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A path space integral approach to modelling the job description of the cerebellum is proposed. This new approach incorporates the “tidal wave” equation into a kind of generalized Huygens's wave equation. The resulting exponential functional integral provides a mathematical expression of the inhibitory function by which the cerebellum “sculpts” the intended control signal from the background of neuronal excitation.
A propagator for a path space integral can be used to represent the “tidal wave function” and provides a natural way to model a control signal that is temporally segmented by placement of pairs of stimulating and recording electrodes. Although care must be exercised in interpreting the resulting measurement, the technique should prove useful to experimenters who study cerebellar functioning.
This article describes a CDI outbreak in a long-term care (LTC) facility that used molecular typing techniques and whole-genome sequencing to identify widespread dissemination of the clonal strain in the environment which was successfully removed after terminal cleaning.
Setting
This study was conducted in a long-term care facility in Texas.
Methods
A recently hospitalized LTC patient was diagnosed with CDI followed shortly thereafter by 7 subsequent CDI cases. A stool specimen was obtained from each patient for culturing and typing. An environmental point-prevalence study of the facility was conducted before and after terminal cleaning of the facility to assess environmental contamination. Cultured isolates were typed using ribotyping, multilocus variant analysis, and whole-genome sequencing.
Results
Stool samples were available for 5 of 8 patients; of these specimens, 4 grew toxigenic C. difficile ribotype 027. Of 50 environmental swab samples collected throughout the facility prior to the facility-wide terminal cleaning, 19 (38%) grew toxigenic C. difficile (most commonly ribotype 027, 79%). The terminal cleaning was effective at reducing C. difficile spores in the environment and at eradicating the ribotype 027 strain (P<.001). Using multilocus variance analysis and whole-genome sequencing, clinical and environmental strains were highly related and, in some cases, were identical.
Conclusion
Using molecular typing techniques, we demonstrated reduced environmental contamination with toxigenic C. difficile and the eradication of a ribotype 027 clone. These techniques may help direct infection control efforts and decrease the burden of CDI in the healthcare system.
We examine brand building from the perspective of complex adaptive systems. Brand building is a neglected engine of capital formation, innovation and institutional change in market economies. The nature of brands and the service streams they generate have been construed too narrowly. Brands are capital: entrepreneurs use brands as market-making devices that create value and capture profit, while consumers use brands to derive psychic income and lifestyle benefits. Brands are building blocks that can be combined in production to fill perceived gaps in brand architectures and capital structures. These structures are themselves complex adaptive systems. In an era of digital technological platforms, complex generative networks are the institutional locus of brand creation and brand extensions. Innovation in brand building is a socially distributed, service-intensive and interpretive process; it entails combinatorial experiments in resource integration by heterogeneous and socially connected actors, such as entrepreneur-producers, end-users and distributors. Legal brand owners never have total control over their brands – customer networks often exercise substantial de facto control rights (economic property rights) over the use and transformation of brands. Both the entire branding system (as a form of organization) and individual iconic brands can crystallize into relatively stable institutions that orient and coordinate market behaviour.
In the Bretton Woods era the controversy over cross-border use of national monies turned on how to create ‘symmetries’ and avoid significant ‘asymmetries’ in the way national currencies shared specific international currency functions. We examine the twentieth-century work of prominent economists on the nature, choice, and functions of international currencies. Prescriptive approaches to international currency formation are considered, beginning with the discussion of the Bretton Woods plans, followed by doctrinal developments stimulated by the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. Why are those developments instructive, given recent revisitation of the currency internationalization question in modern international monetary thought and policy? The modern revival of this question resembles a rehabilitation and restatement of earlier controversies, though it underestimates the gradual encroachment of the idea of international currency competition. This idea came to dominate other doctrines from the 1970s; it accommodates the ongoing adaptation of national currencies to the full range of international currency functions.
The potential for future commercialization of glyphosate-resistant wheat necessitates evaluation of agronomic merits of this technology. Experiments were established to evaluate glyphosate-resistant wheat and weed responses to glyphosate rate, application timing, and tank mixtures. Glyphosate at 1,680 g/ha did not injure wheat. Wheat response to glyphosate applied to one- to three- or three- to five-leaf wheat was not different from that of untreated wheat. Wheat was injured more from glyphosate plus thifensulfuron or glyphosate plus dicamba than from individual herbicides at one of six locations, but grain yield was not affected by glyphosate tank mixtures. Glyphosate application timing did not affect control of wild oat or common lambsquarters 56 d after treatment. Glyphosate when applied to one- to three-leaf wheat provided better control of wild buckwheat than later glyphosate application, whereas glyphosate applied to three- to five-leaf wheat provided the best control of green and yellow foxtail, redroot pigweed, and Canada thistle. Weed control with glyphosate tended to be better than with conventional herbicides, and wheat treated with glyphosate produced approximately 10% more grain than wheat treated with conventional herbicide tank mixes.
We undertake a close textual study of the entire corpus of Ludwig Lachmann's publications from 1936 to 1991 and demonstrate that his theory of entrepreneurial behaviour is sufficiently distinctive to warrant ranking alongside the theories of Schumpeter and Kirzner. Lachmann's entrepreneurs are creatively constructive change-agents who discover, exploit and create gaps in capital structures. Entrepreneurs select and interpret specific market and institutional phenomena using pre-existent rules and mental ‘instruments’, extract meaning about capital-forming opportunities, and generate all subsequent capital combinations. Lachmannian entrepreneurs are problem-solvers and communicate problem ‘solutions’ by dissolving and reforming capital combinations. We examine 20th-century Lachmannian research that builds on these foundations – research that emphasizes the institutional and material embeddedness of entrepreneurial behaviour and that appreciates the capacity of Lachmann's approach to explain entrepreneurial success, imitation and failure in a dynamic endogenous process. To underscore the distinctiveness of the Lachmannian entrepreneur, we compare it with Schumpeterian and Kirznerian approaches.
We examine various, sometimes divergent, conceptions of capital and its structure in the Austrian tradition from Menger (1871) to Lachmann (1956). We outline Menger’s methodological and philosophical position that recommends investigating the morphology of capital—its shape, form, and structure; it also recommends maintaining some “realisticness” in the treatment of capital in economics. Prominent Austrian contributions are examined and compared along various dimensions: the existence or otherwise of “original” factors of production; time conceptions; analytical domain assumptions; real and money capital doctrines; the causal role of the entrepreneur in creating capital; and the fundamental question of capital aggregation into a stock or fund. We consider the extent to which Menger’s avowed followers and successors diverged from his original vision of capital, subsequent consequences for the development of Austrian capital theory, and implications of Mengerian structural analysis for the study of capital more generally.
Observations of CH+, J = 1 − 0 and 2 − 1 near 0.835 and 1.67THz with Herschel/HIFI and of 13CH+, J = 1 − 0 near0.830 THz with APEX revealed their rest frequencies to be higher than the accepted valuesby 21 and 30 km s-1, respectively. Very recent laboratory measurements of theJ = 1 − 0 transition frequencies of CH+,13CH+ and CD+ and fits to these as well as electronicspectral data resolved the descrepancies. The laboratory spectroscopic situation will bereviewed for selected cationic light hydride species.
This volume is a collection of articles based on the plenary talks presented at the 2005 meeting in Santander of the Society for the Foundations of Computational Mathematics. The talks were given by some of the foremost world authorities in computational mathematics. The topics covered reflect the breadth of research within the area as well as the richness and fertility of interactions between seemingly unrelated branches of pure and applied mathematics. As a result this volume will be of interest to researchers in the field of computational mathematics and also to non-experts who wish to gain some insight into the state of the art in this active and significant field.
Let K denote a number field, and G a finite abelian group. The ring of algebraic integers in K is denoted in this paper by $/cal{O}_K$, and $/cal{A}$ denotes any $/cal{O}_K$-order in K[G]. The paper describes an algorithm that explicitly computes the Picard group Pic($/cal{A}$), and solves the corresponding (refined) discrete logarithm problem. A tamely ramified extension L/K of prime degree l of an imaginary quadratic number field K is used as an example; the class of $/cal{O}_L$ in Pic($/cal{O}_K[G]$) can be numerically determined.
This 2002 book expands our understanding of the distinctive policy analysis produced between 1919 and 1950 by economists and other social scientists for four major international organizations: the League of Nations, the International Labor Organization, the Bank for International Settlements, and the United Nations. These practitioners included some of the twentieth century's eminent economists, including Cassel, Haberler, Kalecki, Meade, Morgenstern, Nurkse, Ohlin, Tinbergen, and Viner. Irving Fisher and John Maynard Keynes also influenced the work of these organizations. Topics covered include: the relationship between economics and policy analysis in international organizations; business cycle research; the role and conduct of monetary policy; public investment; trade policy; social and labor economics; international finance; the coordination problem in international macroeconomic policy; full employment economics; and the rich-country-poor-country debate. Normative agendas underlying international political economy are made explicit, and lessons are distilled for today's debates on international economic integration.
The Society for the Foundations of Computational Mathematics supports and promotes fundamental research in computational mathematics and its applications, interpreted in the broadest sense. It fosters interaction among mathematics, computer science and other areas of computational science through its conferences, workshops and publications. As part of this endeavour to promote research across a wide spectrum of subjects concerned with computation, the Society brings together leading researchers working in diverse fields. Major conferences of the Society have been held in Park City (1995), Rio de Janeiro (1997), Oxford (1999), Minneapolis (2002), and Santander (2005). The next conference is expected to be held in 2008. More information about FoCM is available at its website http://www.focm.net.
The conference in Santander on June 30 – July 9, 2005, was attended by several hundred scientists. FoCM conferences follow a set pattern: mornings are devoted to plenary talks, while in the afternoon the conference divides into a number of workshops, each devoted to a different theme within the broad theme of foundations of computational mathematics. This structure allows for a very high standard of presentation, while affording endless opportunities for cross-fertilization and communication across subject boundaries.
In the early twentieth century, John A. Hobson's Toward International Government (1915) reflected hopefully on the prospects for realizing the ideal of a “world community” or of “a society of nations” through the creation of an international organization. That organization would subordinate national advantage to the idea of international cooperation – an idea that Hobson did not fully articulate. Hobson could not have foreseen the evolution of international organizations committed to economic and social cooperation among nations over the twentieth century and the increasingly active role in international affairs that such organizations were to play from the creation of the League of Nations (LON) in 1919 onward.
There are now available a plethora of institutional and organizational histories expatiating on the functions and influences of international organizations in the twentieth century. Some recent studies have proceeded beyond recounting the history of administrative structures and functions to analyzing the nature, scope, and history of international economic cooperation – treating cooperation in connection with a flow of episodes, events, economic crises, and policy responses. An abundant literature written by economists has focussed attention on:
the macroeconomic stabilization, financial reconstruction, and enforcement programs of the LON and Bank for International Settlements (BIS) prior to 1939 (Pauly 1996; Santaella 1993; Schloss 1958);
the structure, function, and performance of international economic and financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (Black 1987; Gavin and Rodrik 1995; Krueger 1998; and MacBean and Snowden 1981); and
The ILO constitution of 1919 enshrined the achievement of “social justice” as a core general objective of the organization. Following that broad objective, the International Labour Office proceeded to the specific task of investigating “every question appertaining to conditions of labor” (Thomas 1921a: 10–11). Studying “conditions of labor” requires a wide purview, encapsulating all the areas of research only later to be known as “social economics” (Clark 1936). Areas of study included working conditions and remuneration, population, health, housing, social services and pension schemes, unemployment insurance, and relief schemes and education. Later, one contribution to the Cambridge Economic Handbook Series succinctly outlined the social economist's modus operandi:
to apply economic theory to social problems;
to measure, where possible, the extent of social problems;
to study the social causes of economic behavior; and
to study the social consequences of economic behavior (Hagenbuch 1958:2).
In all these respects, ILO researchers acted as social economists; the scope and method of their work was far from being narrowly confined by the conventional boundaries of contemporary economic theory. ILO social economists made generous allowances for “noneconomic,” social, or institutional aspects of human behavior. Often these factors rendered irrelevant or inapplicable much received microeconomic economic theory.