bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Prevention and management of pressure ulcers
Authors: Thomas David R
Published: August 2008

A pressure ulcer is the visible evidence of pathological changes in blood supply
to the dermal and underlying tissues, usually due to compression of the tissue over
a bony prominence. Pressure ulcers are one of several types of chronic ulcers of
the skin, including venous stasis, diabetic ulcers, and arterial insufficiency ulcers.
The differential diagnosis of pressure ulcers is imperative, since the management
of each wound type differs substantially.
Myopathies
Authors: Hilton-Jones David
Published: August 2008

Myopathy is a convenient shorthand term meaning muscle disease or dysfunction.
In other words, the myopathies are those conditions in which the patient’s
symptoms and signs can be attributed to a pathological process affecting either the
structure of muscle fibres or their associated interstitial tissues, or to disturbance
of the biochemical or electrophysiological function of those fibres. Myopathies are
rare in all age ranges. They may be inherited or acquired. Onset of inherited myopathies
in the elderly, not surprisingly, is uncommon, but some of these diseases are asymptomatic
or cause such minor symptoms that their significance is not appreciated by the patient,
and thus they may not be recognized until late on in life. Their recognition may
have implications for other, younger, family members. Many of the acquired myopathies
afflicting the elderly are treatable, but the commonest, inclusion body myositis,
is not, and incorrect diagnosis and inappropriate use of steroids may compound morbidity.
The significance of manic syndromes in old age
Authors: Shulman Kenneth I
Published: August 2008

Introduction

Since the last review of this topic in this journal, there has been a focusing of efforts to clarify the classification of manic syndromes and their neurobiologic basis. This has involved proposals for more refined subtypes, as well as descriptions of brain localization and co-morbidity. Our understanding of the epidemiology, genetics, clinical course and treatment of manic syndromes has not substantially altered over the last decade.
Grief in old age
Authors: Harwood D
Published: August 2008

Much of Parkes’ thorough review of bereavement in the elderly in a previous
issue of this journal is still highly relevant. Advances in our understanding of
bereavement are surprisingly slow for a condition which is ubiquitous, and there
are still disappointing gaps in our knowledge. A common difficulty for researchers
in this field, and for clinicians reading their papers, is the problem of selection
bias. Participants in studies on bereavement are often white and middle class. More
often than not, grief research focuses on bereaved spouses rather than blood relatives
or friends of the deceased. In addition, much research on bereavement originates
from the USA, so the findings may not be as relevant in other countries. Lastly,
of particular relevance to this paper, although many studies of grief purport to
be of ‘older’ samples, closer inspection of the paper will often reveal
a surprisingly young mean age; people over 75 are often excluded from bereavement
research. These biases must be borne in mind when interpreting the findings from
the studies discussed in this review.
Care work and quality of care for older people: a review of the research literature
Authors: Hannan Shirina , Norman Ian J , Redfern Sally J
Published: August 2008

There is considerable research on work satisfaction and stress of care staff on
the one hand and on quality of care and well-being of older people on the other.
However, very little research in continuing-care settings for older people (nursing
homes, residential homes and long-stay wards) links perceptions of workers (work
satisfaction and stress) with the process of care (quality of care) and outcomes
for residents/patients (well-being). This is a notable omission, given the emphasis
of government policy on improving quality of health and social care services for
vulnerable elderly people in the UK. The White Papers, The New NHS and Modernising
Social Services and the National Priority Guidance for Health and Social Services
for 2000–2003, all emphasize the importance of services that are responsive
to local needs and which maintain and promote independence. The Centre for Policy
on Ageing has been commissioned by the Department of Health to develop national standards
for nursing and residential home care services for older people. This work will
build upon recommendations of the Burgner Report and Achieving a Better Home Life,
which identified areas for benchmarking. The national standards proposed under the
forthcoming National Service Framework for Older People will underpin new legislation
to regulate care services.
The meaning of organum: some case studies
Authors: WILLIAMS PETER
Published: August 2008

Fundamental work in recent decades on a variety of related topics can still leave one uncertain what
individual documents mean by ‘organum’, particularly those prepared by clerks unversed in musical vocabulary. This
essay looks at several types of document to ask whether they mean an organ, a siren, a wind instrument, a tool, a
book, a gospel, or even Mass and Office. Paradoxically, the more ‘versatile’ the word, the likelier that organs were
familiar.
A Sarum antiphoner and other medieval office manuscripts from England and France: some musical relationships
Authors: Halmo Joan
Published: August 2008

Using several twelfth- and thirteenth-century sources, this study examines a selected number of Office antiphons, comparing their melodic variants for patterns of similarity and difference. The ancestry of a Sarum manuscript and - in another source - the survival of a pre-Conquest musical tradition in England are discernible in Office manuscripts examined as are affinities among French and English sources. Evidence from previous chant scholarship and certain medieval historical events shed light on the observations made in this study.
The Roman Missa sponsalicia
Authors: Boe John
Published: August 2008

Proper chants unique to the Roman wedding Mass - the introit Deus Israel, the gradual Vxor tua and the communion Ecce sic benedicetur - are not found in the unnotated northern Mass antiphoners of Hesbert's Sextuplex. Heavily edited and fitted with Gregorian melodies (or else unnotated), these texts appear sporadically in northern graduals beginning in the mid-tenth century. Their compilation can therefore be dated to the second half of the ninth century. Because the melodies for these Propers were assembled from formulas in common use at a time when new chants were no longer being composed at Rome and because they are certainly free of Gregorian influence, the nuptial chants disclose how certain formulas were being sung shortly before Roman culture and papal institutions began to decline.
Liturgical chant bibliography 11
Authors: Paucker Günther Michael
Published: August 2008

Liturgical chant bibliography 11 maintains the system of classification established in previous years: (1) Editions and facsimile editions, (2) Books and reprints, (3) Congress reports, (4) Chant journals, (5) Collections of essays and dictionaries, (6) Articles in periodicals and Festschriften. Additions to previously published Bibliographies (mostly reviews) will be found immediately following this introduction.
The urban hierarchy in the later Middle Ages: a study of the East Midlands
Authors: Laughton Jane , Jones Evan , Dyer Christopher
Published: August 2008

The urban hierarchy of an English region in the period 1300–1540 is defined, using both documentary and archaeological evidence. The part of the East Midlands studied – Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Rutland – contained twenty towns. ‘Benchmarks’ for placing towns in the hierarchy are explored, including population, topography, social structure, occupational diversity, marketing and migratory networks, administration, and civic and material culture. The conclusion emphasizes the common urban characteristics of all of the towns studied, the compatibility of written and unwritten evidence, and the stability of the urban system.
Between reality and stereotype: town views of the Balkans
Authors: Klusáková Ludá
Published: August 2008

A content analysis of the Leiden Sketchbook (1577–85) addresses two major issues. First, how a stereotype of an Ottoman town was created by sixteenth-century travellers and second, how the social organization of space and integration of formerly Christian towns into the Ottoman system during the period of its greatest expansion was perceived. The comparison of visual sources with travelogues and historiography confirms the historicity and trustworthiness of the drawings. The drawings are revealing when interpreted in the context of the approach of historical anthropology: they illustrate the travelogues and testify to the sensual experience of their author.
Learning from Los Angeles
Authors: Larkham Peter J.
Published: August 2008

Several recent books provide reason for an extended review of aspects of the development and history of Los Angeles. This city is so prominent particularly in the entertainment media that it is often seen (from outside the USA at least) as the archetypal American city, which gives rise to many misconceptions. There is a great deal still to learn from Los Angeles.
Water and power in Milan, c. 1200–1500
Authors: Boucheron Patrick
Published: August 2008

‘This city has a circular form, and such a marvellous roundness is the sign of its perfection. A trench of surprising beauty and breadth surrounds this city and contains, not a swamp or a putrid pool, but living water from fountains stocked with fish and crayfish.’ For friar Bonvesin de la Riva at the end of the thirteenth century, as for most of his successors, glorifying Milan consisted of singing the praises of its running water. Abundant, regular, gushing water was everywhere; it was ‘marvellous to drink, clear, healthy, within reach of the hand’.This praise is evidently for the geographical situation of Milan, which brought it harmony and wealth. But it is also for the Milanese themselves, who brought running water from the rivers to the Lombard capital. Milan, after all, was naturally ‘Medio-Amnium’, at an equal distance from the two rivers (the Ticino and the Adda) that flowed around it. At the end of the Middle Ages, it was at the centre of the most immense system of navigable rivers in Europe, and it owed this condition to three centuries of effort during which the communal power, but also private initiatives, had dug the canals and connected the streams. Water became the vital element in the economy, and the development of Milan multiplied the concurrent, sometimes rival uses of it. How could stagnant water from trenches be reconciled with that of the navigable rivers? How could it be ensured that the water that irrigated the garden would also supply the needs of the paper mill? There were many economic contradictions that could be resolved only by an equitable and measured sharing of the water. At the same time, the growing strength of the seigniorial and territorial state sought to appropriate the management of the water to itself. If the prince succeeded in guaranteeing a supply of clean water, which flowed constantly for the good of the whole community, he would have found the best way not only of participating in the development of his city but also of ensuring that his own power was retained.
‘Velddrift’: the making of a South African company town
Authors: van Sittert Lance
Published: August 2008

Recent reviews of South African urban history have highlighted its neglect of rural urbanization and the role of the state and capital in urban development. Natural resource frontiers offer a uniquely unobstructed view of rural urbanization under the aegis of capital and the state. The process has been well documented for South Africa's mineral revolution, but other resource frontiers have been completely ignored. The latter developed in the long shadow cast by mining and the urban metropoles, with their centripetal pull on labour and the state, making the company town an archetypal urban form on the rural periphery.
‘Small-scale Toy-towns and Trumptons’? Urbanizations in Britain and the new Cambridge Urban History
Authors: Pythian-Adams Charles
Published: August 2008

The appearance of the three substantial volumes that comprise this heroic enterprise under the banner of Cambridge University Press (only the first two being discussed here) marks a defining moment in the development of urban history since Jim Dyos launched the Urban History Group nearly forty years ago. How pleased he would have been with this collaborative realization of a long-standing dream that more than one of us discussed with him well before 1977! Characteristically, however, it was from then that the torch was carried forward by Dyos' energetic and energizing heir to the urban history mantle, Peter Clark. For him, as General Editor, these volumes mark the fulfilment of a personal odyssey that stretches from a time when he and Paul Slack were framing collections or overviews on English Tudor and Stuart towns some three decades ago, through to his more recent work on small towns and provincial societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. To have masterminded and driven forward this immense project spanning urban development since the Roman period to 1950 in the island of Britain, as well as editing the 1540–1840 volume and contributing extensively to it, thus represents a highpoint in a remarkable career in this field. Additionally Peter Clark was shrewd enough to enlist the skilled and dependable editorial aid of David Palliser for the medieval volume and of Martin Daunton for the modern, and to gather around him an Advisory Committee containing many of the more influential figures in the recent development of urban history not only in England but also in Scotland and Wales. Let us hope that detailed notes of their strategic discussions have been preserved for posterity.
From Dyos to Daunton: The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol. III
Authors: Meller Helen
Published: August 2008

It is a work of modern scholarship: on time, comprehensive and rather expensive! But there are 944 pages of this third and final volume of The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, which could make it value for money. And indeed, like the preceding volumes in the series, it has amassed a galaxy of authors, twenty-eight to be exact not including Martin Daunton who, as editor, has also contributed a weighty introduction and an epilogue. The whole project gives strong affirmation that urban history has a present and a future, a product of the renaissance in urban studies in Britain over the past decade. The renaissance has been a European phenomenon, as witnessed by the founding of the European Urban History Association, also over the last decade, and the new groups of urban historians in Germany and Scandinavia, in France and Holland and even more recently in Italy and elsewhere. What the Cambridge Urban History vol. III sets out to do is to provide a British perspective on the historical process of urbanization from 1840–1950. In the process, claims are made that urban history can offer a framework for addressing many questions in the field of economic and social history, not exclusively, but often with an insight lacking in more general approaches.
How green was my valley? Urban history in Latin America
Authors: Derham Michael
Published: August 2008

The history of Latin America has been dominated by ideas of order and progress. Unfortunately those ideas have not always been of regional origin. In the colonial era the conquest and conversion of the native peoples was seen as progress by the Europeans. The imposition of order was aided greatly by urbanization sometimes symbolically on the ruins of Indian cities such as at Cuzco and Mexico City. Cities became the point of cultural and economic articulation between the barbaric hinterland and the civilization of Europe. Freedom from the Spanish yoke gained in the Independence wars was similarly seen as progress, at least by the ultimately victorious creole ‘patriots’. It was here, however, that notions of national identity, modernization and economic success became intertwined to produce the conflicts which still inflame the region today. The paramount question has remained: whose order and concept of progress should be imposed?
Enzyme activity in anuran spermatozoa upon induction of the acrosome reaction
Authors: Infante V. , Amirante R. , Vaccaro M.C. , Wilding M. , Campanella C.
Published: August 2008

At the time of sperm-egg fusion in Discoglossus pictus, a large amount of electron-dense material of an unknown nature is liberated from the sperm. In the present work we studied this material in D. pictus sperm, using an assay utilising strips of autoradiographic film as a gelatin substrate for proteolytic enzymes. Upon treatment with A23187, D. pictus sperm produced a large halo on the gelatin substrate, indicating the presence of enzymes released by the sperm at the time of the acrosome reaction. In contrast, Xenopus laevis sperm did not produce halos upon treatment with A23187. The use of protease inhibitors such as TLCK, leupeptin, chymostatin, SBTI and EACA strongly suggests that the D. pictus whole acrosome contains trypsin and chymotrypsin activity while an SBTI-sensitive activity is absent in a small portion of the acrosome, possibly the anteriormost region. Furthermore, the material released at the acrosome reaction also contains an EACA-inhibited activity, indicating the presence of plasminogen activator. We conclude that D. pictus sperm release proteolytic enzyme(s) that may act at the egg surface at the time of gamete fusion.
Effect of incubation temperature on in vitro maturation of porcine oocytes: nuclear maturation, fertilisation and developmental competence
Authors: Abeydeera Lalantha R. , Wang Wei-Hua , Prather Randall S. , Day Billy N.
Published: August 2008

The present study examined the effect of low culture temperature during in vitro maturation (IVM) of pig oocytes on their nuclear maturation, fertilisation and subsequent embryo development. In experiment 1, oocytes were cultured at 35 or 39 °C for 44 h in modified tissue culture medium 199 supplemented with 10 ng/ml epidermal growth factor, 0.57 mM cysteine, 75 μg/ml potassium penicillin G, 50 μg/ml streptomycin sulphate, 0.5 μg/ml LH and 0.5 μg/ml FSH to examine the nuclear maturation status. In experiment 2, oocytes were cultured at 35 °C for 44 or 68 h and nuclear maturation was examined. In experiment 3, oocytes matured for 44 or 68 h at 39 °C and for 68 h at 35 °C were co-incubated with frozen-thawed spermatozoa for 5-6 h. Putative embryos were transferred into North Carolina State University (NCSU) 23 medium containing 0.4% bovine serum albumin. At 12 h after insemination, some oocytes were fixed to examine the fertilisation rate and the remaining embryos were examined at 48 and 144 h for cleavage and blastocyst formation rate, respectively. Compared with 39 °C, culture of oocytes at 35 °C for 44 h significantly (p < 0.05) reduced the metaphase II (M II) rate (79% vs 12%). However, extension of culture time to 68 h at 35 °C significantly increased (p < 0.05) the M II rate (7% vs 58%). In experiment 3, compared with other groups, fewer (p < 0.05) oocytes reached M II when cultured at 35 °C for 68 h (69-81% vs 49%). Extension of culture duration to 68 h at 39 °C stimulated spontaneous activation (28%) of oocytes. No difference in cleavage rates was observed among different groups. Compared with oocytes matured for 44 h at 39 °C (31%), the proportion of blastocysts obtained was low (p < 0.05) for oocytes matured at 35 °C (13%) or 39 °C (3%) for 68 h. The results indicate that lower culture temperature can delay nuclear maturation of pig oocytes. However, extension of culture time can stimulate nuclear maturation and these oocytes are capable of fertilisation and development to the blastocyst stage at moderate rates.
Nuclear maturation inducers in Bufo arenarum oocytes
Authors: Ramos Inés , Cisint Susana , Crespo Claudia , Medina Marcela F. , Fernández Silvia
Published: August 2008

The present study analyses the effect of dihydrotestosterone (DHT) and mammalian insulin on the nuclear maturation of Bufo arenarum oocytes under in vitro conditions. The response of fully grown follicle oocytes to DHT, shown by germinal vesicle breakdown (GVBD), occurred in a manner dependent on dose, time and sexual cycle period. The highest oocyte sensitivity to the hormone appeared during the breeding period, a fact evinced by high GVBD percentages after short incubation periods and at a low hormone concentrations. Insulin also proved effective in inducing nuclear maturation, although its action was only visible at high concentrations and after a long incubation period. The combination of insulin and steroid hormones (DHT or progesterone), both at subliminal doses, caused a noticeable potentiating synergism, resulting in a rapid and important increase in GVBD. Another effect of insulin was the acquisition by oocytes of steroid sensitivity during folliculogenesis.
Evidence for long-term cross-language repetition priming in low fluency Chinese–English bilinguals
Authors: LI LI , MO LEI , WANG RUIMING , LUO XUEYING , CHEN ZHE
Published: August 2008

Previous studies have found that proficiency in a second language affects how the meanings of words are accessed. Support for this hypothesis is based on data from explicit memory tasks with bilingual participants who know two languages that are relatively similar phonologically and orthographically (e.g., Dutch–English, French–English). The present study tested this hypothesis with Chinese–English bilinguals using an implicit memory task – the cross-language repetition priming paradigm. Consistent with the result of Zeelenberg, R. and Pecher, D. (2003), we obtained reliable effects of long-term cross-language repetition priming using a conceptual implicit memory task. Overall, the four experiments support the Revised Hierarchical Model as they demonstrate that low fluency bilinguals can only access the conceptual representation of the second language via the lexical representation of the first language.
Phonological inconsistency in word naming: Determinants of the interference effect between languages
Authors: SMITS ERICA , SANDRA DOMINIEK , MARTENSEN HEIKE , DIJKSTRA TON
Published: August 2008

Dutch–English participants named words and nonwords with a between-language phonologically inconsistent rime, e.g., GREED and PREED, and control words with a language-typical rime, e.g., GROAN, in a monolingual stimulus list or in a mixed list containing Dutch words. Inconsistent items had longer latencies and more errors than typical items in the mixed lists but not in the pure list. The consistency effect depended on word frequency, but not on language membership, lexicality, or instruction. Instruction did affect the relative speed and number of errors in the two languages. The consistency effect is the consequence of the simultaneous activation of two sublexical codes in the bilinguals' two languages and its size depends on the activation rate of the associated lexical representations (high-frequency words versus low-frequency words and nonwords) and on the decision criteria that monitor the response conflict at the decision level: the timing for responding (time criterion) in each language depends on the composition of the stimulus list and the likelihood of responses in either language.
On the problem of computing the well-founded semantics
Authors: LONC ZBIGNIEW , TRUSZCZYŃSKI MIROSŁAW
Published: August 2008

The well-founded semantics is one of the most widely studied and used semantics of logic
programs with negation. In the case of finite propositional programs, it can be computed
in polynomial time, more specifically, in O([mid ]At(P)[mid ] × size(P))
steps, where size(P) denotes
the total number of occurrences of atoms in a logic program P. This bound is achieved by
an algorithm introduced by Van Gelder and known as the alternating-fixpoint algorithm.
Improving on the alternating-fixpoint algorithm turned out to be difficult. In this paper we
study extensions and modifications of the alternating-fixpoint approach. We then restrict our
attention to the class of programs whose rules have no more than one positive occurrence of
an atom in their bodies. For programs in that class we propose a new implementation of the
alternating-fixpoint method in which false atoms are computed in a top-down fashion. We
show that our algorithm is faster than other known algorithms and that for a wide class of
programs it is linear and so, asymptotically optimal.
Call for Papers Verification and Computational Logic Special Issue of Theory and Practice of Logic Programming
Authors: Leuschel Michael , Podelski Andreas , Ramakrishnan C. R. , Ultes-Nitsche Ulrich
Published: August 2008

Submission deadline: January 10, 2002

The past decade has seen dramatic growth in the application of model checking
techniques to the validation and verification of correctness properties of hardware,
and more recently software systems. One of the methods is to model a hardware
or software system as a finite, labelled transition system which is then exhaustively
explored to decide whether a given temporal specification holds. Recently, there has
been increasing interest in applying logic programming techniques to model checking
in particular and verification in general. For example, table-based logic programming
can be used as an efficient means of performing explicit model checking. Other
research has successfully exploited set-based logic program analysis, constraint logic
programming, and logic program transformation techniques.

The aim of this special issue is to attract high-quality research papers on the
interplay between verification techniques (e.g. model checking, reduction and abstraction)
and logic programming techniques (e.g. constraints, abstract interpretation, program
transformation).
Propositional defeasible logic has linear complexity
Authors: MAHER MICHAEL J.
Published: August 2008

Defeasible logic is a rule-based nonmonotonic logic, with both strict and defeasible rules,
and a priority relation on rules. We show that inference in the propositional form of the
logic can be performed in linear time. This contrasts markedly with most other propositional
nonmonotonic logics, in which inference is intractable.
Sequence-based abstract interpretation of Prolog
Authors: LE CHARLIER BAUDOUIN , ROSSI SABINA , VAN HENTENRYCK PASCAL
Published: August 2008

Abstract interpretation is a general methodology for systematic development of program
analyses. An abstract interpretation framework is centered around a parametrized non-standard
semantics that can be instantiated by various domains to approximate different program properties.
Many abstract interpretation frameworks and analyses for Prolog have been proposed,
which seek to extract information useful for program optimization. Although motivated by
practical considerations, notably making Prolog competitive with imperative languages, such
frameworks fail to capture some of the control structures of existing implementations of the
language. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for the abstract interpretation of
Prolog which handles the depth-first search rule and the cut operator. It relies on the notion
of substitution sequence to model the result of the execution of a goal. The framework consists
of (i) a denotational concrete semantics, (ii) a safe abstraction of the concrete semantics
defined in terms of a class of post-fixpoints, and (iii) a generic abstract interpretation
algorithm. We show that traditional abstract domains of substitutions may easily be adapted to
the new framework, and provide experimental evidence of the effectiveness of our approach.
We also show that previous work on determinacy analysis, that was not expressible by existing
abstract interpretation frameworks, can be seen as an instance of our framework. The ideas
developed in this paper can be applied to other logic languages, notably to constraint logic
languages, and the theoretical approach should be of general interest for the analysis of many
non-deterministic programming languages.
Computing large and small stable models
Authors: TRUSZCZYŃSKI MIROSŁAW
Published: August 2008

In this paper, we focus on the problem of existence and computing of small and large stable
models. We show that for every fixed integer k, there is a linear-time algorithm to decide the
problem LSM (large stable models problem): does a logic program P have a stable model of
size at least [mid ]P[mid ]−k? In contrast, we show that the problem SSM (small stable models problem)
to decide whether a logic program P has a stable model of size at most k is much harder.
We present two algorithms for this problem but their running time is given by polynomials
of order depending on k. We show that the problem SSM is fixed-parameter intractable by
demonstrating that it is W[2]-hard. This result implies that it is unlikely an algorithm exists
to compute stable models of size at most k that would run in time O(mc), where m is the size
of the program and c is a constant independent of k. We also provide an upper bound on
the fixed-parameter complexity of the problem SSM by showing that it belongs to the class W[3].
An effective fixpoint semantics for linear logic programs
Authors: BOZZANO MARCO , DELZANNO GIORGIO , MARTELLI MAURIZIO
Published: August 2008

In this paper we investigate the theoretical foundation of a new bottom-up semantics for
linear logic programs, and more precisely for the fragment of LinLog (Andreoli, 1992) that
consists of the language LO (Andreoli & Pareschi, 1991) enriched with the constant 1. We
use constraints to symbolically and finitely represent possibly infinite collections of provable
goals. We define a fixpoint semantics based on a new operator in the style of TP working
over constraints. An application of the fixpoint operator can be computed algorithmically.
As sufficient conditions for termination, we show that the fixpoint computation is guaranteed
to converge for propositional LO. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to define an
effective fixpoint semantics for linear logic programs. As an application of our framework,
we also present a formal investigation of the relations between LO and Disjunctive Logic
Programming (Minker et al., 1991). Using an approach based on abstract interpretation, we
show that DLP fixpoint semantics can be viewed as an abstraction of our semantics for LO.
We prove that the resulting abstraction is correct and complete (Cousot & Cousot, 1977;
Giacobazzi & Ranzato, 1997) for an interesting class of LO programs encoding Petri Nets.
User Involvement in Research and Evaluation: Liberation or Regulation?
Authors: Beresford Peter
Published: August 2008

This article explores the progressive and regressive potential of ‘user involvement’ in research and evaluation, with particular reference to social policy. There is growing political and research interest in user involvement. This article critically explores key different approaches to user involvement in research and relates them to consumerist and democratic models of involvement in policy and practice, management and development. The article highlights the need to approach user involvement in research critically and systematically, taking account of the diversity of approaches that have developed and to take forward user involvement in research in equal association with service user organisations and movements.
New Labour's Big Idea: Joined-up Government
Authors: Clark Tim
Published: August 2008

There can be little doubt that joined-up government (JUG) is one of New Labour's big ideas, alongside their new managerialism. Since New Labour's initial election victory in 1997 and their subsequent second term in 2001, significant resources have been spent in developing ‘joined-up’ strategies for social policy. This ‘big idea’ stretches from Cabinet level with new groups such as the Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) and the Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU) and extends into every single social policy sector with area-based initiatives, such as Health Action, Education Action and Employment Zones, and encompasses agents from all sectors, public, private and voluntary. New Labour state that by ensuring policy making is more joined-up and strategic, social and public policy can be more ‘inclusive and integrated’ (White Paper, 1999: 6).
Global Justice: The Terrors of Interdependence
Authors: Jordan Bill
Published: August 2008

This article reflects on the events of 11th September, 2001, in their immediate aftermath. Globalisation has brought economic interdependence without institutions for global distributive justice. The challenge for social policy of greater mobility of people, both within and between states, is as pressing as the problems of security highlighted by those events. These issues will demand attention long after the ‘war against terrorism’ has abated, because rich First World countries can no longer insulate themselves from the effects of poverty and injustice in the developing world.
The ESRC Growing Older Research Programme
Authors: Walker Alan
Published: August 2008

This article serves three purposes. The first and main one is to introduce the ESRC's Growing Older Programme and its research agenda. Secondly, it outlines the four main challenges confronting the programme and its research teams: the methodological one concerning ‘quality of life’, the democratic one of participation, the challenge of communication and, ultimately, that of policy impact. Thirdly, the demographic and policy contexts that helped to create the Programme and to which it must respond are also discussed briefly.
Central and East European States Respond to Socio-Demographic Challenges
Authors: Hantrais Linda
Published: August 2008

The political and economic upheavals of the 1990s in Central and Eastern Europe were reflected in socio-demographic changes that presented major challenges for governments. Birth rates fell steeply and social divisions intensified, while population ageing was held in check by low life expectancy. Social protection systems underwent radical reform, as attempts were made to meet criteria for EU membership. This paper examines how socio-demographic change and ensuing social problems were experienced in candidate countries. It analyses the policy responses of governments and explores some of the issues being raised in the context of enlargement for EU member and applicant states.
Researching and Writing about Poverty in Slovakia
Authors: Kusá Zuzana
Published: August 2008

The paper gives some insights into the state of research and public debate abot poverty in Slovakia. It suggests that the idea of personal responsibility and the diminution of the state, and the practical need to rduce the public expenditures frame the public debate and the research orientation substantially, and that there is the tendency both of the poor families and politicians to avoid the discussion about everyday livelihood troubles of those living on social support. The author introduces some findings of the family history research History of Poverty in Slovakia that was the part of the international project designed and co-ordinated by Julia Szalai to present survival strategies of poor households and discusses the outcomes of their tendency to veil their poverty and include themselves by trying to pretend major consumption standards.
Self-Annuitization, Consumption Shortfall in Retirement and Asset Allocation: The Annuity Benchmark
Authors: ALBRECHT PETER , MAURER RAIMOND
Published: August 2008

The present paper considers a retiree of a certain age who is endowed with a certain amount of wealth and is facing alternative investment opportunities. One possibility is to buy a single premium immediate (participating) annuity-contract. This insurance product pays a life-long pension payment of a certain amount, depending e.g. on the age of the retiree, the operating cost of the insurance company and the return the company is able to realize from its investments. The alternative possibility is to invest the single premium into a portfolio of mutual funds and to periodically withdraw a fixed amount that is assumed to be equivalent to the consumption stream generated by the annuity. The particular advantage of this self-annuitization strategy compared to the life annuity is its greater liquidity and the possibility of leaving money for heirs. However, the risk of self-annuitization is to outlive the assets before the uncertain date of death. The risk can thus be specified by considering the probability of running out of money before the uncertain date of death. The determination of this personal probability of consumption shortfall with respect to German insurance and capital market conditions is the objective of this paper.
Do pension plans with participant investment choice teach households to hold more equity?
Authors: WEISBENNER SCOTT
Published: August 2008

Some retirement plans allow the participant to choose how funds are invested. Having to direct investments may provide the participant with financial education. This paper finds that U.S. households covered by pension plans in which the employee chooses investments are significantly more apt to hold stock outside of their retirement plan than are households with pension plans offering no such choice. The effect of investment choice upon non-pension asset allocation is not explained by portfolio rebalancing or observable differences in income and saving preferences across households. This provides some evidence that the design of a pension plan may influence an employee's financial decisions outside of the pension plan, although unobserved heterogeneity in worker's preferences could also explain the result.
Asset rich and cash poor: retirement provision and housing policy in Singapore
Authors: McCARTHY DAVID , MITCHELL OLIVIA S. , PIGGOTT JOHN
Published: August 2008

National defined contribution pension systems have long been a mainstay of retirement income in Asia. One of the oldest and best known of these systems is the Singaporean Central Provident Fund, a mandatory retirement scheme managed by the central government for almost a half-century. With required contribution rates that have ranged up to 50%, this program has powerfully shaped asset accumulation patterns and housing portfolios. This paper explores how the structure and design of the Singaporean retirement and housing schemes influence wealth levels and asset mix at retirement. Our model indicates that outcomes rest critically on the interlinked national retirement and housing programs. We show that policies to enhance one program may boost retirement replacement rates but can also lower total wealth in unexpected ways. The lessons we draw may serve as guidance for other countries constructing a national defined contribution retirement system.
Overview of the Issue
Authors: BROWN JEFFREY , HABERMAN STEVEN , MILEVSKY MOSHE , ORSZAG MIKE
Published: August 2008

This is the final issue of the first volume of the Journal of Pension Economics and Finance. We are pleased that the Journal has had a very successful first year, both in terms of the quality of submissions and in terms of building up an extensive and high quality subscription base. We will report in more detail on our first year as well as our plans for the future in the first issue of the second volume.

The four articles in this issue span a broad range of topics. The first article is by David McCarthy (Oxford University, Institute of Ageing), Olivia Mitchell (University of Pennsylvania, Pension Research Council) and John Piggott (University of New South Wales, Centre for Pensions and Superannuation) who have written a paper entitled: Asset rich and cash poor: retirement provision and housing policy in Singapore.

As mandatory defined contribution systems are increasingly adopted around the world, the experience in Singapore is particularly relevant in that its Central Provident Fund (CPF) is one of the oldest major international examples of a mandatory defined contribution pension system. With funds representing roughly 60% of Singapore's GDP, the CPF is also one of the most prominent publicly managed investment funds in the world.

The particular focal point of the McCarthy et al. paper is the effect of rules in Singapore which allow individuals to use their accumulated funds to pay for housing. The use of retirement savings vehicles for approved purposes, such as medical care, education and unemployment, is an important policy issue, with most countries continuing to have strict prohibitions on drawing funds prior to retirement.
Warping of Saturn's magnetospheric and magnetotail current sheets
Authors: Arridge C. S. , Khurana K. K. , Russell C. T. , Southwood D. J. , Achilleos N. , Dougherty M. K. , Coates A. J. , Leinweber H. K.
Published: August 2008

The magnetotails of Jupiter and Earth are known to be hinged so that their orientation is controlled by the magnetic field of the planet at small distances and asymptotically approach the direction of the flow of the solar wind at large distances. In this paper we present Cassini observations showing that Saturn's magnetosphere is also similarly hinged. Furthermore, we find that Saturn's magnetosphere is not only hinged in the tail but also on the dayside, in contrast to the Jovian and terrestrial magnetospheres. Over the midnight, dawn, and noon local time sectors we find that the current sheet is displaced above Saturn's rotational equator, and thus the current sheet adopts the shape of a bowl or basin. We present a model to describe the warped current sheet geometry and show that in order to properly describe the magnetic field in the magnetosphere, this hinging must be incorporated. We discuss the impact on plasma observations made in Saturn's equatorial plane, the influence on Titan's magnetospheric interaction, and the effect of periodicities on the mean current sheet structure.
Mantle convection models with temperature‐ and depth‐dependent thermal expansivity
Authors: Ghias Sanaz R. , Jarvis Gary T.
Published: August 2008

We investigate the effects of temperature‐ and depth‐dependent thermal expansivity in two‐dimensional mantle convection models in cylindrical shell and plane layer geometries. Most previous models of mantle convection have employed either a constant coefficient of thermal expansion, α, or a depth‐dependent α = α(r), where r is the radial coordinate antiparallel to gravity. We consider α to have the form α(r,T) = αr (r)αT (T), where αr(r) increases with radius, r (or decreases with depth), and αT (T) increases with temperature, T. We find that the depth dependence and temperature dependence of α each have a significant, but opposite, effect on the mean surface heat flux (or Nusselt number) and the mean surface velocity of the convecting system. For α = αr (r), a decrease of α with depth by a factor of 4 across the mantle causes a decrease of surface heat flux by about 20% and a decrease in mean surface velocity by about 30%, relative to the constant α case, in either cylindrical or plane layer geometry. However, when the temperature dependence of α is also included, αT (T) effectively compensates for the effects of αr(r) such that the predicted decreases in heat flow and surface velocity are either eliminated or, in some cases, become increases. Consequently, previous studies that include only the effects of depth dependence of α may underestimate surface heat flow and plate velocities by as much as 20% and 50%, respectively.
Implementation of a two‐moment bulk microphysics scheme to the WRF model to investigate aerosol‐cloud interaction
Authors: Li Guohui , Wang Yuan , Zhang Renyi
Published: August 2008

A two‐moment bulk microphysical scheme has been implemented into the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to investigate the aerosol‐cloud interaction. The microphysical scheme calculates the mass mixing ratios and number concentrations of aerosols and five types of hydrometeors and accounts for various cloud processes including warm and mixed phase microphysics. The representation of the aerosol size distribution is evaluated, showing that the three‐moment modal method produces results better in agreement with the sectional approach than the two‐moment modal method for variable supersaturation conditions in clouds. The effects of aerosols on cloud processes are investigated using the two‐moment bulk microphysical scheme in a convective cumulus cloud event occurring on 24 August 2000 in Houston, Texas. The modeled evolution of the distribution of radar reflectivity in the y‐z section, the cell lifetime, and averaged accumulated precipitation with the aerosol concentration under the polluted urban condition are qualitatively consistent with the measurements. Sensitivity simulations are initialized using a set of aerosol profiles with the number concentrations ranging from 200 to 50,000 cm−3 and mass ranging from 1 to 10 μg m−3 at the surface level. The response of precipitation to the increase of aerosol concentrations is nonmonotonic, because of the complicated interaction between cloud microphysics and dynamics. The precipitation increases with aerosol concentrations from clean maritime to continental background conditions, but is considerably reduced and completely suppressed under highly polluted conditions, indicating that the aerosol concentration exhibits distinct effects on the precipitation efficiency under different aerosol conditions. The maximal cloud cover, core updraft, and maximal vertical velocity exhibit similar responses as precipitation. Comparison is made to evaluate the effects of different autoconversion parameterizations and bulk microphysical schemes on cloud properties. Because of its broad application in numerical weather prediction, implementation of the two‐moment microphysical scheme to the WRF model will greatly facilitate assessment of aerosol‐cloud interaction from individual cumulus to mesoscale convective systems.
The relationship between lightning activity and ice fluxes in thunderstorms
Authors: Deierling Wiebke , Petersen Walter A. , Latham John , Ellis Scott , Christian Hugh J.
Published: August 2008

It is generally believed that a strong updraft in the mixed‐phase region of thunderstorms is required to produce lightning. This is the region where the noninductive charging process is thought to generate most of the storm electrification. Analytic calculations and model results predict that the total lightning frequency is roughly proportional to the product of the downward mass flux of solid precipitation (graupel) and the upward mass flux of ice crystals. Thus far this flux hypothesis has only been tested in a very limited way. Herein we use dual‐polarimetric and dual‐Doppler radar observations in conjunction with total lightning data collected in Northern Alabama and also Colorado/Kansas during two field campaigns. These data are utilized to investigate total lightning activity as a function of precipitation and nonprecipitation ice masses and estimates of their fluxes for different storm types in different climate regions. A total of 11 storms, including single cell, multicell, and supercell storms, was analyzed in the two climatologically different regions. Time series of both precipitation and nonprecipitation ice mass estimates above the melting level show a good relationship with total lightning activity for the 11 storms analyzed (correlation coefficients exceed 0.9 and 0.8, respectively). Furthermore, the relationships are relatively invariant between the two climate regions. The correlations between total lightning and the associated product of ice mass fluxes are even higher. These observations provide strong support for the flux hypothesis.