Phase-lock loop frequency control and the dropout problem

Technique automatically sets the frequency of narrow band phase-lock loops within automatic lock-in-range. It presets a phase-lock loop to a desired center frequency with a closed loop electronic frequency discriminator and holds the phase-lock loop to that center frequency until lock is achieved

Assessing for cognitive impairment in people with an acquired brain injury : validation of a brief neuropsychological assessment battery

Cognitive complaints are common following an acquired brain injury and require careful assessment in order to guide treatment and care. There is a need for brief, comprehensive and psychometrically valid tests of cognitive function that can be used in neuro-rehabilitation services by a range of health professionals. The Short Parallel Assessments of Neuropsychological Status (SPANS) was purpose-designed to meet this need. The current study assessed the reliability, discriminative validity and factor structure of the SPANS. Participants were 61 people with an acquired brain injury, 35 people with a long-term neurological condition, and 122 healthy controls. Cronbach’s alphas were adequate to excellent for the clinical groups though poor for the healthy controls due to limited variance in the scores. Receiver operating characteristic curves showed that SPANS indices were significantly able to discriminate between people with a neurological condition and healthy controls as well as between left and right hemisphere damage. Exploratory factor analysis suggested the retention of 25 subtests representing three factors that largely followed the purported structure of the test: Memory and Learning, Language, and Visual-motor Performance. Limitations of the study, clinical/theoretical implications and research directions are considered. It is concluded that the SPANS is a reliable and valid tool for the assessment of cognitive function in people with an acquired brain injury, though further validation studies are required

Arresting woodland bird decline in Australian agricultural landscapes: potential application of the European agri-environment model

This paper considered the applicability of the European model of land stewardship payments, in particular its support for biodiversity conservation in agricultural landscapes, to an Australian context. More broadly, the research approach described in the paper may also be applied to assessing the suitability of overseas stewardship schemes to the provision of any ecoservice in Australia, such as carbon sequestration and floodwater regulation

Managing crop tradeoffs: A methodology for comparing the water footprint and nutrient density of crops for food system sustainability

The relationship between human nutrition and the use of available resources to feed the planet's growing population demands greater attention from decision makers at all levels of governance. Indicators with dual environmental sustainability and food and nutrition security goals can encourage and measure progress towards a more sustainable food system. This article proposes a methodology that supports the development of an approach to assess the water footprint of nutrient-dense foods [m3/kg]. It provides a clear explanation of the methodology, and the use of water footprint benchmark data and corresponding United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutrient composition data to apply the process. The study analyzed data for 17 grains, roots and tubers, 9 pulses, 10 nuts and seeds, 17 vegetables, and 27 fruits. Of these, fruits and vegetables are 85% of the bottom quartile for water footprint (i.e., highly water efficient) and 100% of the top quartile for nutrient-density (i.e., very nutrient dense). Spinach is a clear winner, with a very high nutrient-density and low water footprint. The article proposes that this approach can help to establish broad typologies to guide decision makers in distinguishing between win-win, win-lose, and lose-lose scenarios of natural resource use and nutrition security. This resource, if considered along with contributing social, environmental, and economic factors (e.g., local tastes, available water resources, soil fertility, local economies) can promote a food system that offers a diverse range of nutrient-dense foods more sustainably

Nearshore surface current patterns in the Tsitsikamma National Park, South Africa

The pattern of surface currents in the Tsitsikamma National Park, South Africa, was studied with holey-sock drogues released in batches of up to four at a time, from 1996 and 1998. Drogues were left to drift for either 6 or 24 h, while recording position and time. The majority of drogue movements were longshore, either eastward or westward; they usually travelled with similar direction and velocity. In most instances, westward movements were slightly offshore and were sometimes associated with a rise in the thermocline. Eastward movements were, on average, slightly slower, with an onshore component, sometimes associated with a lowering of the thermocline. The remaining trials showed some variability between drogues and were characterized by reduced velocity and unstable direction, indicating either the presence of horizontal turbulence or a current reversal. Current and wind were poorly correlated. Current directions were sustained for at least four days, indicating that short-lived ichthyoplankton, originating in the 70-km park, may be dispersed beyond its boundaries. Keywords: currents, drogues, larval dispersal, marine protected areasAfrican Journal of Marine Science 2002, 24: 151–16

A Retrospective Analysis of Mortality Distribution in Juba Teaching Hospital, Southern Sudan

No Abstrac

Fashion and passion: marketing sex to women

Against a backdrop of a ‘pornographication’ of mainstream media and the emergence of a more heavily sexualized culture, women are increasingly targeted as sexual consumers. In the UK, the success of TV shows like Sex and the City and the ‘fashion ‘n’ passion’ of sex emporia like Ann Summers suggests that late twentieth century discourses which foregrounded female pleasure have crystallised in a new form of sexual address to women. This article examines how sex products are being marketed for female consumers, focussing on the websites of sex businesses such as Myla, Babes n Horny, Beecourse, tabooboo and Ann Summers. It asks how a variety of existing discourses – of fashion, consumerism, bodily pleasure and sexuality - are drawn on in the construction of this new market, how they negotiate the dangers and pleasures of sexuality for women, and what they show about the construction of ‘new’ female sexualities.</p

UTOPIA—User-Friendly Tools for Operating Informatics Applications

Bioinformaticians routinely analyse vast amounts of information held both in large remote databases and in flat data files hosted on local machines. The contemporary toolkit available for this purpose consists of an ad hoc collection of data manipulation tools, scripting languages and visualization systems; these must often be combined in complex and bespoke ways, the result frequently being an unwieldy artefact capable of one specific task, which cannot easily be exploited or extended by other practitioners. Owing to the sizes of current databases and the scale of the analyses necessary, routine bioinformatics tasks are often automated, but many still require the unique experience and intuition of human researchers: this requires tools that support real-time interaction with complex datasets. Many existing tools have poor user interfaces and limited real-time performance when applied to realistically large datasets; much of the user's cognitive capacity is therefore focused on controlling the tool rather than on performing the research. The UTOPIA project is addressing some of these issues by building reusable software components that can be combined to make useful applications in the field of bioinformatics. Expertise in the fields of human computer interaction, high-performance rendering, and distributed systems is being guided by bioinformaticians and end-user biologists to create a toolkit that is both architecturally sound from a computing point of view, and directly addresses end-user and application-developer requirements

The Hawkins\Brown emission reduction tool

It is now globally accepted that human activity has caused rapid climate change, and the built environment is one of the biggest contributors to carbon emissions worldwide. There are primarily two ways in which the built environment generates carbon emissions: from energy used during operation (operational carbon) and from the materials used for building and maintenance (embodied carbon). While the industry is increasingly interrogating operational carbon, embodied carbon has historically been less understood. In 2012, Hawkins\Brown and the University College London Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering agreed to co-fund a doctoral project seeking to improve the visualisation of embodied carbon and its impact on the whole life carbon (WLC) of a project. One output of this research was the Hawkins Brown Emissions Reduction Tool (H\B:ERT), a BIM-based tool for rapid reporting and visualisation of embodied carbon in buildings. This paper outlines the tool's development and initial lessons learned from its use at Hawkins\Brown. H\B:ERT v1 measures embodied carbon. As it is available for free from the Hawkins\Brown website, it has contributed to the rapid rise in discussion and dissemination of information about embodied carbon and the contribution it plays in overall emissions. Version 2, which additionally measures WLC, has been fully integrated into the Hawkins\Brown design and BIM processes allowing consideration of WLC emissions from the earliest design stages alongside more traditional design drivers. The paper concludes by outlining how the tool can develop and what regulatory frameworks are required to ensure WLC decision-making becomes the standard method of approaching building and infrastructure design

Effect of Surfaces on Amyloid Fibril Formation

Using atomic force microscopy (AFM) we investigated the interaction of amyloid beta (Aβ) (1–42) peptide with chemically modified surfaces in order to better understand the mechanism of amyloid toxicity, which involves interaction of amyloid with cell membrane surfaces. We compared the structure and density of Aβ fibrils on positively and negatively charged as well as hydrophobic chemically-modified surfaces at physiologically relevant conditions. We report that due to the complex distribution of charge and hydrophobicity amyloid oligomers bind to all types of surfaces investigated (CH3, COOH, and NH2) although the charge and hydrophobicity of surfaces affected the structure and size of amyloid deposits as well as surface coverage. Hydrophobic surfaces promote formation of spherical amorphous clusters, while charged surfaces promote protofibril formation. We used the nonlinear Poisson-Boltzmann equation (PBE) approach to analyze the electrostatic interactions of amyloid monomers and oligomers with modified surfaces to complement our AFM data