REVIEW: Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes

Review of the children\u27s book Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes, by Eric Litwin, and illustrated by James Dean

REVIEW: An Angry Drum Echoed: Mary Musgrove, Queen of the Creeks

Review of the young adult biographical novel An Angry Drum Echoed: Mary Musgrove, Queen of the Creeks, by Pamela Bauer Mueller

The frictional resistance induced by bacterial based biofouling in drainage pipelines

This paper aims at improving the current understanding of bacterial-based biofouling in drainage pipelines. Using a purpose built pipeline facility consisting of a high density polyethylene pipe, biofilms were incubated with synthetic wastewater for 20 days at three steady-state flow regimes. The results obtained have shown that the presence of a biofilm can cause a significant increase in frictional resistance. The magnitude of a biofilm’s frictional resistance is a function of the shear conditions under which the biofilm is incubated. In particular, the lower the conditioning shear, the higher the frictional resistance imparted by the biofilm. This is attributed to the thickness and roughness distribution induced by such conditions, and it serves to highlight the problem of characterizing a biofilm’s effective roughness using a single roughness scale. The study has also supported the earlier funding that the von Kármán constant is non-universal, and is dependent on Reynolds number for biofouled pipes

Single-Longitudinal-Mode Brillouin/Erbium Fiber Laser with High Linewidth-Reduction Ratio

published_or_final_versio

Capacity enhancement of virtual-mirror-based multiwavelength Brillouin-Erbium fiber laser.

An enhanced multiwavelength Brillouin-erbium fiber laser with virtual mirror concept is demonstrated. The performance of three linear amplifier schemes is investigated and optimized. Wide tuning range of 39 nm and maximum of nine laser lines are achieved utilizing a 915 nm pump laser at 616 mW pump power

Maximising follow-up participation rates in a large scale 45 and Up Study in Australia

BACKGROUND: The issue of poor response rates to population surveys has existed for some decades, but few studies have explored methods to improve the response rate in follow-up population cohort studies. METHODS: A sample of 100,000 adults from the 45 and Up Study, a large population cohort in Australia, were followed up 3.5 years after the baseline cohort was assembled. A pilot mail-out of 5000 surveys produced a response rate of only 41.7 %. This study tested methods of enhancing response rate, with three groups of 1000 each allocated to (1) receiving an advance notice postcard followed by a questionnaire, (2) receiving a questionnaire and then follow-up reminder letter, and (3) both these strategies. RESULTS: The enhanced strategies all produced an improved response rate compared to the pilot, with a resulting mean response rate of 53.7 %. Highest response was found when both the postcard and questionnaire reminder were used (56.4 %) but this was only significantly higher when compared to postcard alone (50.5 %) but not reminder alone (54.1 %). The combined approach was used for recruitment among the remaining 92,000 participants, with a resultant further increased response rate of 61.6 %. CONCLUSIONS: Survey prompting with a postcard and a reminder follow-up questionnaire, applied separately or combined can enhance follow-up rates in large scale survey-based epidemiological studies

Differences in client and therapist views of the working alliance in drug treatment

Background - There is growing evidence that the therapeutic alliance is one of the most consistent predictors of retention and outcomes in drug treatment. Recent psychotherapy research has indicated that there is a lack of agreement between client, therapist and observer ratings of the therapeutic alliance; however, the clinical implications of this lack of consensus have not been explored. Aims - The aims of the study are to (1) explore the extent to which, in drug treatment, clients and counsellors agree in their perceptions of their alliance, and (2) investigate whether the degree of disagreement between clients and counsellors is related to retention in treatment. Methods - The study recruited 187 clients starting residential rehabilitation treatment for drug misuse in three UK services. Client and counsellor ratings of the therapeutic alliance (using the WAI-S) were obtained during weeks 1-12. Retention was in this study defined as remaining in treatment for at least 12 weeks. Results - Client and counsellor ratings of the alliance were only weakly related (correlations ranging from r = 0.07 to 0.42) and tended to become more dissimilar over the first 12 weeks in treatment. However, whether or not clients and counsellors agreed on the quality of their relationship did not influence whether clients were retained in treatment. Conclusions - The low consensus between client and counsellor views of the alliance found in this and other studies highlights the need for drug counsellors to attend closely to their clients' perceptions of the alliance and to seek regular feedback from clients regarding their feelings about their therapeutic relationship

Seamless tuning range based-on available gain bandwidth in multiwavelength Brillouin fiber laser.

We experimentally demonstrate a simple widely tunable multiwavelength Brillouin/Erbium fiber laser that can be tuned over the entire C-band, thereby greatly improving the tuning range limitation faced by the previous Brillouin-erbium fiber laser architectures. Tuning range of 39 nm from 1527 nm to 1566 nm, which is only limited by the amplification bandwidth of the erbium gain was successfully achieved. At Brillouin pump wavelength of 1550 nm and 1480 nm laser pump and Brillouin pump powers of 130 mW and 2 mW respectively, all the generated output channels have peak power above 0 dBm, with the first output channel having a peak power of 8.52 dBm. The experimental set up that consists of only 4 optical components, is simple, devoid of the complex structure employed previously to enhance the tunability and feedback mechanism normally associated with multiwavelength Brillouin-erbium fiber laser sources. The generated output channels are stable, rigidly separated by 10 GHz (0.08 nm)

Impact of flow hydrodynamics and pipe material properties on biofilm development within drinking water systems

The aim of this study was to investigate the combined impact of flow hydrodynamics and pipe material on biofilm development in drinking water distribution systems (DWDS). Biofilms were formed on four commonly used pipe materials (namely polyvinyl chloride, polypropylene, structured wall high-density polyethylene and solid wall high-density polyethylene) within a series of purpose built flow cell reactors at two different flow regimes. Results indicate that varying amounts of microbial material with different morphologies were present depending on the pipe material and conditioning. The amount of microbial biomass was typically greater for the biofilms conditioned at lower flows. Whereas, biofilm development was inhibited at higher flows indicating shear forces imposed by flow conditions were above the critical levels for biofilm attachment. Alphaproteobacteria was the predominant bacterial group within the biofilms incubated at low flow and represented 48% of evaluated phylotypes; whilst at higher flows, Betaproteobacteria (45%) and Gammaproteobacteria (33%) were the dominant groups. The opportunistic pathogens, Sphingomonas and Pseudomonas were found to be particularly abundant in biofilms incubated at lower flows, and only found within biofilms incubated at higher flows on the rougher materials assessed. This suggests that these bacteria have limited ability to propagate within biofilms under high shear conditions without sufficient protection (roughness). These findings expand on knowledge relating to the impact of surface roughness and flow hydrodynamics on biofilm development within DWDS