Free surface flows with large slopes: beyond lubrication theory

The description of free surface flows can often be simplified to thin film (or lubrication) equations, when the slopes of the liquid-gas interface are small. Here we present a long wavelength theory that remains fully quantitative for steep interface slopes, by expanding about Stokes flow in a wedge. For small capillary numbers, the variations of the interface slope are slow and can be treated perturbatively. This geometry occurs naturally for flows with contact lines: we quantify the difference with ordinary lubrication theory through a numerical example and analytically recover the full Cox-Voinov asymptotic solution.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Self esteem of learning handicapped students in resource specialist programs at the secondary level

Receipt of resource specialist services and possible resulting low self-esteem -- Gender, grade, age, placement criteria

Attending to Immigrants' Everyday Activities: A New Perspective on Ensuring Asian Immigrants' Quality of Life

INTRODUCTION: The quality of Asian immigrants’ lives is significant to the harmony of New Zealand society where, at the 2013 Census, 11.8% of its residents identified as Asian. However, settlement can be stressful for new Asian immigrants because moving to a country with a different culture can disrupt most of their familiar routines, and it is strongly associated with marginalisation and isolation from society. Recognising these challenges, social workers have positioned themselves at the forefront of efforts to improve Asian immigrants’ quality of life. METHOD: An occupational perspective is applied to underpin an examination of Asian immigrants’ participation in Aotearoa New Zealand society. Occupational science is a basic social science grounded in the notion that people engage in occupations for their existence and that the drive to be occupied has evolutionary, psychological, social, and symbolic roots. CONCLUSIONS: This article suggests an occupational perspective as a new analytic framework which has the potential to give social workers clearer insight into the realities which Asian immigrants encounter; consequently, increasing their ability to support Asian immigrants’ full participation into a new society

Network Lasso: Clustering and Optimization in Large Graphs

Convex optimization is an essential tool for modern data analysis, as it provides a framework to formulate and solve many problems in machine learning and data mining. However, general convex optimization solvers do not scale well, and scalable solvers are often specialized to only work on a narrow class of problems. Therefore, there is a need for simple, scalable algorithms that can solve many common optimization problems. In this paper, we introduce the \emph{network lasso}, a generalization of the group lasso to a network setting that allows for simultaneous clustering and optimization on graphs. We develop an algorithm based on the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) to solve this problem in a distributed and scalable manner, which allows for guaranteed global convergence even on large graphs. We also examine a non-convex extension of this approach. We then demonstrate that many types of problems can be expressed in our framework. We focus on three in particular - binary classification, predicting housing prices, and event detection in time series data - comparing the network lasso to baseline approaches and showing that it is both a fast and accurate method of solving large optimization problems

Enhancing creative problem solving and creative self-efficacy: a preliminary study

The ability to improve creative problem solving (CPS) is considered to be an important resource in a variety of fields such as education (see Murdock, 2003) and business (see Thompson, 2003). Previous research suggests that interventions aimed at training people to improve their CPS skills can be effective, however it is not always clear what tools are being used and it is sometimes difficult to untangle the effect the different tools are having (see Vernon, Hocking, & Tyler, 2016, for a review). This study therefore aimed to utilise an empirically- based creativity toolkit in an 8 week training program aimed at enhancing students' CPS skills. The intervention group was comprised of 33 psychology students who signed up to undertake 8 weeks of CPS training and the control group (n = 9) were matched for contact time, undertaking 8 weeks of cognitive psychology lectures instead. In week 1 (Time 1) and week 8 (Time 2) all participants were assessed using two Unusual Uses Tasks (UUT) and a Creative Problem Solving (CPS) task and were also asked to fill out measures of creative self-efficacy. Analyses revealed that whilst the control group showed no improvement on any of the measures from Time 1 to Time 2, the intervention group showed a significant increase in both their creative self-efficacy and also their levels of creativity on both the UUT and CPS tasks. Whilst a follow- up study utilising a larger control group is ideally needed, these preliminary findings nonetheless support the use of this empirically based creativity toolkit for enhancing creativity problem solving skills

Relaxation of a dewetting contact line Part 2: Experiments

The dynamics of receding contact lines is investigated experimentally through controlled perturbations of a meniscus in a dip coating experiment. We first characterize stationary menisci and their breakdown at the coating transition. It is then shown that the dynamics of both liquid deposition and long-wavelength perturbations adiabatically follow these stationary states. This provides a first experimental access to the entire bifurcation diagram of dynamical wetting, confirming the hydrodynamic theory developed in Part 1. In contrast to quasi-static theories based on a dynamic contact angle, we demonstrate that the transition strongly depends on the large scale flow geometry. We then establish the dispersion relation for large wavenumbers, for which we find that sigma is linear in q. The speed dependence of sigma is well described by hydrodynamic theory, in particular the absence of diverging time-scales at the critical point. Finally, we highlight some open problems related to contact angle hysteresis that lead beyond the current description.Comment: 20 pages, 11 figures Part 1 is stored as Arxiv 0705.357

Relaxation of a dewetting contact line Part 1: A full-scale hydrodynamic calculation

The relaxation of a dewetting contact line is investigated theoretically in the so-called "Landau-Levich" geometry in which a vertical solid plate is withdrawn from a bath of partially wetting liquid. The study is performed in the framework of lubrication theory, in which the hydrodynamics is resolved at all length scales (from molecular to macroscopic). We investigate the bifurcation diagram for unperturbed contact lines, which turns out to be more complex than expected from simplified 'quasi-static' theories based upon an apparent contact angle. Linear stability analysis reveals that below the critical capillary number of entrainment, Ca_c, the contact line is linearly stable at all wavenumbers. Away from the critical point the dispersion relation has an asymptotic behaviour sigma~|q| and compares well to a quasi-static approach. Approaching Ca_c, however, a different mechanism takes over and the dispersion evolves from |q| to the more common q^2. These findings imply that contact lines can not be treated as universal objects governed by some effective law for the macroscopic contact angle, but viscous effects have to be treated explicitly.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figure

Mutation in the guanine nucleotide-binding protein beta-3 causes retinal degeneration and embryonic mortality in chickens

PURPOSE. To identify the gene defect that causes blindness and the predisposition to embryonic death in the retinopathy globe enlarged (rge) chicken. METHODS. Linkage analysis, with previously uncharacterized microsatellite markers from chicken chromosome 1, was performed on 138 progeny of an rge/+ and an rge/rge cross, and candidate genes were sequenced. RESULTS. The rge locus was refined and the gene for guanine nucleotide-binding protein β-3 (GNB3), which encodes a cone transducin β subunit, was found to have a 3-bp deletion (D153del) that segregated with the rge phenotype. This mutation deleted a highly conserved aspartic acid residue in the third of seven WD domains in GNB3. In silico modeling suggested that this mutation destabilized the protein. Furthermore, a 70% reduction was found in immunoreactivity to anti-GNB3 in the rge-affected retina. CONCLUSIONS. These findings implicate the β-subunit of cone transducin as the defective protein underlying the rge phenotype. Furthermore, GNB3 is ubiquitously expressed, and the c.825C→T GNB3 splicing variant (MIM 139130) has been associated with hypertension, obesity, diabetes, low birth weight, coronary heart disease, and stroke in the human population. It therefore seems likely that the defect underlying these human diseases also causes reduced embryonic viability in the rge chicken, making it a powerful model for studying the pathology involved in these associations

The Adelaide VHF radar: Capabilities and future plans

The VHF radar at Buckland Park, South Australia commenced operation in January, 1984. The radar is located adjacent to the 2-MHz ionospheric radar. The routine method for measuring horizontal wind velocity is the space antenna technique (SA) while the Doppler technique is used to measure vertical velocities. It is possible to swing the transmitting beam in the east-west plane, allowing Doppler measurements of the EW wind component