tRNA epitranscriptome including: 5-methoxycarbonylmethyluridine (mcm5U), isopentenyladenosine (i6A), pseudouridine (Ψ), and 1-methyladenosine (m1A) modifications linked to tRNASec and many others. Alkbh8 deficiency also leads to wide-spread epitranscriptomic dysregulation in response to APAP, demonstrating that a single writer defect can promote downstream changes to a large spectrum of RNA modifications. Our study highlights the importance of RNA modifications and translational responses to APAP, identifies writers as key modulators of stress responses in vivo and supports the idea that the epitranscriptome may play important roles in responses to pharmaceuticals.


In the corpulent number of outgrowing viable environment each and everything depends on the other sources to transmit the data securely and maintain the data as well in the familiar medium. Transferable nodes in military environments, for example, a adjoin line or a hostile area are prone to experience the under go of irregular system network and frequent partitions. Disruption-tolerant network (DTN) modernization are getting to be fruitful results that permit remote device conveyed by officers to speak with one another and access the confidential data or secret data or summon dependably by abusing outside facility nodes or storage nodes. Thus an innovative methodology is introduced to impart successful communication between each other in addition to access the confidential information present by some major authorities like commander or other superiors. The method is called Disruption-Tolerant Network (DTN). In many sensor applications, the data collected from individual nodes is aggregated at a base station or host computer. To reduce energy consumption, many systems also perform innetwork aggregation of sensor data at intermediate nodes enroute to the base station. When any node within the group needs to transfer the data, it transfers slices of data to other nodes in that group, encrypted by individual authentication keys. Each receiving node decrypts, sums up the slices and transfers the encrypted data to the aggregator. The aggregator aggregates and encrypts the data with the shared secret key of the sink and forwards it to the sink. The set of nodes is reselected with new set of authentication keys in the second round of aggregation. By simulation results, we demonstrate that the proposed technique resolves the security threat of node capture


We consider a tachyonic scalar field as a model of dark energy with interaction between components in the case of variable G and Λ. We assume a flat Universe with a specific form of scale factor and study cosmological parameters numerically and graphically. Statefinder analysis is also performed. For a particular choice of interaction parameters we succeed in obtaining an analytical expression of densities. We find that our model will be stable at the late stage but there is an instability in the early Universe, so we propose this model as a realistic model of our Universe.


BACKGROUND: Buffy coat pooled platelet concentrate (BCPP) is a new blood component mainly used in Europe, which has good attributes of both random donor platelets and apheresis platelets in terms of high platelet count, leukoreduced and available in emergency. We planned this study to compare quality parameters and biochemical activation markers among buffy coat pooled platelets and apheresis platelet concentrate (AP-PC) to establish the quality and safety of this new blood component during storage. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Three different preparations of BCPP were prepared: Nonleukoreduced (BCPP Part A), leukoreduced (BCPP Part B), and leukoreduced with platelet additive solution (PAS) (BCPP Part C) using a pool of 15 ABO-matched, nonreactive buffy-coats in each experiment to avoid any donor-related variations. Ten such experiments were done. Each BCPP was equivalent to 5 buffy coat units. Ten apheresis platelets were taken as control. Serial samplings were done on day 0, 3, and 5 of collection and were assessed for: volume, platelet count, white blood cell count, swirling, pH, sterility, glucose, lactate, soluble p-selectin, Interleukin (IL)-6, IL-1 β, and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α). RESULTS: BCPP Part C (leukoreduced with PAS) maintained the best quality parameters in terms of maintenance of pH, least lactate accumulation, least sP-selectin levels, and least accumulation of inflammatory mediators (IL-6, IL-1 β, and TNF-α) than the other groups >BCPP part B >AP-PC and >BCPP Part A. On day 5 of storage pH for BCPP Part A, Part B, Part C, and AP-PC was: 6.33, 6.42, 6.64, and 6.29, respectively, and soluble p-selectin (ng/ml) was 201 ± 22, 186 ± 11, 149 ± 18, 200 ± 23, respectively. BCPP Part B and AP-PC had comparable quality parameters and activation markers. CONCLUSIONS: Buffy coat pooled platelet has comparable and even better-quality control parameters (especially leukofiltered with PAS) than conventional platelet preparation and is a good alternative for meeting platelet transfusion requirements of critical patients during emergency hours in resource-constraint setting.


The constitutional revolution of Iran, at least in theory, prepared the conditions for people's presence in bureaucratic affairs, and bureaucratic reform was central to the new devised constitutional law and its supplement. But unfortunately, in spite of some superficial changes, the intended purpose wasn't accomplished sufficiently. The main obstacle to these reforms was an undisputed dominance of traditional autocratic addicts and its persistent opposition with any serious reform. Therefore, different forms of false addicts like blind submission to the despot, illegal procedures, flattery, etc., survived the new regime. Hence, we might ask that to what extent the manifested demands, ideas and practical behavior of pioneer constitutionalists-including their attempts to establish a lawful government- affected the bureaucracy and its management.  The present paper aims to give an adequate answer to this question. Its method is based upon an analytical survey of the mutual interaction between "act" and "structure" in the course of social developments and it intends to further develop this survey within systemic approach.


Picture this scenario: You walk into a pharmacy and find a new category of nonprescription medications near the pharmacy. These "Pharmacy Care OTCs" are available only in an outlet with a pharmacy, and are intended to treat chronic and asymptomatic conditions as well as other conditions that lend themselves to counseling by a pharmacist.


We have used kHz single cycle laser pulses in order to resonantly drive a plasma wakefield, resulting in the acceleration of relativistic electron beam with 5 MeV energies and >20 pC/shot charges. Simulations indicate that the electron bunch duration can be as short as 1 femtosecond, making this source unique for probing structural dynamics on ultrafast time scales.


Homocysteine is an independent risk factor for coronary, cerebral, and peripheral vascular diseases. Recent studies have shown that levels of homocysteine are elevated in patients with impaired hepatic function, but the precise role of homocysteine in the development of hepatic dysfunction is unclear. In this study, we examined the effect of homocysteine on hepatocyte proliferation in vitro. Our results demonstrated that homocysteine inhibited hepatocyte proliferation by up-regulating protein levels of p53 as well as mRNA and protein levels of p21Cip1 in primary cultured hepatocytes. Homocysteine induced cell growth arrest in p53-positive hepatocarcinoma cell line HepG2, but not in p53-null hepatocarcinoma cell line Hep3B. A p53 inhibitor pifithrin-α inhibited the expression of p21Cip1 and attenuated homocysteine-induced cell growth arrest. Homocysteine induced TRB3 expression via endoplasmic reticulum stress pathway, resulting in Akt dephosphorylation. Knock-down of endogenous TRB3 significantly suppressed the inhibitory effect of homocysteine on cell proliferation and the phosphorylation of Akt. LiCl reversed homocysteine-mediated cell growth arrest by inhibiting TRB3-mediated Akt dephosphorylation. These results demonstrate that both TRB3 and p21Cip1 are critical molecules in the homocysteine signaling cascade and provide a mechanistic explanation for impairment of liver regeneration in hyperhomocysteinemia.


Successful conservation of large terrestrial mammals (wildlife) on private lands requires that landowners be empowered to manage wildlife so that benefits outweigh the costs. Laikipia County, Kenya, is predominantly unfenced, and the land uses in the area allow wide‐ranging wildlife to move freely between different management systems on private land. We used camera traps to sample large mammals associated with 4 different management systems (rhinoceros sanctuaries, no livestock; conservancies, intermediate stocking level; fenced ranches, high stocking level; and group ranches, high stocking level, no fencing, pastoralist clan ownership) to examine whether management and stocking levels affect wildlife. We deployed cameras at 522 locations across 8 properties from January 2008 through October 2010 and used the photographs taken during this period to estimate richness, occupancy, and relative abundance of species. Species richness was highest in conservancies and sanctuaries and lowest on fenced and group ranches. Occupancy estimates were, on average, 2 and 5 times higher in sanctuaries and conservancies as on fenced and group ranches, respectively. Nineteen species on fenced ranches and 25 species on group ranches were considered uncommon (occupancy < 0.1). The relative abundance of most species was highest or second highest in sanctuaries and conservancies. Lack of rights to manage and utilize wildlife and uncertain land tenure dampen many owners' incentives to tolerate wildlife. We suggest national conservation strategies consider landscape‐level approaches to land‐use planning that aim to increase conserved areas by providing landowners with incentives to tolerate wildlife. Possible incentives include improving access to ecotourism benefits, forging agreements to maintain wildlife habitat and corridors, resolving land‐ownership conflicts, restoring degraded rangelands, expanding opportunities for grazing leases, and allowing direct benefits to landowners through wildlife harvesting.


BACKGROUND
Acute invasive fungal rhinosinusitis (AIFR) is an aggressive opportunistic infection with a high mortality rate. Recently, non-invasive techniques have been introduced for diagnosis of invasive fungal disease. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the diagnostic significance of serum galactomannan measurement in patients with AIFR.

METHODOLOGY
We conducted a retrospective case-control study of 28 patients with AIFR and 36 fungus ball (FB) patients. We evaluated clinical, laboratory, and pathologic findings along with disease course.

RESULTS
In 28 patients with AIFR, there were 21 cases of invasive aspergillosis (IA) and 7 cases of invasive mucormycosis (IM). The control group was comprised of 36 patients with FB. The three-group analysis showed a statistically significant difference among the groups. At the cut-off value of 0.48, the sensitivity and specificity were 71.4% and 93.0%, respectively. Comparison of mean serum galactomannan levels in 5 non-survivors and 9 survivors at initial measurement showed no significant difference, but that became significantly different 1 week later. Statistical analysis showed that the levels of serum galactomannan decreased significantly according to the measurement-point in within survivor-group analysis. The difference in between survivor-groups analysis was also significant.

CONCLUSION
Serum galactomannan measurement seems useful for early diagnosis and discrimination of fungal species in patients with AIFR. In addition, clinical outcomes may be related to the levels and patterns of serum galactomannan, especially in IA. The appropriate measurement of galactomannan might be helpful in treating the patients at high risk for AIFR.


In this paper, we pretend to create a logical way to managed a mini-grid and micro-grid architecture that can be implemented in Ecuador Electrical Network; this architecture will allow to increase the electrical efficiency. In Ecuador, 70% of the electricity is not harnessed for multiple reasons, between them, the long distances for distribution and also because all electrical network is unidirectional. We are working to obtain the maximum advantage by creating a stable and hold architecture by using the internet of things and Smart Grid topology. Each Mini-grid can generate, produce and transmit energy toward hard demand places. Many countries join efforts to produce many smart-grid standards, but we are researching to change this target, the main goal is the mini-grid and microgrid approach, for this way, we can transform many homes in an electrical mini-generators which can allow electricity to inject in a network; reducing losses, increasing the efficiency to redirect the electricity for needy places without modify the current network and leave out the services provider. To achieve these goals, all electronic devices of the house must be connected to the internet and managed through a self-sufficient cloud APP. Can you imagine just one house with solar panels in the roof, wind generators and other devices that can generate electricity, and inside the home, all things interconnected between themselves (i.e. TV, Microwave, heating system, opening and closing doors, dishwasher, washing machine, lights and so on) all this functions we will manage through the web APP, which can enable and disable each devices or can redirect the energy remainder outside the home; reducing losses for stock and transmission the energy, that is usually expensive and profitless.


An experimental irradiation, named "Alexandre," has been carried out in the Osiris experimental reactor to perform a generic study on the mechanical behavior after irradiation at 325°C of different kinds of steels suitable for use as irradiated components in a nuclear reactor [1]. The irradiated steels were austenitic stainless, martensitic (conventional and reduced activation), and ferritic-martensitic Oxide Dispersion Strengthened steels in various initial metallurgical conditions. The final dose was 9 dpa, which represents nearly a "saturation" dose for the hardening/embrittlement of both austenitic and martensitic steels. At this dose, the Yield Strength and the Ultimate Tensile Strengths are almost equal, and strong localization of the plastic deformation is often observed. After irradiation, as-quenched martensitic steels exhibit very large tensile strengths, and some of them show ductility parameters comparable with those of the tempered martensitic steels. At 9 dpa, the behavior of cold-worked steels tends to be similar to that of tempered steels with a more pronounced localization of the deformation. This indicates that the recovery of the cold-worked microstructure is not achieved at 9 dpa. Certain martensitic steels (MANET II and HT9) show tendencies to brittle behavior and exhibit a considerable degradation of their ductility parameters after irradiation. The behavior of the most chromium-rich ferritic steel (ODS-MA957) is quite surprising. It exhibits moderate hardening and good post-irradiation ductility parameters. Measurements of the dose rate have been performed after several cooling-times, of up to 53 months after unloading, to study the radioactive decay of the steels. Experimental data show that the reduced activation steels exhibit the lowest residual activity and the highest rate of relative activity decrease (90 %) during the cooling period.


Abstract Crater lakes are monitored to detect volcanic unrest starting from the assumption that they behave as condensers for magmatic gases. A further assumption is that acidic gases such as HCl are conservative once dissolved in water. This is not true for extremely acidic crater lakes, whose H+ activity is high enough to induce Cl− hydrolysis and consequently HCl degassing. This study presents the results of experimental determinations at 40–45°C demonstrating that HCl degassing from acidic water depends on pH and Cl− concentration. HCl degassing starts at pH values c. 0.05–0.1 with a rate of 5–10 mg min−1 l−1, increasing up to c. 70 mg min−1 l−1 at pH<−0.2. This implies that the rate of HCl removal from a crater lake with a volume of 104–105 m3 and a seawater-like Cl− concentration ranges from 5 to 50 t h−1. The estimated HCl/H2O ratio in the separated vapour phase (0.01–0.2) is coherent with HCl/H2O ratios of fumaroles. Our experiments imply that: (i) the presence of very acidic gas species in fumaroles can be associated with a liquid-dominated feeding system, and (ii) dissolved in extremely acidic crater lakes, Cl− behaves as a non-conservative component.


Assessments of future potential doses and risks (e.g. in connection with radioactive waste disposal) can be associated with substantial uncertainties. These uncertainties are often incorporated into assessments using stochastic models, and give rise to doses characterised in probabilistic terms. Questions about how doses should be related to risks arise even in the case of deterministic dose assessments. However, results of a probabilistic dose assessment may lead to additional issues when interpreting them or attempting to convert them to risk for regulatory purposes. Some problems are shown to originate from the difference between the meaning of a probabilistic dose value and the definition of potential exposure. Others relate to the appropriate choice of, or approach to compliance with, a regulatory limit. A possible method for setting limits on probabilistic (potential) doses or risks is proposed, based on an accepted technique for determining detection limits.


A man in his 70s presented with a 20-year history of a mass on the right side of his neck. On physical examination, he was found to have a large mass on the right side of his neck, approximately 6 cm in diameter. Initial computed tomographic (CT) examination identified a partially intensely enhancing and partially necrotic lesion at the right carotid bifurcation measuring 5.5 × 4.8 × 4.6 cm. The lesion extended from approximately the C2 to C6 levels. The right internal and external carotid artery branches were splayed. A subsequent CT examination performed 10 months later showed an increase in the size of the lesion (Figure, A), as well as the interval development of a 1.6-cm, oval-shaped enhancing lesion in the right level IV space posterior to the carotid sheath (Figure, B). Following needle biopsy of both masses, a preoperative carotid angiogram was performed, which demonstrated both the mass at the carotid bifurcation and the smaller level IV mass to be hypervascular (Figure, C). The mass at the carotid bifurcation was embolized. What is your diagnosis? A B C


Case No. A42738909, Administratīvā rajona tiesa (Administrative District Court), with thanks to Sorainen Law Firm for helping with this translation (Calibration certificate of the measuring device submitted without a valid electronic signature; consideration of article 5(2) of Directive 1999/93/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 1999 on a Community framework for electronic signatures, OJ L 13, 19.01.2000, p. 12; submission of electronic documents to the competent authorities as evidence should not be denied solely on the grounds that the document is in electronic form and that does not have a secure electronic signature)


The force closure properties of the underactuated forging robot grippers are analyzed. The gripping contact forces distributed between the interface of the tongs and the work-piece are considered as an equivalent resultant force whose contact model is friction point contact, and must meet force closure equations. Then the operation theory of N robot fingers to grasp an object can be used for the analysis of the force closure and the calculation of contact forces. Based on the configurations of heavy duty grippers, where the position distribution of the resultant contact forces is optimized, the iterative algorithm of linear constrained gradient flows is used to optimize the contact forces and calculate the gripping force. The force closure properties for different forging robots and in different operation conditions and mechanisms are analyzed. Simulation and experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the optimization method.


A systematic study of the phase stability, chemical bonding, and lattice dynamics properties of PuGaO3 is performed by means of unbiased particle-swarm optimization techniques combined with first-principles calculations. Phase stability analyses, including total energy, formation enthalpy, mechanical stability, and lattice dynamics, indicate that the ground-state structure of PuGaO3 at ambient pressure belongs to the space group Pnma. The fat-band dispersions and chemical bonding analysis suggest that Pnma PuGaO3 is an indirect band gap semiconductor (2.46 eV at the PBEsol + U level) at the Γ point and the Pu–O and Ga–O bonds in Pnma PuGaO3 are dominated by the ionic interactions. By examining the phonon spectra and phonon DOS, we provide a detailed insight into the lattice dynamics and thermodynamic properties of PuGaO3. In addition, the infrared absorption and Raman scattering spectra of PuGaO3 are predicted and further assigned at the center (Γ point) of the first Brillouin zone.


Background Amid overall reduced demand for paid sex it is unclear how the economic organisation of sex work is affected. We explore factors associated with the price of paid sex in rural Eastern Zimbabwe. Methods We collected and analysed cross-sectional data on 161 women who reported receiving either cash or commodities at their most recent commercial sexual encounter and who were recruited using snowball and location-based methods in October-December 2010. We used linear modelling to assess the impact of social and behavioural variables on payments for sex. Results Eighty percent of sex workers (SW) were paid in cash; the mean payment was US$11 (95% CI:$9-$13) and amount did not vary by payment type (p > 0.2). All acts were penile-vaginal. When clients requested condoms, consistent condom use was more prevalent than in encounters where they did not (82% vs. 38%,p < 0.01). Mean payment in 100% protected encounters was $3 lower than when condom use was inconsistent (at least one unprotected act) (p = 0.03). Mean payment was higher when encounters were initiated in private locations (SW or client's house) than in bars and public places (e.g. markets): $13, $11 and $8, respectively (trend: p = 0.003). Independent factors positively associated with payment were secondary education (vs. no or primary education, p = 0.013), a night-long encounter (vs. one act, p = 0.03), higher numbers of acts (p < 0.01), clients not requesting condoms (vs. requesting condoms, p < 0.05); encounters initiated in public (vs. private locations p < 0.01) were negatively associated with payment. Conclusion Clients who did not request protected sex paid more than clients who did, and more educated SW were able to negotiate higher prices. Under extreme macroeconomic pressures SW may be less financially able to refuse unprotected sex. We need to understand better the importance of economics of sex work for HIV/STI epidemics.


Maintaining soil temperatures at specified levels (below 29 C) in peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) is vital to crop growth, development, and pod yield. Subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) systems are not designed to wet the soil surface. Possible lack of moisture in the pod zone could result in elevated soil temperatures that could be detrimental to the peanut crop. The objective of this study was to document the response of pod zone soil temperature when irrigated with a SDI system. Thermocouple sensors were inserted at 5-cm soil depth in the crop row and at specified distances from the crop row in SDI and nonirrigated (NI) treatments. Maximum hourly and daily soil temperature data were measured at three locations, one in Virginia and two in Georgia. The maximum daily soil temperature decreased as plant canopy increased. During the first 50 d after planting (DAP), the average maximum soil temperature was 1 to 2 C cooler for both the SDI and NI treatments than the average maximum air temperature. From 50 DAP to harvest, the average maximum soil temperatures for SDI and NI treatments were 6 C cooler than the average maximum air temperature. During pod filling and maturation, the average maximum soil temperature was about 5 C cooler (27 C) for SDI treatments than the maximum air temperature and 2 C cooler than the recommended 29 C. Soil temperature in the NI treatments did exceed 29 C during periods of drought but decreased to values similar to SDI treatments immediately following a rainfall event. Overall, SDI can maintain maximum soil temperatures below critical values (29 C) during peanut fruit initiation to crop harvest.


Abstract. Middle reaches of the Yangtze River are the worst flooded segments along the Yangtze River. It is important to understand and study the variations of frequency and magnitude of historical floods in this area and how were they related to or affected by EI Nino in a long historical period. We applied the statistics and time series to study and analyze historical floods (1470-2000) and EI Nino events (1525-1995). The results show that the more floods occurred in the latest 200 years. The power-spectral analysis suggests the main cycle of flood variation is longer than that of EI Nino events. El Nino shows the fluctuations of about 2-year and 3~4 year period while the flood variation is not so significant but can also be identified in the period of 2, 8 and 40 years (it exceeds the level of confidence 0.03). Time series analyses of the fluctuation of flood and El Nino indicate that there is a significant correlation between the two at both high and moderate frequency sections. The result shows that the response of the floods along the middle reaches of the Yangtze River to the effects of El Nino events is not only delayed one or more than one year as suggested by many Chinese scientists, but it also can be somewhat longer delayed up to about 8 years. The result also indicates that the shorter the interval of EI Nino events, the sooner the flood events follows. In other words, flood could be delayed with longer time if the interval time of EI Nino events is longer.


Visual programming languages have facilitated the application development process, improving our ability to express programs, as well as our ability to view, edit and interact with them. Yet even in programming environments, productivity is restricted by the primary input sources: the mouse and the keyboard. As an alternative, we investigate a program development interface which responds to the most natural human communication technologies: voice, handwriting and gesture. Speech- and pen-based systems have yet to find broad acceptance in everyday life because they are insufficiently advantageous to overcome problems with reliability. However, we believe that a visual programming environment with a multimodal user interface properly constrained so as not to exceed the limits of the current technology has the potential to increase programming productivity for not only those people who are manually or visually impaired, but for the general population as well. In this paper we report on such a system.


Oxidative stress imposed by reactive oxygen species is now believed to contribute to hypertension, atherosclerosis and ageing of the vasculature all involving a loss of relaxation. The antioxidant enzymes glutathione peroxidase, superoxide dismutase and catalase play a crucial role in defending against the ravages of oxidative stress. Our purpose was to characterize age-related changes in glutathione peroxidase, superoxide dismutase and catalase in the rat aorta. Aortas were extracted from seven young (4 months), seven middle aged (18 months) and seven old (24 months) animals. Analysis of variance was used with Fisher-LSD post hoc to determine mean differences among glutathione peroxidase, superoxide dismutase and catalase. Aortic glutathione peroxidase activities rose steadily with age expressed in micromol mg protein-1 min-1 +/- SEM (young: 141 +/- 22; middle aged: 198 +/- 18; old: 229 +/- 26) reaching significance between young and old. Superoxide dismutase activities significantly decreased in middle aged when compared with young (young: 22 +/- 2 vs. middle aged: 15 +/- 2 U mg protein-1) before trending upward again in old age (19 +/- 2). Catalase activities dropped significantly between young and old when expressed in mU mg protein-1 (young: 230 +/- 30; middle aged: 173 +/- 18; old: 144 +/- 23). Ratios for the various enzymes indicate a shrinking contribution of catalase with ageing, with an enhanced role for glutathione peroxidase in the antioxidant defence. These data in aortas of ageing rats show a complex alteration of the antioxidant profile.


The gokan is a medium of pre-modern Japanese literature where the story is told through a mixture of text and image on every page, with the narrative and dialogue of the story surrounding the image illustrations on all sides. The Nise Murasaki inaka Genji (A Rustic Genji by a Fake Murasaki, 1829-42), written by Ryutei Tanehiko (1783-1842) and illustrated by Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1865), was one of the most popular gokan of the Edo Period (1605-1868) and has been republished approximately twenty-four times from the end of the nineteenth century until today. By examining how these works handle text and image, this thesis seeks to gain a deeper understanding about how image functions in the gokan genre. When text must be translated and the image altered from the original layout to make it comprehensible to modern readers, the resulting text and image combinations, or lack of image, offer insight into the importance of the role of image in gokan.


Payment services are, at their simplest, services for moving money around the economy. These services carry risks for the provider and the customer, from credit and insolvency risk, through to fraud and 'mere' errors. Different societies deal with, manage and allocate these risks differently. There are a number of similarities in how these services are regulated, and the careful observer can identify patterns and themes. As the economy continues to be heavily reliant on payment services for its efficient operation, commentators and governments have taken a keen interest in these services. This paper examines the six key regulatory risks for payment services: credit risk, efficiency risk, product mismatch, product failure, transactional failure and privacy. Previous articles have considered recent industry and technological developments in the payments industry, many of which post-date the existing regulatory regime in most jurisdictions. This paper draws conclusions about how a best practice regime might address recent innovations such as mobile payments, online payment services and 'stored value' cards. While there is significant commonality between regulatory regimes, there is not yet a common approach to many payment services issues. The goal of this project (and this paper) is to develop a better or best practice framework for the regulation of payment services, drawing on the strengths and weaknesses of the existing regimes. A best practice regime is identified – including both the elements or building blocks, and how and when they should be applied. The elements, based on analysis of key national regimes, are fair play rules, systemic stability, an active supervisor, broad scope, licensing, disclosure, obligations of the parties, liability, dispute resolution and privacy. The paper also explains how these elements can be combined to construct a coherent overall regime. The result is a recommended best practice model involving licensing, disclosure, conduct and redress standards in a three-tiered structure (thus providing a lighter-touch regime for low value products and a more intensive regime for more substantial banking-style products).


The mechanical performance of Dual Phase (DP) and Complex Phase (CP) steels was investigated by SEM analysis, tensile testing, Forming Limit Curve investigation and flange formability testing. The alloys of interest were Dual Phase (DP) untempered, Dual Phase (DP) tempered and Complex Phase (CP) steels. Phase content analysis showed that the distribution of the ferrite and martensite phases was the same for the two DP alloys, but the grain size and condition (tempered/untempered) for the martensite islands was much different in the two alloys. In the tempered DP steel, the smaller grain size for the martensite and the tempering process resulted in increased elongation, more formability and ability to form a flange (flangeability). In CP steels the soft ferrite phase is replaced by harder bainite, yielding a bainitic-martensitic microstructure. Bainite reduced the total elongation of the alloy during tensile testing, reduced the formability (especially under plane strain conditions) of the alloy but improved the flangeability of the alloy. Under flanging conditions, CP steels deformed to higher strains, at tighter radii with minimum springback. Microstructural inspections at the outer radius of the flanged specimens revealed that in CP steels bainite deforms similarly to martensite, therefore the strain partitioning is smaller in CP steels in comparison to DP steels. Plastic deformation in CP steels upon flanging occurs with the formation of strong slip bands in both martensite and bainite. In contrast, the martensite and ferrite grains in DP steels deform quite differently leading to strong strain localisations. Void nucleation and cracking occurred at the martensite islands or within the soft ferrite phase next to the martensite islands. In CP steels no voids or damage was observed within the matrix. A special case study was done with a thicker and stronger alloy, a Martensitic 1400 steel to reveal the flangeability limits for advanced high strength steels. Neither cracks nor damage were observed visually on the flanged specimens. However SEM observations at the outer radius of the flanged samples revealed significant void growth at inclusion sites and cracks nucleating within the matrix adjacent to


Certain societal groups are significantly overrepresented within politics, including men, ethnic majority groups, and socioeconomic elites. This has fueled debates regarding meritocracy within political recruitment. While meritocracy is desirable, its definition and measurement are contested. The criteria used in theoretical and empirical academic studies differ from those of political parties and voters, as discussed below. Furthermore, there is bias in favor of the male status quo, with all groups preferring the qualities of existing elites. The definition of a "good" politician is therefore highly subjective. Nonetheless, political traditionalists claim that the "best" candidate should be selected even if this leads to significant gender imbalance in parliaments. Yet, if political recruitment is biased in favor of social elites, the overrecruitment of men may not derive solely from merit (Murray 2014). Without definitive criteria for evaluating prospective candidates and judging those already elected, we cannot determine whether political recruitment is meritocratic.


IEEE 802.11 CSMA/CA has been widely deployed as the primary MAC protocol for ad hoc networks and wireless LANs. It was designed with the assumption that nodes would follow proper operation of the protocol. Nodes, however, may choose to deviate in order to either obtain an unfair share of the available bandwidth or disrupt the services of the network. Accordingly, a misbehavior rooted at the MAC layer can be classified as selfish or malicious behavior. This article surveys the research activities related to MAC layer misbehavior; based on the operating principles and the objective of misbehaving nodes, we classify MAC layer misbehavior and present descriptions for each solution. We conclude with a brief summary of the key ideas and a general direction for future work.


Background The COVID-19 pandemic has had profound and differential impacts on metropolitan areas across the United States and around the world. Within the United States, metropolitan areas that were hit earliest with the pandemic and reacted with scientifically based health policy were able to contain the virus by late spring. For other areas that kept businesses open, the first wave in the United States hit in mid-summer. As the weather turns colder, universities resume classes, and people tire of lockdowns, a second wave is ascending in both metropolitan and rural areas. It becomes more obvious that additional SARS-CoV-2 surveillance is needed at the local level to track recent shifts in the pandemic, rates of increase, and persistence. Objective The goal of this study is to provide advanced surveillance metrics for COVID-19 transmission that account for speed, acceleration, jerk and persistence, and weekly shifts, to better understand and manage risk in metropolitan areas. Existing surveillance measures coupled with our dynamic metrics of transmission will inform health policy to control the COVID-19 pandemic until, and after, an effective vaccine is developed. Here, we provide values for novel indicators to measure COVID-19 transmission at the metropolitan area level. Methods Using a longitudinal trend analysis study design, we extracted 260 days of COVID-19 data from public health registries. We used an empirical difference equation to measure the daily number of cases in the 25 largest US metropolitan areas as a function of the prior number of cases and weekly shift variables based on a dynamic panel data model that was estimated using the generalized method of moments approach by implementing the Arellano-Bond estimator in R. Results Minneapolis and Chicago have the greatest average number of daily new positive results per standardized 100,000 population (which we refer to as speed). Extreme behavior in Minneapolis showed an increase in speed from 17 to 30 (67%) in 1 week. The jerk and acceleration calculated for these areas also showed extreme behavior. The dynamic panel data model shows that Minneapolis, Chicago, and Detroit have the largest persistence effects, meaning that new cases pertaining to a specific week are statistically attributable to new cases from the prior week. Conclusions Three of the metropolitan areas with historically early and harsh winters have the highest persistence effects out of the top 25 most populous metropolitan areas in the United States at the beginning of their cold weather season. With these persistence effects, and with indoor activities becoming more popular as the weather gets colder, stringent COVID-19 regulations will be more important than ever to flatten the second wave of the pandemic. As colder weather grips more of the nation, southern metropolitan areas may also see large spikes in the number of cases.


The practicability and methodology of applying regularly placed contacts on layout design of standard cells are studied. The regular placement enables more effective use of resolution enhancement technologies, which in turn allows for a reduction of critical dimensions. Although placing contacts on a grid adds restrictions during cell layout, overall circuit area can be made smaller by a careful selection of the grid pitch, allowing slight contact offset, applying double exposure, and shrinking the minimum size and pitch. The contact level of 250 nm standard cells was shrunk by 10%, resulting in an area change ranging from 20% to +25% with an average decrease of 5% for the 84 cells studied. The areas of two circuits, a finite-impulse-response (FIR) filter and an add-compare-select (ACS) unit in the Viterbi decoder, decrease by 4% and 2%, respectively.


While discussing a concrete controversial topic, most humans will find it challenging to swiftly raise a diverse set of convincing and relevant arguments. In this paper we present a system that, given a point of view about a controversial topic, automatically generates arguments supporting and contesting it. This is achieved by breaking the task of automatic argument construction into a pipe-line of successive modules, each is responsible for a specific tangible task such as documents retrieval, identifying building blocks of arguments within a document, and analyzing whether these building blocks support or contest the point of view. By providing an interface for humans to interact and intervene at different points in the pipeline, we present an interactive research tool which, for a given topic and a corpus of documents such as Wikipedia or newspaper archive, provides a more comprehensive view and deeper insights than can be obtained us-ing standard search engines.


The traditional Autumn School of the University of Tartu's Department of History, "Art and Beauty" was conducted on 16 and 17 October 2014 in cooperation with the Tartu University Art Museum and Tartu Art Museum. The objective of the event, on the one hand, was to introduce the development and modification of the concept of beauty in the history of aesthetics and art; and on the other hand, to examine the problematic relationship that contemporary art and theory has with beauty. Thus, the first day of Autumn School was devoted to the classical traditions of beauty and its peak at the turn of the 19th century, when the University of Tartu was reopened, its ensemble of buildings built and the art museum established. Thereafter, the topic of masculine beauty in the classical art tradition was covered as a separate topic. In addition to the presentations, the interest of the Enlightenment in the human body and antique sculpture was associated with the art project created specially for the Autumn School by Jaanus Samma, a respected and well-known young Estonian artist, who made an "incursion" into the exposition at the University of Tartu Art Museum. On the second day of the Autumn School, at the Tartu Art Museum, an analysis of the meaning(s) of art in the 20th century and thereafter, today's art, exhibition and media landscape was conducted with the participation of artists, curators and art critics. Whereas, the description of the current potential and position of beauty developed into an expectedly great challenge because, in the context of contemporary art, beauty and aestheticism may seem like a kind of taboo – a contrast to meaningful and intellectual art/exhibitions – and the topic is difficult to discuss.


INTRODUCTION
Diagnosis of migraine headache in children can be difficult as it depends on subjective symptoms; diagnostic criteria are broader than in adults. Migraine occurs in 3% to 10% of children and increases with age up to puberty. Migraine spontaneously remits after puberty in half of children, but if it begins during adolescence it may be more likely to persist throughout adulthood.

METHODS AND OUTCOMES
We conducted a systematic review and aimed to answer the following clinical question: What are the effects of treatments for acute attacks, and of prophylaxis for migraine headache in children? We searched: Medline, Embase, The Cochrane Library, and other important databases up to June 2010 (Clinical Evidence reviews are updated periodically; please check our website for the most up-to-date version of this review). We included harms alerts from relevant organisations such as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

RESULTS
We found 22 systematic reviews, RCTs, or observational studies that met our inclusion criteria. We performed a GRADE evaluation of the quality of evidence for interventions.

CONCLUSIONS
In this systematic review we present information relating to the effectiveness and safety of the following interventions: for acute symptom relief (antiemetics, codeine phosphate, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs [NSAIDs], paracetamol, and 5HT1 antagonists [such as triptans]) and for prophylaxis (beta-blockers, dietary manipulation, pizotifen, progressive muscle relaxation, stress management, thermal biofeedback, and topiramate).


ABSTRACT The microbial taxonomic composition of the three domains of life in two coastal plankton samples was assessed by random total community metagenomic sequencing and PCR-based rDNA amplicon deep-sequencing in order to compare the resulting diversity and investigate possible limitations and complementarities of each method. The various universal primer sets, used to amplify different hypervariable rDNA regions, revealed the same major high-level taxonomic groups in Bacteria and unicellular Eukaryota, and showed a scarce Archaea apparent richness. However, significant differences were found between the different primer sets (p-value < 0.05, with the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test), regarding both operational taxonomic unit (OTU) richness and relative abundance of the major high-level taxonomic groups detected. Based on the metagenomic approach, the phylum Bacteroidetes dominated the prokaryotic community, followed by Proteobacteria, while the detected eukaryotic unicellular taxa belonged to the groups of Alveolata, Fungi, Chlorophyta, Stramenopiles and Phaeophyceae. These groups were found to carry genes typically found in microbial communities, which are linked to DNA, RNA and protein metabolism and the synthesis of nucleotides, amino acids, carbohydrates and vitamins. Although our findings suggest that the total community metagenomic approach can provide a more comprehensive picture of the planktonic microbial community structure, a number of issues associated with this approach emerged. These issues include the still relatively high cost compared to amplicon sequencing, the possible low coverage of the full marine diversity, the insufficiency of databases for other gene markers than the small subunit gene, and the bias towards bacterial sequences because of their higher abundance relative to eukaryotes in marine environments.


In studies conducted in the last 30 years, different types of virtual labs were applied to different study groups using very different methods and techniques. The aim of this study is to evaluate the virtual labs used in teaching physics in terms of the purpose of use, working groups, methods, and techniques using the content analysis method based on a literature review conducted. The results of the application, which is aimed at the selection and use of virtual physics lab programs that offer very different designs, scopes, and means of application and at the adaptation of such programs to the target audience by educators, as well as at provision of a means for measurement and evaluation, will be analyzed. By examining the data thus obtained in terms of the subject matter, method, and outcome, it will be possible to assist the parties who will utilize the virtual physics laboratory programs in teaching physics to use such programs with expected efficiency.


Fault-detection and prediction in HPC clusters and Cloud-computing systems are increasingly challenging issues. Several system middleware such as job schedulers and MPI implementations provide support for both reactive and proactive mechanisms to tolerate faults. These techniques rely on external components such as system logs and infrastructure monitors to provide information about hardware/software failure either through detection, or as a prediction. However, these middleware work in isolation, without disseminating the knowledge of faults encountered. In this context, we propose a light-weight multi-threaded service, namely FTB-IPMI, which provides distributed fault-monitoring using the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) and coordinated propagation of fault information using the Fault-Tolerance Backplane (FTB). In essence, it serves as a middleman between system hardware and the software stack by translating raw hardware events to structured software events and delivering it to any interested component using a publish-subscribe framework. Fault-predictors and other decision-making engines that rely on distributed failure information can benefit from FTB-IPMI to facilitate proactive fault-tolerance mechanisms such as preemptive job migration. We have developed a fault-prediction engine within MVAPICH2, an RDMA-based MPI implementation, to demonstrate this capability. Failure predictions made by this engine are used to trigger migration of processes from failing nodes to healthy spare nodes, thereby providing resilience to the MPI application. Experimental evaluation clearly indicates that a single instance of FTB-IPMI can scale to several hundreds of nodes with a remarkably low resource-utilization footprint. A deployment of FTB-IPMI that services a cluster with 128 compute-nodes, sweeps the entire cluster and collects IPMI sensor information on CPU temperature, system voltages and fan speeds in about 0.75 seconds. The average CPU utilization of this service running on a single node is 0.35%.


The kinetics of microbial ferrous-iron oxidation have been well studied as it is a critical sub-process in bioleaching of sulphide minerals. Exhaustive studies in continuous culture have been carried out recently, investigating the effects of conditions relevant to heap bioleaching on the microbial ferrous-iron oxidation by Leptospirillum ferriphilum [1-3]. It was postulated that ferric-iron, which is known to be inhibitory, also acts as a stress stimulus, promoting microbial growth at higher total iron concentration. This paper investigates this phenomenon further, by comparing tests run with pure ferrous-iron feeds against those where the feed is partially oxidised to ferric at comparable concentrations. The findings clearly suggest that, contrary to reactor theory, it is indeed ferrous iron concentration in the reactor feed that determines biomass concentration and that ferric iron concentration has little effect on microbial growth. Further mathematical analysis shows that the phenomenon can be explained on the basis of the Pirt equation and the particular reaction conditions employed in the test work.


Introduction One of the surprising facets of wound-healing investigations is the fact that the workers in the field have been unable to agree upon a standard tensiometric technique. This is unfortunate, as it makes it difficult to compare reported results adequately, since many are reported in grams or other weight units, while others are stated in millimeters of mercury. Those results reported in units of weight are generally obtained by cutting the wounds into transverse strips of standard width. The strips so obtained are then placed on tension by the addition of weight (either by a gradated addition of weights, or preferably by a tensiometer) until the healing wound splits apart. The tension (expressed in grams or other weight measure) at which this disruption occurs is declared the tensile strength of the wound. This kind of tensiometry is well described in Howes' original articles.1 The second kind of method


Hierarchically-organized ensembles of shared memory multiprocessors possess a richer and more complex model of locality than previous generation multicomputers with single processor nodes. These dual-tier computers introduce many new factors into the program-mer's performance model. We present a methodology for implementing block-structured numerical applications on dual-tier computers, and a run-time infrastructure, called KeLP2, that implements the methodology. KeLP2 supports two levels of locality and parallelism via hierarchical SPMD control ow, run-time geometric meta-data, and asynchronous collective communication. KeLP applications can eeectively overlap communication with computation under conditions where non-blocking point-to-point message passing fails to do so. KeLP's abstractions hide considerable detail without sacriicing performance, and dual-tier applications written in KeLP consistently outperform equivalent single-tier implementations written in MPI. We describe the KeLP2 model and show how it facilitates the implementation of ve block-structured applications specially formulated to hide communication latency on dual-tiered architectures. We support our arguments with empirical data from running the applications on various single-and dual-tier multicomputers. KeLP2 supports a migration path from single-tier to dual-tier platforms, and we illustrate this capability with a detailed programming example.


From the Publisher:
*JX094-4, 0-201-74387-6, Riccardi, Greg; Database Management with Website Development Applications Covers the basic background needed to understand databases, but applies the material to a real-world context—a business going online—to make the material relevant to readers. The case studies about a business moving to the web helps readers learn about SQL, database design, the Entity-Relationship model. The book uses Access and Oracle to give readers experience with the most popular SQL tools today. The second-half of the book teaches readers how to design a website to interact with users; how to construct web pages with HTML and XML; organize information and applications for use in e-commerce sites; and develop software to support user interactions. MARKET IS/IT database managers who want to learn about using the web with their databases


ABSTRACT Speculation has become a normalized occupational strategy and quotidian economic rationality that extends throughout society. Although there are many contemporary articulations of speculation, this article focuses on contract labor as a domain of financialization. Seen through this lens, contract labor can be understood as a speculative investment strategy wherein individuals leverage whatever assets they have at their disposal – savings, time, bodily health – to capture economic advantages. In particular, we explore the speculative practices of healthy individuals who enroll in pharmaceutical drug trials as their primary or critical source of income. Mobilizing speculative logics to maximize the money they can earn from their clinical trial participation, these contract workers employ what we term a future-income-over-immediate-pay calculus. This speculative calculus valorizes fictional projections of significant long-term future income over present financial opportunities. For the economically precarious individuals in our study, we argue that rather than effectively increasing their income, speculation on contract work serves a compensatory function, providing an important – but ultimately inadequate – sense of control over market conditions that thrive upon workers' economic insecurity.


This article presents an empirical study of how the use of relational database access technologies in open source Java projects evolves over time. Our observations may be useful to project managers to make more informed decisions on which technologies to introduce into an existing project and when. We selected 2,457 Java projects on GitHub using the low-level JDBC technology and higher-level object relational mappings such as Hibernate XML configuration files and JPA annotations. At a coarse-grained level, we analysed the probability of introducing such technologies over time, as well as the likelihood that multiple technologies co-occur within the same project. At a fine-grained level, we analysed to which extent these different technologies are used within the same set of project files. We also explored how the introduction of a new database technology in a Java project impacts the use of existing ones. We observed that, contrary to what could have been expected, object-relational mapping technologies do not tend to replace existing ones but rather complement them.


This paper describes a method for finding the least fixed points of higher-order functions over finite domains using symbolic manipulation. Fixed point finding is an essential component in the calculation of abstract semantics of functional programs, providing the foundation for program analyses based on abstract interpretation. Previous methods for fixed point finding have primarily used semantic approaches, which often must traverse large portions of the semantic domain even for simple programs. This paper provides the theoretical framework for a syntax-based analysis that is potentially very fast. The proposed syntactic method is based on an augmented simply typed lambda calculus where the symbolic representation of each function produced in the fixed point iteration is transformed to a syntactic normal form. Normal forms resulting from successive iterations are then compared syntactically to determine their ordering in the semantic domain, and to decide whether a fixed point has been reached. We show the method to be sound, complete and compositional. Examples are presented to show how this method can be used to perform strictness analysis for higher-order functions over non-flat domains. Our method is compositional in the sense that the strictness property of an expression can be easily calculated from those of its sub-expressions. This is contrary to most strictness analysers, where the strictness property of an expression has to be computed anew whenever one of its subexpressions changes. We also compare our approach with recent developments in strictness analysis.


Sustainability transitions as processes of fundamental change in societal systems are open-ended, nonlinear and uncertain. Respective research and governance approaches, e.g. transition management, propose a reflexive way of governing, aiming for a number of social effects to help facilitating a transition. Effects include empowerment, social learning and social capital development. Jointly mentioned social effects shall allow for reflexivity and innovation in developing socially robust and contextualized solutions to sustainability challenges that work in practice. Still, understanding mentioned social effects and their interplay more in depth is needed to design and assess transition management processes. While such understanding and related assessment framework is under development in transition management literature, transdisciplinary sustainability research can provide a rich body of tools and experiences. Building on a review of respective literature, this article develops an evaluation framework focusing on social effects as important and hitherto under conceptualised aspects of sustainability transitions literature. This framework is used to empirically investigate the effects of two specific transition management processes at local scale. Doing so, the article provides a conceptual and empirical understanding of how social effects contribute to a transition towards sustainability. Results highlight the importance and possibilities of addressing sustainability as an inherent quality of social effects aimed for.


Switched reluctance motor drives may be used in many commercial applications due to their simplicity and low cost. These drives require rotor position feedback to operate. However, in many systems, rotor position sensors have disadvantages. In this paper, a position sensorless scheme is described which uses fuzzy modeling, estimation and prediction. An important feature is that saturation and real-time nonideal effects are not ignored, but that no mathematical model is required. Instead, a fuzzy logic-based model is constructed from both static and real-time motor data, and from this model the rotor position is estimated. The system also incorporates fuzzy logic-based methods to provide a high robustness against noise. This includes a fuzzy predictive filter which combines both fuzzy logic-based time-series prediction, as well as a heuristic knowledge-based algorithm to detect and discard feedback signal error. In addition, the method uses heuristic knowledge to choose the most desirable phase for angle estimation in order to minimize the effect of feedback error. It is also shown that, by using fuzzy logic, the estimation scheme offers a high robustness and reliability and is thus well suited to a wide range of systems.


The Sn4+-doped nano-TiO2 particles with various amounts of dopant Sn4+ irons was prepared by sol-gel method using tetrabutyl titanate(TEOT) as one of the primary raw materials at different calcination temperatures (400-700°C). The products were characterized by XRD and SEM, which revealed that the crystal structure of Sn4+-doped nano-TiO2 changes from anatase to rutile with the calcination temperature increasing, and the nanoparticles diameter was around 10-30 nm. The photocatalytic degradation of ammonia nitrogen in aquaculture wastewater was investigated by using Sn4+-doped nano-TiO2 under UV irradiation. The experimental results can be stated as follows: when the ratio of dopant Sn4+ was 3% wt, the calcination temperature of Sn4+-doped nano-TiO2 was 500 °C, the dosage of Sn4+-doped nano-TiO2 was 0.8 g/L, respectively, if the reaction time may last 4h, the removal rate of ammonia-N was expected to reach 87.13%.


To prepare the amorphous SiO2 optical fiber preform which has lower attenuation, we selected TEOS as raw material, H2O as menstruum, HCl as catalyst, CH3NO as anti-cracking agent, prepared the mandrel material of SiO2 optical fiber preform by sol-gel method. The XRD, SEM, FT-IR and TG were used to study the characteristic of the samples. The results show that the TEOS and H2O can be uniformly mixed with vigorous stirring and water increasing. The hydrolysis rate of TEOS will increase with the increasing HCl volume. The transparency will decrease when the HCl reaches a fixed value. The CH3NO can play a role of anti-cracking agent, it also can affect the transparency if it is more. The optimal capability parameter TEOS: H2O: HCl: CH3NO = 1: 25: 0.5: 0.1. The optimal heat treatment process was determined by TG and FT-IR as follows: the temperature was risen slowly to 170°C and 300 °C for 1h, and then reluxed at 900°C for 2h.


Accurate attitude estimation of spacecrafts is the main requirement to provide good geometric performance of remote-sensing imagery. The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer/short-wave-infrared subsystem has six linear-array sensors arranged in parallel, and each line scans the same ground target with a time interval of 356.238 ms between neighboring bands. The registration performance between bands becomes worse when attitude fluctuation occurs during a time lag between observations. Since the time resolution of the line scan is higher than that of the attitude information provided from the satellite, attitude data are estimated with a high frequency. We succeeded in correcting the image-registration error using the revised attitude information. As a result, the image distortion of 0.2 pixels caused by spacecraft-attitude jitter is reduced to less than 0.08 pixels, showing that band-to-band registration errors of a sensor with parallax observation are available to improve the image distortion caused by attitude fluctuation.


In December 2008, the EU adopted a new approach to the regulatory framework of food additives, enzymes and flavourings, known as the Food Improvement Agents Package (FIAP). The FIAP comprises of four Regulations numbered 1331/2008 to 1334/2008, which covers the authorisation procedure for food additives, enzymes and flavourings (1331/2008), and individual Regulations on food additives (1333/2008), enzymes (1332/2008), and flavourings (1334/2008). This chapter provides guidance on the changes introduced by Regulations 1331/2008 and 1333/2008 as they apply to food additives, and the implications for manufacturers of food products and food additives. It considers food additives and processing aids, the carry-over principle and the labelling of food additives in food products.


In May 2008, the Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology (ALHAT) Project conducted a helicopter field test of a commercial flash lidar to assess its applicability to safe lunar landing. The helicopter flew several flights, which covered a variety of slant ranges and viewing angles, over man-made and natural lunar-like terrains. The collected data were analyzed to assess the performance of the sensor and the performance of two algorithms: Hazard Detection (HD) and Hazard Relative Navigation (HRN). The collected flash lidar data were also used to validate a high fidelity flash lidar software model used in ALHAT Monte Carlo simulations. The field test results, combined with prior simulation results, advanced the technology readiness level of the HD algorithm to TRL 5 and the HRN algorithm to TRL 4.12


Multiple–scales perturbation methods are used to derive equations describing wave–wave interactions in two-fluid cosmic-ray hydrodynamics in one Cartesian space dimension. Two problems are considered: (a) the interaction between short-wavelength waves in a non-uniform large-scale background flow, and (b) wave interactions between long-wavelength waves propagating through a uniform background medium. The short-wavelength wave equations describe the interaction between the backward and forward thermal gas sound waves and the contact discontinuity eigenmode via 'wave mixing', in which the waves are reflected by gradients in the large scale background flow. The equations also contain quadratic wave interaction terms describing (i) the Burgers self-wave interaction term, (ii) mean–wave-field interaction terms in which a specific wave interacts with the mean field of the other waves, and (iii) three-wave resonant interactions that describe how a sound wave resonantly interacts with the contact discontinuity to generate a reverse sound wave. In the limit of no interaction between the cosmic rays and thermal gas, and for a uniform background state, the equations reduce to two coupled, integro-differential Burgers equations derived by Majda and Rosales for resonantly interacting waves in adiabatic gasdynamics. The short-wavelength equations also contain squeezing instability terms associated with the large-scale cosmic-ray pressure gradient, which were first investigated by Drury and Dorfi. A generalized wave-action equation, or canonical wave-energy equation, variational principles, and WKB analyses of the linearized equations are used to investigate the modification of the cosmic-ray squeezing instability by wave mixing. Coupled Burgers equations are also derived in the long-wavelength regime that describe resonant wave interactions for weak, diffusively smoothed cosmic-ray-modified shocks. In the latter equations, the cosmic-ray-modified sound waves can resonantly interact with either the contact discontinuity or the cosmic-ray pressure-balance mode to generate a reverse sound wave.


Correlation mining has gained great success in many application domains for its ability to capture the underlying dependency between objects. However, the research of correlation mining from graph databases is still lacking despite the fact that graph data, especially in various scientific domains, proliferate in recent years. In this paper, we propose a new problem of correlation mining from graph databases, called Correlated Graph Search (CGS). CGS adopts Pearson's correlation coefficient as a correlation measure to take into consideration the occurrence distributions of graphs. However, the problem poses significant challenges, since every subgraph of a graph in the database is a candidate but the number of subgraphs is exponential. We derive two necessary conditions which set bounds on the occurrence probability of a candidate in the database. With this result, we design an efficient algorithm that operates on a much smaller projected database and thus we are able to obtain a significantly smaller set of candidates. To further improve the efficiency, we develop three heuristic rules and apply them on the candidate set to further reduce the search space. Our extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our method on candidate reduction. The results also justify the efficiency of our algorithm in mining correlations from large real and synthetic datasets.


The interactions of a dislocation with commonly observed irradiation induced defects such as a stacking fault tetrahedron (SFT) and a void are studied using molecular dynamics (MD) simulation methods. The simulation of an SFT interacting with a dislocation in face centered cubic (FCC) copper (Cu) reveals that an SFT is a strong obstacle against a dislocation motion, with dislocation detachment often involving an Orowan like mechanism. The resulting SFT generally involves a shear step, although partial absorption is also observed in some specific interaction geometries. Dislocation interaction with a void has been studied in body centered cubic (BCC) molybdenum (Mo). The dislocation locally annihilates upon contact with the void and then re-nucleates on the void surface as the dislocation glides past the void. The interaction results in the simple shear of the void by one Burger's vector. The obstacle strength of the void is measured using conjugate gradient molecular statics (MS) method as a function of void size. A large increase in the obstacle strength is observed for a void size greater than 3 nm in diameter.


Time-domain Green's functions are required for transient analyzes of many structures using the time-domain integral equation method. In this paper, we express the generalized reflection coefficient of the microstrip structure in terms of a geometric optics series so that by applying the Cagniard-de Hoop method to each term of the series, we can derive the time-domain Green's function. It is demonstrated that this series converges rapidly and there are two contributing waves from each source image if the observation point is beyond the total internal refraction location. The two waves are the direct wave from the image and the head wave from the image to the critical point, and then laterally along the surface to the observer. Each contribution is a definite integral that is evaluated for each point in space and time. Therefore, the derived Green's function is efficient for time-domain simulations compared with conventional approach, in which for each point in space and frequency a Sommerfeld type integral is involved and then the frequency-domain data is converted into time-domain by discrete Fourier transform. This rigorous Green's function can also be used to check the accuracy of other approximate methods such as those using the discrete complex image theory.


Projectors satisfy our natural urge to interact with the virtual world with large, human-sized
surfaces. We develop novel techniques to create realistic and appealing projection, using a
single projector, on ad hoc but ubiquitous Lambertian dual-planar surfaces, and demonstrate
support for a range of meaningful interactions with natural interaction.
Deploying projectors in such environments creates several image artifacts resulting in degradation
of observed imagery by end-users. Several artifacts due to global illumination, defocus
blur, geometry distortion, and ambient light can occur in such environments. To correct these
artifacts the projector is coupled with a camera that senses the environment thereby forming a
closed loop system. In these environments interreflection of light results in global illumination
effects. Our method to compensate for these effects is based on the systematic adaptation and
interpretation of the classical radiosity equation in the image domain. Our method does not
assume prior knowledge of 3D scene geometry. Our algorithm achieves compensation in real
time. The output of our method has better contrast and is thus more appealing to the viewer.
Projectors can create bright and crisp images on a single planar surface. The large aperture
lenses used in projectors to create displays restricts their depth of field, thereby resulting in
defocus blur artifacts when projectors are used in ad hoc environments. We advance the
state of the art by demonstrating defocus correction in a non-parametric setting. Our method
differs from prior methods in that (a) the luminance and chrominance channels are holistically
considered, and (b) a sparse sampling of the surface is used to discover the spatially varying
defocus kernel.
Certain area of the large display surface could be non-projectable due to the presence of
undesirable characteristics (like running wires, saturated color patches, etc.). This causes the
projected content to distort and/or occlude making it unreadable. This leads us to the problem
of projection in limited area on a single planar surface that we call as the re-targeting problem.

We explore some of the research challenges involved in solving this problem and develop a
content based re-targeting (CBR) solution for re-targeting content of presentation slides. CBR
along with natural user interaction has been used to develop an intelligent application called
SmartPro. It allows dynamic control of projection area and intensity. This allows us to support
a range of interactions like dynamic annotation of the projected content on the display surface,
holistic movement of the projected content to unoccluded parts, etc.
Traditionally one or more external sensors observe the projection environment and user
interaction is extracted and interpreted from the observed data. This requires appropriate
instrumentation and configuration of the environment. Further a lot of data (in addition to the
interactions) are captured. We propose a different approach wherein the sensor is associated
with the interaction, called sensor on activity. The task of interaction extraction is now
simplified. This paradigm has been effectively demonstrated through a virtual shooting range
application where the sensor (camera) is mounted on the weapon and is directly associated with
the shooting activity. Tracking and inferring position and orientation of weapon, as in traditional
setups, to determine if a fire has been successful is not required any more. This system is able
to support firing at video frame rates. Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India and Monash University, Australia.


The effluents of conventional pulp bleaching represent the main problem of waste water disposal of the pulp industry because of their non-biodegradability. Nowadays the demanded quality of discharges requires new methods exceeding the conventional biological ones.

Experience has shown that for purifying pulp bleaching sewages, only an extra stage treatment-process seems to be successful. In a first stage (e.g. precipitation/flocculation, oxidation with ozone, high-energy radiation) the resistant organic substances must be changed to biodegradable substances. The main elimination should be done in a biological stage, and remaining concentrations could be eliminated by a final treatment,e.g.AC-adsorption.The authors' research works are dealing with all the mentioned stages, and some results of these works are presented in this paper.

With different types of activated sludge the following elimination rates could be achieved: ~ 90 % BOD5, 30 - 40 % COD and 20 - 30 % AOX. Precipitation with lime in addition to flocculation resulted in reduction rates of 40 % COD, 50 % AOX and 70 % of colour. Such a pretreatment and a following biological treatment increased the reduction rates to > 95 % BOD5, 70 - 80 % COD and 70-85 % colour.

The treatment with ozone with and without simultaneous γ-irradiation firstly was carried out with native bleaching effluents at different temperatures and at different pH. These preliminary tests turned out to be unsatisfactory probably because of the high amount of easily biodegradable substances in this sewage, which reduce the effectivity of ozone/radiation. Therefore the research programme was directed to biologically pretreated bleaching effluents.


The extreme liquid transport properties of carbon nanotubes present new opportunities for surpassing conventional technologies in water filtration and purification. We demonstrate that carbon nanotubes with wettability surface patterns act as nanopumps for the ultrafast transport of picoliter water droplets without requiring externally imposed pressure gradients. Large-scale molecular dynamics simulations evidence unprecedented speeds and accelerations on the order of 1010 g of droplet propulsion caused by interfacial energy gradients. This phenomenon is persistent for nanotubes of varying sizes, stepwise pattern configurations, and initial conditions. We present a scaling law for water transport as a function of wettability gradients through simple models for the droplet dynamic contact angle and friction coefficient. Our results show that patterned nanotubes are energy-efficient nanopumps offering a realistic path toward ultrafast water nanofiltration and precision drug delivery.


Additive-controlled precipitation of calcium carbonate is central to various fields of research. Technically, scale formation is an important problem, where polycarboxylates are most commonly employed as inhibitors. Herein, we show that the combination of poly(aspartic acid) with magnesium ions leads to synergistic effects that bring about a dramatic increase in the efficiency towards inhibition of nucleation and growth of nanoscopic CaCO3 precursors. These effects can also be crucial in biomineralization processes, where polycarboxylates and magnesium ions are thought to play important roles.


Now, Internal and external vehicles are artificially queried and identified by a specially-assigned person in most of schools and enterprises, so the workload of vehicle management is very heavy, what's more the vehicles information can not be effectively preserved. So it is not convenient for vehicles access query in the furture. Using RFID intelligent sensor network technology, the intelligent monitoring and identifing of vehicles access was realized and vehicles access was better controlled. The system can provide real-time effective data for enterprises management. Through the unit LAN system, the remote transmission and perservation of the vehicle information and photos were completed, so the network management was realized and the information can be conveniently queried in the future.


A study was carried out on 1764 test day records of Deoni cattle breed located in cattle breeding farm, College of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Udgir Dist- Latur Maharashtra, the western state of India. A multilayer feed forward neural network with back propagation of error learning mechanism was developed using artificial neural network. The network was trained and simulated using Bayesian regularization (BR) algorithms. The performance efficiency of the network model was evaluated using the value of coefficient of determination (R2-value) and root mean square error. It was observed that, the mean value of test days varies from 1.13 to 1.83 with standard deviation ranged from 0.50 to 1.01. Test day nine contributes highest (87.57%) to the total variability. The highest coefficient of determination i.e. 89.55 % was explained in fourth set with 2 layers and 10 neurons. It was inferred that, standard lactation milk yield of Deoni cows could be predicted on the basis of monthly test day milk records as early as 155th days of lactation with 89.55 % of coefficient of determination and 0.138 of root mean squares error.


Summary Particles of a stable isolate of tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) had a density of 1.147 g/ml in sucrose and contained four major structural proteins of mol. wt.: 1, 26 × 103; 2, 52 × 103; 3, 56 × 103; and 4, 78 × 103. The RNA which was not infectious consisted of four segments of mol. wt.: 1, 3.6 × 106; 2, 2·8 × 106; 3, 2·0 × 106; and 4, 1·3 × 106. The ribonucleoprotein (RNP) of TSWV, prepared by treatment of purified virus with Nonidet P-40, could be separated into three components by sedimentation on sucrose density-gradients. All three components contained protein 1; the slowest sedimenting component also contained RNA species 1, 2 and 4, the second component contained RNA species 1 and 2 and the fastest sedimenting component contained all four RNA species. The three components were slightly infectious and infectivity was enhanced by pooling these components. The RNP, when observed under the electron microscope, appeared to consist of strands. Enveloped particles devoid of the outer layer of projections were obtained by treating TSWV with bromelain. These subviral particles retained about 1% of their original infectivity, had a density of 1·137 g/ml in sucrose and only contained protein 1. It was concluded that this protein forms the subunit of the nucleocapsid and that TSWV, unlike the majority of enveloped viruses, does not possess an internal membrane protein.


Objectives: Despite known benefits of productive aging, it is unclear what explains time allocation in productive activities. We investigated whether productive engagement in older people can be explained by their age, health, socioeconomic status, and perceived life expectancy in Hong Kong. Methods: We interviewed 390 community-dwelling older persons for their health and perceived life expectancy, followed by a 7-day ecological momentary assessment to record their activities. Results: A total of 366 participants who completed the study (age 75 ± 8.3 years; 79% women) reported an average perceived life expectancy of nearly 10 years. The majority (59%) engaged in productive activities. Estimates of the structural equation model (RMSEA = 0.046) showed that age and health were associated with productive engagement, mediated by perceived life expectancy. Discussion and Implications: Future efforts in promoting productive aging and related research should include interventions addressing perceived life expectancy, a potentially modifiable factor.


This paper introduces a new data mirroring technique for storage area networks (SANs) in a metropolitan area wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) sectioned ring scenario. Performance is evaluated through simulation of a network with 16 nodes, 4 wavelengths, 1 Gb/s access node rate and 5 Gb/s SAN node rate under different asymmetries of both Poisson and self-similar traffic. Results of average node throughput, queuing delay and transmission buffer packet dropping probability are presented and analyzed. A modified version of the MAC protocol that improves performance in term of mirroring time and bandwidth utilization is introduced and evaluated.


Furin, PC1, PC2, and PC5 represent mammalian convertases (PCs) found in endocrine, central and peripheral nervous tissues, which cleave a number of precursors at basic residues normally processed in vivo. Typical bonds cleaved by PCs include the pairs Lys-Arg, Arg-Arg and Arg-X-Lys/Arg-Arg. These cleavage sites have been detected following coexpression of each convertase in cell lines together with different precursors as models, including proopiomelanocortin (POMC), proinsulin and proNGF and proBDNF. The presence of PCs and different precursors was revealed by in situ hybridization or immunocytochemistry in cultured AtT-20 cells, in the developing CNS, pituitary, and pancreatic islets. In an experimental model of epilepsy in which epileptiform activities were provoked by kainic acid administration, we observed a similar transient expression of furin and PC1 as compared to that of NGF and BDNF. In conclusion, it is proposed that under different stimuli various precursors are activated by a unique cocktail of convertases, each of which either alone or in combination with others acts to process inactive precursors, and thereby playing an important role in development and in the plasticity of the neuronal system.


Crown deformation during cementation was measured with a circumferential strain gauge. The effects of different seating forces (3, 10 and 25 N), three different cements (Phosphacap, Ketac-cem Applicap and Fuji-cap I) and the presence or absence of venting on deformation and seating discrepancy were investigated. Forty microns of cement space was provided for all experiments. Venting increased deformation and reduced seating discrepancy, whilst increased force increased deformation and decreased seating discrepancy. Ketac-cem Applicap allowed the lowest seating discrepancy with median crown deformation. It was possible, by using venting, low forces (10 N) and Ketac-cem Applicap, to achieve a low marginal discrepancy with low crown deformation. Venting also diminished the seating discrepancy to acceptable levels when higher forces (25 N) were used with Phosphacap.


Sustainable and responsible consumption are nowadays at the top of the consumer agenda. However, so far ways of signalling so-called environmentally friendly products have neither been proven to be effective methods of attracting new consumers to a product nor designed to appreciate the heterogeneity of response to their efforts amongst supermarket shoppers. The paper argues that the response to policies is dependent on the type of food being purchased and consumer's level of involvement. The analysis of actual supermarket shopper behaviour proves that lifestage and lifestyle characteristics are consistent with hypotheses, whilst focus groups confirmed different levels of involvement across consumers.JEL codes: E21, C23, Q01


This dissertation studies three examples of public policies having consequences other than those intended when the policy was passed. They demonstrate that due to the interconnectedness of the economy, the intended effect of a policy is rarely the sole effect. The first essay examines the Texas Top 10% Plan. This policy guarantees automatic admission to their state university of choice for all high school seniors who graduate in the top 10% of their high school class. The essay shows evidence that households reacted strategically to this policy by moving to neighborhoods with lower-performing schools, increasing property values by 4.9 percent in those areas relative to areas with slightly better performing schools. The effect is strongest among schools that were the lowest performing before the change in policy; and weakens as the previous performance of the school district increases. These strategic reactions were influenced by the number of local schooling options available: areas that had fewer school choices showed no reaction to the Top 10% Plan. The second essay examines individual differences in the effects of medical malpractice tort reforms on pre-trial settlement speed and settlement amounts by age and likely settlement size. I focus on changes in the value of settlements for those trying to receive quick compensation – an understudied but very important population. Findings of note include that, unlike previously assumed, losses from tort reform among infants are small in an asset value sense and that the prime-aged working population that are the most negatively affected by tort reform, losing over 50 percent of the value of their mean settlements post reform. Maximum entropy quantile results show that the median expected settlement losses are often the most informative for policy evaluation and differ greatly from mean policy effects. The third essay uses the implementation of medical malpractice damage caps in several states, and a panel of private insurance claims to identify the effect of damage caps on the amount physicians charge to insurance companies and the amount that insurance companies reimburse physicians for medical services. In most cases the amount that physicians charge insurers does not change, but the amount that insurers reimburse physicians (which is the price seen in the market) decreases. I estimate price reductions as large as 14.5 percent for specific procedures. THREE ESSAYS ON UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF PUBLIC POLICY


In this paper, a novel implementation is proposed for the Delayed LMS (DLMS) filter, able to reduce the power dissipation while preserving regime performances. The approach relies on the observation that the error signal is small in magnitude and oscillates around zero when the circuit is close to the convergence point. Therefore, the most significant bits of the error signal continuously toggle from positive to negative values causing high switching activity in the multipliers of the feedback section. This paper proposes to employ a sign-modulus representation of the error signal, to substantially reduce the switching activity of the feedback path of the filter. Additional approximation techniques are also devised to further reduce power dissipation. Comparisons with the state-of-the-art show that the proposed filter is the only one able to approach the MSE of the exact implementation with a remarkable reduction of power dissipation. A test-chip in TSMC 28nm CMOS technology has been realized to experimentally verify the validity of our technique. The experimental results show the possibility of saving up to 45.4% of power consumption with respect to the exact implementation of the filter.


Given the current, global, economic situation, the status of youth entrepreneurship in South Africa is no different to that of the youth in other countries. It is debatable whether similar support and mechanisms used by other countries can be used without contextualising them for the South African environment. Cultural differences, level of education, different market standards, and a different socio-political environment are some of the factors that should be taken into consideration, when aiming to create an enabling environment that will open entrepreneurial opportunities for South African youth. A major threat for youth, especially in South Africa, is that if their needs and desires are not addressed, the youth will lose faith in starting their own entrepreneurial activities and in that way, become more dependent on the government to create employment opportunities for them. This situation certainly could add to the currently high unemployment rate and in the long-term, high youth unemployment could destabilise the country. This study is aimed at investigating entrepreneurship activities in a semi-rural area, with the aim of identifying the inherent weaknesses that prevent young people from pursuing entrepreneurial activities, as well as those enabling factors that can mitigate against these identified weaknesses. The study is conducted in the UGu District Municipality, specifically, the Umdoni Local Municipal area has been selected. A mixed methods research approach was used and 120 respondents from the selected municipal area participated in this study, including the municipal official. The study highlighted that access to financial support is one of the primary obstacles for the setting-up of a new business, since the majority of young people in the area tend to come from disadvantaged backgrounds. In addition, the research pointed to other challenges, including the business registration process, lack of adequate entrepreneurial training and mentoring programmes, the impact of crime in starting a fledging business and general support from government departments and agencies. Should these challenges not be addressed through an enabling environment, young people will, in the process, be discouraged from engaging in entrepreneurial activities. Given that the study was conducted in a semi-rural area, there are certainly greater challenges to the development of youth entrepreneurship. Therefore, the recommendations include municipalities creating a special relationship with government agencies to obtain greater assistance; that Government and its agencies consider setting up a designated fund to assist young people who want to open business in semi-rural and rural areas; that the administrative requirements for such a group of young entrepreneurs, in respect of funding, training, support, mentoring and business registration, be much more accessible and easier to obtain.


In this study, we investigated the use of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) polarimetry (Pol-SAR) and a supervised classification technique, support vector machine (SVM), for the classification of bare soil, ice, and snow, over the Ortles-Cevedale massif, (Eastern Italian Alps). We analyzed the importance of topographic correction on the backscattering and polarimetric SAR signature and the advantage of quad-pol with respect to dual-pol data. When backscattering values only are employed, the incidence angle used as input feature of the SVM classifier assures the best classification accuracy, 9.9% higher than the accuracy obtained with cosine corrected γ0 backscattering. The introduction of polarimetric features and decomposition parameters (such as Cloude-Pottier or Touzi decomposition parameters) increases the classification accuracy by 5.2% with respect to the backscattering case. The simulation of RADARSAT-2 data as Sentinel-1 like for dual-pol data shows a decrease of accuracy equal to 7.8% with respect to the fully polarimetric case (93.5%). The first Sentinel-1 image acquired on our test area was also employed for classification. We then tested the capability of C-band SAR to detect accumulation and ablation zones of the glaciers under the winter dry snow by setting up a multi-incidence angle and fully polarimetric SVM classifier, exploiting ascending and descending RADARSAT2 data. In this case, the accuracy increased by 14.7% combining different geometric acquisitions (88.9%) with respect to the single geometry case. Finally, from the resulting classification maps, we extracted the snowline altitude for a sample of three glaciers, using both optical and SAR data, comparing the different products.