5,283 research outputs found

    Graduate Catalog of Studies, 2023-2024

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    Oral health, sugary drink consumption and the soft drink industry levy: using spatial microsimulation to understand tooth decay

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    Spatial microsimulation is a powerful tool for creating large-scale population datasets that can be used to assess spatial phenomena in health-related outcomes. Despite this, it remains underutilized within dental public health. This paper outlines the development of an oral health focused microsimulation model for Sheffield (UK, SimSheffield), and how this can be used to assess potential socio-spatial impacts of a sugar tax which was introduced in the United Kingdom in 2016 and is known as the Soft Drink Industry Levy (SDIL). Exploratory analysis showed areas paying more SDIL were not those with the highest tooth decay or deprivation scores as might be hoped (in the first case) and expected from the literature (in the second)

    Feature Papers in Compounds

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    This book represents a collection of contributions in the field of the synthesis and characterization of chemical compounds, natural products, chemical reactivity, and computational chemistry. Among its contents, the reader will find high-quality, peer-reviewed research and review articles that were published in the open access journal Compounds by members of the Editorial Board and the authors invited by the Editorial Office and Editor-in-Chief

    Spatial dynamics of malaria transmission

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    The Ross-Macdonald model has exerted enormous influence over the study of malaria transmission dynamics and control, but it lacked features to describe parasite dispersal, travel, and other important aspects of heterogeneous transmission. Here, we present a patch-based differential equation modeling framework that extends the Ross-Macdonald model with sufficient skill and complexity to support planning, monitoring and evaluation for Plasmodium falciparum malaria control. We designed a generic interface for building structured, spatial models of malaria transmission based on a new algorithm for mosquito blood feeding. We developed new algorithms to simulate adult mosquito demography, dispersal, and egg laying in response to resource availability. The core dynamical components describing mosquito ecology and malaria transmission were decomposed, redesigned and reassembled into a modular framework. Structural elements in the framework—human population strata, patches, and aquatic habitats—interact through a flexible design that facilitates construction of ensembles of models with scalable complexity to support robust analytics for malaria policy and adaptive malaria control. We propose updated definitions for the human biting rate and entomological inoculation rates. We present new formulas to describe parasite dispersal and spatial dynamics under steady state conditions, including the human biting rates, parasite dispersal, the “vectorial capacity matrix,” a human transmitting capacity distribution matrix, and threshold conditions. An package that implements the framework, solves the differential equations, and computes spatial metrics for models developed in this framework has been developed. Development of the model and metrics have focused on malaria, but since the framework is modular, the same ideas and software can be applied to other mosquito-borne pathogen systems

    Food web-mediated interaction between marine mammals and fisheries in the Norwegian and Barents seas.

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    Ecological systems, such as marine ecosystems, are complex adaptive systems in which large scale system properties (e.g., trophic structure, energy flux patterns, etc.) emerge from interactions between ecosystem components or species. This makes them difficult to understand, predict, and model. The Norwegian and Barents Seas support multiple commercial fisheries, including those for herring, cod, and mackerel. Fisheries extract around 2.61 million tonnes of fish annually and marine mammals consume 11.7 million tonnes of fish and zooplankton annually in the region. The gradual change from conventional fisheries management towards ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) requires that interactions and trade-offs between exploitation and conservation of fish and marine mammals be considered. Such trade-offs occurs when there is direct or food-web mediated competition for resources between fisheries and marine mammals. Recent diet studies suggest that there is limited direct competition between marine mammals and fisheries. Food-web mediated interactions may occur when mammals consume the prey of commercial fish species, or when fisheries target the prey of marine mammals, but evidence for such interactions is still lacking. Using Chance and Necessity modelling (CaN) we reconstruct possible dynamics of 12 trophospecies in the Norwegian and Barents Sea ecosystems during the period 1988-2021. The reconstructed dynamics are consistent with multiple observations of biomass, diet, consumption, and life-history characteristics of the species groups. We use these reconstructions to establish the level of empirical support for food-web mediated interactions between marine mammals and fisheries. The results of the model analysis indicate that there is limited evidence to support direct competitive interactions between marine mammals and fisheries in the Norwegian Sea, and mixed evidence for such interactions in the Barents Sea. The results showed that most direct interactions between the two groups were bottom-up driven, and that only demersal fish, aside from cod, demonstrated a direct competitive interaction. As for food-web mediated interactions, the model provided evidence in support of a competitive interaction between marine mammals and capelin, between marine mammals and Barents Sea fish, and between marine mammals and all fish included in the model domain. However, the analysis also revealed the presence of a bottom-up trophic control in the food-web mediated interactions, particularly involving capelin and juvenile herring as prey. Thus, our model results show the presence of both opportunistic feeding and food-web mediated competitive interactions in the Norwegian and Barents Sea ecosystem

    Residualisation as an explanatory theory of educational inequalities: an exploratory analysis of schools in the Glasgow region

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    This thesis focuses on an understanding of the State and its implications for social equalities promised through the education system. Studies of educational inequalities tend to focus on either social class inequalities and their effects on education or inequalities generated within the education system itself. Whilst there are a few studies on the historical genesis of the modern state education system (e.g. Green, 1990; Archer, 2013), the State itself is an invisible backdrop: there are no studies of educational inequalities which look at the State in state education. The main contribution of the thesis then is in developing an account of the State in the education system, which explains educational inequalities in a way that is neither reducible to class inequalities alone nor to inequalities generated within the education system itself. The reason for developing such an account relates to an impasse of sorts in sociological and educational theory. Namely, in explaining why, given the widespread consensus on the importance of education in generating social equalities, such little progress has been made. The sociologist Diane Reay (2010: 396) expresses the paradoxical nature of this: So we are confronted with a conundrum. How is schooling to be understood in relation to social class? The contribution of the thesis to explore why this is not the right question to ask and why the relations between schooling and social class in themselves are necessary but not sufficient to explain educational inequalities. The answer to what these other relations are is itself an answer to a gap in educational theory, therefore. And the answer is provided by the addition of the State. Methodologically, the approach is a Critical Realist one. This means an ontological focus on structures and their causal powers which generate actual events. And since this ontological level cannot be accessed directly, it means – at the epistemological level - developing a theoretical model based on the relevant structures and causal powers involved in the research object. This is then applied to a concrete empirical case, enabling the explanatory model to be validated or, in most instances, modified and augmented to a greater or lesser degree. This methodological sequence of retroduction-retrodiction-retroduction (or Real-Empirical-Real) shapes the structure of the thesis as follows: • Retroduction: In Chapters 2-4, the building of a theoretical model of systemically linked inequalities, expanding the concept of residualisation in the housing literature. • Retrodiction: Working out the specifics of applying this theoretical model in terms of a Critical Realist research design (Chapter 5) to a specific empirical case, using the secondary schools of Glasgow Region (Chapters 6-10). • Retroduction: Returning to that initial theoretical model enables an integration of the empirical findings and, at the same time, the refinement and augmentation of it into a final, causal model (Chapter 11), which explains the persistence of educational inequalities in terms of structures and their causal powers. Theoretically, no one approach is applied as one of the contributions is to build a new approach. The is done through retaining David Lockwood’s (1964) account of the conflict model of strategic-functionalism found in Karl Marx and developing it. It is developed by adding in the State as the key relation missing. In doing so, Lockwood’s model is elaborated in two ways. Firstly, his account of a core institutional order is developed through an account of institutional compatibilities in the Varieties of Capitalism (VOC) literature (Hall and Soskice, 2001). Secondly, his account of contradiction is developed through Claus Offe’s (1984) structural Marxist approach to the crisis management of the State. The latter supplies the critical relation missing in both Lockwood and the VOC literature: the State. Thirdly, the structural relations of a Liberal Market Economy (LME) in the VOC literature combined with Offe’s structural analysis of the post-Keynesian state means the final elaboration: the LME State. It is argued that this is what produced the phenomenon of residualisation analysed in the housing studies literature In the early 1980s (for example, Forrest and Murie, 1983), and is just one specific instance of the residualisation produced in residual, LME States more generally, a process which is cumulative in its linked poverty traps. It is this then that is used to explain educational inequalities. Empirically, the main finding is that there is a quasi-privatisation of the state secondary system in Glasgow Region, despite the distinctiveness of Scottish Education and its commitment to the welfare state. The key implications of this and the thesis overall are: • Theoretically, an alternative approach to educational inequalities. It also points to a way beyond the theoretical impasse in the sociology of education and a route past the overreliance on Bourdieu, as well as a move past the functionalist issues in the simplified Marxist Base-Superstructure model. In addition, addressing the omission of the State in the skills literature and the VOC literature means a contribution to these other two literatures. • Methodologically, better theoretical conceptualisation of this problem based on structures of System Integration and the State would enable approaches that are necessarily multidisciplinary, taking into account the cumulative nature of inequalities, which cannot be explained by a focus on schooling or social class alone. This requires developing a better understanding of how inequalities work in modern states and a move away from education alone being able to solve them. • Empirically, this opens up a potential programme of research which enables further testing of the theoretical model of residualisation within Scotland and the UK. Further, extending this from countries in the UK to a more comparative international approach, such as in those regimes identified in the Varieties of Capitalism literature, would develop the theory of systemic poverty traps in Liberal Market Economic States. It would also help to develop a better understanding of the relation of the State to education and develop a better understanding of state education more generally. Finally, in terms of the ‘story’ of the thesis, the conundrum of how schooling is to be understood in relation to social class is instead replaced with how education is to be understood in relation to the state

    Graduate Catalog of Studies, 2022-2023

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    Digital 3D reconstruction as a research environment in art and architecture history: uncertainty classification and visualisation

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    The dissertation addresses the still not solved challenges concerned with the source-based digital 3D reconstruction, visualisation and documentation in the domain of archaeology, art and architecture history. The emerging BIM methodology and the exchange data format IFC are changing the way of collaboration, visualisation and documentation in the planning, construction and facility management process. The introduction and development of the Semantic Web (Web 3.0), spreading the idea of structured, formalised and linked data, offers semantically enriched human- and machine-readable data. In contrast to civil engineering and cultural heritage, academic object-oriented disciplines, like archaeology, art and architecture history, are acting as outside spectators. Since the 1990s, it has been argued that a 3D model is not likely to be considered a scientific reconstruction unless it is grounded on accurate documentation and visualisation. However, these standards are still missing and the validation of the outcomes is not fulfilled. Meanwhile, the digital research data remain ephemeral and continue to fill the growing digital cemeteries. This study focuses, therefore, on the evaluation of the source-based digital 3D reconstructions and, especially, on uncertainty assessment in the case of hypothetical reconstructions of destroyed or never built artefacts according to scientific principles, making the models shareable and reusable by a potentially wide audience. The work initially focuses on terminology and on the definition of a workflow especially related to the classification and visualisation of uncertainty. The workflow is then applied to specific cases of 3D models uploaded to the DFG repository of the AI Mainz. In this way, the available methods of documenting, visualising and communicating uncertainty are analysed. In the end, this process will lead to a validation or a correction of the workflow and the initial assumptions, but also (dealing with different hypotheses) to a better definition of the levels of uncertainty

    LIPIcs, Volume 274, ESA 2023, Complete Volume

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    LIPIcs, Volume 274, ESA 2023, Complete Volum
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