Current applications of hyperspectral remote sensing in the discrimination of Australian Eucalypt species

hyperspectral remote sensing provides detail on biophysical variables related to forest ecosystem processes useful for tracking and predicting structure and function of vegetation considerable potential of laboratory spectrometry and near-range work in the field to derive stress indicators and changes in cholorphyll content has been demonstrated that includes a range of studies conducted on unique Australian vegetation types

Theory for the coalescence of viscous lenses

Drop coalescence occurs through the rapid growth of a liquid bridge that connects the two drops. At early times after contact, the bridge dynamics is typically self-similar, with details depending on the geometry and viscosity of the liquid. In this paper we analyse the coalescence of two-dimensional viscous drops that float on a quiescent deep pool; such drops are called liquid lenses. The analysis is based on the thin-sheet equations, which were recently shown to accurately capture experiments of liquid lens coalescence. It is found that the bridge dynamics follows a self-similar solution at leading order, but, depending on the large-scale boundary conditions on the drop, significant corrections may arise to this solution. This dynamics is studied in detail using numerical simulations and through matched asymptotics. We show that the liquid lens coalescence can involve a global translation of the drops, a feature that is confirmed experimentally

You Can't Get Through Szekeres Wormholes - or - Regularity, Topology and Causality in Quasi-Spherical Szekeres Models

The spherically symmetric dust model of Lemaitre-Tolman can describe wormholes, but the causal communication between the two asymptotic regions through the neck is even less than in the vacuum (Schwarzschild-Kruskal-Szekeres) case. We investigate the anisotropic generalisation of the wormhole topology in the Szekeres model. The function E(r, p, q) describes the deviation from spherical symmetry if \partial_r E \neq 0, but this requires the mass to be increasing with radius, \partial_r M > 0, i.e. non-zero density. We investigate the geometrical relations between the mass dipole and the locii of apparent horizon and of shell-crossings. We present the various conditions that ensure physically reasonable quasi-spherical models, including a regular origin, regular maxima and minima in the spatial sections, and the absence of shell-crossings. We show that physically reasonable values of \partial_r E \neq 0 cannot compensate for the effects of \partial_r M > 0 in any direction, so that communication through the neck is still worse than the vacuum. We also show that a handle topology cannot be created by identifying hypersufaces in the two asymptotic regions on either side of a wormhole, unless a surface layer is allowed at the junction. This impossibility includes the Schwarzschild-Kruskal-Szekeres case.Comment: zip file with LaTeX text + 6 figures (.eps & .ps). 47 pages. Second replacement corrects some minor errors and typos. (First replacement prints better on US letter size paper.

Sleep assessment by patients and nurses in the intensive care: An exploratory descriptive study

© 2016. Background: Sleep disruption is common in intensive care unit (ICU) patients, with reports indicating reduced quality and quantity of sleep in many patients. There is growing evidence that sleep in this setting may be improved. Aim: To describe ICU patients' self-report assessment of sleep, examine the relationship between patients' self-reported sleep and their reported sleep by the bedside nurse, and describe the strategies suggested by patients to promote sleep. Methods: An exploratory descriptive study was undertaken with communicative adult patients consecutively recruited in 2014-2015. Patients reported sleep using the Richards-Campbell Sleep Questionnaire (score range 0-100. mm; higher score indicates better sleep quality), with nursing assessment of sleep documented across a five level ordinal variable. Patients were asked daily to describe strategies that helped or hindered their sleep. Ethical approval for the study was gained. Descriptive statistical analysis was performed [median (interquartile range)]; relationships were tested using Spearman's rank correlation and differences assessed using the Kruskal-Wallis test; . p . <. 0.05 was considered significant. Results: Participants (n = 151) were recruited [age: 60 (46-71) years; ICU length of stay 4 (2-9) days] with 356 self-reports of sleep. Median perceived sleep quality was 46 (26-65) mm. A moderate relationship existed between patients' self-assessment and nurses' assessment of sleep (Spearman's rank correlation coefficient 0.39-0.50; . p . <. 0.001). Strategies identified by patients to improve sleep included adequate pain relief and sedative medication, a peaceful and comfortable environment and physical interventions, e.g. clustering care, ear plugs. Conclusion: Patients reported on their sleep a median of 2 (1-3) days during their ICU stay, suggesting that routine use of self-report was feasible. These reports revealed low sleep quality. Patients reported multiple facilitators and barriers for sleep, with environmental and patient comfort factors being most common. Interventions that target these factors to improve patient sleep should be implemented

Effectiveness of Solvent Vapor Annealing over Thermal Annealing on the Photovoltaic Performance of Non-Fullerene Acceptor Based BHJ Solar Cells

We explore two small molecules containing arms of dicyano-n-hexylrhodanine and diathiafulvalene wings terminated with benzothiadiazole linker, denoted as BAF-4CN and BAF-2HDT, respectively, as small molecule non-fullerene acceptors (SMNFAs) in organic solar cells. The proposed materials are mixed with a low band gap polymer donor PTB7-Th having broad absorption in the range of 400–750 nm to form solution-processed bulk heterojunctions (BHJs). The photoluminescence (PL) measurements show that both donor and acceptor can quench each other’s PL effectively, implying that not only electrons are transferred from PTB7-Th → SMNFAs but also holes are transferred from SMNFAs → PTB7-Th for efficient photocurrent generation. Furthermore, solvent vapor annealing (SVA) processing is shown to yield a more balanced hole and electron mobility and thus suppresses the trap-assisted recombination significantly. With this dual charge transfer enabled via fine-tuning of end-groups and SVA treatment, power conversion efficiency of approximately 10% is achieved, demonstrating the feasibility of the proposed approach

Gender, climate change, agriculture, and food security: a CCAFS training-of-trainers (TOT) manual to prepare South Asian rural women to adapt to climate change

This training-of-trainers manual is designed to train you to be able to deliver a capacity enhancement workshop (CEW) to rural women on climate change and gender. It has been designed by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and is appropriate to the South Asian context

Faecal haemoglobin concentration in adenoma, before and after polypectomy, approaches the ideal tumour marker

BACKGROUND: Polypectomy may be performed at colonoscopy and then subsequent surveillance undertaken. It is thought that faecal haemoglobin concentration (f-Hb), estimated by quantitative faecal immunochemical tests (FIT), might be a useful tumour marker. METHODS: Consecutive patients enrolled in colonoscopy surveillance were approached at two hospitals. A specimen for FIT was provided before colonoscopy and, ideally after 3 weeks, a second FIT sample from those who had polypectomy. A single FIT system (OC-Sensor io, Eiken Chemical Co., Ltd) was used to generate f-Hb. RESULTS: 1103 Patients were invited; 643 returned a FIT device (uptake: 58.3%). Four patients had known inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and were excluded, leaving 639 (57.9%) with an age range of 25–90 years (median 64 years), 54.6% male. Of 593 patients who had a f-Hb result and completed colonoscopy, advanced neoplasia was found in 41 (6.9%); four colorectal cancer (CRC): 0.7% and 37 advanced adenoma (AA): 6.3%, and a further 127 (21.4%) had non-advanced adenoma (NAA). The median f-Hb was significantly greater in AA as compared to NAA; 6.0 versus 1.0 μg Hb/g faeces, p < 0.0001.134/164 (81.7%) of invited patients returned a second FIT device: 28 were patients with AA in whom median pre-polypectomy f-Hb was 19.2, falling to 3.5 μg Hb/g faeces post-polypectomy, p = 0.01, and 106 with NAA had median pre-polypectomy f-Hb 0.8 compared to 1.0 μg Hb/g faeces post-polypectomy, p = 0.96. CONCLUSIONS: Quantitative FIT could provide a good tumour marker in post-polypectomy surveillance, reduce colonoscopy requirements and minimise potential risk to patients

Instability of black hole formation under small pressure perturbations

We investigate here the spectrum of gravitational collapse endstates when arbitrarily small perfect fluid pressures are introduced in the classic black hole formation scenario as described by Oppenheimer, Snyder and Datt (OSD) [1]. This extends a previous result on tangential pressures [2] to the more physically realistic scenario of perfect fluid collapse. The existence of classes of pressure perturbations is shown explicitly, which has the property that injecting any smallest pressure changes the final fate of the dynamical collapse from a black hole to a naked singularity. It is therefore seen that any smallest neighborhood of the OSD model, in the space of initial data, contains collapse evolutions that go to a naked singularity outcome. This gives an intriguing insight on the nature of naked singularity formation in gravitational collapse.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, several modifications to match published version on GR