We derive empirical predictions from the standard investment-cash flow framework on the functioning of internal capital markets (ICM), but circumvent its criticism by focusing on parent cash flow and investment opportunities. We test these predictions using a unique data set of parent firms and their listed and unlisted subsidiaries in 90 countries over the period 1995-2006. We find that company and country institutional structures matter. (1) Ownership participation of the parent firm in the subsidiary plays a crucial role for the proper functioning of ICMs. The larger the ownership stake of the parent, the better the functioning of the ICM. (2) The best functioning cross-border ICMs can be found in the sub-sample of firms with parents from a country with "strong" institutions and subsidiaries from a country with "weak" institutions. (3) Unlisted subsidiaries are much more dependent on the ICMs their parents provide than listed subsidiaries. Thus, ICMs are not per se "bright" or "dark", their proper functioning depends on how they are set up. (authors' abstract)

Fathermen is an ethnographic journey in the kinship lives of men on the island of Dominica, West Indies. It traces the various complexities, conundra and contradictions Dominican men encounter and create as they navigate relational life trajectories. These are termed kinship predicaments: moments in kin-lives that trouble hegemonic concepts of fatherhood and masculine personhood; that spark ambivalence between dominant ideals and lived experiences; that provoke quarrels between mothers' expectations and fathers' practices; and expose incongruities between established norms and emerging forms. Seeking to transcend the historical and contemporary circumscriptions that stereotype Caribbean fathers as absent studs or patriarchal authoritarians, this enquiry asks how Dominican men chart their own paths of paternal becoming. Developing an intuitive participatory methodology, referred to as the ethnography of relation, Fathermen commutes into the kin-worlds of Caribbean men, seeking to understand fatherhood through deep dialogue as it is built from the ground up. Organising its chapters around local idioms through which Dominicans frame kinship, Fathermen features discussions on: the romantic and conjugal tensions that precede/inform parenting; the ‘mystic' bodily affects that draw men into reproduction; the vexed norm of paternal provision; Caribbean fathers' emergent nurturant practices; the classed politics of paternal recognition; and, finally, men's ambivalent intergenerational experiences of becoming grandfathers. Fathermen argues that it often takes a lifetime to realise fatherhood, with many Dominican men unable to resolve its many paradoxes within their mortal spans. Whilst it contends that men are ‘tied' tighter into kin-life as they grow along their paternal journeys, ambivalences persist. Yet still, amidst angst and complexity, Fathermen is nonetheless an ethnography of love, dedication, familial vitality, creativity and humour.

CoordenaÃÃo de AperfeiÃoamento de Pessoal de NÃvel Superior / AstrolÃbio is a compiled corpus, with multidimensional annotation, and shared under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported licence. It is a corpus, in Brazilian Portuguese, that uses advanced technologies to text processing and corpora annotation. AstrolÃbio has multidimensional annotation based on TEI P5 guidelines, that prescribes XML metalanguage. Through these guidelines, essential structures from the annotated documents were preserved, keeping the transcription as reliable as possible to the original. By using tag <choice>, it enabled keep, in the same archive, linguistic variation phenomena, orthographic and punctuation errors, as the respectives corrected and normalized forms, and also makes possible the visualization of added and deleted terms. To automatize the integration of many levels of annotation, Astro was used, it is a software that works with several Python modules to Natural Language Processing (NLP), including Aelius and Enchant. To POS tagging, Aelius, a package that uses Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) libraries, was utilized. From Aelius, AeliusHunPosMacMorpho was chosen, it is a tagger based on HunPos and trained by MAC-Morpho, a corpus composed of journalistic texts. The 9spell checking was made by Enchant, a large library with API (Application Programming Interface) in C and C++ languages. The tagger chosen from inside training corpus MacMorpho,. AstrolÃbio's texts were produced during text production workshops from the second edition of Rota das Especiarias project, realized on first semester of 2012, with public school students from Camocim, Barroquinha e Jijoca de Jericoacoara, cities located in CearÃ. Until this moment of AstrolÃbio's creation, concluded stages are texts selection, compilation and the first step of automatic annotation by Astro. AstrolÃbio corpus is already partially avaiable at Rota das Especiarias' website (www.rotadasespeciarias.art.br). Soon, the corpus will be submitted to University of Oxford Text Archive (OTA). As we observed from corpora scene of Portuguese, there's no corpus, in Brazilian Portuguese, with this level of annotation. / AstrolÃbio à um corpus compilado, anotado multidimensionalmente e disponibilizado eletronicamente sob a licenÃa Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported. Trata-se de um corpus, em PortuguÃs brasileiro, que emprega avanÃadas tecnologias para o processamento de texto e anotaÃÃo de corpora. AstrolÃbio possui anotaÃÃo multidimensional baseada na codificaÃÃo TEI P5, que prescreve o uso metalinguagem XML. Com o uso dessa codificaÃÃo, preservaram-se caracterÃsticas essenciais da estrutura e do conteÃdo dos documentos anotados, tornando a transcriÃÃo o mais fiel possÃvel ao original. Por meio do emprego da tag <choice>, foi possÃvel reunir, em um mesmo arquivo, fenÃmenos de variaÃÃo linguÃstica, erros ortogrÃficos e de pontuaÃÃo, bem como as respectivas formas corrigidas e normalizadas, alÃm de possibilitar a visualizaÃÃo de termos que foram acrescidos ou suprimidos. Para a integraÃÃo automÃtica dos vÃrios nÃveis de anotaÃÃo, utilizou-se o Astro, um software que utiliza diversos mÃdulos em Python para o Processamento da Linguagem Natural (PLN), como o Aelius e o Enchant. Na etiquetagem morfossintÃtica, utilizou-se o pacote Aelius, que, por sua vez, recorre à biblioteca Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK). O etiquetador escolhido, dentro do Aelius, foi o AeliusHunposMacMorpho, criado a partir do etiquetador Hunpos, treinado no corpus de textos jornalÃsticos MAC-Morpho. Efetivou-se a correÃÃo ortogrÃfica com o Enchant, uma vasta biblioteca com API (Application Programming Interface) em linguagem C e C++. Os textos que compÃem esse corpus foram produzidos durante as oficinas de produÃÃo textual da segunda ediÃÃo do projeto Rota das Especiarias, realizadas no primeiro semestre de 2012, com alunos de escolas pÃblicas das cidades cearenses de Camocim, Barroquinha e Jijoca de Jericoacoara. Atà o presente momento da construÃÃo do AstrolÃbio, encontram-se concluÃdas as etapas de seleÃÃo, escanerizaÃÃo, compilaÃÃo e a primeira fase de anotaÃÃo automÃtica dos textos por meio do Astro. O corpus AstrolÃbio jà se encontra parcialmente disponÃvel no sÃtio eletrÃnico Rota das Especiarias (www.rotadasespeciarias.art.br). Em breve, serà submetido ao repositÃrio eletrÃnico University of Oxford Text Archive (OTA). Pelo que se observou do panorama de corpora do PortuguÃs, inexiste um corpus, em PortuguÃs Brasileiro, com esse nÃvel de anotaÃÃo.

Chronic inflammation is a triggering mechanism for many metabolic diseases including atherosclerosis and diabetes. A critical step in the development of chronic inflammation is the accumulation of classically activated pro-inflammatory macrophages in the extracellular matrix (ECM) of peripheral tissues. Recently, we demonstrated that adhesion receptor integrin αDβ2 is upregulated on macrophages in atherosclerotic lesions and inflamed adipose tissue, and promotes the development of atherosclerosis and insulin resistance. This pathophysiological mechanism is mediated by αDβ2-dependent strong adhesion of macrophages to the inflamed ECM, which promotes macrophage retention at the site of inflammation. Typical healthy ECM has a limited ligand capacity for integrin αDβ2. However, we recently found that the end-product of DHA oxidation, 2-(ω-carboxyethyl)pyrrole (CEP) serves as ligand for αDβ2. CEP is preferentially generated during inflammation-mediated oxidation and forms adduct with ECM proteins. CEP-modified proteins are detected in inflamed tissue during atherosclerosis, insulin resistance and pathological angiogenesis. In this project, we propose a new strategy for the treatment of chronic inflammation by targeting macrophage retention in the inflamed tissue by focusing on the development of the inhibitor, which is exclusively specific for αDβ2-CEP interaction. The advantage of CEP as a new therapeutic target resides in its unique formation in inflamed tissue. Using specially designed peptide library, protein-protein interaction measured by Biacore and adhesion assay with integrin-transfected HEK293 cells, we identified a sequence (called P5-peptide), which significantly inhibited αD-CEP binding. In vitro three-dimensional migration assay demonstrated that P5 peptide regulates macrophage migration within ECM but not the transendothelial migration of monocytes. The injection of cyclic P5 peptide in the model of thioglycollate-induced peritoneal inflammation led to 3-fold reduction in the number of macrophages accumulated in the peritoneal cavity after 72 hours. Interestingly, P5 peptide injection had no effect on the accumulation of macrophages in αD-deficient mice, that confirmed the specificity of inhibition. This inhibition only affects the recruitment of macrophages, while it has no effect on the efflux of macrophage from the peritoneal cavity in our in vivo studies. The tracking of adoptively transferred fluorescently-labeled WT and αD-/- monocytes in mice on a high fat diet revealed that αD-deficiency reduced 3 folds the accumulation of macrophages in the adipose tissue. The injection of P5 peptide in this model demonstrated the marked reduction of adoptively transferred WT macrophages in adipose tissue. Taken together, these results demonstrate the importance of αDβ2-CEP interaction for the accumulation of infiltrating macrophages during inflammation and propose P5 peptide as a potential inhibitor of atherogenesis and diabetes. Further studies are required to develop these results.

No description available.

This thesis assesses the role of Turkey in the diplomatic process towards resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue within the context of its improving bilateral relations with Iran and analyzes the motives behind increasing Turkish involvement in this issue. Firstly, this thesis will present a historical overview of Iran

La classe des graphes sans P5, c'est-à-dire des graphes ne contenant pas de chaîne induite à cinq sommets, est d'un intérêt particulier en théorie des graphes. Il s'agit en effet de la plus petite classe définie par un seul sous-graphe connexe interdit pour laquelle on ignore encore s'il existe un algorithme polynomial permettant de résoudre le problème du stable maximum. Or ce problème, dont on sait qu'il est difficile en général, est d'une grande importance en pratique (problèmes de planification, d'allocation de registres dans un processeur, biologie moléculaire...). Dans cette thèse, nous commençons par dresser un état de l'art complet des méthodes utilisées pour résoudre le problème dans des sous-classes de graphes sans P5, puis nous étudions et résolvons ce problème dans une sous-classe particulière, la classe des graphes sans P5 3-colorables. Nous apportons également des solutions aux problèmes de la reconnaissance et de la coloration de ces graphes, chaque fois en temps linéaire. Enfin, nous définissons, caractérisons et sommes capables de reconnaître les graphes "chain-probe", qui sont les graphes auxquels il est possible de rajouter des arêtes entre certains sommets de sorte qu'ils soient bipartis et sans P5. Les problèmes de ce type proviennent de la génétique et ont également des applications en intelligence artificielle.

No description available.

A seemingly unexplored territory in teaching computer programming is transcription labs. With transcription referring to "transcribe" in the sense of "to make an exact copy of". In transcription labs students are given the complete code and are asked to transcribe it into their own window before they are able to run it. This approach may be interesting as it forces students to engage with the material more than if they had been given a runnable program outright, while still providing a limited, and in some sense safe, learning environment. This project focuses on creating a web application for transcription labs to serve as a jump-off point into exploration of such labs.  Additionally, this thesis contains a preliminary study that aims at gauging if further exploration of transcription labs is worthwhile. The result of the preliminary study indicates that the answer to that question is yes, it is worthwhile exploring transcription labs further.

The thesis is focused on the description of the basic principles of the virtual reality, on utilization of data gloves in the virtual reality and it implements the application with usage of the input device P5 glove. The implementation contains among the others various visual techniques of OpenGL and also shows up-to-date work with the popular physics engine Bullet Physics. The theoretical bases of these techniques are analysed in the thesis. So the output of the thesis will serve as a source of information to people interested in the knowledge of the data gloves problems and other similar peripherals, but also to interested people who want to learn more about the realization of the computer graphics and creation of physicist models.