There is a growing awareness of virtual 3D worlds such as Second Life and Sun Wonderland within the general population. Virtual 3D worlds are no longer just for the stereotypical geek. By 2011 it is estimated that about 80% of active Internet users will have an “avatar” and a “second life” in some form of virtual world environment. The current virtual world environment is utilized widely as a k...

Nishimura (2003) first pointed out that in Japanese loanwords, voiced geminates devoice optionally when they co-occur with another voiced obstruent i.e. when they violate OCP(voice) (e.g. /baggu/ → [bakku] ‘bag’). This devoicing of geminates has been used to make several theoretical claims in the recent phonological literature. However, these claims have so far largely been based on intuition-b...

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) is a neuromodulatory device often publicized for its ability to enhance cognitive and behavioral performance. These enhancement claims, however, are predicated upon electrophysiological evidence and descriptions which are far from conclusive. In fact, a review of the literature reveals a number of important experimental and technical issues inheren...

The major contributions of John N. Belkin to the field of mosquito systematics are noted. Hallmarks of his publications are presented and his hypotheses about the evolution, speciation, competition, distribution and classification of mosquitoes are summarized. The current status of the field of mosquito systematics is examined. It is argued that mosquito systematics is still largely at the alph...

We obtain new consistent Kaluza-Klein embeddings of the gauged supergravities with half of maximal supersymmetry in dimensions D = 7, 6, 5 and 4. They take the form of warped embeddings in type IIA, type IIB, M-theory and type IIB respectively, and are obtained by performing Kaluza-Klein circle reductions or T-duality transformations on Hopf fibres in S 3 submanifolds of the previously-known sp...

The current system of resolving allegations of medical malpractice neither reliably compensates injured patients nor reliably deters negligence on the part of providers. Recently, a few hospitals have begun experimenting with a change from a policy of categorically denying fault and refusing payment to a policy of routinely and fully disclosing all unexpected adverse events to patients, even ad...

The current international integration of financial markets provides a channel for currency depreciation to affect stock prices. Moreover, the recent financial crisis in Asia with its accompanying exchange rate volatility affords a case study to examine that channel. This paper applies a bivariate GARCH-M model of the reduced form of stock market returns to investigate empirically the effects of...

Patient recruitment is a major challenge for randomised trials. Reviews of publicly funded UK trials have found that 45 to 69% fail to recruit to target. This increases costs, delays results, and adversely impacts on the feasibility of conducting trials for conditions where there is a limited patient pool. For some conditions a patient requires treatment on multiple occasions. For example, pati...