Waste management in the stingless bee Melipona beecheii Bennett (Hymenoptera: Apidae)

Waste management is important in insect societies because waste can be hazardous to adults, brood and food stores. The general organization of waste management and the influence of task partitioning, division of labor and age polyethism on waste processing were studied in three colonies of the tropical American stingless bee Melipona beecheii Bennett in Yucatán, Mexico. Waste generated in the colony (feces, old brood cells, cocoons, dead adults and brood) was collected by workers throughout the nest and taken to specific waste dumps within the nest. During the day, workers based at the waste dumps formed waste pellets, which they directly transferred in 93% of cases, to other workers who subsequently removed them from the nest. This is an example of task partitioning and is hypothesized to improve nest hygiene as has been found in leafcutting ants, Atta. To investigate division of labor and age polyethism we marked a cohort of 144 emerging workers. Workers forming waste pellets were on average 31.2±6.5 days old (±SD, N= 40, range of 18-45 days). The life span of M. beecheii workers was 49.0±14.0 days (N= 144). There was no difference in the life span of workers who formed (52.2±11.6 days, N= 40) or did not form (49.9±11.5 days, N= 97) waste pellets, suggesting that waste work did not increase mortality. Although waste was probably not hazardous to adults and brood, because the dumps are located outside the brood chamber, its presence inside the nests can attract phorid flies and predators, which can harm the colony

The Australian Incident Monitoring Study in Intensive Care: AIMS-ICU. The development and evaluation of an incident reporting system in intensive care

Publisher's copy made available with the permission of the publisher © 1996 Australian Society of AnaesthetistsIntensive care units are complex, dynamic patient management environments. Incidents and accidents can be caused by human error, by problems inherent in complex systems, or by a combination of these. Study objectives were to develop and evaluate an incident reporting system. A report form was designed eliciting a description of the incident, contextual information and contributing factors. Staff group sessions using open-ended questions, observations in the workplace and a review of earlier narratives were used to develop the report form. Three intensive care units participated in a two-month evaluation study. Feedback questionnaires were used to assess staff attitudes and understanding, project design and organization. These demonstrated a positive attitude and good understanding by more than 90% participants. Errors in communication, technique, problem recognition and charting were the predisposing factors most commonly chosen in the 128 incidents reported. It was concluded that incident monitoring may be a suitable technique for improving patient safety in intensive care.U. Beckman, L.F. West, G.J. Groombridge, I. Baldwin, G.K. Hart, D.G. Clayton, R.K. Webb, W.B. Runcima

Generating derivative structures: Algorithm and applications

We present an algorithm for generating all derivative superstructures--for arbitrary parent structures and for any number of atom types. This algorithm enumerates superlattices and atomic configurations in a geometry-independent way. The key concept is to use the quotient group associated with each superlattice to determine all unique atomic configurations. The run time of the algorithm scales linearly with the number of unique structures found. We show several applications demonstrating how the algorithm can be used in materials design problems. We predict an altogether new crystal structure in Cd-Pt and Pd-Pt, and several new ground states in Pd-rich and Pt-rich binary systems

Electronic Structure of Cu_(1-x)Ni_xRh_2S_4 and CuRh_2Se_4: Band Structure Calculations, X-ray Photoemission and Fluorescence Measurements

The electronic structure of spinel-type Cu_(1-x)Ni_xRh_2S_4 (x = 0.0, 0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 1.0) and CuRh_2Se_4 compounds has been studied by means of X-ray photoelectron and fluorescent spectroscopy. Cu L_3, Ni L_3, S L_(2,3) and Se M_(2,3) X-ray emission spectra (XES) were measured near thresholds at Beamline 8.0 of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory's Advanced Light Source. XES measurements of the constituent atoms of these compounds, reduced to the same binding energy scale, are found to be in excellent agreement with XPS valence bands. The calculated XES spectra which include dipole matrix elements show that the partial density of states reproduce experimental spectra quite well. States near the Fermi level (E_F) have strong Rh d and S(Se) p character in all compounds. In NiRh_2S_4 the Ni 3d states contribute strongly at E_F, whereas in both Cu compounds the Cu 3d bands are only ~1 eV wide and centered ~2.5 eV below E_F, leaving very little 3d character at E_F. The density of states at the Fermi level is less in NiRh_2S_4 than in CuRh_2S_4. This difference may contribute to the observed decrease, as a function of Ni concentration, in the superconducting transition temperature in Cu_(1-x)Ni_xRh_2S_4. The density of states of the ordered alloy Cu_(1/2)Ni_(1/2)Rh_2S_4 shows behavior that is more ``split-band''-like than ``rigid band''-like.Comment: 7 pages of text, 11 trailing figures, updated to fix faulty postscript in Fig.

Neural NILM: Deep Neural Networks Applied to Energy Disaggregation

Energy disaggregation estimates appliance-by-appliance electricity consumption from a single meter that measures the whole home's electricity demand. Recently, deep neural networks have driven remarkable improvements in classification performance in neighbouring machine learning fields such as image classification and automatic speech recognition. In this paper, we adapt three deep neural network architectures to energy disaggregation: 1) a form of recurrent neural network called `long short-term memory' (LSTM); 2) denoising autoencoders; and 3) a network which regresses the start time, end time and average power demand of each appliance activation. We use seven metrics to test the performance of these algorithms on real aggregate power data from five appliances. Tests are performed against a house not seen during training and against houses seen during training. We find that all three neural nets achieve better F1 scores (averaged over all five appliances) than either combinatorial optimisation or factorial hidden Markov models and that our neural net algorithms generalise well to an unseen house.Comment: To appear in ACM BuildSys'15, November 4--5, 2015, Seou

Design and development of novel screen-printed microelectrode and microbiosensor arrays fabricated using ultrafast pulsed laser ablation

© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. A new generic platform for the development of microbiosensors combining screen-printing and ultrafast pulsed laser technologies has been developed, characterised and evaluated. This new platform consists of a layer of screen-printed carbon ink containing the enzyme and mediator, covered with an insulating layer formed from a dielectric screen printed ink. Microholes were drilled through the insulated layer by ultrafast pulsed laser ablation to generate the microbiosensor array. The geometry of the microelectrode array was evaluated by optical microscopy, white light surface profiling and scanning electron microscopy. The electrochemical behaviour of the microelectrode array was characterised by cyclic voltammetry and compared with macroelectrodes. The analytical performance of the microbiosensor array was evaluated with external counter and reference electrodes for hydrogen peroxide and glucose determination showing linearity up to 4 mmol L-1 and 20 mmol L-1 (360 mg dL-1) respectively. The full screen printed three-electrode configuration shows linearity for glucose determination up to 20 mmol L-1 (360 mg dL-1). This study provides a new fabrication method for microelectrode and microbiosensor arrays capable for the first time to retain the activity of the enzymatic system after processing by pulse laser ablation

BAs-GaAs Semiconductor Alloys as a Photovoltaic Alternative to Nitride Alloys

Nitrogen alloyed III-V semiconductor compounds have been intensely studied in recent years due to unusual effects caused by nitrogen alloying. These effects are exploited in band gap engineering for specific applications such as solar cells and blue lasers

The monopole mass in the three-dimensional Georgi-Glashow model

We study the three-dimensional Georgi-Glashow model to demonstrate how magnetic monopoles can be studied fully non-perturbatively in lattice Monte Carlo simulations, without any assumptions about the smoothness of the field configurations. We examine the apparent contradiction between the conjectured analytic connection of the `broken' and `symmetric' phases, and the interpretation of the mass (i.e., the free energy) of the fully quantised 't Hooft-Polyakov monopole as an order parameter to distinguish the phases. We use Monte Carlo simulations to measure the monopole free energy and its first derivative with respect to the scalar mass. On small volumes we compare this to semi-classical predictions for the monopole. On large volumes we show that the free energy is screened to zero, signalling the formation of a confining monopole condensate. This screening does not allow the monopole mass to be interpreted as an order parameter, resolving the paradox.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, uses revtex. Minor changes made to the text to match with the published version at http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRD/v65/e12500

Problems in Lattice Gauge Fixing

We review many topics and results about numeric gauge fixing in lattice QCD.Comment: 47 pages, 16 eps figures. Review article sent to IJMP