An interdisciplinary scenario analysis to assess the water availability and water consumption in the Upper Ouémé catchment in Benin

This paper presents an interdisciplinary scenario analysis to assess the influence of global and regional change on future water availability and water consumption in the Upper Ouémé catchment in central Benin. For the region three development scenarios were evolved. These scenarios are combined with climate change scenarios based on the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). In the mo-delling approach the quantification of the land use/land cover change is performed by the cellular automata model CLUE-S. The future climate scenarios are computed with the regional climate model REMO driven by the global ECHAM model. Using this data different land use and climate change scenarios can be calculated with the conceptual hydrological model UHP-HRU to assess the effects of global changes on the future water availability in Benin. <P> To analyse the future water availability also the water consumption has to be taken into account. Due to high population growth an increase in water need in the future is expected for the region. To calculate the future household water consumption data from a regional survey and demographic projections are used. Development of the water need for animal husbandry is also considered. <P> The first test run of the modelling approach was performed for the development scenario &apos;business as usual&apos; combined with the IPCC scenario B2 for the year 2025. This test demonstrates the applicability of the approach for an interdisciplinary scenario analysis. A continuous run from 2000&ndash;2025 will be simulated for different scenarios as soon as the input data concerning land use/land cover and climate are available

Cloud-scale VM Deflation for Running Interactive Applications On Transient Servers

Transient computing has become popular in public cloud environments for running delay-insensitive batch and data processing applications at low cost. Since transient cloud servers can be revoked at any time by the cloud provider, they are considered unsuitable for running interactive application such as web services. In this paper, we present VM deflation as an alternative mechanism to server preemption for reclaiming resources from transient cloud servers under resource pressure. Using real traces from top-tier cloud providers, we show the feasibility of using VM deflation as a resource reclamation mechanism for interactive applications in public clouds. We show how current hypervisor mechanisms can be used to implement VM deflation and present cluster deflation policies for resource management of transient and on-demand cloud VMs. Experimental evaluation of our deflation system on a Linux cluster shows that microservice-based applications can be deflated by up to 50\% with negligible performance overhead. Our cluster-level deflation policies allow overcommitment levels as high as 50\%, with less than a 1\% decrease in application throughput, and can enable cloud platforms to increase revenue by 30\%.Comment: To appear at ACM HPDC 202

Rationale and design: telepsychology service delivery for depressed elderly veterans

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Older adults who live in rural areas experience significant disparities in health status and access to mental health care. "Telepsychology," (also referred to as "telepsychiatry," or "telemental health") represents a potential strategy towards addressing this longstanding problem. Older adults may benefit from telepsychology due to its: (1) utility to address existing problematic access to care for rural residents; (2) capacity to reduce stigma associated with traditional mental health care; and (3) utility to overcome significant age-related problems in ambulation and transportation. Moreover, preliminary evidence indicates that telepsychiatry programs are often less expensive for patients, and reduce travel time, travel costs, and time off from work. Thus, telepsychology may provide a cost-efficient solution to access-to-care problems in rural areas.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We describe an ongoing four-year prospective, randomized clinical trial comparing the effectiveness of an empirically supported treatment for major depressive disorder, Behavioral Activation, delivered either via in-home videoconferencing technology ("Telepsychology") or traditional face-to-face services ("Same-Room"). Our hypothesis is that in-homeTelepsychology service delivery will be equally effective as the traditional mode (Same-Room). Two-hundred twenty-four (224) male and female elderly participants will be administered protocol-driven individual Behavioral Activation therapy for depression over an 8-week period; and subjects will be followed for 12-months to ascertain longer-term effects of the treatment on three outcomes domains: (1) clinical outcomes (symptom severity, social functioning); (2) process variables (patient satisfaction, treatment credibility, attendance, adherence, dropout); and (3) economic outcomes (cost and resource use).</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>Results from the proposed study will provide important insight into whether telepsychology service delivery is as effective as the traditional mode of service delivery, defined in terms of clinical, process, and economic outcomes, for elderly patients with depression residing in rural areas without adequate access to mental health services.</p> <p>Trial registration</p> <p>National Institutes of Health Clinical Trials Registry (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier# NCT00324701).</p

Shooting yourself in the foot with due care: psychotherapists and crystallized standards of tort liability

Professional organizations sometimes promulgate guidelines intended to inform their members\u27 practice. These standards may be designed to guide practitioners under ordinary conditions, or they may define an ideal toward which to strive. If courts adopt idealized standards as criteria of responsible practice for the purpose of establishing tort liability, professional organizations might respond by refraining from developing such guidelines or by framing them with an eye toward preventing liability rather than strictly for the purpose of enhancing patient care. In either case, the courts\u27 actions and the organizations\u27 responses might hinder, rather than enhance, the therapeutic project of the mental health system. Therapeutic jurisprudence is an approach to the study of mental health law that investigates the effects of the law on the therapeutic project of the mental health system and considers ways in which the law might be designed in order to promote that project without sacrificing other important values. One important item on this agenda is the study of various ways in which legal rules, procedures, or roles may actively impair the functioning of the mental health system. This paper considers one aspect of tort law that may undermine both the therapeutic project of the mental health system and the legal goals that the law is designed to promote