A sodar for profiling in a spatially inhomogeneous urban environment

The urban boundary layer, above the canopy, is still poorly understood. One of the challenges is obtaining data by sampling more than a few meters above the rooftops, given the spatial and temporal inhomogeneities in both horizontal and vertical. Sodars are generally useful tools for ground-based remote sensing of winds and turbulence, but rely on horizontal homogeneity (as do lidars) in building up 3-component wind vectors from sampling three or more spatially separated volumes. The time taken for sound to travel to a typical range of 200 m and back is also a limitation. A sodar of radically different design is investigated, aimed at addressing these problems. It has a single vertical transmitted sound pulse. Doppler shifted signals are received from a number of volumes around the periphery of the transmitted beam with microphones which each having tight angular sensitivity at zenith angles slightly off-vertical. The spatial spread of sampled volumes is therefore smaller. By having more receiver microphones than a conventional sodar, the effect of smaller zenith angle is offset. More rapid profiling is also possible with a single vertical transmitted beam, instead of the usual multiple beams.A prototype design is described, together with initial field measurements. It is found that the beam forming using a single dish antenna and the drift of the sound pulse downwind both give rise to reduced performance compared with expectations. It is concluded that, while the new sodar works in principle, the compromises arising in the design mean that the expected advantages have not been realize

Continuous-time quantum walk on integer lattices and homogeneous trees

This paper is concerned with the continuous-time quantum walk on Z, Z^d, and infinite homogeneous trees. By using the generating function method, we compute the limit of the average probability distribution for the general isotropic walk on Z, and for nearest-neighbor walks on Z^d and infinite homogeneous trees. In addition, we compute the asymptotic approximation for the probability of the return to zero at time t in all these cases.Comment: The journal version (save for formatting); 19 page

Phase Transitions on Nonamenable Graphs

We survey known results about phase transitions in various models of statistical physics when the underlying space is a nonamenable graph. Most attention is devoted to transitive graphs and trees

Multifractal tubes

Tube formulas refer to the study of volumes of $r$ neighbourhoods of sets. For sets satisfying some (possible very weak) convexity conditions, this has a long history. However, within the past 20 years Lapidus has initiated and pioneered a systematic study of tube formulas for fractal sets. Following this, it is natural to ask to what extend it is possible to develop a theory of multifractal tube formulas for multifractal measures. In this paper we propose and develop a framework for such a theory. Firstly, we define multifractal tube formulas and, more generally, multifractal tube measures for general multifractal measures. Secondly, we introduce and develop two approaches for analysing these concepts for self-similar multifractal measures, namely: (1) Multifractal tubes of self-similar measures and renewal theory. Using techniques from renewal theory we give a complete description of the asymptotic behaviour of the multifractal tube formulas and tube measures of self-similar measures satisfying the Open Set Condition. (2) Multifractal tubes of self-similar measures and zeta-functions. Unfortunately, renewal theory techniques do not yield "explicit" expressions for the functions describing the asymptotic behaviour of the multifractal tube formulas and tube measures of self-similar measures. This is clearly undesirable. For this reason, we introduce and develop a second framework for studying multifractal tube formulas of self-similar measures. This approach is based on multifractal zeta-functions and allow us obtain "explicit" expressions for the multifractal tube formulas of self-similar measures, namely, using the Mellin transform and the residue theorem, we are able to express the multifractal tube formulas as sums involving the residues of the zeta-function.Comment: 122 page

We are all one together : peer educators\u27 views about falls prevention education for community-dwelling older adults - a qualitative study

Background: Falls are common in older people. Despite strong evidence for effective falls prevention strategies, there appears to be limited translation of these strategies from research to clinical practice. Use of peers in delivering falls prevention education messages has been proposed to improve uptake of falls prevention strategies and facilitate translation to practice. Volunteer peer educators often deliver educational presentations on falls prevention to community-dwelling older adults. However, research evaluating the effectiveness of peer-led education approaches in falls prevention has been limited and no known study has evaluated such a program from the perspective of peer educators involved in delivering the message. The purpose of this study was to explore peer educators’ perspective about their role in delivering peer-led falls prevention education for community-dwelling older adults. Methods: A two-stage qualitative inductive constant comparative design was used.In stage one (core component) focus group interviews involving a total of eleven participants were conducted. During stage two (supplementary component) semi-structured interviews with two participants were conducted. Data were analysed thematically by two researchers independently. Key themes were identified and findings were displayed in a conceptual framework. Results: Peer educators were motivated to deliver educational presentations and importantly, to reach an optimal peer connection with their audience. Key themes identified included both personal and organisational factors that impact on educators’ capacity to facilitate their peers’ engagement with the message. Personal factors that facilitated message delivery and engagement included peer-to-peer connection and perceived credibility, while barriers included a reluctance to accept the message that they were at risk of falling by some members in the audience. Organisational factors, including ongoing training for peer educators and formative feedback following presentations, were perceived as essential because they affect successful message delivery. Conclusions: Peer educators have the potential to effectively deliver falls prevention education to older adults and influence acceptance of the message as they possess the peer-to-peer connection that facilitates optimal engagement. There is a need to consider incorporating learnings from this research into a formal large scale evaluation of the effectiveness of the peer education approach in reducing falls in older adults

Expression and Function of Serotonin 2A and 2B Receptors in the Mammalian Respiratory Network

Neurons of the respiratory network in the lower brainstem express a variety of serotonin receptors (5-HTRs) that act primarily through adenylyl cyclase. However, there is one receptor family including 5-HT2A, 5-HT2B, and 5-HT2C receptors that are directed towards protein kinase C (PKC). In contrast to 5-HT2ARs, expression and function of 5-HT2BRs within the respiratory network are still unclear. 5-HT2BR utilizes a Gq-mediated signaling cascade involving calcium and leading to activation of phospholipase C and IP3/DAG pathways. Based on previous studies, this signal pathway appears to mediate excitatory actions on respiration. In the present study, we analyzed receptor expression in pontine and medullary regions of the respiratory network both at the transcriptional and translational level using quantitative RT-PCR and self-made as well as commercially available antibodies, respectively. In addition we measured effects of selective agonists and antagonists for 5-HT2ARs and 5-HT2BRs given intra-arterially on phrenic nerve discharges in juvenile rats using the perfused brainstem preparation. The drugs caused significant changes in discharge activity. Co-administration of both agonists revealed a dominance of the 5-HT2BR. Given the nature of the signaling pathways, we investigated whether intracellular calcium may explain effects observed in the respiratory network. Taken together, the results of this study suggest a significant role of both receptors in respiratory network modulation

The Hausdorff and dynamical dimensions of self-affine sponges : a dimension gap result

We construct a self-affine sponge in R 3 whose dynamical dimension, i.e. the supremum of the Hausdorff dimensions of its invariant measures, is strictly less than its Hausdorff dimension. This resolves a long-standing open problem in the dimension theory of dynamical systems, namely whether every expanding repeller has an ergodic invariant measure of full Hausdorff dimension. More generally we compute the Hausdorff and dynamical dimensions of a large class of self-affine sponges, a problem that previous techniques could only solve in two dimensions. The Hausdorff and dynamical dimensions depend continuously on the iterated function system defining the sponge, implying that sponges with a dimension gap represent a nonempty open subset of the parameter space