Time domain simulations of dynamic river networks

The problem of simulating a river network is considered. A river network is considered to comprise of rivers, dams/lakes as well as weirs. We suggest a numerical approach with specific features that enable the correct representation of these assets. For each river the flow of water is described by the shallow water equations which is a system of hyperbolic partial differential equations and at the junctions of the rivers, suitable coupling conditions, viewed as interior boundary conditions are used to couple the dynamics. A different model for the dams is also presented. Numerical test cases are presented which show that the model is able to reproduce the expected dynamics of the system. Other aspects of the modelling such as rainfall, run-off, overflow/flooding, evaporation, absorption/seepage, bed-slopes, bed friction have not been incorporated in the model due to their specific nature

Despite worries to the contrary, the evidence suggests that candidates do engage in dialogue with their opponents

Do candidates engage in dialogue with their opponents during election campaigns in the U.S? The conventional wisdom is that candidates talk past rather than to one another. In new research examining the television advertisements aired by U.S. Senate candidates, Kevin K. Banda finds that candidates do tend to partake in dialogue with their opponents and do so to a greater extent when electoral competition is higher over the course of campaigns

Analyzing logic programs with dynamic scheduling

Traditional logic programming languages, such as Prolog, use a fixed left-to-right atom scheduling rule. Recent logic programming languages, however, usually provide more flexible scheduling in which computation generally proceeds leftto- right but in which some calis are dynamically "delayed" until their arguments are sufRciently instantiated to allow the cali to run efficiently. Such dynamic scheduling has a significant cost. We give a framework for the global analysis of logic programming languages with dynamic scheduling and show that program analysis based on this framework supports optimizations which remove much of the overhead of dynamic scheduling

Independence in constraint logic programs

Studying independence of literals, variables, and substitutions has proven very useful in the context of logic programming (LP). Here we study independence in the broader context of constraint logic programming (CLP). We show that a naive extrapolation of the LP definitions of independence to CLP is unsatisfactory (in fact, wrong) for two reasons. First, because interaction between variables through constraints is more complex than in the case of logic programming. Second, in order to ensure the efUciency of several optimizations not only must independence of the search space be considered, but also an orthogonal issue - "independence of constraint solving." We clarify these issues by proposing various types of search independence and constraint solver independence, and show how they can be combined to allow different independence-related optimizations, from parallelism to intelligent backtracking. Sufficient conditions for independence which can be evaluated "a-priori" at run-time are also proposed. Our results suggest that independence, provided a suitable definition is chosen, is even more useful in CLP than in LP

The Impact of Decentralization Policy on the Performance of Colleges of Education in Zambia: The Case of Kitwe, Mufulira and Copperbelt College of Education

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of decentralization on the performance of public Colleges of Education after the introduction of decentralization policy. The study was conducted on three colleges of education, namely; Kitwe College of Education (KICE), Mufulira College of Education (MUCE) and Copperbelt College of Education (CBCE), now Mukuba University. The three selected institutions are all public teacher training institutions located on the Copperbelt Province of Zambia. The sample consisted of thirty (30) respondents, comprising academic staff and administrators. Ten (10) participants were drawn from each college. In order to evaluate the impact of decentralization on the performance of public colleges of Education, the researcher decided to use some performance variables (indicators) of decentralization; quality assurance, efficiency and effectiveness, service delivery, transparency and accountability, responsiveness and staff motivation to guide the study in the investigation of the topic at hand. The methods used to collect data for this study were questionnaires, unstructured interviews and desk research. The research design used for this study was a mixed survey method. Data obtained were analyzed using simple statistics, and the Pearson’s correlation model. The findings of the study were that colleges of educations had failed to take advantage of the decentralization policy as they have continued to depend for instructions and other important things from government. The performance variables showed that nothing significant has taken place in the three sampled public Colleges of Education. Despite this general picture however, the results from individual institution showed significant contrasts among the three institutions sampled on each of the performance indicators

Paediatric oncology in the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, Blantyre

In a developing country, where infection, malnutrition and HIV infection cause an enormous burden of childhood illnesses, cancer is, for many, not a priority. It is reported that globally 80% of the children who develop cancer have no or poor access to cancer treatment1 but childhood cancer is often curable and every child needs care, be it curative or palliative.Malawi Medical Journal Vol. 20 (4) 2008: pp. 115-11

HIV infection and domestic smoke exposure, but not human papillomavirus, are risk factors for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma in Zambia: a case-control study

(c) 2015 The Authors. Cancer Medicine published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited