Digital engagement and the ATSILIRN protocols: indigenous Australian experiences and expertise guiding the use of social media in libraries

Library and archive collections include many historical and contemporary materials relating to the first people of Australia. These collections are significant resources for Indigenous Australian people in connecting with their culture and heritage. They are also vital pieces of Australia’s documentary heritage that provide an understanding of the diverse experiences, histories and culture of Indigenous Australian people since 1788 and beyond. As libraries and archives increasingly explore social media for delivering services and connecting with communities the ATSILIRN (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Library, Information and Resource Network) protocols provide insight and practical guidance for library staff. First published in 1995 by the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA), the ATSILIRN Protocols provide a roadmap for building culturally responsive client services when engaging with Indigenous Australian communities. Has your Library considered use of Indigenous collections through social media? Do you know how to share information through social networks, whilst respecting cultural protocols and sensitivities? Would you like to increase access to collections relating to Indigenous people, but don't know where to start? Does your library or archive need strategies to incorporate the client needs of diverse communities? This presentation will explore how State Library of NSW has adopted the ATSILIRN protocols in its use of social media to engage with Indigenous communities and in sharing Indigenous material with the wider community. It will provide case study examples of ways in which staff have built capacity and made informed decisions about utilising Indigenous content in social media. The paper will aim to inspire others to deliver client services that incorporate the user needs of Indigenous Australian people and communities. The speakers will unpack some of the issues around using Indigenous collections through social media, and share experiences of the discussions that have opened up at the State Library of NSW in this area. This session will be for every library or archive who is thinking of developing services at the client edge, whilst keeping a commitment and respect for diversity

Change in drag, apparent slip and optimum air layer thickness for laminar flow over an idealised superhydrophobic surface

Analytic results are derived for the apparent slip length, the change in drag and the optimum air layer thickness of laminar channel and pipe flow over an idealised superhydrophobic surface, i.e. a gas layer of constant thickness retained on a wall. For a simple Couette flow the gas layer always has a drag reducing effect, and the apparent slip length is positive, assuming that there is a favourable viscosity contrast between liquid and gas. In pressure-driven pipe and channel flow blockage limits the drag reduction caused by the lubricating effects of the gas layer; thus an optimum gas layer thickness can be derived. The values for the change in drag and the apparent slip length are strongly affected by the assumptions made for the flow in the gas phase. The standard assumptions of a constant shear rate in the gas layer or an equal pressure gradient in the gas layer and liquid layer give considerably higher values for the drag reduction and the apparent slip length than an alternative assumption of a vanishing mass flow rate in the gas layer. Similarly, a minimum viscosity contrast of four must be exceeded to achieve drag reduction under the zero mass flow rate assumption whereas the drag can be reduced for a viscosity contrast greater than unity under the conventional assumptions. Thus, traditional formulae from lubrication theory lead to an overestimation of the optimum slip length and drag reduction when applied to superhydrophobic surfaces, where the gas is trapped

Plastron respiration using commercial fabrics

A variety of insect and arachnid species are able to remain submerged in water indefinitely using plastron respiration. A plastron is a surface-retained film of air produced by surface morphology that acts as an oxygen-carbon dioxide exchange surface. Many highly water repellent and hydrophobic surfaces when placed in water exhibit a silvery sheen which is characteristic of a plastron. In this article, the hydrophobicity of a range of commercially available water repellent fabrics and polymer membranes is investigated, and how the surface of the materials mimics this mechanism of underwater respiration is demonstrated allowing direct extraction of oxygen from oxygenated water. The coverage of the surface with the plastron air layer was measured using confocal microscopy. A zinc/oxygen cell is used to consume oxygen within containers constructed from the different membranes, and the oxygen consumed by the cell is compared to the change in oxygen concentration as measured by an oxygen probe. By comparing the membranes to an air-tight reference sample, it was found that the membranes facilitated oxygen transfer from the water into the container, with the most successful membrane showing a 1.90:1 ratio between the cell oxygen consumption and the change in concentration within the container

Accounting for biological and physical sources of acoustic backscatter improves estimates of zooplankton biomass

Author Posting. © NRC Canada, 2008. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of NRC Canada for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 65 (2008): 1321-1333, doi:10.1139/F08-047.In order to convert measurements of backscattered acoustic energy to estimates of abundance and taxonomic information about the zooplankton community, all of the scattering processes in the water column need to be identified and their scattering contributions quantified. Zooplankton populations in the eastern edge of Wilkinson Basin in the Gulf of Maine in the Northwest Atlantic were surveyed in October 1997. Net tow samples at different depths, temperature and salinity profiles, and multiple frequency acoustic backscatter measurements from the upper 200 meters of the water column were collected. Zooplankton samples were identified, enumerated, and measured. Temperature and salinity profiles were used to estimate the amount of turbulent microstructure in the water column. These data sets were used with theoretical acoustic scattering models to calculate the contributions of both biological and physical scatterers to the overall measured scattering level. The output of these predictions shows that the dominant source of acoustic backscatter varies with depth and acoustic frequency in this region. By quantifying the contributions from multiple scattering sources, acoustic backscatter becomes a better measure of net-collected zooplankton biomass.This work was supported by the Office of Naval 540 Research (Grants #N00014-00-1-0052 and N00014-01-1-0166)

Operational Effectiveness in Use fo BAS

The effectiveness of BAS in controlling building systems is seen to reside in conjoint man machine function. In an emerging industry paradigm, data is extracted from the BAS and used for analytics that inform enhanced operations. This processing may include a mash up with data from other sources, such as energy meters. KPI metrics and Building ReTuning, an on going commissioning process, are suggested as important ways to guide operators in training and subsequent understanding and use of data intensive tools. Short case studies of work in progress on two CUNY campuses are provided

MEDICATION USE AND FALLS IN OLDER ADULTS: A PHARMACOEPIDEMIOLOGIC APPROACH

More than one-third of community-dwelling older adults fall each year. Falling is classified as a geriatric syndrome which has multiple contributing factors and an interaction between chronic predisposing diseases and impairments and acute precipitating insults. One potentially modifiable risk factor is medication use. While previous research has been conducted on medication-related falls, there are several gaps remaining in the literature, including the lack evidence on dose-response relationships across wide ranges of medication classes and falls as well as the frequent inability to address confounding by indication. Therefore, the overall purpose of this project was to determine—in a large, representative sample of community-dwelling older adults—associations between antihypertensive, anticholinergic, and antidepressant use and recurrent falls. First, we found no increased risk of recurrent falls in antihypertensive users compared to non-users, or those taking higher doses or for longer durations. Only those using a loop diuretic were found to have a modest increased risk of recurrent falls. In conclusion, antihypertensive use overall was not associated with recurrent falls after adjusting for important confounders. Loop diuretic use may be associated with recurrent falls and needs further study. Second, we found no statistically significant increased risk of recurrent falls in anticholinergic users, or those taking higher doses or for longer durations. In conclusion, increased point estimates suggest an association of anticholinergic use with recurrent falls, but the associations did not reach statistical significance. Future studies are needed to examine other measures of anticholinergic burden, and their associations with other outcomes such as cognitive function. Third, we found a statistically significant increased risk of recurrent falls in antidepressant users. An increased risk was also seen among those taking SSRIs, those with short duration of use, and those taking moderate doses. Among those with a history of falls/fracture at baseline, we found an increase in risk for any antidepressant use, but no increased risk was found in those without a history of falls/fracture. Taken together, the findings from this proposal will provide clinicians and researchers with clinically-relevant information on potential harmful outcomes associated with chronic medication therapy among older adults

Integration of a Coupled Fire-Atmosphere Model Into a Regional Air Quality Forecasting System for Wildfire Events

The objective of this study was to assess feasibility of integrating a coupled fire-atmosphere model within an air-quality forecast system to create a multiscale air-quality modeling framework designed to simulate wildfire smoke. For this study, a coupled fire-atmosphere model, WRF-SFIRE, was integrated, one-way, with the AIRPACT air-quality modeling system. WRF-SFIRE resolved local meteorology, fire growth, the fire plume rise, and smoke dispersion, and provided AIRPACT with fire inputs. The WRF-SFIRE-forecasted fire area and the explicitly resolved vertical smoke distribution replaced the parameterized BlueSky fire inputs used by AIRPACT. The WRF-SFIRE/AIRPACT integrated framework was successfully tested for two separate wildfire events (2015 Cougar Creek and 2016 Pioneer fires). The execution time for the WRF-SFIRE simulations was \u3c3 h for a 48 h-long forecast, suggesting that integrating coupled fire-atmosphere simulations within the daily AIRPACT cycle is feasible. While the WRF-SFIRE forecasts realistically captured fire growth 2 days in advance, the largest improvements in the air quality simulations were associated with the wildfire plume rise. WRF-SFIRE-estimated plume tops were within 300-m of satellite-estimated plume top heights for both case studies analyzed in this study. Air quality simulations produced by AIRPACT with and without WRF-SFIRE inputs were evaluated with nearby PM2.5 measurement sites to assess the performance of our multiscale smoke modeling framework. The largest improvements when coupling WRF-SFIRE with AIRPACT were observed for the Cougar Creek Fire where model errors were reduced by ∼50%. For the second case (Pioneer fire), the most notable change with WRF-SFIRE coupling was that the probability of detection increased from 16 to 52%

Plastron induced drag reduction and increased slip on a superhydrophobic sphere

On low contact angle hysteresis superhydrophobic surfaces, droplets of water roll easily. It is intuitively appealing, but less obvious, that when such material is immersed in water, the liquid will flow more easily across its surface. In recent experiments it has been demonstrated that superhydrophobic surfaces with the same high contact angle and low contact angle hysteresis may not, in fact, have the same drag reducing properties. A key performance parameter is whether the surface is able to retain a layer of air (i.e. a plastron) when fully immersed. In this report, we consider an analytical model of Stokes flow (i.e. low Reynolds number, Re, creeping flow) across a surface retaining a continuous layer of air. The system is based on a compound droplet model consisting of a solid sphere encased in a sheathing layer of air and is the extreme limit of a solid sphere with a superhydrophobic surface. We demonstrate that an optimum thickness of air exists at which the drag on this compound object is minimized and that the level of drag reduction can approach 20 to 30%. Physically, drag reduction is caused by the ability of the external flow to transfer momentum across the water-air interface generating an internal circulation of air within the plastron

The Microarcsecond Sky and Cosmic Turbulence

Radio waves are imprinted with propagation effects from ionized media through which they pass. Owing to electron density fluctuations, compact sources (pulsars, masers, and compact extragalactic sources) can display a wide variety of scattering effects. These scattering effects, particularly interstellar scintillation, can be exploited to provide *superresolution*, with achievable angular resolutions (<~ 1 microarcsecond) far in excess of what can be obtained by very long baseline interferometry on terrestrial baselines. Scattering effects also provide a powerful sub-AU probe of the microphysics of the interstellar medium, potentially to spatial scales smaller than 100 km, as well as a tracer of the Galactic distribution of energy input into the interstellar medium through a variety of integrated measures. Coupled with future gamma-ray observations, SKA observations also may provide a means of detecting fainter compact gamma-ray sources. Though it is not yet clear that propagation effects due to the intergalactic medium are significant, the SKA will either detect or place stringent constraints on intergalactic scattering.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures in 8 PostScript files, to appear in "Science with the Square Kilometer Array," eds. C. Carilli and S. Rawlings, New Astronomy Reviews (Elsevier: Amsterdam

Data series subtraction with unknown and unmodeled background noise

LISA Pathfinder (LPF), ESA's precursor mission to a gravitational wave observatory, will measure the degree to which two test-masses can be put into free-fall, aiming to demonstrate a residual relative acceleration with a power spectral density (PSD) below 30 fm/s$^2$/Hz$^{1/2}$ around 1 mHz. In LPF data analysis, the measured relative acceleration data series must be fit to other various measured time series data. This fitting is required in different experiments, from system identification of the test mass and satellite dynamics to the subtraction of noise contributions from measured known disturbances. In all cases, the background noise, described by the PSD of the fit residuals, is expected to be coloured, requiring that we perform such fits in the frequency domain. This PSD is unknown {\it a priori}, and a high accuracy estimate of this residual acceleration noise is an essential output of our analysis. In this paper we present a fitting method based on Bayesian parameter estimation with an unknown frequency-dependent background noise. The method uses noise marginalisation in connection with averaged Welch's periodograms to achieve unbiased parameter estimation, together with a consistent, non-parametric estimate of the residual PSD. Additionally, we find that the method is equivalent to some implementations of iteratively re-weighted least-squares fitting. We have tested the method both on simulated data of known PSD, and to analyze differential acceleration from several experiments with the LISA Pathfinder end-to-end mission simulator.Comment: To appear Phys. Rev. D90 August 201