4
Abstract
The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate the problems and solutions for a company who wants to expand their applications onto mobiles. It is important for the company if they can find the faster way to develop the same system onto mobile apps, what artifacts can be used in common and what can be reused. Even smartphones have ability to work almost like PC but they also have many limitations such as screen size, limited resources like RAM, disk, and battery. How can we compromise the full data context with those limitations? In this master thesis, we have studied all perspectives in the software engineering area and come up with problems and solutions through the real implementation of mobile apps. We have learned that a project plan and organization involvement at the beginning is crucial because the decision on the target market, software architecture, offline/ online necessity affects a lot later on in the implementation phase. We have found out that a large extent on the reuse is based on the software architecture and design pattern. The tradeoff between using the same design pattern and different mobile frameworks' best fits design patterns is a one interesting future study topic. A testing coverage is also one topic that we have found out needed because a mobile app needs more considerations than a traditional application.


known from historical and prospective studies2-5 to warrant effective preventive action. The point is that there is no single cause and that intervention must be based on the recognition of multiple risk factors. Prediction of morbidity and mortality from coronary artery disease on this basis is far from weak 6 and is in fact an epidemiologically-acceptable means of defining high-risk groups whose health can be improved by planned intervention.7 A further merit of this approach is that it encourages all concerned towards knowledgeable self-help in personal habits such as cigarette smoking, exercise, and diet.-We are, etc.,


Date Presented 04/04/19
 This qualitative pilot study used an interpretative phenomenological design to examine mothers' reported challenges and supports in performing the co-occupation of caregiving for their preterm infants upon discharge from the NICU. There are several implications for future OT practice, particularly as it relates to supporting maternal facilitation of infant play and sleep occupations and easing the transition from NICU to home during the first few weeks postdischarge.
 Primary Author and Speaker: Allison Smith
 Additional Authors and Speakers: Megan Karpf, Molly Jow, Morgan Jardon, Tiffany Yu, Brianca Hutchins


Introduction: The application of extreme value statistics provides a novel way to characterize the risk of high blood glucose levels. Its statistical methodology works well for dependent data, but the impact of non-stationarity is unclear.Material and Methods: 14.7 million blood glucose measurements from 225 patients were analyzed with stationary and nonstationary extreme value models. In case of the latter, the location parameter was allowed to vary with time using spline expansion to allow for a flexible, data-driven functional form.Results: Estimated scale and shape parameters were almost identical (correlation > 0.99) and estimated location was also similar (correlation =0.9). One-year return level and estimated time spent in a year above the clinically relevant threshold of 600 mg/dl was also very similar, and estimated time spent above 400 mg/dl was similar with the exception of a single patient, who had much higher value with the stationary model.Discussion and Conclusion: Non-stationary extreme values models can be applied to analyze blood glucose measurements with the aim of measuring the risk of hyperglycaemia. Obtained results are similar to those with stationary models, but whether it is possible (and if so, to what extent) that the estimated longterm trend in location picks up some effect of true extremity requires further investigation.


Recently vehicle tracking system is getting vast popularity because of the rising number of the stolen vehicles. Vehicle theft is happening on parking and sometimes driving in unsecured places. This research work explores how to avoid this kind of stealing and provides more security to the vehicles. The implemented system contains single-board embedded system which is equipped with global system for mobile (GSM) and global positioning system (GPS) along with a microcontroller installed in the vehicle. The use of GSM and GPS technologies allows the system to track the object and provides the most up-to-date information about on-going trips. Moreover, fingerprint verification is done in the implemented system to ensure the driving of correct person. The implemented system is very simple with greater security for vehicle anti-theft protection and low cost technique compared to others.


This report is the result of a year-long internship with a new theatre company in New Orleans, Delta Theatre Productions, currently operating under the name Delta Productions. I functioned as the Managing Director for this start-up, building organizational infrastructure from the ground up, guiding the process of its first production from idea to final product, and creating the branding of the organization in order to set it apart from its competition and establish it as a viable and healthy theatrical company for the New Orleans community. This report tells the story of how the organization began, reports on my duties as an intern, analyzes the successes and failures of the first year of operation, relates guidance from the best practices of other theatrical organizations around the nation, and finally offers practical recommendations for Delta Productions as it pursues growth and sustainability.


Outlines the nature and content of unit portfolios developed at Sheffield Hallam University, in response to national quality assurance initiatives and the enhanced status accorded to credit‐bearing units of study which constitute the basic building blocks of courses and programmes. Draws on the experience of introducing unit portfolios. Argues that the time and effort involved in compiling and maintaining them need to be justified, with respect to quality assurance, planning, unit management, staff development and the diffusion of innovation. Considers their advantages including ease of access; greater transparency in delivery methods and the responsibilities of unit leaders; and incorporation of best practice. Examines the tensions to which their introduction and potential roles give rise and the arguments of those who are opposed to developments of this kind, such as the opportunity cost of compiling them and the perceived erosion of academic freedom.


Many online applications, especially in the financial industries, are running on blockchain technologies in a decentralized manner, without the use of an authoritative entity or a trusted third party. Such systems are only secured by cryptographic protocols and a consensus mechanism. As blockchain-based solutions will continue to revolutionize online applications in a growing digital market in the future, one needs to identify the principal opportunities and potential risks. Hence, it is unavoidable to learn the mathematical and cryptographic procedures behind blockchain technology in order to understand how such systems work and where the weak points are. The book provides an introduction to the mathematical and cryptographic concepts behind blockchain technologies and shows how they are applied in blockchain-based systems. This includes an introduction to the general blockchain technology approaches that are used to build the so-called immutable ledgers, which are based on cryptographic signature schemes. As future quantum computers will break some of the current cryptographic primitive approaches, the book considers their security and presents the current research results that estimate the impact on blockchain-based systems if some of the cryptographic primitive break. Based on the example of Bitcoin, it shows that weak cryptographic primitives pose a possible danger for the ledger, which can be overcome through the use of the so-called post-quantum cryptographic approaches which are introduced as well.


The identification and quantification of food ingredients based on DNA detection depends strictly on DNA stability during the food preparation treatment and on the efficiency of DNA recovery. Investigations into DNA stability carried out on polenta by real time PCR revealed that after 65 min of processing the amplifiable DNA decreased to 40% of the amount detectable before processing. Four commercial kits for DNA extraction were compared with the hexadecyltrimethyl ammoniumbromide (CTAB)-based method for DNA extraction from different maize foodstuffs: flour, canned maize, corn chip snacks, cheese corn puff snacks, chocolate corn flakes and an infant formula having a maize flour ingredient. The methods were evaluated for recovered DNA quality and yield by agarose gel electrophoresis, PCR and real time PCR targeting of the maize zein gene. No detectable DNA could be extracted from the chocolate corn flakes, whereas highly degraded DNA was extracted from all the other materials tested except flour which yielded high quality DNA. Among the methods tested, CTAB, the Wizard method and Wizard Magnetic DNA Purification System kits gave the highest DNA yields. The overall data indicate that quantitative detection of ingredients in processed food products may not reflect the original amount of DNA due to DNA degradation and low yield of DNA recovery.


Maternal stress is known to be an important factor in shaping child development, yet the complex pattern of associations between stress and infant brain development remains understudied. To better understand the nuanced relations between maternal stress and infant neurodevelopment, research investigating longitudinal relations between maternal chronic physiological stress and infant brain function is warranted. In this study, we leveraged longitudinal data to disentangle between- from within-person associations of maternal hair cortisol and frontal electroencephalography (EEG) power at three time points across infancy at 3, 9, and 15 months. We analyzed both aperiodic power spectral density (PSD) slope and traditional periodic frequency band activity. On the within-person level, maternal hair cortisol was associated with a flattening of frontal PSD slope and an increase in relative frontal beta. However, on the between-person level, higher maternal hair cortisol was associated with steeper frontal PSD slope, increased relative frontal theta, and decreased relative frontal beta. The within-person findings may reflect an adaptive neural response to relative shifts in maternal stress levels, while the between-person results demonstrate the potentially detrimental effects of chronically elevated maternal stress. This analysis offers a novel, quantitative insight into the relations between maternal physiological stress and infant cortical function.


This article examines the way Somali refugees cope with their situation under uncertain circumstances in their transit country, more particularly, the Eastleigh Estate, Nairobi, Kenya, where they wait for resettlement to a third country in a process that normally takes years of waiting with no guarantee of a positive outcome. The spatial reality of their displacement in Eastleigh was characterized by socio-economic hardship, a sense of illegitimate stay, and the uncertainty of their chances for resettlement. During their prolonged wait for resettlement, the refugees generated hope by engaging in a search for normality through making homes, social activities, and religious practices. Displacement meant not only crisis and hopelessness; it could also entail potentiality and openings for social transformation. In an environment that did not allow much space for agency, the refugees in Eastleigh, Nairobi, fostered hope through activity, collectiveness, and building for the future.


The real time monitoring of passenger movement and behaviour through public transport environments including precincts, concourses, platforms and train vestibules would enable operators to more effectively manage congestion at a whole-of-station level. While existing crowd monitoring technologies allow operators to monitor crowd densities at critical locations and react to overcrowding incidents, they do not necessarily provide an understanding of the cause of such issues. Congestion is a complex phenomenon involving the movements of many people though a set of spaces and monitoring these spaces requires tracking large numbers of individuals. To do this, traditional surveillance technologies might be used but at the expense of introducing privacy concerns. Scalability is also a problem, as complete sensor coverage of entire rail station precinct, concourse and platform areas potentially requires a high number of sensors, increasing costs. In light of this, there is a need for sensing technology that collects data from a set of 'sparse sensors', each with a limited field of view, but which is capable of forming a network that can track the movement and behaviour of high numbers of associated individuals in a privacy sensitive manner. This paper presents work towards the core crowd sensing and perception technology needed to enable such a capability. Building on previous research using three-dimensional (3D) depth camera data for person detection, a privacy friendly approach to tracking and recognising individuals is discussed. The use of a head-to-shoulder signature is proposed to enable association between sensors. Our efforts to improve the reliability of this measure for this task are outlined and validated using data captured at Brisbane Central rail station.


The strength of randomized controlled trials is that they allow causal statements to be made about the efficacy of an intervention. This is because the randomization of participants to experimental condition distributes participants with different characteristics to each experimental condition by chance, including variations in the outcome variables of interest. Such randomization allows the use of statistical tests incorporating probability statements regarding the chance that the difference observed between conditions is due to chance (eg, 1 in 20 chance; P<.05).

Any systematic removal of participants post-randomization interferes with the assumption of the randomness of participant allocation to experimental condition. This can introduce a potential confound or alternative explanation of the results. The recently published study by Rooke et al [1] removed participants from the analysis who reported other treatment use during the study (n=5). The removal of participants was done post-randomization and in a systematic fashion (ie, anyone who reported using other treatment was not included in the analysis). All participants who reported receiving other treatment were in the control condition and were allocated to receive the Web address of an education only website. Even if some participants in the intervention condition had also accessed other treatment, this would still be a systematic, post-randomization removal of participants. However, it is easier to develop alternate explanations of the findings of this trial because all participants using other treatment were from the control condition.

From one perspective, it is possible that the excluded participants were those who were experiencing the most serious problems with their Cannabis use. If this is the case, it could make it less likely that significant differences would be observed between experimental condition by reducing the variance between participants. Alternatively, perhaps these were the five participants in the control condition who were the most motivated to reduce their Cannabis use. This could mean that participants in the control condition were less motivated, on average, than those in the intervention condition, to do something about their Cannabis use. This could serve as an alternate explanation of the findings in this study.

Given that only five participants were removed out of 225 (or 230 if control and intervention group participant totals are added?) randomized at baseline, it is quite possible that this alternate explanation is untrue. However, the authors do expose themselves to alternate explanations of the findings by the removal of these participants. If the systematic removal of participants post-randomization is deemed necessary, one possible solution would be to run (and report on) the analysis with and without these participants included. Such sensitivity analyses would go a long way towards addressing any possible confounds that may have been introduced.


The manufacturing tolerances of a hydrodynamic journal bearing system are inevitable in manufacturing process. To examine and understand the effect of manufacturing tolerances on the system stability can help engineers to confidently choose reasonable tolerances at design stage. This study presented a theoretical analysis method to determine and compare the effects of dimensional manufacturing tolerances and journal out-of-roundness on system stability by Taguchi method. The results show that the journal out-of-roundness has the most significant effect on the system stability and the journal out-of-roundness appears to stabilize the system. The authors suggest that both dimensional manufacturing tolerances and journal roundness should be taken into account in the design of cylindrical journal bearings.


Nowadays, enterprises can provide computing services through their intranet networks by letting their available resources be used as virtual clusters for scientific computation during idle periods such as nights, weekends, and holidays. Generally, these idle periods do not permit to carry out the computations completely. It is therefore necessary to save the context of uncompleted applications for possible restart. This checkpointing mechanism is subject to resource constraints: the network bandwidth, the disk bandwidth, and the delay T imposed for releasing the workstations. We first introduce a function bw that gives the bandwidth bw(m,V) of a system during the checkpointing of m applications with aggregated memory requirement V. Assuming that this bandwidth is shared equitably among the applications, the scheduling problem becomes a sequence of knapsack problems with nonlinear constraints for which we propose approximate solutions. Experiments carried out on Grid5000 show that the running time of this algorithm is negligible compared to the delay T which is of the order of few minutes. This means that the proposed scheduling algorithm does not induce a significant overhead on the checkpointing process. As a consequence, our mechanism can be incorporated in a batch scheduler.


The micro processing of materials using ultra short pulse (USP) lasers with durations in the low picosecond (ps) and femtosecond (fs) range allows for the possibility of precision material removal on both nanometre and micron scales. Precision material removal can be achieved due to the near diffraction limited focus spot size and ultra-short pulse durations, which provide extremely high peak intensities with minimal thermal impact on the surrounding area. The work presented in this thesis is primarily concerned with the selective ablation of thin films deposited on various surfaces, using lasers with picosecond temporal pulse lengths at 1064 nm. As a result, damage to the substrate is negated through exploitation of the difference in linear absorption coefficients between the thin film and substrate. To elucidate the mechanism of selective processing with USP lasers; absorption, single and multi-pulse ablation effects were investigated in both fixed and variable beam positions. A sample of white float glass vacuum coated with indium tin oxide (ITO) was chosen as the material for this study. Experimental results demonstrate that linear absorption (α (λ)) of the ITO and substrate plays a key role in achieving selective thin film ablation. As a direct consequence of the difference in absorption coefficients at 1064 nm, the single (ϕ_th^1 ) and multi (ϕ_th^n ) pulse ablation thresholds of both materials are altered during the high peak intensity exposure. Selective processing was achieved by exploiting the difference between the ablation thresholds of ITO and glass. When irradiated with multiple pulses the ablation threshold of the substrate was observed to decrease with increasing pulse number. This change in threshold fundamentally limits the selective processing window; therefore incubation (S) effects must be considered when determining the viability of selective processing. For the purpose of practical applications, a series of case studies are also presented which attempt to utilise selective materials processing. These investigations were split into industrial and conservation. Industrial case studies focused on successfully micro processing a small thin film ITO circuit using a Spatial Light Modulator and a new low cost solar cell (F doped SnO2); whilst in conservation, the restoration of a pair of Royal gloves and the removal of unwanted bronze gilding is presented. The application of USP lasers in conservation represents a relatively new field of study where little previous research has been carried out. These case studies not only showcase the wide range of USP applications in which selective processing can be applied but also highlight the limitations of this method.


This Article responds to the nine contributions to a symposium on Living Originalism (Harvard University Press 2011). It considers nine different aspects of the argument in the book: (1) why constitutions around the world contain vague and abstract language, and how a constitution's choice of language connects to the purposes of a constitution; (2) the book's theory of democratic legitimacy; (3) how the book's argument applies to constitutional cultures outside the United States, and the relationship between original and implied meanings; (4) the differences between the book's theory of constitutional interpretation and that of Ronald Dworkin; (5) whether the book's account of legal principles is consistent with legal positivism; (6) the book's account of the U.S. Constitution as both "fallen" and as "higher law;" (7) whether a "protestant" constitutional culture — in which citizens feel authorized to state what the Constitution means for themselves — benefits or harms democratic legitimacy; (8) the book's account of the original meaning of "commerce" as "intercourse," and Congress's power to regulate interstate networks of transportation and communication; and (9) the book's message for living constitutionalists and constitutional originalists.


Blade is one of the key components in wind turbine, which is needed to be enough stiffness, strength and stability. Loading calculation is significant for the blade strength analysis. In this paper, a three-dimension model of wind turbine blade is set up by CATIA software and the blade shape parameters are obtained. Based on blade element momentum (BEM) theory, the load acted on the blade in normal operation is analyzed and calculated. Moreover, stress analysis of blade is carried out by finite element numerical analysis and stress distribution is obtained. At last, Strength checking for wind turbine blade is also achieved. The results of the analysis are reference for wind turbine blade loads research.


A brief summary of various competing visions about the basic principles of quantum Topological Geometrodynamics (TGD) and about tensions between them is given with emphasis on the recent developments. These visions are following. Quantum physics as as classical spinor field geometry of the "world of classical worlds" consisting or light-like 3-surfaces of the 8-D imbedding space H = M×CP2; zero energy ontology in which physical states correspond to physical events; TGD as almost topological quantum field theory for light-like 3-surfaces; physics as a generalized number theory with associativity defining the fundamental dynamical principle and involving a generalization of the number concept based on the fusion of real and p-adic number fields to a larger book like structure, the identification of real and various p-adic physics as algebraic completions of rational physics, and the notion of infinite prime; the identification of configuration space Clifford algebra elements as hyper-octonionic conformal fields with associativity condition implying what might be called number theoretic compacticitation; a generalization of quantum theory based on the introduction of hierarchy of Planck constants realized geometrically via a generalization of the notion of imbedding space H to a book like structure with pages which are coverings and orbifolds of H; the notion of finite measurement resolution realized in terms of inclusions of hyperfinite factors as the fundamental dynamical principle implying a generalization of S-matrix to M-matrix identified as Connes tensor product for positive and negative energy parts of zero energy states; two different kinds of extended super-conformal symmetries assignable to the light-cone of H and to the light-like 3-surfaces leading to a concrete construction recipe of M-matrix in terms of generalized Feynman diagrams having light-like 3-surfaces as lines and allowing to formulate generalized Einstein's equations in terms of coset


PURPOSE
Accurate delineation of organs at risk (OARs) is a precondition for intensity modulated radiation therapy. However, manual delineation of OARs is time consuming and prone to high interobserver variability. Because of image artifacts and low image contrast between different structures, however, the number of available approaches for autosegmentation of structures in the head-neck area is still rather low. In this project, a new approach for automated segmentation of head-neck CT images that combine the robustness of multiatlas-based segmentation with the flexibility of geodesic active contours and the prior knowledge provided by statistical appearance models is presented.

METHODS
The presented approach is using an atlas-based segmentation approach in combination with label fusion in order to initialize a segmentation pipeline that is based on using statistical appearance models and geodesic active contours. An anatomically correct approximation of the segmentation result provided by atlas-based segmentation acts as a starting point for an iterative refinement of this approximation. The final segmentation result is based on using model to image registration and geodesic active contours, which are mutually influencing each other.

RESULTS
18 CT images in combination with manually segmented labels of parotid glands and brainstem were used in a leave-one-out cross validation scheme in order to evaluate the presented approach. For this purpose, 50 different statistical appearance models have been created and used for segmentation. Dice coefficient (DC), mean absolute distance and max. Hausdorff distance between the autosegmentation results and expert segmentations were calculated. An average Dice coefficient of DC = 0.81 (right parotid gland), DC = 0.84 (left parotid gland), and DC = 0.86 (brainstem) could be achieved.

CONCLUSIONS
The presented framework provides accurate segmentation results for three important structures in the head neck area. Compared to a segmentation approach based on using multiple atlases in combination with label fusion, the proposed hybrid approach provided more accurate results within a clinically acceptable amount of time.


J. D. Hudson writes: Anybody reading the recent paper on the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinctions in this Journal (MacLeod et al. 1997) should also read the papers in Geological Society of America Special Paper 307 (Ryder et al. 1996), including especially the commentaries by Ryder and by Glen. These authors summarize the background to the debate over the nature and timing of events around the boundary, and they point to some of the biases that have affected almost all contributors to it. I believe that MacLeod et al. have got it wrong in denying the reality of an abrupt and impact-related catastrophe at the K–T boundary as the major cause of the extinctions at that time, and that their presentation reveals a gradualistic bias in its choice of quotations. But first, in order to acknowledge the points made by Glen, in his exposé of the tendency we all have to prefer corroborative to inconvenient evidence, I should make my own prior standpoint clear. I have written nothing about the K–T boundary previously apart from a brief mention in a review of palaeo-atmospheres (Hudson 1989). I have given many lectures about it, mainly to undergraduate classes. I was long ago intrigued by the attempts by Bramlette (1965), Tappan (1968) and Gartner & Keany (1978) to explain large-scale turnovers in evolutionary history in terms of world-wide events affecting the ocean–atmosphere system, surely one of the most important endeavours historical geologists can undertake. In the post-Alvarez debate, I have been impressed


Purpose
Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the emerging technologies of this time. AI is a widely used technology in library services that can transform the best services in the age of information technology. This paper aims to highlight the use of AI in library operations. Several research has been undertaken on this subject, but that only address a few applications. AI and libraries have a substantial nexus; nevertheless, the use and awareness of AI in library services are still creating question marks addressed in this paper. This study will help the policy stakeholder, librarians and scholars in the field to address these issues before the deployment of AI in library services.

Design/methodology/approach
This study is based on a qualitative method using content analysis techniques. An extensive review of literature on "artificial intelligence", "smart libraries" was carried to ascertain the emerging technologies in the smart library domain. Literature was searched against various keywords like artificial intelligence, smart technologies, Internet of Things, electronic resource management, data mining and ambient intelligence. This study highlights the pros and cons of AI in library services and its possible solutions.

Findings
The findings of this study show that AI is a vibrant technology that can be used in library services; however, some obstacles like adequate funds, the attitude of librarians and technical skills are a few obstacles that hamper AI in library operations. The findings also reveal that using AI in library operations will accelerate libraries in the right direction. Furthermore, this study highlights various applications that can be deployed without spending costs.

Practical implications
This paper may be of interest to academic, librarians, policymakers, researchers and the government to have a perspective on initiatives in the country on application of technology in library services. This study can introduce the current status and potential of this technology to bring the technology revolution in library and information center services.

Social implications
This study will motivate library professionals to take advantage of AI in library services and further accelerate library operations in the right direction.

Originality/value
This study covers the understanding of AI in library services that will help the librarian's and information professionals leverage AI in library scenarios. Furthermore, the practical implication of AI in library services will bring positive change in implementing AI.


This contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium on xenophilia documents and discusses the life and work of an important but neglected early British convert to Islam, the fifth Baron Headley, Rowland George Allanson Allanson-Winn (1855–1935), and also comments on the nature of the kind of xenophilia that can lead to conversion. The essay argues that Lord Headley's attraction to the Muslim world and his religious conversion in 1913 were typical of a small minority of Britons who chose Islam with the guidance of Indian Muslim missionaries in the first half of the twentieth century. But it also shows that Headley's privileged social position enabled him to become a leader of the nascent British Muslim community and an international ambassador for Islam between the wars. A staunch defender of Islam and Muslims, Headley was not wholly uncritical of them and made public pronouncements especially about the spread of sectarianism in Islam and about how that faith needed to be practiced differently in the West.


Solanum piliferum was first described by Bentham in 1840, based on material collected in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. In 1919, the species was transferred to the genus Lycianthes by Friedrich August Georg Bitter and became the type species of his series Piliferae. This article provides a key to separate the Mexican species included by Bitter in series Piliferae, with updated species descriptions, synonymy, typification, distribution, and images of characteristics (trichomes, flowers, fruits, seeds). We address the misplacement of L. stephanocalyx and L. coffeifolia in this series and suggest limiting the series to just the species L. caeciliae, L. pilifera and L. quichensis based on habitat preferences, floral morphology, and seed characters. However, the series is not recircumscribed at this time.


Income segregation is found to be a common phenomenon, which imposes far-reaching implications on housing and social policies. However, the focus has long been on its extent rather than on its distribution. This study investigates the asymmetry of income segregation and the relationship between income segregation and spatial autocorrelation of housing rent in Hong Kong, by studying the census data in 2001 and 2006, compiled by the Hong Kong SAR Government. The result shows that segregation is more intense among high household income districts, and the pattern is highly correlated with the spatial autocorrelation of housing rent. This phenomenon helps explain the underlying cause of income segregation. We contend that positive feedback effects are imposed between the quality of land attributes and income segregation, thus resulting in a co-reinforcing and self-organizing force between spatial autocorrelation of housing rent and household income segregation (analogous to the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction). The contention is tested empirically in Hong Kong, where is recognized as the most income-unequal city by UN-Habitat in 2008. Providing a very large-scale public housing policy but relying strongly on land sale income, Hong Kong provides a very good natural experiment for an empirical test of the asymmetry of income and segregation as well as the relationship between income segregation and spatial autocorrelation of housing rent


With increasing frequency, prosecutors are demanding that corporations act as "good corporate citizens" - which, to prosecutors, means cooperating fully in any investigation. These demands for cooperation present corporation with a dilemma. These prosecutorial demands for cooperation can place a corporation (or, more accurately, its officers and directors) in an extraordinarily difficult position. On the one hand, the cost of cooperating can be significant: the cooperating corporation may be required to terminate employees, disclose confidential documents, and waive privileges - all of which may expose the corporation to substantial civil liability. On the other hand, the cost of not cooperating can be even more devastating, as few firms can survive in indictment. This Article examines corporate cooperation and the difficulties it can create for corporate decision-makers. The Article first describes the principles of vicarious guilt that give prosecutors the power to demand corporate cooperation, and then examines how prosecutors exercise their discretion in deciding whether to charge corporations with crimes. Next, the Article examines the cooperators. Just as a corporation's guilt is only vicarious, so too its cooperation can be only vicarious. In the end, it is not the corporation that cooperates, but its officers and directors - the men and women who make decisions for the corporation. For these vicarious snitches, the process can be a minefield, filled with conflicting loyalties and inevitable self-interest. After examining a series of recent high-profile corporate prosecutions or investigations, the Article reaches two conclusions: first, a corporation's best hope to avoid indictment is to engage in "super cooperation" that will convince prosecutors of its "good corporate citizenship"; and second, that "super cooperation" may be irrevocably hampered if the firm does not quickly change its top management.


OBJECTIVE
To study whether a trained outreach nurse practitioner could provide a service that is as good as, or better than, that provided at a hospital outpatient clinic for people who had been diagnosed with dystonia and required treatment with botulinum toxin.

DESIGN
Randomized trial.

SETTING
An outpatient department of a regional neurorehabilitation center and patients' homes in northern England.

PATIENTS
Eighty-nine patients with a clinical diagnosis of spasmodic torticollis, blepharospasm, or hemifacial spasm who had ongoing treatment of dystonia with botulinum injections.

INTERVENTIONS
Individuals were randomly allocated either to receive ongoing botulinum injections at home by the nurse practitioner or to continue attending the hospital outpatient clinic and be injected by medical staff.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
The following measures were recorded at each visit: demographic descriptors, dosage of botulinum toxin, treatment interval, side-effect profile, external referrals, and a questionnaire to determine qualitative opinion.

RESULTS
Efficacy and duration of the botulinum was similar in both groups. Botulinum dosage and side-effect profiles were similar in both groups except for significantly less dysphagia (p < .018) in the home group (7 vs 24 occasions). Subjective opinion by the patients indicated statistically significant preference for home injections. Economic analysis indicated that the overall cost of the treatment was less in the home injection group (total cost per visit $36.90 [ pound 23.36] vs $79.00 [ pound 50.01]), but this difference was not statistically significant.

CONCLUSION
A trained outreach nurse practitioner provided a service that was as good as, and in certain aspects better than, that provided by a hospital outpatient clinic. The nurse practitioner provided a more flexible, much appreciated, safe, and cost-effective service for this client group. Wider use of outreach nurse practitioners for dystonia should be encouraged.


Variations of the abductor digiti minimi muscle are a rare occurrence as compared to anomalous thenar musculature. Surgico-anatomical basis of such accessory muscular slips should be discussed in detail. This case report presents a rare bilateral existence of accessory slips of abductor digiti minimi originating from the antebrachial fascia and flexor retinaculum in a male cadaver. Hypertrophy of these muscular heads can be occult etiologies in causation of ulnar entrapment neuropathies. Such anomalous muscles can prove to be a boon or bane for an operating surgeon. On one hand, they can be the guiding factor in planning myofascial flaps and on the other; they can cause unwanted iatrogenic complications during antero-medial approach through the wrist tendons. Nevertheless, the presence of accessory bellies in the hypothenar eminence deserve a special mention especially if present bilaterally. The authors have attempted to assign an embryological explanation for the above anomaly and have discussed its possible link with various clinical syndromes.


: In this paper, we develop the theoretical and empirical properties of a new class of multivariate GARCH models capable of estimating large time-varying covariance matrices, Dynamic Conditional Correlation Multivariate GARCH. We show that the problem of multivariate conditional variance estimation can be simplified by estimating univariate GARCH models for each asset, and then, using transformed residuals resulting from the first stage, estimating a conditional correlation estimator. The standard errors for the first stage parameters remain consistent, and only the standard errors for the correlation parameters need be modified. We use the model to estimate the conditional covariance of up to 100 assets using S&P 500 Sector Indices and Dow Jones Industrial Average stocks, and conduct specification tests of the estimator using an industry standard benchmark for volatility models. This new estimator demonstrates very strong performance especially considering ease of implementation of the estimator.


The problem of communication delay in bilateral or teleoperation systems is even more emphasized with the use of the internet for communication, which may give rise to loss of transparency and even instability. To address the problem, numerous methods have been proposed. This study is among the few recent studies taking a disturbance observer approach to the problem of time delay, and introduces a novel sliding-mode observer to overcome specifically the effects of communication delay in the feedback loop. The observer operates in combination with a PD+ controller which controls the system dynamics, while also compensating load torque uncertainties on the slave side. To this aim, an EKF based load estimation algorithm is performed on the slave side. The performance of this approach is tested with computer simulations for the teleoperation of a 1-DOF robotic arm. The simulations reveal an acceptable amount of accuracy and transparency between the estimated slave and actual slave position under both constant and random measurement delay and variable and step-type load variations on the slave side, motivating the use of the approach for internet-based bilateral control systems.


To identify novel genes involved in the molecular pathogenesis of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) we performed a serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE) in CLL cells, and compared this with healthy B cells (nCD19(+)). We found a high level of similarity among CLL subtypes, but a comparison of CLL versus nCD19(+) libraries revealed 55 genes that were over-represented and 49 genes that were down-regulated in CLL. A gene ontology analysis revealed that TOSO, which plays a functional role upstream of Fas extrinsic apoptosis pathway, was over-expressed in CLL cells. This finding was confirmed by real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction in 78 CLL and 12 nCD19(+) cases (P < .001). We validated expression using flow cytometry and tissue microarray and demonstrated a 5.6-fold increase of TOSO protein in circulating CLL cells (P = .013) and lymph nodes (P = .006). Our SAGE results have demonstrated that TOSO is a novel over-expressed antiapoptotic gene in CLL.


One of the key criticisms of the ethical review process is the time taken to decision, and associated resource use. A key source of delay is that most submissions are required to respond to at least one request for further information or clarification from the Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC). This study audited the request letters of a single Australian public health HREC using content analysis. Twenty-four submissions were analysed, including 355 individual request elements. Most submissions received a single request letter. There was a mean number of 14.2 (SD = 5.5) elements per letter for the first request and a mean of 2.1 (SD = 1.2) for subsequent requests. Administrative errors were the most common source of request for further information, occurring in all submissions. The second most common theme was the content of the Participant Information and Consent Form, occurring in 79% of submissions. Other common themes, present in over 50% of submissions, concerned: data collection and study procedures; general ethical considerations; recruitment and consent; site, setting or patient pool; research design and methodology; and data management and security. In terms of the general purpose of the HREC comments, 44% were direct corrections or specific requests for changes, 42% were asking for more information or clarification of existing information, and 14% were the HREC expressing concerns about an element of the study, without directly suggesting a change. Overall, the study provides some evidence to show that the quality of the submission (ensuring correct attachments, up to date documents, clear information etc.) could account for a significant proportion of the burden and delay associated with ethical review.


In Wason's selection task, participants select whichever of four cards could provide evidence about the truth or falsity of a conditional rule. As our meta-analysis of hundreds of experiments corroborates, participants tend to overlook one of the cards that could falsify the rule. 15 distinct theories aim to explain this phenomenon and others, but many of them presuppose that cards are selected independently of one another. We show that this assumption is false: Shannon's entropy for selections is reliably redundant in comparison with those of 10,000 simulated experiments using the same four individual probabilities for each real experiment. This result rules out those theories presupposing independent selections. Of the remaining theories, only two predict the frequencies of selections, one (due to Johnson-Laird & Wason, 1970a) provides a better fit to the experimental data than the other (due to Klauer et al., 2007). We discuss the implications of these results.


Much current research has focused on employing network-on-chips (NoC's) for communication among numerous cores on large scale SoC's. One side benefit of such designs is the potential to utilize this communication infrastructure with little modification for manufacturing test delivery. In this paper the authors present a test scheduling approach for such designs that minimizes test time through high-speed test delivery over the network and lower rate test execution at the target cores. To achieve this, test data are interleaved over the network in a time division multiplexed (TDM) approach. Experimental results with the ITC'02 SoC benchmarks are proposed that show substantial test time reduction beyond single speed techniques. Further enhancements are presented that overcome some deficiencies in the simplest approach


Abstract Natural circulation loop (NCL) is mainly used as passive cooling system in nuclear power plants to ensure safety during pump failure and station blackout. Stable operation without flow instability is the most desirable operational mode of natural circulation loop for passive cooling. The present work deals with numerical analysis on the effect of inclination of horizontal leg of a rectangular loop working in single phase and presence of orifice on the thermohydraulic behaviour of NCL, using commercial CFD code ANSYS FLUENT 19.0. The effect of temporal variation of loop mass flow rate and temperature difference across the cooler section is compared for inclined loop with and without orifice. It is observed that the flow stability attained in the loop at inclination h = 308 can be achieved at h = 108 with orifice, with a reduction in the loop mass flow rate of 28.57%. The reduction in loop mass flow rate is accompanied by an increase in temperature difference across the cooler of 46.67%.


This paper— part of a comprehensive project on industry clusters and rural competitiveness— explores the role of industrial specialization and rurality on economic performance for counties in the continental United States. Regression models are estimated that evaluate the impact of industry cluster-specific employment shares on per capita income growth overall, as well as in a sequence of different contextual settings. Overall, the results suggest that economic disparities across U.S. counties will diminish. The results also suggest that economic specialization "per se" is not a guarantee for economic growth. Instead, economic growth very much depends on the type of specialization and the contextual setting, with distinct differences between, for example, the metropolitan sphere, the rural sphere, and the rural-metro interface.


Characteristics of using valproic acid drugs in women, from puberty to menopause period, are reviewed. Based on initial treatment efficacy, type of epileptic seizures and a form of epilepsy, the author emphasizes the practical use of valproates during pregnancy in dependence on the situation. Several scenarios of pregnancy course and possible treatment tactics are presented.


OBJECTIVE
To determine whether partial liquid ventilation (PLV) affects the risk of nosocomial pneumonia.

STUDY DESIGN
To assess in vitro bacterial adhesion and viability after liquid perfluorocarbon exposure and to assess bacterial recovery after partial liquid ventilation in vivo in rabbits.

SETTING
University animal research facility.

SUBJECTS
Thirty-six New Zealand White rabbits.

INTERVENTIONS
To assess adhesions, radiolabeled Escherichia coli were exposed to perfluorocarbon, incubated against artificial biosurfaces, and compared with nonexposed controls. Bacterial viability in vitro was assessed by exposing broth suspensions of Pasteurella multocida to perflubron for various times. Controls were run in parallel without exposure. Quantitative cultures were performed to determine viability. We undertook short-term and recovery in vivo investigations. The lungs of treated animals were filled with perflubron (approximately 18 mL/kg), and the control rabbits were ventilated without perflubron in an identical fashion. Cryopreserved aliquots of P. multocida were administered via an endotracheal tube. The short-term study animals were ventilated for 6 hrs before being killed. The recovery animals were ventilated for 2-4 hrs, extubated, and killed 20 hrs later. The lungs were removed, aseptically minced, and homogenized. Serial dilutions of the homogenate were quantitatively cultured by manual counting of colonies on agar plates. The recovered organisms were typed for species by the clinical microbiology laboratory.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS
The adhesion of bacteria to immobilized bronchoalveolar lavage and human saliva, respectively, was reduced by 65%+/-7% and 66%+/-1% (p < .05; n = 5) after exposure to perflubron and by 63%+/-9% and 68%+/-6% after exposure to FC-77 (p < .05; n = 5); however, adhesion was not affected by exposure to Rimar. There was no difference in bacterial viability between the control and perflubron-exposed bacteria (n = 5). The in vivo study demonstrated a ten-fold or greater reduction in the number of recovered bacteria in the partial liquid ventilated group compared with the control group.

CONCLUSIONS
This study suggests that different perfluorocarbons affect adhesions differently. Perflubron and FC-77 appear to decrease bacterial adhesion, whereas Rimar does not. Rerflubron does not have a direct bactericidal effect. Furthermore, PLV with perflubron decreased the number of viable bacteria per gram of tissue after an intentional inoculation of the airway, suggesting that the risk of nosocomial pneumonia is unlikely to be increased during PLV and may, in fact, be reduced in patients supported with PLV.


Promoting Equity, Cooperation and Innovation in the Fields of Transboundary Waters and Natural Resources Management offers publications and essays by colleagues around the world on the prolific work and scientific contribution of Dr David J.H. Phillips, giving insight into a remarkable and ingenious scientist who lived life to the utmost.


The eastern North Pacific gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) population is considered "recovered" since the days of commercial whaling, with a population of over 25,000 animals. However, gray whale habitat is changing rapidly due to urbanization of the migratory coastal corridor, increases in shipping, and climate change altering water conditions and prey distribution. Increased single strandings and intermittent large-scale mortality events have occurred over the past 20 years, raising questions about how gray whale health is affected by whale population size (density dependence), climate change, and coastal development. To understand the impacts of these factors on health and the role of health changes in whale population dynamics, increased understanding of the pathogenesis and epidemiology of diseases in gray whales is needed. To date, most information on gray whale health and disease is in single case reports, in sections of larger papers on whale ecology, or in technical memoranda and conference proceedings. Here we review existing data on gray whale health and disease to provide a synthesis of available information and a baseline for future studies, and suggest priorities for future study of gray whale health. The latter include nutritional studies to distinguish annual physiological fasting from starvation leading to mortality, identification of endemic and novel viruses through increased use of molecular techniques, quantifying parasitic infections to explore interactions among prey shifts and parasite infection and body condition, as well as enhancing necropsy efforts to identify stochastic causes of mortality such as vessel strikes, entanglements, and predation. Integration of health and disease studies on individual animals with population monitoring and models of whale/prey dynamics will require interdisciplinary approaches to understand the role of health changes in population dynamics of this coastal whale.


CARE-W was a joint European initiative to develop a framework for water network rehabilitation. The project was supported by the European Commission under the Fifth Framework Programme for Research and Development.

The aim of CARE-W was to support European water companies in their decisions on upgrading their water supply. The system has been developed for and tested by cities representing all parts of Europe.

CARE-W consists of software dealing with fundamental instruments for estimating the current and future condition of water networks, including tools to assess performance indicators (PI), to predict pipe failures (FAIL) and to calculate water supply reliability (REL).

Based on the results of these tools, annual rehabilitation projects are selected and ranked (ARP tool). Information of network is further used for the estimation of long-term investments needs (LTP).

The tools are operated jointly within the 'CARE-W Manager', which also contains facilities for using pipe network databases, geographical information systems (GIS) and input/output routines. The results from using the procedures are presented by reports, in tables and graphically.

Aimed at planning engineers, water utilities and municipalities and consultants working in the increasingly growing field of the planning of rehabilitation of water networks in cities.

This title belongs to European Water Research Series

ISBN: 9781843390916 (Print)

ISBN: 9781780403953 (eBook)


Background: Identification of obesity and other risk factors for cardiovascular disease in childhood is strongly recommended for prevention of the diseases in adulthood. Objectives: To determine the prevalence of the conventional cardiovascular risk factors among primary school children aged 6-15 years in Urban Dar es Salaam and Rural Morogoro. Methods: Anthropometric and blood pressure measurements were determined using standard techniques. Metabolic variables such as blood sugar, total cholesterol, low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and triglycerides levels were assessed. A questionnaire was used to assess socio-demographic characteristics, involvement in physical activities and active and passive cigarette smoking. Results: Among the 508 studied children systolic hypertension was found in 11.4%, diastolic hypertension in 8.1% and combined hypertension in 3.9%. Obesity was observed in 5.3%. Four percent of the subjects were found to have elevated levels of total cholesterol and 2% elevated levels of LDL-cholesterol. Passive smoking was reported from 35%, while only 1.2% had a history of active cigarette smoking. None had blood sugar levels that met the World Health Organisation's definition of diabetes mellitus. Subjects from affluent families were more likely to be hypertensive and obese. Most of the children were physically active. Conclusions: The prevalence of the conventional cardiovascular risk factors is relatively low among children in this society. A significant difference was, however, observed between children from different socio-economic backgrounds. Keywords: Cardiovascular risk factors, children, urban, rural


Two broad lines of research have developed on code alternation or code-switching. One line focuses on structural issues related mostly to intra-sentential code-mixing and is based in formal syntactic and psycholinguistic approaches to language. The other line of research focuses on identifying the types of code-switching patterns, their social functions and meanings and the social motivations for code-switching. It applies methods of discourse and conversation analysis. Despite similar goals, these lines of investigation have proceeded separately without much cross-fertilization. The aim of this paper is to critically examine the main tenets of these approaches in the light of data from one contact setting involving related languages and to highlight ways in which the two approaches might complement each other. It argues that since codeswitching is an important meaning making resource, analysis of its functions should precede analysis of structural issues as the latter impact on the structure of codeswitching practices


"Cultural interaction in the Middle East since the Rise of Islam" - such was the title of a combined research project of the Universities of Leiden and Groningen aimed at describing the various ways in which the Christian communities of the Middle East expressed their distinct cultural identity in Muslim societies. As part of the project the symposium "Redefining Christian Identity, Christian cultural strategies since the rise of Islam" took place at Groningen University on April 7-10, 1999. This book contains the proceedings of this conference.From the articles it becomes clear that a number of distinct "cultural strategies" can be identified, some of which were used very frequently, others only in certain groups or at particular periods of time. The three main strategies that are represented in the papers of this volume are: (i) reinterpretation of the pre-Islamic Christian heritage; (ii) inculturation of elements from the new Islamic context; (iii) isolation from the Islamic context. Viewed in time, it is clear that the "reinterpretation" of older Christian heritage was particularly important in the first two centuries after the rise of Islam, the seventh and eighth centuries, that "inculturation" was the dominant theme of the Abbasid period, in the ninth to twelfth centuries, whereas from the Mongol period onwards, from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, "isolation" more and more often occurs, although inculturation of elements from the predominantly Muslim environment never came to a complete standstill.


Root canal refactoring is a software development activity that is intended to improve dependability-related attributes such as modifiability and reusability. Despite being an activity that contributes to these attributes, deciding when applying root canal refactoring is far from trivial. In fact, finding which elements should be refactored is not a cut-and-dried task. One of the main reasons is the lack of consensus on which characteristics indicate the presence of structural degradation. Thus, we evaluated whether the density and diversity of multiple automatically detected symptoms can be used as consistent indicators of the need for root canal refactoring. To achieve our goal, we conducted a multi-case exploratory study involving 6 open source systems and 2 systems from our industry partners. For each system, we identified the classes that were changed through one or more root canal refactorings. After that, we compared refactored and non-refactored classes with respect to the density and diversity of degradation symptoms. We also investigated if the most recurrent combinations of symptoms in refactored classes can be used as strong indicators of structural degradation. Our results show that refactored classes usually present higher density and diversity of symptoms than non-refactored classes. However, root canal refactorings that are performed by developers in practice may not be enough for reducing degradation, since the vast majority had little to no impact on the density and diversity of symptoms. Finally, we observed that symptom combinations in refactored classes are similar to the combinations in non-refactored classes. Based on our findings, we elicited an initial set of requirements for automatically recommending root canal refactorings.


Social marketing has become a key component of policy initiatives aimed at reducing the incidence of domestic abuse. However, its efficacy remains debated, with most measures of effectiveness being somewhat crude. More subtle effects of social marketing, such as the boomerang effect whereby the message engenders the opposite effect to that intended, have been detected, suggesting a need for modes of analysis sensitive to the multiple ways in which viewers react to social opprobrium. This article attempts to deliver just this. It begins with a short history and critique of the concept of social marketing. It then proceeds to explore the utility of the more complex notion that viewers often identify with the subject positions thrown open by social marketing on a quite temporary basis, before reconfiguring them. Using the responses of domestic abuse perpetrators exposed to the UK Government's This is Abuse campaign film, the article shows how contradictory identifications with both anti-violence messages and victim-blaming discourses are negotiated by those young men prone to perpetrating domestic abuse. The article concludes by exploring how effectiveness might be better conceptualised and assessed with regard to the impact of anti-violence social marketing that speaks to domestic abuse perpetrators.


Fault detection in electrical drives can be really challenging, especially when the input data is collected from an operational electrical machine. In order to prevent machine damages and downtimes, it is really important to detect pre-fault conditions. This paper presents the detection of stator inter-turn fault for Synchronous Reluctance Motor (SynRM) with a severity as low as 1.3%. After the transformation of the three-phase currents using Extended Park Vector (EPV) approach, the temporal features were calculated. Thereafter, the geometry of the features has been studied by using the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and the Curvilinear Component Analysis (CCA) to estimate the best intrinsic dimensionality and extract the most significant features. Finally, a variety of classifiers have been trained with this feature-set (FS) and the shallow neural network has proved to give the best performance.


Even though unidimensional item response theory (IRT) provides a better framework for practical test settings than classical test theory (CTT), theoretical and empirical evidence shows that most response data violate the assumption of unidimensionality. There are several computer programs dedicated to estimating parameters based on the multidimensional perspective (MIRT). However, their accessibility is still costly, and they are not easy to use. In this paper, we present a SAS macro called MDIRT-FIT, to increase accessibility to the benefits obtained from this recent measurement theory development. The program is developed to estimate parameters based on a compensatory multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) model for dichotomous data. The full information item factor analysis model with an EM algorithm suggested in Bock & Aitken (1988) is implemented in the SAS programs. The estimation program written in SAS/IML® provides both parameters of MIRT and parameters of the factor analysis model with their associated standard errors and overall model fit statistics. The maximum number of latent traits that can be estimated with this program is limited to five latent dimensions because of both computational burden and practical sufficiency. The accuracy and stability of the SAS macro is examined by utilizing simulated data of examinees' responses.


ABSTRACT In Switzerland, universities of applied sciences were created with a strong applied research mandate in the mid-1990s. Together with traditional universities they form a functionally differentiated higher education system consisting of equivalent but different types of institutions. The state of the differentiation is discussed controversially and there is speculation about a decreasing practical orientation of lecturers at universities of applied sciences. Through a comparative analysis of data on lecturer profiles from two different surveys, this contribution explores whether differentiation or convergence between the two types of higher education institutions can be observed. The comparison of the lecturers' qualifications and their activities in research and teaching shows that overall, the differentiation required by educational policy is mostly met. While traditional university lecturers have a stronger academic background and are oriented more towards research, their colleagues at universities of applied sciences accumulate considerably more practical experience and are less involved in research. However, there are indications that research at traditional universities is to a certain extent applied in its character. Also, disciplinary differences may play a stronger role in differentiation than the type of institution.


This communication presents four contrasted and near-caricatured scenarios of retail location and distribution, and compares them on the bases of both road occupancy rates and greenhouse gas emissions. Two main families of scenarios are defined: retailing land-use scenarios, based on the location of the different retailing activities of a city, and end-consumer delivery organisational scenarios, based on the definition of new services to deliver end-consumers, at home or to reception points. Those scenarios are simulated using an integrated approach combining inter-establishement goods transport flows, shopping trips and end-consumer deliveries. The simulation approach is able to show the relation between several aspects of retailing deployment (store location, catchment area's supply, urban retailing planning policies) and both upstream distribution of goods to retailers and downstream usage of private vehicles for shopping. Although scenarios are extreme and near-caricatured, they are able to identify the limits and forces of the different retailing strategies in urban zones.


The strain encoding (SENC) technique encodes regional strain of the heart into the acquired MR images and produces two images with two different tunings so that longitudinal strain, on the short-axis view, or circumferential strain on the long-axis view, are measured. Interleaving acquisition is used to shorten the acquisition time of the two tuned images by 50%, but it suffers from errors in the strain calculations due to inter-tunings motion of the heart, which is the motion between two successive acquisitions. In this work, a method is proposed to correct for the inter-tunings motion by estimating the motioninduced shift in the spatial frequency of the encoding pattern, which depends on the strain rate. Numerical data is generated to test the proposed method and real images of human subjects are used for validation The results show an improvement in strain calculations so as to relax the imaging constraints on spatial and temporal resolutions and improve image quality.


Neutral hydrogen surveys in the last decade have revealed a new class of galaxies where the gas component can be dominant compared to the stellar one ((Mm/L b 1). These objects may be either young ( 1) with gas-mass-to-stellar light ratios larger than typical dwarf irregular galaxies. These systems should be favoured hosts for starburst, yet a faint star formation region has been detected in only one object. Are these galaxies truly young Or rather, what inhibits the conversion of gas into stars slowing down their evolution Is there a connection with the environment they are evolving in the attempt to answer some of the above questions we have analysed data in Hi, Ha, V and / bands (taken with the Hubble Space Telescope) and the optical spectrum of the Hll region of one dwarf (HIPASS J1337-39). In particular we have constructed /, (V - I) Colour Magnitude Diagrams (CMDs) and we have compared the data-sets with theoretical models, using isochrones of various metallicities (Bertelli et al. 1994) and simulated CMDs (Harris & Zaritsky 2001). All three galaxies have well determined Red Giant Branches (RGBs) which put them in the Centaurus A group at distances between 4.5 and 5 Mpc. The well populated RGBs suggest that these systems cannot . be younger than 2 Gyr. The evidence of asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars in two out of three galaxies suggest that they contain populations with ages of up to 10 Gyr. Older Horizontal Branch (HB) and RR Lyrae stars would be two magnitudes fainter than the photometric limit reached with the HST at this distance, therefore we cannot infer the presence of an old (> 10 Gyr) stellar population. The age-metallicity degeneracy has been broken in one case (HIPASS J1337-39) where we measured a low metal abundance (Z 1/30 solar) from the analysis of the Hll region. The remaining two galaxies do also show properties which are at least consistent with similarly low metallicities. From the comparison of the observed and model CMD's we infer that all three galaxies are gas-rich because their Star Formation Rates have been very low during their long lives (>10--3 A/ yr_1). We argue that in such systems, star formation (SF) may have been sporadic and local, although one object (HIPASS J1321-31) has a peculiar red plume in its CMD suggesting that most of its stars were formed in a "miniburst" 300--500 Myr ago. Neither their low Hi surface densities, nor their low metal content favour high star formation rates or starbursts, although we can not exclude connections with the local environment. Two out of three galaxies seem to be located in the outskirts of the group, being at about or less than 1 Mpc from the more massive galaxies of the group. The low metal abundances may be the consequence of the ejection of enriched material via supernovae-driven winds during the SF episodes, but it is likely they were not violent enough to blow away the majority of gas (Mac Low k Ferrara 1999, Ferrara & Tolstoy 2000). The question of why there are no similar dwarf galaxies in the Local Group remains open and the study of similar objects in the nearby groups is necessary to widen the sample of galaxies with such properties. In the Appendix A we present the first part of a still ongoing project with the aim of studying the stellar population of "retarded" galaxies at the other end of the mass scale---spirals with Mhi > 10io A/ and Mhi/Lb 1---The optical, near IR and 21cm observations are briefly presented and discussed.


Autophagy has been reported to maintain intracellular homeostasis through lysosomal-mediated degradation of damaged organelles and proteins. Recent evidence suggests that autophagy regulates many physiological and pathological process including aging, reactive oxygen species levels, and inflammation. The role of autophagy in endothelial cell biology is poorly understood. Electron microscopic analysis of human umbilical vein endothelial cell (HUVEC) surprisingly demonstrated spontaneous fusion of autophagosomes with Weibel-Palade bodies, endothelial specific organelles containing abundant von Willebrand factor (VWF). Knockdown of the essential autophagy gene Atg7 resulted in a reduction in release of VWF from HUVECs after histamine (2.07±0.02 mU/mL vs. 1.30±0.02 mU/mL), or vascular endothelial growth factor (3.10±0.01 mU/mL vs. 1.22±0.03 mU/mL) stimulation. Pharmacological inhibition of autophagy showed similar results. We generated mice that have an endothelial specific deletion of Atg7. These mice have normal blood pressure (Control; 113±8/87±6 mmHg vs. Atg7 deficient; 119±7/88±4 mmHg) and normal vessel architecture. However, endothelial specific Atg7 deficient mice showed a reduction of plasma VWF and marked elevation of their bleeding times (The number of mice with bleeding time of more than 10min; Control=1/17, Atg7 deficient 6/9). Thus, an intact endothelial autophagy machinery is necessary for VWF secretion and hemostasis.


Background Microorganisms perform their metabolic processes rapidly with remarkable specificity under ambient conditions catalyzed by their diverse enzymes – mediated reactions. The introduction of microbial enzymes as an alternative to harsh chemical technologies has led to intensive exploration of natural microbial biodiversity to discover microbial enzymes with possible application in waste recycling under appropriate conditions (Gautam et al., 2010). Cellulase is the key enzyme for the conversion of cellulosic materials into simple sugars which can serve as feed-stock for the production of different chemicals and fuels via anaerobic fermentation (Ryu and Mandels, 1980). Cellulolytic enzymes play an important role in natural biodegradation processes in which plant ligno-cellulosic materials are effectively degraded by cellulolytic fungi, bacteria, Actinomycetes and protozoa. Many fungi capable of degrading cellulose synthesize large quantities of extracellular cellulases that are more efficient in depolymerising the cellulose substrate. Objectives This research was to carry out an environmental surveillance for cellulose-degrading microorganisms present in wastes dumpsites in Lagos, southwest Nigeria. Methods Soil and leachate samples were collected from three dumpsites in Lagos following aseptic procedures and the microbial species were isolated using Nutrient agar and Potato-dextrose agar media respectively. The cellulase-producing microbial species were characterized following conventional and standard methods. They were then screened for cellulase activity using the Cellulose Congo-Red plate technique. The diameters of clear zone of inhibition were measured in millimeters (mm) (Lu et al., 2005; Guatam et al., 2012). Result All isolates were cellulase producers, with Bacillus licheniformis having the highest cellulase activity and hydrolytic value (34mm and 8.5 respectively) among the bacterial species while Aspergillus sp. had the highest cellulase activity (63mm) and hydrolytic value (15.8) among the fungal species. The colonial and microscopic characterization of the fungal isolates showed that they belong to the genera; Penicillium, Aspergillus and Trichoderma. Conclusion This result suggested that these microorganisms utilized the available sources of cellulose present in wastes both for growth and biodegradative processes. Consequently, this will enhance the sustainable solid waste management practice for megacities as well as the public health in developing economies.


We examine ten antecedent connector models in the framework of a singleton or nonsingleton fuzzy logic system (FLS), to establish which models can be used. In this work, a usable connector model must lead to a separable firing degree that is a closed-form and piecewise-differentiable function of the membership function parameters and also the parameter characterizing that connector model. Our analysis shows that: for a singleton FLS where the Mamdani-product or Mamdani-minimum implication method is used, all ten antecedent connector models are usable; for a nonsingleton FLS where the Mamdani-product implication method is used, only one antecedent connector model is usable; and for a nonsingleton FLS where the Mamdani-minimum implication method is used, none of the ten antecedent connector models is usable. We also show, by examples, that the parameter of the antecedent connector model provides additional freedom in adjusting a FLS, so that the FLS has the potential to achieve better performance than a FLS that uses the traditional product or minimum t-norm for the antecedent connections.


COLLABORATIVE SOFTWARE AGENTS SUPPORT FOR THE TEXPROS DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM by Jrtian Lin This dissertation investigates the use of active rules that are embedded in markup documents. Active rules are used in a markup representation by integrating Collaborative Software Agents with TEXPROS (abbreviation for TEXt PROcessing System) [Liu and Ng 1996J to create a powerful distributed document management system. Such markup documents with embedded active rules are called Active Documents. For fast retrieval purposes, when we need to generate a customized Internet folder organization, we first define the Folder Organization Query Language (FO-QL) to solve data categorization problems. FO-QL defines the folder organization query process that automatically retrieves links of documents deposited into folders and then constructs a folder organization in either a centralized document repository or multiple distributed document repositories. Traditional documents are stored as static data that do not provide any dynamic capabilities for accessing or interacting with the document environment. The dynamic and distributed nature of both markup data and markup rules do not merely respond to requests for information, but intelligently anticipate, adapt, and actively seek ways to support the computing processes. This outcome feature conquers the static nature of the traditional documents. An Office Automation Definition Language (OADL) with active rules is defined for constructing the TEXPROS 's dual modeling approach and workflow events representation. Active Documents are such agent-supported OADL documents. With embedded rules and self-describing data features, Active Documents provide capability of collaborative interactions with software agents. Data transformation and data integration are both data processing problems but little research has focused on the markup documents to generate a versatile folder organization. Some of the research merely provides manual browsing in a document repository to find the right document. This browsing is time consuming and unrealistic, especially in multiple document repositories. With FO-QL, one can create a customized folder organization on demand. COLLABORATIVE SOFTWARE AGENTS SUPPORT FOR THE TEXPROS DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM


Idiosyncrasy of certain persons to drugs, causing various skin rashes, is of common occurrence, but the proof that an eruption is due to the ingestion of a drug is generally lacking. In many cases of repeated rashes invariably following the ingestion of a drug, such as quinin or balsam of copaiba, the cause and effect are so obvious that further proof is seldom sought and generally is not necessary. The field covered by skin manifestations of untoward action of chemicals, toxins of various kinds and foreign proteins, whether applied externally, taken through the alimentary canal or injected into tissues or directly into the blood stream, is enormous, and with the introduction of new drugs is of unlimited possibilities. Idiosyncrasy to drugs may be described as the unusual reactions of certain persons to drugs, whether applied externally, taken into the stomach, or injected into tissues or the blood stream; it may


Financial reports are the resource for the decision making of investors. Because financial
reports are made according to accounting standards, the changes in these .standards would change the
way investors view the data of financial "reports. The shift to International Financial
Reporting Standard (IFRS) has affected the financial reporting of almost all countries around the
world, including Indooesia. Seriously planned since 2007, IFRS convergence in Indonesia was
predicted to be completed in 2012.
The issuance of IFRS based PSAK effective in January 1, 2011 has required the public
companies to restate their financial statements for year 20 I 0 which are provided as comparison
balance in financial statements 2011, to comply with the converged PSAK. IFRS with its high quality
is believed to enhance the accounting information quality by minimizing the opportunity
for earnings management. Thus, this converge~ affects the level of conservatism in presenting
the financial position and financial performance of the companies. Total equity is utilized as the
proxy for financial position. Total profit (net income based on PSAK before IFRS convergence
in 2011 and total comprehensive income based on IFR.S...converged PSAK) will be utilized as the
proxy for financial performance. Changes in level of conservatism are able to trigger changes in
key financial indicators as well. Two key financial indicators chosen in this research are gearing
and current ratio. -Gearing -ratio is used to -present the long-term view while current ratio is used
to present the short-term view. In order to study the changes on those financial information, this
research compares the financial data for year 2010 according to PSAK 2010 with the financial
statements 2010 which were restated to comply with PSAK 2011 (presented in financial
statements 2011). All companies listed in Indonesian Stock Exchange on 2010-2012 were used,
except property, real estate and building construction and financial institution sector.
-Comparability analysis utilized Oray's Index, Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test and Median Test.
Results of this research found that IFRS convergence on 2011 in Indonesia led to better
financial position, financial performance and key financial ratio in significant manner. These
results show that IFRS convergence led to lower level of conservatism. The financial results
shown based on IFRS convergence effective from January 1, 2011 triggered less conservative
financial presentation.


More than 1.4 billion people lack access to electricity (The International Energy Agency (IEA) 2010, p.248; World Bank 2008; Legros et.al 2009). With the current electrification policy, the total number of people lacking energy will stay at 1.2 billion people in 2030, due to the high population growth (IEA 2010, p.248). This is especially prominent in Sub-Saharan Africa and India, where population growth exceeds electrification rates (Barnes & Foley 2004). There is a strong correlation between energy access, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the Human Development Index (HDI) (Aqeel & Butt 2001). Rural electrification (RE) is important in bringing both direct and indirect social benefits for communities, ranging from higher standards of living to better health facilities and education (Palit & Chaurey 2011). RE has evolved into both a practice and an area of research, with an increasing attention the last two decades (Schillebeeckx et.al 2012). It has been shown that to increase rural electricity access, renewable technologies will be cheaper and faster than fossil fuels, as the need for central grid expansion is removed. (Zerriffi 2007, p.18; Krishnaswamy 2010). However, the access to risk capital for up-front investments has been a problem, which calls for private participation (Barnes og Floor 1996). This master thesis aims to contribute in increasing the success rate of RE firms. This is done through investigating innovative business models for sustainable RE companies. The thesis is divided into two papers; Thesis Paper 1, we investigate how RE companies strategize, focusing on the dilemma of strategizing based on internal strengths or external constraints. To do this, a framework for RE business models is developed, and three solar cell device-based companies in India are investigated through interviews. The proposed framework based on strategy and RE literature is revised to fully depict the cases, giving an empirically and theoretically tested business model framework for this type of company. Furthermore, the results show an emphasis by the case companies on external (market-oriented) strategizing to adapt to customer and end user demands. It is also shown that after RE entrepreneurs have adapted their business to external constraints, their personal experience heavily influences how they form their business. Thesis Paper 2 investigates the factors for alliance formation between telecom tower operators (TTOs) and RE firms selling electricity to rural households. Such an alliance has the potential to increase economies of scale, predictability and access to investments for RE firms, and can be instrumental in increasing energy access. Using Transaction Cost Economics, the Resource Based View and Cluster theory, three important motivations for partnering are developed, and these are reviewed using interviews with OMC Power, an RE company in Uttar Pradesh, India. We find that especially three factors are important; the resources the RE firm can offer to their partner, as well as assuring that there are mutual motivations to the alliance. Most importantly, however, is the need for social capital; experience, relationships and trustworthiness of the management team.


Unpaid family caregivers must consider the economic trade-off between caregiving and paid employment. Prior literature has suggested labour force participation (LFP) to decline with caregiving intensity, but no study has evaluated this relationship by accounting for the presence of both kinks and discontinuities. Here we used respondents of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study baseline survey who were non-farming, of working-age (aged 45-60) and had a young grandchild and/or a parent/parent-in-law. For women and men separately, a caregiving threshold-adjusted probit model was used to assess the association between LFP and weekly unpaid caregiving hours. Instrumental variables were used to rule out the endogeneity of caregiving hours. Of the 3,718 respondents in the analysis, for men, LFP was significantly and inversely associated with caregiving that involved neither discontinuities nor kinks. For women, a kink was identified at the caregiving threshold of 8 hours per week such that before 8 hours, each caregiving hour was associated with an increase of 0.0257 in the marginal probability of LFP, but each hour thereafter was associated with a reduction of 0.0014 in the marginal probability of LFP. These results have implications for interventions that simultaneously advance policies of health, social care and labour force.


Borderline tumors of the ovary (BOT) generally behave in a less aggressive way than their malignant counterparts and tend to occur more often in women of childbearing age. Therefore conservative, fertility-sparing treatment is a tempting solution in carefully selected cases. The aim of the present study is to assess the safety of this kind of treatment (in terms of recurrence and survival rates) and to evaluate the remaining fertility. We conducted a retrospective analysis of 75 cases of BOT disease, which underwent surgical management in our institution between 1986 and 2000. Sixteen out of 75 patients were treated by conservative surgery defined as: unilateral adnexectomy, unilateral adnexectomy associated with contralateral cystectomy, unilateral or bilateral cystectomy. We report 2 cases of recurrent BOT but no disease-related deaths. Twelve pregnancies were obtained in 7 out of 11 women who underwent fertility-sparing management; there was no recurrence of disease after childbirth. These results suggest that, in certain conditions, conservative surgery offers a safe solution for borderline tumors of the ovary. We observed no influence of conservative surgery on long-term survival rates, when compared with radical surgery. This approach might offer a considerable chance (63.6%) of pregnancy and live birth to patients of childbearing age but close follow-up is certainly required.


In order to prevent dysbacterioses occurring in the early neonatal period, 60 neonates classified with the risk group were administered, when they were still at the puerperal room, pure cultures of specially selected strains of Lactobacillus acidophilus possessing marked anti-Klebsiella activity and antagonistic activity against Staphylococcus aureus. The cultures were instilled into the mouth and nasal passages. Forty neonates administered bifidum-bacterin and 54 neonates not given biopreparations were used as control. Application of the pure culture of Lactobacillus acidophilus noticeably raised the efficacy of the preventive measures. Over 60 percent of the neonates were discharged from the maternity home with a normally formed intestinal microflora, 60 percent had normal microflora in the fauces, 80 percent in the nose, and 70 percent of the neonates demonstrated normal skin microflora. The carriage of opportunistic microorganisms in the fauces and nose of the neonates had decreased substantially by the time of the discharge from the maternity home, while the incidence of pyo-inflammatory diseases had also reduced among them.


This thesis advocates the view that traditional document clustering could be significantly improved by representing documents at different levels of abstraction at which the similarity between documents is considered. The improvement is with regard to the alignment of the clustering solutions to human judgement.
The proposed methodology employs semantics with which the conceptual similarity be-tween documents is measured. The goal is to design algorithms which implement the meth-odology, in order to solve the following research problems: (i) how to obtain multiple deter-ministic clustering solutions; (ii) how to produce coherent large-scale clustering solutions across domains, regardless of the number of clusters; (iii) how to obtain clustering solutions which align well with human judgement; and (iv) how to produce specific clustering solu-tions from the perspective of the user's understanding for the domain of interest.
The developed clustering methodology enhances separation between and improved coher-ence within clusters generated across several domains by using levels of abstraction. The methodology employs a semantically enhanced text stemmer, which is developed for the pur-pose of producing coherent clustering, and a concept index that provides generic document representation and reduced dimensionality of document representation. These characteristics of the methodology enable addressing the limitations of traditional text document clustering by employing computationally expensive similarity measures such as Earth Mover's Distance (EMD), which theoretically aligns the clustering solutions closer to human judgement. A threshold for similarity between documents that employs many-to-many similarity matching is proposed and experimentally proven to benefit the traditional clustering algorithms in pro-ducing clustering solutions aligned closer to human judgement.
4
The experimental validation demonstrates the scalability of the semantically enhanced document clustering methodology and supports the contributions: (i) multiple deterministic clustering solutions and different viewpoints to a document collection are obtained; (ii) the use of concept indexing as a document representation technique in the domain of document clustering is beneficial for producing coherent clusters across domains; (ii) SETS algorithm provides an improved text normalisation by using external knowledge; (iv) a method for measuring similarity between documents on a large scale by using many-to-many matching; (v) a semantically enhanced methodology that employs levels of abstraction that correspond to a user's background, understanding and motivation.
The achieved results will benefit the research community working in the area of document management, information retrieval, data mining and knowledge management.


The growth pattern, toxicology and chromium bioavailability in 45 days grown Paragrass (Brachiaria mutica Forssk.Stapf) in response to applications of ionic Chromium (Cr+6) and chelate-assisted Cr+6 were undertaken. Root and shoot length of Paragrass significantly decreased with increasing concentration of Cr+6. Paragrass plants grown both in Cr+6 (300 ppm) and chelate(EDTA/CA)-assisted Cr+6 (300 ppm) showed noticeable decrease in root and shoot length, fresh and dry matters whereas ionic Cr+6 or chelate assisted Cr+6- EDTA/ Cr+6-CA stimulated growth at low concentration (10 ppm). Root phytotoxicity was highest (56%) in Cr+6-EDTA (300 ppm) treatment whereas shoot phytotoxicity was 36% in Cr+6 (300 ppm) treatment. High Cr accumulation was found in root (46.65 mg kg- 1) when supplemented with Cr+6-EDTA (300 ppm) as compared to other treatments. Transportation index (Ti) values are high depicting the plants with high translocation for the seedlings grown in ionic and chelate assisted Cr using 10 and 100 ppm concentrations of Cr+6.Bioconcentration Factor (BCF) of Cr increases in chelate assisted chromium treatment than chromium treatment only. Total Accumulation Rate (TAR) in different treated plants (both ionic and chelate assisted) showed increasing trend with increase in chromium treatments which indicates that the plant is tolerant in nature could survive under diverse chemospheric conditions.


This paper focuses on a system dynamics simulation approach modelling the flow of frail elderly patients in health and social care systems in the South of England, UK. A system dynamics model of this pathway is designed that enables testing and informs redesign of the pathway to enhance integrated working between health and social care agencies leading to reduced number of acute hospital admissions and fewer delayed transfer of care. Given the complexity of the model, a number of different scenarios are considered


Concepts from the Threat Appraisal and Coping Theory, Precarious Manhood Theory, and Ambivalent Sexism suggest that U.S. Latino men who perceive social discrimination and powerlessness may respond with machismo beliefs that serve as coping responses to empower themselves and reassert their manhood. Machismo beliefs include both aggressive "traditional machismo" and gentlemanly family-focused "caballerismo." Because past research has revealed that individuals respond to social abuse with anger, prompting them to feel empowered but less empathetic, we hypothesized that Latino men who perceive social discrimination combined with a sense of powerlessness would report more traditional machismo and less caballerismo. We also hypothesized that this three-variable sequence would be stronger for men with high rather than low in Latino identity, since discrimination would be a more personal threat to their identity and manhood. Participants included 1,530 U.S. Latinos who completed online surveys to report demographics (age, education, employment, sexual orientation, partner status, household size), perceived social discrimination, powerlessness, traditional machismo, caballerismo, and Latino identity. Mediational analyses confirmed the three-variable sequence in which powerlessness mediated associations between social discrimination and (more) aggressive machismo, and (less) gentlemanly caballerismo. Also as hypothesized, moderated mediational analysis revealed that these three-variable sequences were stronger for men with high rather than low Latino identity. With recent increases in social discrimination against U.S. Latinos, present results caution that men may respond to these challenges with increased aggressive patterns of traditional machismo.


Design and performance of kinetic inductance detectors for cosmic microwave background polarimetry Heather McCarrick This thesis presents the development of kinetic inductance detectors (KIDs) for cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarimetry. Increasingly precise measurements of the CMB have led to much of our understanding of the observable universe; future measurements of the CMB will require the development of new detectors as progressively fainter signals are targeted. In particular, a measurement of the primordial B-mode polarization signal, which would offer strong evidence of inflation, will require at least a 50 times increase in detector count. KIDs are an attractive detector option for next-generation CMB experiments due to their low-noise and high-multiplexing factor. In this thesis, I present KIDs optimized for ground-based CMB observations, which are sensitive to a 150 GHz spectral band where the CMB spectrum peaks. This research demonstrates the first systematic studies of lumpedelement KIDs (LEKIDs) optimized for CMB surveys and shows the readiness of the detectors for on-sky observations. First, I present the design and performance of horn-coupled LEKIDs, which are sensitive to a single polarization. I show that KIDs can meet the stringent noise and sensitivity requirements necessary for a competitive CMB detector. Second, I present a novel method for reducing crosstalk between LEKIDs, which is important for controlling instrument systematics. Third, I present the design and performance of dual-polarization LEKIDs, which are sensitive to orthogonal polarizations within a single spectral band and double the number of detectors per array, increasing the sensitivity. Finally, I present the initial analysis of millimeter-wave observations of a nearby galaxy cluster, Abell 2443, taken with the LEKID-based NIKA2 instrument on the IRAM 30 m telescope. This is part of ongoing research to make high-resolution measurements of the Sunyaev–Zel'dovich effect, seen as a distortion in the CMB spectrum.


: We report a case of intracerebral hemorrhage which occurred during a migraine in a 62 year-old woman who had migraine since the age of 20. The patient was normotensive. The angiograms were normal. Cerebral hemorrhage in migraine appears to be very rare: we found 6 reported cases that were compared with our own. The hypothesis of recirculation in an infarcted tissue and the possible role of dissecting aneurysms are examined.