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The last decades have seen a renewed interest in the study of argumentation in archaeology, particularly in response to the overproduction of weak and unreliable interpretations and explanations. Concurrently, recent appeals for scientific transparency and efficiency in the management of archaeological information in digital form have stressed the necessity of explicitly showing the processes foll
Multiconfigurational theory, in combination with the embedded cluster approach, is a precise and ab initio approach to describe the electronic structure of solids. In this work, the spectrum of a Ce(III) dopant in YVO4 has been studied by complete active space perturbation theory of the second order (CASPT2), with the host material represented as a set of ab initio model potentials and point-charg
This chapter introduces the British MPs’ expenses scandal: its origins, evolution and consequences. We argue that despite some early predictions, the scandal was limited in its impact: the purported ‘revolution’ never occurred. We briefly review the comparative literature on the political impact of scandal, which illustrates why the effects of scandals are usually limited and reasons why voters ma
This contribution comprises a comparison of capacity performances of MIMO terminal antenna configurations for smart phones at 2.65 GHz, measured in an extensive 2×2 MIMO measurement campaign in noise- and interference-limited urban environments. Whereas, on average along the route, the performances where dictated by the received power, locally the eigenvalue dispersion of the communication channel
This open access book describes methods of mortality forecasting and discusses possible improvements. It contains a selection of previously unpublished and published papers, which together provide a state-of-the-art overview of statistical approaches as well as behavioural and biological perspectives. The different parts of the book provide discussions of current practice, probabilistic forecast
The beneficial role of the Mediterranean diet in the prevention of chronic diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and obesity, is well-recognized. In this context, Brassicaceae are considered important vegetables due to several evidences of their health promoting effects that are associated to bioactive compounds present in the edible parts of the plants. In this review, the mechan
This article investigates the performance of several residuals for the Cox proportional hazards regression model to diagnose the influential observations. The standardized and adjusted forms of residuals are proposed for Cox proportional hazards regression model. In addition, Cook’s distance is proposed for both standardized and adjusted residuals. The assessment of different residuals for the ide
Tax rules may form an impediment to philanthropic initiatives, including innovative activities such as social entrepreneurship and cross-border initiatives. This chapter analyses three specific tax barriers: barriers to cross-border philanthropy, possible barriers as a result of proposed EU corporate income tax harmonization, and barriers to philanthropy in the form of social entrepreneurship. The
We extend the generalized information criteria for high-dimensional penalizedmodels to sparse statistical jump models, a new class of statistically robust and computationally efficient alternatives to hidden Markov models. In a simulation study, we demonstrate that the new generalized information criteria selects the correct hyperparameters with high probability. Finally, providing an empirical ap
This paper presents an optimization of shell and tube heat exchangers with respect to the total annual costs by a cuckoo search algorithm. The total annual cost is considered as the optimization objective so as to obtain economic heat exchanger structures. The performance of the CSA algorithm is further compared with various algorithm representative of the state of the art in heat exchanger optimi
When searching for convolutional codes and tailbiting codes of high complexity it is of vital importance to use fast algorithms for computing their weight spectra, which corresponds to finding low-weight paths in their code trellises. This can be efficiently done by a combined search in both forward and backward code trees. A bidirectional efficient algorithm for searching such code trees (BEAST)
The white-rot fungus Bjerkandera sp. strain BOL13 was capable of degrading toxaphene when supplied with wood chips, wheat husk or cane molasses as cosubstrates in batch culture experiments. Approximately 85% of toxaphene was removed when wheat husk was the main substrate. The production of lignin peroxidase was only stimulated when wheat husk was present in the liquid medium. Although xylanase was
Wound botulism is a growing problem among injecting drug users. The condition is often difficult to diagnose, with laboratory confirmation in only 50% of the cases. Here we present a real-time PCR-based method for the diagnosis of wound botulism caused by Clostridium botulinum. The assay includes an internal amplification control which is amplified simultaneously with the genes encoding neurotoxin
