Variations in the spatial distribution of 11 Micron radiation from omicron Ceti

The spatial distribution of 11 micron radiation from omicron Ceti was observed at various phases of its light cycle using a stellar interferometer. Changes were seen which can be attributed to variation in the strength of thermal emission from circumstellar dust relative to the stellar continuum at 11 microns. These changes are shown to be correlated with the changes in luminosity of micron Ceti in such a way that dust grain emission at 11 microns was increased more than the continuum during the period of maximum luminosity. The degree of the change in dust grain emission implies that the maximum dust temperature is in the range of 500 K to 700 K during minimum stellar luminosity

Spatial heterodyne interferometry of VY Canis Major's, alpha Orionis, alpha Scorpii, and R leonis at 11 microns

Using the technique of heterodyne interferometry, measurements were made of the spatial distribution of 11 micron radiation from four late type stars. The circumstellar shells surrounding VY Canis Majoris, alpha Orionis, and alpha Scorpii were resolved, whereas that of R Leonis was only partially resolved at a fringe spacing of 0.4 sec

Clinical characteristics of mephedrone toxicity reported to the UK National Poisons Information Service

Objective To describe the patterns and clinical features of toxicity related to recreational use of mephedrone and other cathinones in the UK using data collected by the National Poisons Information Service (NPIS). Methods The number of accesses to TOXBASE, the NPIS online poisons information database, details of consecutive cases uploaded onto TOXBASE and the number and details of telephone enquiries made to the NPIS by health professionals in the UK were collected for the period March 2009 to February 2010. Results Over the year of study there were 2901 TOXBASE accesses and 188 telephone enquiries relating to cathinones, the majority relating to mephedrone (TOXBASE 1664, telephone 157), with a month-on-month increase in numbers. In 131 telephone enquiries concerning mephedrone, alone or in combination with alcohol, common clinical features reported included agitation or aggression (n=32, 24%, 95% CI 18% to 33%), tachycardia (n=29, 22%, 95% CI 16% to 30%), confusion or psychosis (n=18, 14%, 95% CI 9% to 21%), chest pain (n=17, 13%, 95% CI 8% to 20%), nausea (n=15, 11%, 95% CI 7% to 18%), palpitations (n=14, 11%, 95% CI 6% to 18%), peripheral vasoconstriction (n=10, 8%, 95% CI 4% to 14%) and headache (n=7, 5%, 95% CI 2% to 11%). Convulsions were reported in four cases (3%, 95% CI 1% to 8%). One exposed person died following cardiac arrest (1%, 95% CI 0% to 4%), although subsequent investigation suggested that mephedrone was not responsible. Conclusions Toxicity associated with recreational mephedrone use is increasingly common in the UK. Sympathomimetic adverse effects are common and severe effects are also reported. Structured data collected by the NPIS may be of use in identifying trends in poisoning and in establishing toxidromes for new drugs of abuse

Open defecation and childhood stunting in India: an ecological analysis of new data from 112 districts.

Poor sanitation remains a major public health concern linked to several important health outcomes; emerging evidence indicates a link to childhood stunting. In India over half of the population defecates in the open; the prevalence of stunting remains very high. Recently published data on levels of stunting in 112 districts of India provide an opportunity to explore the relationship between levels of open defecation and stunting within this population. We conducted an ecological regression analysis to assess the association between the prevalence of open defecation and stunting after adjustment for potential confounding factors. Data from the 2011 HUNGaMA survey was used for the outcome of interest, stunting; data from the 2011 Indian Census for the same districts was used for the exposure of interest, open defecation. After adjustment for various potential confounding factors--including socio-economic status, maternal education and calorie availability--a 10 percent increase in open defecation was associated with a 0.7 percentage point increase in both stunting and severe stunting. Differences in open defecation can statistically account for 35 to 55 percent of the average difference in stunting between districts identified as low-performing and high-performing in the HUNGaMA data. In addition, using a Monte Carlo simulation, we explored the effect on statistical power of the common practice of dichotomizing continuous height data into binary stunting indicators. Our simulation showed that dichotomization of height sacrifices statistical power, suggesting that our estimate of the association between open defecation and stunting may be a lower bound. Whilst our analysis is ecological and therefore vulnerable to residual confounding, these findings use the most recently collected large-scale data from India to add to a growing body of suggestive evidence for an effect of poor sanitation on human growth. New intervention studies, currently underway, may shed more light on this important issue

When non-activists care: group efficacy mediates the effect of social identification and perceived instability on the legitimacy of collective action

In recent years, multiple social movements have emerged around the world. In addition, public surveys indicate the highest recorded levels of support for protest. In this context of acceptance of collective action, we examine the role of non-activists in the legitimacy of social movements, as this ‘passive’ support can contribute to social change. Given that antecedents of legitimacy have been neglected in the literature, we carried out a survey (N = 605) among a general sample of the population in Chile to shed light on this issue. We found that social identification with movements and perceived instability predicted the perceived legitimacy of protests by social movements, and that both variables had only indirect effects, through group efficacy. This suggests that perceiving social movements as able to achieve success can lead non-activists to perceive their actions as legitimate, highlighting the importance to movements of being seen to be effective

Adaptive mutation using statistics mechanism for genetic algorithms

Copyright @ 2004 Springer-Verla

Life at both ends of the ladder: education-based identification and its association with well-being and social attitudes

Level of formal education is an important divide in contemporary societies; it is positively related to health, well-being, and social attitudes such as tolerance for minorities and interest in politics. We investigated whether education-based identification is a common underlying factor of these education effects. Indeed, education-based identification was stronger among the higher educated, especially for identification aspects that encompass education-based group esteem (i.e., the belief that one’s educational group is worthy and that others think so, too). Furthermore, while group esteem had beneficial effects across educational levels, aspects of identification that were unrelated to group esteem had positive effects for the higher educated but not for the less educated. Thus, the less educated do not benefit from the psychologically nourishing effect of identification that exists for other groups. The stigma and responsibility related to low education could be a common explanation for a wide range of outcomes

Quantifying Robotic Swarm Coverage

In the field of swarm robotics, the design and implementation of spatial density control laws has received much attention, with less emphasis being placed on performance evaluation. This work fills that gap by introducing an error metric that provides a quantitative measure of coverage for use with any control scheme. The proposed error metric is continuously sensitive to changes in the swarm distribution, unlike commonly used discretization methods. We analyze the theoretical and computational properties of the error metric and propose two benchmarks to which error metric values can be compared. The first uses the realizable extrema of the error metric to compute the relative error of an observed swarm distribution. We also show that the error metric extrema can be used to help choose the swarm size and effective radius of each robot required to achieve a desired level of coverage. The second benchmark compares the observed distribution of error metric values to the probability density function of the error metric when robot positions are randomly sampled from the target distribution. We demonstrate the utility of this benchmark in assessing the performance of stochastic control algorithms. We prove that the error metric obeys a central limit theorem, develop a streamlined method for performing computations, and place the standard statistical tests used here on a firm theoretical footing. We provide rigorous theoretical development, computational methodologies, numerical examples, and MATLAB code for both benchmarks.Comment: To appear in Springer series Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering (LNEE). This book contribution is an extension of our ICINCO 2018 conference paper arXiv:1806.02488. 27 pages, 8 figures, 2 table