Assessment of solar energy source distribution and potential in Zambia

Zambia is vastly endowed with a wide range of energy resources. Yet, to date, Zambia has not fully exploited its potential in solar energy utilisation for electricity generation due to various reasons such as lack of understanding of the distribution of solar energy potential in the country and limitation of access to solar energy resource information. This paper assess the solar energy distribution and potential in Zambia. Nine provinces with different geographical and climatic regions that makes up Zambia were assesed. The distribution of solar radiation within the country were assessed using spatial analysis in ArcGIS Software. The 22year period solar datasets were considered for assessment. These datasets were obtained from NASA Atmospheric Science Data Center using Surface Meteorology and Solar Energy. The analyzed results indicate that Zambia has approximately 20,442TWh/year technical solar energy potential and receives 2109.97kWh/m2 of solar energy per year with 4403.12hours of sunshine. The country has 186,121km2 available and suitable land area for RETs implementations. This study is important as it present an overview of the technical solar energy potential for Zambia which is vital for decision making, energy mix and sustainable deployment of solar energy technologies in the countr

Exploring Play and Creativity in Pre-schooler's use of apps: Final Project Report

This report outlines the key findings of a co-produced study, developed in collaboration between academics at the Universities of Sheffield and Edinburgh, the BBC (CBeebies), Monteney Pirmary School and the children’s media companies Dubit and Foundling Bird (Appendix 1 outlines the project team members and Advisory Board members). The project was co-produced in that all project partners contributed to the development of the project aims and objectives and were involved in data collection, analysis and dissemination. The aim of the study was to identify pre-school children’s (aged 0-5) uses of and responses to tablet apps in terms of the impact on their play and creativity

Prognostic significance of peritoneal lavage cytology in staging gastric cancer: systematic review and meta-analysis

Background Peritoneal cytology has been used as a part of the cancer staging of gastric cancer patients. The primary aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the value of peritoneal cytology as part of the staging of gastric cancer and survival prediction. The second aim was to establish if positive cytology may be modified by neoadjuvant therapy, to improve prognosis. Methods An electronic literature search was performed using Embase, Medline, Web of Science, and Cochrane library databases up to January 2016. The logarithm of the hazard ratio (HR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) was used as the primary summary statistic. Comparative studies were used, and the outcome measure was survival in three groups: (1) positive versus negative cytology at staging laparoscopy immediately preceding surgery; (2) effect of neoadjuvant therapy on cytology and survival; and (3) positive cytology in the absence of macroscopic peritoneal disease was compared with obvious macroscopic peritoneal disease. Results Pooled analysis demonstrated that positive cytology was associated with significantly reduced overall survival (HR, 3.46; 95% CI, 2.77–4.31; P < 0.0001). Interestingly, negative cytology following neoadjuvant chemotherapy was associated with significantly improved overall survival (HR, 0.42; 95% CI, 0.31–0.57; P < 0.0001). The absence of macroscopic peritoneal disease with positive cytology was associated with significantly improved overall survival (HR, 0.64; 95% CI, 0.56–0.73; P < 0.0001). Conclusion This study suggests that patients with initial positive cytology may have a good prognosis following neoadjuvant treatment if the cytology results change to negative after treatment

Constructing public health policies in post crisis countries: lessons to learn from the associations between free-sugars consumption and diabetes, obesity and dental caries before, during and after sanctions in Iraq.

BACKGROUND: This article aims to provide evidence for an informed public health policy on free-sugar consumption in post-crisis countries. METHODS: Iraq was selected as a case study. A systematic search for published data on the prevalence/incidence of type-2 diabetes, overweight/obesity, dental caries and free-sugar consumption levels in Iraq was conducted using MEDLINE, the Iraqi Academic Scientific journals and relevant international organisations' websites. Comparable data before (1980-1990), during (1991-2002) and after (2003-2015) the United Nations sanctions (UNS) were included. RESULTS: Ten studies were included. Quality scores ranged between 3 and 7/8. Free-sugar consumption decreased dramatically during the UNS (from 50 to 16.3 kg/person/year) and started increasing afterwards (24.1 kg/person/year). Changes in type-2 diabetes, overweight/obesity and caries levels mirrored those of free-sugar consumption. Caries declined markedly during UNS and started increasing afterwards. Comparable data on diabetes and overweight/obesity were only available for the periods during and after the UNS. Both of these conditions started increasing with increased free-sugar consumption after lifting the UNS. CONCLUSIONS: There is a need to develop a public health policy in post-crisis countries to maintain the reduction in free-sugar consumption, and hence promote both general and dental health, by integrating the common risk factor approach into the social determinant framework

Beam Energy and Centrality Dependence of Direct-Photon Emission from Ultrarelativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions.

The PHENIX collaboration presents first measurements of low-momentum (0.41  GeV/c) direct-photon yield dN_{γ}^{dir}/dη is a smooth function of dN_{ch}/dη and can be well described as proportional to (dN_{ch}/dη)^{α} with α≈1.25. This scaling behavior holds for a wide range of beam energies at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and the Large Hadron Collider, for centrality selected samples, as well as for different A+A collision systems. At a given beam energy, the scaling also holds for high p_{T} (&gt;5  GeV/c), but when results from different collision energies are compared, an additional sqrt[s_{NN}]-dependent multiplicative factor is needed to describe the integrated-direct-photon yield

Jet Structure from Dihadron Correlations in d+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV

Dihadron correlations at high transverse momentum in d+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV at midrapidity are measured by the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). From these correlations we extract several structural characteristics of jets; the root-mean-squared (RMS) transverse momentum of fragmenting hadrons with respect to the jet sqrt(), the mean sine-squared angle between the scattered partons , and the number of particles produced within the dijet that are associated with a high-p_T particle (dN/dx_E distributions). We observe that the fragmentation characteristics of jets in d+Au collisions are very similar to those in p+p collisions and that there is also little dependence on the centrality of the d+Au collision. This is consistent with the nuclear medium having little influence on the fragmentation process. Furthermore, there is no statistically significant increase in the value of from p+p to d+Au collisions. This constrains the amount of multiple scattering that partons undergo in the cold nuclear medium before and after a hard-collision.Comment: 330 authors, 30 pages text, RevTeX4, 42 figures, 20 tables. Submitted to Physical Review C. Plain text data tables for the points plotted in figures for this and previous PHENIX publications are (or will be) publicly available at http://www.phenix.bnl.gov/papers.htm