Herijking EHS Noord-Holland : een toets vanuit het perspectief van ruimtelijke samenhang

De realisatie van de Ecologische Hoofdstructuur in de Provincie Noord-Holland ligt achter op schema. Hierom hebben Gedeputeerde Staten van Noord-Holland besloten te onderzoeken of via een herbegrenzing een groter deel van de EHS nog is te realiseren. De gebieden die in aanmerking komen voor herbegrenzing zijn beoordeeld op de ruimtelijke samenhang van het gebied zelf én de mate waarin het gebied bijdraagt aan de omgeving. Op basis van de analyses mag geconcludeerd worden dat de beoogde herbegrenzing in Noord-Holland goed is voor de ruimtelijke samenhang van de provinciale EHS. Tevens zijn er twee quick-scan analyses uitgevoerd die een positief beeld laten zien van de herbegrenzingen op het niveau van Natuurdoelen en in relatie tot Natura2000-gebieden

Promoting Community College Student Completion Through On-demand Informational Video Modules

Given the individual and societal benefits of earning a higher education credential, such as advancements across academic fields and increased rates of civic and political engagement, the decrease in educational attainment in the United States is cause for concern (Bowen, Chingos, & McPherson, 2009). By 2016-2017, the 2011-2012 California community college statewide student cohort had only achieved a 48.2% completion rate (California Community College Chancellor’s Office, 2019). Facing similar completion rates as the rest of California, by 2016-2017, students at one community college in the San Francisco Bay Area, Oak Tree Community College (OTCC), had achieved a 52.3% rate of completion six years after their initial enrollment (California Community College Chancellor’s Office, 2019). A needs assessment conducted during the spring 2019 semester concluded that students at OTCC do not understand the requirements for completing a degree or certificate and/or transferring, seeking out support services can be arduous and inconvenient, and students do not define success that same way as the state chancellor’s office. In an effort to increase student knowledge and ultimately increase program completion, the author created and piloted an informational video module program in two degree-applicable, transfer-level courses at OTCC during the fall 2020 semester. The intervention program yielded statistically significant (p < .01) increases in participant knowledge of program completion requirements, available support services, and how the college defines student success. Findings of the study suggest the intervention’s efficacy for on-demand informational video modules as a supplemental resource to existing student support services

QKD in Standard Optical Telecommunications Networks

To perform Quantum Key Distribution, the mastering of the extremely weak signals carried by the quantum channel is required. Transporting these signals without disturbance is customarily done by isolating the quantum channel from any noise sources using a dedicated physical channel. However, to really profit from this technology, a full integration with conventional network technologies would be highly desirable. Trying to use single photon signals with others that carry an average power many orders of magnitude bigger while sharing as much infrastructure with a conventional network as possible brings obvious problems. The purpose of the present paper is to report our efforts in researching the limits of the integration of QKD in modern optical networks scenarios. We have built a full metropolitan area network testbed comprising a backbone and an access network. The emphasis is put in using as much as possible the same industrial grade technology that is actually used in already installed networks, in order to understand the throughput, limits and cost of deploying QKD in a real network

Crowdsourcing Linked Data on listening experiences through reuse and enhancement of library data

Research has approached the practice of musical reception in a multitude of ways, such as the analysis of professional critique, sales figures and psychological processes activated by the act of listening. Studies in the Humanities, on the other hand, have been hindered by the lack of structured evidence of actual experiences of listening as reported by the listeners themselves, a concern that was voiced since the early Web era. It was however assumed that such evidence existed, albeit in pure textual form, but could not be leveraged until it was digitised and aggregated. The Listening Experience Database (LED) responds to this research need by providing a centralised hub for evidence of listening in the literature. Not only does LED support search and reuse across nearly 10,000 records, but it also provides machine-readable structured data of the knowledge around the contexts of listening. To take advantage of the mass of formal knowledge that already exists on the Web concerning these contexts, the entire framework adopts Linked Data principles and technologies. This also allows LED to directly reuse open data from the British Library for the source documentation that is already published. Reused data are re-published as open data with enhancements obtained by expanding over the model of the original data, such as the partitioning of published books and collections into individual stand-alone documents. The database was populated through crowdsourcing and seamlessly incorporates data reuse from the very early data entry phases. As the sources of the evidence often contain vague, fragmentary of uncertain information, facilities were put in place to generate structured data out of such fuzziness. Alongside elaborating on these functionalities, this article provides insights into the most recent features of the latest instalment of the dataset and portal, such as the interlinking with the MusicBrainz database, the relaxation of geographical input constraints through text mining, and the plotting of key locations in an interactive geographical browser

Acute and chronic respiratory effects of sodium borate particulate exposures.

This study examined work-related chronic abnormality in pulmonary function and work-related acute irritant symptoms associated with exposure to borate dust in mining and processing operations. Chronic effects were examined by pulmonary function at the beginning and end of a 7-year interval. Time-specific estimates of sodium borate particulate exposures were used to estimate cumulative exposure during the study interval. Change in pulmonary function over the 7 years was found unrelated to the estimate of cumulative exposure during that interval. Exposure-response associations also were examined with respect to short-term peak exposures and incidence of five symptoms of acute respiratory irritation. Hourly measures of health outcome and continuous measures of particulate exposure were made on each subject throughout the day. Whenever a subject reported one of the irritant symptoms, a symptom intensity score was also recorded along with the approximate time of onset. The findings indicated that exposure-response relationships were present for each of the specific symptoms at several symptom intensity levels. The associations were present when exposure was estimated by both day-long and short-term (15-min) time-weighted average exposures. Associations persisted after taking account of smoking, age, and the presence of a common cold. No significant difference in response rate was found between workers exposed to different types of sodium borate dusts

Bromidebalansberekeningen voor het Hoogheemraadschap van Delfland voor de periode september 1979 tot en met augustus 1980

Tussen mei 1979 en oktober 1980 is een onderzoek gedaan naar de bromidehuishouding van het gebied, dat onder beheer van Hoogheemraadschap Delfland valt. Het onderzoek had primair ten doel de invloed van het gebruik van methylbromide als grondontsmettingsmiddel in de glastuinbouw op de bromideconcentraties in het oppervlaktewater van het gebied te bepalen. Daartoe werden polder- en boezemwateren in zowel specifieke glastuinbouwgebieden als in graslandgebieden regelmatig bemonsterd. In deze nota volgt een kwantificering van de bromidehuishouding

Estimates for practical quantum cryptography

In this article I present a protocol for quantum cryptography which is secure against attacks on individual signals. It is based on the Bennett-Brassard protocol of 1984 (BB84). The security proof is complete as far as the use of single photons as signal states is concerned. Emphasis is given to the practicability of the resulting protocol. For each run of the quantum key distribution the security statement gives the probability of a successful key generation and the probability for an eavesdropper's knowledge, measured as change in Shannon entropy, to be below a specified maximal value.Comment: Authentication scheme corrected. Other improvements of presentatio

Association Between Acute Kidney Injury Hospital Visits and Environmental Heat Stress at a Nicaraguan Sugarcane Plantation

Background: Mesoamerican sugarcane cutters are at a high risk of chronic kidney disease of non-traditional origin, a disease likely linked to heat-related acute kidney injury (AKI). Studies in general populations have described a positive association between high environmental temperatures and clinically assessed kidney outcomes, but there are no studies in occupational settings. Method: We accessed routine records of clinically diagnosed AKI (AKI-CD) and wet bulb globe temperatures (WBGT) at a large Nicaraguan sugarcane plantation and modeled the relationship between these using negative binomial regression. A rest-shade-hydration intervention was gradually enhanced during the study period, and efforts were made to increase the referral of workers with suspected AKI to healthcare. Results: Each 1°C WBGT was associated with an 18% (95% confidence interval [CI]: [4, 33%]) higher AKI-CD rate on the same day and a 14% (95% CI [−5, 37%]) higher rate over a week. AKI-CD rates and severity, and time between symptoms onset and diagnosis decreased during the study period, that is, with increasing rest-shade-hydration intervention. Symptoms and biochemical signs of systemic inflammation were common among AKI-CD cases. Discussion: Occupational heat stress, resulting from heavy work in environmental heat, was associated with a higher rate of clinically diagnosed AKI in a population at risk of CKDnt. Promoting rest-shade-hydration may have contributed to reducing AKI rates during the study period. Occupational health and safety personnel have key roles to play in enforcing rest, shade, and hydration practices, referring workers with suspected AKI to healthcare as well as collecting and analyzing the data needed to support workplace heat stress interventions

Klimaateffecten op de Natura 2000 moerascorridor, Quick Scan in het Groene Hart

Dit onderzoek is uitgevoerd om antwoord te vinden op de volgende vraag: Welke gevolgen heeft klimaatverandering op eutrofiëring, verdroging en verzilting in acht Natura 2000 gebieden in het Groene Hart? De hydrologische gegevens zijn ontleend aan de acht gebieden: Naardermeer, Botshol, Oostelijke Binnenpolder van Tienhoven, Molenpolder, Groot Wilnis Vinkeveen, Nieuwkoop en Noorden, Oukoop en Krimpenerwaar