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This paper critically examines the concept of collaboration, and how it can be mobilised in policy and practice in the pursuit of educational change in the context of the Scottish education system. Policy analysis and interviews with primary school headteachers highlighted the lack of definitional agreement but common conceptual characteristics of collaboration, and the implications of this for how it is led and governed in the pursuit of change. Highlighted in this paper is the complex interplay between forms of, influences on, and drivers of collaboration and how this results in varied outcomes of it. It is argued that collaboration across systems should be focused, purposeful, and supported with high levels of trust from those involved or enabling it to happen, and meso- and macro-level structures which are flexible to enable diverse forms of collaboration to emerge. This paper presents a framework for collaboration that supports the complex consideration of the interrelated domains of forms, influences, and drivers of collaboration, and the leadership practices and governance arrangements necessary for collaboration to lead to improvement and change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the noticeably low presence of Canadian literature in hemispheric American literary research. The fact that hemispheric literary studies focuses on a comparison of the United States and Spanish America is partly because of Canada's marginal position in the Americas, its lack of identification with the continent, and Canadian scholars' reluctance to engage in hemispheric studies due to their insecurity concerning cultural identity and the discipline's potential imperialistic impulses. By examining a representative history of Canadian literature and several literary studies for intersections and tangencies between Canadian literature and other literatures of the Americas, this paper will demonstrate that there are natural links between them, which make a transnational comparative approach to Canadian literature both legitimate and desirable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the power of online virtual monopolies (like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and similar companies) to influence and nudge (or even control) our behavior for financial or political gain which goes beyond anything we could have imagined even less than ten years ago. The massive amount of personal data and real time tracking have moved the traditional advertising practices to another level. The power of these private, unregulated, unaccountable, opaque entities has been noticed by governments and, in some cases, they are trying to pair up with them, or to put some kind of regulation. I argue that the manipulations go way deeper than the so called "fake news" phenomenon which gained popularity after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The reality appears to be more sinister. These companies are using the latest research in human perception, and secretly doing experiments on their own, thus becoming capable of building highly effective psychological predictive models to find out what, how, and when to display (or not) some specific information to the user of their products. The actions seem to move us toward a worldwide surveillance society with unprecedented and unknown long-term consequences in terms of ethical, legal, and political issues. Finally, the paper speculates on what actions may be taken to tackle these dangerous trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

French composers Albert Roussel and Maurice Delage were strongly influenced by Classical Indian music, the evocation of this exotic world offering them the opportunity to devise innovative musical languages. The present paper strives to reveal the manner in which both Roussel and Delage employ in their works modal constructions, inspired by Indian ragas, vocal and instrumental timbres that can be associated by the Western listener with the sound of Indian music, at the same time incorporating in their works rhythmic patterns and sound effects specific for Indian music. The orientalism and exoticism in the works of these two composers reflect their desire to obtain a certain purity of the artistic expression, while the direct contact with the music of India and that of other regions in Asia, visited by Roussel and Delage, contributed in a great deal to their transcending of the philosophical, social, and even musical barriers and limitations, offering them the freedom to turn to new means of musical expression in their works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The chemical characteristics of water differ according it place and time in the area of study. Its influences also differ according to the different concentration of chemicals in the water. This paper searches the geographical analysis of the chemical characteristics for some samples of water of the Euphrates River at Kufa city; those samples of water were compared with samples from the water of the drinking tap water and the packed water at AL Kufa City. Also eight samples of mineral water were taken from the markets there in Kufa. After analyzing all the samples at the labs, the research presented the influence of the chemicals in these samples of water on the health of people and the diseases that people might get because of the polluted water. The statics of the study state a relation between the concentration of chemicals in the water and the diseases among the people in the area of the study (0.6) that is any increase of the concentration of the chemicals in the water leads to the increase of diseases among people there. The study involves the following topics: A- The theoretical background of the research and the basic elements of the research such as the problem, hypothesis, aims of the study and its limits. B- Analyzing and deciding the chemical characteristics of water at the area of the study. C- Identifying the health influences of the water in Al Kufa City. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of the judicial system in the Republic of N.Macedonia is in three phases. The first phase begins with the independence of the state and lasts until the constitutional changes in 2001. The second phase starts mostly through the obtaining of the status for candidate for EU membership in 2005 when the laws on judiciary, prosecution, attorney, notary, enforcement agents and criminal procedural legislation were passed. We are in the third phase of reforms that we can freely say that they are consequence of the political conditions that began in 2015 and for which the international screening found that the judicial system did not correspond properly with the newly created conditions in the country and failed to resist influences on it. This paper aims to locate these situations and offer a solution for exiting and overcoming the qualification of a "captured judiciary" in the Republic of N.Macedonia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The classical correlation inequality of Harris asserts that any two monotone increasing families on the discrete cube are nonnegatively correlated. In 1996, Talagrand [19] established a lower bound on the correlation in terms of how much the two families depend simultaneously on the same coordinates. Talagrand's method and results inspired a number of important works in combinatorics and probability theory. In this paper we present stronger correlation lower bounds that hold when the increasing families satisfy natural regularity or symmetry conditions. In addition, we present several new classes of examples for which Talagrand's bound is tight. A central tool in the paper is a simple lemma asserting that for monotone events noise decreases correlation. This lemma gives also a very simple derivation of the classical FKG inequality for product measures, and leads to a simplification of part of Talagrand's proof. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay analyses the impact of the years spent in Vienna on the formation of Lucian Blaga, taking into consideration the fact that, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the capital of the Empire was the centre of an impressive art movement called the "Vienna Secession". The aim of this paper is to identify the similarities that can be established between the art of the painter Gustav Klimt, a representative figure for that period and the president of Secession, and the poetry of Blaga. The comparison includes the symbols to be found in the works of the two artists, such as the spring flowers and the serpents, the dominant colours, the type of lines used in the creation of their images and the reaction of people to their modern art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bearing in mind the fact that in the Middle ages the region of present-day Romania was in many ways tied to the region where Serbian people lived, the aim of this paper is to present a short overview of the relations between the two countries in the Middle Ages until the Ottoman Conquest, highlighting the connections, influences and cohabitation between the two people. The ties between Serbia and Wallachia began at the end of the rule of the Nemanjić dynasty. In addition, just like the Serbs influenced the Romanian church and literacy, the Moldovan and Wallachian influences could be seen on Serbian churches and monasteries at Fruška Gora. Besides, after the final conquest of Hungary, in the Ottoman defters, evidence of cohabitation of people bearing typical Serbian and Romanian names could be found. That indicates that the examined region, mostly present-day Banat, was a region with a mixed population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chvátal's conjecture in extremal combinatorics asserts that for any decreasing family F of subsets of a finite set S , there is a largest intersecting subfamily of F consisting of all members of F that include a particular x ∈ S . In this paper we reformulate the conjecture in terms of influences of variables on Boolean functions and correlation inequalities, and study special cases and variants using tools from discrete Fourier analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studied the irradiation behavior of Nd 2 Zr 2 O 7 ceramics under 2.0 MeV Xe 20+ irradiation to high fluences from 4.08 × 10 13 ions/cm 2 to 5.28 × 10 16 ions/cm 2 . Phase transformation, from pyrochlore to fluorite and finally to amorphization, have been discovered. In addition, the amorphous fraction increases with enhanced fluences, whereas it decreases with growing depth. Slight changes in Raman spectroscopy indicates that cation disordering is the mainly induced disordering. Obvious microtopography change but homogeneous element distribution have been observed through SEM-EDX. The HRTEM-SAED test verifies the irradiation induced order-disorder transition and amorphization. Our work could offer a set of detailed data for evaluating pyrochlores structural solidified body holding with nuclear waste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the literature provides a strong conceptual justification for Interdisciplinary Research (for example: Klein 1990, 1996; Sherif & Sherif, 1969) and a number of studies document the benefits and challenges of such studies (such as: Slatin, Galizzi, Melillo & Mawn 2004; Rhoten, 2004; Lynch 2006; Jacobs & Frickel 2009), there are surprisingly few empirical analyses of the reasons why individual researchers become involved in Interdisciplinary Research projects. Responding to this gap in the extant literature, the current study was undertaken to identify individual influences and motivations for participating in Interdisciplinary Research projects. In this paper we report findings that emerged from 30 interviews with researchers from a wide range of disciplines, as well as different stage of career, on the major reasons why they are drawn to Interdisciplinary Research. As part of the paper we also report the extent to which participants agreed or disagreed with a variety of pitfalls identified in the literature as potential impediments or deterrents to individuals becoming involved in Interdisciplinary studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The island of Gozo is located just off the mainland island of Malta and is one of its constituencies. Gozo boasts of its own traditional characteristics which also include the particular Gozitan 'dialect.' Like other islands in the world, it has also been influenced by globalization. It has also been influenced by such changes as those brought about by Malta's accession to the EU in 2004 including a change in its currecy to the euro. This paper explores whether, in line with postmodern concepts, which do not tie life on islands to fixed notions of borders, nations, nationalities, culture and the language(s) spoken, as young people who live in Gozo, the Gozitan sixth formers have their own ideas about what 'being Gozitan' infers, and whether they believe that their schooling, alongside other agents of socialization, has led them to identify with Gozo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Objective: Active commuting (AC) is a behavior with many documented health benefits; however, influences on AC are not well understood. This paper examined a range of influences on self-reported AC behavior. Methods: Participants in Manhattan, KS, responded to an online survey (August–December 2008) with questions about walking, biking and driving patterns, influences on AC (motivators, barriers, self-efficacy, and workplace factors) and demographics. Separate logistic regression models predicted if participants walked, biked, or drove to work at least once/week according to the demographic factors and influences on AC, and significant factors were examined simultaneously in a multivariate logistic model. Results: Participants (n=375) were primarily young to middle aged adults, female, Caucasian, with at least a high school education, and 24.2% reported AC one or more times per week. Univariate analyses revealed several demographic variables, employment related factors, barriers, and motivators significantly associated with walking, biking, and driving. The multivariate models found multiple significant predictors associated with walking (Nagelkerke R2 =0.685), biking (Nagelkerke R2 =0.717), and driving (Nagelkerke R2 =0.799). Conclusions: AC is a complex behavior and this study noted a wide range of significant influences. These results provide insight for the development of policies and programs to enhance population level AC. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A well-known inequality due to Harris and Kleitman [T.E. Harris, A lower bound for the critical probability in a certain percolation process, Math. Proc. Cambridge Philos. Soc. 56 (1960) 13–20; D.J. Kleitman, Families of non-disjoint subsets, J. Combin. Theory 1 (1966) 153–155] states that any two monotone subsets of are non-negatively correlated with respect to the uniform measure on . In [M. Talagrand, How much are increasing sets positively correlated? Combinatorica 16 (2) (1996) 243–258], Talagrand established a lower bound on the correlation in terms of how much the two sets depend simultaneously on the same coordinates. In this paper we show that when the correlation is averaged over all the pairs for any family T of monotone subsets of , the lower bound asserted in [M. Talagrand, How much are increasing sets positively correlated? Combinatorica 16 (2) (1996) 243–258] can be improved, and more precise estimates on the average correlation can be given. Furthermore, we generalize our results to the correlation between monotone functions on with respect to the Lebesgue measure. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper we describe the Swedish media education landscape and Brigitta Qvarsell 's perspective on the influence of technological development in media education in Swedish context. Results of data collection about the media consumption by children and young Swedish people are also included. The conclusion remarks the need for a new area with ethnographic and semiotic basis: media educology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Consider an election between two candidates in which the voters'' choices are random and independent and the probability of a voter choosing the first candidate is . Condorcet''s Jury Theorem which he derived from the weak law of large numbers asserts that if the number of voters tends to infinity then the probability that the first candidate will be elected tends to one. The notion of influence of a voter or its voting power is relevant for extensions of the weak law of large numbers for voting rules which are more general than simple majority. In this paper we point out two different ways to extend the classical notions of voting power and influences to arbitrary probability distributions. The extension relevant to us is the “effect” of a voter, which is a weighted version of the correlation between the voter''s vote and the election''s outcomes. We prove an extension of the weak law of large numbers to weighted majority games when all individual effects are small and show that this result does not apply to any voting rule which is not based on weighted majority. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The ordered honeycomb polyphenylene oxide (PPO) film was prepared by casting the solution on a solid substrate in a high humid environment in this paper. It was found that PPO/CHCl3 solution could form regular microporous film in a large range of solution concentration (2–70g/L) and their pore size was almost equal when the concentration varied from 5 to 30g/L. Based on these phenomena, the mechanism of the formation of PPO honeycomb film was proposed. Moreover, several solvents were chosen to investigate the influence of the compatibility between PPO and solvents, and the volatility of solvents on the pattern regularity. It was found that good compatibility between PPO and solvents, and the appropriate volatility of solvents were important for the fabrication of honeycomb structure. Finally, some other affecting factors, such as the environment temperature and the molecular weight of PPO, were also tested. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper reports findings about the impact of departmental characteristics on secondary science teachers' work. It is drawn from a larger study, which also looked at ideological and material influences on practice. It focuses particularly on those aspects of the departmental environment which teachers themselves referred to frequently when discussing their work. These were: the managerial style of the department; the use made of schemes of work; the emphasis on the science disciplines as compared with 'science'; and the characteristics of pupils. It argues that such departmental characteristics are sometimes symbiotic, and that they are most subtly characterized in mainstream comprehensive schools. It also suggests that, while these influences do not necessarily lead to variation in the broad forms of pedagogy employed, they are perceived by teachers as significantly influencing their professional working environment, and the experience of teaching science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As one of the most promising and effective delivery systems for targeted controlled-release drugs, nanocarriers (NCs) have been widely studied. Although the development of nanoparticle preparations is very prosperous, the safety and effectiveness of NCs are not guaranteed and cannot be precisely controlled due to the unclear processes of absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME), as well as the drug release mechanism of NCs in the body. Thus, the approval of NCs for clinical use is extremely rare. This paper reviews the research progress and challenges of using NCs in vivo based on a review of several hundred closely related publications. First, the ADME of NCs under different administration routes is summarized; second, the influences of the physical, chemical, and biosensitive properties, as well as targeted modifications of NCs on their disposal process, are systematically analyzed; third, the tracer technology related to the in vivo study of NCs is elaborated; and finally, the challenges and perspectives of nanoparticle research in vivo are introduced. This review may help readers to understand the current research progress and challenges of nanoparticles in vivo , as well as of tracing technology in nanoparticle research, to help researchers to design safer and more efficient NCs. Furthermore, this review may aid researchers in choosing or exploring more suitable tracing technologies to further advance the development of nanotechnology. Unlabelled Image • Unclear behaviour in vivo is a major challenge for the clinical translation of nanoparticles. • Existing in vivo studies of nanoparticles lack systematization and integrity. • Changing the physiochemical properties of nanoparticles is more conducive to their in vivo behaviour. • The commonly used techniques for the in vivo study of nanoparticles are discussed. • The challenges and future perspectives of the in vivo behaviour of nanoparticles are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]