In the first book of Magia naturalis, chapter 3, Giambattista della Porta (1535-1615) stated that natural magic was the practical part of natural philosophy. Della Porta referred to knowledge of a particular set of phenomena from which one could operate naturally. In fact Magia naturalis covers a broad spectrum of issues that include topics related to the art of distillation, perfumes, fireworks, cookery, fishing and hunting. The purpose of these subjects was to survey natural and artificial things to reproduce them. In this sense, one could say that natural magic was a type of art (techne) in the Aristotelian sense, because it implied the type of knowledge that depended on the ability of the ones who manipulated phenomena. This is why the concept of natural magic is usually closely associated with "skill." The aim of this paper is to discuss natural magic as a science that was close in meaning to techne, because it involved a concrete sense of craftsmanship and the connotation of the ability to devise stratagems. However, once natural magic was no longer limited to intellectual or manual activity, it could not be considered a mere technical art or technical science (i.e., a technology or technique).


Infants learning about their environment are confronted with many stimuli of different modalities. Therefore, a crucial problem is how to discover which stimuli are related, for instance, in learning words. In making these multimodal ldquobindings,rdquo infants depend on social interaction with a caregiver to guide their attention towards relevant stimuli. The caregiver might, for example, visually highlight an object by shaking it while vocalizing the object's name. These cues are known to help structuring the continuous stream of stimuli. To detect and exploit them, we propose a model of bottom-up attention by multimodal signal-level synchrony. We focus on the guidance of visual attention from audio-visual synchrony informed by recent adult-infant interaction studies. Consequently, we demonstrate that our model is receptive to parental cues during child-directed tutoring. The findings discussed in this paper are consistent with recent results from developmental psychology but for the first time are obtained employing an objective, computational model. The presence of ldquomultimodal mothereserdquo is verified directly on the audio-visual signal. Lastly, we hypothesize how our computational model facilitates tutoring interaction and discuss its application in interactive learning scenarios, enabling social robots to benefit from adult-like tutoring.


Microbial biodegradation of engine oil contaminated soil in Calabar Metropolis was studied for a period of six (6) months (January to June, 2017). The soil samples collected were ice boxed and taken to the laboratory for microbial, total hydrocarbon, total organic carbon and other physico-chemical parameters analysis. A total of thirteen (13)  indigenous bacteria species were identified in the soil of the sites analyzed during the study, which includes; Staphylococcus spp., Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Bacillus spp., E. coli, Enterococcus feacalis, Shigella spp., Arthrobacter spp., Alcaligen spp., Acinobacter spp., Azotobacter spp., Aeromonas spp., Xanthomonas spp. and Clostridium spp. The most abundant bacteria in the contaminated site was Staphylococcus spp. (65%) while the least bacteria count in the contaminated site was Clostridium spp. (9%). Staphylococcus spp. was the most abundant indigenous bacterial species and also the most effective biodegradation bacteria. The identified indigenous bacteria utilized the hydrocarbons, multiplied rapidly and then degraded the total hydrocarbon and total organic carbon more in the contaminated site compared to the control site. Site one recorded the highest bacteria count (927) while the least bacteria counts were recorded in the control site (81). The bacteria species showed its degradation and bioremediation capabilities prompting the need for its use in cleaning crude oil contaminated sites, due to the fact that it is cheap and not environmentally harmful.


We describe an essentially algorithm-independent experimental comparison of projective versus Euclidean reconstruction. The Euclidean approach is as accurate as the projective one, even with significant calibration error and for the pure projective structure. Projective optimization has less of a local-minima problem than its Euclidean equivalent. We describe techniques that enhance the convergence of optimization algorithms.


In this Thesis we have developed a Proof of Concept malware software that uses common techniques for malware distribution, infection, sandbox detection, persistence, command and control. The purpose of this Thesis is to examine the various implementation techniques of each malware component and use them to create a sample rogue software that infects Microsoft Windows hosts, it searches for information in infected systems, it sends and receives files, it detects debugging or sandboxing attempts and receives commands from the a Command and Control server.
For the purposes of this Thesis content from various sources were studied in order to select the appropriate components. The developed malware contains bits and pieces from infamous malware software, software from opensource communities and repositories, content from Dark Web and Hacking Forums.
The developed malware is comprised from various different components that perform different tasks with the ultimate goal the infection of the victims system. The malware is comprised from a Dropper (Microsoft Office Document), a System Checking and Injection Software (MallyInjector) and the final malware (DLL- MallySuite).
Extensive effort was given in detecting Sandboxing and Debugging attempts. We focused on giving the malware capabilities to understand the environment it executes so it can evade detection and analysis through various malware analysis techniques.


Today's enterprises are exposed to sophisticated attacks, such as Advanced Persistent Threats~(APT) attacks, which usually consist of stealthy multiple steps. To counter these attacks, enterprises often rely on causality analysis on the system activity data collected from a ubiquitous system monitoring to discover the initial penetration point, and from there identify previously unknown attack steps. However, one major challenge for causality analysis is that the ubiquitous system monitoring generates a colossal amount of data and hosting such a huge amount of data is prohibitively expensive. Thus, there is a strong demand for techniques that reduce the storage of data for causality analysis and yet preserve the quality of the causality analysis. To address this problem, in this paper, we propose NodeMerge, a template based data reduction system for online system event storage. Specifically, our approach can directly work on the stream of system dependency data and achieve data reduction on the read-only file events based on their access patterns. It can either reduce the storage cost or improve the performance of causality analysis under the same budget. Only with a reasonable amount of resource for online data reduction, it nearly completely preserves the accuracy for causality analysis. The reduced form of data can be used directly with little overhead. To evaluate our approach, we conducted a set of comprehensive evaluations, which show that for different categories of workloads, our system can reduce the storage capacity of raw system dependency data by as high as 75.7 times, and the storage capacity of the state-of-the-art approach by as high as 32.6 times. Furthermore, the results also demonstrate that our approach keeps all the causality analysis information and has a reasonably small overhead in memory and hard disk.


Background There was the need and wish of youth organisations and PARE organisations to improve the services to young people with Rheumatic and Musculoskeletal Diseases (RMDs). In order to be able to do this, it was necessary to gain more insight into the needs of young people with RMDs and their organisations, and insight into what is currently available in terms of activities and organisations for young people with RMDs across Europe. Objective To gather information about the way young people with RMDs are organised in different European countries and to explore the needs, obstacles, preferences and priorities of young people with RMDs and their organisations. Method For this study the age range of 18 - 35 years old was used. An explorative study using mixed methods was performed. To gather information about the way young people with RMDs are organised a mapping study on youth activities on an organisational level was used. To explore the needs, obstacles, preferences and priorities of young people with RMDs first a qualitative study (interviews and focus groups) was performed and based on this gained information an online survey was developed. The survey was translated into 18 languages and spread broadly. For promotion of the survey the website www.youngpare.org was built. Results The mapping exercise showed that from the 40 participating PARE organisations, 22 countries reported some form of activities for young people with RMDs. In 18 countries no activities were reported. There is a big difference in how youth is defined in terms of age limits. Varying between 0 till 55 years old. The qualitative study gathered the experiences of 27 young people in total. Based on analysis of the interviews and focus groups the task force came up with six main categories: Me, Myself & I, Health care, Education, Work, Social life and Family&intimacy. The final analysis used data of 2329 respondents from 41 European countries. Most (66%) respondents were not a member of a patient organisation. Results reveal more than half of the respondents are never or only sometimes satisfied with their life and young people never or only sometimes feel optimistic about their future. Most people (69%) prefer not to talk about the condition, they feel disadvantaged if others know about their disease. Data shows that patients with more common diseases and members of patient organisations (compared to non-members) have somewhat better access to the rheumatologists. About half of the respondents had a RMD during their studies, 74% of them reported delays in their study. Most reported more awareness about rheumatic diseases among teachers would have been helpful. Only 29% of those who had a RMD during their studies reported that they had managed at school without assistance. In total 95% of the respondents admit that a RMD has a negative impact on their work ability. About half of the respondents (48%) were always or very often able to support themselves financially. A majority of the respondents reported that having a RMD interferes with their social life (93%) and has an impact on their mental health (92%). The main obstacles for participation in social activities are pain and fatigue. Most respondents (83%) admit that their RMD interferes with their sexual life. The main problems interfering with sexual life are pain/discomfort and fatigue. Conclusion Collected data confirm that having a RMD has a huge impact on many domains of life. With these results, we not only have a solid base-line picture of the current needs and obstacles of this patient group, but we also have a good starting document to develop a youth strategy for the future and a practical plan of actions for EULAR, youth groups and PARE organisations. The full research report is available at www.youngpare.org Reference Poldemaa I, Tammaru M, de Wit M (2014): Final report - PARE Youth Research Project. Disclosure of Interest None declared DOI 10.1136/annrheumdis-2014-eular.6231


Governments in many countries worldwide have increasingly focused on accreditation as an important strategy to improve the quality of vocational education and training (VET). In Vietnam, accreditation in vocational training is still in its initial stage of development. The first cycle of accreditation at institutional level was conducted in 2008, and accreditation at programme level was piloted for the first time in 2012. The purpose of this mixed method study was to investigate the actual effects of institutional and programme accreditation from the perspectives of staff members in two Vietnamese vocational training colleges. Sixty staff members in these two institutions participated in the study. A questionnaire combining closed-ended and open-ended questions was administered to all participants. To obtain more in-depth responses about the impact of accreditation, individual interviews were conducted with eight participants. The findings suggest that the staff members overall had a positive perception towards the impact of accreditation regardless of the type of accreditation. The three main perceived benefits of accreditation included the increased awareness amongst staff of QA, its role as a catalyst for institutions' change and enhancement, and the improvements in managerial practices. However, the study found support for the view that accreditation seemed to have been geared towards accountability rather than improvement. Many staff members observed that accreditation did not lead to a significant increase in teaching and learning quality or the institutions' reputation. The effects of accreditation were also seen to be temporary rather than long-lasting. In conclusion, the study argues that though accreditation in vocational training in Vietnam has gained some preliminary success, there is still a mismatch between policy and reality. A number of important implications at both national and institutional levels for more effective accreditation are identified.


On-line partial discharge (PD)measurement is now widely applied to motors rated 6 kV and above that are fed from the 50/60 Hz power system. However, many motors are being powered from invertors which facilitate variable speed motors to improve process efficiencies. One of the most common drives now being used is of the voltage source, pulse width modulation (VS-PWM) type. Such drives generate high voltage spikes in the kV range with risetimes in the submicrosecond range. These high voltage spikes are a form of severe electrical interference which render the detection of PD (with magnitudes 1000 x smaller) difficult, due to the overlapping frequency content in PD and the spikes. Thus PD detection on VS-PWM has been a challenge, in spite of the serious insulation aging that such drives may cause. This paper will outline the challenges in measuring the stator winding PD in motors fed by VS-PWM drives and describe a measurement system that is often effective. Results from measurements obtained using this system will be presented.


Instructional design and test development models converged in the development of a valid placement test for college level students in English second language courses in Quebec. The realities of instructional design within the context of budget cuts and time constraints often result in the curtailment of the needs assessment and formative evaluation phases of design. The development of the placement test relied heavily on these two essential phases of instructional design despite constraints. The needs assessment and formative evaluation phases provided the necessary insights for the production of a test that corresponds to the learning objectives of the curriculum and the expectations of the test users. Adhering to these models provided the framework for the test design and ensured that the test items produced for the large scale field testing were functioning well in terms of their level of difficulty and their ability to discriminate. This thesis deals with the needs assessment that led to the development of items for a placement test and the formative evaluation of both the individual items and the test itself. n = 299 and n = 118, respectively.


In this paper dipole type optical antenna and V type optical antenna are designed using gold and glass substrates, we compared their resonance properties by finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method, calculated and analyzed their distribution and field enhancement effects contrastively. The results showed that in the same projected length, the resonant frequency of dipole type optical antenna was higher than the V type optical antenna, while the resonance enhancement factor was lower than the V type optical antenna. These have certain reference significance for researching characteristics of nanoantenna based on surface plasma.


We report on pump-probe mode-mismatched photothermal lens experiments of metallic micro- and nanoparticle water solutions. We show that metallic colloids exhibit nonlinear absorption effects related to the forces that result from the interaction with the electromagnetic radiation. The colloids show a double peak Z-scan shape that is associated with the presence of attraction forces when irradiating at 400 nm. We estimate the corresponding nonlinear absorption coefficients using a Fresnel diffraction approximation for the description of the signal.


The data are clear: the sexual health of gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (MSM) continues to deteriorate in many western industrialised countries.1 2 The epidemiological trends appear consistent: a resurgence of bacterial and viral sexually transmitted infections (STI); rising or stable HIV incidence; recent outbreaks of lymphogranuloma venerum and hepatitis C, especially among HIV-positive MSM;3 4 accompanied by a stable or increasing prevalence of risky sexual behaviours including unprotected anal intercourse, serodiscordant unprotected anal intercourse and high rates of partner change.5 These individual level changes are occurring within a wider context of evolving social, cultural and risk environments and norms and at a time when MSM in many developed country settings are enjoying unparalleled social acceptance and freedoms.6 Concomitant changes in the availability, use and abuse of recreational drugs, including alcohol, continue to fuel risk behaviour and drive disease incidence.1 Similarly, the growing population of HIV-infected MSM, many of whom are unaware of their HIV infection, may be increasing the burden of infection at a time when more men are reporting homosexual sexual behaviours and partnerships.7 8

The reality is that in many developed countries, gay, bisexual and other MSM continue to bear the brunt of the HIV epidemic. In the USA, nearly 60% of incident HIV infections are among MSM (including MSM who inject drugs), and HIV incidence has been rising unabated within this group since the early 1990s.9 HIV diagnosis rates among MSM are now many times those of women and heterosexual men in the USA, with HIV prevalence among MSM ranging between 18% and 40% in some large metropolitan areas.10 11 There are now more than 500 000 gay, bisexual and other MSM living with HIV infection in the USA, including an ageing cohort of …


Vareille M, Kieninger E, Alves MP, et al. Impaired type I and type III interferon induction and rhinovirus control in human cystic fibrosis airway epithelial cells. Thorax 2012;67:517-25. This article has been retracted. In our article recently published in Thorax, we described a novel mechanism explaining the increased susceptibility of patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) to rhinovirus infections, namely defective interferon type I and III production by CF airway epithelial cells. In experiments performed after publication of the article we were unable to consistently replicate our findings of deficient interferon type I and III production by CF airway epithelial cells upon rhinovirus infection. In the light of these results, we carried out detailed investigations of the data reported in the above manuscript and regrettably found evidence of deliberate manipulation of experimental data by the first author Dr M. Vareille. This manipulation was accompanied in some instances by absence of original data files. The manipulation/original data absence involved data presented in most, if not all of the figures, thus we wish to fully retract the paper and apologise to the readers of Thorax and to the scientific community for the inconvenience this has caused. We also checked data published by our group in manuscripts on which Dr Vareille was a co-author and found that data published in these manuscripts had not been manipulated. These two manuscripts, whose data and conclusions we stand by are: Edwards MR, Regamey N, Vareille M, et al. Impaired innate interferon induction in severe therapy resistant atopic asthmatic children. Mucosal Immunol 2013;6:797–806. doi: 10.1038/mi.2012.118. and Kieninger E, Vareille M, Kopf BS, et al. Lack of an exaggerated inflammatory response on virus infection in cystic fibrosis. Eur Respir J 2012;39:297–304. doi: 10.1183/09031936.00054511. Dr. Vareille has received a letter from the Secretary General of the University of Bern condemning her scientific misconduct as a severe offence against the rules of scientific integrity. Her current employers have also been informed. All co-authors of the publication including Dr. Vareille concur with the retraction statement.


The ever growing threat from different types of accidents, natural disasters and risks to the eco-system as well as potential dangers from terrorist attacks all bearing very serious consequences have incited countries in Europe and around the world to more intensely invest into systems and technologies that will lead to an increase in the efficiency of the emergency response and the reduction of the consequences of accidents and disasters. The system of the unique emergency response number is the entry point for seeking help thus enabling everyone in need of assistance regardless of the type of accident to request this assistance quickly not having to think about whom to call and who are all the responders he might need. Today the 112 system receives several thousand calls a day and they all initiate activities of emergency response elements within an optimal timeframe. We have to bear in mind that the complex protection and rescue system operates in accordance with strict procedures that need to ensure transparency, a systematic approach and adherence to the chain of command. The 112 system needs to be used rationally so as not to deprive the ones most in need and the efficiency of this is already confirmed through the data on the lives rescued through operations of the emergency medical flights, search and rescue activities, medical assistance on highways, etc.


This special issue consolidates some recent research findings and scientific thought on co-occurring disorders from both the substance abuse and mental health fields. This summary article recaps and synthesizes the main findings and themes, then considers additional issues in the field today to arrive at an agenda for future co-occurring disorders research. Plans must: (1) encourage and assist further development of treatment programs that respond to an array of types and severities of co-occurring disorders while taking into account the limited resources typically available; (2) continue the development and testing of continuing care models by exploring strategies that will sustain the recovery of treated individuals who remain vulnerable to relapse; and (3) contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms and processes that enable new interventions and practices to be adopted, implemented, and sustained. bCo-occurring disordersQ is a relatively new area of research; this special issue illustrates the productivity of work to date and indicates the potential for advances to


We try to convince the reader that the categorical version of differential geometry, called Synthetic Differential Geometry (SDG), offers valuable tools which can be applied to work with some unsolved problems of general relativity. We do this with respect to the space-time singularity problem. The essential difference between the usual differential geometry and SDG is that the latter enriches the real line by introducing infinitesimal of various kinds. Owing to this geometry acquires a tool to penetrate "infinitesimally small" parts of a given manifold. However, to make use of this tool we must switch from the category of sets to some other suitable category. We try two topoi: the topos ${\cal G}$ of germ determined ideals and the so-called Basel topos ${\cal B}$. The category of manifolds is a subcategory of both of them. In ${\cal G}$, we construct a simple model of a contracting sphere. As the sphere shrinks, its curvature increases, but when the radius of the sphere reaches infinitesimal values, the curvature becomes infinitesimal and the singularity is avoided. The topos ${\cal B}$, unlike the topos ${\cal G}$, has invertible infinitesimal and infinitely large nonstandard natural numbers. This allows us to see what happens when a function "goes through a singularity". When changing from the category of sets to another topos, one must be ready to switch from classical logic to intuitionistic logic. This is a radical step, but the logic of the universe is not obliged to conform to the logic of our brains.


With the advent of conversational assistants, like Amazon Alexa, Google Now, etc., dialogue systems are gaining a lot of traction, especially in industrial setting. These systems typically consist of Spoken Language understanding component which, in turn, consists of two tasks - Intent Classification (IC) and Slot Labeling (SL). Generally, these two tasks are modeled together jointly to achieve best performance. However, this joint modeling adds to model obfuscation. In this work, we first design framework for a modularization of joint IC-SL task to enhance architecture transparency. Then, we explore a number of self-attention, convolutional, and recurrent models, contributing a large-scale analysis of modeling paradigms for IC+SL across two datasets. Finally, using this framework, we propose a class of 'label-recurrent' models that otherwise non-recurrent, with a 10-dimensional representation of the label history, and show that our proposed systems are easy to interpret, highly accurate (achieving over 30% error reduction in SL over the state-of-the-art on the Snips dataset), as well as fast, at 2x the inference and 2/3 to 1/2 the training time of comparable recurrent models, thus giving an edge in critical real-world systems.


Proposals for world government (WG) have come from a variety of sources including international relations (IR) scholars, economists, normative political theorists and global justice academics. In general, these visions are couched as ideal models to be approximated as closely as possible. The key argument of the article is that, in evaluating the democratic potential of these proposals, we should focus upon the process of designing and building a WG. This is because there is an ineluctable gap between ideal conceptualization and non-ideal realization that emerges through institutionalization. I employ a historical institutionalist lens to describe and problematize potential institutional shifts along a WG pathway. I argue that institutionalizing these ideal visions in our current, non-ideal context would actually exacerbate the democratic deficit. Specifically, building a WG would likely entrench existing inequalities, expand the authority of unaccountable bureaucrats and limit institutional improvements over time. These three points respectively undercut three core values of democratization: equal participation, accountability and institutional revisability. Given this argument, I conclude that an incremental approach—which focuses on advancing values rather than moving towards an ideal model—represents a more productive pathway for global democratization.


Objectives: The first objective was to examine factors that could be predictive of postoperative unilateral (cochlear implant alone) speech recognition ability in a group of subjects with greater degrees of preoperative acoustic hearing than has been previously examined. Second, the study aimed to identify factors predictive of speech recognition in the best-aided, bilateral listening condition. Design: Participants were 65 postlinguistically hearing-impaired adults with preoperative phoneme in quiet scores of greater than or equal to 46% in one or both ears. Preoperative demographic and audiometric factors were assessed as predictors of 12-month postoperative unilateral and bilateral monosyllabic word scores in quiet and of bilateral speech reception threshold (SRT) in babble. Results: The predictive regression model accounted for 34.1% of the variance in unilateral word recognition scores in quiet. Factors that predicted better scores included: a shorter duration of severe to profound hearing loss in the implanted ear; and poorer pure-tone-averaged thresholds in the contralateral ear. Predictive regression models of postimplantation bilateral function accounted for 36.0% of the variance for word scores in quiet, and 30.9% of the variance for SRT in noise. A shorter duration of severe to profound hearing loss in the implanted ear, a lower age at the time of implantation, and better contralateral hearing thresholds were associated with higher bilateral word recognition in quiet and SRT in noise. Conclusions: In this group of cochlear implant recipients with preoperative acoustic hearing, a shorter duration of severe to profound hearing loss in the implanted ear was shown to be predictive of better unilateral and bilateral outcomes. However, further research is warranted to better understand the impact of that factor in a larger number of subjects with long-term hearing impairment of greater than 30 years. Better contralateral hearing was associated with poorer unilateral word scores with the implanted ear alone, but better absolute bilateral speech recognition. As a result, it is clear that different models would need to be developed to predict unilateral and bilateral postimplantation scores.


These papers were among those presented at a conference entitled "The Atlantic Slave Trade: Who Gained and Who Lost?" held under the auspices of the Frederick Douglass Institute of the University of Rochester in October 1988. Social Science History has been publishing some of the papers from this conference, and the full set of papers will be published as a volume by Duke University Press.


Background Neoadjuvant therapy, which aims to achieve a pathological complete response (pCR) for better overall survival (OS) has several advantages for patients with early breast cancer (eBC) and subtypes of HER2-positive (HER2+) and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). However, there has been no large-scale real-world investigation on the clinical outcomes associated with trastuzumab-based and platinum-based neoadjuvant treatments for patients with HER2+ and TNBC, respectively. Material and methods Taiwan Cancer Registry and National Health Insurance Research Database were utilized in this study. Patients diagnosed with clinically lymph-node-positive (LN+) HER2+ or TNBC were identified for analysis. Logistic regression and Cox proportional hazard models were employed to estimate the adjusted odds ratios (aOR) of achieving pCR and adjusted hazard ratios (aHR) of overall survival associated with treatment agents, respectively. Results A total of 1,178 HER2+ eBC and 354 early TNBC patients were identified, respectively. Neoadjuvant trastuzumab significantly increased the pCR rates by 3.87-fold among HER2+ patients. Trastuzumab-associated survival benefit was found in HER2+ patients who achieved pCR (aHR [95% CI]: 0.30 [0.11-0.84]) but not in those without pCR (1.13 [0.77-1.67]). Among the TNBC patients, platinum was associated with a 1.6-fold increased pCR rate; however, it did not improve OS regardless of pCR status. Conclusions Trastuzumab improved pCR and OS for patients with HER2+ subtype. Using platinum agents for TNBC patients increased pCR rates but was not linked to better survival. Optimal neoadjuvant anti-HER2 therapy for patients with HER2+ eBC and the introduction of novel therapy for patients with TNBC should be considered.


Southey's public criticism of "The Ancient Mariner" as "a Dutch attempt at German sublimity" is conventionally and all too easily dismissed as a demonstration of his limitations, both as a man and as a poet. Given Southey's allegiance to the tradition of "German sublimity," which he felt was epitomized in Burger's ballads, and which he found championed by his literary friends in Norwich, he had good grounds for concern at Coleridge's redevelopment of the modern ballad, however. Southey's own ballad, "The Old Woman of Berkeley," is read here as a deliberate "answer" to the problems he found in "The Ancient Mariner," and an attempt to reinforce the "sublime" Burger tradition. The most important difference concerns the poets' attitudes to the past, which to Southey is essentially dead, and in need of the poet's "organicizing" voice (Geoffrey Hartman's term), while to Coleridge its imaginative energy survives, and can be mediated by the poet. This difference puts Southey closer to the German brand of "Romanticism." The issues between Southey and Coleridge here are relevant to the problems we face today as scholars approaching, sorting, and evaluating the narratives of the past.


The Nanocomposite group of AIDICO and the Nanomaterials Group of University of Valencia collaborate in the research of new organic-inorganic hybrid materials with application in construction products. Tribological properties and good thermal stability are some of the required specifications for such applications. Some hybrid coatings based on simultaneous formation of epoxy and silica networks are introduced in this work. Elastic modulus and hardness obtained from TDMA analyses and indentation techniques, together with thermal stability by TGA, are the main properties analysed in order to fulfil the requirements for construction coating applications. New routes for obtaining these coatings based on sol-gel have been explored.


One of the most successful books ever published and the basis of one of the most popular and highly praised Hollywood films, Gone with the Wind has entered world culture in a way that few other stories have. The book was published in June 1936; the film premiered on December 15, 1939. The book has sold 25 million copies, has been translated into twenty-seven languages, and won the 1936 Pulitzer Prize. The film received eight Oscars and has been called the greatest movie ever made. Everyone has heard of GWTW. Most of us have seen the movie or read the novel. In this entertaining and informative book, Helen Taylor is the first to seek reasons for the film/novel's success among viewers/readers. The author asked GWTW fans to relate their experiences with the works, to explain their fascination with the story, to describe the impact GWTW has had on their lives. The results are astonishing and illuminating. In the United States and England, where the author conducted her research, women have to a remarkable degree claimed the story Margaret Mitchell wrote as their own. They name their children Rhett and Scarlett. They see in the lives of the men and women of GWTW their own lives, their own restlessness, their own aspirations for something better than marriage and motherhood. Helen Taylor not only explains the enduring appeal of the work, but also identifies different kinds of response at particular historical moments (especially World War II) and through the past five decades by women of different classes, races, and generations. The author also looks at the contemporary implications of the work's political conservatism, racism, and--paradoxically--feminism. The result is a book that is sophisticated, accessible, and revealing. Scarlett's Women is a book for eery fan, and for all students of film and popular culture.


We document substantial correlation dynamics between equity returns and CDS spread changes at the firm level, which is critical for cross-market hedging and arbitrage strategies. Using the implied cost of capital approach, we decompose the unexpected equity returns into cash flow and discount rate news and examine the impact of the shocks on the correlations. We find that discount rate news explains the majority fraction. At longer horizons and in periods when cash flow news is more negatively related with CDS spread changes, however, the cross-market integration is stronger. In addition, firms with more cash flow news exhibit stronger correlations between equity returns and credit spread changes, and the structural model can explain more variations of credit spread changes in these firms.


We provide a general framework for deriving Hamiltonian electromagnetic gyrofluid models from a Hamiltonian system of gyrokinetic equations. The presented procedure permits to derive gyrofluid models for an arbitrary number of moments with respect to the velocity coordinate parallel to an equilibrium magnetic field. The resulting gyrofluid models account, in particular, for finite Larmor radius effects, equilibrium temperature anisotropies and fluctuations of the magnetic field in the direction parallel to the equilibrium magnetic field, thus generalizing Hamiltonian gyrofluid models previously presented in the literature. The Hamiltonian reduction procedure leading from the parent gyrokinetic model to the gyrofluid models is formulated in two stages. In the first step, after having shown that the parent gyrokinetic system indeed posseses a Hamiltonian structure, a Hamiltonian system is derived, by means of a Poisson sub-algebra argument, which describes the evolution of the perturbation of the gyrocenter distribution function, averaged with respect to the magnetic moment coordinate. The second stage brings from the latter model to the gyrofluid models by means of a closure relation, applicable at an arbitrary order in the moment hierarchy, which guarantees the preservation of a Hamiltonian structure. Casimir invariants of the noncanonical Poisson brackets of the gyrofluid models are provided. It is also shown how, in the two-dimensional limit, the gyrofluid model equations can be cast in the form of advection equations for Lagrangian invariants transported by generalized incompressible velocity fields, thus extending results obtained for previous Hamiltonian gyrofluid and drift-fluid models. The Hamiltonian reduction procedure is applied to derive a five-field gyrofluid model evolving the first two moments for the electron species and the first three moments for the ion species. The Casimir invariants and the Lagrangian advection formulation are provided explicitly for the five-field model. Remarks concerning possible variants of the procedure are discussed. As an example, it is shown how, by means of a variant of the procedure, it is possible to derive an isothermal two-field model for kinetic Alfvén waves including equilibrium electron temperature anisotropy effects.


OBJECTIVE
This paper explores pharmacist perceptions of a pilot study assessing the impact of specialist training on depression for rural community pharmacists on their understanding of treatment and psychological well-being of patients.

DESIGN
Mixed method survey.

SETTING
Rural community pharmacies.

PARTICIPANTS
Thirty-two rural based community pharmacists.

INTERVENTIONS
Recruited pharmacists were allocated to either the 'control' or 'intervention' group. Intervention pharmacists were given training in depression and asked to dispense medication with extra advice and support, while control pharmacists provided usual care.

OUTCOME MEASURES
Understanding of depression, current involvement in patients with depression, changes in practice.

RESULTS
All pharmacists were more likely to initiate conversation, discuss medication and its side effects, point out the importance of remaining on the medication, provide ongoing follow-up and encourage patients to talk with their GPs and pharmacists by the end of the project. Intervention pharmacists were more likely than the control pharmacists to initiate conversation on dispensing a repeat prescription and to discuss extended support.

CONCLUSION
Response to the project by pharmacists was generally very positive. It is recommended that a longitudinal study based on this project be undertaken which involves pharmacists, GPs and other mental health professionals and trials a holistic approach to mental health care.


Many state-of-the-art algorithms for solving Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) rely on turning the problem into a "fully observable" problem---a belief MDP---and exploiting the piece-wise linearity and convexity (PWLC) of the optimal value function in this new state space (the belief simplex ∆). This approach has been extended to solving ρ-POMDPs---i.e., for information-oriented criteria-when the reward ρ is convex in ∆. General ρ-POMDPs can also be turned into "fully observable" problems, but with no means to exploit the PWLC property. In this paper, we focus on POMDPs and ρ-POMDPs with λ ρ-Lipschitz reward function, and demonstrate that, for finite horizons, the optimal value function is Lipschitz-continuous. Then, value function approximators are proposed for both upper-and lower-bounding the optimal value function, which are shown to provide uniformly improvable bounds. This allows proposing two algorithms derived from HSVI which are empirically evaluated on various benchmark problems.


There are increasing opportunities to use smart farming technologies for improved management of farming systems. However, there is limited understanding of how the potential can be translated into effective use in the farming sector. Previous studies have highlighted the role that uncertainty plays in technological innovation systems. In this paper, we present the results of an international survey investigating the impact of innovation uncertainty on adoption of a smart farming technology, automatic milking systems (AMS). The objective of this study was to review adoption of AMS internationally and propose lessons for developing institutional knowledge and effective networks of practice in emerging smart farming innovation systems. We used an online survey of AMS experts globally and received 81 completed survey responses. The main countries represented were Canada, The Netherlands, USA, Denmark, and the UK. Respondents identified a range of adoption trends in their country and some of the reasons behind these adoption profiles were suppression of uptake due to low milk prices, financial markets, and issues with early installations and perceptions of these issues by other farmers. In terms of the impact of uncertainty, technological uncertainty was historically an important issue around the early development of AMS, with decommissioning occurring in some cases due to perceived technology issues. Political uncertainty also impacted adoption, with implications of food safety regulations or rules around herd testing systems. Our study highlighted the potential impact of negative experiences associated with new technologies from farmers who struggle with the adaptation process as such occurrences may act to stall the uptake of smart farming technologies. If public policy organizations are to realize the desired impacts of smart farming technology, there needs to be greater focus on understanding where (and which) technologies can have an actual impact on farm as opposed to technologies that only create greater farmer distrust and uncertainty. Our study highlights that to reduce uncertainty with emerging smart technologies, greater public and private R&D collaboration is required to foster knowledge development and exchange.


This study is a descriptive and a theoretical analysis of corruption in Sudan. Given the causes and current level of corruption in the country, the current paper aims to determine some of the possible remedies of corruption. The study investigates the political, economic, social and legislative factors that contribute to the spread of corruption in the county. It analyzes—based on the literature—whether corruption is contagious and if corruption does corrupt. In addition, it suggests that the absence of the rule of law, collectivist nature of Sudanese society, in addition to the low pay cheque of civil servants contribute to the spread of petty corruption in the country. Lessons learned from success stories in fighting against corruption such as Hong Kong and Singapore as well as stories of failure from other countries are also presented. The research concludes by suggesting a holistic strategy that includes legislative, educational, business and economic dimensions to fight corruption in Sudan. Needless to say, nothing can really be accomplished without a strong will and commitment from the leadership. Although this paper considers Sudan as a case study, its suggested strategy is completely generic and applicable in all other countries that suffer from a high level of corruption.

 Key words: Corruption, social factors, economic factors, government solutions, individual solutions, Sudan.


Abstract Social accounts of objective content, like the one advanced by Tomasello (2014), are traditionally challenged by an 'essential tension' (Hutto and Satne 2015). The tension is the following: while sociality is deemed to be at the basis of thinking, in order to explain sociality, some form of thinking seems to be necessarily presupposed. In this contribution I analyse Tomasello's two-step theory of the evolution of human thinking vis-à-vis this challenge. While his theory is in principle suited to address it, I claim that the specifics of the first step and the notion of perspective that infuse it are problematic in this regard. I end by briefly sketching an alternative.


The propensity of two Chlamydia trachomatis strains (L2/434/Bu [biovar LGV] and E/DK20/ON [biovar trachoma]) to induce putative host defense responses upon infection of McCoy (mouse) cell cultures was examined. Both strains induced production of alpha/beta interferon and nitric oxide (NO) by McCoy cells. NO synthesis was mediated by the inducible isoform of NO synthase as indicated by the ability of cycloheximide or the arginine analog NG-monomethyl-L-arginine to abolish NO production; the extent of the response was dependent upon the dose of chlamydiae applied. Incubation of McCoy cells with chloramphenicol prior to infection reduced NO production by strain 434 but not by DK20, suggesting that initial chlamydial metabolism was essential to induction by the LGV strain. Antibody inhibition studies indicated that NO synthesis was dependent upon production of alpha/beta interferon and induction via lipopolysaccharide. Overall, our findings show that chlamydiae are capable of the induction of interferon and NO in murine fibroblasts in the absence of exogenous cytokines. However, the role of NO as an antichlamydial effector could not be clearly demonstrated since treatment with an arginine analog, while suppressing NO production, gave no consistent enhancement of infected cell numbers.


Author(s): Lau, Hiu | Advisor(s): Chalasani, Sreekanth | Abstract: To accommodate complex and changing environmental conditions, animals have evolved mechanisms to modify behaviors that maximize survival. Behavior can be modified by prior experiences that alter internal states such as hunger and external cues such as food signals. Despite the importance of this ability to evaluate and respond to environmental changes, it remains incompletely understood how animals accomplish this essential task. Using the Caenorhabditis elegans model system, the goal of this dissertation is to reveal mechanisms that allow animals to interpret the world around them and respond appropriately. Advantages of using C. elegans include a simple body plan with a total of only 959 somatic cells, a complete nervous system wiring diagram and robust behavior readouts. Combining these advantages with powerful genetics and molecular manipulations, my dissertation presents mechanistic insight into how the nervous system generates flexible behaviors. Chapter 1 introduces effects of environmental changes on neural circuits and how neuropeptides play an important role in linking food conditions with animal behavior responses. Insulin-like signaling is presented as an example of how conserved molecules play critical roles in modifying the nervous system. In Chapters 2 and 3, I use acute food experience paradigms to probe how prior experience modifies the nervous system resulting in altered animal behavior. Using acute food deprivation in Chapter 2, I show that internal state changes specifically and reversibly modify C.elegans behavioral responses to repellent signals. Lack of food status is sensed and relayed through multiple tissues using neuropeptides to modify downstream ASI chemosensory neurons altering repellent sensitivity. In Chapter 3, I show that transiently altering diet by changing food source modifies C. elegans behavioral responses to attractive signals. I also find that neuropeptide signals are used to relay diet changes modifying food-seeking behavior. In summary, my research links dietary changes with neuropeptide signals from multiple tissues modifying behaviors. Together, I have identified a role for neuropeptides and conserved signaling pathways in relaying changes in internal and external states. In sum, this dissertation unravels how prior experiences involving food signals modify the nervous system allowing animals to generate adaptive and appropriate behaviors.


European policymakers are struggling to identify economic policies that can create new jobs and return their economies to a stable growth path. The aim of this report is to examine how Europe can gain a competitive edge in new products and services with higher value added that can form the basis for future growth and jobs. In light of limited fiscal and political capital, the crucial issue is prioritisation in terms of technologies, regions and policies. Given global decarbonisation concerns, the wide array of low-carbon technologies offers significant growth potential. Some EU countries have already been able to develop a comparative advantage in wind turbines and electric vehicles, though the EU is less effective at exporting solar panels and batteries. Based on patenting activities we, however, see some potential – maybe not for entire countries but for some regions – to further specialise in all of these four low-carbon technologies.


Since the first genetically engineered (GE) crops (also called GM [genetically modified] crops, or GMOs, genetically modified organisms) became commercially available in the mid-1990s, U.S. soybean, cotton, and corn farmers have rapidly adopted them. As adoption has spread, there have been policy debates over the costs
and benefits of GE products. Issues include the impacts of GE crops on the environment and food safety, and whether GE foods should be specially labeled. Congress generally has been supportive of GE agricultural products, although some Members have expressed wariness about their adoption and regulation. The 109th Congress will likely continue to follow trade developments, particularly the
U.S.-EU dispute, as well as U.S. regulatory mechanisms for approving biotech foods.


Big data analytics frameworks, such as Spark and Giraph, need to process and cache massive amounts of data that do not always fit on the managed heap. Therefore, frameworks temporarily move long-lived objects outside the managed heap (off-heap) on a fast storage device. However, this practice results in (1) high serialization/deserialization (S/D) cost and (2) high memory pressure when off-heap objects are moved back to the heap for processing. In this paper, we propose TeraHeap, a system that eliminates S/D overhead and expensive GC scans for a large portion of the objects in big data frameworks. TeraHeap relies on three concepts. (1) It eliminates S/D cost by extending the managed runtime (JVM) to use a second high-capacity heap (H2) over a fast storage device. (2) It offers a simple hint-based interface, allowing big data analytics frameworks to leverage knowledge about objects to populate H2. (3) It reduces GC cost by fencing the garbage collector from scanning H2 objects while maintaining the illusion of a single managed heap. We implement TeraHeap in OpenJDK and evaluate it with 15 widely used applications in two real-world big data frameworks, Spark and Giraph. Our evaluation shows that for the same DRAM size, TeraHeap improves performance by up to 73% and 28% compared to native Spark and Giraph, respectively. Also, it provides better performance by consuming up to 4.6× and 1.2× less DRAM capacity than native Spark and Giraph, respectively. Finally, it outperforms Panthera, a state-of-the-art garbage collector for hybrid memories, by up to 69%.


Today we live in an extremely dynamic world. Some of us were born in countries with developed economy, well functioning civil society and established country brand. Some of us live in developing countries, which are trying to do their best on international arena. Unfortunately, very often the latter do not have a clear coordinated vision of moving forward. This makes it hard for international society to grasp the concept they assemble. One thing is clear – developing, and often developed, countries need to build their country brands in order to get the attention and interest from the outside world. At the same time, there is a very clear trend of the world's population migration towards social media, which is capable of bringing additional benefits.There are two important Research questions in this master thesis. The first one is: "What are the Essential Conditions for Creation of Unified Country Branding Strategy?". The second research question is: "What are the Necessary Components for Country Branding Strategy Implementation Applying Omnifarious Social Media Technology Resources and Potential?".As the incentive of this master thesis is to understand, describe, structure and build certain practical guideline for country brand strategy in a social media environment, different research methods and data are used for this purpose. The main ones are the synthesis and analysis, aimed at the procession and extraction of valuable information, as well as its' conversion into part of the universal country brand strategy approach. Observation technique was also used to proceed with the research, since the country branding is an on-going process, which needs constant follow-up to gather the facts. Intended target audience for this master thesis are national governments interested in country branding and struggling to find a starting point for it, country branding agencies, as well as all individuals, working or interested in the field of country branding.


Universal processes related to the demographic transition to structural low fertility on the one hand, and economic geographic processes of concentration and urbanization on the other lead to regional population decline in most European countries. Due to this universal nature of the underlying processes policies aimed at dealing with them share substantial similarities. At the same time, the regional context is very important as well. This paper aims to give more insight into and reflections on policies dealing with population decline in three European regions: Northeast Scotland, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, and Brandenburg. Each region has experienced population decline, but in different regional and national contexts. Policy responses between the regions differed. Each of the regions has experienced some form of structural change that was triggered by external developments. Demography has reacted to these changes primarily through migration. Moreover, there are strong internal differences in growth and decline within these regions. One of the main conclusions is that the role of national policies has been substantial. The more successful regional policies were supported strongly by national policies. Moreover, policies have primarily affected liveability in the regions, but not population decline as such.


: Before laparoscopic inguinal hernia repair can be widely adopted, general surgeons must become familiar with the laparoscopic presentation of the inguinal anatomy and must obtain practice with an effective technique that follows the surgical tenets of a good repair. This paper discusses some of the possible pitfalls of performing laparoscopic hernia repair and presents recommendations for success, including a brief description of a technique that has been used successfully in > 60 cases.


"Tests were conducted in the Variable Density Wind Tunnel of the NACA to determine the importance of the interference effects and drag of struts on a monoplane. Inclined struts were placed upon a Gottingen 387 airfoil in the lower surface positions and in two upper surface positions. Tests were made at values of Reynolds Number comparable with those obtained in flight. It was found that the interference drag of struts may be as great as the drag of the struts alone" (p. 1).


The primary motor area (M1) has been implicated in visuomotor sequence learning. However, it has been suggested there are multiple neural networks that undertake visuomotor sequence learning. The role of M1 in sequence learning may be specific to learning simple sequences comprising predictable associations between adjacent movements. This study aimed to investigate the role of M1 in learning simple ("first-order conditional") and more complex ("second-order conditional") sequences. It was hypothesized that continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) over M1 would result in poorer learning of the simple sequence only. Forty-eight healthy adults received cTBS to either M1 or the parietal lobe or received sham cTBS before immediately completing 2 visuomotor sequence learning tasks. The tasks only differed in relation to the structure (i.e., simple vs. complex) of the sequence. The group who received cTBS over M1 demonstrated significantly poorer learning of the simple sequence in comparison to the more complex sequence. The parietal lobe stimulation and sham stimulation did not affect learning of either sequence. This is the first study to show differential involvement of M1 in visuomotor sequence learning, dependent on sequence structure. The study provides new evidence that sequence learning might be supported by different networks in the brain. Specifically, M1 sequence learning appears to be important for learning simple item-to-item associations but not for more complex sequences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).


Software performance engineering (SPE) provides an approach to constructing systems to meet performance objectives. The authors illustrate the application of SPE to an example with some real-time properties and demonstrate how to compare performance characteristics of design alternatives. They show how SPE can be integrated with design methods and demonstrate that performance requirements can be achieved without sacrificing other desirable design qualities such as understandability, maintainability, and reusability. >


The EU carbon price lies well below estimates of the social cost of carbon and "target-consistent" carbon prices needed to deliver ambitious targets such as the 40% reduction target for 2030. In light of this, the UK introduced a carbon price floor (CPF) for its electricity sector in 2013 and the new Dutch Government has recently made a similar commitment, while successive French Governments have called for an EU-wide CPF. This paper analyzes the impacts and design of a power-sector CPF, both at the EU and national level, using a political-economy approach. We find a good case for introducing such a price-based instrument into the EU ETS. We suggest that a CPF should be designed to "top up" the EUA price to €25–30/tCO2, rising annually at 3–5% above inflation, at least until 2030. We argue that the new EU Market Stability Reserve enhances the value of a CPF in terms of delivering climate benefits, and discuss the potential for a regional CPF in North-West Europe. We also review international experience with price floors (and ceilings).


The switching scheme of a point-to-point network determines how packets flow through each node, and is a primary element in determining the network's performance. In this paper, we present and evaluate a new switching scheme called hybrid switching. Hybrid switching dynamically combines both virtual cut-through and wormhole switching to provide higher achievable throughput than wormhole alone, while significantly reducing the buffer space required at intermediate nodes when compared to virtual cut-through. This scheme is motivated by a comparison of virtual cut-through and wormhole switching through cycle-level simulations, and then evaluated using the same methods. To show the feasibility of hybrid switching, as well as to provide a common base for simulating and implementing a variety of switching schemes, we have designed SPIDER, a communication adapter built around a custom ASIC, the Programmable Routing Controller (PRC).


On 31 October 2007 the M  5.4 Alum Rock earthquake occurred near the junction between the Hayward and Calaveras faults in the San Francisco Bay Area, producing coseismic and postseismic displacements recorded by 10 continuously operating Global Positioning System (GPS) instruments. The cumulative postseismic displacements over the four months following the earthquake are linearly related to the cumulative number of aftershocks and are comparable in magnitude to the coseismic displacements. The postseismic signal suggests that, in addition to afterslip at seismogenic depths, localized right-lateral/reverse slip occurred on dipping shallow fault surfaces southwest of the Calaveras. The spatial distribution of slip inferred by inverting the GPS data is compatible with a model in which moderate Calaveras fault earthquakes rupture locked patches surrounded by areas of creep, afterslip, and microseismicity (Oppenheimer et al. , 1990). If this model and existing Calaveras fault slip rate estimates are correct, a slip deficit remains on the 2007 Alum Rock rupture patch that may be made up by aseismic slip or slip in larger earthquakes. Recent studies (e.g., Manaker et al. , 2005) suggest that at depth the Hayward and central Calaveras faults connect via a simple continuous surface illuminated by the Mission Seismic Trend (MST), implying that a damaging earthquake rupture could involve both faults (Graymer et al. , 2008). If this geometry is correct, the combined coseismic and postseismic slip we infer for the 2007 Alum Rock event predicts static Coulomb stress increases of ∼0.6 bar on the MST surface and on the northern Calaveras fault ∼5 km northwest of the Alum Rock hypocenter.


We present the first application of a time reverse location method in a volcanic setting, for a family of long-period (LP) events recorded on Mt Etna. Results are compared with locations determined using a full moment tensor grid search inversion and cross-correlation method. From 2008 June 18 to July 3, 50 broad-band seismic stations were deployed on Mt Etna, Italy, in close proximity to the summit. Two families of LP events were detected with dominant spectral peaks around 0.9 Hz. The large number of stations close to the summit allowed us to locate all events in both families using a time reversal location method. The method involves taking the seismic signal, reversing it in time, and using it as a seismic source in a numerical seismic wave simulator where the reversed signals propagate through the numerical model, interfere constructively and destructively, and focus on the original source location. The source location is the computational cell with the largest displacement magnitude at the time of maximum energy current density inside the grid. Before we located the two LP families we first applied the method to two synthetic data sets and found a good fit between the time reverse location and true synthetic location for a known velocity model. The time reverse location results of the two families show a shallow seismic region close to the summit in agreement with the locations using a moment tensor full waveform inversion method and a cross-correlation location method.


Universities provide a platform for sport and physical activity participation opportunities to students. For students, participation in sport and physical activity is an important part of university life which can lead to improved physical and mental health. Positive consequences such as increased self-esteem and life satisfaction can emanate from participation in sport and physical activity. University students' participation in sport and physical activity can be bound by the social constructions of gender and gender stereotypes. Hence, the purpose of the study was to examine the relationship among attitude towards sport, self-esteem and life satisfaction of university students from a gender perspective. A non-probability convenient sample of university students (from first year to postgraduate) from two universities in the Gauteng Province, participated in the study. A four-section questionnaire comprising questions on demographic variables, participants' attitude towards sport, self-esteem and satisfaction with life was used to collect data. Cronbach alpha was used to assess the reliability of the attitude to sport scale (α=0.943), self-esteem scale (α=0.748) and satisfaction with life scale (α=0.804). Correlations were used to examine the relationship among the constructs. The results of the correlation analysis showed weak, yet positive association between students' attitude towards sport and satisfaction with life. Attitude towards sport and self-esteem showed insignificant associations with satisfaction with life. The mean ranks indicated that male students seem to be more inclined to sport compared to their female counterpart. Limitations and areas for future research are suggested.


The past few years have witnessed significant interest and developments in researching mobile learning, with a lot of important contributions being made towards understanding and defining mobile learning. However, current research efforts are being redirected towards a new agenda to establish appropriate methods for investigating mobile learning, as this book testifies. This chapter contributes to this research effort by articulating how to adapt Activity-Oriented Design Methods (AODM – see Mwanza, 2002) for use in mobile learning research.


Aim: Against the background of an impending shortage of family practitioners, it is important to investigate the factors influencing the choice to become one. The aim of this study was to identify factors that encourage medical students to choose to practice family medicine. Method: Using a questionnaire, students in the fourth and fifth years of their studies in the Federal State of Hesse were asked about the factors that had influenced their choice of medical specialty and their experience of courses in family medicine. Predictors of an interest in practicing family medicine were calculated using multiple logistic regression. Results: 361 questionnaires were returned, representing a response rate of 70.9%. Confirmation of personal strengths, an interest in the field, and practical experience of the subject generally turned out to be important factors influencing the choice of medical specialty. 49.3% of students expressed an interest in practicing family medicine. A link existed between an interest in working as a family doctor and the opportunity to take over an existing practice, experience of medicine in rural areas, and an appreciation of the conditions of work. With regard to education at medical school, positive experiences during a clinical traineeship in family medicine and positive role models among teachers of general practice were identified as predictors. Conclusion: Almost half the medical students were open to the idea of practicing family medicine. Experience of medicine in rural areas and positive experiences of courses in general practice were linked to an increased interest in working as a family doctor. To promote this interest, it may be a promising approach to increase opportunities to collect experience of medicine in rural areas, and to encourage highly motivated teaching practices.


The English verbs remember and forget are typically treated by syntacticians as mental process verbs whose argument structure is characterized by a variety of possible complements. Based on extensive corpus data, Tao (2001) investigates the use of remember in spoken English and proposes that complement-taking is actually a marginal feature of remember, and remember can be seen as undergoing changes toward becoming a discourse particle in spoken English. This paper extends the previous study by bringing in forget for comparison against remember. It is shown that while both remember and forget disprefer complements, forget lacks the placement flexibility seen in remember but allows more tense options; at the same time, forget also has its own pragmatically strengthened patterns in such combinations as 'forget it' and 'don't forget to.' Overall this study shows that not only can usage-based investigations provide a realistic account of argument structure, a usage-based approach is also instrumental in elucidating the varied local patterns that are often confined to individual linguistic entities or sequences in highly specified contexts, a conclusion which supports the emergent view of argument structure.


This purpose of this model is to distinguish between anthropogenic and climate-driven patterns of shellfish exploitation over the last 1500 years at Tutuila Island, American Samoa. The model employs optimal foraging theory principles to generate predictions of which habitats are exploited in climatically stable versus variable environments. Results imply that the radius of foragers' ability to sense the quality of their environment determines which habitats they spend most of their time in. These predictions are applied to archaeological data excavated from the Fatu-Ma-Futi site to infer which habitats humans who created these archaeological sites were exploiting over time (Morrison and Addison 2008).


An automatic video-object oriented steganographic system is proposed for biometrics authentication over error-prone networks. Initially, the host video object is automatically extracted through analysis of videoconference sequences. Next, the biometric pattern corresponding to the segmented video object is encrypted by a chaotic cipher module. Afterwards, the encrypted biometric signal is inserted to the most significant wavelet coefficients of the video object, using its qualified significant wavelet trees (QSWTs). QSWTs provide both invisibility and significant resistance against lossy transmission and compression, conditions that are typical in error prone networks. Finally, the inverse discrete wavelet transform (IDWT) is applied to provide the stego-object. Experimental results under various losses and JPEG compression ratios indicate the security, robustness, and efficiency of the proposed biometrics hiding system.


The Peacock Poems, Sherley Anne Williams' first book of poetry, was nominated for a National Book Award. A former senior Fulbright lecturer at the University of Ghana and visiting professor at the University of Southern California and Cornell University, Williams is professor of literature at the University of California at San Diego. She had received an Emmy Award for a television performance of her poetry. She is advisory editor of Callaloo and Langston Hughes Review. Williams was graduated from California State University (B.A. 1966) and Brown University (M.A. 1972). Her home is in San Diego.


The purpose of the research described in this thesis is to investigate certain aspects of the reactivity of doubly-charged cations (dications) with neutral molecules in the gas phase, specifically, the mechanisms governing the bond-forming reactivity of dications with neutrals as well as the degree of state-selectivity involved in their electron transfer reactivity. Computational investigations of the mechanisms governing the bond-forming reactivity in the following systems have been performed: CF22+ + H2O Ar2+ + NH 3 and CF32+ + H2. All of these systems are found to possess a well in their potential energy surfaces corresponding to an associated complex between the dication and the neutral. For the systems involving molecular dications (CF22+ and CF32+), the mechanisms that emerge from the quantum chemical calculations indicate a pattern of reactivity that is in support of computational and experimental studies previous to and concurrent with the work presented in this thesis. This mechanistic pattern involves three main steps: bond formation, rearrangement and fragmentation, indicating a degree of complexity in bond-forming dication-molecule reactions that had not been previously expected. The mechanisms calculated quantum chemically were compared with experimental studies on the same system, either performed previously by others or as part of the work for this thesis, and found to be in good agreement. Crossed-beam collision experiments employing time-of-flight mass spectrometry analysis of the products were performed on two dication-neutral systems: CF22+ + D20 and SF2+ + H 2O. The results of experiments on CF22+ + D20 were compared with previous experimental studies on CF22+ + H2O in order to determine the possible existence of an intermolecular isotope effect. No isotope effect was observed within the experimental error, in agreement with our predictions from theoretical rate constant calculations. Experiments on the SF2+ + H2O system were carried out in order to determine the relative degree of dissociative and non-dissociative electron transfer. The ratio of the product ions corresponding to these two processes, S+/SF+, was then compared with a ratio determined from theoretical calculations. These calculations involved the determination of Landau-Zener probabilities for forming products in a given electronic and vibrational state, as well as Franck-Condon factors for the electron capture of SF2+, in order to determine the degree of state-selectivity in the formation of electron transfer products. Good agreement was found between the experimental and theoretical S+/SF+ ratios and it was also found that only excited states contributed to the formation of electron transfer products.


Hepatitis C virus (HCV)-infected patients often use multiple medications to treat infection, adverse events related to HCV therapy, or to manage other comorbidities. Drug-drug interactions (DDIs) associated with this polypharmacy are important in HCV pharmacotherapy, especially after introduction of direct-acting antivirals (DAAs). Knowledge about pharmacokinetics, metabolism, and disposition of drugs used in the treatment of HCV and comor- bidities is crucial in the interpretation of these data and management of these interactions (e.g. dose adjustments, therapeutic drug monitoring, or safe alternatives). Web-based DDIs interactive tools like http://www.hep-druginteractions.org represent the most feasible and comprehensive way for an assessment of potential DDIs before, during, and after treat- ment. Additional helpful resources are data from clinical drug interaction studies as well as recent real-life data. This chapter is practical overview of DDIs in the treatment of HCV with the last update.


Prices of new antimalarial drugs are targeted at the "travellers' market" in developed countries, which makes them unaffordable in malaria-endemic countries where the per capita annual drug expenditures are US$ 5 or less. Antimalarials are distributed through a variety of channels in both public and private sectors, the official malaria control programmes accounting for 25-30% of chloroquine distribution. The unofficial drug sellers in markets, streets, and village shops account for as much as half of antimalarials distributed in many developing countries. Use of antimalarials through the health services is often poor; drug shortages are common and overprescription and overuse of injections are significant problems. Anxiety over drug costs may prevent patients from getting the necessary treatment for malaria, especially because of the seasonal appearance of this disease when people's cash reserves are very low. The high costs may lead them to unofficial sources, which will sell a single tablet instead of a complete course of treatment, and subsequently to increased, often irrational demand for more drugs and more injections. Increasingly people are resorting to self-medication for malaria, which may cause delays in seeking proper treatment in cases of failure, especially in areas where chloroquine resistance has increased rapidly. Self-medication is now widespread, and measures to restrict the illicit sale of drugs have been unsuccessful. The "unofficial" channels thus represent an unacknowledged extension of the health services in many countries; suggestions are advanced to encourage better self-medication by increasing the knowledge base among the population at large (mothers, schoolchildren, market sellers, and shopkeepers), with an emphasis on correct dosing and on the importance of seeking further treatment without delay, if necessary.


ABSTRACT People with eating disorders have elevated interoceptive deficits and risk for self-injurious behaviors (SIBs). Across two eating disorder samples, the relationship between interoceptive deficits (IDs) and SIBs was tested. Study 1 (n = 100) found that suicide attempters and those engaging in non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) had greater IDs than those with no self-injury history. Lack of access to emotion regulation strategies accounted for the link between IDs and SIBs. In Study 2 (n = 92) multiple suicide attempters had greater IDs than single attempters and those engaging in NSSI; however, the latter two groups did not differ from one another. Interoceptive deficits may differentiate those who engage in severe SIBs from those who do not, and thus be a useful determinant of suicide risk severity among patients with eating disorders. Lack of access to emotion regulation strategies appears to be one pathway linking interoceptive deficits and self-injury.


In order to solve the problems in numerical calculation of fluid-solid interaction (FSI) caused by fluid deformation when projectile penetrates into water, a finite element model was developed through experimentation by using ANSYS/ LS-DYNA software. The process in which a rod projectile penetrates water was simulated at a high velocity by applying an Arbitrary Lagrange-Euler (ALE) algorithm. The results show that the model is effectively solved several numerical problems. A higher penetration velocity leads to greater deformation and wear of projectile head and subsequently an increased rate of deceleration, due to hydrodynamic drag.


Summary Serum unsaturated vitamin B12-binding capacity (UBBC) has been shown to fluctuate with neutrophil levels and has been reported to correlate with TBGP in normal and hyperleukocytic states. However, the present report demonstrates that the above relationship is not present in neutropenia, suggesting that some of our concepts regarding UBBC may have to be reexamined, since factors other than TBGP appear to be operative There was a wide scatter of UBBC values among the 39 neutropenic subjects studied, the mean being significantly above normal. There were few low values. High UBBC was primarily confined to subjects with transient neutropenia. Normal values were generally seen in steady neutropenia. The difference in UBBC was primarily due to Transcobala-min I, the other serum binders being similar in both groups. No other significant diagnostic pattern of UBBC was found. Recovery from neutropenia was accompanied by a rise in UBBC in all cases except in four patients whose UBBC was initially very high and fell with recovery. No discernible pattern of serum B12 levels existed, although subnormal levels without evidence of B12 deficiency were found in three of the seven patients with aplastic anemia. Serum B12 levels did not change with recovery in approximately half of the neutropenic subjects, change being variable in the others. Neither serum B12, UBBC, total Biz-binding capacity, or any of the three serum B12 binders correlated with neutrophil count, bone marrow findings, TBGP, or granulo-cyte turnover rate. We thank Airman Leonard J. DeLallo, Ms. Karen Bjorndal and Ms. Lynn Baril for their technical assistance.


We describe the clinical presentation and outcome in a series of eight patients with systemic necrotizing vasculitis and severe alpha1-antitrypsin (AAT) deficiency followed up at three Swedish hospitals during 1968-92. We also review six other cases reported in the literature during the same period. Diagnosis of severe AAT deficiency was based on the presence of the PiZZ phenotype, or low plasma total trypsin inhibitory capacity, or a low plasma AAT concentration (10-40% of the normal mean value) and presence of the PiSZ or PiFZ phenotype. The diagnosis of systemic vasculitis was biopsy-verified in all eight patients. Pretreatment laboratory findings, treatment protocol, and outcome were reviewed in each of the 14 patients. Of the eight patients in the Swedish series, six had systemic vasculitis of the microscopic polyangiitis form, one had Wegener's granulomatosis, and another had Henoch-Schönlein purpura. In the series as a whole (n = 14), median age at diagnosis was 48 years (range 44-84), the median number of affected organs was eight, and all 14 patients had skin involvement, and either renal or joint involvement (in most cases both); 71% (10/14) had emphysema; 57% (8/14) had hepatic abnormalities (two having cirrhosis, two fibrosis, and one multiple aneurysms in hepatic arteries); one patient who presented with acute ulcerative colitis developed manifest vasculitic syndrome three years later; and 64% (9/14) died, the major cause of death being renal failure. This syndrome, characterized by multiple organ involvement and fatal outcome, has been underdiagnosed. Physicians should be alert to the presence of the PiZ AAT deficiency gene in patients with systemic vasculitis, especially when the course is progressive or when the patient also has emphysema or cirrhosis. Awareness of those features may aid prompt recognition and enable early treatment.


Abstract
 The perennial lupines of western North America, previously suggested to be monophyletic, comprise an apparently rapid and recent species radiation concentrated in the California Floristic Province. The Lupinus albifrons species complex consists of a number of closely related yet morphologically variable taxa within the larger group of perennial lupines. We used sequence data from two rapidly evolving noncoding chloroplast regions to analyze relationships in the perennial lupines, with special emphasis on the Lupinus albifrons species complex. Sampling from throughout the ranges of species thought to be closely related to Lupinus albifrons, we found that this group is characterized by high genetic diversity not only between species, but also within species and even within populations. The results of this study call into question the monophyly of the western North American perennials. Only two taxa clearly emerge as deserving recognition at the species or subspecies level based on the molecular data: Lupinus paynei from Simi Valley, California, and Lupinus excubitus from eastern California and the San Gabriel Mountains. Although some taxonomic conclusions can be extrapolated from this study, overall, these results warn against undersampling in phylogenetic studies of recently evolved groups.


The paper presents the motion simulation of a Wing in Ground craft with a Lippisch configuration which is stable in terms of static stability. The influence of wind and wave perturbations on the dynamic stability of the flight are investigated.The analysis of safety and stability used two different approaches. Based on frequency domain simulation, the first approach derived from the classical stability theory utilizes the aerodynamic coefficients and their linearized derivatives. The second approach based on time domain simulation uses the coefficients with full respect to the nonlinear character of aerodynamics in ground effect. The trajectory is used to evaluate the dynamic stability and flight safety of the craft. From the results for typical perturbations, the limitations of the classical stability theory for the flight safety of Wing in Ground craft are shown.The results show the necessity of the automatic control system even for a satisfying stable craft predicted by the linear theory. The demand of high performance together with the hard constraints for states and control inputs are challenging for the controller design. A proportional-integral-derivative controller is studied to secure the flight safety of small craft under different perturbation and a methodology for designing a control system for operation under various weather conditions is illustrated.Copyright © 2014 by ASME


The Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) within the construction industry are presenting challenges to both industry and financial institutions in Namibia. The Development Bank of Namibia's (DBN) investments in the construction industry yield mixed results, which have become worrisome. The percentage of non-performing loans within the construction portfolio continues to rise, hence a suitable contractor-financing model is required in order to advance financial resources and capacitate the contractor for their own development. The challenges of SMEs in construction business point to the need for the integration of knowledge from fields as diverse as business, finance, management and technical skills. This integration necessitates the need to create an enabling environment in which they can persevere. Understanding and experiencing these challenges, this researcher from the Development Bank of Namibia has taken the initiative to establish advanced financial solutions mainly for SMEs in the construction industry through the Bridging Finance Facility (BFF). This research report compiled findings gathered through the investigation of challenges impeding the success of SMEs, with a specific focus on SMEs engaged in the construction industry. A review of their satisfaction levels pertaining to the DBN's application requirements, the adequacy of the BFF, mentoring, training, and client relationship support were some of the aspects investigated. The report also brought to the fore the bank's internal lending processes that are currently in place. The main findings revealed that technical capacity, mentoring and training remain key shortcomings faced by SME's. This matches the bank's internal credit assessment processes that do not address the assessment of technical capacity sufficiently. The research found that the standard BFF induction program being implemented by the bank, and credit assessment turnaround times remain challenges for the DBN. Interestingly, road contractors were found to be a less risky portfolio group to finance in comparison to building contractors. The objectives of the document are in accord with the DBN's overall strategic priorities, namely financial sustainability, stakeholder satisfaction and business development. Fundamental to the success of these investigations with the SMEs challenges was the use of the sets of structured questionnaires tailored to a selected sample of road and building contractors, consultants, quantity surveyors and architects as well as interviews with senior management at the DBN.


To assess the contribution of the arterial and venous systems in the hemodynamic changes of normal pregnancy, we studied blood flow, vascular resistance, venous tone, and the viscoelastic properties ("creep") of the upper and lower limbs (using plethysmography), aortic distensibility (using pulse wave velocity measurements), and cardiac dimensions (using echocardiography) in nine healthy women. Studies were longitudinally performed at the first (10-13 wk) and third (33-38 wk) trimesters of pregnancy in comparison with the period between the third and sixth month after delivery. From the first trimester, heart rate significantly increased while systemic blood pressure and limb vascular resistances did not change significantly and aortic distensibility increased ( P < 0.05). Lower limb viscoelastic properties decreased at the third trimester ( P < 0.05) and venous tone increased from the first trimester ( P < 0.01), whereas little changes were observed at the site of upper limbs. The decrease in calf venous tone was significantly correlated with the increase in left ventricular diastolic diameter at the first ( P < 0.001) and the third trimester ( P < 0.05). The study provides evidence that during normal pregnancy, changes in the arterial and venous sides of the circulation occur independently of pressure alterations. The increase in venous tone, contributing to preload augmentation, and the decrease in aortic stiffness, reducing afterload, both optimize cardiac function until delivery.


Recent advances of person re-identification have well advocated the usage of human body cues to boost performance. However, most existing methods still retain on exploiting a relatively coarse-grained local information. Such information may include redundant backgrounds that are sensitive to the apparently similar persons when facing challenging scenarios like complex poses, inaccurate detection, occlusion and misalignment. In this paper we propose a novel Fine-Grained Spatial Alignment Model (FGSAM) to mine fine-grained local information to handle the aforementioned challenge effectively. In particular, we first design a pose resolve net with channel parse blocks (CPB) to extract pose information in pixel-level. This network allows the proposed model to be robust to complex pose variations while suppressing the redundant backgrounds caused by inaccurate detection and occlusion. Given the extracted pose information, a locally reinforced alignment mode is further proposed to address the misalignment problem between different local parts by considering different local parts along with attribute information in a fine-grained way. Finally, a focal triplet loss is designed to effectively train the entire model, which imposes a constraint on the intra-class and an adaptively weight adjustment mechanism to handle the hard sample problem. Extensive evaluations and analysis on Market1501, DukeMTMC-reid and PETA datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of FGSAM in coping with the problems of misalignment, occlusion and complex poses.


Abstract. Using stereo endoscopes for 3D reconstruction in minimally invasive surgery, the calibration of the stereo system is required. Since calibration in general and of medical endoscopes in particular is a well discussed topic, this publication will focus on the user experience in the operating room. To enable the medical personnel in performing the calibration, a guided process using an augmented camera image has been developed and implemented on the basis of the Robot Operating System framework. A similarly guided accuracy check allows the user to determine beforehand if a calibration is necessary.The method is tested by performing multiple calibrations on two different stereo endoscopes. It is shown, that the accuracy check and calibration can be completed in around 2 minutes. The resulting calibration parameters for one endoscope are analyzed in terms of temporal stability. Additionally, the self-heating that occurs after the system starts is examined. It is shown that short- and long-term effects impact the stereo system stability and that regular re-calibrations might be required for use in 3D reconstruction.


This article examines the use of "unclean hands" and corruption as a defense in international investment arbitration using the infamous World Duty Free v Kenya arbitration in 2006 as a lens. By allowing for corruption to act as a complete defense, even when the "unclean hands" were on the part of both sides, allows for host States to be effectively rewarded for their corruption leaving the investor with their investment taken away and no recourse. How is it equitable to allow a State, whose illegal actions are more serious, to dismiss an investor's claim because of a comparatively minor illegality which was solicited from them? If two parties can act immorally and illegally in concluding a contract, there is merit to the argument that no court should aid one whose cause of action is based on an immoral or illegal act, ex dolo malo non oritur action. But corruption cases in investor-state disputes are rarely so black and white. This article proposes a paradigm shift to account for a more balanced approach.


Various Intrusion Detection System (IDS) in the literature have shown that multiple classifier may be well versed in detecting the specific attack, but detecting different types of attack is low. In order to ensure high security this work focuses on multiple classifier fusion technique to increase detection rate. The primary role of classifier is to classify the correct and incorrect instance therefore multiple classifier design that is practical, and detects more attack by means of combining them is preferred here. To our best knowledge, this is the first design that considers multiple classifier in which all classifiers are different that detects both anomalies based and misuse based attacks. The dataset collected in a networking environment with the relatively high data density may contain attacks that assaults the system and thus violates system security. In this paper the operation of combining multiple classifiers that detects all categories of attack, from that improving the detection rate and true positive rate thereby reducing the false positive rate can be done. Decision based on threshold value and combining the classifiers result based on majority voting rule helps to increase the overall efficiency and accuracy in detecting the various categories of attack.


In a cloud computing environment, a great amount of services require to be deployed into the cloud, which may lead to the redundancy and complexity of cloud-services, and ever-increasing resource consumption. Current researches try to optimize the increasing number of services with the support of buffer pool and deployment optimization algorithms. Buffer pool here performs the crucial task of storing the deployment requirements for optimization. However, issues like when to enforce the flush and which stored objects should be flushed out still lack comprehensive consideration. To address these problems, we propose an improved collaborative dynamic double buffer pool in this paper. By classifying different deployment requirements and flush fashions, we select a threshold to determine when to enforce the flush. According to this flush time, we can select the to-be-optimized objects dynamically along with necessary collaborative interaction with the service owner. Meanwhile we present the algorithms of the buffer pool flush mechanism, and the improved service deployment optimization approach. In the end, we illustrate the effectiveness and feasibility of our approach through a demonstration which guarantees relatively high optimization efficiency.


Ghost-free bimetric theory can describe gravity in the presence of an extra spin-2 field. We study certain aspects of dynamics in this theory: (1) It is shown that if either of the metrics is an Einstein solution then the other is always forced to be Einstein, too. For a class of bimetric models this constraint is stronger and as soon as one metric is Einstein, the other metric is forced to be proportional to it. As a consequence, the models in this class avoid a branch of pathological solutions that exhibit determinant singularities or nonlinear ghosts. These constraints persists in a generalized form when sources are included, but are destroyed in the massive gravity limit of the theory. (2) For another class of bimetric models, we show the existence of solutions that do not admit a massive gravity limit. A bimetric model that could exhibit a nonlinear version of "partially massless" symmetry belongs to both these classes. It is argued that if such a model exits, its symmetry will not survive in the massive gravity limit.


Catalytic functionalized aniline formation from nitroarenes is a core technology in the synthesis of pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and fine chemicals. However, control of chemoselectivity still poses particular challenges with aromatic nitro substrates bearing one or more reducible groups. Here, we report the low-cost synthesis of a porous carbon supported CoS2 catalyst (CoS2/PC) and successfully apply the catalyst in the chemoselective hydrogenation of nitroarenes. For hydrogenation of 3-nitrostyrene, the catalyst furnishes a superior selectivity of 99% towards 3-aminostyrene at a conversion of >99%. Density functional theory calculations together with X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy reveal that terdentate and tetrahedral coordinated Co atoms in CoS2 (labeled as Co3 and Co4) are possible active sites. The face to face located Co3 and Co4 sites make the reaction rather local, and Co3 and Co4 sites are occupied by substrates and H2, respectively, which is beneficial to the superior activity and selectivity. The Co3–Co4 "synergic active site pair" in CoS2 makes the investigation of the synergic effects at the molecular level a reality on heterogeneous catalysts.


The discovery of ballistic transport in graphene grown on SiC(0001) sidewall trenches has sparked an intense effort to uncover the origin of this exceptional conductivity. How a ribbon's edge termination, width, and topography influence its transport is not yet understood. This work presents the first structural and electronic comparison of sidewall graphene grown with different edge terminations. We show that armchair and zigzag terminated ribbons, grown from SiC, have very different topographies and interact differently with the substrate, properties that are critical to device architecture in sidewall ribbon electronics.