105 research outputs found

    On the transition between different initiation structures of wedge-induced oblique detonations

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    Oblique detonation waves (ODWs) have been widely studied due to their application potential for airbreathing hypersonic propulsion. Moreover, various formation structures of wedge-induced oblique detonation waves have been revealed in recent numerical investigations. Given the inflow conditions, the wave configuration is dependent on the wedge angle. Hence, any wedge-angle change will induce a transient ODW evolution to transition from one configuration to another. In this study, the transient development created by instantaneously changing the wedge angle is investigated numerically, based on the unsteady two-dimensional Euler equations and one-step irreversible Arrhenius chemical kinetics. The evolution caused by the abrupt wedge-angle change from one smooth initiation structure to another, both with a curved oblique shock/detonation surface at high-Mach-number regime, is investigated. Two processes are analyzed; the first consists of the downstream transition of the ODW initiation region the by decreasing the angle, and the second is the upstream transition by increasing the angle. In the downstream transition, the overall structure moves globally and readjusts continuously, generating an intermediate kinklike initiation structure. In the upstream transition, a localized reaction region forms and induces a more complex process, mainly derived from the different responding speeds of the oblique shock and detonation waves. To avoid the generation of the new localized explosion region, which causes an abrupt change in the initiation position and potentially affects the ODWE’s stability and performance, it is suggested to vary the wedge angle in incremental steps within a certain time interval

    Birds.

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    Birds are useful bioindicators for monitoring ecological change. They form an interactive community within the ecosystem and are integral for pollination and seed dispersal for many native plants (Gatesire et al., 2014; Stratford et al., 2015). Nonetheless, the destruction of avian habitats, such as lowland forests for timber, human settlements and coastal development in recent decades have resulted in the decline of many avian species (Kihia, 2014; Barlow et al., 2016). Little work has been done on the mangroves and coastal birds in Sarawak, despite increasing threats towards such ecosystems (Wilson, 2002

    A Bird Survey of Sungai Kangkawat Research Station, Imbak Canyon Conservation Area, Sabah

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    A bird survey was conducted at the Sungai Kangkawat Research Station (117°3′34.593″E, 5°4′29.187″N), Imbak Canyon Conservation Area (ICCA), Sabah from 5th until 8th October, 2018. The objective of this survey was to produce a preliminary checklist of bird species in the study area. The primary method used was mist-netting with occasional observation from vocal and visual identification. A total of 30 mist-nets were deployed for 11 hours (0630-1730 hr.) for four consecutive days with a final accumulation of 1840 net/hours. Overall, 59 species comprising 23 families were recorded throughout the survey. Of these, 114 individuals were netted representing 41 species from 13 families. The most abundant species caught was the Little Spiderhunter Arachnothera longirostra with 26 individuals. Additionally, 18 species from 10 different families were identified via opportunistic sighting and vocalisation. This includes one Critically Endangered (Helmeted Hornbill, Buceros vigil), three Vulnerable (i.e., Rhinoceros Hornbill Buceros rhinoceros, Large-billed Blue Flycatcher Cyornis caerulatus and Blue-headed Pitta Pitta baudii and 20 other Near-threatened species. Four endemic species were recorded namely the Bornean Blue Flycatcher Cyornis superbus, White-crowned Shama Copsychus stricklandi, Black-headed Pitta Pitta ussheri and Blue-headed Pitta Pitta baudii. We expect higher diversity of birds in ICCA because the species accumulation curve did not reach an asymptote until the last day of sampling. This suggests additional trapping effort with point counts along predetermined transects should be considered for future surveys

    Bird diversity in Imbak Canyon Conservation Area, Sabah, Malaysia

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    A bird survey was conducted at the Sungai Kangkawat Research Station (117°3′34.593″E, 5°4′29.187″N), Imbak Canyon Conservation Area (ICCA), Sabah from 5th until 8th October, 2018. The objective of this survey was to produce a preliminary checklist of bird species in the study area. The primary method used was mist-netting with occasional observation from vocal and visual identification. A total of 30 mist-nets were deployed for 11 hours (0630-1730 hr.) for four consecutive days with a final accumulation of 1840 net/hours. Overall, 59 species comprising 23 families were recorded throughout the survey. Of these, 114 individuals were netted representing 41 species from 13 families. The most abundant species caught was the Little Spiderhunter Arachnothera longirostra with 26 individuals. Additionally, 18 species from 10 different families were identified via opportunistic sighting and vocalisation. This includes one Critically Endangered (Helmeted Hornbill, Buceros vigil), three Vulnerable (i.e., Rhinoceros Hornbill Buceros rhinoceros, Large-billed Blue Flycatcher Cyornis caerulatus and Blue-headed Pitta Pitta baudii and 20 other Near-threatened species. Four endemic species were recorded namely the Bornean Blue Flycatcher Cyornis superbus, White-crowned Shama Copsychus stricklandi, Black-headed Pitta Pitta ussheri and Blue-headed Pitta Pitta baudii. We expect higher diversity of birds in ICCA because the species accumulation curve did not reach an asymptote until the last day of sampling. This suggests additional trapping effort with point counts along predetermined transects should be considered for future surveys

    A Bird Survey of Sungai Kangkawat Research Station, Imbak Canyon Conservation Area, Sabah

    Get PDF
    A bird survey was conducted at the Sungai Kangkawat Research Station (117°3′34.593″E, 5°4′29.187″N), Imbak Canyon Conservation Area (ICCA), Sabah from 5 th until 8 th October, 2018. The objective of this survey was to produce a preliminary checklist of bird species in the study area. The primary method used was mist-netting with occasional observation from vocal and visual identification. A total of 30 mistnets were deployed for 11 hours (0630-1730 hr.) for four consecutive days with a final accumulation of 1840 net/hours. Overall, 59 species comprising 23 families were recorded throughout the survey. Of these, 114 individuals were netted representing 41 species from 13 families. The most abundant species caught was the Little Spiderhunter Arachnothera longirostra with 26 individuals. Additionally, 18 species from 10 different families were identified via opportunistic sighting and vocalisation. This includes one Critically Endangered (Helmeted Hornbill, Buceros vigil), three Vulnerable (i.e., Rhinoceros Hornbill Buceros rhinoceros, Large-billed Blue Flycatcher Cyornis caerulatus and Blue-headed Pitta Pitta baudii and 20 other Near-threatened species. Four endemic species were recorded namely the Bornean Blue Flycatcher Cyornis superbus, White-crowned Shama Copsychus stricklandi, Black-headed Pitta Pitta ussheri and Blue-headed Pitta Pitta baudii. We expect higher diversity of birds in ICCA because the species accumulation curve did not reach an asymptote until the last day of sampling. This suggests additional trapping effort with point counts along predetermined transects should be considered for future surveys

    Expected Performance of the ATLAS Experiment - Detector, Trigger and Physics

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    A detailed study is presented of the expected performance of the ATLAS detector. The reconstruction of tracks, leptons, photons, missing energy and jets is investigated, together with the performance of b-tagging and the trigger. The physics potential for a variety of interesting physics processes, within the Standard Model and beyond, is examined. The study comprises a series of notes based on simulations of the detector and physics processes, with particular emphasis given to the data expected from the first years of operation of the LHC at CERN

    Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

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    A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

    Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

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    Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

    Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

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    Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely
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