Seeing double: the low-carb diet

No abstract available

Review on String Breaking - the Query in Quest of the Evidence

Considerable progress has been achieved recently in the observation of string breaking within non-Abelian Higgs models, by use of multi-channel methods allowing for broken string states. Similarly, in pure gauge theory this approach has been shown to reveal string breaking for color charges in the adjoint represaentation. For QCD with dynmical fermions, one needs substantial progress in noise reduction, however, to render such techniques viable.Comment: June 1999, 6 pages, 11 figures. Plenary talk presented at the 17th Int. Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice 99), Pisa, Italy 29 Jun - 3 Jul, 199

Gamifying the leaders of tomorrow: how the use of gamification in HE engages and motivates students in business and management education

Extended abstract submitted for the Faculty of Business and Law Research Day 2022

Feasibility Analysis of Floating Offshore Wind in Svalbard

Svalbard is a Norwegian island archipelago located far north in the Arctic with Longyearbyen its largest settlement. Fossil fuel in the form of diesel generators or coal power plants is still the primary energy source in all the settlements of Svalbard. In 2018, The Ministry of Petroleum and Energy (MPE) commissioned a study on the future energy supply options for Svalbard. This study did not explore offshore wind, and considered onshore turbines to have lower cost, with similar environmental consequences. Recently, policy has restricted the future development of onshore wind turbines as a result of local opposition and concern over sensitive bird populations. Floating offshore wind (FOW) could be considered as an alternative and the feasibility of such a project should be investigated further. As such, the purpose of this study is to investigate the feasibility of FOW in Svalbard. This was done through a case study, which is limited to the installation and operational feasibility of a semi-submersible FOW concept layout of six 12MW WINDMOOR units positioned 60km offshore from the entrance at Isfjorden. Reference literature on the subject is scarce, so typical arctic offshore engineering challenges are explored to aid the analysis. Typical and extreme site conditions and challenges encountered with arctic offshore installations is of great interest to the case study. Of these challenges, sea ice was identified as a critical environmental condition for the installation and operation of offshore structures in the arctic. At the selected site however, due to the warmer and more favourable climate conditions on the west coast of Svalbard, sea ice is expected to be small and in low concentrations. The concept was then tested for the expected extreme ice conditions at the site using the Simulator for Arctic Marine Structures (SAMS) program. The results from the SAMS simulation that replicated adverse sea ice conditions on the FOW concept showed that sea ice would likely be a minor issue and not impact on the stability of the semi-submersible structure. This provides greater confidence that one of the major challenges in the arctic would not be a significant issue at the selected site. The threat from icebergs was also considered, which would need to be monitored and managed should the project progress. A high-level installation downtime assessment was conducted using Shoreline, a simulation tool for the programming and optimisation of offshore wind construction projects. From the results of the simulation, weather conditions during summer are favourable for the delivery of the project and downtime due to waiting on weather would be limited. From a constructability perspective, the project is possible. The study showed that the FOW concept would be able to meet the energy needs of Longyearbyen. However, while FOW is feasible in Svalbard from an engineering perspective, a business case analysis should be conducted for the selection of the alternative energy system. It is likely that this project may be too costly for any funding to be secured in the immediate future. The cost is projected to decrease which could make this a more attractive option within the decade. The onshore assembly of FOW units combined with long distance towing operations has been achieved before in Norway for a similar scale project. The concept would also be dependent on the future environmental policy as well as conflicts with stakeholders in tourism, fishing, and shipping. More research is required to progress the FOW concept to development. The most critical information required would be a detailed cost estimate enabling a business case analysis to be conducted. A preliminary cost assessment however indicates that electricity costs from FOW would be competitive against other forms of energy. This would ultimately decide the fate of the project. Stakeholder engagement and an environmental impact assessment would also need to be conducted for the project

String breaking and lines of constant physics in the SU(2) Higgs model

We present results for the ground state and first excited state static potentials in the confinement "phase" of the SU(2) Higgs model. String breaking and the crossing of the energy levels are clearly visible. We address the question of the cut-off effects in our results and observe a remarkable scaling of the static potentials.Comment: LATTICE99(Higgs), 3 pages, 4 figure

Clinical Guidelines : a NICE Way to Introduce Cost-effectiveness Considerations?

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the United Kingdom initiated its clinical guidelines program in 2001 and more than 200 guidelines have been produced to date. As with most of NICE’s other programs, the clinical guidelines program also must take into account the relative costs and benefits of interventions when deciding whether to recommend them. The three main advantages of the program are that 1) it represents an important collaboration with the medical profession, thereby increasing the likelihood of recommendations being adopted; 2) the guidelines provide an opportunity to review all aspects of the clinical pathway, rather than focusing on only the adoption of a new technology; and 3) the guidelines offer the potential to discuss disinvestment as well as new investment. All the guidelines contain a systematic review of the relevant economic evaluation literature, and the 12 guidelines published from January 1 to August 31, 2015, contain 28 de novo economic analyses. The main challenges encountered in the guidelines program are that 1) there is an inevitable tension in advising on the quality of care that individual patients could expect while recognizing the broader public health objectives of equity, fairness, and efficiency; 2) the impact of economics is sometimes lessened because of the lack of time to conduct de novo analyses; and 3) unlike NICE’s technology appraisal program, the adoption of recommendations is not mandatory for the UK National Health Service

Understanding the extent of poverty in rural Scotland

This thesis, motivated by the paucity of previous research in this subject area, describes an attempt to better understand the extent of poverty in rural Scotland and how the factors associated with that poverty may differ in the rest of the country. By identifying factors showing association uniquely with rural as opposed to urban poverty so policy decisions on targeted rural poverty alleviation could be made. Few such factors appear to have been tested formally for their association with poverty in rural Scotland. Using data from British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) datasets I create an income-based measure to compare levels of poverty across the rurality domain for the general population and several sub-populations. I also test the levels of association that factors found in the literature exhibit with households being in poverty, entering poverty and exiting poverty in both rural and non-rural Scotland. In so doing I highlight some of the data limitations within BHPS, particularly in the number of households in the remote and rural categories of the Scottish Government rural classification system. Under the current Scottish Government rural classification system it is evident that poverty in rural Scotland is lower than in the rest of the country. However, in-work poverty and fuel poverty are significantly higher in rural Scotland, where fluctuations in household fuel prices also appear to have a much quicker impact on poverty levels and levels of workless households than in the rest of the country. This thesis identifies evidence that the current definition of rural Scotland excludes parts of Scotland typically described as rural, with the result that the high levels of poverty in these areas goes unreported in most rural poverty analysis. Areas for further research are suggested, as is an alternative regional typology that may better reflect differences in poverty related factors across Scotland

The Paths Social-Emotional Education Curriculum with Reflections on Felt Bodily Experience and Buddhist Principles

This report focuses on the PATHS (Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies) social-emotional education curriculua for preschool and elementary school students developed in the 1990s, by Dr. Mark Greenberg and colleagues at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA. In considering Greenberg’sdiscussion of the PATHS program with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the article first offers a brief Buddhist context for emotioneducation. Of interest is that the PATHS curriculum also uses the concept of “feelings that arise in the body” and so in the later part of the article I draw out the implications of this concept in my discussion on the nature of bodily experienced emotions. In thisdiscussion, I also give reference to developments in Humanistic Psychology, Neuropsychology and Buddhist mindfulnessmeditation

Modeling in Early Stages of Technology Development: Is an Iterative Approach Needed?; Comment on “Problems and Promises of Health Technologies: The Role of Early Health Economic Modeling”

A recent paper by Grutters et al makes the case for early health economic modeling in the development of health technologies. A number of examples of the value of early modeling are given, with analyses being performed at different stages in the development of several non-drug health technologies. This commentary acknowledges the contribution of the paper by Grutters et al and argues for an iterative and integrated approach to early modeling, assessing the cost-effectiveness of the technology, the value of future research and the interaction with the manufacturer’s pricing and revenue expectations