Academic literature on the topic 'Channel shortening'

ATP-sensitive K+ (KATP) channels are inhibited by intracellular ATP, but MgATP is necessary to maintain the channel activity. Numerous cofactors modulate channel function. K+ channel openers activate and sulfonylureas inhibit KATP channels. The structure of cardiac KATP channel is a complex of mainly KIR6.2 and SUR2a. Activation of cardiac KATP channels contributes to action potential shortening during ischemia and plays a role in cardioprotection.

The unique 3D dual-channel graphene framework could improve electron transport by GF channels possessing high electrical conductivity and facilitate Li ion diffusion by GA channels shortening the diffusion pathways.

Ultra Wideband (UWB) communication systems occupy large bandwidths with very low power spectral densities. This feature makes UWB channels highly rich in multipaths. To exploit the temporal diversity, a UWB receiver usually incorporates Rake reception. Each multipath in the channel carries just a fraction of the signal energy. This phenomenon dictates a Rake receiver with a large number of fingers to achieve good energy capture and output signal to noise ratio (SNR). Eventually, the Rake structure becomes very complex from analysis and design perspectives and incurs higher manufacturing cost. The first contribution of this thesis is to propose channel shortening or time domain equalization as a technique to reduce the complexity of the UWB Rake receiver. It is analyzed that most of the existing channel shortening equalizer (CSE) designs are either system specific or optimize a parameter not critical or even available in UWB systems. The CSE designs which are more generic and use commonly critical cost functions may perform poorly due to particular UWB channel profiles and related statistical properties. Consequently, the main contribution of the thesis is to propose several CSE designs to address the specific needs of UWB systems. These CSE designs not only exploit some general but also some UWB specific features to perform the task more efficiently. The comparative analysis of the proposed CSEs, some existing designs and the conventional Rake structures leads towards the conclusion. It is finally shown that the use of CSE at the receiver front end greatly simplifies the Rake structure and the associated signal processing.

A new time domain blind adaptive channel shortening algorithm for Discrete Multi Tone (DMT)-based multicarrier systems is first proposed. It is computationally less expensive, and more robust to non- Gaussian impulsive noise environments than a recently reported Sum squared Autocorrelation Minimization (SAM) algorithm. A "left" initialization scheme is also suggested for Carrier Serving Area (CSA) loop Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) channels. Simulation studies show that by a proper selection of the learning parameter i.e., the step size, the bit rates achieved by the SAM algorithm when operating in an environment contaminated by Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) can be further improved. Next a novel time domain low complexity blind adaptive channel short ening algorithm called Single Lag Autocorrelation Minimization (SLAM) is introduced. The algorithm is totally blind in the sense that it does not require a prior knowledge about the length of the channel impulse response. The proposed novel stopping criterion freezes the adaptation of the SLAM algorithm when the maximum amount of Inter Symbol Interference (ISI) is cancelled. As such, the stopping criterion can also be used with SAM. An attractive alternate frequency domain equalization approach for multicarrier systems is Per Tone Equalization (PTEQ). This scheme en- ables true signal-tonoise ratio optimization to be implemented for each tone and it always achieves higher bit rates than Time domain Equalizer (TEQ) based channel shortening schemes but at the price of increased computational complexity and higher memory requirements. A low complexity (PTEQ) scheme is, therefore, finally proposed. The com plexity of the PTEQ can be traded off with the complexity of the timing synchronization within the system. In particular, it is shown that the use of more than one difference terms and hence a long equalizer in the PTEQ scheme is generally redundant. The PTEQ scheme assumes knowledge of the channel impulse response. In this case synchronization is trivial and it is possible to use only a length two PTEQ equalizer and attain essentially identical bit rate performance to a PTEQ equalizer with length matched to the cyclic prefix. This observation allows for a substantial reduction in computational complexity of the PTEQ scheme in both initialization and data transmission modes. For a reasonable range of values of synchronization error, <5, around the optimal value of 5 = 0, the performance of this length two equalizer is shown to remain relatively constant. For positive synchronization errors, however, the required PTEQ equalizer length is proportional to the synchronization error. A low complexity blind synchronization method is ultimately suggested which is based on the construction of the difference terms of the PTEQ scheme.

In wireline multi carrier systems a cyclic prefix is commonly used to facilitate simple channel equalization at the receiver. The selection of the length of the cyclic prefix is a trade-off between maximizing the length of the channel for which inter-symbol interference is eliminated and optimizing the transmission efficiency. When the length of the channel exceeds that of the cyclic prefix, adaptive channel shorteners can be used to force the effective channel length of the combined channel and channel shortener to satisfy the cyclic prefix constraint. The focus of this thesis is the design of new blind adaptive time-domain algorithms for channel shortening in wireline multicarrier systems, with good convergence properties and low computational complexity.

In wireline multicarrier systems a cyclic prefix is generally used to facilitate simple channel equalization at the receiver. The choice of the length of the cyclic prefix is a trade-off between maximizing the length of the channel for which inter-symbol interference is eliminated and optimizing the transmission efficiency. When the length of the channel is greater than the cyclic prefix, adaptive channel shorteners can be used to force the effective channel length of the combined channel and channel shortener to be within the cyclic prefix constraint. The focus of this thesis is the design of new blind adaptive time-domain channel shortening algorithms with good convergence properties and low computational complexity. An overview of the previous work in the field of supervised partial update adaptive filtering is given. The concept of property-restoral based blind channel shortening algorithms is then introduced together with the main techniques within this class of adaptive filters. Two new partial update blind (unsupervised) adaptive channel shortening algorithms are therefore introduced with robustness to impulsive noise commonly present in wireline multicarrier systems. Two further blind channel shortening algorithms are proposed in which the set of coefficients which is updated at each iteration of the algorithm is chosen deterministically. One of which, the partial up-date single lag autocorrelation maximization (PUSLAM) algorithm is particularly attractive due to its low computational complexity. The interaction between the receiver matched filter and the channel shortener is considered in the context of a multi-input single-output environment. To mitigate the possibility of ill-convergence with the PUSLAM algorithm an entirely new random PUSLAM (RPUSLAM) algorithm is proposed in which randomness is introduced both into the lag selection of the cost function underlying SLAM and the selection of the particular set of coefficients updated at each algorithm. This algorithm benefits from robust convergence properties whilst retaining relatively low computational complexity. All algorithms developed within the thesis are supported by evaluation on a set of eight carrier serving area test loop channels.

Le contexte de ces travaux de thèse est la transmission dite faster-than-Nyquist (FTN). Cette technique propose d’augmenter l’efficacité spectrale en augmentant lerythme de transmission au-delà de la bande occupée par le signal émis, indépendamment de laconstellation choisie. Il a été montré que le FTN offre des taux d’information supérieurs à ceuxdes systèmes de Nyquist. Toutefois, le non respect du critère de Nyquist entraîne l’apparitiond’interférence entre symboles et des techniques de réception appropriées doivent être utilisées.La technique de réception dite channel shortening consiste à filtrer la séquence reçue puis àcalculer des probabilités symbole a posteriori approximatives à l’aide de l’algorithme BCJRen considérant une réponse de canal modifiée, de longueur réduite. Dans la littérature, enprésence d’information a priori, les filtres du récepteur channel shortening sont optimiséssous critère de maximisation de l’information mutuelle généralisée (IMG) en utilisant desméthodes numériques. Nous proposons dans ces travaux de thèse une solution analytiquepour l’ensemble des filtres channel shortening sous critère de maximisation de l’IMG lorsquele récepteur dispose d’information a priori. Nous démontrons ensuite que l’égaliseur au sens dela minimisation de l’erreur quadratique moyenne (MMSE) est un cas particulier de l’égaliseurchannel shortening. Dans le cadre de la turbo égalisation, nous étudions ensuite un estimateurpermettant d’obtenir l’information a priori à partir de l’information en sortie du décodeurcorrecteur d’erreurs. Finalement, nous évaluons les performances du système complet aveccodage correcteur d’erreurs sur canal à bruit additif blanc Gaussien
In order to increase the spectral efficiency of digital communications systems,the faster-than-Nyquist (FTN) approach increases the symbol rate beyond the occupied bandwidthof the transmitted signal independently of the constellation type and size. It has beenshown that information rates of FTN systems are greater than those of Nyquist systems.However, the non-compliance of the Nyquist criterion causes inter-symbol interference to appearand therefore appropriate reception techniques must be used. At reception, the channelshortening approach consists on a receiving filter followed by a BCJR algorithm computingapproximate a posteriori symbol probabilities by considering a modified channel response ofreduced length. In the literature, the channel shortening receiving filters are chosen to maximizethe generalized mutual information (GMI). Such optimization is performed by usingnumerical optimization methods. In this PhD thesis, we propose a closed-form solution forall channel shortening filters considering the GMI maximization criterion. We show that theminimum mean square error (MMSE) equalizer is a particular case of the channel shorteningapproach. Within the frame of turbo equalization, we then study a suitable estimator allowingto obtain symbols a priori information from the information provided by the a decoder. Finally,we study the performance of the complete system with channel coding over an additivewhite Gaussian noise channel

碩士
國立中興大學
電機工程學系所
99
Cyclic prefix (CP) is widely used to communication systems, because it is useful and robust to cancel Inter-symbol interference (ISI). CP this technique it not only can cancel ISI, but also to reduce the channel with the Channel-Shortening Equalizer (CSE). This technique CSE is using this way that the length of channel is equal with the length of CP the last CP subtract the last symbol will be zero. Follow this way if other CPs with other copy symbols subtraction also zero or minimum to zero, the channel is equal to one tap channel for the transmission data. Using this way demodulate the transmission data, we can use the sample (one tap) frequency-domain equalization to restore it. And orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) is a popular transmission format for emerging wireless communication systems, including satellite radio, various wireless local area network (LAN) standards, and digital broadcast television. So in this paper we also use the CSE in the DS-CDMA and the OFDM-CDMA system.

碩士
國立中山大學
通訊工程研究所
96
Considering the communication systems with cyclic prefix (CP), such as orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation and single-carrier cyclic prefixed (SCCP) modulation, when the length of CP is longer than the channel length, the use of cyclic prefix (CP) does not only eliminate the inter-block interference, but also convert linear convolution of the transmitted signal with the channel into circular convolution. Unfortunately, the use of CP significantly decreases the bandwidth utilization. Therefore, to reduce the length of CP is a critical issue. The thesis investigates that how to design a channel-shortening equalizer (CSE) at receiver which forces the length of the effective channel response as short as the CP length. The thesis describes the signal model as a matrix form. The effect channel response after CSE is investigated and then the coefficient of channel shortening filter is obtained using singular value decomposition method under various criterions. We further propose a novel CSE maximizing the shortening signal-to-interference ratio. In addition, it is demonstrated that the proposed CSE has the same performance as the conventional scheme but a lower computation complexity.

碩士
國立臺灣大學
電子工程學研究所
99
With the popular application of wireless local area network (WLAN), there is an increasing demand for bandwidth by the users. Some existing WLAN specifications cannot provide adequate transmission rate gradually. The main purpose of IEEE 802.11n WLAN standard is to provide a higher transmission rate to meet present and future bandwidth requirements. The difference between IEEE 802.11n and previous standards is the use of multiple input multiple output (MIMO) technique combining with OFDM which causes substantially improvement of transmission rate. In orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, a time-domain equalizer (TEQ) is used to reduce the inter-symbol interference (ISI) by shortening the channel impulse response when the channel length is larger than cyclic prefix (CP) length. However, conventional channel shortening methods may have frequency notch problem which will cause performance degradation. In this thesis, we propose a channel shortening algorithm to effectively mitigate the frequency notch effect. Besides, we also extend the proposed algorithm to MIMO environment with joint channel shortening technique. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm has the best system performance in the MIMO-OFDM system as compared with other channel shortening algorithms. We use the delay estimate method, matrix property and Gauss-Seidel iterative method to reduce the high computation complexity TEQ design. The proposed TEQ algorithm architecture can provide SISO to MIMO environment and the one TEQ can be shared for other receivers with only twenty complex multipliers by folding technique. Finally, the TEQ engine is implemented in UMC90 40 MHz with 1.91 mm2. And it can provide the MIMO environment from 1X1 to 4X4.

碩士
國立中興大學
電機工程學系所
104
In the Fifth Generation(5G) communication system ,the research about it can be sorted higher data rates ,massive number of devices and low-latency high-reliability ,etc. The Short-Packet Communications (SPC) is a concerned application in the subject about low-latency high-reliability. Due to the property of SPC, efficiently reducing the length of cyclic prefix (CP) and length of pilot is a important study. This paper proposes a blind receiver for SPC system that do not need to joint pilot and can solve the interblock interference (IBI) caused by CP length not enough. The proposed receiver exhibits a four-stage structure: the first stage performs blind shortening of channel impulse responses (CIRs),without needing neither a priori knowledge of the CIRs to be shortened, nor preliminary compensation of the CFOs; the second stage performs joint estimation and compensation of the CFOs; the third stage implements signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) maximization, without requiring knowledge of the shortened CIRs; the fourth stage performs blind adaptive equalization with fractional lower-order constant modulus algorithm(FLOS _CMA) algorithm to update the equalization.

The molecular basis of ageing is reviewed. This includes the concept of a summation of DNA damage over a lifetime causing genome instability. Epigenetic alterations, telomeric shortening, and the possibility of their modification are discussed. Oxidative and mitochondrial DNA damage and the resulting dysfunction leading to senescence are briefly described. Systemic problems and resultant behavioural adaptation may mask the decline in functional reserve and cause some of the difficulties in identifying its presence in ill elderly patients. Specific organ system changes are then described in some detail. These include the major concerns with the cardiovascular, respiratory, renal, hepatic, neurologic, endocrine, and musculoskeletal systems. The effect of ageing on the special senses of vision and hearing are covered, with emphasis on issues of informed consent.

Levodopa is the most efficacious medication to reduce motor impairment in Parkinson disease (PD). The effect of levodopa can wear off after time, which is treated by increasing the dose or shortening the inter-dose interval. Dyskinesias can be treated by a change in levodopa dosing or route of administration, such as by constant administration of levodopa as a gel through a jejunostomy tube or a change to dopamine agonists or amantadine. Non-motor signs including depression can be treated with several antidepressants. Surgical treatments including pallidotomy, thalamotomy, and deep brain stimulation (DBS) have emerged as effective therapies in selected patients with PD refractory to drug treatment.

The phenomenon of Morphological Length-Manipulation is introduced and defined and it is discussed why an investigation of this phenomenon is challenging and interesting for both morphological and phonological theory. For example, the existence of subtractive MLM—instances where the shortening or deletion of segments marks a morpheme—is the most obvious challenge that MLM poses for any theory of morphology that wants to maintain the theorem that morphology is additive. The chapter defines the empirical scope of this book and discusses why, for example, reduplication is disregarded for most parts and only morphological changes that add or subtract segmental length or segments are taken into account. The variety of attested MLM patterns is then illustrated with a range of examples.

At the molecular and cellular levels human ageing is characterized by the accumulation of unrepaired random damage, and an accompanying loss of function. A major source of damage is oxidative stress caused by the generation of reactive oxygen species as a by-product of respiration. DNA and proteins are both susceptible to damage but whereas DNA damage repair systems exist, faulty proteins are generally removed by protein degradation systems. During ageing these systems become less efficient and the subsequent accumulation of damaged protein promotes protein aggregation, a process which is especially problematic in the ageing brain. Other aspects of ageing include genetic and epigenetic changes, mitochondrial dysfunction, telomere shortening, and cellular senescence, all subject to stochasticity. The complexity of the biology of ageing has led to an increase in the use of systems biology approaches whereby the use of mathematical modelling and bioinformatic tools complement the more traditional experimental approaches.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

<em>Abstract</em>.—The Mississippi River flows 3,734 km from its source at Lake Itasca, Minnesota to its outlet at the Gulf of Mexico. Along its course, it collects water from portions of two Canadian provinces and 41% of the conterminous United States. Although greatly altered for navigation and flood control throughout much of its length, the Mississippi River remains an important fishery resource that provides habitat for 188 species of fishes and recreational and commercial fishing opportunities. The objectives of this chapter are to describe the contemporary fisheries habitat throughout the Mississippi River, identify how management to achieve human benefits influences the fishes and their habitats, and summarize efforts to conserve and enhance fish habitat. The 826-km headwater reach is entirely in Minnesota and remains largely unaltered. The reaches that extend 1,059 km from St. Anthony Falls, Minnesota to above the confluence with the Missouri River near St. Louis, Missouri have been altered by impoundment that has affected floodplain function, increased sedimentation of backwaters, and homogenized the formerly diverse aquatic habitats. After the confluence with the Missouri River, the Mississippi River flows freely for 1,849 km to the Gulf of Mexico. The alterations of the free-flowing reaches of greatest significance to the fisheries resource are reducing the duration and height of the flood pulse as a consequence of shortening the river channel, disconnection of the river from its historic and present floodplain, and loss of secondary channel–island complexes. Engineering features to improve commercial navigation have also added habitat and, when wisely manipulated, can be used to rehabilitate habitat. Some aspects of water quality have improved, but legacy chemicals and nutrient-laden inflows and sediments remain problems. Although true restoration in the sense of restoring all environmental conditions to an unaltered state is unlikely, the future value of the Mississippi River as a fisheries resource will depend on actively maintaining diverse and accessible aquatic habitats to support food webs and water quality suitable for fishes.

The purpose of this chapter is to put the ideas of Chapter 11 into quantitative form. The first step is to link L0 to N and K; L0 is the arc-length of the imaginary quarter-cylinders in Figure 11. 5b, N is the material's viscosity (Pa-sec), and K is its coefficient for pressure-driven self-diffusion (m2/Pa-sec). The point emphasized in Chapter 11 is that if two migration paths exist, one curved and one straight, but both having the same length and the same variation of normal-stress components along their length, migration will be equally vigorous along the two paths. Further, the shortening rates at the source-ends of the two paths will be equal. The procedure used to find the relation of L0 to (NK)1/2 is to write the two shortening rates and equate them.

This chapter attempts to estimate the amount of harm an average American does by her emissions of greenhouse gas, on the basis of recent very detailed statistical analysis being done by a group of economists. It concentrates on the particular harm of shortening people’s lives. The estimate is very tentative, and it varies greatly according to how effectively the world responds to climate change. If the response is very weak, the author estimates that an average American’s emissions shorten lives by six or seven years in total. If the response is moderately strong, the figure is about half a year.

The children and families who speak in this chapter articulate concerns that are shared by many who are living with potentially life-shortening illnesses or conditions. They have all had to negotiate the changing, and often narrowing, of their world that the progressive losses that illness can bring and find ways to live with these changes and the ongoing uncertainty. The chapter explores how the availability of sensitive emotional support and psychological expertise throughout the course of the child’s and family`s journey can bring much comfort, ease suffering and distress, and even aspire to enable growth in the face of enormous challenge.

The biometric changes of the human eye with lowered intraocular pressure (IOP), like those observed after glaucoma surgery, have been investigated by in vivo studies. Leydolt et al demonstrated IOP-dependent axial eye length changes in human eyes. An axial eye length decrease of 2 μm/mm Hg with short-term reduction of IOP was observed. They suggested that this concomitant shortening of axial length and IOP reduction could be a result of a decrease in scleral length owing to the reduced IOP or an increase in choroidal blood flow compensating the reduced ocular fundus pulsations during the increased IOP phase. In another in vivo study, Read et al showed that axial length underwent significant variation over a 24-hour period in normal human eyes, and a significant association existed between the change in axial length and the change in IOP, as measured by dynamic contour tonometry. The association observed between IOP and axial length was found to be consistent with the hypothesis of passive expansion and contraction of the globe in response to IOP. Studies on trabeculectomy patients, performed with or without cataract extraction, have shown a significant decrease of axial length after surgery, correlated with IOP reduction. Similarly, IOP lowering after tube shunt surgery may produce a decrease in axial length that is dependent on the amount of IOP lowering. Understanding how axial length changes impact clinical decisions, such as lens power choice for cataract surgery, is important for treating patients after glaucoma surgery or patients who have had previous glaucoma surgery. Table 41.1 summarizes reported axial length changes following different types of trabeculectomy procedures. Nemeth and Horoczi noted decreased axial length and increased thickness and volume of the ocular wall 4 days after trabeculectomy. In a retrospective study, Cashwell and Martin found a significant decrease in axial length (mean: 0.423 mm, range: 2.8 to +0.5 mm) after successful initial trabeculectomy in 62 patients using ultrasound biometry. Preoperative factors found to be associated with a greater decrease in axial length were young age, myopia, exposure to an antimetabolite, and a post-trabeculectomy IOP drop greater than 30 mmHg.

This chapter is structured around the concepts of risk analysis due to underwater deployment of the cables for data transfer. Most of the organizations have deployed their networks below the water for shortening the distances between peers and also to reduce the physical destruction cost of cables. Furthermore, some organizations like Google kept their servers below the water because it reduced the cost of getting it cool, which in turn increases the efficiency. However, security consultants around the world in recent past expressed their considerations that a cyber-attack on these servers or cables might result in miserable economic collision. This might be overstated but there are infrequent situations in which cable breakage could be riotous. Although organizations cannot rule the threat of attacks on these apparatuses, there are fewer check measures that could reduce the possible attack chances in underwater communication.