Fast and low cost analysis of dioxin and dioxin-like compounds in marine matrices: final report

0info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Automatic Restoration of Diacritics for Igbo Language

Igbo is a low-resource African language with orthographic and tonal diacritics, which capture distinctions between words that are important for both meaning and pronunciation, and hence of potential value for a range of language processing tasks. Such diacritics, however, are often largely absent from the electronic texts we might want to process, or assemble into corpora, and so the need arises for effective methods for automatic diacritic restoration for Igbo. In this paper, we experiment using an Igbo bible corpus, which is extensively marked for vowel distinctions, and partially for tonal distinctions, and attempt the task of reinstating these diacritics when they have been deleted. We investigate a number of word-level diacritic restoration methods, based on n-grams, under a closed-world assumption, achieving an accuracy of 98.83 % with our most effective method

Product design and business model strategies for a circular economy

© 2016 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. The transition within business from a linear to a circular economy brings with it a range of practical challenges for companies. The following question is addressed: What are the product design and business model strategies for companies that want to move to a circular economy model? This paper develops a framework of strategies to guide designers and business strategists in the move from a linear to a circular economy. Building on Stahel, the terminology of slowing, closing, and narrowing resource loops is introduced. A list of product design strategies, business model strategies, and examples for key decision-makers in businesses is introduced, to facilitate the move to a circular economy. This framework also opens up a future research agenda for the circular economy.Part of this work was supported by ResCoM, which is co-funded by the European Union under EU Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), Grant agreement number: 603843. We would like to thank the ResCoM team for their support and encouraging discussions on the topic of the circular economy

Explicit singular viscosity solutions of the Aronsson equation

We establish that when n≥2 and H∈C1(Rn) is a Hamiltonian such that some level set contains a line segment, the Aronsson equation D2u:Hp(Du)⊗Hp(Du)=0 admits explicit entire viscosity solutions. They are superpositions of a linear part plus a Lipschitz continuous singular part which in general is non-C1 and nowhere twice differentiable. In particular, we supplement the C1 regularity result of Wang and Yu (2008) [11] by deducing that strict level convexity is necessary for C1 regularity of solutions. © 2011 Académie des sciences

Serum dioxin and PCB levels among PCB waste processing plant workers

peer reviewedA clinical investigation and a biological monitoring were carried out to evaluate the occupational exposure of workers in contact with pyralen in a PCB-transformer and capacitor decontamination plant in France. The aim of this study was to assess the body burden of polychlorinated dibenzo-p- dioxin (PCDDs), polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs), dioxin-like (DL) PCBs and marker PCBs for those workers. We examined 8 representative workers (34-44 years old). The subjects of this study worked from 5 years to 19 years at the plant. All workers reported daily multiple contacts with various metal and wood parts of dismantled transformers during working hours. On a yearly basis, the exposed subjects were examined by the occupational health physician for a check-up. Basic parameters such as liver function and lipid statement were performed

The efficacy of itraconazole against systemic fungal infections in neutropenic patients : a randomised comparative study with amphotericin B

Contains fulltext : 4533.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access

The Council of Europe's Approach towards Ageism

In this chapter, I examine the degree of interest in ageism among Council of Europe members, and the degree of interest in its elimination through the Council of Europe forum. I also examine the interpretation of the concept of ageism by various Council of Europe institutions. Finally, I explore the Council’s willingness and ability to eliminate or at least mitigate ageism effect

Optical properties of MgH2 measured in situ in a novel gas cell for ellipsometry/spectrophotometry

The dielectric properties of alpha-MgH2 are investigated in the photon energy range between 1 and 6.5 eV. For this purpose, a novel sample configuration and experimental setup are developed that allow both optical transmission and ellipsometric measurements of a transparent thin film in equilibrium with hydrogen. We show that alpha-MgH2 is a transparent, colour neutral insulator with a band gap of 5.6 +/- 0.1 eV. It has an intrinsic transparency of about 80% over the whole visible spectrum. The dielectric function found in this work confirms very recent band structure calculations using the GW approximation by Alford and Chou [J.A. Alford and M.Y. Chou (unpublished)]. As Pd is used as a cap layer we report also the optical properties of PdHx thin films.Comment: REVTeX4, 15 pages, 12 figures, 5 table

Stranded research? Leading finance journals are silent on climate change

Finance research has shaped the modern financial system, influencing investors and market participants directly through research findings and indirectly through teaching and training programmes. Climate change presents major risks to the global financial system as well as new opportunities for investors. Is climate finance an important topic in finance research? We systematically analyse the content of 20,725 articles published in the leading 21 finance journals between January 1998 and June 2015. We find that only 12 articles (0.06%) are related in some way to climate finance. The three elite finance journals (Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics and Review of Financial Studies) did not publish a single article related to climate finance over the 17.5-year period. We repeat our analysis across a sample of 29 elite business journals spanning accounting, economics, management, marketing and operations research, as well as finance. We find a similar dearth of published climate finance research. We consider four possible explanations for this failure of top finance and business journals to engage with climate finance as a research topic. These include methodological constraints and editorial policies. We conclude by arguing why it is critical for climate-related research to be given greater attention and prominence in finance journals