Primary health care nurses’ knowledge, self- efficacy and performance of diabetes self- management support in the OR Tambo District, Eastern Cape

Nursing and Midwifer

The resolution sensitivity of the South Asian monsoon and Indo-Pacific in a global 0.35◦ AGCM

The South Asian monsoon is one of the most significant manifestations of the seasonal cycle. It directly impacts nearly one third of the world’s population and also has substantial global influence. Using 27-year integrations of a high-resolution atmospheric general circulation model (Met Office Unified Model), we study changes in South Asian monsoon precipitation and circulation when horizontal resolution is increased from approximately 200 to 40 km at the equator (N96 to N512, 1.9 to 0.35◦). The high resolution, integration length and ensemble size of the dataset make this the most extensive dataset used to evaluate the resolution sensitivity of the South Asian monsoon to date. We find a consistent pattern of JJAS precipitation and circulation changes as resolution increases, which include a slight increase in precipitation over peninsular India, changes in Indian and Indochinese orographic rain bands, increasing wind speeds in the Somali Jet, increasing precipitation over the Maritime Continent islands and decreasing precipitation over the northern Maritime Continent seas. To diagnose which resolution related processes cause these changes we compare them to published sensitivity experiments that change regional orography and coastlines. Our analysis indicates that improved resolution of the East African Highlands results in the improved representation of the Somali Jet and further suggests that improved resolution of orography over Indochina and the Maritime Continent results in more precipitation over the Maritime Continent islands at the expense of reduced precipitation further north. We also evaluate the resolution sensitivity of monsoon depressions and lows, which contribute more precipitation over northeast India at higher resolution. We conclude that while increasing resolution at these scales does not solve the many monsoon biases that exist in GCMs, it has a number of small, beneficial impacts

Multi-model evaluation of the sensitivity of the global energy budget and hydrological cycle to resolution

This study undertakes a multi-model comparison with the aim to describe and quantify systematic changes of the global energy and water budgets when the horizontal resolution of atmospheric models is increased and to identify common factors of these changes among models. To do so, we analyse an ensemble of twelve atmosphere-only and six coupled GCMs, with different model formulations and with resolutions spanning those of state-of-the-art coupled GCMs, i.e. from resolutions coarser than 100 km to resolutions finer than 25 km. The main changes in the global energy budget with resolution are a systematic increase in outgoing longwave radiation and decrease in outgoing shortwave radiation due to changes in cloud properties, and a systematic increase in surface latent heat flux; when resolution is increased from 100 to 25 km, the magnitude of the change of those fluxes can be as large as 5 W m−2. Moreover, all but one atmosphere-only model simulate a decrease of the poleward energy transport at higher resolution, mainly explained by a reduction of the equator-to-pole tropospheric temperature gradient. Regarding hydrological processes, our results are the following: (1) there is an increase of global precipitation with increasing resolution in all models (up to 40 × 103 km3 year−1) but the partitioning between land and ocean varies among models; (2) the fraction of total precipitation that falls on land is on average 10% larger at higher resolution in grid point models, but it is smaller at higher resolution in spectral models; (3) grid points models simulate an increase of the fraction of land precipitation due to moisture convergence twice as large as in spectral models; (4) grid point models, which have a better resolved orography, show an increase of orographic precipitation of up to 13 × 103 km3 year−1 which explains most of the change in land precipitation; (5) at the regional scale, precipitation pattern and amplitude are improved with increased resolution due to a better simulated seasonal mean circulation. We discuss our results against several observational estimates of the Earth's energy budget and hydrological cycle and show that they support recent high estimates of global precipitation

Capital Inflows-National Saving Dynamics in Tunisia: Evidence from Cointegration, Weak Exogeneity and Simultaneous Error Correction Modelling

The negative relationship between capital inflows and savings in less developed countries is an accepted fact in the existing literature. However, this result is based essentially on standard econometrics which ignores the nonstationarity of these two variables. This study investigates the 'direct' and 'indirect' effect of capital inflows on savings in Tunisia using Johansen's multivariate cointegration technique, weak exogeneity test and simultaneous error correction modelling. In the short and long run, the econometric estimates show that capital inflows have a negative effect on domestic savings, which invalidates the Chenery-Strout thesis. Nevertheless, the direction of causality between the aggregates being dealt with still remains a subject of debate. Relying on time-series data of the Tunisian economy, Granger's causality test shows a causal relationship in the long term running from domestic savings to capital inflows. In the short term, however, this paper reveals a two-way causation. [E20, F35, C32, C51]

A New Transfer Function for Volume Visualization of Aortic Stent and Its Application to Virtual Endoscopy

Aortic stent has been widely used in restoring vascular stenosis and assisting patients with cardiovascular disease. The effective visualization of aortic stent is considered to be critical to ensure the effectiveness and functions of the aortic stent in clinical practice. Volume rendering with ray casting has been used as an effective approach to enable the effective visualization of aortic stent. The volume rendering relies on the transfer function that converts the medical images into optical attributes including color and transparency. This article proposes a new transfer function, namely, the multi-dimensional transfer function, to provide additional transparency value of a voxel. The proposed approach using the additional transparency value effectively assists the distinguishing of tissues that have the same CT value. The transparency values are simultaneously determined by gray threshold and gray change threshold, which can recognize the unnecessary structures such as bones transparent. A series of experimental results demonstrate that the situation of aorta stent of a patient can be directly observed, and the angle of view can be switched arbitrarily. The proposed method provides a new way for the operation of a virtual endoscopy to reach the place of blood vessels that a traditional endoscopy fails to reach