The State of Human Development Data and Statistical Capacity Building in Developing Countries

human development, human rights

Insertion Magnets

Chapter 3 in High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) : Preliminary Design Report. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is one of the largest scientific instruments ever built. Since opening up a new energy frontier for exploration in 2010, it has gathered a global user community of about 7,000 scientists working in fundamental particle physics and the physics of hadronic matter at extreme temperature and density. To sustain and extend its discovery potential, the LHC will need a major upgrade in the 2020s. This will increase its luminosity (rate of collisions) by a factor of five beyond the original design value and the integrated luminosity (total collisions created) by a factor ten. The LHC is already a highly complex and exquisitely optimised machine so this upgrade must be carefully conceived and will require about ten years to implement. The new configuration, known as High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), will rely on a number of key innovations that push accelerator technology beyond its present limits. Among these are cutting-edge 11-12 tesla superconducting magnets, compact superconducting cavities for beam rotation with ultra-precise phase control, new technology and physical processes for beam collimation and 300 metre-long high-power superconducting links with negligible energy dissipation. The present document describes the technologies and components that will be used to realise the project and is intended to serve as the basis for the detailed engineering design of HL-LHC.Comment: 19 pages, Chapter 3 in High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) : Preliminary Design Repor

Interaction of agents and environments

A new abstract model of interaction between agents and environments considered as objects of different types is introduced. Agents are represented by means of labelled transition systems considered up to bisimilarity. The equivalence of agents is characterised in terms of an algebra of behaviours which is a continuous algebra with approximation and two operations: nondeterministic choice and prefixing. Environments are introduced as agents supplied with an insertion function which takes the behaviour of an agent and the behaviour of an environment as arguments and returns the new behaviour of an environment. Arbitrary continuous functions can be used as insertion functions, and we use functions defined by means of rewriting logic as computable ones. The transformation of environment behaviours defined by the insertion function also defines a new type of agent equivalence--- insertion equivalence. Two behaviours are insertion equivalent if they define the same transformation of an environment. The properties of this equivalence are studied. Three main types of insertion functions are used to develop interesting applications: one-step insertion, head insertion, and look-ahead insertion functions

Microscopic observations of needle and soft-tissue simulant interactions

Currently, physicians have no means of correctly estimating the needle tip location during percutaneous needle insertion. A model of needle-tissue interaction that predicts the needle tip location would assist physicians in pre-operative planning and hence improve needle targeting accuracy. This study is aimed to investigate the interactions of bevel-tipped needles and soft tissue in situ, using agarose gel as a soft-tissue simulant. An experimental setup is designed to record the needle-gel interaction forces and torques during needle insertion. Gel rupture during needle insertion is observed using a Laser Scanning Confocal Microscope and recorded in time series and three-dimensional images (Figure). Experimental results show the possibility of observing in situ gel rupture during needle insertion and relating them to the needle-gel interaction forces and torques. Moreover, it is seen that the maximum force along the insertion axis, |Fz max|, is proportional to bevel angle and inversely proportional to insertion speed. The maximum resultant torque, ||Tr max||, is found to be inversely proportional to bevel angle and proportional to insertion speed. However, the influence of the increase in insertion speed in |Fz max| and ||Tr max|| diminishes as insertion speed increases. These results concur with observations noted in gel rupture images

Import of honeybee prepromelittin into the endoplasmic reticulum

Honeybee prepromelittin is correctly processed and imported by dog pancreas microsomes. Insertion of prepromelittin into microsomal membranes, as assayed by signal sequence removal, does not depend on signal recognition particle (SRP) and docking protein. We addressed the question as to how prepromelittin bypasses the SRP/docking protein system. Hybrid proteins between prepromelittin, or carboxy-terminally truncated derivatives, and the cytoplasmic protein dihydrofolate reductase from mouse were constructed. These hybrid proteins were analysed for membrane insertion and sequestration into microsomes. The results suggest the following: (i) The signal sequence of prepromelittin is capable of interacting with the SRP/docking protein system, but this interaction is not mandatory for membrane insertion; this is related to the small size of prepromelittin. (ii) In prepromelittin a cluster of negatively charged amino acids must be balanced by a cluster of positively charged amino acids in order to allow membrane insertion. (iii) In general, a signal sequence can be sufficient to mediate membrane insertion independently of SRP and docking protein in the case of short precursor proteins; however, the presence and distribution of charged amino acids within the mature part of these precursors can play distinct roles