An evaluation of water treatment technologies for sustainable rural communities

This paper presents the initial stages of research funded by the Scottish Government to enable an evaluation of the suitability of drinking water treatment technologies at small to medium scales to facilitate the application of the Scottish Government’s Sustainable Rural Communities concept. The research included a technology scan to identify relevant drinking water treatment technologies suitable for small and medium sized rural communities in Scotland and an expert stakeholder workshop to verify and refine the technology inventory. The stakeholder workshop was also used to identify suitable selection criteria for Sustainable Rural Community drinking water projects. The criteria can be used in subsequent multi-stakeholder decision making for the most sustainable treatment options for specific communities. An explanation is provided on the methodology and the types of information that were collected and the outcomes of the research. <br/

A network approach to overcoming barriers to market engagement for SMEs in energy efficiency initiatives such as the Green Deal

The Green Deal (GD) was launched in 2013 by the UK Government as a market-led scheme to encourage uptake of energy efficiency measures in the UK and create green sector jobs. The scheme closed in July 2015 after 30 months due to government concerns over low uptake and industry standards but additional factors potentially contributed to its failure such as poor scheme design and lack of understanding of the customer and supply chain journey. We explore the role of key delivery agents of GD services, specifically SMEs, and we use the LoCal-Net project as a case study to examine the use of networks to identify and reduce barriers to SME market engagement. We find that SMEs experienced multiple barriers to interaction with the GD such as lack of access to information, training, and confusion over delivery of the scheme but benefited from interaction with the network to access information, improve understanding of the scheme, increasing networking opportunities and forming new business models and partnerships to reduce risk. The importance of SMEs as delivery agents and their role in the design of market-led schemes such as the GD are discussed with recommendations for improving SME engagement in green sector initiatives

The effects of debater styles on audiences during televised political debates

The goal of this study is to examine the effects of certain predetermined debate styles on television viewing audiences. The study used three separate gubernatorial debates with identical questionnaires attached to determine the behavioral traits viewers found most appealing in state level political candidates during organized, televised events. The author acknowledges that many studies of this nature are conducted on the national level. The author chose to analyze the same type of material on a lower level of government to determine what potential voters find appealing in state level potential elected officials. The study places the two selected candidates in competition with each other to allow study participants to select a final winner based on the areas asked to analyze. The study focused on external characteristics and personality traits only. This study has no political basis. The study is intended to serve as tool to future state level political candidates. It will describe and explain the platform presentation, attitude, and skills of political candidates potential voters support, with no interference from political platforms and policies

Walking on Thin Ice: Exploring Demands and Means of Coping During an Extreme Expedition

The present exploratory study was undertaken with two experienced explorers in order to examine daily events, perceived demands, coping strategies, and mood during a unique 636–675 km ‘‘double solo’’ crossing of Lake Baikal, a frozen lake in Siberia. A 59-year-old female explorer and a 49-year-old male explorer completed a daily survey and written diary during the expedition to collect situational data. Two semi-structured interviews were also completed, one within 24 hours and a second within four months of their return. These interviews sought to identify demands and coping efforts perceived as being most pertinent during their expedition. Guided by the work of Skinner et al. (2003), families of coping were organized around three human concerns (autonomy, relatedness, and competence) and two targets of coping (self or context). Findings illustrate two very different expedition experiences as evidenced by demands faced and coping strategies utilized, which influenced perceptions of workload and emotions experienced. Each explorer brought idiosyncrasies, which, when combined with different expedition experiences, bore influence on coping behaviors (focused on the self or context) and outcomes relative to the concerns of autonomy, relatedness, and competency. In discussing the findings, recommendations are offered for those preparing to undertake expeditions in extreme environments

Co-expression of neighbouring genes in Arabidopsis: separating chromatin effects from direct interactions

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In all eukaryotic species examined, genes that are chromosomal neighbours are more similar in their expression than random gene pairs. Currently, it is still unclear how much of this local co-expression is caused by direct transcriptional interactions, and how much is due to shared chromatin environments.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We analysed neighbouring genes in <it>Arabidopsis thaliana</it>. At large intergenic distances (>400 bp), divergently and convergently transcribed gene pairs show very similar levels of co-expression, mediated most likely by shared chromatin environments. At gene distances below 400 bp, co-expression is strongly enhanced only for divergently transcribed gene pairs, indicating bi-directional transcription from a single promoter. Conversely, co-expression is suppressed for short convergently or uni-directionally transcribed pairs. This suppression points to transcriptional interference concentrated at the 3' end, e.g., in the context of transcription termination.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Classifying linked gene pairs by their orientation, we are able to partially tease apart the different levels of regional expression modulation. (i) Regional chromatin characteristics modulate the accessibility for regulation and transcription, regardless of gene orientation; the strength of this chromatin effect can be assessed from divergently or convergently transcribed distant neighbours. (ii) Shared promoter regions up to 400 bp in length enhance the co-expression of close bi-directional neighbours. (iii) Transcriptional interference of close neighbours is concentrated at the 3' ends of genes, and reduces co-expression on average by 40%.</p

Establishing the ratio of rock salts and organic compounds to reduce the number of Chloride and Sodium ions in the soil when de-icing roads

The research analyzes the amount of salt being dumped onto roads and its effect on trees, specifically the Red Maple and Eastern Hemlock. The goal is to find an alternative to rock salt without completely eliminating its use. The experiment involves using three different alternatives-volcanic mineral, beet juice, cheese brine-and constructing a ratio between a baseline amount of salt and alternative. The result of this is to find the smallest amount of salt needed to efficiently melt ice and cause least damage to trees. Analyzing leaf water content will show which alternative works best

Energy reduction by power loss minimisation through wheel torque allocation in electric vehicles: a simulation-based approach

As vehicles become increasingly electrified, electrical machines for propulsion can be divided into many sources making the vehicle highly over-actuated. For over-actuated vehicles, the allocation of a propulsive force is an underdetermined process with respect to both the number of wheels and electrical machines. Hence, the allocation can be made to favour particular attributes such as energy consumption. In this study, a vehicle equipped with four identical electric motors with a fixed transmission ratio connected through a half-shaft and a coupling to one wheel respectively is driven a 2-h-long city cycle in the vicinity of G\uf6teborg. Two different control allocation methods are presented to distribute torque momentaneously based on driver request while minimising power losses in electric motor and inverter as well as tyres. One method is a quadratic programming optimisation and the other is an offline exhaustive search method resulting in a look-up table based on requested torque and actual speed. The two methods are compared to other torque distribution strategies based on fixed distribution ratio and equal tyre-to-road friction utilisation. It was found that using the developed optimisation algorithms, a reduction of up to 3.9% in energy consumption can be obtained

The STING pathway does not contribute to behavioural or mitochondrial phenotypes in Drosophila Pink1/parkin or mtDNA mutator models

Abstract: Mutations in PINK1 and Parkin/PRKN cause the degeneration of dopaminergic neurons in familial forms of Parkinson’s disease but the precise pathogenic mechanisms are unknown. The PINK1/Parkin pathway has been described to play a central role in mitochondrial homeostasis by signalling the targeted destruction of damaged mitochondria, however, how disrupting this process leads to neuronal death was unclear until recently. An elegant study in mice revealed that the loss of Pink1 or Prkn coupled with an additional mitochondrial stress resulted in the aberrant activation of the innate immune signalling, mediated via the cGAS/STING pathway, causing degeneration of dopaminergic neurons and motor impairment. Genetic knockout of Sting was sufficient to completely prevent neurodegeneration and accompanying motor deficits. To determine whether Sting plays a conserved role in Pink1/parkin related pathology, we tested for genetic interactions between Sting and Pink1/parkin in Drosophila. Surprisingly, we found that loss of Sting, or its downstream effector Relish, was insufficient to suppress the behavioural deficits or mitochondria disruption in the Pink1/parkin mutants. Thus, we conclude that phenotypes associated with loss of Pink1/parkin are not universally due to aberrant activation of the STING pathway

TARGETED PRINCIPLE COMPONENT ANALYSIS: A NEW MOTION ARTIFACT CORRECTION APPROACH FOR NEAR-INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY

As near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) broadens its application area to different age and disease groups, motion artifacts in the NIRS signal due to subject movement is becoming an important challenge. Motion artifacts generally produce signal fluctuations that are larger than physiological NIRS signals, thus it is crucial to correct for them before obtaining an estimate of stimulus evoked hemodynamic responses. There are various methods for correction such as principle component analysis (PCA), wavelet-based filtering and spline interpolation. Here, we introduce a new approach to motion artifact correction, targeted principle component analysis (tPCA), which incorporates a PCA filter only on the segments of data identified as motion artifacts. It is expected that this will overcome the issues of filtering desired signals that plagues standard PCA filtering of entire data sets. We compared the new approach with the most effective motion artifact correction algorithms on a set of data acquired simultaneously with a collodion-fixed probe (low motion artifact content) and a standard Velcro probe (high motion artifact content). Our results show that tPCA gives statistically better results in recovering hemodynamic response function (HRF) as compared to wavelet-based filtering and spline interpolation for the Velcro probe. It results in a significant reduction in mean-squared error (MSE) and significant enhancement in Pearson’s correlation coefficient to the true HRF. The collodion-fixed fiber probe with no motion correction performed better than the Velcro probe corrected for motion artifacts in terms of MSE and Pearson’s correlation coefficient. Thus, if the experimental study permits, the use of a collodion-fixed fiber probe may be desirable. If the use of a collodion-fixed probe is not feasible, then we suggest the use of tPCA in the processing of motion artifact contaminated data