Satellite remote sensing for ice sheet research

Potential research applications of satellite data over the terrestrial ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are assessed and actions required to ensure acquisition of relevant data and appropriate processing to a form suitable for research purposes are recommended. Relevant data include high-resolution visible and SAR imagery, infrared, passive-microwave and scatterometer measurements, and surface topography information from laser and radar altimeters

Health and Safety Executive

flammable gas detector

The development of point-of-use treatment technologies for the production of drinking water

An estimated 884 million people worldwide lack access to drinking water from improved water sources. With the global population expected to reach eleven billion by the end of the 21st Century, stress on water and energy resources will be exacerbated. The development and implementation of innovative drinking water treatment technologies ensuring safe, sustainable drinking water provision is required. The overall aim of this thesis was to develop point-of-use [POU] water treatment technologies for the production of chemically and biologically safe drinking water. A proof-of-concept decentralised drinking water treatment systems [DWTS] investigated whether Drinking Water Inspectorate [DWI] standard drinking water could be produced by combining multi-step filtration processes, including ultrafiltration [UF] membrane columns, and low dosing of electrochemically activated solution [ECAS] dosing pre- and post UF column membrane (total 1% [v/v]). The ECAS dosing regimen produce DWI standard drinking water, whilst the treated water produced in throughout the control (no ECAS dosing) field trial was not biologically safe. Resulting from these trials, further investigations regarding the effect ECAS has on producing chemically (e.g. trihalomethanes [THMs]) and biologically safe water, as well as manage biofilm formation to minimise biofouling. THMs are regulated disinfection products [DBPs], and form through chlorine-based disinfectants reacting with organic matter. Comparing THM formation in water when treated with three disinfectants (ECAS, NaOCl and HOCl) as a function of contact time and free chlorine resulted in NaOCl producing significantly higher concentrations compared to HOCl and ECAS. Chlorination processes in drinking water treatment ensure the production of biologically safe water. The comparative antimicrobial activity of ECAS against NaOCl and HOCl against standard microbial challenges in planktonic phase, and as biofilms was determined. Throughout all standard chemical bactericidal assays against planktonic E. coli ATCC 10536, neutral (HOCl) and acidic (ECAS) disinfectants exhibited greater antimicrobial activity in comparison to NaOCl, the alkaline disinfectant (NaOCl). Increasing organic load resulted in reduced antimicrobial activity for all disinfectants tested. The antimicrobial activity of all disinfectants decreased against a mature Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 15422 biofilm. ECAS demonstrated the greatest reduction in biofilm density compared to NaOCl and HOCl at free chlorine concentrations ≥ 50 mg L-1. In-situ disinfectant dosing biofilm models to represent disinfection processes in water treatment were developed. Preliminary experiments demonstrated an inhibitory effect against biofilm formation through in-situ dosing, however, further model development and experimentation is required

Consideration of the novel psychoactive substances (‘legal highs’)

Original report can be found at: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/ Crown Copyright, the Advisory Council/ The Home Office. This work is published under an open government license.The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) committed to providing the Government with advice on novel psychoactive substances (often colloquially termed „legal highs‟). This is a relatively recent phenomenon, exemplified by the drug known as mephedrone. The actions by the ACMD and subsequently by the Government on this drug have gone some way to reducing the potential harms caused by this substance. However, there is more that can be done. The advent of novel psychoactive substances has changed the face of the drug scene remarkably and with rapidity. The range of substances now available, their lack of consistency and the potential harms users are exposed to are now complex and multi-faceted. In light of this we have pleasure in enclosing the Council‟s report. This report provides advice on high level issues that ACMD believe the Government should give careful consideration to in addressing legally available psychoactive substances. The report does not purport to provide a single solution to the problem, but rather a number of practicable options that, in combination, seek to tackle the on-going sale, supply and consequential harms. It is important that the Government recognises that each and every department, that has a locus of responsibility in drug issues should both take personal ownership and share collective responsibility of the recommendations in this report. Tackling the issues that are raised by novel psychoactive substances requires a co-ordination of efforts that can only be realised by a strategic and co-operative approach. The ACMD has identified lead departments for each of the recommendations that should assist and guide the Government in this aim. The ACMD provides key recommendations in this report on legislation, public health, education and research. The key legislative measures are primarily concerned with tightening the enforcement of existing legislation and moving the responsibility for the supply of novel psychoactive substances to the vendors, such that the burden of proof falls to them. The ACMD believe it is for vendors to prove that such substances are neither analogues of current medicines nor products harmful to consumers in their intended form. The ACMD also makes key recommendations around public awareness from local to international initiatives.Final Published versio

Automatic Generation of Test Cases Using Document Analysis Techniques

In software maintenance, software testing consumes 55% of the total software maintenance work. The problem is how to reduce the software testing work while still insuring high quality software.nbsp Some solutions involve software execution automation tools, outsourcing the testing tasks at lower labor rates. Such solutions still depend upon individual skills in generation of the test cases. In contrast, we focused on generation of test cases rather than the skills and developed a method for the automatic generation of test cases by using our natural language document analysis techniques which use text parsers for extracting and complementing parameter values from documents. We applied the method to Internet banking system maintenance projects and insurance system maintenance projects.nbsp In this paper, we discuss our method and techniques for automatic generation of test cases and their use in these industry case studies.nbsp Our document analysis tool helped automatically generate 95% of the required test cases from the design documents. The work of creating test cases was reduced by 48% in our case studies

Evaluation of the Potential use of Bagasse and Sugar Millswaste Water as Substrate for Biogas Production

Biogas is a sustainable alternative source of energy to fossil fuels. Its production also serves as sink for biological wastes and it is a pollution control measure. Most of biogas generation units in Kenya utilize animal wastes as the substrate. However, the bio fuel potential of bagasse, the abundant crop residues like co-products in sugarcane-based industries remain underutilized. The idea of converting bagasse into additional energy is gaining attention, especially through government commitments on increasing the renewable energy generation combined with the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. In this study bagasse samples collected from Chemelil sugar mills were passed through multiple sieves of different sizes to obtain different particle sizes. Mills waste water was also collected from Chemelil sugar factory and analyzed for pH and Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) to establish their biogas production potential, the analyzed mills waste water was then mixed with different particle sizes of bagasse and allowed to be digested anaerobically. Volume of the gas collected from each flask containing different particle sizes of bagasse was measured to identify the optimum conditions for biogas production. The study showed that the mills waste water that had the highest TDS (130g/L) yielded relatively higher volumes of biogas when mixed with bagasse of different particle sizes. Bagasse of particle size ≤0.600mm produced the highest volume when mixed with the mills waste water with TDS and pH of130g/l and 4.67 respectively. Designing and installing a digester system that allows for the control of TDS and pH in mills wastewater and utilizes bagasse of particle size ≤0.600mm would be expected to produce reasonable amount of biofuel and put a check on environmental pollution problems associated with bagasse and sugar mill waste waters in sugar factories

Laboratory Experiments on 5G Cellular Technologies - A Case Study on the Synergy of Research and Experiential Learning

Teaching and research complement each other. This is an advice often given to young professors, to encourage them to find synergy between research and teaching, i.e., to let research aid teaching, and vice-versa. When a professor develops new laboratory experiments for undergraduate courses in wireless communications, he/she may find it difficult to replicate research experiments, because they require expensive equipment, usually available in “research, non-teaching” laboratories. In this paper, we present a wireless laboratory that is used for both research and teaching. We show how the research on fifth generation (5G) cellular networks - including millimeter wave transmission, ultra-wideband wireless communications, and multiple-input-single-output (MISO) antennas – helped develop laboratory experiments for undergraduate engineering students. The experiments not only teach students about 5G technologies, but also how to use real-time spectrum analyzers, vector signal generators, arbitrary waveform generators, and signal analyzers, which will help their engineering and/or research careers.Cockrell School of Engineerin

The Use of Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) Method in Improving Writing Ability of Narrative Text of the Second Year Students of SMAN 4 Pekanbaru

This classroom action research was aimed to find out if the use of Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) Method could improve the writing ability of the second year students of SMAN 4 Pekanbaru. The participants were 31 students. The procedures applied were: (a) dividing students into pairs, (b) asking students to read to each other the story, (c) asking students to correct their teammates' error, (d) asking students to answer the questions related to the story in team, (e) asking students to pronounce the difficult words listing, (f) asking students to find the meaning of the difficult words listing, (g) asking students to write a draft composition of narrative texts related to the passage, (h) asking students to edit one's another's work by using peer editing, (i) asking students to finish their writing based on their teammates' revision. The data was collected by using of tests, observation sheets, and field notes. The level of achievement in this research was 85, based on the standard minimum criteria of achievement of English subject in SMAN 4 Pekanbaru. The research finding showed that the implementation of applying CIRC as the teaching method could improve students' writing ability both at the first, second, and third cycle. Based on the data analysis that is obtained, the students' score was improve from 60,32 in the pre-test, to 74,62 in post-test 1, to 83,29 in post-test 2, and up to 87,68 in post-test 3. Therefore, the implementation of CIRC method could improve students' writing ability of the second year students of SMAN 4 Pekanbaru

Intrinsic vs. extrinsic evaluation measures for referring expression generation

In this paper we present research in which we apply (i) the kind of intrinsic evaluation metrics that are characteristic of current comparative HLT evaluation, and (ii) extrinsic, human task-performance evaluations more in keeping with NLG traditions, to 15 systems implementing a language generation task. We analyse the evaluation results and find that there are no significant correlations between intrinsic and extrinsic evaluation measures for this task.peer-reviewe