Assessment framework for the impacts of climate change and urbanization on urban drainage systems

It has been widely recognized that global climate change will have negative impacts not only on the natural environment but also on the human-built environment. This paper describes the framework developed to assess the potential impacts of climate change and urbanization on drainage systems of Australian urban cities. One of real concerns is how the flooding risk will change over the next 5-25 years under such possible impacts. In this study, the assessment method is explored with regards to two major effects of climate change (i.e. changed pattern of storm event and rising sea level), two effects of urbanization (i.e. increasing impervious area and storm water harvesting) and two effects of hydraulic deterioration (i.e. reduced cross-sectional area and increased internal surface roughness of conduits). The framework is demonstrated on a simulation study at street. The outcomes of this study will provide preliminary understanding on how drainage systems respond to changing climate inputs and also guided steps to implement the framework on real-world problems

Analisis Kinerja Web Server Menggunakan Algoritma Round Robin dan Least Connection

In the industrialized world many companies are using web as a form of promotion or online transactions such as e-commerce. It handles millions of hit visits on the web server. There are many things that can cause the failure hit. One of them is the number of requests or transactions to the web server that is not able to be handled or the slowness of the response, which is very dangerous and detrimental for the company. The single web server with extremely expensive brands is a way to face the constraints overload, but only certain companies are able to have it. The issues faced, how to use some of the PCs as a web server with a reasonable economic value, could be empowered by implementing network load balancing technology. Network load balancing is a technology solution that is used, and expected to be able to handle the simultaneous load of web server with small output failure. Web server performance measurement at the round robin algorithm and least connection include parameters against components such as throughput, request loss, response time and cpu utilization, from the result of the measurement, it will be seen which is the best algorithm to use

Comparing the patterns of hypertension and type 2 diabetes mellitus in patients with colorectal cancer

Background: Type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) and hypertension are worldwide epidemic. Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the most prevalent gastrointestinal cancer in Iran. Prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus and hypertension in the patients with colorectal cancer had not reported in Iran, before this study. Methods: Overall, 2570 individual-year follow-ups were conducted for 1127 patients with colorectal cancer. For diagnosis of type 2 diabetes mellitus, fasting blood sugar and glycosylated hemoglobin tests were used and for that of hypertension, blood pressure was measured in two turns. The descriptive indices were calculated and the mean and median survivals, from colorectal cancer diagnosis time, were calculated using survival analysis and the comparison among survival times was done through log-rank test. Stata12 software was used for data analysis. Findings: The prevalences of hypertension and type 2 diabetes mellitus in the patients with colorectal cancer were 13.38 (95 CI: 11.1-15.8) and 8.69 (95 CI: 7.0-10.7), respectively. Median survival time in patients with hypertension and diabetes mellitus were 8.52 and 4.90 years, respectively. According to log-rank test, no significant difference was observed between the survival time of patients with colorectal cancer suffering from hypertension and type 2 diabetes mellitus. Conclusion: The obtained findings in this study indicate that survival time in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus is less than those with hypertension; but two metabolic diseases have same effect on survival rate of the patients with colorectal cancer. © 2014, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences(IUMS). All rights reserved

Risk assessment of drug management process in women surgery department of qaem educational hospital (QEH) using HFMEA method (2013)

Evaluation and improvement of drug management process are essential for patient safety. The present study was performed whit the aim of assessing risk of drug management process in Women Surgery Department of QEH using HFMEA method in 2013. A mixed method was used to analyze failure modes and their effects with HFMEA. To classify failure modes; nursing errors in clinical management model, for classifying factors affecting error; approved model by the UK National Health System, and for determining solutions for improvement; Theory of Inventive Problem Solving, were used. 48 failure modes were identified for 14 sub-process of five steps drug management process. The frequency of failure modes were as follow:35.3 in supplying step, 20.75 in prescription step, 10.4 in preparing step, 22.9 in distribution step and 10.35 in follow up and monitoring step. Seventeen failure modes (35.14) were considered as non-acceptable risk (hazard score� 8) and were transferred to decision tree. Among 51 Influencing factors, the most common reasons for error were related to environmental factors (21.5), and the less common reasons for error were related to patient factors (4.3). HFMEA is a useful tool to evaluating, prioritization and analyzing failure modes in drug management process. Revision drug management process based focus-PDCA, assessing adverse drug reactions (ADR), USE patient identification bracelet, holding periodical pharmaceutical conferences to improve personnel knowledge, patient contribution in drug therapy; are performance solutions which were placed in work order. © 2015 by School of Pharmac

An early Little Ice Age brackish water invasion along the south coast of the Caspian Sea (sediment of Langarud wetland) and its wider impacts on environment and people

Caspian Sea level has undergone significant changes through time with major impacts not only on the surrounding coasts, but also offshore. This study reports a brackish water invasion on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea constructed from a multi-proxy analysis of sediment retrieved from the Langarud wetland. The ground surface level of wetland is >6 m higher than the current Caspian Sea level (at -27.41 m in 2014) and located >11 km far from the coast. A sequence covering the last millennium was dated by three radiocarbon dates. The results from this new study suggest that Caspian Sea level rose up to at least -21.44 m (i.e. >6 m above the present water level) during the early Little Ice Age. Although previous studies in the southern coast of the Caspian Sea have detected a high-stand during the Little Ice Age period, this study presents the first evidence that this high-stand reached so far inland and at such a high altitude. Moreover, it confirms one of the very few earlier estimates of a high-stand at -21 m for the second half of the 14th century. The effects of this large-scale brackish water invasion on soil properties would have caused severe disruption to regional agriculture, thereby destabilizing local dynasties and facilitating a rapid Turko-Mongol expansion of Tamerlane’s armies from the east.N Ghasemi (INIOAS), V Jahani (Gilan Province Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organisation) and A Naqinezhad (University of Mazandaran), INQUA QuickLakeH project (no. 1227) and to the European project Marie Curie, CLIMSEAS-PIRSES-GA-2009-24751

Using STROBE checklist to assess the reporting quality of observational studies affiliated with Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, and its correlates: a scientometric study from Iran

The reporting quality of Observational Studies (OSs) is an important measure of their overall quality. We aim to assess the reporting quality of OSs of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences (SUMS) in Iran in the years 2012–2015, using Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies checklist. Systematic online search was performed. A random sample of SUMS affiliated published articles was selected. Articles were appraised and scored by two reviewers. Variables such as the study design, publication year, journals’ impact factor etc. were retrieved and their correlation with the articles’ scores was assessed. Out of 4297 published articles during 2012–2015, 1742 (40.5%) were OSs of which we assessed 171 (~ 10%) studies. Among these, 87 (50.9%), 74 (43.3%) and 10 (5.8%) articles had a cross-sectional, case–control and cohort design, respectively. Overall score of the reporting quality was 79% ± 0.01. It was at 81% ± 0.1, 77% ± 0.01 and 83% ± 0.02 for cross-sectional, case–control and cohort studies, respectively. A significant correlation was observed between the study design and the score for the reporting quality (P = 0.015). Reporting of “flow-diagram” (5%), “sources of bias” (28%) and “study size calculation” (30%) were the most missed items. Although the overall reporting quality of OSs was found to be at an acceptable rate, there are points of concern regarding some of the most important items that deserve the attention of authors as well as reviewers and editors

Quantum critical dynamics in a 5000-qubit programmable spin glass

Experiments on disordered alloys suggest that spin glasses can be brought into low-energy states faster by annealing quantum fluctuations than by conventional thermal annealing. Due to the importance of spin glasses as a paradigmatic computational testbed, reproducing this phenomenon in a programmable system has remained a central challenge in quantum optimization. Here we achieve this goal by realizing quantum critical spin-glass dynamics on thousands of qubits with a superconducting quantum annealer. We first demonstrate quantitative agreement between quantum annealing and time-evolution of the Schr\"odinger equation in small spin glasses. We then measure dynamics in 3D spin glasses on thousands of qubits, where simulation of many-body quantum dynamics is intractable. We extract critical exponents that clearly distinguish quantum annealing from the slower stochastic dynamics of analogous Monte Carlo algorithms, providing both theoretical and experimental support for a scaling advantage in reducing energy as a function of annealing time

Quantum error mitigation in quantum annealing

Quantum Error Mitigation (QEM) presents a promising near-term approach to reduce error when estimating expectation values in quantum computing. Here, we introduce QEM techniques tailored for quantum annealing, using Zero-Noise Extrapolation (ZNE). We implement ZNE through zero-temperature extrapolation as well as energy-time rescaling. We conduct experimental investigations into the quantum critical dynamics of a transverse-field Ising spin chain, demonstrating the successful mitigation of thermal noise through both of these techniques. Moreover, we show that energy-time rescaling effectively mitigates control errors in the coherent regime where the effect of thermal noise is minimal. Our ZNE results agree with exact calculations of the coherent evolution over a range of annealing times that exceeds the coherent annealing range by almost an order of magnitude.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure