794 research outputs found
Recent Judicial Perspectives on the Duty of Candour
The duty of candour – the common law duty that governs the evidence base in judicial reviews – has long been a feature of the public law landscape. The duty requires the parties before a court to provide all the facts and information needed for a fair determination of the issue at hand.Footnote1 The last few years have seen an increasing degree of judicial attention being paid to the duty. This article explores recent cases on the duty of candour which demonstrate contemporary judicial thinking. It identifies four themes which are discernible from recent case law. These themes are (i) elucidation on when the duty is engaged; (ii) demonstration of the range of consequences of non-compliance; (iii) emphasis on the interrelationship between the duty of candour and record-keeping practices; and (iv) proactivity in checking for compliance
Self-Duality in D <= 8-dimensional Euclidean Gravity
In the context of D-dimensional Euclidean gravity, we define the natural
generalisation to D-dimensions of the self-dual Yang-Mills equations, as
duality conditions on the curvature 2-form of a Riemannian manifold. Solutions
to these self-duality equations are provided by manifolds of SU(2), SU(3), G_2
and Spin(7) holonomy. The equations in eight dimensions are a master set for
those in lower dimensions. By considering gauge fields propagating on these
self-dual manifolds and embedding the spin connection in the gauge connection,
solutions to the D-dimensional equations for self-dual Yang-Mills fields are
found. We show that the Yang-Mills action on such manifolds is topologically
bounded from below, with the bound saturated precisely when the Yang-Mills
field is self-dual. These results have a natural interpretation in
supersymmetric string theory.Comment: 9 pages, Latex, factors in eqn. (6) corrected, acknowledgement and
reference added, typos fixe
Nonsingular Black Hole Evaporation and ``Stable'' Remnants
We examine the evaporation of two--dimensional black holes, the classical
space--times of which are extended geometries, like for example the
two--dimensional section of the extremal Reissner--Nordstrom black hole. We
find that the evaporation in two particular models proceeds to a stable
end--point. This should represent the generic behavior of a certain class of
two--dimensional dilaton--gravity models. There are two distinct regimes
depending on whether the back--reaction is weak or strong in a certain sense.
When the back--reaction is weak, evaporation proceeds via an adiabatic
evolution, whereas for strong back--reaction, the decay proceeds in a somewhat
surprising manner. Although information loss is inevitable in these models at
the semi--classical level, it is rather benign, in that the information is
stored in another asymptotic region.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figures, harvmac and epsf, RU-93-12, PUPT-1399,
NSF-ITP-93-5
Semantically enhancing multimedia lifelog events
Lifelogging is the digital recording of our everyday behaviour in order to identify human activities and build applications that support daily life. Lifelogs represent a unique form of personal multimedia content in that they are temporal, synchronised, multi-modal and composed of multiple media. Analysing lifelogs with a view to supporting content-based access, presents many challenges. These include the integration of heterogeneous input streams from different sensors, structuring a lifelog into events, representing events, and interpreting and understanding lifelogs. In this paper we demonstrate the potential of semantic web technologies for analysing lifelogs by automatically augmenting descriptions of lifelog events. We report on experiments and demonstrate how our re- sults yield rich descriptions of multi-modal, multimedia lifelog content, opening up even greater possibilities for managing and using lifelogs
Characterising pressure and bruising in apple fruit
A large percentage of apples are wasted each year due to damage such as bruising. The apple journey from orchard to supermarket is very complex and apples are subjected to a variety of static and dynamic loads that could result in this damage occurring. The aim of this work was to use a novel ultrasonic technique to study apple contact areas and stresses under static loading that may occur, for example, in bulk storage bins used during harvesting. These results were used to identify load thresholds above which unacceptable damage occurs. They were also used to validate output from a finite element model, which will ultimately be developed into a packaging design tool to help reduce the likelihood of apple damage occurring
Genomic signatures of population decline in the malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae
Population genomic features such as nucleotide diversity and linkage disequilibrium are expected to be strongly shaped by changes in population size, and might therefore be useful for monitoring the success of a control campaign. In the Kilifi district of Kenya, there has been a marked decline in the abundance of the malaria vector Anopheles gambiae subsequent to the rollout of insecticide-treated bed nets. To investigate whether this decline left a detectable population genomic signature, simulations were performed to compare the effect of population crashes on nucleotide diversity, Tajima's D, and linkage disequilibrium (as measured by the population recombination parameter ρ). Linkage disequilibrium and ρ were estimated for An. gambiae from Kilifi, and compared them to values for Anopheles arabiensis and Anopheles merus at the same location, and for An. gambiae in a location 200 km from Kilifi. In the first simulations ρ changed more rapidly after a population crash than the other statistics, and therefore is a more sensitive indicator of recent population decline. In the empirical data, linkage disequilibrium extends 100-1000 times further, and ρ is 100-1000 times smaller, for the Kilifi population of An. gambiae than for any of the other populations. There were also significant runs of homozygosity in many of the individual An. gambiae mosquitoes from Kilifi. These results support the hypothesis that the recent decline in An. gambiae was driven by the rollout of bed nets. Measuring population genomic parameters in a small sample of individuals before, during and after vector or pest control may be a valuable method of tracking the effectiveness of interventions
The non-Abelian gauge theory of matrix big bangs
We study at the classical and quantum mechanical level the time-dependent
Yang-Mills theory that one obtains via the generalisation of discrete
light-cone quantisation to singular homogeneous plane waves. The non-Abelian
nature of this theory is known to be important for physics near the
singularity, at least as far as the number of degrees of freedom is concerned.
We will show that the quartic interaction is always subleading as one
approaches the singularity and that close enough to t=0 the evolution is driven
by the diverging tachyonic mass term. The evolution towards asymptotically flat
space-time also reveals some surprising features.Comment: 29 pages, 8 eps figures, v2: minor changes, references added: v3
small typographical changes
Methods to reduce medication errors in a clinical trial of an investigational parenteral medication
AbstractThere are few evidence-based guidelines to inform optimal design of complex clinical trials, such as those assessing the safety and efficacy of intravenous drugs administered daily with infusion times over many hours per day and treatment durations that may span years. This study is a retrospective review of inpatient administration deviation reports for an investigational drug that is administered daily with infusion times of 8–24 h, and variable treatment durations for each patient. We report study design modifications made in 2007–2008 aimed at minimizing deviations from an investigational drug infusion protocol approved by an institutional review board and the United States Food and Drug Administration. Modifications were specifically aimed at minimizing errors of infusion rate, incorrect dose, incorrect patient, or wrong drug administered. We found that the rate of these types of administration errors of the study drug was significantly decreased following adoption of the specific study design changes. This report provides guidance in the design of clinical trials testing the safety and efficacy of study drugs administered via intravenous infusion in an inpatient setting so as to minimize drug administration protocol deviations and optimize patient safety
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