950 research outputs found
MODELLING OF THIN LAYER DRYING KINETICS OF COCOA BEANS DURING ARTIFICIAL AND NATURAL DRYING
Drying experiments were conducted using air-ventilated oven and sun dryer to simulate the artificial and natural drying processes of cocoa beans. The drying data were fitted with several published thin layer drying models. A new model was introduced which is a combination of the Page and two-term drying model. Selection of the best model was investigated by comparing the determination of coefficient (R2), reduced chi-square (2) and root mean square error (RMSE) between the experimental and predicted values. The results showed that the new model was found best described the artificial and natural drying kinetics of cocoa under the conditions tested
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What is the most useful approach for forecasting hydrological extremes during El Niño?
In the past, efforts to prepare for the impacts of El Niño-driven flood and drought hazards have often relied on seasonal precipitation forecasts as a proxy for hydrological extremes, due to a lack of hydrologically relevant information. However, precipitation forecasts are not the best indicator of hydrological extremes. Now, two different global scale hydro-meteorological approaches for predicting river flow extremes are available to support flood and drought preparedness. These approaches are statistical forecasts based on large-scale climate variability and teleconnections, and resource-intensive dynamical forecasts using coupled ocean-atmosphere general circulation models. Both have the potential to provide early warning information, and both are used to prepare for El Niño impacts, but which approach provides the most useful forecasts?
This study uses river flow observations to assess and compare the ability of two recently-developed forecasts to predict high and low river flow during El Niño: statistical historical probabilities of ENSO-driven hydrological extremes, and the dynamical seasonal river flow outlook of the Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS-Seasonal). Our findings highlight regions of the globe where each forecast is (or is not) skilful compared to a forecast of climatology, and the advantages and disadvantages of each forecasting approach. We conclude that in regions where extreme river flow is predominantly driven by El Niño, or in regions where GloFAS-Seasonal currently lacks skill, the historical probabilities generally provide a more useful forecast. In areas where other teleconnections also impact river flow, with the effect of strengthening, mitigating or even reversing the influence of El Niño, GloFAS-Seasonal forecasts are typically more useful
Characterization of a novel population of low-density granulocytes associated with disease severity in HIV-1 infection
The mechanisms resulting in progressive immune dysfunction during the chronic phase of HIV infection are not fully understood. We have previously shown that arginase, an enzyme with potent immunosuppressive properties, is increased in HIV seropositive (HIV+) patients with low CD4(+) T cell counts. Here we show that the cells expressing arginase in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of HIV+ patients are low-density granulocytes (LDGs) and that whereas these cells have a similar morphology to normal-density granulocyte, they are phenotypically different. Importantly, our results reveal that increased frequencies of LDGs correlate with disease severity in HIV+ patients
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What is going wrong with community engagement? How flood communities and flood authorities construct engagement and partnership working
In this paper, we discuss the need for flood risk management in England that engages stakeholders with flooding and its management processes, including knowledge gathering, planning and decision-making. By comparing and contrasting how flood communities experience ‘community engagement’ and ‘partnership working’, through the medium of an online questionnaire, with the process’s and ways of working that the Environment Agency use when ‘working with others’, we demonstrate that flood risk management is caught up in technocratic ways of working derived from long-standing historical practices of defending agricultural land from water. Despite the desire to move towards more democratised ways of working which enable an integrated approach to managing flood risk, the technocratic framing still pervades contemporary flood risk management. We establish that this can disconnect society from flooding and negatively impacts the implementation of more participatory approaches designed to engage flood communities in partnership working. Through the research in this paper it becomes clear that adopting a stepwise, one-size-fits-all approach to engagement fails to recognise that communities are heterogenous and that good engagement requires gaining an understanding of the social dimensions of a community. Successful engagement takes time, effort and the establishment of trust and utilises social learning and pooling of knowledge to create a better understanding of flooding, and that this can lead to increasing societal connectivity to flooding and its impacts
Renewable energy in remote communities
This article is the result of a competitively tendered University-funded project, this brings together two major Government Policy areas: sustainable communities and use of carbon fuels, and is aimed at influencing the policy debate on the difficulties of linking remote communities to renewable energy production because of poor distribution networks. Linkage with the Sustainable Communities agenda is an essential ingredient, as the proposal is that the renewable energy technologies will be installed and maintained by the communities themselves
Key myths about corruption (Briefing Paper)
Corruption has been one of the major international concerns of the past
decade. It is an issue that affects all countries, rich and poor, in different ways
and to differing degrees. Exactly how corruption affects particular societies
has, however, been the subject of some discussion in the literature. The major
international institutions promoting governance reforms have, for example,
persistently argued that corruption has a direct negative impact upon overall
economic growth levels and can depress the climate for attracting
international investment; although these are far from universally-held
assumptions, even in the mainstream economics literature.
Amidst heightened international concern for tackling the abject poverty which
continues to affect such large sections of humanity (expressed most clearly in
the evolution of the millennium development goals or MDGs), perhaps the
most important concern that has been expressed about corruption is that it
disproportionately affects the poor and marginalized, through excluding them
from access to services or reducing the funds available for direct use in social
programmes. Donor-country fears over corruption in the handling of
development aid monies may also act to erode the political will necessary to
ensure adequate international funding of the actions needed to meet MDG
targets, whilst within Southern countries perceptions of widespread corruption
within political life can act decisively to depress popular support for state
reforms and/or open democratic political systems. Clearly, then, corruption –
its extent, nature, dynamics, causation and how it might be tackled – is an
issue of fundamental importance to those working in the field of international
development.
One of the things noticeable on a first exploration of the literature on
corruption and development is the singular lack of attention that was devoted
to the issue for most of the period since the second world war and, in turn, the
sudden rediscovery of the issue towards the end of the 1980s and the
explosion of international legislative initiatives, institutional formation and
academic work that has occurred since then. Clearly, the end of the bipolar
geopolitical world of the cold war and the onslaught of contemporary
globalization appear to have presented considerable opportunities for
international collaboration in placing the issue at the centre of the international
stage. Nevertheless, those very same global processes also present
Preliminary version – not for citation without the permission of the authors
important challenges to the international community in dealing with the issue
because of the difficulties involved in tracing international flows of capital, the
increasing complexity of international criminal networks and non-criminal tax
evasion networks and the complex and hazy lines between the private and
public sectors.
Since the early 1990s large amounts of public money have been spent on the
development of new legislation at national and international levels, the
creation of national anti-corruption programmes and the evolution of anticorruption
departments within just about every major international
development institution. The impact of such measures, however, has been, at
best, partial. As such, whilst the international community should continue to
do what it can to raise the international profile of corruption and how it might
be better combatted, we argue that it is even more important that a more
detailed independent assessment of the effectiveness of existing interventions
is carried out.
Our position is that the first steps towards such a review of international anticorruption
initiatives must involve subjecting the ways in which the issue has
been constructed in the mainstream development arenas to closer scrutiny.
This workshop is intended to be a first step in this direction. As such, this
paper is intended to generate debate about the meaning of corruption, its
complexity, how it relates to particular areas of development policy
intervention and the means whereby it might be combated (if indeed this is
considered feasible or even desirable). Given this, what follows is (i)
deliberately provocative, (ii) deliberately broad and (iii) deliberately polemical.
We thought long and hard about how best to organize this session and in the
end decided to organize it around the presentation of a series of key myths
which we have identified as important amongst those involved in anticorruption
activities and research. Some of these myths relate to the
academic community, some to a kind of general common sense amongst
development practitioners and some to those involved in the implementation
of anti-corruption initiatives. Here, they are organized into four broad sections
dealing with (a) basic definitions, (b) states and markets, (c) actors and anticorruption
initiatives and (d) economic factors
Antiretroviral therapy abrogates association between arginase activity and HIV disease severity.
Arginase-induced L-arginine deprivation is emerging as a key mechanism for the downregulation of immune responses. We hypothesised that arginase activity increases with disease severity in HIV-seropositive patients. Our results show that peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from 23 HIV-seropositive patients with low CD4(+) T cell counts (≤350 cells/μl) expressed significantly more arginase compared with 21 patients with high CD4(+) T cell counts. Furthermore, we found a significant association between the two principal prognostic markers used to monitor HIV disease (CD4(+) T cell count and plasma viral load) and PBMC arginase activity in antiretroviral therapy naïve patients but not in patients undergoing therapy
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