From the Society of Jesus' first appearance in England in 1580,
various political treatises, literary works, and theological discourses
have attributed legendary plots, exploits, and malice to its members.
For nearly two hundred years, the Jesuits were consistently portrayed
as seditious regicides who would sacrifice all to regain England for
Rome. Although modern scholarship has revealed the true nature of the
myth of the evil Jesuits, few historians have attempted to explicate
the reality. There have been biographies of individual sixteenth
century Jesuits and studies of the Society's conflicts with the English
secular clergy and of their pretended plots against the government but
there has been no investigation of the English Jesuits as members of an
international religious order. The Society of Jesus had a "pathway to
God" in its Institute (that is, its Constitutions, decrees, and rules)
which became more complicated throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Could it be adapted to the special conditions of England?
Were the practices of the Jesuits there harmonious with those prescribed
in the Institute? Or was England so singular that dispensations and
concessions left the Society there scarcely recognizable as such to
other Jesuits? Centring on the period from 1623 to 1688, from the
initial enthusiasm at the erection of the province to the debacle of
James II's collapse and flight, this thesis will consider the English
Jesuits in the context of the Society's Institute.
Not bound by any monastic vow of stability, the early Jesuits were
dispersed throughout the world. The preservation and the confirmation
of union among such members was a constant concern of St Ignatius
Loyola and the early Society. Out of this concern evolved much of the
Society's Institute and its ordinary manner of government, which are
topics of the first chapter.
Although the mission was opened in 1580, England did not become a
fully constituted province until 1623. During the intervening forty-three
years, the mission survived on the institutional fringe of the
Society. It was the Society's first independent, permanent mission and,
as such, was an exception to the customary style of government. Condemned
as a novelty, the mission withstood the threats and objections of other
provinces. Once erected, the English province was remarkably resilient in
its adjustments to the vicissitudes of the English political scene.
As the number of Jesuits increased, "colleges" and "residences"
were established in England. The precise meaning of both terms has
long eluded recusant historians and can only be understood fully if seen
in the context of the Institute. Although most Jesuits lived with
recusant families, there was a consistent effort to have a specific
Jesuit house within each college and residence.
Restricted by the Society's teachings on poverty and threatened by
the penal laws, the province had to be very careful about its financial
arrangements. The Society's Institute placed serious restrictions on
the provincial institutions. Working within those limitations, the
province was able to protect most of its capital and much of its real
estate again t theft, confiscation, and apostasy through lay trustees
and a complex system of interlocking trusts.


A remarkably versatile man, Jan van der Heyden (1637-1712) was the preeminent painter of cityscapes in the Netherlands and the first artist to capture all the beauty of the urban scene. Notwithstanding his achievements as an artist, Van der Heyden was even more famous in his own time as an inventor and engineer: he invented firefighting equipment that set the standard throughout Europe for two centuries, and he perfected the streetlamp. This is the first book in English devoted to Van der Heyden. It includes recent discoveries about his fascinating life and offers an introduction to his ravishing art. The book includes a general discussion of Van der Heyden's work, entries on 40 of his paintings, illustrations of about 100 of his paintings, as well as supplemental drawings and prints. Focusing mainly on the bustling city of Amsterdam, he also recorded other Dutch, Flemish, and German cities with a brilliant palette and exceptionally detailed technique. Often innovative in his composition, he was the first artist to create imaginary scenes by rearranging existing city views and known buildings.


Abstract Nippobodespanemorfissp. n. and Leobodestrypasissp. n. are described by means of optical and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and compared to other congeners. The leg-folding process is described and illustrated. Nippobodespanemorfissp. n. is characterised by interlocking, double hook-shaped, posterior prodorsal condyle and anterior zone humeral apophysis; posterior prodorsal depression present. Tutorium a large lamina defining a pocket-shaped structure; bothridial opening ovoid, situated at the bottom of a U-shaped structure; deep, rounded-ovoid anterior notogastral depression present; ten pairs of notogastral setae; c setae looped, dentate, sharply tipped. Marginal setae h3, p3 on large promontories, followed by deep V-shaped incision; notogaster completely surrounded by circumgastric depression; lateral genital zone with locking structure constituted by longitudinal cuticular elevation, with promontories and a parallel furrow involved in the leg-folding process; genital plate smaller than anal plate. Leobodestrypasissp. n. is characterised by: the presence of posterior prodorsal depression and anterior notogastral depression; bridge-shaped anterior prodorsal condyles; heart-shaped frontal prodorsal orifice; ten pairs of notogastral setae; posterior prodorsal condyle and humeral condyle interlocked, forming double hook-like structure; circumgastric furrow surrounding entire notogaster; setae lp, h2, h1 situated on shallow medial furrow; notogastral setae lm, lp, h1, h2 medially aligned; p1, p2, p3, h3 marginally situated. Legs I-IV, tutorium, pedotectum I, and pedotectum II involved in leg folding which is inferred to be a protection mechanism.


The use of 100% oxygen to determine intrapulmonary shunting has been widely advocated. This study was performed to determine the clinical application of this technique in critically ill patients on PEEP. Determinations of intrapulmonary shunting using FIO2 of 0.45 and 1.0 were performed on 18 patients. Machine error was also calculated. Shunt calculations increased by an average of 52% (29% corrected for machine error) with the use of an FIO2 of 1.0 and returned to previous levels when an FIO2 of 0.45 was reinstituted. There was no statistical difference in shunt increase between patients on high (greater than or equal to 15 cm H2O) or low (less than 15 cm H2O) PEEP. The use of 100% oxygen to calculate intrapulmonary shunting in patients on PEEP is misleading in both physiological and methodological terms.


The New Zealand Thomisidae (crab spiders) are represented in New Zealand by two subfamilies (Stephanopinae and Thomisinae) and were used as a model group to test two competing theories on the origins of the New Zealand spider fauna. The New Zealand thomisids are also given their first full taxonomic revision. The two origin models essentially represent species radiations following recent dispersal or ancient vicariance events. Modern distribution data suggested that the stephanopines are poor dispersers and may provide evidence demonstrating a long period of separation from Australia; while in contrast, thomisines are known to be excellent dispersers. Maximum Likelihood and Bayesian analyses of cytochrome c suboxidase subunit I (COI), 28S ribosomal RNA (28S), histone H3 (H3), NADH dehyrogenase 1 (ND1) data and a combined genetic dataset was undertaken. Results indicate New Zealand stephanopines and thomisines form distinct endemic groups separate from sampled Australian species and appear to have separated from them around 5-6 million years ago. Additionally, genetic data from this study showed i) colour variations are not indicative of cryptic species; ii) previously described species are genetically distinct; iii) several suspected new species are also genetically distinct; iv) the relatively recent establishment of two Australian stephanopines and the occurrence of similar COI haplotypes in disjunct locations suggest that the dispersal ability of stephanopines is greater than previously thought and that radiation following colonization from Australia is a plausible explanation for the current diversity of the New Zealand thomisid biota. The taxonomic revision raises the number of described species from eight to eleven based on a combination of morphological and genetic data. In the stephanopines, Bryantymella Gen. nov. is erected to contain the type species Bryantymella angularis (Urquhart, 1885) comb. nov. as well as B. angulata (Urquhart, 1885) comb. nov., B. thorini sp. nov. and B. brevirostris sp. nov. Two Australian species, Sidymella longipes (Koch, 1874) and S. trapezia (Koch, 1874), are also recorded for New Zealand. Sidymella benhami (Hogg, 1910) is considered to be a junior synonym of Bryantymella angulata (Urquhart, 1885). In the thomisines, all species are now included in the previously monotypic genus Cymbachina Bryant, 1933. The genus now encompasses the type species C. albobrunnea (Urquhart, 1893), C. ambara (Urquhart, 1885) comb. nov., C. albolimbata (L. Koch, 1893) comb. nov., C. sphaeroides (Urquhart, 1885) comb. nov. and D. urquharti sp. nov. Synema suteri Dahl, 1907 is regarded as a junior synonym of C. ambara (L. Koch 1893). All previously described species are redescribed to a modern standard and sexes for some species are described for the first time. Three new species are described. Photographs of adults and diagnostic genitalic characters are included, as are diagnostic keys and updated synonymic, geographic and biological information. Overall, this study indicates that New Zealand thomisids appear to have split from their Australian relatives some 5-6 million years ago and taken in concert with the recent establishment of two Australian stephanopine species, it appears that dispersal to New Zealand by Australian colonists and subsequent radiation into endemic New Zealand forms is a plausible explanation for the current state of the fauna. Genetic and morphological data are mutually supporting and in concert have helped inform the first taxonomic revision ever undertaken for this family in New Zealand.


In spread spectrum systems employing parity bit selected spreading sequences, parity bits generated from a linear block encoder are used to select a spreading code from a set of mutually orthogonal spreading sequences. In this thesis, turbo receivers for SS-PB systems are proposed and investigated. In the transmitter, data bits are first convolutionally encoded before being fed into SS-PB modulator. In fact, the parity bit spreading code selection technique acts as an inner encoder in this system without allocating any transmit energy to the additional redundancy provided by this technique. The receiver implements a turbo processing by iteratively exchanging the soft information on coded bits between a SISO detector and a SISO decoder. In this system, detection is performed by incorporating the extrinsic information provided by the decoder in the last iteration into the received signal to calculate the likelihood of each detected bit in terms of LLR which is used as the input for a SISO decoder. In addition, SISO detectors are proposed for MC-CDMA and MIMO-CDMA systems that employ parity bit selected and permutation spreading. In the case of multiuser scenario, a turbo SISO multiuser detector is introduced for SS-PB systems for both synchronous and asynchronous channels. In such systems, MAI is estimated from the extrinsic information provided by the SISO channel decoder in the previous iteration. SISO multiuser detectors are also proposed for the case of multiple users in MC-CDMA and MIMO-CDMA systems when parity bit selected and permutation spreading are used. Simulations performed for all the proposed turbo receivers show a significant reduction in BER in AWGN and fading channels over multiple iterations.


In the fight against anthropogenic climate change, the benefit of the integration of fluctuating renewable energies (wind and photovoltaics) into the electricity grid is a widely proved concept. At the same time, a fluctuating and decentralised supply of energy, especially at lower voltage levels, leads to a local discrepancy in the power balance between generation and consumption. A possible solution in connection with demand side management is the grid-oriented flexibilisation of energy demand. The present study shows how the use of an innovative hybrid-redundant high-temperature heat system (combined heat and power (CHP), power-to-heat system (PtH), gas boiler) can contribute to a flexibilisation of the electrical energy demand of plastics processing companies. In this context, the flexibilisation potential of a company is to be understood as the grid-related change of the energy supply through a change of the energy sources within the framework of the process heat supply. For this purpose, an omniscient control algorithm is developed that specifies the schedule of the individual system components. A sensitivity analysis is used to test the functionality of the control algorithm. Determination of the electrical flexibilisation potential is carried out via a comprehensive simulation study using Monte Carlo methods. For this purpose, the residual load curves of four characteristic distribution grids with a high share of renewable energies as well as heat load profiles of injection moulding machines are taken into consideration. A frequency distribution provides information on the electrical flexibilisation potential to be expected depending on the various combinations. The evaluation is carried out using a specially introduced logic, which identifies grid-relevant changes in the company's power consumption as flexibilisation potential based on a reference load curve. The results show that a reliable energy supply for production is possible despite flexibilisation. Depending on the grid under consideration, there are differences in the exploitation of the potential, which essentially depends on the installed renewable capacity. Depending on the scenario under consideration, an average of up to 1486 kWhel can be shifted in a positive direction and 1199 kWhel in a negative direction.


The faucet snail Bithynia tentaculata, a nonindigenous aquatic snail from Eurasia, was introduced into Lake Michigan in 1871 and has spread to the mid-Atlantic states, the Great Lakes region, Montana, and most recently, the Mississippi River. The faucet snail serves as intermediate host for several trematodes that have caused large-scale mortality among water birds, primarily in the Great Lakes region and Montana. It is important to limit the spread of the faucet snail; small fisheries equipment can serve as a method of snail distribution. Treatments with chemical disinfection, pH extremes, and heated water baths were tested to determine their effectiveness as a disinfectant for small fisheries equipment. Two treatments eliminated all test snails: (1) a 24-h exposure to Hydrothol 191 at a concentration of at least 20 mg/L and (2) a treatment with 508C heated water for 1 min or longer. Faucet snails were highly resistant to ethanol, NaCl, formalin, Lysol, potassium permanganate, copper sulfate, Baquacil, Virkon, household bleach, and pH extremes (as low as 1 and as high as 13).


Studies have shown that when students are tested about their knowledge of basic economic principles six months after completing an introductory economics course, they score no better, on average, than those who never took the course. That remarkable failure is explained in part by the fact that many professors try to teach their students far too much, and in part because many employ excessive mathematical formalism. This paper describes an alternative approach inspired by evidence that the human brain absorbs new ideas most efficiently when they are expressed in narrative form. It describes an extraordinarily effective pedagogical device–the economic naturalist–writing assignment, in which the student is asked to pose an interesting question based on personal observation or experience, and then use basic economic principles in an attempt to craft a plausible answer to it.


Abstract : An investigation of solid electrolyte cells utilizing a 90 mole % ZrO2-10 mole % Y2O3 electrolyte and platinum electrodes for the reduction of carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide and oxygen was carried out. At 1000 C, oxygen production efficiency is less than 50% when the cell is operated at a current density greater than 0.040 amp/cu cm on a dry CO/CO2 mixture as cathode feed. Reduction of the solid electrolyte because of insufficiently rapid transfer of oxygen from the cathode feed gas to the cathode is the direct cause of low current efficiency. Reduction of the electrolyte can lead to formation of a two-phase region in the electrolyte which can, in turn, result in permanent damage to the electrolyte. The presence of water vapor in the feed mixture of CO and CO2 decreases cell polarization, decreases electrolyte reduction and increases oxygen production efficiency. (Author)


Nonlinear photonic crystals are capable of highly efficient nonlinear wavefront manipulation, providing a promising platform for compact and large-scale integrated nonlinear devices. However, the current nonlinear encoding methods for nonlinear photonic crystals inherently require a number of disordered and complex microstructures, which are quite challenging in a real fabrication process. Herein we propose and experimentally demonstrate a nonlinear detour phase method for nonlinear wavefront manipulation in nonlinear photonic crystals. With the proposed method, the designed nonlinear detour phase hologram only requires a set of basic building blocks with simple shapes, which are easy to fabricate by using the femtosecond laser writing technique. The second-harmonic hologram is demonstrated by designing the nonlinear detour phase patterns, and the quasi-phase-matching scheme in the second-harmonic holographic imaging process is also discussed. This study conceptually extends the conventional detour phase method into the nonlinear regime, offering new possibilities for compact nonlinear micro-devices with multi-functions.


Both inanimate and animate intertidal surfaces including Fucus and Ascophyllum develop a biofilm that can bind metals contributed by non-point and point sources of pollution. The biofilm also functions as a habitat for the many organisms, i.e. bacteria, diatoms and other algal cells that are part of the biofilm and contribute to the polysaccharide matrix. Examinations of the biofilm were quantified by polysaccharide analysis using a spectrophotometer. Biofilm samples were recovered from both intertidal rock surfaces and the surface of the surrounding fucoid algae to determine if they bind Cu and Zn. Locations in Kittery, Maine differed by the amount of polysaccharides produced. The widespread cover of polysaccharides indicates that Cu and Zn may have a diffuse impact and accumulation in the intertidal zone. A laboratory study was conducted using adult Fucus fronds to determine if Cu and Zn were accumulated in the biofilm as well as in tissue. Fucus was collected from a coastal site in Kittery, Maine and brought to the Jackson Estuarine Laboratory ( JEL) where it was added to tanks of seawater containing Cu or Zn at 5 mg 1-1. After three weeks the Fucus was used for Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) as well as chemical analysis of the metals. The results from that indicated significant amounts of Cu and Zn were recovered from the biofilm and the Fucus tissue. Because not just adult fucoid algae are exposed to Cu and Zn present in tidal waters, zygotes were exposed to combinations of copper and zinc that ranged from 0.02 mg 1-1 to 2 mg 1-1. Environmental parameters were also altered including salinity, particulate or dissolved organic matter, presence or absence of a biofilm and pH. Germination and growth of the germlings was determined using a light microscope equipped with an ocular micrometer following 2 to 4 day exposure to treatments. Germlings of Fucus, following Cu and Zn exposure, do best when grown in 32 ppt seawater containing dissolved and particulate organic matter. In this static study, the presence of a biofilm on the glass slides did not improve germination or growth.


The current paper presents the design methodology for reducing the water consumption to reach a zero energy building. The building of the Garaboulli Engineering Faculty (GEF), Libya was chosen as a case study. The required energy will be supplied by renewable energy. In order to meet the required loads, solar energy is used in the design to generate heating, cooling, and electric power by using different techniques such as solar thermal collectors and photovoltaic panels. Moreover, rain water is used as a source of water supply for the building. To reach the low water and Zero Energy aims, different techniques such as recycling of greywater and solar cooling were adopted. Finally, the proposed system will be feasible for a long term of operation.


Lymphatic filariasis is a long term chronic infection characterised by a Th2 dominated immune response and suppressed Ag-specific proliferation. This immunological hyporesponsiveness is most profound amongst individuals with circulating microfilariae (mf) suggesting an important role for mf in generating proliferative suppression. The use of single life cycle stage infections in murine models of filariasis has facilitated the study of stage specific mechanisms of immunomodulation. Intravenous infection of BALB/c mice with B. pahangi mf or L3 (the third stage larvae) leads to development of differentially polarised immune responses. At 12 d.p.i. splenocytes from L3 infected animals produce Ag-specific IL-4, IL-5 and IL-10 and show strong Ag-driven proliferative responses. In contrast splenocytes from mf-infected animals show a cytokine profile dominated by IFN-gamma and suppression of Ag-specific proliferation. After 96 hrs of Ag-stimulated culture splenocytes from mf-infected animals proliferate at levels below background indicating that an active form of suppression is operable in vitro.

A lack of IL-2 does not account for the defective proliferative response as addition of recombinant IL-2 failed to restore Ag-specific proliferation. Splenocytes from mf-infected animals produce high levels of NO in Ag-stimulated culture which correlates inversely with their proliferative responses. No such accumulation of nitrite is seen in cultures of cells from L3 infected animals. The proliferative defect is dependent upon inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) activity as inhibition of iNOS activity with either L-NMMA or AMG restored Ag-specific proliferation.


The converging impact of globalization, ICT and knowledge explosion has led to phenomenal changes in the modern society, which have challenged every aspect of our modern lifestyle. To cope with these run-away changes we need to prepare workforce with the skills to handle a range of electronic technologies that characterize this digital era. To prepare citizens with cosmopolitan outlook, cross-cultural understanding, capable of working in multicultural settings on group projects and capacity to think creatively and critically a different approach to the delivery of education is required. This paper argues that nothing less than a radical change, especially in the developing countries, is required in the ways education is delivered to the 'digital natives' of today and tomorrow. Arguing that education is the engine room and strength of a nation is based on its quality education, it is crucial for a country to deliver calibrated education to prepare globally competitive citizens. The paper examines various educational reforms undertaken in some successful education systems, but it also serves a caveat that the developing countries like Indonesia or a region like ASEAN should learn from the experience of such systems. At the same time time they should be aware of that an idea which works in one socio-economic setting may not be that effective in another setting as socio-political systems play their own part.


In this paper, we present a pattern recognition method that uses dynamic programming (DP) for the alignment of Radon features. The key characteristic of the method is to use dynamic time warping (DTW) to match corresponding pairs of the Radon features for all possible projections. Thanks to DTW, we avoid compressing the feature matrix into a single vector which would otherwise miss information. To reduce the possible number of matchings, we rely on a initial normalisation based on the pattern orientation. A comprehensive study is made using major state-of-the-art shape descriptors over several public datasets of shapes such as graphical symbols (both printed and hand-drawn), handwritten characters and footwear prints. In all tests, the method proves its generic behaviour by providing better recognition performance. Overall, we validate that our method is robust to deformed shape due to distortion, degradation and occlusion.


This paper explores the concept of environmental refugees through a literature review and discourse analysis of media coverage on Tuvalu. Tuvalu is predicted to be the first nation lost to sea level rise and its government has been active in attempting to secure a place of asylum for its citizens. Although the term 'environmental refugee' is not an official one, it is widely used. Therefore, a case study is used to illustrate how environmental refugees are constructed in the public eye. Using political economy and political ecology approach, the power dynamics that lead to disproportionate environmental destruction in poor, racialized areas as well as unequal access to migration are questioned. Looking at two major newspapers each from Canada, the US, Australia, and New Zealand, and one from Tuvalu, the discourse surrounding environmental refugees reveals how the term is constructed and used for varying agendas, from environmentalism to racial exclusion.


Pepper (Piper nigrum L.) is an important cash crop in Malaysia, especially for the state of Sarawak. There are two major pepper products in international trade, white pepper and black pepper. This paper describes
the performance of a mechanized pepper thresher and sorter which was designed and nibricated at Universiti Pertanian Malaysia. The machine serves three main functions: detaching berries from the stalks, separating
detached berries from the empty stalks and separating large (> 5 mm diameter) and small berries for white and black pepper production, respectively. Tests were carried out to determine the optimum speed for threshing and sorting. The optimum operating speed for threshing was
found to be 700 rpm. At this speed, the average threshing capacity was 338 kg/h with threshing efficiency of 99%; damaged berries accounted for less
than 5%. The optimum operating speed for the sorting was found to be 280 rpm with the average sorting capacity of 415 kg/h.


Today, fast and accurate diagnosis through portable and cheap devices is in high demand for the general healthcare. Lab-on-chips (LoCs) have undergone a great growth in this direction, supported by optical imaging techniques more and more refined. Here we present recent progresses in developing imaging tools based on coherent imaging microscopy that can be very useful when applied into biomicrofluidics. In some cases, the optical tweezers (OT) technique is combined with digital holography (DH), thus offering the possibility to manipulate, analyze, and measure fundamental parameters of different kinds of cells. This approach can open the route for rapid and high-throughput analysis in label-free microfluidic devices and for prognostic based on cell examination, thus allowing advancements in biomedical science.


The widespread use of pesticides in agriculture during the last several decades has contaminated soils and different Critical Zone (CZ) compartments, defined as the area extended from the top of the vegetation canopy to the groundwater table, and it integrates interactions of the atmosphere, lithosphere, biosphere, and hydrosphere. However, the long-term fate, storage, and transfer dynamics of persistent pesticides in CZ in a changing world remain poorly understood. In the French West Indies, chlordecone (CLD), a toxic organochlorine insecticide, was extensively applied to banana fields to control banana weevil from 1972 to 1993 after which it was banned. Here, to understand CZ trajectories we apply a retrospective observation based on marine sediment core analyses to monitor long-term CLD transfer, fate, and consequences in Guadeloupe and Martinique islands. Both CLD profiles show synchronous chronologies. We hypothesized that the use of glyphosate, a postemergence herbicide, from the late 1990s onward induced CZ modification with an increase in soil erosion and led to the release of the stable CLD stored in the soils of polluted fields. CLD fluxes drastically increased when glyphosate use began, leading to widespread ecosystem contamination. As glyphosate is used globally, ecotoxicological risk management strategies should consider how its application affects persistent pesticide storage in soils, transfer dynamics, and widespread contamination.


This article argues that China's public service broadcasting (PSB) policy has been motivated more by the pragmatic ends of securing social stability and cohesion than by moral or humane concerns for the development of citizens. Actual PSB policy focused predominantly on a narrowly defined, "basic cultural right," of access to broadcast media and on social equalization between urban and rural access to broadcast networks. Other values of PSB, including high-quality programming, independence and impartiality, are still marginalized. The continuation of consensus on the authoritarian political model and the prioritization of social order and collective rights over individual political and civil rights has restricted the scope of the policy. The lack of consensus on the substance of the public interest undermines any meaningful political construction of PSB. The long-term implications of PSB policy depend on the legitimation of the discourse of individual rights and equality, and on recognition of the broadcast media's role in independently serving the public and common good and of the State's obligation to respect individuals as citizens having equal and unalienable rights.


Objective: Black and lesbian, gay, bisexual, or questioning (LGBQ) youth in the United States are disproportionately affected by HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Although self-efficacy is strongly, positively associated with safer sex behaviors, no studies have examined the validity of a safer sex self-efficacy scale used by many federally funded HIV/STD prevention programs. This study aims to test factor validity of the Sexual Self-Efficacy Scale by using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to determine if scale validity varies between heterosexual and LGBQ Black youth. Method: The study uses cross-sectional data collected through baseline surveys with 226 Black youth (15 to 24 years) enrolled in community-based HIV-prevention programs. Participants use a 4-point Likert-type scale to report their confidence in performing 6 healthy sexual behaviors. CFAs are conducted on 2 factor structures of the scale. Using the best-fitting model, the scale is tested for measurement invariance between the 2 groups. Results: A single-factor model with correlated errors of condom-specific items fits the sample well and, when tested with the heterosexual group, the model demonstrates good fit. However, when tested with the LGBQ group, the same model yields poor fit, indicating factorial noninvariance between the groups. Conclusions: The Sexual Self-Efficacy Scale does not perform equally well among Black heterosexual and LGBQ youth. Study findings suggest additional research is needed to inform development of measures for safer sex self-efficacy among Black LGBQ youth to ensure validity of conceptual understanding and to accurately assess effectiveness of HIV/STD prevention interventions among this population.


'Getting to zero' – the post-2015 development aim of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030 – involves not just ensuring that people currently in poverty escape from it but also that people do not fall into poverty in the future. Is there a 'resilience threshold': a line which, once people are living over, means that they are highly unlikely to live in poverty in the future? If such a threshold exists, what form does it take? Is it dependent upon achieving a certain level of income/expenditure; a particular number of years of education or access to a particular type of (informal) insurance arrangement? Using data from Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda, this Oxfam GB and Chronic Poverty Advisory Network research report explores the multi-dimensional issue of resilience.


The purpose of this present research is first to analyze how the process of ideation has unfolded in community-supporting platforms, exploring ideation patterns and thereby the identification and analysis of how task characteristics that influence the contribution performance in ideation projects. Building a model based on task design theories for task characteristics and problem-solving theory, this study is addressing this aim with an empirical analysis of 335 ideation projects that vary based on task characteristics. The results from a negative binomial model indicate that while reward and specified task topics have a positive impact on the success of ideation; sector information as an alternative task characteristic has an inverse effect.


Numerical simulation can be successfully applied to evaluate product manufacturability and predict, while material wrinkling and splitting are associated with entry angle and pressure-pad force during sheet metal stamping process. In this paper, the influence of entry angle and pressure-pad force on deep-drawing thermal forming of TC1 titanium alloy was analyzed by using explicit dynamic finite element software STAMPACK, two kinds of main invalidation, including wrinkling and splitting, and obtained that the entry angle is an important factor for deep-draw thermal forming. By analyzing the forming operation and optimizing the entry angle and the pressure-pad force of the die, the best range of the entry angle and the suitable pressure-pad force without wrinkling were obtained and splitting phenomena were controlled effectively. The researched results of numerical simulation provided some parameters for die design.


There are no studies available to describe the epidemiology and causes of low vision in Nigeria and Africa.Aretrospective record review was conducted of low vision patients seen at the 2-weeks-per-month low vision clinic carried out at ECWAEye hospital, Kano, by the Low VISION PROGRAMME between
the periods 1999 to 2004. Records of 1200 patients, age range, 4 month - 92 years seen within the period was reviewed. 70.3% were males, 11.3% were between age range 4 months-14 years; 73.2%, 15-65yrs; 12.8%; 65 yrs and above. The major causes of low vision are glaucoma, 19.8%; followed by
aphakia/unoperatable cataract 28.9% and maculopathy8.8%.Majority of the patients (34%)had their best
corrected Visual Acuity in the range of <6/18 – 6/60. 1515 optical aids were prescribed. 40.1% were refractive corrections, 36.4% magnifiers while 23.4% were telescopes. 88.3% of the patients seen were advised to cope with their education/employment. 7.6% were referred for Braille lessons. information on characteristics of the Nigerian low vision population would help in policy formulation and funds
allocation for low vision rehabilitation particularly in developing countries.


Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are progenitors of connective tissues, which have emerged as important tools for tissue engineering owing to their differentiation potential in various cell types. The therapeutic utility of MSCs hinges upon our understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in cellular fate decisions. Thus, the elucidation of the regulation of MSC differentiation has attracted increasing attention in recent years. A variety of external cues contribute to the process of MSC differentiation, including chemical, physical, and biological factors. Among the multiple factors that are known to affect cell fate decisions, the epigenetic regulation of MSC differentiation has become a research hotspot. In this chapter, we summarize recent progress in the determination of the effects of epigenetic modification on the multilineage differentiation of MSCs.


The movement of alpha-linolenic acid (C18:3, n-3) through the mitochondrial outer membrane to oxidation sites was studied in rat liver and compared with the movement of linoleic acid (C18:2, n-6) and oleic acid (C18:1, n-9). All differ in the degree of unsaturation, but have the same chain length and the same position of the first double bond when counted from the carboxyl end. The following results were obtained. (1) The overall beta-oxidation in total mitochondria was in the order C18:3, n-3 greater than C18:2, n-6 greater than C18:1, n-9, independent of the amount of albumin in the medium. (2) The rate of formation of acylcarnitine from acyl-CoA was higher with oleoyl-CoA than with linoleoyl-CoA, and remained very low with alpha-linolenoyl-CoA for all concentrations studied. (3) When the formation of acylcarnitines originated from fatty acids (as potassium salts) in a medium containing CoA and ATP, the conversion of alpha-linolenate was greater than that of linoleate, which in turn was greater than that of oleate. (4) Use of a more purified mitochondrial fraction, practically devoid of peroxisomes, did not modify the results obtained with alpha-linolenate. (5) alpha-Linolenoyl-CoA did not inhibit oxidation of labelled alpha-linolenate, whereas the other acyl-CoAs did. (6) Transfer to carnitine of all three fatty acids (as potassium salts) by carnitine palmitoyltransferase-I (CPT-I) was similarly inhibited by increasing concentrations of malonyl-CoA. (7) On using a fraction containing mitochondrial outer membranes, the formation of acylcarnitines from potassium salts of fatty acids was qualitatively and quantitatively similar to that found with whole mitochondria. (8) Our observations show that alpha-linolenoyl-CoA synthesized other than in the mitochondria cannot be used to any great extent by the mitochondria due to its configuration. However when added as the unactivated form, alpha-linolenate appears to be very quickly oxidized, but should first be activated by acyl-CoA synthetase in the mitochondrion itself. Then it is rapidly channelled to CPT-I. These enzymic sites are probably close together in the mitochondrial outer membrane. The different behaviour of the alpha-linolenic group compared with the other acyl groups in the studied pathway can be explained by a different spatial arrangement due to the number and position of the double bonds.


This paper deals with the development of low carbon NbTiB micro-alloyed high strength low alloy steel for heavy plates with high wall thickness. In the production of heavy plate it is remarkably difficult to achieve a combination of high strength and good low-temperature toughness. Bainitic microstructures have shown the capability to attain such requirements. To achieve a bainitic microstructure even for heavy wall products the formation of bainite can be promoted and supported by the use of small amounts of boron as a micro-alloying element. This industrial research project is based on the addition of small amounts of boron to promote the desired bainitic structure. Mill rolling trials were carried out to determine the optimum process parameters. The results of experimental mill rolling trials on 35 mm plates will be presented in this paper.


It is assumed that the atlas (C1) glides superiorly and laterally along the occipital (C0) condyle during translatory motion of the head in the opposite direction. To provide roentgenographic documentation, a translatory test of atlanto-occipital (C0-C1) motion was performed to the left and to the right on a healthy, asymptomatic volunteer subject. Roentgenographic examination was made at the extreme in each direction. The films indicate the change in atlantal position relative to the occiput and support the assumption. A translation of the head in the coronal plane to test for atlanto-occipital joint mobility is described.


Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a modulation method used in many broadcasting services, including the European digital video broadcasting-terrestrial (DVB-T) standard for digital television. Electrical breakdown in the filter at the output of the DVB-T transmitter interrupts the broadcasting and causes damage to transmission equipment. An Australian manufacturer conducted breakdown tests of power filters and found that the results were not as expected and not well understood. This project provides a good understanding of these experimental results.


This is a study of the influence of social and cultural factors on the adoption of e-learning in higher education in Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, Singapore and Australia. Particular attention in each case was given to factors relating to social capital, attitudes and patterns of behavior in leadership, entrepreneurialism, and teaching and to broader sets of attitudes that shape general outlook. A case study approach was chosen in order to enable a richer and more finely grained analysis of the issues. The case studies are based on semi-structured interviews and observations conducted over several years. This research shows that previously known factors that affect the adoption of e-learning in higher education, namely, policy, guidelines, paradigm shifts and pedagogical change, are also significant in the contexts of each of the case studies in this research. However, this research shows that the adoption and uptake of e-learning technologies is also strongly shaped by cultural and social factors but not in ways that might first have been expected. It is not so much that there are specific cultural and social factors relating to specific e-learning technologies, but rather, that the degree of uptake of these technologies depends on teachers being encouraged, guided and assisted to innovate and adopt new technology. This can only occur when there is sufficient social capital, mediated through appropriate social networks, to build trust, overcome objections and anxieties, and generally motivate staff to engage in challenging, time-consuming initiatives in e-learning that generally do not promise immediate rewards. Certain culture-based issues emerged as important. These included staff mentoring, clustering through 'bamboo networking', trust-building and overcoming fear of 'losing face' (kiasu), facilitating women to take the initiative and lead, developing sensitivity to cultural differences, encouraging entrepreneurialism and rewarding pioneering endeavours, all of which were present in varying degrees across all five case studies. There were subtle variations on a central theme, which was clearly that of the impact of social capital as a driver. It was social capital played out through personal relationships and social networks that most strongly influenced individual teachers to be sufficiently motivated to add to an already busy schedule by taking on the additional burdens of pioneering e-learning technology and it was those social relationships that provided guidance and ongoing encouragement. As a consequence of these findings, this study offers a social capital model of e-learning adoption, which suggests that the adoption and uptake of e-learning technologies is strongly shaped by cultural and social factors.


Facile and effective approaches were developed to fabricate 3D-ordered films of titania hollow spheres with different sphere diameters. The shell thickness of the sphere was adjusted in the range of 20-40 nm by changing the casting cycle of the titania precursor. The photonic stop band was observed for the 3D-ordered film and was tunable by the sphere diameter and the shell thickness. The stop band shifted from 930 to 547 nm. Crystal violet dye adsorbed on the film exhibited more than two times higher absorbance than that on a reference film of a flat titania layer, probably due to the red edge effect of the stop band and/or to the multiple scattering effect. The enhanced absorbance led to more efficient photodegradation of the dye under visible light and under solar light irradiation. A maximum photocatalytic enhancement of 22% is achieved. Finally, the influence of TiO2 morphology on photocatalytic activity was discussed. Compared with flat titania films, the existence of ordered macropores in titania spheres causes the stop band and a longer optical path due to multiple scattering. Both the red edge of the stop band and multiple scattering effects enhance the absorption of the dye, which results in the photocatalytic enhancement.


Household composition, economic resources, and residence are not necessarily stable across childhood. Changes in parental relationship status, parental employment, and residence have been shown to affect children's educational attainment. Less studied is the fact that these events can occur in combination: families could experience more than one of these disruptive events within the same time period (e.g. year); from a life course perspective, families could experience multiple events throughout their lives. Using linear regression models to analyse data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a longitudinal study of U.S. individuals, I confirmed that the children of parents who experienced employment loss or gain, or partner loss or gain demonstrated lowered odds of high school completion, college attendance, and college completion. Residential moves increased the odds of high school completion but decreased chances of college completion. I then found that experiencing two disruptive events within a given two-year period led to an increased negative effect compared to experiencing only one event. These findings robustly applied to different comparison group specifications. Finally, I showed that, generally, increasing the number of disruptive events decreased the probability of attaining the educational outcomes considered.


Human rights are the most universally accepted set of norms that have ever existed. Thus, finding a person or community that would deny their fundamental importance to our society is not easy. According to some views, we live in a global revolution of rights, where fundamental rights are a central part of all political discussions. The dilemma of the universality of human rights holds various aspects, of which this article identifies four. The first and most challenging question is how to justify the fact that human rights universally bind everyone. This must be kept separate from the second, much more practical question of how human rights can be applied universally. Thirdly, the politicization of human rights can be considered an obstacle to universal principles as politics are typically dependent on momentary issues. Fourth, one must consider the inadequacy of human rights in their current form and how human rights fail to solve some of the critical problems they were created to solve. The article's main objective is to go through the challenges of universality at a general level. The purpose of this article is not to offer a certain kind of solution to a specific debate but to map what kind of limitations come into question when considering the universality of human rights.


Consumers are making increasing use of digital camera, phone camera, and camcorder every minute. Normal users have desires to produce high-quality photos although they are less of photography techniques. Consumers hunger for online instructing on how to capture a good photograph in terms of camera pose (location, orientation, field of view, etc.) Making it ubiquitously accessible is essential which requires excessive computation and communication capabilities over existing portable devices. The emerging Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) and Ultra Mobile PCs (UMPCs) have been equipped with enabling features and turn into an alternative. This paper presents a new Location Based Service for photography assistance. It consists of three major components, focus of attention modeling, image quality assessment, and camera pose matching, to deal with the geo-referenced photos retrieved from Internet. Those techniques have been widely studied in the research domains of computer vision and pattern recognition. Having the MID / UMPC platforms at hand, richer experiences on Internet, such as instant travel blogging and photo sharing are more convenient.


This study addressed the opportunities to learn (OTL) modeling in algebra provided to secondary mathematics pre-service teachers (PSTs). To investigate these OTL, we interviewed five instructors of required mathematics and mathematics education courses that had the potential to include opportunities for PSTs to learn algebra at three universities. We also interviewed a group of three to four PSTs at each of the universities. We coded the interview transcripts using an analytic framework developed based on related literature and policy documents. We report the similarities and differences in perspectives among instructors and PSTs related to modeling at each university, along with comparisons of OTL across universities.


Results derived from empirical analyses on the stability of climate coalitions are usually very sensitive to the large uncertainties associated with the benefits and costs of climate policies. This paper provides the methodology of Stability Likelihood that links uncertainty about benefits and costs of climate change to the stability analysis of coalitions in a stochastic, empirical setting. We show that the concept of Stability Likelihood improves upon the robustness and interpretation of stability analysis. Our numerical application is based on a modified version of the climate model STACO. It turns out that the only non-trivial coalition structure with a relatively high Stability Likelihood (around 25 percent) is a coalition between the European Union and Japan, though quantitative results depend especially on the variance in regional benefits from abatement.


Abstract Late watergrass is a serious weed of California rice that has evolved resistance to molinate, thiobencarb, fenoxaprop-ethyl, and bispyribac-sodium. To obtain an insight into the origin and spread of resistant (R) late watergrass in California rice fields, we evaluated similarities in morphological traits and amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) fingerprints among 15 R strains compared with susceptible (S) strains. All strains were derived by inbreeding from accessions collected in rice fields of the Sacramento Valley, CA. In the field, R plants were shorter than S plants; they also had narrower and shorter flag leaves and thinner culms. Spikelets also appeared smaller and more slender in R plants. There was greater morphological similarity among the 15 R strains than among the eight S strains. The mean coefficients of variation for morphological traits were much smaller among R strains, which in a cluster analysis (Ward's method) were grouped morphologically apart at early clustering stages from the more variable S strains. AFLP electropherograms also showed greater similarity between R strains. R strains were grouped separately from the S strains in a cluster analysis based on calculated Nei and Li coefficients used in an unweighted pair group method using arithmetic means. However, small genetic differences also existed because the R strains were grouped into six clusters, suggesting that R strains were not samples from an identical strain. It was concluded that R strains originated from a preexisting and preadapted mutant late watergrass population in the Sacramento Valley. This study establishes that resistance moved by spikelet dispersal, not independent mutation events, most likely defined the geographical distribution of R late watergrass in California. Prevention and control of this dispersal combined with elimination of seed-producing survivors after herbicide treatment should be relevant components of the integrated management of herbicide-resistant late watergrass in California rice. Nomenclature: Bispyribac-sodium, sodium 2,6-bis[(4,6-dimethoxypyrimidin-2-yl)oxy]benzoate; fenoxaprop-ethyl; molinate; thiobencarb; early watergrass, Echinochloa oryzicola Vasing; late watergrass, Echinochloa phyllopogon (Stapf) Koss ECHPH; rice, Oryza sativa L.


"The purpose of this greenhouse study was to assess the vetiver (Vetiveria zizanoides) in terms of the capacity to tolerate and accumulate cyanide (KCN) from contaminated soils of varying physicochemical properties. The toxicity of potassium cyanide (KCN) to grass vetiver (Vetiveria zizonioides) was tested. At the end of test, almost all cyanides had vanished from soils. Also, the in vivo capacity of Vetiveria zizonioides to remove cyanide was evaluated. For cyanide adsorption onto Vetiveria zizonioides, various parameters, affecting the removal rate, such as pH (6-8), and contact time (3-9months) were evaluated. The effect of pH on cyanide complex ion uptake rate and capacity of Vetiveria zizonioides was studied at 4-8 mg kg-1 initial cyanide concentration. Cyanide adsorption was increased with increasing soil pH, water content and contact time. At an optimum pH of 8, over 85% removal of 8 mg kg-1 cyanide was obtained for Vetiveria zizonioides after 9 months of contact time. Data from the experiment were analyzed with statistical software SPSS. The removal of cyanide by vetiver might be useful in cleanup of soil from gold and silver mining."


Edited by Lee Gutkind. Published by Underland Press, 2012, paperback, 288 pages. ISBN 9781937163044, £10.99.

This book is a collection of essays about dying. The essays were all first published in 2011 by a different publisher, the Southern Methodist University Press, under a different title, Twelve Breaths a Minute: End of Life Essays. They are reissued under the new title as part of 'a series of narrative books on science and medicine supported by the Jewish Healthcare Foundation'.

The phrase 'How We Die' in the new title is no doubt intended to recall Sherwin B Nuland's book, How We Die: Reflections on Life's Last Chapters (1994) which was a New York Times bestseller, and won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. The message of that book is that most of us will die in hospital, from a heart attack, stroke or cancer, or some combination of the above. We will probably die in our old age, by which time our bodies will no longer be able to cope with some of the treatments intended to keep us alive. For Nuland, dying is 'a messy business', 'a series of destructive events that involve by their very nature the disintegration of the dying person's humanity. I have not seen much dignity in the process by which we die.' 'Dying badly,' he goes on to say, is not 'a judgment upon the many that are fated to die badly, simply the nature of the thing that kills them'. How We Die, explained to the lay reader in biological terms, the dehumanising work of the most common terminal illnesses; but it also used real-life examples to show how hi-tech medicine often made the moment of death less dignified.

Nuland was, of course, writing in the shadow of another classic book, whose shade also hovers over the present volume: Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's On Death and Dying (1969). A psychiatrist by training, …


Advances in proteogenomic technologies have revealed hundreds to thousands of translated small open reading frames (sORFs) that encode microproteins in genomes across evolutionary space. While many microproteins have now been shown to play critical roles in biology and human disease, a majority of recently identified microproteins have little or no experimental evidence regarding their functionality. Computational tools have some limitations for analysis of short, poorly conserved microprotein sequences, so additional approaches are needed to determine the role of each member of this recently discovered polypeptide class. A currently underexplored avenue in the study of microproteins is structure prediction and determination, which delivers a depth of functional information. In this review, we provide a brief overview of microprotein discovery methods, then examine examples of microprotein structures (and, conversely, intrinsic disorder) that have been experimentally determined using crystallography, cryo-electron microscopy, and NMR, which provide insight into their molecular functions and mechanisms. Additionally, we discuss examples of predicted microprotein structures that have provided insight or context regarding their function. Analysis of microprotein structure at the angstrom level, and confirmation of predicted structures, therefore, has potential to identify translated microproteins that are of biological importance and to provide molecular mechanism for their in vivo roles.


ABSTRACT
 Transitions towards low-carbon societies trigger renegotiations of justice concerns in regions that have to abandon unsustainable, fossil-based production patterns. In these transition regions, tensions may appear between inner- and supra-regional justice claims on the one hand, and recognition-based and distributional justice concerns on the other. Intermediary actors such as municipal politicians have to navigate these spatial and moral tensions. Based on qualitative data generated in the German lignite-mining region of Lusatia, 'moral rifts' are reconstructed that shape local perceptions of justice. These rifts help elucidate how reconciliation in this region proves to be difficult despite considerable redistributive efforts. Unless patterns of misrecognition are adequately addressed, prospects for a successful transformation of the region remain limited.


Global changes in industry and society have led us to reassess the numerous factors that combine to influence the time of onset of puberty and the efficiency of reproduction in young sheep. Age and weight have long been considered the dominant factors that influence the onset of puberty and, for many years, it has been accepted that these relationships are mediated by the hormone, leptin, produced by body fat. However, recent studies showing that muscle mass also plays a role have challenged this dogma and also presented new options for our understanding of metabolic inputs into the brain control of reproduction. Moreover, the possibility that an improvement in meat production will simultaneously advance puberty is exciting from an industry perspective. An industry goal of strong reproductive performance in the first year of life is becoming possible and, with it, a major step upwards in the lifetime reproductive performance of ewes. The concept of early puberty is not well accepted by producers for a variety of reasons, but the new data show clear industry benefits, so the next challenge is to change that perception and encourage producers to manage young ewes so they produce their first lamb at 1 year of age.


????Carpet anemones of the genus Stichodactyla are characterized by having no calcium carbonate skeleton, being flattened with rather short tentacles, being exclusively tropical, and being hosts for clown fish species. Most of the species belonging to this genus, however, are often very similar morphologically; thus, identification by external features is rather difficult. In this study, we have described the morphology and phylogenetic affinities of a carpet anemone species collected from Chabahar Bay. Although the Iranian species showed different coloration patterns within the same geographical area, they strongly resemble Stichodactyla haddoni Saville-Kent, 1893 in having short tentacles densely covering the undulated oral disc and white, pointed, recognizable exocoelic tentacles. Comparison of 18S rDNA with other actiniarians revealed that the 2 Iranian species are closely related to Stichodactyla haddoni, Stichodactyla gigantea, and Heteractis magnifica. This is the first record of Stichodactyla haddoni from the southeastern coast of Iran and the northern part of the Sea of Oman.


Collaborative design is a typical application of the CSCW (computer supported collaborative work), and real-time collaborative design is one of difficulties for collaborative design. This paper does some research on the technology of realtime graphics sharing in AutoCAD, and realizes the real-time graphics sharing based on AutoCAD, which establishes the foundation to develop further the realtime collaborative design.


Abstract:Despite much intensive archaeological fieldwork, several regions of Greece still have not yielded any evidence for palatial structures. It may be, therefore, that they never gave rise to full palatial states. Rather, in regions such as Achaia, local elites may have functioned within less-articulated organizational orders (perhaps chiefdoms), which did not require the centralization of economic activities. These polities existed alongside the more complex palatial states, but it is not necessary to posit that they were subjected to or dependent on the palaces economically or politically, although their opportunities may have been constricted by the presence of the larger power. After the collapse of the palatial system around 1200 b.c., some of these smaller polities seem to have flourished in the LH IIIC period.


PURPOSE: To report the clinical features of strabismus associated with Graves' orbitopathy, and the results of surgery with adjustable suture under drop anesthesia. METHODS: The charts of 13 patients who had surgical treatment for strabismus related to Graves' orbitopathy at Hospital das Clinicas of University of Sao Paulo were retrospectively reviewed. Ocular motility, sensorial examination and the follow-up after strabismus correction were studied. RESULTS: Preoperatively, the most common type of deviation was esotropia with hypotropia. Adjustable recession was done in nine patients and a second surgery occurred in 3 patients. After follow-up of at least six months, 8 of 13 patients were orthotropic or had a small phoria with some degree of binocular vision. CONCLUSION: In this study, 62% (8/13) of patients showed hypotropia with esotropia, probably because fibrotic and restrictive muscles (medial and inferior rectus). In nine of 13 patients adjustable recession with a good postoperative alignment of the eyes was performed. Adjustment of strabismus surgery under drop anesthesia in patients with Graves' orbitopathy was successful in restoring binocular vision with minimum complications.


This paper outlines evolutions in the underlying logic of corporatist policymaking in Western Europe. Starting from the discrepancy between the observable decline in the power of organised labour on the one hand, and the persistence of corporatist concertation as a mode of policymaking on the other, the paper outlines the remaining incentives for governments to involve trade unions and employers in policymaking. The paper shifts the focus from the traditional structural explanations of corporatist policymaking to political explanations emphasising political support, compliance and knowledge. The paper then outlines a few elements regarding the relationship between political and partisan configurations on corporatism.


This study analyzed the relationship between home stay attributes towards international tourist satisfaction and dissemination information in Kampung Banghuris Homestay, Selangor. Tourist perception of the home stay attribute, satisfaction with their experience caused the dissemination information and these items are vital for successful destination management. Moreover destination attributes affect the perceived quality of tourist offerings, which positively relates to satisfaction as well as visitors loyalty and dissemination information. Nevertheless, there are other factor which are also significant such as type of building, feature of equipment, host family's empathy and responsiveness and moreover feel of safety and security at the destination. Data was gathered by self-administered questionnaire at Kampong Banghuris Homestay. The analysis strongly supported the assumption of a positive relationship between home stay attributes and international tourist satisfaction. Furthermore, tourist satisfaction significantly contributed to the prediction of intention to return as well as homestay attributes was found significantly influence the tourist's intention to return and tourist satisfaction demonstrates a mediating effect towards the relationship between homestay attributes and dissemination of information. The findings of this study provide a valuable tools and recommendation to increase international tourists' satisfaction with Kampung Banghuris Homestay. A thorough understanding of tourists' expectation and satisfaction will assist homestay managers to provide better services to their customers, to identify their faulty and weaknesses and to understand the characteristics and behaviors of tourists visiting homestay. Moreover identifying the attributes which affects satisfaction level of the international tourists who visit homestay will help tourism planners develop appropriate strategies to attract more customers and to serve them successfully.


If many mutations confer no immediate selective advantage, they can pave the way for the discovery of fitter phenotypes and their subsequent positive selection. Understanding the reach of neutral evolution is therefore a key problem linking diversity, robustness and evolvability at the molecular scale. While this process is usually described as a random walk in sequence space with clock-like regularity, new effects can arise in large microbial or viral populations where new mutants arise before old ones can fix. Here I show that the clonal interference of neutral variants shuts off the access to neutral ridges and thus induces localization within the robust cores of neutral networks. As a result, larger populations can be less effective at exploring sequence space than smaller ones—a counterintuitive limitation to evolvability which invalidates analogies between evolution and percolation. I illustrate these effects by revisiting Maynard Smith's word-game model of protein evolution. Interestingly, the phenomenon of neutral interference connects evolutionary dynamics to a Markov process known in network science as the maximal-entropy random walk; its special properties imply that, when many neutral variants interfere in a population, evolution chooses mutational paths—not individual mutations—uniformly at random.


This paper uses different multivariate GARCH models to model conditional correlations and analyze the volatility spillovers between cryptocurrency time series. The dynamic conditional correlation GARCH model is found to fit the data the best. Our empirical results are fourfold. First, on average, a $1 long position in BitShares (BTS) can be hedged for 15% with a short position in MonaCoin (MONA), while a $1 long position in MONA can be hedged for 14% with a short position in Ripple (XRP). Second, the average weight for the BTS/MONA portfolio is 0.48, indicating that for a $1 portfolio, 48% should be invested in BTS and 52% invested in MONA. Third, the average weight for the BTS/XRP portfolio indicates that 27% should be invested in BTS and 73 % invested in XRP. Finally, the average weight for the MONA/XRP portfolio indicates that 33% should be invested in MONA and 67% invested in XRP.


A huge toll of illness and death, a dire need for new treatments, and rapid scientific progress are inspiring researchers to battle malaria. But most drug companies balk at investing in what they see as a Third World disease. Some researchers think it9s time for the government to step in, perhaps with tax breaks and longer patents for certain drugs on the condition that the revenue be used for new antimalarials.


Species differ strongly in their life histories, including the probability of survival. Annual adult survival was investigated extensively in the past, whereas juvenile survival, and especially survival to independence, received much less attention. Yet, they are critical for our understanding of population demography and life-history evolution. We investigated post-fledging survival to independence (i.e. survival upon leaving the nest until nutritional independence) in 74 species of passerine birds worldwide based on 100 population level estimates extracted from published literature. Our comparative analyses revealed that survival to independence increased with the length of nestling period and relative fledging mass (ratio of fledging mass to adult body mass). At the same time, species with higher nest predation rates had shorter nestling periods and lower relative fledging mass. Thus, we identify an important trade-off in life history strategies: staying longer in the nest may improve post-fledging survival due to enhanced flight ability and sensory functions, but at the cost of a longer exposure to nest predators and increased mortality due to nest predation. Additionally, post-fledging survival to independence did not differ between species from the northern temperate zone vs species from the tropics and southern hemisphere. However, analyses of post-fledging survival curves suggest that 1) daily survival rates are not constant and improve quickly upon leaving the nest, and 2) species in the tropics and southern hemisphere have higher daily post-fledging survival rates than northern temperate species. Nevertheless, due to the accumulation of mortality risk during their much longer periods of post-fledging care, overall survival until independence is comparable across latitudes. Obtaining high-quality demographic data across latitudes to evaluate the generality of these findings and mechanisms underlying them should be a research priority.


Research has been the tool for recycling existing scientific ideas to promote improved concepts for the development of new materials. All technological innovations have links with the ancient philosophies that are being adapted progressively. Given this, composite material development remains one of the most excellent methods to influence the environment to meet human needs. Various studies have shown that polymer-based composites have emerged as the leading group of composites that are fast displacing all other materials in several applications due to their inherent properties. Polymer-based composites can be entirely synthetic, completely natural, or a mixture of synthetic and natural-based. However, a recent desire for eco-friendly materials has shifted attention from complete synthetic-based materials to natural fibers, whether in a partial or total replacement. Thus, this review provides an overview of research trends from synthetic to natural based polymer composites. The article also highlights the different intrinsic classifications of composites, their development, areas of applications, and their projection into the future in line with considerations for environment and applications.


For problems in celestial mechanics that involve close encounters, it is necessary to determine the region where the gravitational influence of a body prevails over the influence of other bodies. From this need comes the concept of the sphere of influence. The models most used for the calculation of the radii of these spheres are the Hill sphere and the Laplace sphere. These are determined in terms of constant parameters, resulting in a fixed-size sphere, independent of the conditions of the encounter. In this paper, we present a numerical model for the sphere of influence, whose radius has been defined in terms of the initial relative velocity of the encounter, and of the mass ratio of the system considered. The same idea was applied to the delimitation of the regions where the phenomenon of temporary gravitational capture occurs, for some given initial conditions. With this goal, a numerical study was made through integrations of the restricted three-body problem and by monitoring the energy variation of the two-body problem. This study resulted in a complete mapping of the influence and capture regions, considering systems with a mass ratio from 10 −1 to 10 −12 , with the empirical functions for the calculation of these limits, called the capture radius and the influence radius.


Drying kinetics of garlic cloves was investigated by drying 5 mm thick slices in air, vacuum, and nitrogen atmosphere. The drying coefficient and lag factor were estimated from the slope and intercept of the moisture ratio time plot based on a model by Dincer-Hussain. Both drying coefficient and lag factor increased with increasing drying temperature. The diffusivity estimated from the Fick's law of diffusion and Dincer-Hussain's model differed, because Fick's law assumes negligible external mass transfer, whereas Dincer-Hussain's model considers both internal and external mass transfer resistance. Allicin, which is rapidly produced by the action of alliinase on alliin when fresh tissue is crushed, is the main biologically active phytochemical of garlic. Air drying at 50°C, vacuum drying at 50 and 60°C, nitrogen atmosphere drying at 40°C gave lowest losses of allicin potential. In general, the loss of allicin potential increased with increasing drying temperature, and drying below 50°C should be the best drying condition for the retention of allicin potential. This could be due to higher retention of alliinase activity during lower temperature drying. The loss of allicin potential decreased with the increase of slice thickness. This may be explained by lower structural damage and by lower shrinkage in the case of thicker slices.


Urban green space (e.g., parks, farmland, gardens, etc.) design in different urban functional regions (e.g., residential land, commercial land, etc.) depends on different planning purposes. The changes in urban green spaces are highly related to urban land-use changes (e.g., from residential land to commercial land). However, the investigation of urban green space patterns in response to urban land-use changes has been ignored. This research takes Hangzhou city, a typical example in terms of urbanization, population growth, economic development, and land-use changes, as the study site, aiming to explore the landscape patterns of urban green space changes with different urban land-use changes. The results showed that urban green spaces increased from 2017 to 2021, and the growth was mainly concentrated in the urban core area, indicating that the city has made remarkable achievements in the planning of green spaces. Specifically, the increase in urban green spaces in the first ring belt was mainly related to the old town transformation program in the residential land. The change from the residence parcels to the business parcels determined the increase in green spaces in the second and third ring belts, probably because of the attractiveness of customers. In addition, a large number of open-space parcels have changed to business parcels around the urban periphery, which might be due to the transformation from farmland to impervious surfaces. Combined with the urban land-use and green-space policies, the findings highlighted that a reasonable urban land-use layout can promote the optimization and layout of urban green spaces. The private sector (e.g., shopping malls) can also contribute to the increase in green spaces. The understanding of urban green landscapes with different urban land-use changes can provide references for analyzing and optimizing green space in other cities experiencing rapid urban land-use changes.


Abstract Focussing of the serine protease urokinase (uPA) to the tumor cell surface via interaction with its receptor (uPAR) is an important step in tumor invasion and metastasis. The human ovarian cancer cell line OVMZ 6#8 was stably transfected with expression plasmids either encoding cellassociated uPAR (GPIuPAR) or a soluble form of uPAR (suPAR) lacking its glycan lipid anchor. In vitro, high level synthesis of functionally active recombinant suPAR inhibited cell proliferation and led to reduced cellassociated fibrin matrix degradation, whereas fibrinolytic activity was increased in OVMZ-6#8 cells overexpressing GPIuPAR. Both OVMZ-6#8-derived clones were inoculated into the peritoneum of nude mice and tested for tumor growth and spread. High level synthesis of recombinant suPAR (without altering the physiological expression levels of GPIuPAR and uPA in these cells) resulted in a significant reduction of tumor burden (up to 86%) in the xenogeneic mouse model. In contrast, overexpression of GPIuPAR in tumor cells did not affect tumor growth. Our results demonstrate that high levels of suPAR in the ovarian cancer cell vicinity can act as a potent scavenger for uPA, thereby significantly reducing tumor cell growth and cancer progression in vivo.


It has become popular to identify a "bipartisan consensus" on criminal justice reform, but how deep is that consensus, actually? This Article argues that the purported consensus is largely illusory. Despite shared reformist vocabulary, the consensus rests on distinct critiques that identify different flaws and justify distinct policy solutions. The underlying disagreements transcend traditional left/right political divides and speak to deeper disputes about the state and the role of criminal law in society.
The Article offers a typology of the two prevailing, but fundamentally distinct, critiques of the system:
(1) the quantitative approach (what I call the "over" frame); and
(2) the qualitative approach (what I call the "mass" frame).
The "over" frame grows from a belief that criminal law has an important and legitimate function, but that the law's operations have exceeded that function. This critique assumes that there are optimal rates of incarceration and criminalization, but the current criminal system is sub-optimal in that it has criminalized too much and incarcerated too many. In contrast, the "mass" frame focuses on the criminal system as a socio-cultural phenomenon. This reformist frame indicates that the issue is not a mere miscalculation; rather, reforms should address how the system marginalizes populations and exacerbates both power imbalances and distributional inequities.
To show how these frames differ, this Article applies the "over" and the "mass" critique, in turn, to the maligned phenomena of mass incarceration and overcriminalization. The existing literature on mass incarceration and overcriminalization displays an elision between these two frames. Some scholars and reformers have adopted one frame exclusively, while others use the two interchangeably. No matter how much scholars and critics bemoan the troubles of mass incarceration and overcriminalization, it is hard to believe that they can achieve meaningful reform if they are talking about fundamentally different problems.
While many reformers may adopt an "over" frame in an effort to attract a broader range of support or appeal to politicians, "over" policy proposals do not reach deeper "mass" concerns. Ultimately, then, this Article argues that a pragmatic turn to the "over" frame may have significant costs in legitimating deeper structural flaws and failing to address distributional issues of race, class, and power at the heart of the "mass" critique.


OBJECTIVES
Rehabilitation in the home (RITH) services increasingly provide hospital substitution services. This study examines clinical outcomes in a large metropolitan RITH service in Western Australia.

METHODS
The 2010 database of Fremantle Hospital RITH service was interrogated to identify the clinical profile of cases, length of stay (LOS) and clinical outcomes. Negative outcomes included death or unexpected hospital readmission. Multiple logistic regression modelling was used to explore associations with negative outcomes. This study was reviewed by the Institutional Review Board which deemed it not to require ethics approval.

RESULTS
There were 1348 cases managed by RITH: 70.6% were aged≥65 years; elective joint replacement (29.7%), medical conditions (20%), stroke (13%), hip fractures (10%) were major contributors. The majority (93.3%) were discharged after a median of 9 days. Negative outcomes occurred in 90 cases (6.7%), including five deaths (0.4%) and 85 readmissions (6.3%). Independent associations with negative outcomes included older age (odds ratio (OR) (95% CI); 1.02, P=0.006), orthopaedic conditions (OR 1.91, P=0.004) and longer inpatient LOS (OR 1.96, P=0.003). Age above 80 years was independently associated with risk of negative outcome (OR 2.99, P=0.004).

CONCLUSIONS
RITH had a low rate of negative outcomes. The database proved useful for monitoring quality of service provision. WHAT IS KNOWN ABOUT THE TOPIC?: Rehabilitation in the home environment has proven cost effective for multiple conditions, particularly stroke and elective joint surgery, among others, facilitating better quality of life, with reduced rates of delirium and mortality. Overall there are few negative outcomes and death is rare. WHAT DOES THIS PAPER ADD?: Although RITH services are widely utilised as bed substitution services, there is scant literature on clinical outcomes while within the service. This study focuses on frequency of good and poor clinical outcomes in a well-established RITH service in Western Australia, suggesting pattern recognition of an at-risk cohort by identifying potentially useful predictors of poor outcome. WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTITIONERS?: RITH services are a safe alternative for many, including older people. Health administration databases are useful tools to monitor clinical outcomes. Clinical indicators such as older age, long hospital stay and orthopaedic diagnoses may be useful predictors of poor outcomes in such services.


Arteries are modelled, within the framework of non-linear elasticity, as incompressible two-layer cylindrical structures that are residually stressed through differential growth. These structures are loaded by an axial force, internal pressure and have non-linear, anisotropic, hyperelastic response to stresses. Parameters for this model are directly related to experimental observations. The possible role of axial residual stress in regulating stress in arteries and preventing buckling instabilities is investigated. It is shown that axial residual stress lowers the critical internal pressure leading to buckling and that a reduction of axial loading may lead to a buckling instability which may eventually lead to arterial tortusity.


Photograph occurs in album immediately following those dated August 1900. Possibly taken during the "March through the Palace, August 1900".


The role of yeast supplementation in small ruminants on rumen fermentation, animal performance, and nematode control is still unclear. The effect of Celmanax® (yeast culture product) in two diets using lambs on body weight gain, rectal temperatures and nematode loads were monitored. 24 sheep (17 ± 2.8 kg BW), housed in individual pens, were divided into four treatments and fed on four basal diets; lucerne meal (LC), lucerne meal plus Celmanax® (LCC), sunflower meal (SF), and 4 sunflower meal plus Celmanax (SFC), for 96 days including 14 days adaptation. Dry matter intake, average body weight gain and feed conversion efficiency were calculated. Rectal temperatures and nematode egg count/gram (EPG) were measured once a week. Feed intake was higher (P < 0.05) in LCC and SFC than in LC and SF, respectively. Overall, weight gain was higher in SFC (P < 0.05) than SF. Feed conversion efficiency was higher (P < 0.05) in LCC than LC. Nematode EPG were lower (P < 0.05) in Celmanax® supplemented diets (LCC and SFC) than in their controls. Rectal temperatures dropped (P < 0.05) in Celmanax® diets. These findings suggest that, Celmanax® has the potential of improving animal performance and may be used in conjunction with other anthelmintics to control nematodes.

 Key words: Celmanax®, yeast, nematode, dry matter intake.


Recent research has proven a correlation between money laundering activities and tax havens. One of the results of which is that multiple financial entities close down their branches or correspondent relations operating in tax haven countries due to the risks of money laundering , especially sanctions and reputational damage. This article examines and discusses how the fear of getting involved in money laundering contradicts the incentive of establishing or expanding tax havens and/or pushing for a low tax agenda in and outside of the EU. The article focuses on the incentives of placing a company (financial and non-financial), a branch or the like in a low tax county in relation to the EU regulatory framework regarding the prevention of money laundering, which has started the de-risking of companies in low tax countries. The overall purpose of the article is to analyze whether the anti-money laundering directive actually pushes forward an agenda for equal taxation and decreases the incentive of exploiting tax haven solutions that support an unequal international taxation.


Space-time convolutional codes, that provide maximum diversity and coding gain, are produced for cases with PSK modulation and various numbers of states and antennas. The codes are found using a new approach introduced previously in a companion paper. The new approach provides an efficient method that allows a search for optimum codes for many practical problems. The new approach also provides a simple method for augmenting the criteria of maximum diversity and coding gain with a new measure which is shown to be extremely useful for evaluating code performance without extensive simulations. To validate the approach, an extensive set of simulation results are presented comparing the codes designed here to many other previously proposed space-time convolutional codes. The comparisons, given in terms of frame error rate (FER), indicate that our new method provides codes which yield excellent performance. The approach is especially useful for finding a handful of good codes. Selection among these codes can be made with a limited number of simulations for FER.


There is always a lively interest in the supervisory process and its explication. Courses in supervision abound and the critical role of supervision in becoming a psychotherapist is widely acknowledged. It is for this reason that this book aims to present the essentials of supervision, establish validated principles of teaching and learning, define a series of optimal supervisory precepts, consider some of the basic issues in this sometimes difficult arena, explore the supervisee's concerns as the student, and address the future of supervisory work.Supervision should be principled and properly framed, sufficiently consistent and well defined to assure the supervisee the best possible supervisory experience and the supervisor a situation with as little possibility of crisis and untoward reactions, and as much reward as possible. This book is dedicated to both teachers and students: to their growth, maturation and ultimately to better psychotherapy for their patients.


We provide structural results and a solution method for designing horizontally differentiated product lines – optimizing product positions and prices – under fairly general consumer choice behavior. Our choice model is a generalization of the basic Hotelling-Lancaster locational choice model: Consumer tastes (ideal products) follow a general distribution; substitution disutility (transportation cost) can be an asymmetric convex function of product-spatial distance; and the market may not be fully covered. We formalize the notion that a shift of consumer tastes toward one end of the product space cannot result in a shift of the optimal product line in the opposite direction. For a unimodal taste distribution, we show that with respect to the product that covers the mode (or one of two products adjacent to it) prices and market shares drop toward the tails. Hence, higher popularity is always associated with higher price – although pricing, positioning, relative market share and popularity of products are all endogenous in our model. Our solution method is exact for discrete consumer taste distributions. Whereas, for continuous distributions, it requires lower and upper bounds, which can be computed efficiently using shortest path formulations and they asymptotically converge to the optimal profit.


Abstract In the palladium (II) -catalyzed enyne coupling reactions, the nitrogen-containing ligand plays the same role as the halide ion to inhibit the β-hydride elimination. Employing the pymox or bisoxazoline as ligands, the catalytic asymmetric cyclization of (Z) -4'-acetoxy-2'-butenyl 2-alkynoates initiated by acetoxypalladation was established with high efficiency (up to 92% ee) to afford the optically active γ-butyrolactones.


This thesis studies the sources of the returns from the momentum strategy and attempts to find some hints for the heated debate on the market efficiency hypothesis over the past twenty years. By decomposing the momentum returns from a mathematical model, we investigate directly the contributors and their relative importance in generating these momentum returns. Our empirical results support that autocorrelation of own stock returns is one of the driving forces for the momentum expected returns. The magnitude of the autocorrelation decreases as the ranking period becomes more remote. The second important source comes from the cross-sectional variation of the expected returns in the winner and loser portfolios at a given time. The third important source is the difference of the expected returns between the winner and loser portfolios. To our surprise, the cross-autocovariance does not contribute much to the momentum expected returns. Thus, the lead-lag effect can cause momentum returns, but its impact is not as significant as we had anticipated. More importantly, by changing the weights of the winner and loser portfolios, we find that the own-autocovariance of the winner portfolio is almost negligible, compared to that of the loser portfolio. The returns of the winners are much more random than those of the losers. This asymmetric own-autocovariance found in the return decomposition provides another underlying explanation to the recent finding that the contribution of the winner and loser portfolios to the momentum returns is asymmetric, and it is the losers, rather than the winners, that drive the momentum returns. Therefore, the market may not be as efficient as we believed before.


Despite their theoretical value in tackling principal-agent problems at low cost to firms there is almost no empirical literature on the prevalence and correlates of performance bonds posted by corporate executives. Using data for China we examine their incidence and test propositions from principal-agent theory regarding their correlates. Around one tenth of corporations deploy performance bonds. They are sizeable relative to CEO cash compensation. Ceteris paribus, CEO's posting performance bonds are more likely than other CEO's to have their compensation linked to firm performance in other ways and the elasticity of their pay with respect to firm performance is greater. They are also more likely to hold company stock. Thus bonds appear to be complements to rather than substitutes for other forms of corporate incentive. The negative association between bonds and sales volatility is consistent with principal-agent theory. Positive associations between performance bonds and firm age, the CEOs ranking in the Communist Party, and city-level clustering in the use of bonds are all consistent with "legacy" effects dating back to the use of performance bonds in the early reform period. The only corporate governance measure that is strongly and robustly associated with an increased use of bonds is employee representation on the board of directors.


Since the introduction of a reserve price scheme in 1970, the interest in wool marketing previously shown by agricultural economists has not been maintained outside the public service and the wool industry itself. Nor is the subject as divisive amongst wool growers with, in general, 'orderly marketing' now acceptable to all factions of wool growers. The history of wool marketing discussion in Australia is reviewed and some reasons for this changing climate of opinion are discussed. An attempt is made to assess the actual performance of the buffer stock scheme in the light of the academic literature of the 1960s.


OBJECTIVE. A case series analysis and meta-analysis were performed to assess the efficacy of stenting for inferior vena cava (IVC) stenosis after liver transplant; a secondary analysis assessed demographic factors as potential predictors of all-cause mortality. MATERIALS AND METHODS. Liver transplant recipients treated for symptomatic IVC stenosis at a major medical center from 1996 to 2017 were assessed. The main medical databases were searched for studies evaluating stenting in liver transplant recipients with IVC stenosis. Cox proportional hazards regression analysis was used to determine predictors of survival (age, sex, reason for transplant, stent size and number, publication year). Univariate and multivariable models were constructed. Because patients in the case series and meta-analysis had similar demographics and outcomes, the results were pooled. RESULTS. The case series included 40 patients (31 treated with stents; nine, without stents). Meta-analysis of 5277 records identified 17 eligible studies involving 73 patients. Stenting was effective in resolving the gradient in 100% of patients and in relieving symptoms in 85% of patients. Primary stent patency at latest follow-up (median, 556 days) was seen in 113 of 118 stents (96%; some patients had multiple stents). Reason for transplant was the only significant predictor of all-cause mortality; patients with hepatocellular carcinoma had a higher hazard of death than those undergoing transplant for other reasons (hazard ratio = 3.23; 95% CI, 1.40-7.42; p = 0.006). CONCLUSION. Stenting for IVC stenosis after liver transplant is clinically effective and durable, with 96% of stents showing long-term patency and 85% of patients experiencing symptom relief.


BackgroundThe functional pathways of efferent sympathetic and vagal innervation to the right ventricle (RV) might be important in a variety of disease states that involve the RV wall. The purpose of this study was to investigate those pathways. Methods and ResultsWe determined the effects of phenol and endocardial radiofrequency ablation applied to the RV anterolateral wall and outflow tract on effective refractory period (ERP) shortening during bilateral ansae subclaviae stimulation and ERP lengthening during bilateral vagal stimulation. We found that efferent sympathetic axons to the RV are located in the superficial subepicardium and that lateral sites receive sympathetic innervation predominantly from the lateral margin of the RV near the AV groove. Medial sites close to the left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD) receive sympathetic innervation from both the right lateral atrioventricular (AV) groove and regions near the LAD. At the RV outflow tract, some sympathetic fibers are located intramurally. Efferent vagal fibers are located at the RV surface within 10 mm of the right lateral AV groove; they penetrate intramurally and reach to the medial sites of the RV anterior wall. Other vagal fibers originate near the LAD and are intramural. Vagal fibers to the RV outflow tract are located intramurally either from the lateral side (close to the right coronary artery) or medial side (close to the LAD). ConclusionsEfferent vagal and sympathetic innervation of the right ventricle resembles that of the left ventricle. A major difference is that efferent sympathetic fibers to the right ventricular outflow tract are located not only in the subepicardium but in the subendocardium as well.


Indonesian government reformation affected changing paradigm, from centralization to decentralization, that evident from real and broad autonomy by local government to manage and improve their territory, include education management. The realization is emergence Dewan Pendidikan (education board) at district level and Komite Sekolah (school committee) at education unit level. This enhances community direct involvement to education domain. School committee have role as advisory agency, supporting agency, controlling agency, also as mediatory agency. Therefore, school committee must cooperate with community and government to run quality education.


The philosophy of psychology at the turn of the century was an amalgam of perspectives and commitments--experimental science, Darwinian theory, positivism--forged partly out of achievements in experimental science and partly in response to transcendentalist (Hegelian) challenges. The amalgam itself appeared as an early version of the positivism that became developed and dominant early in the 20th century. For many psychologists at the turn of the century, experimental science, as practiced chiefly in physics and chemistry, was tantamount to a philosophy of science and one stripped of what were taken to be distracting and useless metaphysical quibbles. The assets and liabilities of this allegiance were recognized even as it was forming.