711 research outputs found
Asil International Law Weekend: Panel On Internal Conflicts
As John Crook has pointed out, most of the armed conflicts of recent years have been internal rather than international, and most of the suffering of the civilian population has occurred in these internal conflict
International Law And Anti-Personnel Land Mines
The Convention on Conventional Weapons was adopted in 1980 to limit the use of conventional weapons that present special risks of causing unnecessary suffering or indiscriminate effects. The Convention currently contains three Protocols, each of which regulates the use of a specific type of weapon
Experiences with designing and managing organic rotation trials
This report was presented at the UK Organic Research 2002 Conference. Practical problems encountered in two long-term organic rotation trials at Aberdeen and Elgin are discussed. Compromises have had to be made in designing and managing the trials: how to include livestock and measure output, plot size, marking and fencing, discards and paths, replication, rotation length, randomisation of crop sequence, site uniformity, manoeuvrability of machines, soil compaction and exposure to pest damage
Effect of organic crop rotations on long-term development of the weed seedbank
Changes in the weed seedbank were monitored between 1991 and 1998 in two experiments that were established to compare organic crop rotations at two sites in NE Scotland. Two rotations, replicated twice at each site, were compared and all courses of both rotations were present every year. There were relatively minor changes in weed species diversity over time, but major changes in seedbank abundance. Weed seed numbers were relatively low in rotations with a high proportion of grass/clover ley. Differences in level of seedbank across the rotation were relatively predictable at Tulloch but much less so at Woodside where factors such as the effect of the grass/clover ley seemed to play a lesser role. Other factors, such as weather and its influence on the effectiveness of weed control operations, and higher populations of ground-living arthropods, may be affecting the Woodside seedbanks
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Efficacy of FFP3 respirators for prevention of SARS-CoV-2 infection in healthcare workers
Funder: NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research CentreFunder: Addenbrooke's Charitable Trust, Cambridge University HospitalsBackground: Respiratory protective equipment recommended in the UK for healthcare workers (HCWs) caring for patients with COVID-19 comprises a fluid resistant surgical mask (FRSM), except in the context of aerosol generating procedures (AGPs). We previously demonstrated frequent pauci- and asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection HCWs during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK, using a comprehensive PCR-based HCW screening programme (Rivett et al., 2020; Jones et al., 2020).
Methods: Here, we use observational data and mathematical modelling to analyse infection rates amongst HCWs working on “red” (COVID-19) and “green” (non-COVID-19) wards during the second wave of the pandemic, before and after the substitution of filtering face piece 3 (FFP3) respirators for FRSMs.
Results: Whilst using FRSMs, HCWs working on red wards faced an approximately 31-fold (and at least 5-fold) increased risk of direct, ward-based infection. Conversely, after changing to FFP3 respirators, this risk was significantly reduced (52-100% protection).
Conclusions: FFP3 respirators may therefore provide more effective protection than FRSMs for healthcare workers caring for patients with COVID-19, whether or not AGPs are undertaken.
Funding: Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council, Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust, NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre, NHS Blood and Transfusion, UKRI
A Direct Measurement of the Dust Extinction Curve in an Intermediate-Redshift Galaxy
We present a proof-of-concept study that dust extinction curves can be
extracted from the infrared (IR), optical, ultraviolet (UV) and X-ray afterglow
observations of GRBs without assuming known extinction laws. We focus on GRB
050525A (z = 0.606), for which we also present IR observations from the Spitzer
Space Telescope at about 2.3 days post-burst. We construct the spectral energy
distribution (SED) of the afterglow and use it to derive the dust extinction
curve of the host galaxy in 7 optical/UV wavebands. By comparing our derived
extinction curve to known templates, we see that the Galactic or Milky Way
extinction laws are disfavored versus the Small and Large Magellanic Cloud (SMC
and LMC) ones, but that we cannot rule out the presence of a LMC-like 2175
angstrom bump in our extinction curve. The dust-to-gas ratio present within the
host galaxy of GRB 050525A is similar to that found in the LMC, while about 10
to 40% more dust is required if the SMC template is assumed. Our method is
useful to observatories that are capable of simultaneously observing GRB
afterglows in multiple wavebands from the IR to the X-ray.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by ApJ. Minor changes to 2nd Paragraph
of Introductio
SweetSpot: Near-Infrared Observations of Thirteen Type Ia Supernovae from a New NOAO Survey Probing the Nearby Smooth Hubble Flow
We present 13 Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) observed in the restframe
near-infrared (NIR) from 0.02 < z < 0.09 with the WIYN High-resolution Infrared
Camera (WHIRC) on the WIYN 3.5-m telescope. With only 1-3 points per light
curve and a prior on the time of maximum from the spectrum used to type the
object we measure an H-band dispersion of spectroscopically normal SNe Ia of
0.164 mag. These observations continue to demonstrate the improved standard
brightness of SNe Ia in H-band even with limited data. Our sample includes two
SNe Ia at z ~ 0.09, which represent the most distant restframe NIR H-band
observations published to date.
This modest sample of 13 NIR SNe Ia represent the pilot sample for
"SweetSpot" - a three-year NOAO Survey program that will observe 144 SNe Ia in
the smooth Hubble flow. By the end of the survey we will have measured the
relative distance to a redshift of z ~ 0.05 to 1%. Nearby Type Ia supernova (SN
Ia) observations such as these will test the standard nature of SNe Ia in the
restframe NIR, allow insight into the nature of dust, and provide a critical
anchor for future cosmological SN Ia surveys at higher redshift.Comment: 36 pages, 8 figures, Submitted to Ap
Exascale Deep Learning for Climate Analytics
We extract pixel-level masks of extreme weather patterns using variants of
Tiramisu and DeepLabv3+ neural networks. We describe improvements to the
software frameworks, input pipeline, and the network training algorithms
necessary to efficiently scale deep learning on the Piz Daint and Summit
systems. The Tiramisu network scales to 5300 P100 GPUs with a sustained
throughput of 21.0 PF/s and parallel efficiency of 79.0%. DeepLabv3+ scales up
to 27360 V100 GPUs with a sustained throughput of 325.8 PF/s and a parallel
efficiency of 90.7% in single precision. By taking advantage of the FP16 Tensor
Cores, a half-precision version of the DeepLabv3+ network achieves a peak and
sustained throughput of 1.13 EF/s and 999.0 PF/s respectively.Comment: 12 pages, 5 tables, 4, figures, Super Computing Conference November
11-16, 2018, Dallas, TX, US
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