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Recent international agreements on reducing energy consumption have led to a series of interventions in residential buildings, from modifying the building fabric to upgrading operating systems. To date, these attempts have met with limited success. One reason for this has been identified as the ‘rebound effect’, where the occupants’ respond to their home thermal environment change in unexpected ways after interventions. Often people decide to turn up the heating, to leave it on for longer, or to increase the average spatial temperature by heating more rooms. Although much of the research on heating patterns in dwellings has focused on identifying methods to predict and to assess thermal sensation, less is understood about the way occupants form their responses. Research presented in this paper focuses on mapping householders thermal discomfort responses. Empirical methods, drawn from the social and cognitive sciences, were used in a several studies, which monitored a small sample of UK households during winter of 2010. One of the tools used, the SenseCam, facilitates an automatic electronic diary collection by logging occupants’ responses in a systematic approach.SenseCam results enabled the mapping of participants’ activities in their home, in particular the estimation of clothing and activity level throughout the record period. The preliminary monitoring results show that different householders are interacting with their home thermal comfort systems in very different ways, and that their responses diverge from the current predictive models. Further analysisexamines the factors influencing responses to thermal discomfort and thereby energy consumption of individual in dwellings.

This paper presents the design and the performance evaluation of a joined process between the PHY (PHYsical) layer and routing layer in multi-hop wireless ad hoc networks. This cross-layer interaction between the PHY and routing layers allows each node in an ad hoc network to evaluate the performance of each path in its routing table in terms of Bit Error Rate (BER) and to classify each path accordingly. Routing information from poor quality links are not forwarded leading to the selection of high quality links during the routing process. An implementation of our cross-layer algorithm based on Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) is presented along with simulation results showing significant improvements in terms of additional throughput and lower BER. Furthermore, inherent of our mechanism's design, the network overhead introduced by routing protocols is reduced.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The various etiological hypotheses for Alzheimer's disease (AD) need to be tested in patients using designs and outcomes that are appropriate. This chapter reviews the principles of symptomatic treatment versus disease modification, the natural history of AD, and designs to slow down its progression. It should be noted that the diagnosis of AD implies first a diagnosis of dementia, followed by an assessment of its etiology. The accuracy of the clinical diagnosis of AD is in the order of 85% once dementia is clinically detected, but less than 50% in the predementia stage of amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) using clinicopathological correlations (Petersen et al., 2006). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chapter 5 of the book "Introduction to Environmental Forensics," Second Edition, edited by Brian L. Murphy and Robert D. Morrison is presented. It suggests that statistical techniques can be used to identify relationships among contaminants at a site. It discusses a variety of basic statistical analysis techniques and demonstrate their use in environmental forensics. It emphasizes that statistical inference is the process of drawing conclusions about an underlying population.

A simple macroarray system based on the use of polyester cloth as the solid phase for DNA hybridization has been developed for the identification and characterization of bacteria on the basis of the presence of various virulence and toxin genes. In this approach, a multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) incorporating digoxigenin-dUTP is used to simultaneously amplify different marker genes, with subsequent rapid detection of the amplicons by hybridization with an array of probes immobilized on polyester cloth and immunoenzymatic assay of the bound label. As an example of the applicability of this cloth-based hybridization array system (CHAS) in the characterization of foodborne pathogens, a method has been developed enabling the detection of antibiotic resistance and other marker genes associated with the multidrug-resistant food pathogen Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serotype Typhimurium DT104. The CHAS is a simple, cost-effective tool for the simultaneous detection of amplicons generated in a multiplex PCR, and the concept is broadly applicable to the identification of key pathogen-specific marker genes in bacterial isolates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A lack of established design guidelines for intelligent adaptive systems is a challenge in designing a human-machine performance maximization system. An extensive literature review was conducted to examine existing approaches in the design of intelligent adaptive systems. A unified framework to describe design approaches using consistent and unambiguous terminology was developed. Combining design methodologies from both Human Computer Interaction and Human Factors fields, conceptual and design frameworks were also developed to provide guidelines for the design and implementation of intelligent adaptive systems. A number of criteria for the selection of appropriate analytical techniques are recommended. The proposed frameworks will not only provide guidelines for designing intelligent adaptive systems in the military domain, but also broadly guide the design of other generic systems to optimize human-machine system performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cooperation is a means for multi-agent systems to function more efficiently and more adaptively. Cooperation can be viewed as a local criterion for agents to self-organize and then to perform a more adequate collective function. This paper mainly aims at showing that with only local rules based on cooperative attitude and without any global knowledge, a solution is provided by the system and local changes lead to global reorganization. This paper shows an application of cooperative behaviors to a dynamic distributed timetabling problem, ETTO, in which the constraint satisfaction is distributed among cooperative agents. This application has been prototyped and shows positive results on adaptation, robustness and efficiency of this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Part of the inheritance we leave to future generations is the (positive or negative) public net wealth. Depending on the country, the positive wealth may include roads, bridges, office buildings, hospitals, universities, natural parks etc. Such items resemble durable goods in that they depreciate at a relatively predictable rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the demographic transition from high to low rates of birth and death accomplished or underway in most of the world, some observers have predicted that humanity is on the road to zero population growth. In the long term, the destination of unchanging population size is probably an illusion. In the short term, the road must surmount population growth and population ageing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the issue of age-structure transitions and intergenerational transfers from a macro rather than a micro perspective: to what extent might changing age structure, brought about by the demographic transition and subsequent baby booms and busts, have contributed to economic fluctuations experienced in countries around the globe in the last century? And to what extent might intergenerational and interhousehold transfers have confounded attempts to quantify this relationship? These issues are explored here using data for the United States throughout the 20th century, as the United States moved from “developing” to “developed” status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in the public and individual burden of chronic health problems have significant implications for the allocation of public and private resources across generations. Preston (1984) noted almost two decades ago that population ageing in the United States was accompanied by the rapid expansion of public programs benefiting the health of elderswhile public programs benefiting children’s education contracted. Health care is the principal public service provided to the elderly while education is the counterpart for children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the middle 1980s, two interrelated areas of inquiry emerged within the field of comparative welfare state research, and both are ongoing. First, after three decades of theory-building and empirical research on the initiation and expansion of the welfare state, scholars began to focus on social policy restructuring and retrenchment (Rein, Esping-Andersen, and Rainwater 1987; Munday 1989; Mishra 1990; Pierson 1994; Ploug and Kvist 1996). At the same time, new questions arose about intergenerational differentials, i.e., about the well-being of the elderly versus children, especially in relation to the relative allocation of resources between these two groups (O’Higgins 1988; Smeeding, Torrey, and Rein 1988; Pampel 1994). To a large degree, the second inquiry emerged from the first, in that concerns about welfare state cutbacks motivated questions about which groups’ interests would prevail as public resources grew increasingly scarce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic performance of low-income countries may be affected by their system of health care. But there is no consensus regarding the optimum level of public health spending, or the efficiency and equity of various schemes for financing public and private health care. On the one hand, excessive government spending on health care in poor countries could divert resources from promising investment opportunities and thus translate into slower economic growth. Some countries have used public health subsidies with restraint at early stages of economic development, but at later stages public expenditure on health increase as a share of GDP—often with the goal of universal coverage of health care.1 Reviewing the health care experiences of “successful” East Asian countries—Japan,Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan— Gertler (1998) notes that these countries achieved universal coverage of health care only after they had reached relatively high levels of income, were largely urbanized, and most of their workers were in the formal sector. Gertler cautions against early implementation of universal coverage because the resulting health subsidies encourage overuse of health care (i.e., moral hazard) and inefficient allocation of health goods and services. If cost inflation of medical curative care is partly borne by the private consumer, this may also deter the adoption of new medical technology until it is cost effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural Chinese society has historically been dominated by a rigid male-centered patrilineal family system and virilocal marriage remains overwhelmingly dominant. Under this system, parents call in a daughter-in-law for each of their sons, and all sons are entitled to stay home after marriage and coreside with their parents for a period of time until family division occurs or until both of their parents pass away. A son’s offspring use his father’s surname to continue the family lineage. Family property is usually inherited equally among all sons, and sons are obliged to take care of their parents in their old age. By contrast, parents marry all of their daughters to other families, and these daughters as well as their future descendants are no longer regarded as members of their natal families. All rights, productivity, and services of daughters are transferred to their husbands’ families at the time of marriage, and they can neither inherit their natal family’s property nor do they have any formal obligation to take care of their natal parents in old age (Das Gupta and Li 1999). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since families provide a safety net that compensates for the limitations of public support systems, family exchanges between the generations remain an integral component of wellbeing, even in the mature welfare states of the developed world. Finding the right balance of state and family transfers constitutes a central issue for public policy. As they confront ageing populations, nations come under increased pressure to reconcile contradictory goals. They are urged to do more to help beleaguered families care for their dependents, to hold the line against rising welfare and social service costs, and to guard against permitting public transfers to undermine private assistance. Although most developed countries confront this public policy challenge, they come to the intergenerational transfer debate constrained by their unique cultural traditions, by their distinctive histories of public welfare, and by their different demographic age structures. Comparative and cross-national studies enrich our understanding of these demographic and welfare contexts (Hantrais and Letablier 1996). Although cross-national estimates and comparisons of public intergenerational transfers are easy to come by, more knowledge is needed about the private support that flows between younger and older family members in different societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The genesis for the exploration of motives underlying inter vivos transfers, of which intergenerational transfers are a special case, lay in the seminal papers of Barro (1974) and Becker (1974). The issue has survived the test of time, and has once again emerged as an important part of the economists ’ research agenda.1 There are primarily two reasons behind this surge of interest. First, an important implication of Barro ’s analysis is that any increase in social security benefits accruing to a member of the “dynastic” household would crowd out, perhaps even dollar for dollar, private intrahousehold transfers to that individual. Since the efficacy of publicly provided social security benefits, including nonmonetary transfers like health care, is the focus of a major public policy debate, a better understanding of the motives underlying intergenerational transfers has become imperative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many researchers have documented patterns of intergenerational exchanges (e.g., Cox and Rank 1992; Eggebeen 1992; Hermalin, Ofstedal, and Chi 1992; Lee, Parish, and Willis 1994; Soldo and Hill 1995; Logan and Spitz 1996; Lillard and Willis 1997; Agree et al. 2005), but, by and large our understanding of the helping behaviours between generations reflects a static view. This limitation results from the reliance of most of these previous studies on a snapshot approach to understanding monetary or time transfers. Far fewer studies provide a dynamic view of what happens in the same family over a longer period of time (but for exceptions, see Whitbeck, Simons, and Conger 1991; Whitbeck, Hoyt, and Huck 1994; Silverstein 1995; Henretta et al. 1997; Chang 1999; Silverstein et al. 2002). In this study, we use a unique data set that follows a cohort of more than two thousandTaiwanese older adults over a 10-year period to assess stability in intergenerational transfers. Specifically, we raise two questions in this paper: first, do patterns of transfers in the same family change over time? Second, how are ageing parents’ demographic, social, and economic characteristics associated with changes in the patterns of transfers? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most existing literature on intergenerational transfers in the West focuses on downward transfers from parents to children. Two strands of studies have been developed in the past decade. One strand emphasizes inter vivos transfers while the other strand looks at postmortem bequests. For a related discussion, references can be found in Rosenzweig and Stark (1997). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although increasing analytic attention has been focused on intergenerational support structures of late, little of that attention has, thus far, been focused on the lateral components of those structures, by which I refer to relations among uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews, and so on. This is problematic from a broad sociological perspective for two main reasons. The first is that a relatively narrow focus on vertical intergenerational links overlooks the extent to which these microstructures are embedded in multidirectional and multigenerational support networks involving the elderly’s siblings, their nephews and nieces, other relatives, neighbours, friends, fictive kin, and so on. And the second is that, while the “structures of jural obligations” (Holy 1976:108)1 which underlie intergenerational support structures may be associated with kin proximity measured in terms of closeness of blood ties—thus, for example, the common assumption that a given person has a greater obligation to provide assistance to his parents than to his uncles, aunts, or some unrelated individual—there is considerable ethnographic evidence that across many societies this is not the case; that individuals may have, and often do have, more intensive structured ties with second-order blood relations like uncles and aunts than with first-order blood relations like fathers; or indeed, that they may have more structured ties with non-kin (e.g., Whyte 1943;Wilmott and Young 1962; Stack 1974; Fox and Fox 1984; Lewis 1994; Griffiths 1997; Meriwether 1999; Feinberg and Ottenheimer 2002). In short, overlooking lateral intergenerational transfers relations implicitly privileges biology over culture and also ignores a key premise of multiple theoretical approaches to the analysis of exchange relations: the idea that these relations are both emergent product and producer of normative systems of social relations (e.g., Mauss 1925, 1990; Homans 1958; Blau 1964, 1986). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intergenerational transfers are a key determinant of individuals’ and families’ well-being, and of societies’ aggregate level of human and financial capital. Intergenerational transfers of time, money, goods, and attitudes from parents to young children have been shown to contribute to children’s educational achievement and employment trajectories in adulthood (Teachman 1987; Rindfuss 1999) and to intergenerational class mobility (Erikson and Goldthorpe 2002). Similarly, intergenerational transfers from grown-up children to elderly parents have been shown to contribute to parents’ well-being (Chan 1996). At a macro level, the direction and magnitude of intergenerational transfers have been proposed as the key factor determining fertility transitions and levels (Caldwell 1976). The significance of intergenerational transfers is accentuated in populations undergoing age-structural transitions, which would include much of the world today. Age-structural transitions are driven by declines in fertility and mortality, and by migration, and result in shifts in age structure, kinship structure, and social networks, all of which can affect intergenerational transfers. The macroeconomics of populations undergoing fertility and mortality transitions can be usefully analysed in terms of intergenerational flows (Lee 2003) to illuminate questions ranging from the rapid increase in savings rates during a fertility transition to the sharing of risk and support in ageing societies. Rapid fertility declines have a large effect on dependency ratios both at the family level and at the national level, and can interact with cultural preferences to generate unusual shifts in the sex ratio of populations (see the chapter by Feldman et al., this volume). Rapid fertility declines also interact with traditional patterns of intergenerational transfers to pose challenges to rapidly industrializing countries in the provision of old-age support (Cameron and Cobb-Clark 2002; Zimmer and Kwong 2003). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Design of Systems on a Chip: Design & Test is the property of Springer eBooks and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this review, the physics of short-pulse laser-produced plasmas at moderate intensities is described, together with applications to X-ray sources and material processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A low-temperature stage pulse tube cooler is under development at CEA-SBT in partnership with Air Liquide (AL/DTA). This stage is designed to operate from an 80 K heat sink and to provide cooling power at 30 K. In a first phase, an experimental setup featuring a Gifford McMahon (GM) cooler as the precooling stage has been manufactured. The regenerator of the pulse tube stage includes a heat exchanger thermally coupled to the GM cold tip. The design is such that the temperature of this heat sink can be varied over a wide range of temperatures. A preliminary tuning of this experimental setup has been done. In this case, stainless steel meshes have been used even in the low-temperature area. The first results are encouraging, as a temperature lower than 30 K has already been achieved. Sensitivity to various parameters such as inertance, frequency, filling pressure and heat intercept temperature has been tested. The heat extracted at the intermediate heat exchanger has been measured using a shunt-type technique and is compatible with the use of our large-heat-lift pulse tube for precooling. For space applications, the precooling could be provided by a passive radiator. In order to increase the performance, we have examined the use of a regenerator material with better specific heat capacity in the cold area. Lead plated meshes have been manufactured and initial experimental results are presented. This cooler will provide inputs for the design of an integrated two-stage pulse tube cooler in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the usage of cooperative self-organization to design adaptive artificial systems. Cooperation can be viewed as a local criterion for agents to self-organize and then to perform a more adequate collective function. This paper shows an application of cooperative behaviors to a dynamic distributed timetabling problem, ETTO, in which the constraint satisfaction is distributed among cooperative agents. This application has been prototyped and shows positive results on adaptation, robustness and efficiency of this kind of approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disease expression in vascular dementia (VaD) is heterogeneous and provides several potential targets for treatment, including (1) symptomatic improvement of the core symptoms (cognition, function, and behavior), (2) slowing of progression, and (3) treatment of secondary manifestation that affect cognition (e.g., depression, anxiety, and agitation) (1). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agents available or in development for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection fall into two major groups: immunomodulators, such as interferon-α and therapeutic vaccines, and nucleoside/nucleotide analogs, such as lamivudine and adefovir (1). Currently, the only therapies approved in the United States for treatment of chronic HBV infection are IFN-α and lamivudine. However, a number of nucleoside and nucleotide analogs are in development, and it is likely that treatment of chronic HBV infection in the future will involve additional therapies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Reinventing Order in the Congo: How People Respond to State Failure in Kinshasa is the property of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article presents an overview of the Field Day pamphlets, which were part of the project undertaken by the Field Day Theatre Co. in Northern Ireland. It includes "A New Look at the Language Question," by Tom Paulin, "Heroic Styles: The Tradition of an Idea," by Seamus Deane, and "Liberty and Authority in Ireland," by Robert L. McCartney. Other pamphlets are also featured like "Nationalism: Irony and Commitment," by Terry Eagleton, and "The Apparatus of Repression," by Michael Farrell.

The article explores the plays of Irish playwright Brian Friel that were composed exclusively for Field Day Theatre Co. in Northern Ireland. It discusses the ambivalence surrounding issues of identity that can be observed in the drama of Friel, It also mentions the shift established by Friel away from the oppositional politics in "Translations" to a willful acceptance of the concept of hybridity in "Making History" and to a parody of the Irish cult of authenticity in "The Communication Cord."

In mammals, thyroid hormones (TH) have been shown to control the postnatal development of many organs, such as brain, intestine and long bone, and to participate in the maintenance of homeostasis in adults by controlling basal metabolism, heart rate, and body temperature (1,2). To ensure this last role, circulating TH concentrations are maintained very stable by a tight control of TH production. Indeed, TH, which is primarily synthesized in the thyroid gland, represses the production of two peptidic hormones, thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH) in the hypothalamus and thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) in the pituitary. TRH normally stimulates the production of TSH, which, in turn, stimulates the thyroid gland and thus permits an efficient TH production (3). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we show that when boundary control is used, it is possible to stabilize rotating flexible systems at any constant velocity with suppression of vibration. The stabilization is achieved with spectral assignment techniques via boundary control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]