Analysis of the potential mechanisms of rockbursts

Sudden slip on geological faults or other discontinuities in rock may be preceded by an initial phase of "slow" fault creep. A simple plane strain model of a suddenly loaded fault is analysed to illustrate the possible transition from stable slip behaviour to accelerated, unstable slip. The model assumes that a peaked shear load is applied suddenly to the fault region. The rate of slip movement is assumed to be proportional to the difference between the applied shear stress and the cohesive and frictional slip resistance. It is found that the evolutionary fault movement can be described succinctly by a non-linear ordinary differential equation describing the activated length of the sliding fault as a function of time. The differential equation is found to depend on a single, dimensionless parameter whose value determines whether the fault slip decays monotonically or accelerates in an unstable manner

Health Behavior Assessments Lacking in Primary Care Settings

Outlines findings on existing health behavior questionnaires and the need to develop brief, broadly applicable, self-administrable, age- and culture-appropriate tools in order to deliver effective behavior change counseling in primary care settings

The auditor as historian: Reflections of the epistemology of financial reporting

Concern has been growing recently that the modern commercial organisation is becoming less auditable. The volume and complexity of transactions and the opacity of computer-based information systems, coupled with the increased knowledge gap between auditors and clients, make the auditor reliant on evidence whose quality and reliability is open to broad challenges. At the same time, the changing nature of financial reports, from summaries of the past to images of the present and windows on the future, weakens the link between evidence of underlying activities and transactions and their representation in financial statements.This exacerbates the epistemological challenge faced by accountants and auditors: how can financial statements be said to be a faithful representation of an entity, and how can auditors give a well-grounded opinion that the financial statements give a true and fair view? These issues are by no means unique to financial reporting. Similar problems arise in historical research, where historical theorists and practical historians have had to grapple with the nature and status of evidence of the past and the relationship between evidence and historical narratives. By examining contemporary debates within the literature of historiography, insights into comparable issues within financial reporting and auditing should be gained.The paper concentrates in particular on the contribution to the historiographical debate made by Keith Jenkins. Through his books Re-thinking History (1991), On “What is History?” (1995) and Why History? Ethics and Postmodernity (1999), and his edited collection The Postmodern History Reader (1997), Jenkins has provocatively challenged more mainstream views of the historian’s relationship with evidence, indeed the nature of historical evidence itself, in ways that raise issues for the conventional understanding of evidence in the audit context. The arguments of Jenkins are contrasted with those of C. Behan McCullagh, whose The Truth of History (1998) explicitly explores the extent to which historical descriptions can be “true and fair”, and thus provides a direct analogy between the task of the historian and that of the auditor. The paper concludes that auditing stands or falls in an epistemological sense with history, in that the statements of auditors bear essentially the same relationship to audit evidence as those of historians bear to historical evidence. If, in a postmodern world,histories that claim to tell a unique “truth” are not just logically impossible but also ethically immoral, then so are financial statements and audit reports

Climate based facade design for business buildings with examples from central London

There is a disconnection between commercial architecture and environmental thinking, where green features can be included as part of a strategy for gaining approvals and marketing projects, but those features are not reviewed after completion and occupation of the building and knowledge is not shared. High levels of air conditioning are still considered unavoidable. Elaborate double skin façades and complex motorized shading systems are adopted; often masking an underlying lack of basic environmental thinking. This article returns (in principle) to the physics of comfort in buildings and the passive strategies which can help achieve this with a low energy and carbon footprint. Passive and active façade design strategies are outlined as the basis of a critical tool and a design methodology for new projects. A new architectural sensibility can arise based on modeling the inputs of sunlight, daylight and air temperature in time and space at the early stages of design. Early but sound strategies can be tested and refined using advanced environmental modeling techniques. Architecture and environmental thinking can proceed hand in hand through the design process

All Americans at Risk of Receiving Poor Quality Health Care

Summarizes a study of the health care Americans receive compared to the health care they should receive and of the links between the quality of care received and patient characteristics, including age, gender, race/ethnicity, income, and insurance status

Do Reductions in Medicaid/SCHIP Enrollment Increase Emergency Department Use Among Low-Income Persons?

Outlines estimates of the impact on emergency department visits by the uninsured and the overall low-income population if Medicaid and State Children's Health Insurance Program enrollment and physicians' acceptance rates of Medicaid patients were to fall

An assessment of the cost effectiveness of vegetation harvesting as a means of removing nutrient and metals from ponds

This paper reports on an investigation to quantify the mass of pollutants removed from a stormwater retention pond by routine vegetation harvesting. The amount of plants can increase the costs of ponds, and the increased costs of plant maintenance may not be justified by enhanced pollutant removal. This study provides some of the basic information, previously lacking, which is needed to come to such decisions. The study facility was La Costa pond, a retention pond in California used to treat highway runoff. Water quality monitoring data indicate that the pond removed 43 percent of the total nitrogen entering the facility, with 5 to 7 percent directly attributable to harvesting the vegetation – in this case cattails (Typha). The data also indicate that 48 percent of the total annual phosphorus was removed from the runoff, with the harvested vegetation responsible for between 3 and 8 percent. Metal uptake by the vegetation was substantially less than nutrients. Total removal of copper, lead and zinc by the pond varied between 57 and 93 percent, with the harvested vegetation accounting for less than 2 percent of removal. Issues addressed in the paper include the cost implications of harvesting and ways of improving vegetative pollutant removal