Critics of higher education often criticize the chasm separating esoteric academic theory from the pragmatic knowledge required of students after graduation. Service-learning is presented as a catalyst for intrinsically motivating students to master course concepts. In service-learning, students collaborate with each other and with external stakeholders to fuse classroom theory with practical application in order to address real-world problems. Typological and historical overviews of service-learning are provided with special emphasis on how the systemic incorporation of service-learning throughout a degree program may increase student persistence by harmonizing academic processes with generational values. The use of service-learning in flight safety courses at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University has not only improved safety at the campus and in the surrounding aviation community, it has enhanced the learning of technical concepts in students while greatly improving their soft s k i . When Mark Twain sardonically boasted that he never let his schooling interfere with his education, one can be rather certain that he was not referring to the need for servicelearning in higher education curricula, but rather lamenting how formal education often falls woefully short of imparting practical knowledge to its learners. Twain's prescient musing highlights the often cited distinction between the act of teaching and the process of learning. Professors often pride themselves in their lecturing skills, but must stop to consider the disturbing truth that only active learning can truly tap the full potential of the education process. The correlation between teaching and learning is particularly relevant for university administrators who recognize that classroom learning processes have a direct impact on student persistence. It is rather self-evident to state that students who enjoy education will have a tendency to remain in school and will result in the pursuit of excellence after graduation. Pundits are quick to criticize such assertions as promoting edutainment instead of meaningful instruction. Educational psychologists counter by proclaiming, "Making learning fun is serious business." How can enjoyable learning be induced without sacrificing the necessary rigors of a curriculum and without sliding to the lower hierarchies of cognition in Bloom's Taxonomy? Over the past few decades a highly enjoyable yet challenging learning catalyst has been implemented at many universities that attempts to fuse academic theory with the pragmatic appeal of real-life applications. By utilizing the theory exposed in a university course to address c o k i t y problems, students simultaneously serve society while using active learning to master academic concepts. Since institutions of higher learning serve as centralized repositories of human capital for society, it stands to reason that local communities should benefit directly by each university's presence amongst them. Service-learning attempts to link academic processes with societal needs in a symbiotic arrangement that polishes the reputation of the host institution, benefits the members of society by providing liee intellectual capital, and provides learning dividends for students tasked with addressing the community problems. Although service-learning has penetrated into the mainstream of liberal arts curricula with great success, it has not seen widespread acceptance within the technical disciplines of the academy. Many educators in the hard sciences erroneous perceive that service-learning falls outside the functionality of their learning processes and thus miss a stellar opportunity to simultaneously improve the technical and soft skills oftheir students. One such field that has notoriously escaped the attention of service-learning is aeronautical science. Over the past few years, service-


Previous studies showed that both amplitude [1, 6] and phase [4] of the Modulation Spectrum (MS) of speech waveforms play an important role in preserving intelligibility in stress-timed languages like English. In the current study, association between MS and speech intelligibility of spoken sentences in Mandarin and Cantonese which are typical syllable-timed languages [7, 8], is investigated. The manipulation of "local time reversal" on speech waveforms was employed for each sentence. Speech identification accuracies were calculated and MS analysis was implemented. It is found that both amplitude and phase of the MS components at the corresponding syllabic rates of the spoken sentences are contributing to speech identification. We suggest that this work will help us understand more about the relation between speech intelligibility and speech acoustics, especially for syllable-timed languages.


In this paper we compiled data on 157 Hungarian adventive plant species – of which 65 had not been reported from the country previously – from 47 settlements of Transdanubia and the Great Hungarian Plain. These taxa are rare, interesting or not included in the most recent list of the Hungarian neophyte species. The list includes data about many rare, occasionally escaping species (e.g. Lagurus ovatus, Salvia coccinea), taxa considered incapable of reproduction under the recent climatic conditions of the Pannonian Basin (e.g. Cupressus sempervirens, Punica granatum) or naturalised plants that may become invasive in the future (e.g. Celtis sinensis, Lonicera japonica). In the outlook we highlighted some special urban habitats (e.g. private and botanical gardens) and practices (e.g. public green space management) that endanger the native flora. We also describe their role in promoting the appearance and the expansion of alien plant species, and processes (e.g. laurophyllisation, spread of thermophile species) that will become increasingly common in the future as a result of climate change.


One of the main conditions for the successful formation of the peasant households is credit ensuring. Credit is the only tool of intensification of agricul-tural production process through the purchase of agricultural machinery, equip-ment and introduction of new technologies. Therefore, in the present conditions the effective existence of private peasant households is impossible without a long-term mortgage lending. In this regard, research on the Peasant Land Bank activities acquires special significance, allowing to gain invaluable experience in the application of various methods and means of intensification of agriculture. The research determines the role of the Peasant Land Bank in solving of the agrarian question on the territory of Belarus in the end of the 19th beginning of the 20th century. It is the first time in historical science when the comprehensive research of the activities of the Belarusian branches of the Peasant Land Bank was made and their effect on the growth of peasant land ownership, land market stabilization during agrarian crisis and the realization of the Stolypin agrarian reform in Belarusian provinces was shown. The results of the research offer the challenge for further study of the agrarian history of Belarus of the second half of the 19th beginning of the 20th century. In addition, the experience of the bank's activities on the territory of Belarus will be useful for the banking sector of the ecomomy of the Russian Federation in the choice of monetary policy instruments.


Unlike English, in highly inflected Indian languages like Bengali, Marathi, and Sanskrit, compound words are not multi-word expressions but created by combining two or more simple words without any orthographic separation. A compound word with unmarked word boundaries creates a problem for many computational tasks. Splitting compound words improves performances in Machine Translation, and Information Retrieval by reducing out-of-vocabulary words in the dictionary. So far, a number of decompounding techniques have been applied in European languages like German, Dutch, and Scandinavian. In this work, we apply a corpus-based decompounding technique in Sanskrit and improve splitting accuracy by applying various ranking methods. We evaluate the performance by different ranking methods against a gold standard in terms of Precision, Recall, and F-measure.


Breast milk contains immunological factors, such as IgA antibody, which help to prevent infectious diseases. A total of 197 paired samples of colostrum and breast milk was collected from postpartum mothers in Gunma City, Japan, and examined for anti‐rubella IgA antibody by enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and Western blotting (WB). The anti‐rubella virus IgA ranged from 0.5 to 78.5 U/ml with a mean of 6.05 U/ml and a median of 3.6 U/ml in colostrum, and from 0.5 to 32.7 U/ml with a mean of 2.74 U/ml and a median of 2 U/ml in milk. The differences between the means of titers of total IgA and anti‐rubella virus IgA in colostrum and in milk were significant statistically. The levels of anti‐rubella virus IgA in both colostrum and breast milk correlated positively with the anti‐rubella virus hemagglutination inhibition (HI) titers in the sera of mother, indicating that the levels of these different classes of antibodies correlated. Based on WB, anti‐rubella virus IgA in both colostrum and breast milk reacted with the rubella viral protein E1 and C, but not with the E2 protein. J. Med. Virol. 82:1475–1479, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


We are reporting electrically tunable metasurface working in the range covering C-band to O-band. ENZ condition is enabled at/around optical telecommunications wavelength, which permits the design of new optoelectronic devices.


Abstract Field studies conducted in 1990 and 1991 at five locations in Georgia and one location in Virginia in 1991 evaluated imazethapyr [2-[4,5-dihydro-4-methyl-4-(l-methylethyl)-5-oxo-1H-imidazol-2-yl]-5-ethyl-3-pyridinecarboxylic acid] and AC 263,222 [(±)-2[4,5-dihydro-4-methyl-4-(l-methylethyl)-5-oxo-1H-imidazol-2-yl]-5-methyl-3-pyridinecarboxylic acid] for weed control, peanut tolerance, and yield. Imazethapyr and AC 263,222 applied early postemergence (EPOST) controlled smallflower morningglory [Jacquemontia tamnifolia (L.) Griseb], Ipomoea morningglory species, prickly sida (Sida spinosa L.), and coffee senna (Cassia occidentalis L.) greater than 90%. Imazethapyr did not control Florida beggarweed [Desmodium tortuosum (SW.) DC.] or sicklepod (Cassia obtusifolia L.) adequately, with control generally less than 40%. AC 263,222 controlled Florida beggarweed greater than 92% when applied EPOST and from 54 to 100% when applied postemergence (POST). Imazethapyr applied preplant incorporated (PPI) contro...


[ ] was deposited by DC magnetron sputtering on glass surface under various sputtering parameters such as discharge power(, substrate temperature(), Ar and flow ratio with ( 90 sccm) and about 1 mtorr of pressure. TiO-N thin film was prepared under same sputtering conditions for thin film except flow ratio( 90 sccm). The sheet resistance of thin films deposited under these parameters was measured to analyze electronic characteristic and thin film's thickness(-step), surface roughness(AFM) and formation construction(FE-SEM, XRD) were also measured to draw optimal sputtering parameters. In order to evaluate photo-activity of thin film(, TiO-N) made in optimal parameters for removal of pollutants, toluene among VOCs and Suncion Yellow among reactive dyes were chosen to probe organic compounds for photo-degradation. It was shown that the photo-catalytic thin films had a significant photo-activation for the chosen contaminants and especially TiO-N thin film showed maximum efficiency of 33% for toluene(5 ppm) removal in visible-light range.


Abstract : This research assessed development of a Visualization and Interactive Elicitation Workstation (VIEW) for inferring and representing mental models of the battlefield. The prototype is composed of two subsystems: a Visualization subsystem and a Knowledge Elicitation (KE) subsystem. The Visualization subsystem is composed of three interlinked modules: (1) a Tactical Visualization Interface providing liked displays for visualizing the battlefield; (2) an Object Database providing a common object representation for environmental and military entities: and (3) an Object World Model providing behaviors for objects in the database. The KE subsystem is composed of two linked modules: (1) the KE interface which navigates across direct indirect and observational techniques collection of elicited data, and KE analysis results: and (2) the KE Recording/Analysis Module, which records the elicited data. A demonstration illustrates coupling between the visualization and elicitation components and support of direct and indirect mental model examination. Direct techniques use a case-based interview format: indirect techniques include repertory grid analysis, multidimensional scaling, and hierarchical cluster analysis.


This article analyses the representation of social security fraud in the UK's Department for Work and Pensions' (DWP) television advertising campaign between 2000 and 2004. The article discusses the campaign in the context of New Labour's concerns with social security fraud and observes that the ostensible aim of the television advertisements was to deter social security fraud. The article then moves on to discuss the difficulties of the advertising campaign in meeting this aim in the context of what is known about the nature of social security fraud.
Since the 1970s, the mass media in the UK has been fascinated by social security fraud (Golding and Middleton, 1982; Golding, 1999). However, since the year 2000 there has been a further media representation of social security fraud; the anti-fraud advertisement. Despite recent literature commenting on 'fraud in the public domain' (Sainsbury, 2003, pp 290-92) the anti-fraud advertisements have received no analytical attention. This article addresses this issue by focusing on the 'Targeting fraud' and the 'We're onto you' television advertisements. These advertisements were part of a campaign that also involved newspaper, poster and radio advertisements, but there is not enough space here to analyse these other types of advertisements.
This article outlines the New Labour government's concerns with social security fraud and locates the television advertising campaign in relation to them. The article goes on to offer a textual analysis of the advertisements, focusing on the theme of deterring social security fraud, before critically engaging with the advertisements by focusing on their representation of social security fraud and the potential of the advertisements to deter fraudulent activity.


1. Introduction For many years a central problem of theoretical physics has been to set up a satisfactory relativistic theory of elementary particles. This problem is yet far from solution, the notorious occurrence of infinite self-energies and similar divergencies having hitherto frustrated all attempts at complete formulation. Nevertheless, definite advances towards the understanding of the general problem have recently been made, not so much by improvement of the theory as by a more detailed study of all its possible types and variants and the resulting clarification of the essential underlying principles. The picture of an elementary relativistic quantum-mechanical "particle " can now be roughly outlined as follows: The "exact theory" is one of quantized waves, the particle characteristics appearing as consequences of the non-commutation of the wave amplitudes. There exist possible theories with any given integral or half-integral value s of the " spin" of the particle, the number of independent states of polarization of the corresponding waves then being 2 s + 1 = N (Fierz 1939; Fierz and Pauli 1939).


College computer is a compulsory course for non-computer major students in our college.In accordance with the reform spirits for college students set by the Education Department of China and the application capabilities required by the society,the author of this paper,considering teaching practice used in public computer course in our college in recent years and students characteristics after conducting serious researches,calls for reform in public computer course in terms of curriculum system,teaching contents,testing mode and teaching methods.The author also presents in this paper expected reform fruition and results.


A macular hole is a full-thickness defect of the retinal tissue involving the anatomical fovea of the eye. The first macular hole descriptions were made in the second half of the nineteenth century. Early case descriptions of macular holes focused on young, traumatized eyes. Knapp made the first case description of a macular hole in 1869 in a patient with ocular contusion injury and an initial diagnosis of macular hemorrhage. He and most other observers attributed macular holes to ocular trauma. Two years later, Noyes made the first accurate and detailed ophthalmoscopic description of a macular hole that was secondary to blunt trauma in a 13year-old girl. Noyes was the first to recognize that the hallmark of the lesion was a full-thickness defect within the center of the macula. He postulated that blunt trauma could cause immediate macular hole formation from mechanical energy created by vitreous fluid waves and contrecoups macular necrosis or macular laceration. The first histopathological descriptions of full-thickness holes were provided by Fuchs (1901) and by Coats. Coats noted cystic intraretinal changes adjacent to the macular holes and thought that these changes could be caused by ocular trauma and by other atraumatic mechanisms. The coalescence of these intraretinal cysts could then lead to a full-thickness macular hole. Even in the early part of the twentieth century, traumatic holes were believed to account for one-half of all cases of macular holes. Beginning with Schepens in 1955, the role of the vitreous in macular hole formation was postulated and, with Gass, a comprehensive description of the stages of macular hole development and the role of the prefoveolar vitreous cortex in macular hole formation was delineated. Thus, although these early case reports of macular holes described traumatic macular holes, it is now known that


For the research on the repair of the airplane leaf blade by laser cladding, regard the LY11CZ as substrate and the Al-Y-Nb alloy as layer cladding material, the microstructure of laser cladding layers and anti-corrosive performance were studied. The results indicate that, the Al-Y-Nb alloy can be used to repair the leaf blade (LY11CZ) as reference material. The laser cladding layers were obtained with close organization and good metallurgy union with the substrate, without obvious micro-cracks under electric current 150A, pulse width 10ms and frequency 1Hz. The anti-corrosive performance of the laser cladding layers was good. The corrosive pitting and the crevice corrosion were the main corrosion form in the acidic salt solution. The obvious inter-crystalline corrosion has not been discovered. The blowholes and the micro-cracks existed in the laser cladding layers with bad influence to their causticity. The micro-blowhole and the periphery micro-crack were the most main reasons for the crevice corrosion.


Based on the analysis of the path planning under the cyclic goods-taking model, the mathematical model of path planning is established. After comparison and analysis of the commonly-used optimization algorithms, the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is adopted to solve the path planning model under the situation of cyclic goods-taking model. An auto manufacturing plant is adopted as a case, with its cyclic goods-taking path of its parts entering the plant being planned. Research finds that a satisfying transportation path under the cyclic goods-taking model with reduced transportation costs can be obtained through the ACO-based path planning.


This research was conducted at the Spazzio Kuta Bali hotel using saturated samples of 35 employees. Furthermore, the collected data was analyzed using descriptive analysis and path analysis. The results of this study conclude that transformational leadership has a positive and significant effect on employee work motivation, where the better the application of transformational leadership is ensured also the higher the level of motivation of work held by employees. Transformational leadership has a positive and significant effect on employee performance, where if transformational leadership goes well and effectively it can have an effect on improving employee performance. Work motivation has a positive and significant effect on employee performance, where if the higher the work motivation of the employee, the higher the level of employee performance. Work motivation is positively and significantly able to mediate transformational leadership style towards employee performance, that is if the applied leadership style can precisely direct organizational goals with individual needs, the higher the motivation of the subordinates which will further improve their performance.
Keywords: transformational leadership, work motivation, employee performance


The small ligands that bind to the mismatched base pairs were found to stabilize the hairpin secondary structures of the repeat sequences found in the human genome. The trinucleotide repeats are the causatives of many neurological disordersƒÀ whereas the telomere repeats are the sequence located in the 3' end of the human chromosome and stabilize the genome. The ligands described here induced the hairpin secondary structure upon binding to these repeat sequences.


The purpose of this study was to develop a model of virtual labs on some concepts of physics. In this article will describe some of the findings of the preliminary study carried out in the framework of the development of the virtual laboratory model. Data were collected through observation, questionnaires, interviews, and studies related documents. The results showed that a number of problems related to the lecture held, particularly with respect to the selection method of teaching on certain concepts, issues related to the activities of laboratory experiments, the description of the physics of matter that is difficult for students. Results of this study are expected to be the basis for the development of the model as well as efforts to improve the quality of learning physics, particularly for prospective teachers of physics.


The precise mechanism which allows the hybridization between nearly degenerate localized 4f and (6s,5d)-conduction-band states of a mixed-valent rare earth (RE) is investigated in detail. We propose that a dynamic symmetry breaking, generated by coupling the displacement of the RE ion from its equilibrium position to the mixing term of the Anderson Hamiltonian, induces the hybridization of the opposite-parity f and sd states. The model is solved under the assumption that the degeneracy of the 4f level, N/sub f/, is large, which yields exact results in the N/sub f/..-->..infinity limit. Also, only one Einstein phonon mode is retained. Both a semiclassical and a full quantum-mechanical treatment are presented. Finally, we apply our model to the metal-insulator transition of SmS.


Background: Gender differences among the responses to the COVID-19 disease needs to studied. Aspandemic is growing and more and more cases are being registered, correlation between disease and genderresponse if any should be examined.Summary: pandemic of COVID-19 is evolving which reported its first case in Wuhan, PRC, considerableamount and efforts are only directed towards containment of the virus. The effect of the pandemic on pregnantwomen physiologically, psychologically and classification by socioeconomic status can give better trendsto study. Further mortality rate between men and women and reason behind it can be evidently proved afterthrough study. After all, one solution to different problems cannot be implemented. Middle East respiratorysyndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) also belonging to similar family of thecoronavirus have more things to study regarding which strategy should be employed in containing the viralspread. Vertical transmission is not seen yet but occurrences of sporadic deaths of infants or still birth couldbe explained after research.Conclusion: Gender based case fatality rate and its reasons can be extremely helpful in treating the patientwith specific gender. Psychological state in the time of distress always been a cause of worry. It worries morewhen identified in pregnant state. All these aspects need to studied thoroughly


We read the paper by Trebicz-Geffen published in the April issue of the International Journal of Experimental Pathology with interest (Trebicz-Geffen et al. 2008). In their study, the authors reported molecular analysis of the multiple osteochondroma (MO)-associated EXT1 gene [MO (Bovee & Hogendoorn 2002) was previously known as hereditary multiple exostoses (HME) (Solomon 1964)], and documented their findings with mRNA and protein measurements, and with DNA sequence analysis. As these results are difficult to reconcile with aspects of current understanding of EXT1 function, and with previous studies on EXT1 and EXT2 expression in hereditary MO and solitary osteochondromas (SO), we would like to comment on their results in perspective.

Their observation that EXT1 mRNA and protein levels are elevated in patients with MO who carry an EXT1 mutation was surprising. EXT1 has been shown to act as a tumour suppressor gene (Bovee et al. 1999; Bernard et al. 2001). In a subset (but not all) of MO patients, loss of the remaining wild type allele can be shown in the osteochondromas (Bovee et al. 1999). As 70% of the mutations found in EXT1 are non-sense frame shift or splice site mutations, leading to a premature stopcodon (Wuyts & Van Hul 2000), one would expect down-regulation at both mRNA and protein levels in MO. We reported that EXT1 and/or EXT2 mRNA levels are down-regulated in MO as compared with normal human growth plate (Hameetman et al. 2007a), and decreased levels of EXT1 and/or EXT2 protein in the cartilage cap cells of MOs have been reported previously (Bernard et al. 2001).

In addition, their observation that normal EXT1 levels are present in SOs is surprising. Somatic mutations of EXT1 and EXT2 are very rare or absent in these tumours (Hecht et al. 1997, Hecht et al. 2002; Bernard et al. 2001). Recently, however, we have shown that homozygous deletion of EXT1 occurs in the cartilaginous cap of SOs (Hameetman et al. 2007b), suggesting that (similar to MOs) EXT1 is inactivated in SOs. These findings suggest that EXT1 mRNA and protein levels are likely to be down-regulated in both conditions, and this has been confirmed at the mRNA level (Hameetman et al. 2007a).

The authors do not discuss these discrepancies. They propose that up-regulation of EXT1 is a compensation mechanism for the defective EXT1. This is difficult to reconcile with the alternative, which is that inactivation of EXT1 is causative for osteochondromas.

An explanation for these conflicting data may lie in the different tissues that were used in the two studies. Our study used fresh frozen material from the cartilage cap, with confirmed cartilaginous morphology, whereas their study used cultured cartilage cap cells, without clarifying which markers were used to confirm this. It is therefore impossible to exclude that the cultured cells had a fibroblast-like phenotype without evidence about morphology and biochemistry. Furthermore, as control material, we used normal age-matched growth plate, and they used normal cartilage from patients undergoing total joint replacement.

EXT1 mRNA expression is high in both human (Hameetman et al. 2007a) and mouse (Stickens et al. 2000) growth plate. Endogenous EXT1 mRNA levels have not been determined previously in human articular cartilage, and have not been documented in elderly people with severe osteoarthritis, which is the most likely source of material for their study. However, high EXT expression would not be expected, because proliferating and prehypertrophic chondrocytes (i.e. the cells that express EXT in the growth plate) are infrequent in articular cartilage. Moreover, postpuberty, one would expect low or absence of expression of EXT in human articular cartilage, as the downstream signalling targets of EXT, such as Wnt, transforming growth factor, and bone morphogenetic protein, are also altered to favour chondrocyte catabolic activity (Hopwood et al. 2007).

The immunohistochemical staining of EXT1 in articular cartilage is difficult to evaluate but does not suggest high expression in figures 5 and 6 of the paper. Comparison to low EXT expression in articular cartilage will mean that there appears to be an increase in osteochondromas, whereas comparison with high endogenous EXT1 expression in growth plate cartilage will suggest down regulation. As osteochondromas are presumed to arise from growth plate cartilage (Hameetman et al. 2007b; Clement et al. 2008), we believe that this is the more relevant control.

Another explanation, which could account for the difference in findings, may lie in the approach used for the Western blot analysis. Pre-immune sera showed different patterns in normal, SO and hereditary MO samples. The use of a standard more stably expressed internal control, such as alpha tubulin, could overcome this problem and might lead to different conclusions.

Thus we suggest that the findings are difficult to interpret based upon current understanding on the function of EXT1, and on comparative expression (Bernard et al. 2001; Hameetman et al. 2007a), and that there are technical issues, including choice of positive controls, which might account for the observations reported.


Using panel data of 30 Chinese provinces during 2000~2010, this paper employs super-efficiency DEA method and considers exhaust gas emission as undesirable outputs to measure the total factor energy efficiency of each province. Then we empirically examine the effect of regional marketization on total factor energy efficiency. The major conclusions are as followers: during the sample period, whether environmental constraint is controlled, it has significant improvement in China, but the contribution of technological progress to efficiency is relatively low. Form the regional angle, the efficiency of eastern region is the highest, followed by centre region and western region in order. But inter-provincial energy efficiency exists significant convergence tend. Using the sys-GMM method to deal with the endogeneity, we find that marketization can at least improve energy efficiency by 0.6%. With other conditions remaining unchanged, higher initial energy efficiency, raising energy prices, reducing investment in fixed assets and optimizing energy consumption structure have significant positive effect on energy efficiency.


We study a class of three-dimensional systems of harvesting two species. The dynamics of the harvesting effort is assumed to be slow comparatively to the dynamics of the species. By using singular perturbation theory and the stability loss delay phenomenon, we give precise conditions which guarantee the existence of a semi global asymptotically stable equilibrium. As an application, a well-known model considered by Clark will be discussed.


v CHAPTER 1. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 1 Research Motivation 1 Thesis Organization 2 CHAPTER 2. GENERAL METHODS 3 General Methods 3 CHAPTER 3. LENNARD-JONES SYSTEM 7 Overall Introduction 7 Method on BCC Solid Reference Free Energy 8 Method on BCC Solid Perturbation Free Energy 11 Results of BCC Solid Free Energy of LJ System 12 Method on Liquid Hard Sphere Free Energy 13 Method on Liquid Perturbation Free Energy 13 Results of Liquid Free Energy of LJ System 14 Conclusions 16 CHAPTER 4. YUKAWA SYSTEM 18 Amendment on General Methods When Applied to Yukawa System 18 Issue of Units 20 Results of Liquid Free Energy of Yukawa System 20 Conclusions 22 CHAPTER 5. GENERAL CONCLUSION 23


This study aims to identify and evaluate the critical success factors (CSFs) for international development projects (IDPs) from the perspective of key IDP stakeholders in Afghanistan. The study adopts a quantitative cross-sectional survey research design. Thirty-one success factors were identified and shortlisted through literature reviews and validated by experts and IDP management practitioners. The study's target population is the IPD senior management, IDP team members, and the general public. Amongst 500 questionnaires distributed, a total of 217 were returned and considered for analysis. The result of Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) revealed five key CSFs, namely: project cycle management, effective recruitment, continuous learning and adapting, project management method, and clear project goals and objectives. Besides, one-way ANOVA results revealed no statistically significant differences in the ranking of CSFs by the three groups of respondents. However, the post hoc test result indicated that the CSF 'continuous learning and adapting' was relatively rated lower by the general public. The findings of the study would assist the international community, their implementing partners, and IDP management practitioners in better management and successful implementation of IDPs in developing countries. It will also contribute to the CSFs theories and IDPM body of knowledge. The research is the first of its kind to examine the CSFs for IDPs in Afghanistan.


This study examined the impact of domestic debt on private sector investment and economic growth in Nigeria, covering the period 2000-2019. The causal research design was employed. Unit root and cointegrated tests were carried out and the unit root test results showed that the variables were non-stationary at level but became stationary after first differencing. Cointegration test results revealed that the variables are cointegrated meaning that they have long-run equilibrium relationship. Using the ordinary least squares (OLS) method to estimate the specified multiple regression models, findings showed that domestic debt and interest on domestic debt negatively and significantly impacted on private sector investment and economic growth in Nigeria during the period under consideration. The negative impact of domestic debt on private sector investment indicates that government domestic borrowing crowd-out private sector investment. In lieu of the fact that government borrowing (especially domestic borrowing) stifles (crowd-out) private sector investment and retards economic growth in Nigeria, it is recommended that since government borrowing especially through the money market is exerting adverse effects on private sector investment and economic growth, government should endeavor to borrow domestically through the capital market by further developing the Nigerian equity and bond markets in order to enable these markets have the capacity to provide the needed funds. Also, to avoid stunt economic growth and crowding-out effect of government borrowing, government should endeavor to put in place fiscal prudent measures that would favor the private investor by discouraging high government spending in areas that don't have direct positive impact on private sector investment growth and economic growth.


1The degree of "bachelor", Russia, Obninsk, National Research Nuclear University "MEPhI" (NNIU MEPhI) Obninsk Institute of Nuclear Power Engineering (IATE); 2Associate Professor of the Department of Economics, Economic and Mathematical Methods and Informatics, Doctor of Economics, Associate Professor, Russia, Obninsk, National Research Nuclear University "MEPhI" (NNIU MEPhI) Obninsk Institute of Nuclear Power Engineering (IATE)


We evaluate the outage capacities of a multi-carrier downlink wireless LAN system. Time, frequency, and code division are considered to multiplex different users. For code division, we also consider a multi-carrier CDMA implementation with orthogonal signature sequences. It is assumed that the transmitter has no channel state information. Numerical results show outage capacity regions and outage probabilities for a two-user system with different average signal-to-noise ratios.


Research on information system (IS) adoption and resistance has accumulated substantial theoretical and managerial knowledge. Surprisingly, the paradox that end users support and at the same time resist use of an IS has received relatively little attention. The investigation of this puzzle, however, is important to complement our understanding of resistant behaviours and consequently to strengthen the explanatory power of extant theoretical constructs on IS resistance. We investigate an IS project within the healthcare sector in the UK in which end-users, who were heavily involved during the design, implementation and roll out, expressed their support for the system, while simultaneously showing resistance. To examine this behaviour in detail, we applied Q methodology. As a result, we identified three different groups: (1) The convinced connector, waiting for collaborators. (2) The savvy explorer, sceptical about the tools' benefits. (3) The ambivalent follower, overwhelmed by complexity. While the behaviour is similar across all three groups, the reasons for not using the system differ significantly. Based on these groups, as our main contribution, we explain the paradox of supportive nonuse. We further add a fine grained understanding of supportive non-use to the existing types of IS resistance.


At the historic conference in Tiibingen on "The Healing Church" in 1964, Dr. John Wilkenson read a paper on "The Congregation as Agent of Pastoral Care." Here was an idea which surely had its roots in the diakonia of the New Testament and in the Reformation emphasis on the priesthood of all believers. But with the professionalization of the ministry and with the technical specialty of pastoral counseling, it had been forgotten, even submerged.


The article considers the expediency and possibility of familiarizing the 6 7 year old children with the cultural traditions of physical education of their people and the peoples of the nearest national environment. It also contains the main theses of the programme "Spings of Health" and discusses the results of the experimental work on its realization in preschool educational institutions in the Chuvash Republic.


"Siger" rice is cassava analogue rice adopt tiwul making process but with the appearance (more uniform shape, brighter colors) and the flavor is better. "Siger" rice is basically an instant tiwul that have been modernized. Because processed by the same method, the "siger" rice characterized as a functional food as well as traditional Tiwul. In order to transfer "siger" rice processing technology, has developed a pilot center for processing of "Siger" rice in Margomulyo village, Jati Agung, South Lampung. The study aims 1) to assess the effectiveness of technology transfer" siger" rice to increase productivity of traditional tiwul business 2) to reviewing the composition of the functional components of "Siger" rice result of technology transfer . The results showed that 1) the activities of technology transfer has been able to increase the productivity of the business as reflected in production capacity from 10 kg to 100 kg per week; selling price from Rp 8.000/kg to Rp 10.000/ kg ; profits per week from Rp 20.000 to Rp 350.000 ; expanding the marketing reach form Margomulyo village into South Lampung and Bandar Lampung and 2) "Siger" rice of technology transfer characterized as a functional food that is reflected in the high content of dietary fiber (14.95%) and resistant starch (7.78%) ; and more slowly digested the body because it has a low starch digestibility (17.65%).


Our previous studies demonstrated potent anti‐cancer effects of 5‐hydroxy tangeretin (5HT, a citrus flavonoid). However, high hydrophobicity of 5HN results in poor bioavailability, which has greatly limited its utilization as a nutraceutical. Herein, we investigated the possibility of encapsulating 5HN within food‐grade nanoemulsions to improve its bioavailability. Three food‐grade emulsions with different droplet sizes (r = 67, 125 and 203 nm) were prepared to encapsulate 5HN by a high energy method. These delivery systems were then used to treat human colon cancer cells. HPLC analysis revealed that the nature of the delivery system had a strong influence on the cellular uptake of 5HN. There was poor uptake of 5HN from both bulk water and bulk oil, while cellular uptake of 5HN was much greater for all three emulsions, with the amount of 5HN uptaken increasing with decreasing droplet sizes. Consistent with these results, the viability of colon cancer cells was inhibited to a much greater extent by 5HN encapsulated in the emulsion systems with the smaller droplet sizes. This is presumably because a greater amount of the 5HN was uptaken into the cells where it could exhibit its inhibitory effect against the cancer cells. Our results suggest that nanoemulsions may increase the bioavailability of highly hydrophobic bioactivities such as 5HN, and facilitate their utilization in functional foods and pharmaceuticals.


Crossbar is the core logic of switch and chipset. This paper designs and implements a crossbar in multi-processor chipset, and the frequency of the crossbar is up to 100 MHz after placing and routing on FPGA platform. The delay and bandwidth of the crossbar is tested based on implementation, and some optimization strategies of the crossbar are proposed. The crossbar runs in multi-processor system composed by Godson 2E CPU.


Ongoing investigations propose enrollment derivation (MI) assaults on profound models, where the objective is to surmise if an example has been utilized in the preparation interaction. Regardless of their obvious achievement, these examinations just report exactness, accuracy, and review of the positive class (part class). Subsequently, the presentations of these assaults have not been plainly covered negative class (non-part class). AI (ML) models have been broadly applied to different applications, including picture grouping, text age, sound acknowledgment, and chart information examination. Nonetheless, late investigations have shown that ML models are helpless against participation induction assaults (MIAs), which mean to gather whether an information record was utilized to prepare an objective model or not. MIAs on ML models can straightforwardly prompt a security break. For model, through distinguishing the way that a clinical record that has been utilized to prepare a model related with a specific infection, an assailant can surmise that the proprietor of the clinical record has the sickness with a high possibility. As of late, MIAs have been demonstrated to be compelling on different ML models, e.g., arrangement models and generative models. In the interim, numerous safeguard strategies have been proposed to relieve MIAs.


Experimental research methods was used in this research and the kind of research is quantitative research. To get the result about the size of tensile strength analysis, distortion and low carbon steel violence which has experienced FCAW welding by adding of static cooling with the cooling water capacity variant. The obtained result was analyzed by using analysis descriptive, namely outline the comparison specimens were given different treatment on the welding process. The result showed that the static cooling with different water capacity variations during the welding could get to minimize distortion, get highest tensile strength result, and the highest hardness violence. Minimum distortion occured on the welding result with 700L/H water capacity, is 5,76mm. The highest hardness violence occured on the welding result with 2800L/H water capacity, is 196,07 kg/mm2 and the maximuum tensile strength occured on the welding result with water capacity 2800L/H is 32,83 kgf/mm2.


In this paper a method to localize damage using partial modal response is derived. The method has 'patent pending' status. Partial modal response is the part of the response which arises just due to the damage and hence is extremely sensitive to damage. Data for the undamaged structure is not required for this method. The sensitivity of damage detection is higher for partial modal response using Timoshenko theory than Euler Bernoulli theory. Both experimental results and results of structures modeled in Abaqus are used to verify the theory. The derivation is done for a generic beam (supported on any boundary conditions) based on both Euler Bernoulli beam theory and Timoshenko beam theory and is given as 'Unifled Framework'. The Unifled Framework is extensible to other flnite elements like plates and shells.


This paper has expounded on the construction of barrier-free information system in library,and pointed out that library core competitiveness is the guarantee for realizing barrier-free information system.Through the establishment of barrier-free information system,we can improve the competitiveness advantages of libraries and promote the culture of library core competitiveness.


Beauveria bassiana stain TSB011 was obtained through mutating and rejuvenating by using the live insect of Carposina sasakii.The stain TSB011's pathogenicity to Aslaarposina sasakii was confirmed by detecting lethality rate and microscopic examination paraffin section.The conclusion indicted that the pathogenicity could be improved through mutating by using the target insect.


The remaining three essays fall into the category of constructive theology. Robert E. Cushman, Research Professor of Systematic Theology , Duke University Divinity School, traces the universal implications of the biblical doctrine of election through Old and New Testaments. Klaus Penzel, Professor of Church History, Perkins School of Theology, SMU, critically evaluates Philip Schaff's "mythical thinking" regarding history and comes down in favor of Bauer and Ebeling's preference for "critical thinking. " Finally, Schubert M. Ogden, Professor of Theology at Perkins, defends Rudofudolf Bultmann's view that Christianity should not claim special revelation except insofar as the "original revelation" of God was objectified by Jesus and thus demanded a particular response at the moment.


Based on mathematical model of the motor system,the self-sensing algorithm of mover displacement for the linear oscillatory motor with two separated stators is established,which is achieved through the voltage and current signal processing.Then,the method is verified by corresponding experiment.Under two control styles of constant frequency variable displacement and resonance variable displacement,the results show that the maximum absolute error of estimated stroke are 0.4 mm and 0.3 mm,and the maximum relative error are 4.76 % and 3.7 % respectively,which are suitable to actual control requirement.This method could be applied in the variable stroke control and top dead point control of directly driven compressor.


Device (10) for conditioning and / or applying a cosmetic product, comprising: - an applicator (20) and / or a fluid reservoir, - a device (30) for processing by suction of the skin, arranged to set detachably mountable to the applicator (20) and / or the reservoir, comprising a tip for application to the skin, communicating with an internal chamber of variable volume, the processing device (30) having at least one surface side actuator (60) on which the user can press to cause an elastic deformation and a reduction in the volume of the chamber, the latter tending to return by elasticity to its original shape.


determine the cell that contains a given point is the core procedure necessary for accomplishing this task. Donor search is particularly challenging for partitioned unstructured meshes because of the complex geometry that is often created at the boundaries of each mesh-block during partitioning. Another challenge arises because of the large variation in the type of mesh-block overlap and the resulting large load imbalance on multiple processors. Desirable traits for the grid assembly method are eciency (requiring only a small fraction of the solver time), robustness (correct identification of all point types), and full automation (no user input required other than the mesh system). Additionally, the method should be scalable, which is an important challenge due to the inherent load imbalance. In this paper, two fully-automated grid assembly algorithms are described. One is based on the use of auxiliary grids and Exact Inverse Maps (EIM), and the other is based on the use of Alternating Digital Trees (ADT). The EIM method is demonstrated to be more ecient than the ADT method, while retaining robustness. An adaptive load re-balance algorithm is also designed and implemented, which considerably improves the scalability of the method.


With its disputed international status and a recently proindependence government, Taiwan is striving to erase the memory of China as the motherland and construct a local homeland legacy. In the last fifteen years, the Taiwanese government has started a vigorous nation-building process and has strived to construct Taiwan as an island-state in its own right. In this process, the traditional opera form —xiqu— has been deployed as a crucial element in the formation of national identity. This paper looks at the changing definition of 'national opera' in relation to the emergence of Taiwanese identity. Traditional opera in Taiwan has become a symbol of a multi-racial, culturally-hybrid Taiwanese identity. By negotiating a sense of identity and constructing new traditions, a new national narrative is formulated and takes effect


The purpose of this study was to explore the similarities and differences between nonalcoholic fatty liver (FL) disease (NAFLD) and abdominal obesity in their association with insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome (MetS).


My work discusses the development program of micro-region Staroměstsko. Only the regions, that have created strategy of next development, shall be able to use financial and other means in form of government donation titles or various EU institutions to their further development. A basic characteristic of the micro-region is described in the preface of my work. The aim of my work is to find out possibilities of next strategic development of the micro-region. This was conducted by help of outputs from SWOT analyses of contemporary state, evaluation of conditions, presumptions and risks.


This study summarizes a large diverse dataset of methane (CH4) fluxes measured from agricultural sites across the British Isles. A total of 53,976 manual static chamber measurements from 27 different sites were investigated to determine the magnitude of CH4 fluxes from a variety of agricultural fields across the UK and Ireland. Our study shows that contrary to some studies, agricultural soils (both arable and grassland) are small net emitters of CH4 rather than sinks. Mean fluxes measured from arable and grassland sites (excluding fertiliser and tillage events) were 0.11 ± 0.06 and 0.19 ± 0.09 nmol m−2 s−1, respectively, and were not found to be significantly different (Welch t‐test, p = 0.17). Using the values reported in this study, we estimate that an annual emission of 0.16 and 0.09 Mt of CO2‐eq is expected from arable and grassland agricultural soils in the UK and Ireland (comparable to 0.3 and 0.7% of the current annual CH4 emission inventories, respectively). Where CH4 uptake occurs in soils, it is negligible compared to expected emissions of the application of animal manures and tillage events, which were both found to significantly increase CH4 emissions in the immediate few days to months after events. Our study highlights that there are significant differences in CH4 uptake and emissions between sites, and that these differences are partially the result of the moisture content of the soil (i.e., the aerobic status of the soil). We expect uptake of CH4 to be more prevalent in drier soils where volumetric water content does not exceed 35% and emissions to be exponentially greater where agricultural fields become waterlogged.


OBJECTIVE: To review the literature regarding point-of-care (POC) cholesterol monitors and describe their role in pharmacy practice. DATA SOURCES: Primary articles were identified by a MEDLINE search (1966–May 2003); references cited in these articles provided additional resources. STUDY SELECTION AND DATA EXTRACTION: All of the articles identified from this search were reviewed, and all information deemed relevant was included. DATA SYNTHESIS: Hyperlipidemia is a well-established risk factor for coronary artery disease, which is the leading cause of death in the US. The use of POC cholesterol monitors may help to improve the identification and management of this disease. Pharmacists may use many of these devices in their practice and are also in an ideal position to provide patient education on selection and use of these monitors and interpretation of the results. CONCLUSIONS: The availability of POC cholesterol monitors has increased in recent years. Based on currently available data, these monitors are best suited for screening purposes and to assist in the management of hyperlipidemia. There is not enough evidence to support the notion that POC cholesterol monitors can replace laboratory or office monitoring. Their application in the diagnosis of hyperlipidemia is also currently limited.


Strong Bronsted-base-catalyzed addition reactions of alkylazaarenes with vinylsilanes are reported. The reactions of alkylpyridines and their analogues with vinylsilanes proceed in moderate to high yields in the presence of catalytic amounts of LiTMP, LiCl, and MS 4A. This is a general method that can be applied to catalytic addition reactions of alkylazaarenes with vinylsilanes.


The Senior Day Care is necessary to satisfy the biopsychosocial need of the functional elderly. The study aims to determine the unmet biopsychosocial needs and perceptions on senior day care of 100 functional elderly, aged 60 years and above, in the village of Dayap in Calauan, Laguna. The descriptive study was aided by interviews and questionnaires. Socio-demographic and perception data were processed and analyzed using descriptive statistics, Marascuilo procedure, Pearson's correlation, and Monte Carlo method. Majority of the respondents, with ages ranging from 60 to 89, were married and were earning for their living. The respondents' level of awareness on Senior Day Care was low at 32% but their willingness to participate was high at 71% after the concept was explained. Major reasons for their willingness to join were their desire to be productive, active, healthy, and strong. Identified reasons for not taking part in the Senior Day Care were lack of time and preference to stay at home. The culturally acceptable senior day care services needed were medical screening, nutritional counseling, livelihood, health education, and physical fitness. Psychological counseling, socialization, and recreational arts and crafts were the least preferred services.


Objectives: Circadian rhythm characteristics are considered essential parameters for recognizing and treating increased risks in blood pressure (BP) and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Franz Halberg spent most of his academic career in CV research, focusing on ambulatory BP monitoring (ABPM) and developing chronobiological methods for clinical applications. Visit-to-visit BP variability (BPV) or overswinging/ shallow amplitude is associated with both increased all-cause mortality and CVD. Methods: Thus, we investigated BPV in 21 adolescents and adults by ABPM around the clock at 30-min to hourly intervals. Data were analyzed by the least squares rhythmometry method and compared it with telemetered rat circadian BP after one-cell homozygous embryos were transferred into spontaneously hypertensive (SHR, pup:shr) or normotensive (WKY, pup:wky) rats' oviducts (embryos: s,w; oviduct-uterus: S,W) and cross-suckled at birth (nurses: S,W). Results: The circadian response peaked in the late afternoon hours in most human subjects. Most rats showed clustered peaks at ∼23:00-h, while a WKY-uterine environment caused offspring peak variations (sWS, 00:45; sWW, 20:12-h). Circadian double amplitudes (2A) in human subjects varied from 8 to 26 mm Hg with higher 2A in elder adults, and 3 to 8 mm Hg in rats with significant fluctuations in SHR groups (wWW vs. sSS & sSW: 4.7 ± 0.3 vs. 7.5 ± 0.7& 8.3 ± 0.6 mm Hg). Conclusion: Hypertensive-prone shr strains showed significantly lowered BPs in WKY uterine and/or WKY nursing environments, indicating that environment can strongly modify genetic influence. However, lowering shr MESORs in the WKY environments remained above the MESORs and BPVs encountered in wky-donors. Biological time structures broader than circadian BPs are considered to be a gauge of vascular disease status.


If an egg rolls end over end along a horizontal surface at sufficient speed it will become airborne. A similar effect occurs if a person walks fast enough. The person then becomes airborne and both feet lift off the ground in a running stride.


ABSTRACT LncRNA in non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) pathway 1 (LINP1) is an lncRNA which promotes therapeutic resistance in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). However, the expression and function of LINP1 in cervical cancer is not yet well-understood. In this study, we evaluated the expression levels of LINP1 in tumor tissues and cell lines of cervical cancer. We found that LINP1 associates with NHEJ proteins (Ku80 and DNA-PKcs). LINP1 translocates from cytosol to nucleus in response to irradiation. In addition, LINP1 knockdown significantly increases the levels of cleaved caspase3 and PARP, leading to enhanced cell apoptosis after ionizing radiation (IR). LINP1-knockdown cells showed delayed repairs of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) after IR. Finally, LINP1 knockdown increases radiosensitivity of Hela S3 cells. These results suggest that LINP1 facilitates DSBs repair through NHEJ pathway and may thus serve as a prognostic marker and a potential target for the therapy of cervical cancer.


This study examines the relationship of consumers' experiential pursuing tendency and experience perception with the moderating role of consumers' expertise and their demographics, sex and age. Experience pursuing tendency is based on an individual personality. Experience perception is individuals' affection in the procession of consumption or after purchase. The study found that there are relationships between consumers' experience pursuing tendency and experience perception, sensual, affective consumers perceived even more emotional dimensions of experience. Whereas the other side of consumers, the pursuers more practical are less susceptible to emotional experience and more to professional experience. Accumulated knowledge by indirect learning or directly by oneself does not control the relationship between experiential pursuing tendency and experience perception. But sex and age among demographics are involving the relationships between them. Aged consumers over 50s perceived experience less, especially to the emotional side of experience perception. Finally, managerial and research implications are presented from the results of the study.


Objective:To observe the efficacy of Maple Polygonum gastrointestinal health capsules in the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome(IBS).Methods:120 cases of irritable bowel syndrome were randomly divided into two groups: treatment group of 60 patients with maple Polygonum gastrointestinal health,2/3 times/d,and control group 60 cases maleate US Buting 200mg,3times/d,4 weeks for both of the two groups.Results:After treatment,the patient's symptoms improved significantly(P0.05).The total efficiency for the treatment group and the control group was 97.0% and 88.3%,respectively,showing a significant difference in the treatment results(P0.05).Although abdominal pain,abdominal discomfort and diarrhea symptoms of patients in both two groups improved significantly,symptom score after treatment for treatment group was higher than that of control group,P0.01;there was no serious adverse reactions for two groups,while treatment group had a mild adverse reaction rate of 3.3%.Conclusion:Maple Polygonum gastrointestinal health capsules has a prominent effect in the treatment of IBS,and can be used in clinical treatment.


In the latest book in the 'New Ethnographies' series from Manchester University Press Geoff Pearson has provided us with a much needed fresh perspective on football fan research. It should become a leading text in the field. There are three excellent participation observation studies presented here, all conducted by the author, from a period of fifteen years of fieldwork. They focus on fans of Blackpool FC, Manchester United FC and England; in Pearson's words 'the loud and noisy subculture of wider football fandom'. I have argued for many years that sociology of sport should produce better and more rigorous ethnographies of football fans to counter the litany of misinformation and fantasy which abounds on this topic, often stemming from tabloid journalism, the hooligan memoir books and internet sites and the 'media hooligan wars' that have been created. Geoff Pearson has certainly answered the call. The book is outstanding. Max Gluckman, and his colleagues, who founded the Department of Anthropology at the University of Manchester in the 1940s and created 'the Manchester School', would be proud of Pearson as one the new practitioners of that ethnographic work in a book series explicitly building on their fine legacy.


Workload consolidation is a widely-used technique to improve the resource utilization of services computing systems by consolidating latency-critical (LC) and batch workloads on the same physical server. The resource manager for workload consolidation dynamically allocates hardware resources (e.g., cores, caches) to the workloads to maximize the resource utilization while satisfying the service-level objective (SLO) of the LC workloads. Since security-critical hardware resources are dynamically allocated across consolidated workloads, information leakages can be created among workloads through microarchitectural side-channel (SC) attacks. Despite extensive prior works, it is yet to investigate efficient system software support for achieving high resource utilization without compromising the SLO and security of consolidated workloads. To bridge this gap, we propose SDRP, secure and dynamic resource partitioning for safe, efficient, and SLO-aware workload consolidation. As with the state-of-the-art techniques, SDRP dynamically allocates hardware resources to enhance the resource utilization and provide the SLO guarantees. In contrast to the state-of-the-art techniques, SDRP dynamically sanitizes security-critical hardware resources to robustly defeat microarchitectural SC attacks. Our quantitative evaluation demonstrates that SDRP achieves high resource sanitization quality, introduces low performance overheads, delivers high resource utilization with the SLO and security guarantees, and defeats the last-level cache (LLC)-based SC attack.


The Bluest Eye tells the story of Pecola, a black little girl who undergoes different forms of discrimination and abuse because of the color of her skin. As result of all the pain and suffering—including an incestuous rape—which she is subjected to, the girl loses her sanity. Therefore, one of the objectives of this article is to analyze how trauma is portrayed in the novel, considering the many micro-aggressions which Pecola is exposed to and which result in insidious


titration procedure. This method depends upon the amount of blue color developed when phenol, ammonium hydroxide, and sodium hypochlorite react. It represents an adaptation to a specific use of a general method developed by Tarugi and Lenci [3] and described by Snell and Snell [2] ] for determining -I~TH~ and =NH groups which depends upon the reaction of phenol and sodium hypochlorite with these groups. This method has also been adapted to the qualitative determination of these groups associated with textile materials [4]. Chloramine T has been used as a substitute for NaOCl [1].


Although the use of raster graphics technology has increased considerably during the past few years, in many applications vector devices still produce the highest quality pictures. This issue's displays on display were designed and generated by Melvin L. Prueitt at the Los Alamos National Laboratory on an Information International FR-80 computer-output-to-microfilm system, which draws vectors on a white phosphor CRT. Color is applied by means of red, green, and blue filters.


Recent research suggests that the structure of user knowledge, in addition to the content, is a significant determinant of user behavior in computer‐oriented tasks. The purpose of this article is to provide the researcher in human‐computer interaction with a comparative review of available knowledge structure measurement techniques and to summarize their potential application for aiding the designer at various stages of interface design. Three general classes of techniques are identified: verbal reports, clustering, and scaling. Each group is reviewed according to (1) the manner in which concepts and relationships are elicited, (2) the method used to derive the knowledge structure, and (3) procedures used to analyze the knowledge structure. With this information, the human‐computer interface designer can more effectively use these techniques for their particular application.


The burner is an important component of boiler.Such problems are analyzed as combustion instability,not operation in suction-fired,flame easy going out,slagging and higher carbon content in fly ash etc on 4# coal-fired boiler of Hunan Jing-xin Chemical Co.,Ltd,choosing bluff body burner instead of drect current burner,a new type specific bluff body burner are reformed. Running results show that the carbon content of fly ash Cfh = 13.6% and falling 5.4%,the boiler effcient enhancing from 76.74% to 80.54%.The bluff body burner has excellent performance in better steady burning and load adjusting ability.Also had better economic benefit and great application lvalue.


The papers in this special issue were part of the 8th Transatlantic Dialogue Conference of the European Group of Public Administration and the American Society for Public Administration, hosted by the Radboud University Nijmegen (the Netherlands) from 6 to 9 June 2012. The overall theme of this conference, in which scholars in public administration from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean exchange ideas and research and explore differences and similarities, was Transitions in Governance, a theme that was broad enough to attract a wide variety of scholars from this diverse disciplinary community to engage in lively scholarly and academic debates. But the theme of this specific workshop was still a bit of an outlier in the field of public administration and so were the attendants of this workshop. The workshop dealt with the issue of (new) 'social' risks and the (changing) role of the state or governments in addressing these risks and/or dealing with these social risks on both sides of the Atlantic. Hence, nearly all the workshop attendants identify themselves with social policy analysis, welfare state analysis, political science and political sociology and the papers discussed during this two days workshop could easily fit in any political science conference about the future of the American and European welfare states. Its link to the general theme of transitions in governance was that the aim was to explore the relevance and importance of so-called new social risks and/or the question whether governments at both side of the Atlantic have come to respond to (new) social risks in novel ways. In this editorial introduction, we first introduce the general theme of the workshop and we then introduce briefly the starting assumptions. We end with an outline of the papers that follow.


Kathy Brodie suggests a range of bought and made ideas for resourcing your children's schematic play. Interlocking train tracks are great for exploring connection schema, while trains can be used for rotation and positioning.


The utility model relates to a low-nitrogen oxid decomposition furnace for the cement industry, which can decompose the nitrogen oxid under a high temperature and emits low Nox, can fit for different fuel, can cause part of materials to be calcined in a suspension mode, and has great energy-saving effect. The pyrogenetic decomposition furnace adopts the technical proposal that the upper part of a deposition furnace body is provided with a swirl combustion-supporting chamber; the lower part of the furnace body is provided with a swirl combustion chamber; the lower part of the swirl combustion chamber is provided with a reduction chamber; a raw meal feeding device and a fuel feeding device are arranged on the furnace body, the swirl combustion chamber and the reduction chamber; combustion devices are arranged on the reduction chamber, the swirl combustion chamber and the furnace body 3; a wind inlet device is arranged on the swirl combustion chamber and the swirl combustion-supporting chamber; the top part of the furnace body is provided with a furnace delivery wind pipe.


Recent years have seen a significant increase in cloud computing simulation tools. They are essential to evaluate cloud computing services and applications. Indeed, they can help to test, evaluate, and replicate the assumptions cost-effectively before a cloud platform is deployed in a real environment. It also provides an option to change and control the bottlenecks of the performance prior to implementing on an actual cloud platform. The simulation tools for cloud computing are also important to help users choose which cloud computing service is suitable for their requirements as deploying and operating a cloud platform in a real environment are often expensive, time consuming, or even impractical due to multiple test runs in different conditions and requirements. This paper surveys the various simulation platforms and tools of cloud computing. We identify the characteristics of the tools highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, the paper notes the challenges and the future research directions.


The general mathematical model of internal meshing spiral bevel gears for nutation drive is studied. Based on conventional enveloping theory and transmission principle, the meshing of two spiral bevel gears in nutation drive was substituted by the meshing of an imaginary rotating crown gear engaging with the external and internal bevel gear respectively. The general mathematical model of crown gear was established. Then the general mathematical model of internal meshing spiral bevel gears is obtained by matrix transformation, which is suitable for a variety of gear tooth profiles. Finally, the mathematical model and 3D modeling of double circular-arc spiral bevel gears are developed.


International cooperation is one of characteristics in the age of globalization,international energy cooperation is an important part of international cooperation. Based on the cooperation and development of oil and gas resources between China and Central Asia,the article studies on the foundation,actuality,pattern and prospect of the two sides. Considering that there is supply and demand complementary exists in the cooperation,and it lays a solid foundation for the cooperation; boiling down to the existed cooperation as two types:the cooperation on the development of oil and gas resources and the construction of pipeline about oil and gas resources,and mainly refers to Kazakhstan,Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan 3 countries; summarized 3 patterns existed in the cooperation,which is production sharing pattern,joint operation pattern and technical service pattern. In the end,on the basis of supply and demand complementary of oil and gas resources,harmonious of political environment,adjoin of geographic position and the cooperation in other fields,prospecting the broad prospect in the cooperation of oil and gas resources between China and Central Asia.


The dim poetry is the first trend of poetry in the new period of literature in China. It reflects the life and art of a generation, focusing on self consciousness. It brings about the development of poetry enjoyment and the spiritual reconstruction. The poets propose the humanism and the topics of renaissance including the esteem and value of man, and adopt the artistic techniques from Western modernism. The dim poetry is of course a milestone in the spiritual life of poetry. Because of the unavoidable limitations and spiritual crises, it disappears against the criticisms of a newer generation.


This paper investigates attack mitigation problem in supervisory control of discrete event systems. We consider the scenario where the system is subject to actuator enablement attack. We explicitly distinguish between controllable events and defendable events; the former are events that can be disabled by the normal supervisor but may be subject to attack, while the latter are events that can be defensed (disabled definitely) by the mitigation module but possibly with higher costs. The objective is to design an attack mitigation strategy to prevent serious damage from attack. We formulate the attack mitigation problem as a tolerant control problem under partial observation. Particularly, in addition to guarantee safety, we aim to maximize the desirable behavior (normal specification) while minimize the tolerable behavior (safe but not desirable). We provide an effective online algorithm for solving this problem, which yields a novel attack mitigation strategy that generalizes the existing one in the literature. Specifically, we show that the proposed strategy may still prevent damage even when the safe-controllability condition, which is required by the existing strategy, does not hold.


This review article draws out some of the major jurisprudential lessons that can be learned from a series of case studies of judicial politics in authoritarian regimes. Such regimes need to portray themselves as respectful of the rule of law to prolong their grip on power; they therefore tolerate independent courts, because an independent judiciary is emblematic of a commitment to the rule of law. However, the regime must contend with an unintended side effect of independent courts: judges may use their independence to check the regime, limiting its power. Authoritarian regimes will thus employ strategies to contain judicial power, producing a dialectic of empowerment and constraint with respect to courts. Among the lessons highlighted is that attempts by authoritarian regimes to contain courts strain formal rule of law conditions (conditions requiring, inter alia, that laws comprise rules that are clear, non-contradictory, stable, and generally prospective, and that official action match declared rule), suggesting that the formal conception of the rule of law imposes substantive limits on arbitrary power; and that the dialectic of empowerment and constraint exhibits a problem of domination with respect to courts, as part of a larger problem of domination of legal subjects.


Context-Awareness plays a major role for the success of mobile applications; this is true for context-aware (software) services as well as for the used devices themselves. Therefore, within this paper, we want to discuss the usage of context-specific mobile devices as target platforms for new mobile applications. Nowadays, the primary application platforms taken into considerations for new mobile applications are mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and tablet PCs. Because of this, the specialties of the device itself—its characteristics, features, and constraints—are lost. This is also the case for the majority of known mobile guide systems. A selection of mobile devices, being possible platforms for future mobile applications and a number of case studies of those alternative devices as mobile guides will be given.


can be answered simply by deductions from this axiom. John Rawls, in his essay, discusses why the basic structure of society (the way in which social institutions fit together into one system) should be taken as 'the first subject of justice'. I was particularly interested in a footnote in which Rawls partially replies to J. C. Harsanyi's objections to Rawls's use of the maximin principle. Unfortunately he says that he cannot here reply in full to Harsanyi's objections. One of the most intelligent essays in the book is that by Holly S. Goldman, on 'Doing the Best One Can'. She deals with certain paradoxes arising out of the application of moral principles to simultaneous performance of actions and goes on to consider analogous difficulties arising out of the application of moral principles to sequential actions. Roderick Chisholm is concerned to defend the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value. He begins with a generalized notion of value and splits it up by means of fairly complicated definitions into the required notions. He takes 'states of affairs' as the bearers of value; one may wonder whether instead of this the bearers of value are concrete entities and processes, for example feelings of pleasure. J. O. Urmson writes helpfully about Plato, Aristotle and Butler on the goals of action. He is very illuminating about the Socrates of the early Platonic dialogues, translating the Greek phrase often rendered as 'no man sins willingly', as the unparadoxical 'no one makes mistakes intentionally'. After considering Aristotle he commends Butler for his distinction between higher order and lower order goals. Monroe C. Beardsley in his 'Intending' wishes to clarify the notions of doing intentionally, intending to do and having an intention. Richard Wasserstrom writes on 'Some Problems in the Definition and Justification of Punishment'. David Lyons writes on 'Mill's Theory of Justice', and suggests that Mill can not be interpreted either as an act utilitarian or as a rule utilitarian. Joel Feinberg begins his essay 'The Interest in Liberty on the Scales' by a reference to Mill. He raises problems concerned with the extent to which state coercion (which is harmful in itself) is justified by the prevention of harm to others. He holds that we need to rank interests. He goes on to discuss this ranking of interests, and he is particularly concerned with the generalized interest in liberty. This is a fine volume, well worthy of the distinguished philosophers it seeks to honour. J. J. C. Smart


This series is a secondary scientific series designed to assure the long-term documentation and to enable the timely transmission of research results by Center and/or non-Center researchers, where such results bear upon the research mission of the Center (see the outside back cover for the mission statement). These documents receive internal scientific review, and most receive copy editing. The National Marine Fisheries Service does not endorse any proprietary material, process, or product mentioned in these documents. All documents issued in this series since April 2001, and several documents issued prior to that date, have been copublished in both paper and electronic versions. To access the electronic version of a document in this series, go to http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/nefsc/publications/. The electronic version is available in PDF format to permit printing of a paper copy directly from the Internet. If you do not have Internet access, or if a desired document is one of the pre-April Editorial Treatment: To distribute this report quickly, it has not undergone the normal technical and copy editing by the Northeast Fisheries Science Center's (NEFSC's) Editorial Office as have most other issues in the NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-NE series. Other than the four covers and first two preliminary pages, all writing and editing have been performed by the authors listed within. This report was reviewed by the Stock Assessment Review Committee , a panel of assessment experts from the Center for Independent Experts (CIE), University of Miami. Information Quality Act Compliance: In accordance with section 515 of Public Law 106-554, the Northeast Fisheries Science Center completed both technical and policy reviews for this report. These predissemination reviews are on file at the NEFSC Editorial Office. PURPOSE Warden (in review) estimated an annual average of 292 observable (i.e., via standard fisheries observer protocols) loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) interactions with bottom otter trawl gear for fish and scallops during 2005–2008, with an additional estimated annual average of 61 loggerhead interactions that were unobservable but quantifiable (i.e., they were estimated to have passed through a turtle excluder device [TED] at depth). To support Endangered Species Act Section 7 consultations for Fishery Management Plans (FMPs), the Northeast Regional Office (NERO) has requested information on these estimated loggerhead interactions in relation to all managed species landed on the commercial bottom trawl trips. This document provides the supplemental information requested. Fisheries observer sampling and analysis of sea turtle interactions are not normally done at …


The 2013 World Development Report on jobs helps to explain and analyze the connection between jobs and important dimensions of economic and social development. It provides analytical tools to identify the obstacles to sustained job creation and examine differences in the nature of jobs. Jobs are the cornerstone of economic and social development. This report takes the centrality of jobs in the development process as its starting point and challenges and reframes how we think about work. Adopting a cross-sectoral and multidisciplinary approach, the report looks at why some jobs do more for development than others. The report finds that poverty falls as people work their way out of hardship and as jobs empower women to invest more in their children. Efficiency increases as workers get better at what they do, as more productive jobs appear, and as less productive ones disappear. Societies flourish as jobs foster diversity and provide alternatives to conflict. The report advances a three-stage approach to help governments meet these objectives. First, policy fundamentals, including macroeconomic stability, an enabling business environment, investments in human capital, and the rule of law, are essential for both growth and job creation. Second, well-designed labor policies can help ensure that growth translates into employment opportunities, but they need to be complemented by a broader approach to job creation that looks beyond the labor market. Third, governments should strategically identify which jobs would do the most for development given their specific country context, and remove or offset the obstacles that prevent the private sector from creating more of those jobs.


Near Real-Time (NRT) anomaly detection and fault diagnostics for underwater gliders are challenging because satellite connections with limited bandwidth allow only decimated data to be sent back from the remote vehicle, whilst on-board systems are constrained by power and computational limits. Currently, anomaly detection and fault diagnostics for such vehicles require intensive monitoring from the operating pilots, which prohibits large scale deployments with multiple vehicles. This paper presents a system with NRT anomaly detection and fault diagnostics for multi-vehicle underwater glider fleets based on Bidirectional Generative Adversarial Networks with assistive hints. The unsupervised anomaly detection system is applied to assist in annotating deployment datasets to train a supervised fault diagnostics model. The results suggest that the anomaly detection system has successfully detected different types of anomalies, validated against model-based and rule-based approaches. In addition, the supervised fault diagnostics system has achieved high fault diagnostics accuracy on the test dataset.


The quantum space-time and the phase space of massive particles with Fuzzy Geometry structure investigated as the possible quantization formalism. In this model the state of nonrelativistic particle m corresponds to the element of fuzzy ordered set (Foset) fuzzy point. Due to its partial ordering m space coordinate x acquires principal uncertainty σx. It's shown that Fuzzy Mechanics (FM) in 1+1 dimension is equivalent to the path integral formalism of nonrelativistic Quantum Mechanics.


How mature forest impacts adjacent disturbed forest, or "forest influence", is a poorly understood ecological concept that is important for sustainable forest management worldwide. Specifically, this thesis investigated whether beetles can recolonise disturbed areas from adjacent mature forests, and how this changed with forest succession. Furthermore, I applied a combined functional trait and phylogenetic approach to better understand what processes were important for succession and recolonisation. This involved a review and three studies based on two large-scale experiments.
Functional trait approaches for beetles lack consistent methodology and conceptual basis. Chapter 2 reviews previous beetle functional trait studies and outlines a broadly applicable trait framework, including a potentially useful list of traits, analysis approaches and future challenges for this discipline. This manuscript is accepted for publication in Ecological Entomology.
Chapter 3 illustrates that forest influence operates for beetle communities, and that these effects changed greatly over time. This was based on analysing beetle community composition from pitfall traps at fifteen sites, using replicated transects across mature forest boundaries into adjacent harvested stands, over a chronosequence of three secondary forest stages (~7, ~27 and ~45 years old). Environmental characteristics were measured at each plot and used to model how beetle communities were responding across the forest boundaries, and to assess if successional beetle communities were responding to the same environmental forces. Within 200 m from mature forest, the beetle community in ~45 year old secondary forest had largely recovered. The important environmental factors differed in each forest age, yet leaf litter variables and microclimate were consistently correlated with species distribution. This manuscript is accepted in Ecological Applications.
Chapter 4 uses functional trait and phylogenetic approaches on data collected from the experiment described in Chapter 3 to gain deeper insights into community assembly processes underlying beetle succession. I also test whether different beetle trophic groups (decomposers/primary consumers versus predators) assembled the same way. A molecular phylogeny constructed from two DNA barcoding regions and 14 functional traits were calculated for 133 common species. Successional patterns in the phylogenetic and trait datasets were modelled using 16 environmental variables. Environmental filtering was the dominant process shaping beetle community succession for both trophic groups, yet the traits driving this pattern, and evolutionary forces underpinning them, were strongly divergent. Microclimate and leaf litter were key trait filters, particularly for decomposers/primary consumers. This manuscript is in pre–review with Axios.
Microclimate and leaf litter inputs were manipulated in an experimental trial (Chapter 5) to understand the role of dispersal limitation and habitat on beetle recolonisation. The trial was established within a recently harvested site with a mature forest boundary nearby, and beetle communities were sampled using pitfall traps under sterilized leaf litter, artificial shade plots and control (no litter or shade) in a randomized block design. Litter addition and shading significantly altered beetle abundance and community composition and allowed some species adapted to older forest to successfully recolonise. Species functional traits and phylogenetic relationships were also used to explore how environment affects community assembly. Environmental filtering was also the dominant process overall, yet biotic interactions were important for community assembly in open control plots. This manuscript is submitted to Animal Ecology.
My results demonstrate that forest influence is important for beetles in production forests and that forest influence may alter the successional trajectory of beetle communities. Microclimate and leaf litter were both important in facilitating recolonisation, yet dispersal limitation still plays a role. Furthermore, this thesis has helped elucidate what forces shape beetle community assembly over succession, and demonstrates that litter addition and shade not only alters species composition it also changes how beetle communities assemble.


The article is devoted to the prevention of crime, maintenance of public order and early crime prevention, identification and elimination of the causes of crime in each district, family and individual, classification of each district depending on the crime situation in these regions and joint work to attract all forces and means to identify and eliminate the causes of crime, the role of the law "On operational-search activities" in the prevention of offenses, the concept of operational-search activities, the main tasks, basic principles; bodies carrying out operational-search activities, their legal status; types of operational-search measures and their comments regarding the procedure for conducting a search; social and legal protection of law enforcement officers and persons assisting in the conduct of such events, as well as their family members


The length of the PCCP pipeline of the Water Conveyance Project of Dahuofang Reservoir(Phase II) is 154.4 km,and it is known from the investigation made on the soil and underground water environment of the region the pipeline passed through that the most part of the soil resistivity therein is between 20~50 Ω·m with a higher chlorine ion content in part of the region,which is a moderate corrosion environment,and then the difference of the cathodic protection design is larger as well.Therefore,an experiment on the cathodic protection is made before beginning of the whole construction project,so as to provide a scientific basis for the design of cathodic protection for the PCCP pipeline.


The present volume, a collection of six previously published and four previously unpublished essays, focusses on the moral themes in Kant's aesthetics and on the role of feelings or the aesthetic dimension in Kant's ethics. The book as a whole aims to elucidate the following two revisionary historical theses: (1) On the traditional interpretation of the enterprise of modern aesthetic theory, its overarching aim has been seen as that of carving out and defending a concept and sphere of aesthetic and artistic autonomy, or of the independence of aesthetic experience and artistic creation from all constraints arising from elsewhere in human theory and practice, and Kant's derivation of his analysis of the judgment of taste from the initial moment of disinterestedness has been seen as the paradigmatic theoretical expression of this intention.' On my account, however, the fundamental challenge for modern aesthetic theory, beginning with both Shaftesbury in Britain and Baumgarten in Germany, has been to reconcile the obvious experiential or phenomenological independence of the aesthetic and the artistic with a more general conception of the sources of value in human affairs, or even-to put it as a paradox-to give a general explanation of the value of a sphere of individuality, and it is Kant's attempt-to use his terms-to reconcile the disinterestedness of aesthetic judgment with the intellectual interest in the beautiful which should be seen as the theoretical paradigm for modern aesthetics. (2) In traditional accounts of the history of modern moral philosophy, of course, Kant has always been seen as the leading advocate of a rationalistic and rigoristic deontology according to which virtue lies solely in acting in accordance with a universal principle of pure reason that disregards all particu-


The paper demonstrates the result of changes in the physicochemical and biological properties in soil as a result of the operation of illegal dumping sites. Soil was sampled from the research points located on the outskirts of the city of Bydgoszcz (Poland) from the site not affected by illegal dumping sites (control C), within the dumping sites, having removed the waste layer (W), and 10 m away from the dumping sites (W 10). In the soil the content of phosphorus, potassium, magnesium and sulphur, total content of copper, zinc, lead and nickel as well as the activity of enzymes were assayed. The content of Pb, Zn, Cu and Ni in the soil samples qualifies the soils as representing the soil category with natural content. The greatest activity of all the enzymes analysed was identified in the soil sampled from the control point affected by waste, whereas the highest content of macroelements was reported in the soil from the dumping sites (W 10). A high variation in the enzymes under study in soils confirms a high value of the coefficient of variation (CV >36%). The analysis of correlation confirmed the relationship between the content of organic carbon compounds and the content of zinc, lead, nickel. The soils show a slight value of the coefficient of contamination for heavy metals (CF<1). The contamination degree (Cdeg) ranged from 1.993 to 5.116, which points to a low level of soil contamination with Zn, Cu, Pb and Ni.


European currency markets have been subject to recurring periods of turmoil since the summer of 1992. In the first wave of turmoil in September of 1992, the United Kingdom and Italy withdrew their currencies from the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) of the European Monetary System (EMS). In the second wave of turmoil in August of 1993, the ERM temporarily suspended the narrow bands within which exchange rates of remaining ERM currencies were allowed to fluctuate. Understanding the reasons for the ERM crisis is essential for predicting the future course of European economic, financial, and political developments-all of which could affect the U.S. economy into the 21st century. According to one interpretation, the ERM crisis was caused by a combination of bad luck and bad policy decisions. This interpretation was offered by monetary officials in Europe in their analysis of the reasons for ERM turmoil in 1992 (European Community, Monetary Committee). The bad luck was the timing of the large external shock to European economies resulting from German unification and monetary union in 1990. This shock imposed severe strains on European economies and thus on the ERM because it led to a divergence between the policy priorities in Germany and those in other EMS countries. These strains were exacerbated by inappropriate macroeconomic policy decisions that contributed to high inflation and budget deficits in some EMS countries--especially the United Kingdom and Italy. This interpretation of the ERM crisis leads to a relatively sanguine view that only minor modifications to the ERM system will allow a return to exchange rate stability as a step toward full monetary union in the European Community (EC) by the end of this decade, as envisioned in the Maastricht Treaty. More skeptical analysts offer a much less sanguine interpretation of the crisis. They view the ERM as fundamentally flawed. Although not denying that German unification and unsound macroeconomic policies contributed to strains within the ERM, these analysts stress that the design of the system made it particularly vulnerable to such disruptive factors. Fundamental systemic changes would thus be required to achieve either exchange rate stability as a precursor to monetary union within the EMS. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the reasons for the ERM crisis and the changes necessary to prevent a recurrence. The first section describes why Europeans want exchange rate stability and how they tried to achieve that goal before the new ERM evolved in the late 1980s. The second section analyzes the reasons the new ERM was vulnerable and how that vulnerability, while not making the crisis inevitable, nonetheless made the system susceptible to crisis. The final section evaluates prospective changes that might be necessary to reduce the vulnerability of the ERM. DESIRE FOR EUROPEAN INTEGRATION AND EXCHANGE RATE STABILITY The ERM crisis has led some to question whether exchange rate stability leading ultimately to monetary union is a feasible goal. Yet most European political leaders continue to express their determination to achieve that goal as soon as possible. This determination grows out of a long standing desire in Western Europe for greater economic, monetary, and political integration. The specific contribution of the ERM was intended to be greater stability of exchange rates among the currencies of EC countries. Why Europeans want stable exchange rates Europeans have a long history of trying to stabilize the exchange rates between their national currencies. Exchange rate stability is considered critical by member states of the EC for two reasons: 1) a history of exchange rate instability has led to economic hardship and social disruption, and 2) trade is important for economic performance. The history of exchange rate instability in 1920s and 1930s has had an enduring effect on Europeans' perspective. Whereas exchange rates had been stable and European economies had prospered under the international gold standard in the third of a century leading up to World War I, exchange rate instability in the interwar period was accompanied by recurring financial crises and extreme economic hardship in Europe and elsewhere. …