Determination of Fracture Toughness of Anisotropic Rocks Under Water Vapour Pressure by Semi-Circular Bend Test

Failure of rock materials is a process of crack propagation. Crack initiation takes place when the crack tip stress intensity K reaches a critical value called fracture toughness, K1C. The rock fracture toughness is known to be affected by the surrounding environment such as temperature, confining pressure and humidity. In order to examine the effect of humidity a series of semi-circular bend tests were performed under various water vapour pressures in a rock material that is known to be anisotropic. Water vapour promotes stress corrosion of rock and therefore the fracture toughness was found to have a decreasing trend with increasing water vapour pressure. The rate of decreasing the fracture toughness depends on the microcrack density that promotes the migration of water vapour into the rock. Also in an anisotropic rock the fracture toughness depends on the direction of crack in relation to the anisotropy of the rock material

RLZAP: Relative Lempel-Ziv with Adaptive Pointers

Relative Lempel-Ziv (RLZ) is a popular algorithm for compressing databases of genomes from individuals of the same species when fast random access is desired. With Kuruppu et al.'s (SPIRE 2010) original implementation, a reference genome is selected and then the other genomes are greedily parsed into phrases exactly matching substrings of the reference. Deorowicz and Grabowski (Bioinformatics, 2011) pointed out that letting each phrase end with a mismatch character usually gives better compression because many of the differences between individuals' genomes are single-nucleotide substitutions. Ferrada et al. (SPIRE 2014) then pointed out that also using relative pointers and run-length compressing them usually gives even better compression. In this paper we generalize Ferrada et al.'s idea to handle well also short insertions, deletions and multi-character substitutions. We show experimentally that our generalization achieves better compression than Ferrada et al.'s implementation with comparable random-access times

Disasters and climate change in the Pacific: adaptive capacity of humanitarian response organizations

© 2014, © 2014 Taylor & Francis. Climate change is likely to affect the pattern of disasters in the Pacific and, by extension, the organizations and systems involved in disaster response. This research focused on how immediate humanitarian health-related needs following disasters are met using the concept of adaptive capacity to investigate the resilience of organizations and the robustness of the broader system of disaster response. Four case study countries (Cook Islands, Fiji, Samoa, and Vanuatu) were chosen for deeper investigation of the range of issues present in the Pacific. Key findings were that adaptive capacity was enhanced by strong informal communication and relationships as well as formal relationships, appropriate participation of traditional leaders and churches, and recognition and support for the critical role national disaster management offices play in disaster coordination. Adaptive capacity was found to be constrained by lack of clear policies for requesting international assistance, lack of coordinated disaster assessments, and limited human resources for health in disaster response. Limitations in psychosocial support and Australian medical services to meet specific needs were observed. Finally, the research revealed that both Pacific and Australian disaster-response agencies would benefit from a strengthened ‘future’ focus to better plan for uncertainty and changing risks

A qualitative examination of the health workforce needs during climate change disaster response in Pacific Island Countries

Background: There is a growing body of evidence that the impacts of climate change are affecting population health negatively. The Pacific region is particularly vulnerable to climate change; a strong health-care system is required to respond during times of disaster. This paper examines the capacity of the health sector in Pacific Island Countries to adapt to changing disaster response needs, in terms of: (i) health workforce governance, management, policy and involvement; (ii) health-care capacity and skills; and (iii) human resources for health training and workforce development.Methods: Key stakeholder interviews informed the assessment of the capacity of the health sector and disaster response organizations in Pacific Island Countries to adapt to disaster response needs under a changing climate. The research specifically drew upon and examined the adaptive capacity of individual organizations and the broader system of disaster response in four case study countries (Fiji, Cook Islands, Vanuatu and Samoa).Results: 'Capacity' including health-care capacity was one of the objective determinants identified as most significant in influencing the adaptive capacity of disaster response systems in the Pacific. The research identified several elements that could support the adaptive capacity of the health sector such as: inclusive involvement in disaster coordination; policies in place for health workforce coordination; belief in their abilities; and strong donor support. Factors constraining adaptive capacity included: weak coordination of international health personnel; lack of policies to address health worker welfare; limited human resources and material resources; shortages of personnel to deal with psychosocial needs; inadequate skills in field triage and counselling; and limited capacity for training.Conclusion: Findings from this study can be used to inform the development of human resources for health policies and strategic plans, and to support the development of a coordinated and collaborative approach to disaster response training across the Pacific and other developing contexts. This study also provides an overview of health-care capacity and some of the challenges and strengths that can inform future development work by humanitarian organizations, regional and international donors involved in climate change adaptation, and disaster risk reduction in the Pacific region. © 2014 Rumsey et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd