The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Art (MESDA) Craftsmen Database: User Study and Analysis

This exploratory study describes a questionnaire survey of members of Friends of Old Salem and Friends of MESDA and the Collection. The survey was conducted to determine user awareness and user satisfaction of those Friends who have access to the database to study early Southern craftsmen. The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) has placed online an index to the early southern Craftsmen records found in the Research Center at MESDA. This index to the full text Index of Early Southern Artists and Artisans (IESAA) provides researchers with basic information about southern craftsmen who produced works in the South before 1821. The study finds that while most MESDA patrons are aware of many of the formats of the Craftsmen Database, they are not as aware of the online version. The ultimate goal of the survey is to justify the expenditure needed to migrate and add information to the online database. Based on the user awareness findings, it is recommended that more user education about the online database is needed before further expenditures to improve the database can be justified

YOUNG_ADULLLT Scotland: Key Messages for Scottish Policy Actors

This dissemination paper presents findings and recommendations produced from the research project entitled Policies Supporting Young Adults in their Life Course: A Comparative Study of Lifelong Learning and Inclusion in Education and Work in Europe (YOUNG_ADULLLT). The project ran from 2016 to 2019 and was funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation initiative. This paper is intended for use by Scottish policymakers, practitioners and researchers in the fields of adult education, lifelong learning, youth policy and skills policy, as well as international audiences interested in the case of Scotland

Navier-stokes CFD analysis of a tidal turbine rotor in steady and planar oscillatory flow

Initial results of an ongoing Navier-Stokes Computational Fluid Dynamics study of horizontal axis tidal current turbine hydrodynamics are presented. Part of the underlying motivation is assessing the effects of the Reynolds number on turbine performance and loads in steady flow conditions and unsteady regimes. The study aims at a) providing initial verification and validation of Navier-Stokes CFD for steady and unsteady tidal turbine flows over a wide range of Reynolds numbers, and b) estimating the dependence of turbine performance and loads on this parameter, so as to enable more reliable exploitation of low-Reynolds number tank measurements for field installation analysis and design. The investigation starts from a tidal current turbine towing tank experiment conducted at the Kelvin Hydrodynamic Laboratory of Strathclyde University, compares available measured data and CFD results regarding the blade steady flow and unsteady flow due to the harmonic planar motion of the turbine, and extends the CFD analysis to the high Reynolds numbers of typical utility-scale field installations. It is found that at high (field-like) Reynolds numbers, the blade power, force and moment coefficients are about 20 percent higher than at (low) tank-like Reynolds numbers, and also that the agreement of measured and predicted loads at fairly low Reynolds numbers improves by modelling laminar-to-turbulent transition, highlighting the importance of this phenomenon in tank experiments

'Countries in the Air': Travel and Geomodernism in Louis MacNeice's BBC Features

In the middle stretch of his twenty-two-year BBC career, the poet and producer Louis MacNeice earned a reputation as one of the ‘undisputed masters of creative sound broadcasting’, a reputation derived, in part, from a huge range of radio features that were founded upon his journeys abroad. Through close examination of some of his most significant overseas soundscapes – including Portrait of Rome (1947) and Portrait of Delhi (1948) – this article will consider the role and function of travel in shaping MacNeice’s engagement with the radio feature as a modernist form at a particular transcultural moment when Britain moved through the end of the Second World War and the eventual disintegration of its empire

Environmental Exposures and Invasive Meningococcal Disease: An Evaluation of Effects on Varying Time Scales

Invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) is an important cause of meningitis and bacteremia worldwide. Seasonal variation in IMD incidence has long been recognized, but mechanisms responsible for this phenomenon remain poorly understood. The authors sought to evaluate the effect of environmental factors on IMD risk in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a major urban center. Associations between monthly weather patterns and IMD incidence were evaluated using multivariable Poisson regression models controlling for seasonal oscillation. Short-term weather effects were identified using a case-crossover approach. Both study designs control for seasonal factors that might otherwise confound the relation between environment and IMD. Incidence displayed significant wintertime seasonality (for oscillation, P < 0.001), and Poisson regression identified elevated monthly risk with increasing relative humidity (per 1% increase, incidence rate ratio = 1.04, 95% confidence interval: 1.004, 1.08). Case-crossover methods identified an inverse relation between ultraviolet B radiation index 1–4 days prior to onset and disease risk (odds ratio = 0.54, 95% confidence interval: 0.34, 0.85). Extended periods of high humidity and acute changes in ambient ultraviolet B radiation predict IMD occurrence in Philadelphia. The latter effect may be due to decreased pathogen survival or virulence and may explain the wintertime seasonality of IMD in temperate regions of North America

Discovery and characterisation of detached M-dwarf eclipsing binaries in the WFCAM Transit Survey

We report the discovery of 16 detached M-dwarf eclipsing binaries with J<16 mag and provide a detailed characterisation of three of them, using high-precision infrared light curves from the WFCAM Transit Survey (WTS). Such systems provide the most accurate and model-independent method for measuring the fundamental parameters of these poorly understood yet numerous stars, which currently lack sufficient observations to precisely calibrate stellar evolution models. We fully solve for the masses and radii of three of the systems, finding orbital periods in the range 1.5<P<4.9 days, with masses spanning 0.35-0.50 Msun and radii between 0.38-0.50 Rsun, with uncertainties of ~3.5-6.4% in mass and ~2.7-5.5% in radius. Close-companions in short-period binaries are expected to be tidally-locked into fast rotational velocities, resulting in high levels of magnetic activity. This is predicted to inflate their radii by inhibiting convective flow and increasing star spot coverage. The radii of the WTS systems are inflated above model predictions by ~3-12%, in agreement with the observed trend, despite an expected lower systematic contribution from star spots signals at infrared wavelengths. We searched for correlation between the orbital period and radius inflation by combining our results with all existing M-dwarf radius measurements of comparable precision, but we found no statistically significant evidence for a decrease in radius inflation for longer period, less active systems. Radius inflation continues to exists in non-synchronised systems indicating that the problem remains even for very low activity M-dwarfs. Resolving this issue is vital not only for understanding the most populous stars in the Universe, but also for characterising their planetary companions, which hold the best prospects for finding Earth-like planets in the traditional habitable zone.Comment: 30 pages, 14 figures, 16 tables, Accepted for publication in MNRA

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy