Based on HHT method, the influences of site conditions and epicenter distance on non-stationarity of multidimensional ground motion were studied. Additionally, preliminary statistics were carried out on frequency characteristics of multidimensional ground motion under different site conditions. The analysis results showed that HHT method was more accurate in a quantitative description of frequency-domain non-stationarity of ground motion than zero-crossing rate method, and also can reflected the non-stationarity of multidimensional ground motion better.


The aim of this study is to propose an alternative methodology of reading classical Arabic narratives, which forgrounds the effect of reading such narratives on the readers, instead of the traditional concern with questions like : what is the context of classical Arabic narratives within an overall historical context of such texts. The focus in this new proposal is not on what these texts say, or how they say it. Rather the focus is on questions like: What happens to the Reader when he/she reads? In other words, what is the impact of the narrative text on the reader? In our attempt to answer these new questions, we will try to provide an answer to an everlasting question which is : is the narrative text that is critiqued or read good or bad? This question has always been addressed through the identification of reading patterns. This study, however, is not merely an approach to the reading of classical narrative texts. It is rather a study of some patterns of reception of such texts. The aim is to discover the significant role played by reading and reception in the creation of text and in determining its value and meaning.


Africa does not give up its secrets easily. Buried there lie answers about the origins of humankind. After a century of investigation, scientists have transformed our understanding about the beginnings of human life. But vital clues still remain hidden. In Born in Africa, Martin Meredith follows the trail of discoveries about human origins made by scientists over the last hundred years, recounting their intense rivalry, personal feuds, and fierce controversies as well as their feats of skill and endurance. The results have been momentous. Scientists have identified more than twenty species of extinct humans. They have firmly established Africa as the birthplace not only of humankind but also of modern humans. They have revealed how early technology, language ability, and artistic endeavour all originated in Africa; and they have shown how small groups of Africans spread out from Africa in an exodus sixty thousand years ago to populate the rest of the world. We have all inherited an African past.


In a recent Journal of Politics article, Daniela Campello and Cesar Zucco argue that Latin American voters credit and blame presidents for economic outcomes unambiguously exogenous to their policy choices, a claim that undermines broadly held understandings of how voters hold politicians accountable. While we concur on the importance of the global economy to politics in the region, we challenge their study on two grounds. First, we question their designation of economies as fitting a low-savings commodity-exporting profile as the key factor shaping the influence of world markets on presidential success. Second, we contend that the impact of the world economy on domestic politics depends instead on the degree of control exercised by national policy makers. In particular, the region's unprecedented experiment with economic policy regimes informs voters' assignment of responsibility to policy makers. A series of analyses provides support for our argument.


Rosa chinensis Jacq, a traditional Chinese ornamental flower, is an important landscaping plant in northern China. Since July 2013, leaf blotch symptoms were observed in the Tianjin flower nursery (117°09' E 39°17' N). The garden exhibited 40% disease incidence with observable symptoms on basal leaves that were yellowed from the edge to the inside area on infected leaves, in the shape of a V. Yellow lesions covered one third to one half of the leaf. Yellow halos were observed at the junction of the healthy and diseased tissues. Small tissue pieces from the edges of lesions were disinfected in 70% ethyl alcohol for 30 s and 1% hypochlorite for 1 min, rinsed thrice in sterile water, plated on potato dextrose agar (PDA), and incubated at 25°C in lighted incubator for 4 days. Fungal colonies that developed on PDA were white and cottony with concentric rings. Black and globular acervuli appeared after 10 days at 25°C. Conidia (n = 20), which were fusiform, were 9.20 to 31.31 (avg. 26.5) × 4.83 to 9.11 (avg. 6.9) μm. Conidia of all isolates were five celled. Apical and basal cells were colorless, while the three median cells were dark brown. The single basal appendage of conidia was 2.85 to 16.05 μm in length and the two to three apical appendages were 5.93 to 36.23 μm in length. According to colony and conidia morphology (number of cells, number of appendages), the isolates were initially identified as Pestalotiopsis spp (2). A 525-bp band was produced in a conventional PCR assay. Primers ITS1 (5'TCCGTAGGTGAACCTGCGC3') and ITS4 (5'TCCTCCGCTTATTGATATGC3') were used to amplify and sequence the internal transcribed spacer region of rDNA. A BLAST search of the NCBI databases showed that isolate YJYK-1 had 99% homology with Pestalotiopsis clavispora isolate hz-067 (Accession No. FJ517545.1). Pathogenicity tests of the novel isolate YJYK-1 were conducted by placing agar plugs (5 mm in diameter) from an actively growing colony on PDA on surface-disinfected (70% ethyl alcohol, 30 s) leaves (1). Control leaves were inoculated with sterile PDA plugs. Plants with inoculated leaves (five per treatment) were placed in lighted growth chambers at 25°C for 10 days and watered as needed. Symptoms on inoculated leaves were similar to those previously described in the nursery. Black acervuli were easily found on the necrotic tissues. Control plants did not show any symptoms. Cultures isolated from the lesions were similar to those isolated previously from leaves in the nursery. Koch's postulates were confirmed after re-isolation. Although the diversity of endophytic Pestalotiopsis species and its distribution was investigated and the host plants were also listed in China (3), to our knowledge, this is the first report of P. clavispora causing leaf blotch on rose R. chinensis in China. References: (1) M. I. Ahmed et al. Eur. J. Plant Pathol. 135:619, 2013. (2) J. Y. Lu. Diagnosis of plant diseases. Page 194 in: Pestalotiopsis. J. Y. Lu et al., eds. China Agriculture Press, Beijing, 1995. (3) J. G. Wei et al. Mycosystema 24:481, 2005.


We define a new class of languages of $\omega$-words, strictly extending $\omega$-regular languages.
One way to present this new class is by a type of regular expressions. The new expressions are an extension of $\omega$-regular expressions where two new variants of the Kleene star $L^*$ are added: $L^B$ and $L^S$. These new exponents are used to say that parts of the input word have bounded size, and that parts of the input can have arbitrarily large sizes, respectively. For instance, the expression $(a^Bb)^\omega$ represents the language of infinite words over the letters $a,b$ where there is a common bound on the number of consecutive letters $a$. The expression $(a^Sb)^\omega$ represents a similar language, but this time the distance between consecutive $b$'s is required to tend toward the infinite.
We develop a theory for these languages, with a focus on decidability and closure. We define an equivalent automaton model, extending B\"uchi automata. The main technical result is a complementation lemma that works for languages where only one type of exponent---either $L^B$ or $L^S$---is used.
We use the closure and decidability results to obtain partial decidability results for the logic MSOLB, a logic obtained by extending monadic second-order logic with new quantifiers that speak about the size of sets.


The TOR proteins play a central role in the control of cell growth. TOR proteins are the founding members of the phosphatidylinositol-related kinase (PIKK) family of protein kinases. In S. cerevisiae there are two TOR proteins, TOR1 and TOR2. TOR1 and TOR2 regulate cell growth via a rapamycin-sensitive pathway controlling translation, transcription, nutrient uptake, ribosome biogenesis and autophagy. TOR2 also has a unique, rapamycin-insensitive function, which is the control of the actin cytoskeleton. Recently, it has been found that the TOR proteins exist in two distinct complexes, TOR complex(TORC1) and TOR complex(TORC2). While TORC1 mediates the rapamycin-sensitive pathway, TORC2 is responsible for the control of the actin cytoskeleton. TORC1 comprises three proteins, TOR1 or TOR2, KOG1 and LST8. TORC2 consists of five proteins, TOR2, AVO1, AVO2, AVO3 and LST8. Thus, these structurally and functionally distinct TOR complexes account for the diversity of TOR signaling in yeast. Here we focused on the characterization of TORC2. Our studies suggest that TORC2 exists in an oligomeric state and that AVO1 and likely AVO3 act as scaffold proteins required for the integrity of TORC2. We also found that AVO1 plays a role as an adaptor protein mediating efficient phosphorylation of substrates. LST8 in turn appears to modulate TOR2 kinase activity possibly by binding directly to the TOR2 kinase domain. LST8 is common to both TORC1 and TORC2 and may therefore be important to respond to upstream signaling factors.


Incidence of Non-uniform illumination degrades the affected solar photovoltaic modules temporarily. However, in worst case it may also lead to permanent degradation. Thus, non-uniform illumination sensing in terms of encompassed area over solar photovoltaic module become important for sustainable power generation. In this work, we propose, an integrated framework by combining optical and thermal images for Non-uniform illumination sensing and classification (static and dynamic). The proposed technique detects hotspots along with identification of the nature of shading on the solar photovoltaic modules. Additionally, Hungarian Kalman Filter is implemented for estimating the coverage of the Non-uniform illumination-affected region including its abrupt shape. The proposed estimation technique also calculates the total loss in the output energy of the solar photovoltaic system due to non-uniform illumination. Overall, the proposed methodology develops a hybrid imagery-dependent advanced early warning system for large-scale solar power plants that are cost-effective and bypass multi-sensor data fusion to attain real-time application.


Abstract. Relative to extensive studies of interactions between the quasi 2-day wave and tides, nonlinear interaction of the 16-day wave with tides was reported less, in particular interaction with the diurnal tide. We present an observational study of a possible nonlinear interaction event between the 16-day wave and the diurnal tide based on meteor radar measurement at Maui. An obvious 16-day wave can be observed from raw wind data. Its maximum meridional wind amplitude can attain 18.0 m s−1 at a height of 92 km during the time of our attention, which is larger than that in previous reports. Sum and difference interactions between the 16-day wave and the diurnal tide are observed to have rather different intensities. Because sum nonlinear interaction is very intense, the secondary sum wave with a period of 22.59 h is stronger than the diurnal tide. However, weak spectrum of the secondary difference wave is hardly identified. The beat of the diurnal tide with the secondary sum wave leads to substantial modulation of the diurnal tide at a period of 16 days. Moreover, this strong secondary sum wave further interacts with the 16-day wave to generate a new secondary wave with a period of 21.33 h. Such an interaction may be also regarded as a third-order nonlinear interaction between the 16-day wave and the diurnal tide with two-step interaction. Hence, the third-order nonlinear interaction between planetary waves and tides may occur significantly in the MLT region.


Abstract Using the Mafwe ethnic/cultural group as a test case, the situation in post-colonial Namibia can be interpreted to mean that as long as indigenous knowledge remains outside the official school curriculum, ideologically, 'power' continues to elude the people in the country which for over a century had been under the control of various Western colonial powers. It is suggested that there is an urgent need for Namibia to adopt a diverse culturally sensitive form of education which firmly embeds indigenous knowledge in the way the curriculum is conceptualised, designed and delivered. The study used methodologies such as conceptual analysis, oral traditions and phenomenological analysis. The overall findings in the study suggest the need for a comprehensive theory regarding how indigenous knowledge can become the bedrock and not merely an ancillary to a modern education in Namibia. The emphasis here is that learning about indigenous knowledge enables children and the communities they represent to feel authentic, respected and connected.


The aggregation of proteins has been associated with several aspects of daily life, including food processing, blood coagulation and many neurodegenerative infections. However, the actual mechanisms responsible for amyloidosis, the irreversible fibril formation of various proteins, which is linked to disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease and Huntington's disease, have not yet been fully elucidated. Curcumin, a potent anti-oxidant, exhibits anti-amyloid activity; however, its activity is limited due to its instability. Therefore, chemical modifications of curcumin have been performed to obtain molecules with enhanced stability and superior anti-amyloid activity. Herein, the main objective of this study is related to the inhibitory effects of three stable analogs of curcumin against bovine β-lactoglobulin (β-lg) fibrillization. We inferred that a pyrazole derivative of curcumin showed remarkable potency in arresting the fibrillization of β-lg, as revealed by biophysical techniques. Molecular docking demonstrated that pyrazole-mediated inhibition of β-lg fibrillogenesis may be initiated by interacting with aggregation-prone regions of the protein and preventing interactions between monomers, leading to suppression of the overall aggregation process. This work alludes to a possible broader scope for discovery of other small molecules that may exert similar effects against amyloid formation and its associated neurodegenerative diseases.


Greater levels of social mobility are widely seen as desirable on grounds of both equity and efficiency. Debate on social mobility in Britain and elsewhere has recently focused on specific factors that might hinder social mobility, including the role of internships and similar employment opportunities that parents can sometimes secure for their children.We address the help that parents give their children in the job market using data from the new age 42 wave of the 1970 British Cohort Study. We consider help given to people from all family backgrounds and not just to graduates and those in higher level occupations who have tended to be the focus in the debate in Britain. Specifically, our data measure whether respondents had ever had help to get a job from (i) parents and (ii) other relatives and friends and the form of that help. We first assess the extent and type of help. We then determine whether people from higher socio-economic status families are more or less likely to have such help and whether the help is associated with higher wages and higher occupations.Our paper provides insight into whether the strong link between parental socio-economic background and the individual's own economic success can be explained in part by the parents assisting their children to get jobs. We find parental help to have a strong social gradient. But we are unable to identify a clear link between any particular type of help – advice, help through contacts etc. – and individuals' wages or occupations.


e estimate mortality rates by a measure of socio-economic status in a very large sample of male German pensioners aged ~65 or older. Our analysis is entirely nonparametric. Furthermore, the data enable us to compare mortality experiences in eastern and western Germany conditional on socio-economic status. As a simple summary measure, we compute period life expectancies at age~65. Our findings show a lower bound of almost 50 percent (six years) on the difference in life expectancy between the lowest and the highest socio-economic group considered. Within groups, we find similar values for the former GDR and western Germany. Our analysis contributes to the literature in three aspects. First, we provide the first population-based differential mortality study for Germany. Second, we use a novel measure of lifetime earnings as a proxy for socio-economic status that remains applicable to retired people. Third, the comparison between eastern and western Germany may provide some interesting insights for transformation countries.


We present a novel graph-based neural network model for relation extraction. Our model treats multiple pairs in a sentence simultaneously and considers interactions among them. All the entities in a sentence are placed as nodes in a fully-connected graph structure. The edges are represented with position-aware contexts around the entity pairs. In order to consider different relation paths between two entities, we construct up to l-length walks between each pair. The resulting walks are merged and iteratively used to update the edge representations into longer walks representations. We show that the model achieves performance comparable to the state-of-the-art systems on the ACE 2005 dataset without using any external tools.


This paper presents a class of routing protocols called road-based using vehicular traffic (RBVT) routing, which outperforms existing routing protocols in city-based vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). RBVT protocols leverage real-time vehicular traffic information to create road-based paths consisting of successions of road intersections that have, with high probability, network connectivity among them. Geographical forwarding is used to transfer packets between intersections on the path, reducing the path's sensitivity to individual node movements. For dense networks with high contention, we optimize the forwarding using a distributed receiver-based election of next hops based on a multicriterion prioritization function that takes nonuniform radio propagation into account. We designed and implemented a reactive protocol RBVT-R and a proactive protocol RBVT-P and compared them with protocols representative of mobile ad hoc networks and VANETs. Simulation results in urban settings show that RBVT-R performs best in terms of average delivery rate, with up to a 40% increase compared with some existing protocols. In terms of average delay, RBVT-P performs best, with as much as an 85% decrease compared with the other protocols.


We have sequenced two complete chloroplast genomes in the Asteraceae, Helianthus annuus (sunflower), and Lactuca sativa (lettuce), which belong to the distantly related subfamilies, Asteroideae and Cichorioideae, respectively. The Helianthus chloroplast genome is 151 104 bp and the Lactuca genome is 152 772 bp long, which is within the usual size range for chloroplast genomes in flowering plants. When compared to tobacco, both genomes have two inversions: a large 22.8-kb inversion and a smaller 3.3-kb inversion nested within it. Pairwise sequence divergence across all genes, introns, and spacers in Helianthus and Lactuca has resulted in the discovery of new, fast-evolving DNA sequences for use in species-level phylogenetics, such as the trnY-rpoB, trnL-rpl32, and ndhC-trnV spacers. Analysis and categorization of shared repeats resulted in seven classes useful for future repeat studies: double tandem repeats, three or more tandem repeats, direct repeats dispersed in the genome, repeats found in reverse complement orientation, hairpin loops, runs of A's or T's in excess of 12 bp, and gene or tRNA similarity. Results from BLAST searches of our genomic sequence against expressed sequence tag (EST) databases for both genomes produced eight likely RNA edited sites (C → U changes). These detailed analyses in Asteraceae contribute to a broader understanding of plastid evolution across flowering plants.


Enterprise Multiple is widely used by practitioners as a valuation measure (Loughran & Wellman, 2011). Furthermore, one component used in the calculation of enterprise multiple (EV/EBITDA) is the use of operating income before depreciation data as income variables. The data is accurate and difficult to manipulate (not even) in measuring the profitability of a company over net income. This study aims to analyse the influence of enterprise multiple on stock return towards non-financial companies listed in the Indonesian Stock Exchange from 2006-2015. The dependent variable used is stock return. The independent variable used is enterprise multiple which is proxied with EV / EBITDA. Enterprise Value (EV) is (value of equity + debt + preferred stock cash). While EBITDA are Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortisation. This research takes the form of a quantitative research by using panel data regression test. The results show that firms with a low enterprise multiple values, have a higher stock return than firms with high enterprise multiple values. In addition, the portfolio established under enterprise multiple values (low minus high portfolios) in the Carhart 4 Factor Model is robust on non-financial companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange 2006-2015 period.


To incorporate expert opinion into a Bayesian analysis, it must be quantified as a prior distribution through an elicitation process that asks the expert meaningful questions whose answers determine this distribution. The aim of this thesis is to fill some gaps in the available techniques for eliciting prior distributions for Generalized Linear Models (GLMs) and multinomial models.

A general method for quantifying opinion about GLMs was developed in Garthwaite and Al-Awadhi (2006). They model the relationship between each continuous predictor and the dependant variable as a piecewise-linear function with a regression coefficient at each of its dividing points. However, coefficients were assumed a priori independent if associated with different predictors. We relax this simplifying assumption and propose three new methods for eliciting positive-definite variance-covariance matrices of a multivariate normal prior distribution. In addition, we extend the method of Garthwaite and Dickey (1988) for eliciting an inverse chi-squared conjugate prior for the error variance in normal linear models. We also propose a novel method for eliciting a lognormal prior distribution for the scale parameter of a gamma GLM.

For multinomial models, novel methods are proposed that quantify expert opinion about a conjugate Dirichlet distribution and, additionally, about three more general and flexible prior distributions. First, an elicitation method is proposed for the generalized Dirichlet distribution that was introduced by Connor and Mosimann (1969). Second, a method is developed for eliciting the Gaussian copula as a multivariate distribution with marginal beta priors. Third, a further novel method is constructed that quantifies expert opinion about the most flexible alternate prior, the logistic normal distribution (Aitchison, 1986). This third method is extended to the case of multinomial models with explanatory covariates.

All proposed methods in this thesis are designed to be used with interactive Prior Elicitation Graphical Software (PEGS) that is freely available at http://statistics.open.ac.uk/elicitation.


Introduction The PLUTO: Percutaneous Shunting for Lower Urinary Tract Obstruction (LUTO) Study was a multi-centre, randomised, controlled trial (RCT) undertaken to evaluate the safety and efficacy of fetal vesicoamniotic bladder shunting in moderate to severe ante-natally diagnosed cases compared to conservative management. Within the trial a qualitative study explored women's motivation for entering the trial, and their experience of the condition and its management. The trial was terminated early, but the qualitative data collected provided an insight into being pregnant with a fetus with a serious medical condition. Aim To gain insight into the experiences and perceptions of pregnant women asked to participate in an interventional fetal medicine trial requiring an invasive procedure. Method Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with a purposive sample of women involved in the PLUTO trial (n = 6). The data were analysed thematically. Findings Motivation for participation in the PLUTO trial was consistent with other research, and involved reasons of both altruism and self-interest. Loss of a normal pregnancy was precipitated by the current routine use of ante-natal scanning. This was associated with uncertainty for women and a decision making process that could only result in a less than ideal option. Conclusion Undertaking a qualitative study within the PLUTO trial has illuminated the experience of receiving a prenatal diagnosis of LUTO following ultrasound scanning. The unexpected nature of the diagnosis itself and the evident uncertainty that permeates this condition and its management during pregnancy appears to exert some influence over women's decision making.


Part I. Introduction: 1. Judgment and decision research: some historical context William M. Goldstein and Robin M. Hogarth Part II. Currents: 2. Reason-based choice Eldar Shafir, Itamar Simonson and Amos Tversky 3. Probabilistic mental models: a Brunswikian theory of confidence Gerd Gigerenzer, Ulrich Hoffrage and Heinz Kleinbolting 4. Direct comparison of the efficacy of intuitive and analytical cognition in expert judgment Kenneth R. Hammond, Robert M. Hamm, Janet Grassia, and Tamra Pearson 5. The adaptive decision maker: effort and accuracy in choice John W. Payne, James R. Bettman and Eric J. Johnson 6. Confirmation, disconfirmation, and information in hypothesis testing Joshua Klayman and Young-Won Ha 7. Learning from feedback: exactingness and incentives Robin M. Hogarth, Brian J. Gibbs, Craig R. M. McKenzie and Margaret A. Marquis 8. Covariation in natural causal induction Patricia W. Cheng and Laura R. Novick 9. Propensities and counterfactuals: The loser that almost won Daniel Kahneman and Carol A. Varey 10. The Process-performance paradox in expert judgment: how can experts know so much and predict so badly? Colin F. Camerer and Eric J. Johnson 11. Intertemporal choice George Loewenstein and Richard H. Thaler 12. Not me or thee but we: the important of group identity in eliciting cooperation in dilemna situations: experimental manipulations Robyn M. Dawes, Alphons J. C. van de Kragt and John M. Orbell 13. Predicting a changing taste: do people know what they will like? Daniel Kahneman and Jackie Snell 14. Endowment and contrast in judgment of well-being Amos Tversky and Dale Griffin Part III. Connections: 15. The relationship between memory and judgment depends on whether the judgment task is memory-based or on-line Reid Hastie and Bernadette Park 16. Explanation-based decision making: effects of memory structure on judgment Nancy Pennington and Reid Hastie 17. Decision making under ignorance: arguing with yourself Robin M. Hogarth and Howard Kunreuther 18. Positive affect and decision making Alice M. Isen Part IV. Controversies: 19. The paramorphic representation of clinical judgment: a thirty-year retrospective Michael E. Doherty and Berndt Brehmer 20. Islanders and hostages: deep and surface structures of decision problems Willem A. Wagenaar, Gideon Keren and Sarah Lichtenstein 21. Content and discontent: indications and implications of domain specificity in preferential decision making William M. Goldstein and Elke U. Weber 22. The case for rules in reasoning Edward E. Smith, Cristopher Langston and Richard E. Nisbett 23. An alternative metaphor in the study of judgment and choice: people as politicians Philip E. Tetlock 24. Between hope and fear: the psychology of risk Lola L. Lopes.


Summary:  Purpose: Several experimental models of human temporal lobe epilepsy have shown that apoptotic death of neurons is an important part of this degenerative disease. However, the role of apoptotic regulators is not clear during the epileptogenesis. Therefore we investigated the expression pattern of bcl‐2 family of genes during the formation of kindling model of epilepsy in rats.


The present is a moment of crisis and transition, both generally and specifically in "knowledge" and its institutions. Acknowledging this elicits the key questions: where are we? Where are we headed? What, if anything, can be done about this? And what can the "economics of science" contribute to this? This paper assumes a "cultural political economy of research & innovation" (CPERI) perspective to explore the current upheaval and transition in the system of academic knowledge production, at the confluence of accelerating commercialisation and the seemingly opposing movement of "open science." This perspective affords a characterisation of the core of the current crises as a crisis of moral economy; an issue to which a political economy of epistemic authority is in turn crucial. A "remoralizing" of knowledge production is thus a matter of key systemic importance, though it is important to understand such developments in power-strategic, and not explicitly moral, terms. Much of the current moves towards "open science" and "massively open online courses" (MOOCs) can also then be seen as self-defeating developments that simply exacerbate the crisis of a viable "economy of science" and in no sense its solution. Their lasting significance, however, is more likely to lie precisely in their effects on the construction of a new moral economy of knowledge production.


OF DISSERTATION SOCIAL CAPITAL AT THE CAPITOL: A SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS OF INTEREST GROUP INFLUENCE IN THE 111th CONGRESS This dissertation builds on existing scholarship in political science and political sociology to explore the influence of interest groups in legislative action networks. The primary theoretical insight is that as the number of interest group affiliations between two members of Congress increases, so does the frequency with which they forge other sorts of social ties necessary to advance the interests of their interest group constituencies. In particular, the analysis looks at interest group donation strategies, legislative co-sponsorships, and roll-call votes during the 111th Congress (2009-2010). The analysis uses social network analysis methods to create network models of 19 different policy domains, as well as an aggregate model, for both the House and Senate. Legislator ideology, state, committee assignments, and experience have a generally significant impact on the number of interest group affiliations shared by each pair of legislators, whereas gender, race/ethnicity, office location and occupational history do not. The results show that interest groups do have consistent impact over co-sponsorships in the House, but somewhat more mixed influence in the Senate. In some instances, groups in the policy domain encourage policy change, and in other instances, status quo protection. The theory did not anticipate the latter effect, though it does make sense in context of other research findings. For roll-call votes, interest groups have a significant influence over some House policy domains but not many Senate policy domains. The increased polarization of the Senate, necessity of minority party discipline to maximize their leverage through use of the filibuster, and staggered nature of Senate elections makes interest group influence tougher to muster in the upper chamber of Congress.


It is necessary to study crack opening and sliding discontinuous displacement behavior under mixed-mode conditions because parts or structures of a machine with a crack maybe subject to stress from various directions. In this study ,therefore, using the cracks with different slant angle, which are made in circle stress of modeⅠwith stress ratio of R=0, the opening and sliding discontinuous displacements are measured ,so that modeⅠand mode Ⅱ stress intensity factors (KⅠ)mes and (KⅡ)mes at the crack tip are calculated. As a result, the measured stress intensity factors value of (KⅠ)mes from the fatigue crack with the slant angle β=60 deg. is smaller than the theoretical one (KⅠ). But for mode Ⅱ,(KⅡ)mes is about the same with (KⅡ). On the other hand, for the fatigue cracks with smaller slant angle β=45 deg.,(KⅡ)mes declined because of the crack-surface contact while (KⅠ)mes reduced.


The aim is to demonstrate the presence of transference within Gestalt Psychotherapy, opinion not shared by many gestaltists. For this purpose she includes Freud's findings and comments on transference. She also takes into consideration Jung's and Melanie Klein's concepts on transference. The author concludes that transference is in Psychoanalysis a decisive concept in diagnosing and defining a prognosis. She refers to the fact that in Gestalt Psychotherapy the patient projects on the therapist disturbed aspects of his personallity as well as healthy ones, which determines the characteristics of the relationship. In Gestalt Therapy transference is made easy by the self-responsibility the patient has to assume in the process. Within this frame-work some of the techniques which facilitate the use of transference are mentioned: gestual observation, conscience awareness, an alliance with the healthful aspects of the patient, work in the "here-and-now", clarifying projections, switch from environmental support to inner support.


Copper (Cu) is an essential, but toxic, micronutrient for living organisms and cells have developed sophisticated response mechanisms towards both the lack and the excess of Cu in their environments. In this study, we achieved a global view of Cu-responsive changes in the prokaryotic model organism Rhodobacter capsulatus using label-free quantitative differential proteomics. Semi-aerobically grown cells under heterotrophic conditions in minimal medium (∼0.3 μM Cu) were compared with cells supplemented with either 5 μM Cu or with 5 mM of the Cu-chelator bathocuproine sulfonate. Mass spectrometry based bottom-up proteomics of unfractionated cell lysates identified 2430 of the 3632 putative proteins encoded by the genome, producing a robust proteome dataset for R. capsulatus. Use of biological and technical replicates for each growth condition yielded high reproducibility and reliable quantification for 1926 of the identified proteins. Comparison of cells grown under Cu-excess or Cu-depleted conditions to those grown under minimal Cu-sufficient conditions revealed that 75 proteins exhibited statistically significant (p < 0.05) abundance changes, ranging from 2- to 300-fold. A subset of the highly Cu-responsive proteins was orthogonally probed using molecular genetics, validating that several of them were indeed involved in cellular Cu homeostasis.


Phase retrieval (PR) consists of estimating 2D or 3D objects from their Fourier magnitudes and takes a central place in scientific imaging. At present, most iterative methods for PR work well only when the initialization is close enough to the solution and fail otherwise. But there has been no general way of obtaining desired initialization. In this paper, we show that a carefully designed deep learning pipeline can consistently generate reliable initialization, so that the subsequent iterative methods can solve the PR problem and produce high-quality solutions. Technically, PR is an inverse problem containing three forward symmetries, and naive deployment of end-to-end deep learning for PR yields poor initialization. We explain why the symmetries cause the learning difficulty and propose a novel strategy that substantially improves the estimation. Overall, the proposed method solves PR in regimes not accessible by the previous methods, and our work syn-ergizes deep learning and iterative methods to solve a difficult scientific inverse problem.


The rise of China's tech companies in the global economy raises an urgent need to understand how China incubates its tech startups. China's tech startup ecosystem presents two puzzling legal arrangements for human capital in light of Silicon Valley's experience: the co-existence of enforceable non-competes and the high-velocity labor market; the common use of stock options but with a buyback norm. This article delves into the peculiarities of China's legal and political institutions to resolve the legal puzzles. This article also speaks to a global policy debate about the replicability of Silicon Valley and the necessity of such replication. The Chinese experience offers opposite examples showing the replication complexity: replication yet with deformed practices and non-replication yet with similar outcomes. The findings suggest that there is unlikely a one-size-fits-all model for creating an innovation economy.


Complex Systems
Understanding the underlying behavior of complex interacting systems is a challenging problem affecting the social, life, and physical sciences. Representing components of a system as nodes and assigning weights to the interactions between components can provide a graphical picture of the interacting system. Trying to map out real-life systems that are large, consist of multiple layers, and are dynamic can result in oversimplification, though. De Domenico et al. propose a method based on network flow analysis that can reveal clusters or communities of nodes that are closely connected within and across the various layers of a system. Identifying key communities in a complex interacting system could be crucial in revealing the functional structure underlying the system.

Phys. Rev. X 5 , 11027 (2015).


Sound generation by turbulent flames originates from the fluctuating heat release in the flame. The description of this fluctuating heat release and its effect on acoustics in turbulent flames is complicated due to the interaction of chemical reactions with turbulence, mixing and pressure fluctuations. In a turbulent flame the instantaneous density, velocity, pressure, temperature and species concentrations are determined by the transport equations for mass, momentum, enthalpy and species and by the equation of state. In this paper an equation is formulated that describes the propagation of acoustic pressure fluctuations, and that determines the source terms. Subsequently events are ordered on basis of their typical time scale. That way source terms can be evaluated for the situation where the combustion is described with the use of time averaged chemical reaction progress variables and a mixture fraction variable. Subsequently the consequences of Reynolds and Favre averaging on these source terms and conservation of acoustical variables in a domain with turbulent flow are discussed. The use of the reaction progress variables, as a basis for acoustic propagation prediction, in a Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes flow calculation, is demonstrated on a premixed turbulent natural gas flame with finite combustion kinetics.