The objective of this article is to describe the process of construction and validation of a useful and transferable tool for the assessment of the school climate, from the perspective of the students, in 2nd and 3rd cycle of Primary Education. The construction of the instrument involved the elaboration of a theoretical framework for the two main considered variables: Climate of general coexistence and Satisfaction and fulfillment of expectations. Based on this, a search and analysis of existing instruments was carried out, selecting the questionnaires of the Mexican INEE among the more than ten analyzed models and proceeding to their adaptation and evaluation to the Spanish context. Interjudge validation is done based on the frequency analysis of the assessment of Clarity and Coherence of each judge and each item and the Kendall W test. The results offer a positive evaluation of the judges in Clarity, as well as a lower presence of the maximum assessment in the Coherence aspect, in which a great homogeneity of the judges is detected. Thus, as the W of Kendall points out, it can be said that there is agreement in the valuation of the questionnaire items. It is concluded that the validated tool can offer significant results to evaluate the school climate and detect which variables are influencing it. All this will serve to build interventions that can improve it, being used in analogous contexts to the one used in its design and thus achieving a positive impact on learning outcomes


The survey includes a study of the potential for sustainable tourist development of cultural tourism on example of Botevgrad Municipality, Bulgaria. The main accents are focused on theoretical formulations as system methods for territorial development of cultural tourism in the former tourist destination and practical researches which include proposals for tourism product development. The main approaches are the systemic, related to the systemic character of the territorial system for recreation and tourism at the local level and the empirical, used for gathering the necessary, in volume and character, primary quantitative and qualitative information. The research methods used are based on a deductive approach. The main limiting factors of the study are the lack of monitoring of tourist visits, sufficient statistical information and previous systematic research studies, the lack of traditions in the tourism sector, and the fact that the municipality has never worked preoperatively for the tourist development.


BACKGROUND
Amyloidosis is defined as a generic term given to a series of proteins/ polypeptides in the form of amyloid fibrils that are deposited in the tissues and give rise to a set of clinical disorders.

OBJECTIVES
This work developed an approach to first examine chain association propensities of several amyloidogenic peptides: SNNFGAILSS from the islet amyloid polypeptide (coded IAPP), NAGDVAFV from the protein responsible for corneal amyloidosis (coded Lactoferrin), and (1-42) β-amyloid (coded Amyloid).

METHODS
Fmoc-synthesis protocol was applied for the synthesis of IAPP and Lactoferrin whereas Amyloid was synthesized through the Boc-chemistry as early detailed.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSION
The fluorescence and light scattering experiments results indicated that Amyloid revealed a surprising reduction in the aggregation process as a function of time (decrease of about 20-30% in 3 days) through both methods. In contrast, the aggregation intensity of IAPP increased around 35% after 3 days via a light scattering procedure. These findings are very relevant for interpretation of the aggregation phenomenon of amyloidogenic peptides. The final part of this work proposed rules for dissolution of aggregated structures based on the Lewis acid and Lewis base properties of solvents. Very low solubility values (6 to 15%) were measured for peptides in water but with increased to around 90% in strong nucleophilic or strong electrophilic organic solvents. However, care should be taken when strong nucleophilic solvents such as DMSO are mixed with the strong electrophilic such as water. Both solvent molecules tend to attract each other rather than to dissolve peptide chains thus lowering the capacity of this type of solution for fibril dissolution.


The article explains trends in changes on milk market, state of farmers groups' organization and indicates prospects for their development and financial support under RDP 2014-2020. The results of conducted analysis indicate that groups of milk producers constitute 7.5% of all registered groups of agricultural producers. Most of the milk producers groups conduct their activity in Wielkopolskie province. It should be noted that in Poland nearly 73% of produced milk is purchased by milk cooperatives. The number of milk suppliers is systematically decreasing while the average quantity of wholesale deliveries per supplier is increasing. Progressive concentration of milk production is mainly observed in middle-east regions of Poland which concentrate 2/3 of national headage of milk cows and milk production because of tradition as well as natural and agricultural conditions.


In a digital society, people have access to all kinds of electronic information as online users. They have also contributed various content for exchanging ideas in the online community, which has not only extended the traditional knowledge sharing channels, but has also led to concerns about content quality and reliability. The literature suggests that user involvement in collaboratively evaluating the quality of online content for an online community is likely to be an effective means to ease these concerns. However, the understanding of users' intentions to be willing to take part in evaluating online content is still limited. Based on self-determination theory, this study proposes a research model to understand the extrinsic motivation of the user intention. The research model was tested using data collected from 303 participants who were recruited from online communities. The results show that three types of extrinsic motivation, namely identified motivation, introjected motivation, and external motivation, play an important role in user intention of collaboratively evaluating online content. In addition, the research findings suggest that user satisfaction of the three basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness influences different types of extrinsic motivation.


Chords are a concurrency mechanism of object-oriented languages inspired by the join of the Join Calculus. They represent the combination of objectbased program structuring and the chemical metaphor for concurrency. Several modern languages feature chords, among which are Polyphonic C and Cω. Their proponents say that their use will raise the level of abstraction concurrent programs are written in, hence increasing the likelihood of producing correct programs. We present SCHOOL, the Small Chorded Object-Oriented Language, a featherweight model which aims to capture the essence of the concurrent behaviours of chords. Our model serves as a generalisation of chorded behaviours found in existing experimental languages such as Polyphonic C. Furthermore, we study the interaction of chords with fields by extending SCHOOL to include fields, resulting in f SCHOOL. Fields are orthogonal to chords in terms of concurrent behaviours. We show that adding fields to SCHOOL does not change its expressiveness by means of an encoding between the two languages. We observe that most implementations of concurrency in programming languages assume fair scheduling. Two primary notions of fairness are weak and strong, and hence studying the way these two notions apply to chorded languages serves as a basis for scheduler specification. We therefore define weak and strong fairness for SCHOOL which allows us to classify executions as admissible or inadmissible under the two notions of fairness. We develop two abstract schedulers in the form of high-level selection rules imposed on the underlying language, which allow us to admit exactly the weaklyand strongly-fair executions. We also present worst-case calculations for the delay of individual processes.


ABSTRACT Sangma, P.S.W.; Rani, V.; Padmavathy, P., and Zuala, V., 2022. Differential capacity of carbon sequestration potential: Analyzing Avicennia marina and Salicornia brachiata along the south-eastern coast of India. Journal of Coastal Research, 38(2), 377–388. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. The various plant parts of a mangrove, Avicennia marina and a salt marsh, Salicornia brachiata, namely leaves, stems, and roots from Tamil Nadu, India, were analyzed for variation in their carbon sequestration potential for a period during July 2019 to August 2020. The investigations were done using a carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulphur analyzer. The carbon (C) concentration for different seasons revealed a maximum value of 447.26 g C kg–1 (44.726%) in leaves of A. marina recorded during premonsoon months at Nagapattinam, and the minimum of 269.57 g C kg–1 (26.957%) in the roots during monsoon season at Thoothukudi. Similarly, the maximum value of 514.08 g C kg–1 (51.408%) was recorded in leaves of S. brachiata during post-monsoon at Nagapattinam and the minimum of 183.26 g C kg–1 (18.326%) during monsoon in roots at Thoothukudi. The physicochemical parameters such as bulk density, pH, sediment organic matter, and microbial loads of A. marina and S. brachiata reported considerable variation. The mean value of soil organic carbon in A. marina was 24.92 g C kg–1 and 8.04 g C kg–1 in S. brachiata. There was a significant difference in sediment organic matter between the stations (p > 0.01). Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy was carried out to identify the functional groups such as amides amines, carbonyl-containing compounds, and alcohols in the sediments of both the species; it was observed that a major broadband around 3621 cm–1 assigned to be due to hydrogen-bonded O-H stretching vibration and another band around 1052 cm–1 due to C-N stretch. Regardless of their significance, information on the current spatial dispersion (event and degree) of mangroves and salt marshes is fragmented.


The performance of most error-correction algorithms that operate on genomic sequencer reads is dependent on the proper choice of its configuration parameters, such as the value of k in k-mer based techniques. In this work, we target the problem of finding the best values of these configuration parameters to optimize error correction. We perform this in a data-driven manner, due to the observation that different configuration parameters are optimal for different datasets, i.e., from different instruments and organisms. We use language modeling techniques from the Natural Language Processing (NLP) domain in our algorithmic suite, Athena, to automatically tune the performance-sensitive configuration parameters. Through the use of N-Gram and Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) language modeling, we validate the intuition that the EC performance can be computed quantitatively and efficiently using the perplexity metric, prevalent in NLP. After training the language model, we show that the perplexity metric calculated for runtime data has a strong negative correlation with the correction of the erroneous NGS reads. Therefore, we use the perplexity metric to guide a hill climbing-based search, converging toward the best $k$-value. Our approach is suitable for both de novo and comparative sequencing (resequencing), eliminating the need for a reference genome to serve as the ground truth. This is important because the use of a reference genome often carries forward the biases along the stages of the pipeline.


Two chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) lines (AKN 87 and AKN 290) that have different chilling susceptibilities were exposed to 2 chilling temperatures (4 and 2 °C), either cold-acclimated (10 °C) or nonacclimated (25 °C), in order to understand and compare physiological and biochemical changes at the vegetative stage. Chilling temperatures resulted in reduced growth parameters, particularly in cold-acclimated lines, whereas nonacclimated plants exhibited the lowest water contents. Cold acclimation treatment led to protective changes of increased flavonoid, proline, and antioxidant enzyme activities, mostly superoxide dismutase (SOD) and ascorbate peroxidase (APX), in the lines. However, the 10 °C treatment did not significantly influence photosystem II (PSII) activity in chickpea plants. In chilling treatments, cold-acclimated plants exhibited better tolerance; of the 2 lines, AKN 87 had the higher PSII photochemical activity. The chlorophyll contents of lines decreased, while the anthocyanin and flavonoid contents of lines increased at decreasing temperatures. MDA and proline accumulation increased with the severity of the chilling stress. In conclusion, when the plants were exposed to cold acclimation, chilling induced the enhancement of antioxidant enzyme activities, particularly SOD and APX. The results demonstrated that cold acclimation reduced the deteriorative effects of chilling and provided better tolerance, specifically in AKN 87. The line AKN 87 has greater potential for cultivation as a chilling-tolerant cultivar.


ABSTRACT Malaysia's approach to foreign relations over seven decades has been in some ways both creative and distinctive. This article focusses on how Malaysian foreign policy has been influenced by the heritage of inter-state relations among the Muslim monarchies (sultanates, kerajaan) of the Malay Archipelago in the pre-colonial period. Taking note of current research on China's foreign-policy traditions, the article examines Malay literature and letters with the aim of identifying key principles and values operating in the four centuries preceding the consolidation of the British and Dutch colonial domination in the 1800s. It asks how the state was constituted in Malay thinking, and what the Malay writings reveal about the drivers operating in inter-state relations. Particular attention is given to the style of relationship-building, and the way the monarchies responded to hierarchical relations, especially involving "rising powers". An insistence on non-interference in the domestic affairs of others is also noted – as is a persistent aspiration toward what might be termed "moral balance". The article seeks to throw light on Malaysia's present-day approach to China – which is receiving much international attention – as well as its long-term support, in ASEAN and other contexts, for a strongly organic concept of regionalism.


The quality of any scientific journal depends on the critical evaluations provided by its manuscript reviewers. Editors rely on their assessments in deciding what manuscripts to publish and in improving the quality of those that are published. The editorial office and the Wilson Ornithological Society thank the following individuals who served as reviewers of manuscripts submitted to the Wilson Journal of Ornithology, with reviews received between 1 July 2020 and 30 June 2021 (names in bold indicate those who contributed 2 or more reviews).


This thesis explores the impact of material objects on people's identity at work. I address the significance of this question, arguing that materiality, particularly the place it holds in the lives of individuals, has been less considered in relation to people at work than in other disciplines such as consumer studies. My research questions are: to consider how people conceptualise objects at work, to ask how objects and people are mutually implicated at work and to identify how this interactivity impacts on people's identity at work.
I review studies on material objects in organizations and studies on identity, using literature from organization studies and psychology .
My data collection uses a qualitative approach based on participant-led photography. The literature review had raised the issue of many studies focusing on people at the same level in an organization. In order to develop this work, the participant group were selected from multiple organizations and different levels of employment. Participants were asked to photograph all objects in their immediate working spaces which had meaning for them. They were then asked about the meaning of the objects and completed a repertory grid analysis exercise.
The thesis' contributions consist in a specific focus on the place of materiality in identity in organizations for a wide range of workers. It draws on psychology in its use of mixed methods. It develops previous work in offering a view of materiality in practice as both representational and performative, affording practices and meeting areas of lack. It indicates that objects act as a collection through their connection to personal values which otherwise have no means of expression in the social and legal ordering of the workplace.
It is recommended that organizations take cognizance of, and respect, the place which things seen as personal objects play at work.


: Volvulus and incarceration of bowel by a hernia may cause a closed-loop obstruction, possibly with associated intramural accumulation of gas and/or blood. Standing lateral projections optimize diagnosis of strangulating obstructions. Accumulation of only fluid in the obstructed loop may resemble a tumor. Radiographic signs of exudation and peritoneal fluid accumulation may develop with closed-loop obstructions.


This paper deals with low-complexity joint channel estimation and decoding for faster-than-Nyquist (FTN) signaling over frequency selective fading channels. The inter-symbol interference (ISI) imposed by FTN signaling and the frequency selective channel are intentionally separated to fully exploit the known structure of the FTN-induced ISI. Colored noise due to the faster sampling rate than that of the Nyquist signaling system is approximated by autoregressive process. A Forney style factor graph representation of the FTN system is developed and Gaussian message passing is performed on the graph. Expectation propagation (EP) is employed to approximate the message from channel decoder to Gaussian distribution. Since the inner product between FTN symbols and channel coefficients is infeasible by belief propagation (BP), we propose to perform variational message passing (VMP) on an equivalent soft node in factor graph to tackle this problem. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed low-complexity hybrid BP-EP-VMP algorithm outperforms the existing methods in FTN system. Compared with the Nyquist counterpart, FTN signaling with the proposed algorithm is able to increase the transmission rate by over 40%, with only negligible BER performance loss. Disciplines Engineering | Science and Technology Studies Publication Details N. Wu, W. Yuan, Q. Guo & J. Kuang, "A Hybrid BP-EP-VMP Approach to Joint Channel Estimation and Decoding for FTN Signaling over Frequency Selective Fading Channels," IEEE Access, vol. 5, pp. 6849-6858, 2017. This journal article is available at Research Online: https://ro.uow.edu.au/eispapers1/258 Received April 17, 2017, accepted May 4, 2017, date of publication May 9, 2017, date of current version June 7, 2017. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ACCESS.2017.2702571 A Hybrid BP-EP-VMP Approach to Joint Channel Estimation and Decoding for FTN Signaling over Frequency Selective Fading Channels NAN WU1, (Member, IEEE), WEIJIE YUAN1, (Student Member, IEEE), QINGHUA GUO2,3, (Member, IEEE), AND JINGMING KUANG1 1School of Information and Electronics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China 2School of Electrical, Computer and Telecommunications Engineering, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia 3School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA 6009, Australia Corresponding author: Nan Wu (firstname.lastname@example.com) This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation of China under Grant 61421001, Grant 61571041, and Grant 61471037, in part by the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China under Grant 2015AA01A709, and in part by the Australian Research Council's DECRA under Grant DE120101266. ABSTRACT This paper deals with low-complexity joint channel estimation and decoding for faster-thanNyquist (FTN) signaling over frequency selective fading channels. The inter-symbol interference (ISI) imposed by FTN signaling and the frequency selective channel are intentionally separated to fully exploit the known structure of the FTN-induced ISI. Colored noise due to the faster sampling rate than that of the Nyquist signaling system is approximated by autoregressive process. A Forney style factor graph representation of the FTN system is developed and Gaussian message passing is performed on the graph. Expectation propagation (EP) is employed to approximate the message from channel decoder to Gaussian distribution. Since the inner product between FTN symbols and channel coefficients is infeasible by belief propagation (BP), we propose to perform variational message passing (VMP) on an equivalent soft node in factor graph to tackle this problem. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed low-complexity hybrid BP-EP-VMP algorithm outperforms the existing methods in FTN system. Compared with the Nyquist counterpart, FTN signaling with the proposed algorithm is able to increase the transmission rate by over 40%, with only negligible BER performance loss.This paper deals with low-complexity joint channel estimation and decoding for faster-thanNyquist (FTN) signaling over frequency selective fading channels. The inter-symbol interference (ISI) imposed by FTN signaling and the frequency selective channel are intentionally separated to fully exploit the known structure of the FTN-induced ISI. Colored noise due to the faster sampling rate than that of the Nyquist signaling system is approximated by autoregressive process. A Forney style factor graph representation of the FTN system is developed and Gaussian message passing is performed on the graph. Expectation propagation (EP) is employed to approximate the message from channel decoder to Gaussian distribution. Since the inner product between FTN symbols and channel coefficients is infeasible by belief propagation (BP), we propose to perform variational message passing (VMP) on an equivalent soft node in factor graph to tackle this problem. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed low-complexity hybrid BP-EP-VMP algorithm outperforms the existing methods in FTN system. Compared with the Nyquist counterpart, FTN signaling with the proposed algorithm is able to increase the transmission rate by over 40%, with only negligible BER performance loss. INDEX TERMS Faster-than-Nyquist signaling, factor graph, joint channel estimation and decoding, belief propagation, variational message passing, expectation propagation.


This paper presents a novel adversarial deep neural network to estimate human poses from still images, such as those obtained from CCTV and the Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. Specifically, the proposed adversarial deep neural network exhibits the spatial hierarchy of human body parts considering the fact that predicting the position of some parts is more challenging than others. The generative and the discriminative portions of the proposed adversarial deep neural network are designed to encode the spatial relationship between the parts in the first stage of the hierarchy (parents) and the parts in the second stage of the hierarchy (children). Each of the generator and the discriminator networks is designed as two components, which are sequentially connected together to infer rich appearance potentials and to encode not only the likelihood of the part's existence but also the relationships between each body part and its parent. The method is evaluated on three different datasets, whose findings suggest that the proposed network achieves comparable results with other competing state-of-the-art approaches.


Recent nonlinear "superresolution" techniques reported in the field of spectral analysis are of great interest in other fields as well, including radio-frequency (RF) adaptive array antenna systems. This paper is primarily a "cross-fertilization" treatise which takes the two most popular nonlinear techniques, the Burg maximum entropy method and the maximum likelihood method, and relates them to their similar nonlinear adaptive array antenna counterparts, which consist of the generic sidelobe canceller and directional gain constraint techniques. The comparison analysis permits an examination of their principles of operation from the antenna spatial pattern viewpoint, and helps to qualify, their actual superresolution performance. A summary of the resolution performance of several adaptive algorithms against multiple-incoherent sources is provided, including a universal graph of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) versus source separation in beamwidths for the case of two equal-strength sources. Also, a significant dividend in the easy resolution of unequal-strength sources is reported. The superresolution of coherent spatial sources or radar targets is more difficult for these techniques, but successful results have been obtained whenever sufficient relative motion or "Doppler cycles" are available. Two alternate adaptive spatial spectrum estimators are suggested, consisting of a circular array predicting to its center point, and a new "thermal noise" algorithm.


This paper begins with the thesis that all illness is psychological, social and organic, and to effectively treat any patient, salient information in each area is necessary. Through clinical examples, it highlights the unconscious concerns children have when visiting a doctor, going to a hospital, or having surgery. These concerns, along with modes of thought, are described within a developmental framework.


s for &dquo;Program Notes&dquo; and all correspondence concerning abstract review should be sent to Elizabeth Bennett, c/o Pacific Northwest SOPHE, P.O. Box 24973, Seattle, WA 98124. Published abstract length is 200 words. Abstracts may be submitted up to 400 words recognizing it will be edited. Submit a typed original and two copies. Include the following information: name of program, contact person, address and phone number, needs statement (the problems or issues the program addresses), program description, type of evaluation, results. Include a cover letter describing the program objectives and what you think is interesting, important, or different about the program. Feel free to submit additional artwork, graphs, and tables in camera ready form. You will be notified by letter whether your abstract was accepted and the status of its publication.


We use three-dimensional (3-D) fully kinetic particle-in-cell simulations to study the occurrence of magnetic reconnection in a simulation of decaying turbulence created by anisotropic counter-propagating low-frequency Alfvén waves consistent with critical-balance theory. We observe the formation of small-scale current-density structures such as current filaments and current sheets as well as the formation of magnetic flux ropes as part of the turbulent cascade. The large magnetic structures present in the simulation domain retain the initial anisotropy while the small-scale structures produced by the turbulent cascade are less anisotropic. To quantify the occurrence of reconnection in our simulation domain, we develop a new set of indicators based on intensity thresholds to identify reconnection events in which both ions and electrons are heated and accelerated in 3-D particle-in-cell simulations. According to the application of these indicators, we identify the occurrence of reconnection events in the simulation domain and analyse one of these events in detail. The event is related to the reconnection of two flux ropes, and the associated ion and electron exhausts exhibit a complex 3-D structure. We study the profiles of plasma and magnetic-field fluctuations recorded along artificial-spacecraft trajectories passing near and through the reconnection region. Our results suggest the presence of particle heating and acceleration related to small-scale reconnection events within magnetic flux ropes produced by the anisotropic Alfvénic turbulent cascade in the solar wind. These events are related to current structures of the order of a few ion inertial lengths in size.


The current rapid uptake of Autonomous Digital Libraries (both in scholarly and generalist domains) has driven the need for automated procedures for extracting, processing and representing the digital information contained in these digital repositories. Concurrently, the development of Web 2.0 technologies and applications has provided new opportunities and challenges for web-based information system and user interactions: novel features of social interactions as well as new usability and visualization model are having an impact on how people search, navigate and rank digital objects (being multimedia content like music or movies or - as in the case of Autonomous Digital Libraries - digital publications): as an example a simple quick glance at a user-based ``cloud of tags'' for a given Journal may now provide us a lot of information about its content and/or the way that the specific Journal is perceived by the people reading it.

In this thesis we have tackled two open research dimension in state-of-the-art Autonomous Digital Libraries, namely:

1. Automated key-phrases/tags extraction from digital scientific contributions (papers): the ever increasing dimensionality of modern ADLs does not permit realistic manual documents processing and needs efficient and high quality methods for automatic or semi-automatic key-phrases extractions.

2. Exploration of current metrics and proposal of novel metrics for ranking of digital objects in order to improve the navigation within a large number of objects present in modern ADL.

Moreover, we have implemented a prototype for a Digital Library interface capable to integrate the tools developed on the base of the results obtained in the above research directions. The prototype supports the user: (1) in the search of documents related to a topic - using the novel semi-automatic key-phrases extractions techniques proposed in this work; and (2) in the navigation and identification of ``relevant'' documents for a given topic based on a number of user-selectable relevance metrics.

The first challenge we met in our work has been the lack of large, high quality and publicly available document datasets containing both the full text and human (experts) assigned key-phrases to be used for analytical assessment. Thus we constructed one from available public content sources and curated metadata repositories. Our dataset (named in the following as Trento Computer Science (TCS) dataset) consists in a subset of 2000 scientific papers published within 2003 and 2006 in Computer Science domain in the ACM Digital Library. The TCS dataset consists of the full text of papers, curated metadata (authors, title, affiliations, references etc.) and human (both authors and curators) assigned key-phrases. The original paper type (typically PDF, PS or LaTeX) has been processed and transformed into a textual format with the support of commercial pdf-to-text transformations tool and refined with the support of maximum entropy machine learning in order to improve the final quality of the full-texts.

For the semi-supervised key-phrases/tags extraction task we have compared several Machine Learning techniques - namely, Random Forest, Support Vector Machines a novel Fast Local Kernel SVM and the Naive Bayes learning-based system KEA on the same TCS dataset. In particular, we have performed a number of experiments and explored in details the effect of including in the chosen feature sets linguistic and domain specific knowledge. In our experiments, Random Forest has been identified as the most precise method outperforming KEA (used as baseline for key-phrases extraction) by 36\% when using a novel feature sets including linguistic and domain specific knowledge. Moreover, compared with the other Machine Learning techniques, Random Forest is the best trade-off between accuracy and computational speed.

The second task taken on by this thesis - navigation and ranking - relates to the large dimensionality of current ADL. In fact, in the presence of a huge quantity of documents connected to a specific topic, it is hard to navigate and find ``interesting'' contributions. The challenge here is to be able to identify the most important set of papers in a specific topic or for a particular author. A number of used metrics are available for this task, namely citation count for papers and Hirsch-index for authors. We have applied them as well as novel metrics based on the PageRank metric, named PaperRank, Focused PaperRank and PaperRank h-index, that captures - where data is available - more information present in complete citation graphs. As part of our analysis, we have developed methods and tools for qualitatively and quantitatively analyzing metrics that evaluate content and people. We have used them to explore the differences between various metrics as well as to understand in more details what do they measure. We also believe, that these methods and tools could successfully be used to compare rankings in different domains (search engine, review processes, etc.).
We have carried out an extensive investigation of the various ranking metrics on the dataset of over 266,000 scientific papers, and related citation graphs. We discovered that the difference in ranking results is indeed very significant for the different metrics and investigated in details the reasons of this difference.

Although initially this research has started as an independent line of research, it has found a significant number of important interactions with the European FET-Open project LiquidPub. A specific prototype of plug-in used for tagged search and ranking has been incorporated in the LiquidPub portal http://demo.liquidpub.org:8081/ResevalGUI/ that allows the tagged search and ranking over the whole collection of 266,000 papers.


The increase in global demand for lower olefins (ethylene, propylene, and butylenes) coupled with the regional diversification of carbon raw materials bring about opportunities and challenges for emerging technologies. Crude oil has been the primary carbon feedstock for the past 50 years, but alternative carbon feedstocks, including coal, natural gas, and biomass, received considerable attention in recent years. These alternative resources could first be converted to synthesis gas, a mixture of CO and H2. Natural gas produces H2-rich synthesis gas (H2/CO ≥ 2) while coal and biomass produce CO-rich synthesis gas (H2/CO < 2). Synthesis gas could subsequently be used to produce fuels and chemicals, including lower olefins and oxygenates. Lower olefins and their derivatives are essential chemical building blocks for many industries, ranging from plastics to pharmaceuticals. Currently the commercial production of lower olefins from synthesis gas is taking place via methanol (methanol-to-olefins), but direct routes, namely Oxide-Zeolite (OX-ZEO) and Fischer-Tropsch to Olefins (FTO), offer potentially higher efficiencies in volume, energy, materials, and cost. Although the Fischer Tropsch (FT) process has been developed for almost a century, its main application is liquid fuels instead of chemicals (lower olefins, oxygenates, and aromatics). The biggest challenge of the Fischer-Tropsch to Olefins (FTO) process is the product selectivity which is governed the Anderson-Schulz-Flory (ASF) distribution. The serendipitous discovery of adding Na and S promoters to supported Fe-based catalysts which led to unprecedented selectivity towards lower olefins offers a solution to this selectivity problem. The goal of this work is to design and develop catalysts for the direct production of lower olefins from synthesis gas and a two-pronged approach was used to achieve this. On one front, experimental and theoretical methods were used to understand the Fe particle size and promoters (Na and S) effects of state-of-the-art Fe-based FTO catalysts in terms of activity, selectivity and stability. These insights were then used to rationally design model Fe-based FTO catalysts which were highly active, selective and stable for direct conversion of CO-rich syngas feed to lower olefins. On the other front, Co-based FTO catalysts were developed to meet the need of directly converting H2-rich syngas feed to lower olefins.


A listening test was performed to find the changes in perceived loudness for differing crest factors of octave bands
of pink noise as a result of limiting. Each octave band had a continuous and a transient sample which both had five
samples ranging from an uncompressed to a compressed with a difference of 4 dB FS crest factor calculation with
increments of 1 dB FS. Two playback levels of 50 dB SPL and 70 dB SPL were used. The perceived loudness
followed the RMS change within the pink noise however certain octave bands appeared to have a non-linear
relationship between loudness perception and crest factor changes


Bacterial infection is one of the most frequent and severe complications of advanced alcoholic liver disease (ALD), including alcoholic cirrhosis and severe alcoholic hepatitis (SAH). Patients who suffered from SAH are susceptible to bacterial infection with one study reporting 50% of them developed bacterial infection.1 Additionally, standard corticosteroid treatment further increased the risk of bacterial infection in patients with SAH.1 Thus, infection is highly relevant for the outcome of SAH and represents an important therapeutic target. However, except antibiotic treatment, there are currently no other specific therapies that effectively control bacterial infection in SAH due to incomplete understanding of the pathogenesis of bacterial infection in these patients.

The mechanisms underlying the increased risk of bacterial infection in ALD are complex and multifactorial. The high incidence of bacterial infection may be partly explained by gut bacterial overgrowth, dysbiosis and translocation of gut bacteria and their products in patients with ALD.2 3 Impaired host defence against bacterial infection is probably another important mechanism contributing to the increased risk of bacterial infection in patients with ALD. It has been well documented that excessive alcohol consumption has broad and significant inhibitory effects on many key components of the immune system. For example, neutrophils, the first cellular line of defence against microorganisms, have impaired functions in patients with SAH, such as weakened reactive oxygen species production, reduced exocytosis/phagocytosis, declined chemotaxis and severe bactericidal defect.4 T cells from patients with SAH, but not alcoholic cirrhosis, expressed elevated levels of inhibitory mediators (eg, programmed cell death 1, PD ligand 1) that markedly inhibited T cell functions against bacterial infection.4 Although many types …


Nanoporous gold (np-Au) electrode coatings significantly enhance the performance of electrochemical nucleic acid biosensors because of their three-dimensional nanoscale network, high electrical conductivity, facile surface functionalization, and biocompatibility. Contrary to planar electrodes, the np-Au electrodes also exhibit sensitive detection in the presence of common biofouling media due to their porous structure. However, the pore size of the nanomatrix plays a critical role in dictating the extent of biomolecular capture and transport. Small pores perform better in the case of target detection in complex samples by filtering out the large nonspecific proteins. On the other hand, larger pores increase the accessibility of target nucleic acids in the nanoporous structure, enhancing the detection limits of the sensor at the expense of more interference from biofouling molecules. Here, we report a microfabricated np-Au multiple electrode array that displays a range of electrode morphologies on the same chip for identifying feature sizes that reduce the nonspecific adsorption of proteins but facilitate the permeation of target DNA molecules into the pores. We demonstrate the utility of the electrode morphology library in studying DNA functionalization and target detection in complex biological media with a special emphasis on revealing ranges of electrode morphologies that mutually enhance the limit of detection and biofouling resilience. We expect this technique to assist in the development of high-performance biosensors for point-of-care diagnostics and facilitate studies on the electrode structure-property relationships in potential applications ranging from neural electrodes to catalysts.


Abstract Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, popular perceptions in the United States, especially among political elites, continue to believe that religious Muslims oppose American democratic traditions and values. While many studies find positive relationships between mosque attendance and civic participation among U.S. Muslims, an empirical and theoretical puzzle continues to exist. What is missing is research that examines the relationships between the multi-dimensional concept of religiosity and how this is associated with public opinion and attitudes towards the American political system among Muslim Americans. Using a unique national survey of Muslim Americans, we find a positive relationship between religious beliefs, behavior, and belonging and perceptions of compatibility with American democratic traditions. Quite simply, the most religious are the most likely to believe in political integration in the United States.


ABSTRACT Teacher dashboards provide real-time information about students' performance and progress, which help K-12 teachers to adjust feedback to student' specific needs during learning. Prior research indicated two problems with respect to how teachers provide feedback: (i) teachers do not always select the most effective feedback to support student' learning and (ii) feedback is not allocated equally to students with different abilities. Specifically, process feedback is considered most effective yet is relatively scarce. In order to understand how dashboards influence the type and allocation of feedback, we compared characteristics of feedback given after dashboard consultation (dashboard-prompted feedback) to feedback triggered by teachers themselves or in response to students' questions (human-prompted feedback) in thirty-five K-12 classrooms. Results showed that dashboards led to equal amounts of task and process feedback, while human-prompts led to much more task than process feedback and this difference was especially large for low-ability students. Hence the different types of dashboard-prompted feedback were more equally distributed among students of different ability levels. These results indicate that dashboards can have an important equalizing effect on teacher feedback practices.


Purpose: The purpose of this study was to describe the perception of urinary incontinence (UI) among Syrian women living in Sweden. Design: A qualitative, descriptive design with focus group discussions (FGDs) was used and analyzed with content analysis. Fourteen Syrian women were interviewed in three FGDs. Findings: Three categories emerged, "Thoughts on UI," "Managing UI," and "Communication With the Health Care System." Among the interviewees, UI was a common, and expected, problem, which could be managed. However, some expressed shame and embarrassment. Some talked about communication problems with health care. Discussion and Implications for Practice: The health care system should be adjusted to the women's needs, with awareness of the communication difficulties, which could result in misunderstanding and neglected treatments.


This paper describes the RT-LAB real-time simulator implementation of the Hardware-In-the-Loop simulation of a fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle system with several 10 kHz converters. The paper demonstrates the necessity to use special IGBT bridge models that implements interpolation techniques within fixed time step simulation scheme. The paper reports on the latest advances from Opal-RT to simulate this kind of system with a 10 μs sample time. HIL computational time measurement are provided as well as a model fidelity comparison made by Toyota Motor Corp. of the RT-LAB Electrical Drive Simulator versus an actual fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle.


Detection of known malicious code is commonly performed by anti-virus tools. These tools detect the known malicious code using signature detection methods. Each time a new malicious code is found the anti-virus vendors create a new signature and update their clients. During the period between the appearance of a new unknown malicious code and the update of the signature base of the anti-virus clients, millions of computers might be infected. In order to cope with this problem, new solutions must be found for detecting unknown malicious code at the entrance of a client's computer. We presented here the use of active learning in the acquisition of unknown malicious code. Preliminary Results are encouraging. We are currently in the process of creating a wide test collection of more than 30,000 benign and malicious files to evaluate several active learning criterions.


Medicinal properties are present in different part s of Ocimum sps. like leaves flowers, root, stem etc. and have been used by traditional medical practitio ners. The aim of this study was to determine the antimicrobial activity of cold and hot water extrac t of leaves of Ocimum sanctum against clinical bacterial isolates by disc diffusion method. Cold a nd hot water extract of leaf of Ocimum sanctum were prepared at 250µg/ml, 500µg/ml, 1000µg/ml concentrations, impregnated into discs of 6mm diameter and tested on S.aureus , B.subtilis, E.coli , Proteus mirabilis , Shigella dysentriae , Salmonella typhimurium . There was no significant difference between the zo ne of inhibition of the test organisms to cold and hot water extracts. S. aureus and S. typhimurium had the zone size of 1.2 cm, 1.1 cm and 1.0 cm zone of inhibition for B. subtilis and Shigella dysentriae respectively. The inhibition was the greatest at concentration of 1000 µg/ml for both co ld and hot water extracts against all test organism s. The antimicrobial activity was the maximum for E. coli i.e. 1.4 cm in both cold and hot water extracts. The antimicrobial susceptibility pattern of leaf ex tract of Ocimum sanctum was found to be more or less active against all tested pathogenic strains f or both cold and hot water extracts; it may be due to the presence of tannins, essential oils, flavonoids , alkaloids and eugenol present in varying proportions. The plant contains important bio-activ e compounds and hence has found use as essential plant species in traditional medicine for treatment of various diseases.


In this paper, a high-gain annular ring with meander slots antenna array is presented. The proposed design is realized on two different substrate materials separated by a foam layer of 7.5 mm to enhance the operating bandwidth. The antenna is designed to operated as UHF-RFID reading antenna over center frequency of 915 MHz with operating bandwidth of 49.25 MHz (around 5.38%). The overall antenna optimized dimensions are 240×240×11.56 mm3. An overall total realized gain of 12.5 dBi is achieved at the intended center frequency. The proposed antenna exhibits stable radiation capabilities over the operating band. Good agreement is obtained between both CSTMWS, and HFSS simulators.


Bertolt Brecht's reputation as a flawed, irrelevant or difficult thinker for the theatre can often go before him to such an extent that we run the risk of forgetting the achievements that made him and his company, the Berliner Ensemble, famous around the world. David Barnett examines both Brecht the theorist and Brecht the practitioner to reveal the complementary relationship between the two.This book aims to sensitize the reader to the approaches Brecht took to the world and the stage with a view to revealing just how carefully he thought about and realized his vision of a politicized, interventionist theatre. What emerges is a nuanced understanding of his concepts, his work with actors and his approaches to directing. The reader is encouraged to engage with Brecht's method that sought to 'make theatre politically' in order to locate the innovations he introduced into his stagecraft. There are many examples given of how Brecht's ideas can be staged, and the final chapter takes two very different plays and asks how a Brechtian approach can enliven and illuminate their production. Ultimately, the book invites readers, students and theatre-makers to discover new ways of apprehending and making use of Brecht.


This is an age of progress, in which the genius and untiring labor of the philosopher, the scientific thinker and the patient investigator have laid broad and deep the foundations for a higher and happier civilization than the world has hitherto known. There has been an intellectual advancement, a moral uplifting, an ethical awakening, and a quickening of perception, which have led to the proper recognition of the duties and responsibilities of an enlightened citizenship. A broader and truer imperialism has been inaugurated; intellectual expansion has become a fixed policy of the entire profession, and the dream of happiness, through fraternity, freedom, justice and humanity seems to be realized. There never was a time in the history of the world when knowledge was so easily accessible, and so eagerly sought after by the entire profession. The plodding country practitioner, located at the cross-roads, is as near the "springs of Helicon,"


Variation in phloem sap composition is important in determining aphid performance and is known to occur at both diurnal timescales and in response to plant age. For field grown potato plants, Solanum tuberosum L. (Solanaceae), we determined diurnal variation in components of phloem sap, measured by ethylene diamine tetra‐acetate exudation, and tested for impacts of plant age. The effects of plant age and diurnal cycles on honeydew production by Macrosiphum euphorbiae (Thomas) and Myzus persicae (Sulzer) (both Hemiptera: Aphididae) were also quantified. Both the ratio of sucrose to amino acids and the composition of amino acids in phloem sap varied significantly with time of day. Dietary essential amino acids contributed a smaller proportion of amino acids in the phloem sap of older plants and during early phases of the diurnal cycle. The only significant effect on aphid honeydew production was of the diurnal cycle for Ma. euphorbiae, although increased honeydew production during the day when compared with the production at night, was consistent across the two species. In contrast with studies carried out at seasonal scales, we found limited evidence for variation in phloem sap composition in response to plant age, consistent with our results for honeydew production. These data highlight the need for improved understanding of how seasonal and diurnal physiology of plants influence performance in phloem sap feeding insects.


In the current financial crisis plaguing Europe, Latvia stands out for resolving its financial problems quickly and resolutely. After contracting 24 percent in 2008 and 2009, it grew at the rate of 5.5 percent in 2011. The speed and determination with which the government carried out austerity measures in 2009 and restored confidence after suffering the worst output decline is a crucial lesson for the ailing South European countries—Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. Latvia has proven that internal devaluation—cutting wages and public expenditures—works and that it can turn around an economy quickly. Many policy observers and economists have dismissed Latvia's crisis resolution as irrelevant to the situation in Southern Europe. The Latvian orange, they say, cannot be compared with the South European apples. Aslund argues otherwise. Latvia's achievement boils down to five crucial political economy principles, which the South Europeans ignored—and continue to ignore—at their peril. First, Latvia made full use of the grave sense of crisis in the fall of 2008. The sudden large output shock and liquidity freeze made the unthinkable possible and necessary. Second, the government implemented a comprehensive anticrisis program that was heavily front-loaded in the first half of 2009, which restored confidence early. Third, the program contained more expenditure cuts than revenue measures, which made it more realistic and drove structural reforms. Fourth, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union provided early and sufficient—not excessive—international financial support, making the crisis resolution financially sustainable. Finally, the government succeeded in its salesmanship of the adjustment program, by clarifying how severe the crisis was and by ensuring that the burden of the crisis was socially equitable. None of these five crucial conditions, which apply to any crisis resolution, have been satisfied by the South Europeans. They took their time to get a handle on their crises, wasting trust, patience, and resources in the process, and now are paying the price for their indecisiveness and leisurely approach.


We conducted a study of the safety of controlled-release (CR) oxycodone tablets (OxyContin Tablets) administered chronically to patients with cancer-related pain in a usual clinical setting. These patients had participated in 1 of 2 double-blind, active-control studies. Our study was an open, 3-month treatment study that included 87 patients. Patients received CR oxycodone tablets every 12 hr in a manner that reflected typical clinical practice. Supplemental immediate-release (IR) oxycodone was available PRN for breakthrough pain. Patients recorded medication use, adverse events, and evaluations of pain intensity and acceptability of therapy in a daily diary. Forty-four patients (51%) completed all 12 weeks of study; 43 patients (49%) discontinued participation. At baseline and throughout the study period, the overall mean pain-intensity score was slight to moderate. A comparison of initial and final doses showed a significant but modest increase in total daily CR oxycodone dose. An increase or decrease in titration of the oxycodone dose occurred for 66 patients (84%) at least once during the 12-week study period, primarily for increased pain. Forty-four patients (56%) did not undergo dose titration when the latter was indicated. Half of the patients used IR oxycodone rescue almost daily; the mean number of rescue doses per day was 1.5. Despite stable pain control and an increasing total daily CR oxycodone dose, the percentage of patients reporting common opioid-related adverse events decreased over the course of the study. CR oxycodone tablets administered every 12 hr were successfully used to manage cancer pain over a 12-week period. Importantly, side effects diminished over time without a concomitant change in efficacy.


This study evaluated an after-school and a school-based program aimed at improving the dietary and physical activity patterns of youth in Georgia. Both programs utilized communityacademic partnerships and community-based participatory research (CBPR) methods. Participants self-reported dietary and physical activity patterns preand post-intervention. Researchers measured height and weight of the after-school program participants preand postintervention. No significant changes in dietary or physical activity patterns were reported for participants of the after-school program. Additionally, there were no significant changes in BMI. Site was significantly associated with behaviors, with site 3 consuming significantly more fruits, vegetables, healthy and unhealthy foods. Site 3 also reported participating in significantly more physical and sedentary activities. BMI was significantly negatively associated with consumption of fruits, vegetables and healthy foods as well as participation in physical activities. Age was significantly positively associated with being sedentary. The school-based program targeted both students and their parents. Students reported a significant increase in physical activity at school and a significant decrease in screen time. Students also reported a significant decrease in consumption of fruits. Female participants reported consuming significantly more fruit and participating in significantly fewer hours of screen time. Participants from school 2 consumed significantly more fruits and vegetables, but scored significantly lower for physical activity knowledge. Participants from school 3 scored significantly higher for nutrition knowledge, but reported participating in significantly less physical activity at school. Finally, participants from school 5 scored significantly higher for physical activity knowledge. Parents reported participating in significantly more physical activity overall and with their child/children. Parents also reported that their children participated in significantly more physical activity both at school and outside of school. There were significant increases in the reported frequency of reading nutrition labels and the number of nutrients parents considered when purchasing a food item. Findings from this study suggest that after-school programs can improve the dietary and physical activity patterns of youth. School-based programs can influence behaviors and knowledge of both students and parents. Community-academic partnerships and CBPR are viable means of creating and implementing effective nutrition and physical activity interventions targeting youth and their parents. INDEX WORDS: Nutrition, Community-based participatory research, Evaluation, After-school, School-based, Community-academic partnership, Physical Activity Community-academic Partnerships: Can after-school and school-based program improve dietary and physical activity patterns of youth in Georgia?


Contemporary Chinese Women's poetry: towards a new creative freedom
My work will try to shed light on a complex and heterogeneous phenomenon, which is that of Contemporary Chinese women's poetry through the exploration of some of the most significant trends of the past thirty years.
The use of the term nuxing shige 女性 诗歌 (women's poetry) refers to a critical discourse that has characterized the Chinese literary scene the mid-'80s as a reaction to the publication of several poems written by women. In the wake of the first gender studies, which became popular in China in that decade, there was an increasingly urgent need for a redefinition of the female after a period in which the propaganda of equality between the sexes and the subsequent masculinization of the Maoist woman had overshadowed any discussion about gender differences.
The studies focused on these poetry works, mostly conducted by Chinese criticism, referring to the sharing of certain poetic paradigms, have created some interpretative codes responsible, most of the times, of limited reading of the authors. Recently, the works of critical scholars such as Zhang Xiaohong and Zhou Zan have stressed the importance not only of both the historical and cultural context in which the poets write, but also of the interaction between each individual and the poetic experience, subjects, shared languages and techniques, which have inevitably influenced the discussion on gender issues.
My work, clearly referring to studies conducted by these researchers, aims to explore, with a gender approach, the artistic path of three Contemporary women poets in an attempt to provide some general details of interpretation for the study of this subject. Starting from a reference texts corpus, gradually enriched, depending on the research requirements, I chose to focus on two key aspects of the poetics of Zhai Yongming 翟永明, Zhou Zan周 瓒and Hai Nan 海 男, that are gender consciousness and the theme of death, in order to explain the motives and methods that have characterized the change in the '80s and '90s in the way of thinking about poetry and the role it was assigned to it. The different use of the subject of death during these two decades demonstrates the maturation of a different vision of Contemporary poetry in opposition to the social and ethical role it traditionally played. The gender issue, in fact, on passing "political" stage of the '80s, adds new expressive potentials that betray a stronger emphasis on form over content.


Friction stir welding (FSW) offers many potential benefits including reduced distortion, lower cost, no harmful airborne emissions, semi-automated, etc. Although initially developed for Al alloys, considerable work now has been completed to explore the ability of FSW to weld relatively thin (6 mm) ferrous alloys including many alloys of interest to the ship building industry such as HSLA-65. The status of current progress for ferrous alloys is presented offering insight into capabilities and opportunities as well as areas of FSW activity requiring additional improvement. Practical issues of weld penetration depth, gap tolerance, post-FSW mechanical properties, and distortion are addressed. Special consideration will be made to address the ability to friction stir weld 6 mm thick HSLA-65 steel with no/low distortion. Tool materials discussed will include polycrystalline cubic boron nitride (PCBN) and a new composite tool fabricated from PCBN and W-25Re. Last, data will be presented illustrating the complete absence of harmful airborne emissions when welding an austenitic stainless steel.


The diverse techniques for condition monitoring of the test material have been applied in the material test loop (System Safety Benchmark Facility: SSBF) simulating the water condition that of the boiling water reactor. In this paper, two methods of condition monitoring are mainly described. One is a thinning process monitoring of material wall by using pulse echo methods with ultrasonic sensors. The other is early detection of a leakage by measuring and analyzing the SSBF parameter and the temperature and humidity in the protector. Although the experiment is still going on, the validity of the proposed methods of condition monitoring has been confirmed.


Chromatography based mass spectrometry approaches (xC-MS) are commonly used in untargeted metabolomics, providing retention time, m/z values and metabolite specificfragments all of which are used to identify and validate an unknown analyte. Ion mobilitymass spectrometry (IM-MS) is emerging as an enhancement to classic xC-MS strategies, by offering additional separation as well as collision cross section (CCS) determination. In order to apply such an approach to a synthetic biology workflow, verified data from metabolite standards is necessary. In this work we present experimental DTCCSN2 values for a range of metabolites in positive and negative ionisation modes using drift time-ion mobility-mass spectrometry (DT-IM-MS) with nitrogen as the buffer gas. Creating a useful database containing DTCCSN2 measurements for application in metabolite identification relies on a robust technique that acquires measurements of high reproducibility. We report that 86% of the metabolites measured in replicate have a relative standard deviation lower than 0.2 %. Examples of metabolites with near identical mass are demonstrated to be separated by ion mobility with over 4% difference in DTCCSN2 values. We conclude that the integration of ion mobility into current LC-MS workflows can aid in small molecule identification for both


The objective of the study was to develop a remote sensing (i.e., Landsat-8 and MODIS)-based agricultural drought indicator (ADI) at 30 m spatial resolution and 8-day temporal resolution and also to evaluate its performance over heterogeneous agriculture dominant semi-arid region in Jordan. Firstly, we used principal component analysis (PCA) to evaluate the correlations among six commonly used remote sensing-derived agricultural drought related variables. The variables included normalized difference water index (NDWI), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), visible and shortwave drought index (VSDI), normalized multiband drought index (NMDI), moisture stress index (MSI), and land surface temperature (LST). Secondly, we integrated the relatively less correlated variables (that were found to be NDWI, VSDI, and LST) to generate four agricultural drought categories/conditions (i.e., wet, mild drought, moderate drought, and severe drought). Finally, we evaluated the ADI maps against a set of 8-day ground-based standardized precipitation index values (i.e., SPI-1, SPI-2,..., SPI-8) by use of confusion matrices and observed the best results for SPI-4 (i.e., overall accuracy and Kappa-values were 83% and 76%, respectively) and SPI-5 (i.e., overall accuracy and Kappa-values were 85% and 78%, respectively). The results demonstrated that the method would be valuable for monitoring agricultural drought conditions in semi-arid regions at both a reasonably high spatial resolution (i.e., 30 m) and a short time period (i.e., 8-day).


Low-pressure proportional counters (LPPCs) with walls made from the elements C, Mg, Al, Si, Fe and Zr and from the chemical compounds A-150 plastic, AlN, Al2 O3 , SiO2 and ZrO2 were used to measure neutron fluence-to-kerma conversion coefficients at energies up to 66 MeV. The LPPCs served to measure the absorbed dose deposited in the gas of a cavity surrounded by the counter walls that could be converted to the absorbed dose to the wall on the basis of the Bragg-Gray cavity theory. Numerically the absorbed doses to the walls were almost equal to the corresponding kerma values of the wall materials. The neutron fluence was determined by various experimental methods based on the reference cross sections of the 1 H(n,p) scattering and/or the 238 U(n,f) reactions. The measurements were performed in monoenergetic neutron fields of energies of 5 MeV, 8 MeV, 15 MeV and 17 MeV and in polyenergetic neutron beams with prominent peaks of energies of 34 MeV, 44 MeV and 66 MeV. For the measurements in the polyenergetic neutron beams, significant corrections for the contributions of the non-peak energy neutrons were applied. The fluence-to-kerma conversion coefficients of N and O were determined using the difference technique applied with matched pairs of LPPCs made from a chemical compound and a pure element. This paper reports experimental fluence-to-kerma conversion coefficient values of eight elements and four compounds measured for seven neutron energies, and presents a comparison with data from previous measurements and theoretical predictions. The distributions of the absorbed dose as a function of the lineal energy were measured for monoenergetic neutrons or, for polyenergetic neutron fields, deduced by applying iterative unfolding procedures in order to subtract the contributions from non-peak energy neutrons. The dose distributions provide insight into the neutron interaction processes.


Despite the record-breaking performance in Text-to-Image (T2I) generation by Stable Diffusion, less research attention is paid to its adversarial robustness. In this work, we study the problem of adversarial attack generation for Stable Diffusion and ask if an adversarial text prompt can be obtained even in the absence of end-to-end model queries. We call the resulting problem 'query-free attack generation'. To resolve this problem, we show that the vulnerability of T2I models is rooted in the lack of robustness of text encoders, e.g., the CLIP text encoder used for attacking Stable Diffusion. Based on such insight, we propose both untargeted and targeted query-free attacks, where the former is built on the most influential dimensions in the text embedding space, which we call steerable key dimensions. By leveraging the proposed attacks, we empirically show that only a five-character perturbation to the text prompt is able to cause the significant content shift of synthesized images using Stable Diffusion. Moreover, we show that the proposed target attack can precisely steer the diffusion model to scrub the targeted image content without causing much change in untargeted image content.


Although many schools perform preventive interventions for reducing drug use, little is known about their implementation processes and results. Accordingly, this study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of three different types of preventive intervention performed in the school setting for reducing substance use among students. The study comprised 1316 students from the 9th year of elementary school to the 3rd year of secondary school in 8 public schools in the city of Guarulhos, São Paulo state, Brazil. Students were randomly assigned to the intervention groups or a control group and were evaluated at two different time-points regarding substance use. The results indicated that interventions performed by teachers were most effective in reducing both substance use and the severity of substance-associated problems. Interventions performed by experts were partially effective, although they only reduced use among experimental users. The results of " Single lecture " interventions revealed that such approaches are counterproductive. In summary, preventive actions that were contextualized to the student's reality and the school environment and that included the active involvement of both teacher and student were most effective at reducing the prevalence of substance use and the severity of associated problems in students.


As a first step towards a fully disposable stand-alone diagnostic microchip for determination of urinary human serum albumin (HSA), we report the use of a thin-film organic light emitting diode (OLED) as an excitation source for microscale fluorescence detection. The OLED has a peak emission wavelength of 540 nm, is simple to fabricate on flexible or rigid substrates, and operates at drive voltages below 10 V. In a fluorescence assay, HSA is reacted with Albumin Blue 580, generating a strong emission at 620 nm when excited with the OLED. Filter-less discrimination between excitation light and generated fluorescence is achieved through an orthogonal detection geometry. When the assay is performed in 800 microm deep and 800 microm wide microchannels on a poly(dimethylsiloxane)(PDMS) microchip at flow rates of 20 microL min(-1), HSA concentrations down to 10 mg L(-1) can be detected with a linear range from 10 to 100 mg L(-1). This sensitivity is sufficient for the determination of microalbuminuria (MAU), an increased urinary albumin excretion indicative of renal disease (clinical cut-off levels: 15-40 mg L(-1)).


The Eastern side of the Sunda Strait coastal line is an area which faces directly towards the source of the disaster . Mount Krakatau's explosion causes m ajor eruptions and destructive tsunami waves back in 1883, causing severe damages to the area and a death-count reaching 30,000 people. Learning from past, it is important to convey the understanding of natural hazards to the public. Spreading knowledge of the threat needs to be done by using methods that can easily be accepted, understood and implemented by any kind of communit ies . This preliminary research compels that the general population does not have sufficient understanding on this natural disaster . They are also oblivious to what procedure should be taken when such a tragedy occur. The research also illustrates that the audio-visual media is the most appropriate and favored method of gaining knowledge by the community. The media is constituted of multiple segments of 3D animations, digital computer animations, and short field-filmed clips, which are then assembled into one single documentary presenting both a virtual-reconstruction of the event whilst giving a variety of information concerning the subject. The content of the documentary will provide information about the Krakatau tsunami, the current condition of Mount Anak Krakatau, the signs leading to a volcanic eruption and a tsunami, and the necessary steps that they will have to follow in response to such threat . This documentary movie will hopefully become an educational tool to expand people's knowledge and awareness at the event of an eruption and a tsunami.


The authoritarian ideology that guided the authorities of the communist Polish state did not remain indifferent to the emerging model of jurisprudence in petty offence cases. Eliminating the possibility of court proceedings, the location of adjudicating boards in petty offence cases at national councils, the introduction of collegial jurisprudence exercised by the social factor, giving the jurisprudence an educational character, and abandoning it in favour of severe penalties implemented for hooligan petty offences — these are just some of the features that distinguish the jurisprudence model in petty offence cases in the People's Republic of Poland. The pursuit of the authorities to subordinate the individuals by, on the one hand, handing over the jurisprudence in petty offence cases into the hands of the people, and, on the other hand, filling the adjudication boards with members subordinate to the authority, did not bring independence in the decisions issued. It is evidenced, for example, by the excessive repressive adjudication boards judgments issued against participants of the political crisis of March 1968. The Authors present the development of the model of jurisprudence in petty offence cases in the controversial period of the communist regime.


Israel's military court system, a centerpiece of Israel's apparatus of control in the West Bank and Gaza since 1967, has prosecuted hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. This authoritative book provides a rare look at an institution that lies both figuratively and literally at the center of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Lisa Hajjar has conducted in-depth interviews with dozens of Israelis and Palestinians - including judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, defendants, and translators - about their experiences and practices to explain how this system functions, and how its functioning has affected the conflict. Her lucid, richly detailed, and theoretically sophisticated study highlights the array of problems and debates that characterize Israel's military courts as it asks how the law is deployed to protect and further the interests of the Israeli state and how it has been used to articulate and defend the rights of Palestinians living under occupation.


Astronomers study the behaviour of the stars; philosophers of science study the behaviour of the astronomers. Philosophers of science, alongside historians and sociologists of science, are in the business of accounting for how science works and what it achieves. There is more to the philosophy of science than principled descriptions of scientific activity, since there are also all the normative questions of justification and warrant, but the descriptive task is an important part of the discipline and the primary focus of the present essay.


In this work, we consider the minimum distance properties and convergence thresholds of 3-dimensional turbo codes (3D-TCs), recently introduced by Berrou et al.. Here, we consider binary 3D-TCs while the original work of Berrou et al. considered double-binary codes. In the first part of the paper, the minimum distance properties are analyzed from an ensemble perspective, both in the finite-length regime and in the asymptotic case of large block lengths. In particular, we analyze the asymptotic weight distribution of 3D-TCs and show numerically that their typical minimum distance dmin may, depending on the specific parameters, asymptotically grow linearly with the block length, i.e., the 3D-TC ensemble is asymptotically good for some parameters. In the second part of the paper, we derive some useful upper bounds on the dmin when using quadratic permutation polynomial (QPP) interleavers with a quadratic inverse. Furthermore, we give examples of interleaver lengths where an upper bound appears to be tight. The best codes (in terms of estimated dmin) obtained by randomly searching for good pairs of QPPs for use in the 3D-TC are compared to a probabilistic lower bound on the dmin when selecting codes from the 3D-TC ensemble uniformly at random. This comparison shows that the use of designed QPP interleavers can improve the dmin significantly. For instance, we have found a (6144,2040) 3D-TC with an estimated dmin of 147, while the probabilistic lower bound is 69. Higher rates are obtained by puncturing nonsystematic bits, and optimized periodic puncturing patterns for rates 1/2, 2/3, and 4/5 are found by computer search. Finally, we give iterative decoding thresholds, computed from an extrinsic information transfer chart analysis, and present simulation results on the additive white Gaussian noise channel to compare the error rate performance to that of conventional turbo codes.


The use of digital technologies has become one factor that significantly impacts business results in the financial industry. This study seeks to characterize the positioning and web traffic of Colombian banking establishments through analysis of the classification of their website, taking as reference the metrics related to web traffic and the attractiveness of the content and relevance for users as the bounce rate. The study presents a quantitative approach, non-experimental design, and descriptive scope. With a sample of 28 banking establishments, it is intended to contribute to the body of literature on bank marketing based on a systematic analysis of indicators. The findings of the study made it possible to elucidate that a good part of the websites of the banking establishments is well positioned, in addition to presenting low bounce rates. It is also possible to show that a significant portion of this traffic comes from individuals between 18 and 34 years of age and of the female gender. Likewise, traffic to the website is derived to a greater extent from direct access to the establishment's portal or search engines.


We investigate the impact of host-country risk on the expatriation strategies of multinational firms, using data on Japanese subsidiary firms in manufacturing industries in 13 host countries in Asia. We find that country risk is negatively correlated with the degree of expatriation and that, rather than host-country risk, firm-specific factors (particularly capital intensity, ownership share of parent firms in subsidiaries and the age of the venture) explain most of the variation in the degree to which subsidiaries rely on Japanese expatriates. Contrary to previous studies, the capital intensity of production is a key explanatory firm-specific variable that correlates positively with the degree of expatriation. Japanese multinational companies do not rely on expatria127=tes to off-set host-country risk, but to mitigate risk to parent investment in subsidiaries.


Are there any common denominators within the diversity of entrepreneurship literature that may serve as foundations for understanding the entrepreneurial process in a systematic and comprehensive way that is useful to both scholars and practitioners? The objective of this paper was to discover about the entrepreneurial process what, if anything, is both generic (all processes that are "entrepreneurial" do this) and distinct (only entrepreneurial processes do this). Our approach was to evaluate published models of entrepreneurial process to discover what scholars have argued about what entrepreneurs do and how they do it (the processes they use) and to seek out any key commonalities that scholars claim are associated with the phenomenon. Unfortunately for the field, the investigation demonstrates that, as at the time of our investigation, the 32 extant models of entrepreneurial process are highly fragmented in their claims and emphases and are insufficient for establishing an infrastructure upon which to synthesize an understanding of entrepreneurial process that is both generic and distinct. Insights gained in the study lead to suggestions for future research and theory development of which the most urgent is the need to develop a single harmonized model of entrepreneurial process capable of embracing the best of what is on offer and adding new theoretical arguments in areas where practice shows that they are lacking.


Abstract. We use a novel statistical approach-MGPD to analyze the joint probability distribution of storm surge events at two sites and present a warning method for storm surges at two adjacent positions in Beibu Gulf, using the sufficiently long field data on surge levels at two sites. The methodology also develops the procedure of application of MGPD, which includes joint threshold and Monte Carlo simulation, to handle multivariate extreme values analysis. By comparing the simulation result with analytic solution, it is shown that the relative error of the Monte Carlo simulation is less than 8.6 %. By running MGPD model based on long data at Beihai and Dongfang, the simulated potential surge results can be employed in storm surge warnings of Beihai and joint extreme water level predictions of two sites.


A simple method for analyzing nitrite in urine has been developed to confirm and quantify the amount of nitrite in potentially adulterated urine samples. The method involved separation of nitrite by capillary electrophoresis and direct UV detection at 214 nm. Separation was performed using a bare fused silica capillary and a 25 mM phosphate run buffer at a pH of 7.5. Sample preparation consisted of diluting the urine samples 1:20 with run buffer and internal standard, and centrifuging for 5 min at 2500 rpm. The sample was hydrodynamically injected, then separated using -25 kV with the column maintained at 35 degrees C. The method had upper and lower limits of linearity of 1500 and 80 microg/mL nitrite, respectively, and a limit of detection of 20 microg/mL. The method was evaluated using the National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards (NCCLS) protocol (Document EP10-A2), and validated using controls, standards, and authentic urine samples. Ten anions, ClO-, CrO4(-2), NO3-, HCO3-, I-, CH3COO-, F-, SO4-, S2O8(-2), and Cl-, were tested for potential interference with the assay. Interferences with quantitation were noted for only CrO4(-2) and S2O8(-2). High concentrations of Cl- interfered with the chromatography. The method had acceptable accuracy, precision, and specificity.


Cloud computing is an Internet-based computing model which provides several resources through Cloud Service Providers to Cloud Users on-demand basis without buying the underlying infrastructure and follows pay-per-use basis. Cloud computing usage has increased rapidly in many companies. Cloud computing is the well-known technology for scaling of extensive data and complex computation. Cloud computing offers many benefits in terms of low cost and accessibility of data. Data security is the major issue in cloud computing. This paper covers various security algorithms related to cloud computing and shows a comparative study on data security algorithms.


We investigate measurement crosstalk in a system with two flux-biased phase qubits coupled by a resonant coplanar waveguide cavity. After qubit measurement, the superconducting phase undergoes damped oscillations in a deep anharmonic potential producing a frequency chirped voltage or crosstalk signal. We show experimentally that a coplanar waveguide cavity acts as a bandpass filter that can significantly reduce the propagation of this crosstalk signal when the qubits are far off resonance from the cavity. The transmission of the crosstalk signal $\ensuremath{\propto}{({\ensuremath{\omega}}_{q}{C}_{x})}^{2}$ can be further minimized by reducing the qubit frequencies and the coupling capacitance to the cavity. We model the large amplitude crosstalk signal and qubit response classically with results that agree well with the experimental data. We find that the maximum energy transferred by the crosstalk generating qubit roughly saturates for long energy relaxation times $({T}_{1}g100\text{ }\text{ns})$ while the delay time necessary for the crosstalk signal to propagate to the cavity scales linearly with ${T}_{1}$. Ultimately, the use of resonant cavities as coupling elements and crosstalk filters is extremely beneficial for future architectures incorporating many coupled qubits.


Static Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN) based on high capacity pencil-beam millimeter wave (mmWave) links offer an attractive solution for small cell backhauling in 5G networks. However, the delay targets in 5G are such that it is quite challenging to develop adequate link scheduling and routing mechanisms especially for a system composed of backhaul nodes with a single TDD radio. We have proposed earlier a scheme that is based on cyclic semipermanent link schedules and multiple spanning tree based multipath routing. This scheme enables multihop backhaul connections with low delays and fast fault recovery. However, so far this scheme has been analyzed only by using end-to-end delay estimates based solely on link schedules. The potential effects of different queueing disciplines have not been studied in detail. In this paper, we will show how common output queueing systems can have a harmful interplay with the cyclic link schedules that contradicts our primary path optimization targets. We will also suggest a few simple modifications to existing queueing solutions that resolve these problems at WMN node level.


Aim & Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of anesthesia obtained with a Classical inferior dental nerve block compared with the Gow-Gates mandibular nerve block for posterior dentoalveolar surgical procedures. Material & Methods: 100 Patients requiring mandibular posterior dentoalveolar surgical procedure under local anesthesia were randomly selected from the outpatient department. These patients were divided equally into two groups of 50 each with age range of 18 to 56 years. In group A, local anesthetic solution administered by standard technique to achieve mandibular anesthesia while in group B the Gow-Gate technique was used. The statistical analysis was done using SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) Version 15.0 statistical Analysis Software. The values were represented in Number (%) and Mean ± SD. Result: The patients in group B showed no complications during or after injection, time of onset on anesthesia and complete recovery from anesthesia were found more in group B. Most of the patients were highly satisfied with Gow-Gates nerve block. Conclusion: Gow- Gates technique is superior to inferior alveolar nerve block . It requires expertise and higher skill which one develops with practise.


This study presents an improved ghost‐cell immersed boundary approach to represent a solid body in compressible flow simulations. In contrast to the commonly used approaches, in the present work, ghost cells are mirrored through the boundary described using a level‐set method to farther image points, incorporating a higher‐order extra/interpolation scheme for the ghost‐cell values. A sensor is introduced to deal with image points near the discontinuities in the flow field. Adaptive mesh refinement is used to improve the representation of the geometry efficiently in the Cartesian grid system. The improved ghost‐cell method is validated against four test cases: (a) double Mach reflections on a ramp, (b) smooth Prandtl–Meyer expansion flows, (c) supersonic flows in a wind tunnel with a forward‐facing step, and (d) supersonic flows over a circular cylinder. It is demonstrated that the improved ghost‐cell method can reach the accuracy of second order in L1 norm and higher than first order in L∞ norm. Direct comparisons against the cut‐cell method demonstrate that the improved ghost‐cell method is almost equally accurate with better efficiency for boundary representation in high‐fidelity compressible flow simulations. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Pulverized Coal Injection (PCI) is a key technology in modern ironmaking by blast furnace and the life of injection lance has a great influence on PCI operation and on normal running of blast furnace. It is found that the main reasons for the failure of the lances are their outer surface oxidation and the inner surface erosion through monitoring some lances used in BF. The outer surface oxidation of the lances made of lCr18Ni9Ti is inevitable under high hot blast temperature condition through thermodynamics analysis. Increasing the inner surface hardness by surface treatment would prolong the service life of coal lance. The anti-oxidation temperature of lance materials needs to be over 1000°C for BF intensified smelting.


Significance We examine the effects of an uneven population distribution on the spread of the COVID-19 disease spread, using a diffusion model based on interpersonal contact networks. Taking into account spatial heterogeneity, the spread of COVID-19 is much "burstier" than in standard epidemiological models, with substantial local disparities in timing and severity and long lags between local outbreaks. We show that spatial heterogeneity may produce dramatic differences in social exposures to those with the illness, and may stress health care delivery systems in ways that are not well captured by standard SIR-like models. Standard epidemiological models for COVID-19 employ variants of compartment (SIR or susceptible–infectious–recovered) models at local scales, implicitly assuming spatially uniform local mixing. Here, we examine the effect of employing more geographically detailed diffusion models based on known spatial features of interpersonal networks, most particularly the presence of a long-tailed but monotone decline in the probability of interaction with distance, on disease diffusion. Based on simulations of unrestricted COVID-19 diffusion in 19 US cities, we conclude that heterogeneity in population distribution can have large impacts on local pandemic timing and severity, even when aggregate behavior at larger scales mirrors a classic SIR-like pattern. Impacts observed include severe local outbreaks with long lag time relative to the aggregate infection curve, and the presence of numerous areas whose disease trajectories correlate poorly with those of neighboring areas. A simple catchment model for hospital demand illustrates potential implications for health care utilization, with substantial disparities in the timing and extremity of impacts even without distancing interventions. Likewise, analysis of social exposure to others who are morbid or deceased shows considerable variation in how the epidemic can appear to individuals on the ground, potentially affecting risk assessment and compliance with mitigation measures. These results demonstrate the potential for spatial network structure to generate highly nonuniform diffusion behavior even at the scale of cities, and suggest the importance of incorporating such structure when designing models to inform health care planning, predict community outcomes, or identify potential disparities.


Abstract This paper aims to design decentralized controllers for different components in islanded DC microgrids. The major components in the DC microgrid as considered in this paper include a fuel cell, solar photovoltaic (PV) unit, and battery energy storage system (BESS) along with critical and non-critical loads. The main control objective is to maintain the power balance within the DC microgrid through the regulation of the common DC-bus voltage. The controllers are designed based on the dynamical models of the fuel cell, solar PV unit, and BESS. The feedback linearization technique is employed to obtain the control laws, which simplifies the original dynamical models and decouples different components in the form of several subsystems. In this way, the feedback linearization technique allows different components in DC microgrids to achieve the desired control objectives by using only the local information (i.e., in a decentralized manner). The performance of the proposed decentralized controllers for different components is evaluated on a test DC microgrid under different operating conditions. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed control scheme performs in a much better way as compared to an existing proportional integral controller.


Two of the largest earthquakes to affect water levels in Monterey Bay in recent years were the Loma Prieta Earthquake (LPE) of 1989 with a moment magnitude of 6.9, and the Great Alaskan Earthquake (GAE) of 1964 with a moment magnitude of 9.2. In this study, we compare the sea level response of these events with a primary focus on their frequency content and how the bay affected it, itself. Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) was employed to extract the primary frequencies associated with each event. It is not clear how or exactly where the tsunami associated with the LPE was generated, but it occurred inside the bay and most likely began to take on the characteristics of a seiche by the time it reached the tide gauge in Monterey Harbor. Results of the SSA decomposition revealed two primary periods of oscillation, 9-10 minutes, and 31-32 minutes. The first oscillation is in agreement with the range of periods for the expected natural oscillations of Monterey Harbor, and the second oscillation is consistent with a bay-wide oscillation or seiche mode. SSA decomposition of the GAE revealed several sequences of oscillations all with a period of approximately 37 minutes, which corresponds to the predicted, and previously observed, transverse mode of oscillation for Monterey Bay. In this case, it appears that this tsunami produced quarter-wave resonance within the bay consistent with its seiche-like response. Overall, the sea level responses to the LPE and GAE differed greatly, not only because of the large difference in their magnitudes but also because the driving force in one case occurred inside the bay (LPE), and in the second, outside the bay (GAE). As a result, different modes of oscillation were excited. Science of Tsunami Hazards, Vol. 28, No. 5, page 255 (2009)


UNLABELLED
Perception of surface shape and reflectance is a difficult problem because it is underconstrained. The generalized bas-relief (GBR) ambiguity is potentially a powerful tool for probing how human vision solves this problem, as it mathematically describes an important special case of the problem of ambiguity. The GBR ambiguity shows how we can make drastic changes in the shape, reflectance, and illumination conditions of an object without changing its retinal image at all, and so it describes a fundamental obstacle to perception of shape and reflectance from shading. What statistical knowledge about real-world surfaces would help a visual system to overcome the GBR ambiguity? Do we need detailed knowledge about the statistics of real-world surfaces, or is general knowledge that mostly avoids pathological interpretations enough?

METHOD
I examined the statistics of surface properties in digital representations of 1000 natural and man-made objects. I histogrammed local changes in orientation, reflectance, and illuminance, and also their pairwise joint distributions. I tested which of these statistical models of real-world surfaces selected the correct 3D interpretation of 2D images of objects, out of a wide range of GBR transformations of the objects.

RESULTS
Local reflectance changes tended to be small, and this simple prior was effective at selecting correct 3D interpretations of 2D images. Local orientation changes were also small, but this prior usually did not select correct 3D interpretations. Significantly, a simple prior stating that local changes in reflectance and illuminance are uncorrelated also worked very well in selecting correct 3D interpretations.

CONCLUSION
Local statistical information about real-world surfaces can be useful in recovering 3D shape from 2D images, and general knowledge that mostly just avoids pathological interpretations can also work surprisingly well. I will also discuss psychophysical experiments that test whether these priors guide human perception of shape and reflectance from shading. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


A decision-analysis methodology is applied to the problem of the migration of strontium-90 ( 90 Sr) in ground water to the Pripyat Town water wells located near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukraine. The source of the radiostrontium is the diffuse contamination of the ground surface by radioactive fallout, which was released from the damaged reactor core in 1986. The hydrostratigraphy at the site is idealized as a three-layer system; a marl layer separates an upper, unconfined aquifer from a lower confined aquifer which is used as a source of water. Management strategies are evaluated using a risk-cost objective function. The risk is defined as the expected costs of well-field failure due to ex-ceedence of the 90 Sr regulatory standard for drinking water. The probability of well-field failure is estimated using Monte-Carlo simulation techniques. This probability is most dependent upon the 90 Sr regulatory standard and upon the hydraulic conductivity of the aquitard in a hypothesized annular facilitated-transport zone near the well casings. The risk-cost analysis indicates that a "no complex remedial action" alternative represents the preferred management strategy for the Pripyat Town water wells, but that the risk will increase in 25 years by about one order of magnitude. Therefore, efforts to obtain more reliable estimates of contaminant transport parameters, in particular 90 Sr concentrations in the unconfined aquifer, appear warranted.