Use of scenario evaluation in preparation for deployment of a collaborative system for knowledge transfer - the case of KiMERA

This paper presented an approach for the evaluation of a collaborative system, after the completion of system development and software testing but before its deployment. Scenario and collaborative episodes were designed and data collected from users role-playing. This was found to be a useful step in refining the user training, in setting the right level of user expectation when the system started to roll-out to real users and in providing feedback to the development team

A Rare Second Year - Lake Ice Cover in the Canadian High Arctic

Colour Lake, Axel Heiberg Island, N.W.T. (79 25 N; 90 45 W), remained largely ice covered from autumn 1985 to summer 1987. This is a relatively rare event. Observations and measurements of the thickness and specific conductance of the lake ice cover were made at the end of the 1986 summer and again in the following spring. The residual ice cover (second-year ice with first-year ice beneath it) was significantly thicker and had a lower specific conductance than first-year ice formed in marginal leads (moat) that had been ice free in 1986. The first-year ice that grew beneath the residual ice cover had the lowest specific conductance. Distribution of snow on the lake was affected by the roughness of the second-year ice (as compared to the smoother moat ice) and differences in elevation between second-year (high) and moat ice.Key words: High Arctic, specific conductance, residual ice cover, snow distributionMots clés: Extrême-Arctique, conductivité spécifique, couverture de glace résiduelle, répartition de la neig

Evaluation of community-based growth monitoring in rural districts of the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces of South Africa

Background: The Health Systems Trust implemented a community-based growth monitoring intervention project that fits into the Integrated Nutrition Programme focus areas and commissioned an evaluation of this project. Objective: To assess project volunteers’ knowledge on infant and young child nutrition and growth monitoring, and evaluate communitybased growth monitoring activities.Design: Five randomly selected growth monitoring sites per sub-district were evaluated. Project volunteers (n = 45) and caregivers (n = 186)attending the growth monitoring sites were interviewed by means of a questionnaire. Growth monitoring and nutrition education activities were observed at the growth monitoring sites. Setting: Two rural districts in KwaZulu-Natal (Umkhanyakude: sub-district Jozini; and Zululand: sub-district Phongola), and one rural district in the Eastern Cape (OR Tambo), South Africa. Results: Project volunteers were mostly women (87%), 38 ± 10 years old, and 27% had matric/Grade 12. There was a high turnover of project volunteers. Their nutrition knowledge varied. Forty-six per cent of the project volunteers and 39% of the caregivers could correctly identify the growth curve of a healthy growing child. Seven of the 13 sites that were visited were at a crèche. There was a referral system between the growth monitoring site and the local clinic, and links with the Department of Agriculture and, to a lesser extent, the Department of Social Welfare. Weighing methods were inconsistent and the steps of growth monitoring were not followed through. Nutrition education to the caregivers was lacking at several of the sites. Conclusion: The study highlighted both strengths and limitations of the project. Areas that need improvement include the selection, training and supervision of project volunteers performing community-based growth monitoring.

From E_8 to F via T

We argue that T-duality and F-theory appear automatically in the E_8 gauge bundle perspective of M-theory. The 11-dimensional supergravity four-form determines an E_8 bundle. If we compactify on a two-torus, this data specifies an LLE_8 bundle where LG is a centrally-extended loopgroup of G. If one of the circles of the torus is smaller than sqrt(alpha') then it is also smaller than a nontrivial circle S in the LLE_8 fiber and so a dimensional reduction on the total space of the bundle is not valid. We conjecture that S is the circle on which the T-dual type IIB theory is compactified, with the aforementioned torus playing the role of the F-theory torus. As tests we reproduce the T-dualities between NS5-branes and KK-monopoles, as well as D6 and D7-branes where we find the desired F-theory monodromy. Using Hull's proposal for massive IIA, this realization of T-duality allows us to confirm that the Romans mass is the central extension of our LE_8. In addition this construction immediately reproduces the conjectured formula for global topology change from T-duality with H-flux.Comment: 25 pages, 4 eps figure

Forbidden Landscape from Holography

We present a class of field configurations that are forbidden in the quantum gravity because of inconsistency in the dual field theory from holography. Scale invariant but non-conformal field theories are impossible in (1+1) dimension, and so should be the corresponding gravity dual. In particular, the "spontaneous Lorentz symmetry breaking" models and the "ghost condensation" models, which are well-studied in phenomenology literatures, are forbidden in any consistent quantum theories of gravity in (1+2) dimension since they predict such inconsistent field configurations.Comment: 4pages, v2: some improvements, reference adde

Sustainable synthesis of enantiopure fluorolactam derivatives by a selective direct fluorination – amidase strategy

Pharmaceutically important chiral fluorolactam derivatives bearing a fluorine atom at a stereogenic centre were synthesized by a route involving copper catalyzed selective direct fluorination using fluorine gas for the construction of the key C–F bond and a biochemical amidase process for the crucial asymmetric cyclisation stage. A comparison of process green metrics with reported palladium catalyzed enantioselective fluorination methodology shows the fluorination-amidase route to be very efficient and more suitable for scale-up

Loop Groups, Kaluza-Klein Reduction and M-Theory

We show that the data of a principal G-bundle over a principal circle bundle is equivalent to that of a \hat{LG} = U(1) |x LG bundle over the base of the circle bundle. We apply this to the Kaluza-Klein reduction of M-theory to IIA and show that certain generalized characteristic classes of the loop group bundle encode the Bianchi identities of the antisymmetric tensor fields of IIA supergravity. We further show that the low dimensional characteristic classes of the central extension of the loop group encode the Bianchi identities of massive IIA, thereby adding support to the conjectures of hep-th/0203218.Comment: 26 pages, LaTeX, utarticle.cls, v2:clarifications and refs adde