Cleaved surface of i-AlPdMn quasicrystals: Influence of the local temperature elevation at the crack tip on the fracture surface roughness

Roughness of i-AlPdMn cleaved surfaces are presently analysed. From the atomic scale to 2-3 nm, they are shown to exhibit scaling properties hiding the cluster (0.45 nm) aperiodic structure. These properties are quantitatively similar to those observed on various disordered materials, albeit on other ranges of length scales. These properties are interpreted as the signature of damage mechanisms occurring within a 2-3 nm wide zone at the crack tip. The size of this process zone finds its origin in the local temperature elevation at the crack tip. For the very first time, this effect is reported to be responsible for a transition from a perfectly brittle behavior to a nanoductile one.Comment: 8 page

Valorisation of by-products from soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) processing

In recent years, increased awareness of the health benefits associated with consuming soy-based foods, knowledge of milk-related allergies and a move towards more sustainable food production have led to an increase in the number of available soy-based products. The biggest producers in the world, the USA, South America and China, are from the Pacific region. This enormous production is accompanied by the accumulation of related by-products, in particular, a substance that is known as okara. Okara is a paste that is rich in fibre (50%), protein (25%), fat (10%), vitamins and trace elements. Its proper use would lead to economic advantages and a reduction in the potential for polluting the environment. Its high fibre content and low production costs mean that it could also be used as a dietary supplement to prevent diabetes, obesity and hyperlipidaemia. Chemical or enzymatic treatment, fermentation, extrusion, high pressure and micronisation can all increase the soluble fibre content, and thus improve nutritional quality and processing properties. However, the product also degrades rapidly due to its high moisture content (70–80%), which makes it difficult to handle and expensive to dry by conventional means. The aim of this paper is therefore to thoroughly study the existing literature on this subject in order to develop a general protocol for okara exploitation and valorisation. A cost/benefit analysis could drive the design of eco-friendly, sustainable protocols for the preparation of high-value nutritional products

Child protection outcomes of the Australian Nurse Family Partnership Program for Aboriginal infants and their mothers in Central Australia

© 2018 Segal et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Background The Nurse Family Partnership Program developed in the USA, designed to improve mother and infant/child outcomes, has reported lower rates of child protection system involvement. The study tested the hypothesis that an adapted Nurse Family Partnership Program implemented in an Aboriginal community in Central Australia (the FPP) would improve Child Protection outcomes. Methods This was a retrospective and prospective cohort study drawing on linked administrative data, including birth registry, primary health care client information system, FPP program data, and child protection data. Participants were children of women eligible for the FPP program (an exposed and a control group of women, eligible but not referred) live-born between 1/3/2009 (program commencement) and 31/12/2015. Child protection data covered all reports, investigations, substantiations and out-of-home care placements from the time of the child’s birth to 31/12/2016. Generalised linear modelling was used to estimate the relative risk (RR) of involvement with child protection and type of involvement (report, investigation, substantiation, out-of-home-care placement) among FPP and control children. Results FPP mothers (n = 291) were on average younger, were more likely to be first-time mothers and experiencing housing instability than control mothers (n = 563). Among younger mothers 20 years, FPP children had statistically significantly lower rates of involvement with child protection (ARRreport = 0.49, 95% CI: 0.29 to 0.82; ARRinvestigation = 0.34, 95% CI: 0.19 to 0.64; ARRsubstantiation = 0.45, 95% CI: 0.21 to 0.96) and experience fewer days in care (ARR = 0.10, 95% CI: 0.02 to 0.48). Among children of first-time mothers, FPP children also had statistically significantly lower rates of involvement with child protection (ARRreport = 0.50, 95% CI: 0.30 to 0.83; ARRinvestigation = 0.36, 95% CI: 0.19 to 0.67; ARRsubstantiation = 0.38, 95% CI: 0.18 to 0.80) and fewer days in care (ARR = 0.06, 95% CI: 0.01 to 0.27). Conclusion Study results suggest a modified Nurse Family Partnership delivered by an Indigenous community-controlled organisation may have reduced child protection system involvement in a highly vulnerable First Nations population, especially in younger or first-time mothers. Testing these results with an RCT design is desirable

Effect of Disorder and Notches on Crack Roughness

We analyze the effect of disorder and notches on crack roughness in two dimensions. Our simulation results based on large system sizes and extensive statistical sampling indicate that the crack surface exhibits a universal local roughness of $\zeta_{loc} = 0.71$ and is independent of the initial notch size and disorder in breaking thresholds. The global roughness exponent scales as $\zeta = 0.87$ and is also independent of material disorder. Furthermore, we note that the statistical distribution of crack profile height fluctuations is also independent of material disorder and is described by a Gaussian distribution, albeit deviations are observed in the tails.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure

Prevelance of Tinea Pedis and Onychomycosis in Malta : the Achilles project

The Achilles project was set up because of the general poor awareness of foot disease, espe- cially of fungal foot infections. Foot diseases are often not viewed as a real problem, and the general public has limited knowledge of them. Most previous studies have involved small and specific population groups, such as school children, subjects visiting swimming baths, populations with specific occupations, or patients with underlying diseases like diabetes. Moreo- ver, patients often had to diagnose the condition themselves. The results of these self-assess- ments, was an underestimation of the prevalence of foot infections. (1, 2) The Achilles project was the largest epidemiological study ever to be carried out on foot health in Europe and other countries, related to the part of the body below the Achilles heel (e.g. foot, toes, toenails). Started in 1998, the aim of the project was to gain a better understanding of diseases affecting the feet and their prevalence among different patient groups with a view to improve the timely diagnosis and optimal treatment of this significant medical problem. The project also allowed an insight to be gained into the predisposing factors and quality of life in a large population, and to generate clinical data from a sample of the population. The data also served as the basis for epidemiological studies, allowing both medical professionals and pa- tients to benefit from this knowledge. The ultimate goal is therefore to increase the chance for timely diagnosis and treatment of foot disorders. Several European countries, including Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom (UK), have thus far participated in this foot-screening project, which was endorsed by the European Academy of Dermatology and Venerology (EADV) and the European Nail Society. Following the example of these countries, in 1999 Malta, Jordan and Cyprus implemented the Achilles project.peer-reviewe

On using pretext tasks to learn representations from network logs

Learning meaningful representations from network data is critical to ease the adoption of AI as a cornerstone to process network logs. Since a large portion of such data is textual, Natural Language Processing (NLP) appears as an obvious candidate to learn their representations. Indeed, the literature proposes impressive applications of NLP applied to textual network data. However, in the absence of labels, objectively evaluating the goodness of the learned representations is still an open problem. We call for a systematic adoption of domain-specific pretext tasks to select the best representation from network data. Relying on such tasks enables us to evaluate different representations on side machine learning problems and, ultimately, unveiling the best candidate representations for the more interesting downstream tasks for which labels are scarce or unavailable. We apply pretext tasks in the analysis of logs collected from SSH honeypots. Here, a cumbersome downstream task is to cluster events that exhibit a similar attack pattern. We propose the following pipeline: first, we represent the input data using a classic NLP-based approach. Then, we design pretext tasks to objectively evaluate the representation goodness and to select the best one. Finally, we use the best representation to solve the unsupervised task, which uncovers interesting behaviours and attack patterns. All in all, our proposal can be generalized to other text-based network logs beyond honeypots