Effects of conversation interference on annoyance due to aircraft noise

The annoyance and interference effects of aircraft flyover noise on face to face conversation were investigated. Twenty 5 minute sessions, each composed of three flyovers, were presented to each of 20 pairs of female subjects in a simulated living room. Flyovers varied in peak noise level (55-79 dB, A-weighted) and spectrum (low or high frequency components). Subjects engaged in conversation for 10 sessions and in reverie for the other 10 sessions, and completed subjective ratings following every session. Annoyance was affected by noise level, but was not significantly different for the two activities of reverie and conversation. A noise level of 77 db was found unacceptable for conversation by 50 percent of the subjects. Conversation interference was assessed by incidence of increased vocal effort and/or interruption of conversation during flyovers. Although conversation interference increased with noise level, the conversation interference measures did not improve prediction of individual annoyance judgments

Nonflammable organic-base paint for oxygen-rich atmospheres

New paint formulations, which combine aqueous latex paints with inorganic pigments and additives, produce coatings that are self-extinguishing in pure oxygen at pressures up to twice the partial pressure of atmospheric oxygen. A paint formulation in percent by weight is given and the properties of resultant coatings are discussed

Time to publication for NIHR HTA programme-funded research: a cohort study

ObjectiveTo assess the time to publication of primary research and evidence syntheses funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme published as a monograph in Health Technology Assessment and as a journal article in the wider biomedical literature.Study designRetrospective cohort study.SettingPrimary research and evidence synthesis projects funded by the HTA Programme were included in the cohort if they were registered in the NIHR research programmes database and was planned to submit the draft final report for publication in Health Technology Assessment on or before 9 December 2011.Main outcome measuresThe median time to publication and publication at 30?months in Health Technology Assessment and in an external journal were determined by searching the NIHR research programmes database and HTA Programme website.ResultsOf 458 included projects, 184 (40.2%) were primary research projects and 274 (59.8%) were evidence syntheses. A total of 155 primary research projects had a completion date; the median time to publication was 23?months (26.5 and 35.5?months to publish a monograph and to publish in an external journal, respectively) and 69% were published within 30?months. The median time to publication of HTA-funded trials (n=126) was 24?months and 67.5% were published within 30?months. Among the evidence syntheses with a protocol online date (n=223), the median time to publication was 25.5?months (28?months to publication as a monograph), but only 44.4% of evidence synthesis projects were published in an external journal. 65% of evidence synthesis studies had been published within 30.0?months.ConclusionsResearch funded by the HTA Programme publishes promptly. The importance of Health Technology Assessment was highlighted as the median time to publication was 9?months shorter for a monograph than an external journal article

Attitude control study for a large flexible spacecraft using a Solar Electric Propulsion System (SEPS)

The attitude control performance of the solar electric propulsion system (SEPS) was evaluated. A thrust vector control system for powered flight control was examined along with a gas jet reaction control system, and a reaction wheel system, both of which have been proposed for nonpowered flight control. Comprehensive computer simulations of each control system were made and evaluated using a 30 mode spacecraft model. Results obtained indicate that thrust vector control and reaction wheel systems offer acceptable smooth proportional control. The gas jet control system is shown to be risky for a flexible structure such as SEPS, and is therefore, not recommended as a primary control method

Suicidal behavior in individuals accused or convicted of child sex abuse or indecent image offenses: systematic review of prevalence and risk factors

Objective An emerging body of research indicates that child sex abuse (CSA) offenders are at high risk of suicide when their offenses come to light and that those accused of accessing indecent images of children (IIOC) are at particular risk. Methods We conducted a systematic review and narrative synthesis on suicide rates and risk factors in this population of offenders. A keyword search of bibliographic databases (PsycINFO, Ovid, MEDLINE, Embase, PILOTS, SCIE, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials [CENTRAL] and CINAHL) was conducted. Results Eighteen articles were included in the review, with eleven studies meeting criteria for quality assessment. The risk of suicide in perpetrators of CSA and IIOC might be over 100 times that of the general population, although estimates vary widely between studies. Several complex, interlinking factors were identified as associated with risk, including shame, unique demographic characteristics of the offenders, absence of prior criminal contact, and the impact of a criminal investigation. Conclusions The review identified factors that may have practical, clinical, and operational implications in the prevention of suicide in CSA and IIOC perpetrators. Exploring the impact of the investigation itself on suicide risk, including potential operational strategies and clinical input to reduce risk, should be a priority

Composite Goodness-of-fit Tests with Kernels

Model misspecification can create significant challenges for the implementation of probabilistic models, and this has led to development of a range of inference methods which directly account for this issue. However, whether these more involved methods are required will depend on whether the model is really misspecified, and there is a lack of generally applicable methods to answer this question. One set of tools which can help are goodness-of-fit tests, where we test whether a dataset could have been generated by a fixed distribution. Kernel-based tests have been developed to for this problem, and these are popular due to their flexibility, strong theoretical guarantees and ease of implementation in a wide range of scenarios. In this paper, we extend this line of work to the more challenging composite goodness-of-fit problem, where we are instead interested in whether the data comes from any distribution in some parametric family. This is equivalent to testing whether a parametric model is well-specified for the data

CARINA alkalinity data in the Atlantic Ocean

Data on carbon and carbon-relevant hydrographic and hydrochemical parameters from previously non-publicly available cruise data sets in the Arctic, Atlantic and Southern Ocean have been retrieved and merged to a new database: CARINA (CARbon IN the Atlantic). These data have gone through rigorous quality control (QC) procedures to assure the highest possible quality and consistency. The data for most of the measured parameters in the CARINA data base were objectively examined in order to quantify systematic differences in the reported values, i.e. secondary quality control. Systematic biases found in the data have been corrected in the data products, i.e. three merged data files with measured, calculated and interpolated data for each of the three CARINA regions; Arctic, Atlantic and Southern Ocean. Out of a total of 188 cruise entries in the CARINA database, 98 were conducted in the Atlantic Ocean and of these, 75 cruises report alkalinity values. Here we present details of the secondary QC on alkalinity for the Atlantic Ocean part of CARINA. Procedures of quality control, including crossover analysis between cruises and inversion analysis of all crossover data are briefly described. Adjustments were applied to the alkalinity values for 16 of the cruises in the Atlantic Ocean region. With these adjustments the CARINA database is consistent both internally as well as with GLODAP data, an oceanographic data set based on the World Hydrographic Program in the 1990s. Based on our analysis we estimate the internal accuracy of the CARINA-ATL alkalinity data to be 3.3 μmol kg−1. The CARINA data are now suitable for accurate assessments of, for example, oceanic carbon inventories and uptake rates and for model validation

HOPS: Automated detection and authentication of pathogen DNA in archaeological remains

High-throughput DNA sequencing enables large-scale metagenomic analyses of complex biological systems. Such analyses are not restricted to present day environmental or clinical samples, but can also be fruitfully applied to molecular data from archaeological remains (ancient DNA), and a focus on ancient bacteria can provide valuable information on the long-term evolutionary relationship between hosts and their pathogens. Here we present HOPS (Heuristic Operations for Pathogen Screening), an automated bacterial screening pipeline for ancient DNA sequence data that provides straightforward and reproducible information on species identification and authenticity. HOPS provides a versatile and fast pipeline for high-throughput screening of bacterial DNA from archaeological material to identify candidates for subsequent genomic-level analyses