Addressing and Mitigating Violence: Uptake Strategy, Year Two Update

The overarching purpose of the Addressing and Mitigating Violence (AMV) theme is to generate useful analysis to tackle policy dilemmas relating to ‘newer’ forms of violence and organised crime. Across the contexts where we work, we will undertake a multilevel governance analysis with a multi-actor governance approach to better understand the contributions of and possibilities for convergence between state and non-state stakeholder efforts in different policy spaces. An important goal of work across the AMV theme will be to increase the capabilities of partners and stakeholders in each of the contexts where we work to identify more effective ways of influencing policy.UK Department for International Developmen

High-frequency InGaAs tri-gate MOSFETs with fmax of 400 GHz

Extremely scaled down tri-gate RF metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) utilising lateral nanowires as the channel, with gate length and nanowire width both of 20 nm are reported. These devices exhibit simultaneous extrapolated ft and fmax of 275 and 400 GHz at VDS = 0.5 V, which is the largest combined ft and fmax, as well as the largest fmax reported for all III-V MOSFETs

Precessing microblazars and unidentified gamma-ray sources

The recent discovery by Paredes et al. (2000) of a persistent microquasar that is positionally coincident with an unidentified gamma-ray source has open the possibility that other sources in the Third EGRET Catalog could be interpreted as microquasars as well. In this letter we show that some variable unidentified EGRET sources in the galactic plane could be produced by faint, otherwise undetected microquasars with precessing jets. When the jet points towards the observer, gamma-ray emission resulting from upscattered stellar photons could be detectable yielding a variable source with weak or undetectable counterpart at longer wavelengths. Strategies for detecting these``microblazars'' with forthcoming satellites are briefly discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters in press, typing errors correctio

Iron and s-elements abundance variations in NGC5286: comparison with anomalous globular clusters and Milky Way satellites

We present a high resolution spectroscopic analysis of 62 red giants in the Milky Way globular cluster NGC5286. We have determined abundances of representative light proton-capture, alpha, Fe-peak and neutron-capture element groups, and combined them with photometry of multiple sequences observed along the colour-magnitude diagram. Our principal results are: (i) a broad, bimodal distribution in s-process element abundance ratios, with two main groups, the s-poor and s-rich groups; (ii) substantial star-to-star Fe variations, with the s-rich stars having higher Fe, e.g. _s-rich - _s-poor ~ 0.2~dex; and (iii) the presence of O-Na-Al (anti-)correlations in both stellar groups. We have defined a new photometric index, c_{BVI}=(B-V)-(V-I), to maximise the separation in the colour-magnitude diagram between the two stellar groups with different Fe and s-element content, and this index is not significantly affected by variations in light elements (such as the O-Na anticorrelation). The variations in the overall metallicity present in NGC5286 add this object to the class of "anomalous" GCs. Furthermore, the chemical abundance pattern of NGC5286 resembles that observed in some of the anomalous GCs, e.g. M22, NGC1851, M2, and the more extreme Omega Centauri, that also show internal variations in s-elements, and in light elements within stars with different Fe and s-elements content. In view of the common variations in s-elements, we propose the term s-Fe-anomalous GCs to describe this sub-class of objects. The similarities in chemical abundance ratios between these objects strongly suggest similar formation and evolution histories, possibly associated with an origin in tidally disrupted dwarf satellites.Comment: 28 pages, 21 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Relativistic MHD Simulations of Jets with Toroidal Magnetic Fields

This paper presents an application of the recent relativistic HLLC approximate Riemann solver by Mignone & Bodo to magnetized flows with vanishing normal component of the magnetic field. The numerical scheme is validated in two dimensions by investigating the propagation of axisymmetric jets with toroidal magnetic fields. The selected jet models show that the HLLC solver yields sharper resolution of contact and shear waves and better convergence properties over the traditional HLL approach.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure

Using fiberless, wearable fNIRS to monitor brain activity in real-world cognitive tasks

Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a neuroimaging technique that uses near-infrared light to monitor brain activity. Based on neurovascular coupling, fNIRS is able to measure the haemoglobin concentration changes secondary to neuronal activity. Compared to other neuroimaging techniques, fNIRS represents a good compromise in terms of spatial and temporal resolution. Moreover, it is portable, lightweight, less sensitive to motion artifacts and does not impose significant physical restraints. It is therefore appropriate to monitor a wide range of cognitive tasks (e.g., auditory, gait analysis, social interaction) and different age populations (e.g., new-borns, adults, elderly people). The recent development of fiberless fNIRS devices has opened the way to new applications in neuroscience research. This represents a unique opportunity to study functional activity during real-world tests, which can be more sensitive and accurate in assessing cognitive function and dysfunction than lab-based tests. This study explored the use of fiberless fNIRS to monitor brain activity during a real-world prospective memory task. This protocol is performed outside the lab and brain haemoglobin concentration changes are continuously measured over the prefrontal cortex while the subject walks around in order to accomplish several different tasks

A novel GLM-based method for the Automatic IDentification of functional Events (AIDE) in fNIRS data recorded in naturalistic environments.

Recent technological advances have allowed the development of portable functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) devices that can be used to perform neuroimaging in the real-world. However, as real-world experiments are designed to mimic everyday life situations, the identification of event onsets can be extremely challenging and time-consuming. Here, we present a novel analysis method based on the general linear model (GLM) least square fit analysis for the Automatic IDentification of functional Events (or AIDE) directly from real-world fNIRS neuroimaging data. In order to investigate the accuracy and feasibility of this method, as a proof-of-principle we applied the algorithm to (i) synthetic fNIRS data simulating both block-, event-related and mixed-design experiments and (ii) experimental fNIRS data recorded during a conventional lab-based task (involving maths). AIDE was able to recover functional events from simulated fNIRS data with an accuracy of 89%, 97% and 91% for the simulated block-, event-related and mixed-design experiments respectively. For the lab-based experiment, AIDE recovered more than the 66.7% of the functional events from the fNIRS experimental measured data. To illustrate the strength of this method, we then applied AIDE to fNIRS data recorded by a wearable system on one participant during a complex real-world prospective memory experiment conducted outside the lab. As part of the experiment, there were four and six events (actions where participants had to interact with a target) for the two different conditions respectively (condition 1: social-interact with a person; condition 2: non-social-interact with an object). AIDE managed to recover 3/4 events and 3/6 events for conditions 1 and 2 respectively. The identified functional events were then corresponded to behavioural data from the video recordings of the movements and actions of the participant. Our results suggest that "brain-first" rather than "behaviour-first" analysis is possible and that the present method can provide a novel solution to analyse real-world fNIRS data, filling the gap between real-life testing and functional neuroimaging