Co-doping red-emitting Sr2Si5N8:Eu2+ into yellow-emitting phosphor-packaging for enhancing the optical properties of the 8500 K remote-phosphor packaging wleds

In the last decades, WLEDs attract more and more consideration in both academic and industrial purposes because of its advantages such as fast response time, environment friendliness, small size, long lifetime, and high efficiency. In this research, by doping the red-emitting Sr2Si5N8:Eu2+ phosphor particles into yellow-emitting YAG:Ce phosphor-packaging, a new recommendation for enhancing the optical properties (color uniformity, color rendering index, and lumen output) of the 8500 K remote-phosphor packaging WLEDs is presented, investigated, and demonstrated. By using Mat Lab and Light Tools software based on Mie Theory, the obtained results show that the optical properties of the 8500 K remote-phosphor packaging WLEDs significantly depended on Sr2Si5N8:Eu2+ concentration. The results have provided a potential practical recommendation for manufacturing remote-phosphor W-LEDs.Web of Science1341034102

Cost effectiveness of strategies to combat road traffic injuries in sub-Saharan Africa and South East Asia: mathematical modelling study

Objective To identify and estimate the population costs and effects of a selected set of enforcement strategies for reducing the burden of road traffic injuries in developing countries

Integrating ethics, health policy and health systems in low and middle income countries : case studies from Malaysia and Pakistan.

Scientific progress is a significant basis for change in public-health policy and practice, but the field also invests in value-laden concepts and responds daily to sociopolitical, cultural and evaluative concerns. The concepts that drive much of public-health practice are shaped by the collective and individual mores that define social systems. This paper seeks to describe the ethics processes in play when public-health mechanisms are established in low- and middle-income countries, by focusing on two cases where ethics played a crucial role in producing positive institutional change in public-health policy. First, we introduce an overview of the relationship between ethics and public health; second, we provide a conceptual framework for the ethical analysis of health system events, noting how this approach might enhance the power of existing frameworks; and third, we demonstrate the interplay of these frameworks through the analysis of a programme to enhance road safety in Malaysia and an initiative to establish a national ethics committee in Pakistan. We conclude that, while ethics are gradually being integrated into public-health policy decisions in many developing health systems, ethical analysis is often implicit and undervalued. This paper highlights the need to analyse public-health decision-making from an ethical perspective

Goal setting and knowledge generation through health policy and systems research in low- and middle-income countries

The importance of health policy and systems research (HPSR) and its role in aiding health system reforms has been increasingly recognized in recent years within the World Health Organization (WHO). An assessment of the 71 WHO Country Cooperation Strategies (CCS) that are publicly available and were published in English in 2012 was completed to determine the extent to which HPSR goals are incorporated at the global level. A review was then conducted using a Medline database search to determine the number of articles published by countries with HPSR goals. Sixty-six out of the 71 (93%) available CCS describe HPSR as an objective or strategy for achieving health system priorities. However, only 52 out of the 66 countries (79%) have any publications involving HPSR during their most recent CCS cycle. This suggests that although health systems strengthening through HPSR is increasingly emphasized by the WHO and country health ministries, actual HPSR progress may still be lacking. There is a need and an opportunity for the WHO and other global health agencies to focus on providing the necessary tools and building HPSR capacity in low- and middle-income countries

Bacteria-mediated aggregation of the marine phytoplankton Thalassiosira weissflogii and Nannochloropsis oceanica

Funder: Australian Government Research Training Program ScholarshipFunder: University of Technology Sydney Climate Change Cluster (C3)Abstract: The ecological relationships between heterotrophic bacteria and marine phytoplankton are complex and multifaceted, and in some instances include the bacteria-mediated aggregation of phytoplankton cells. It is not known to what extent bacteria stimulate aggregation of marine phytoplankton, the variability in aggregation capacity across different bacterial taxa or the potential role of algogenic exopolymers in this process. Here we screened twenty bacterial isolates, spanning nine orders, for their capacity to stimulate aggregation of two marine phytoplankters, Thalassiosira weissflogii and Nannochloropsis oceanica. In addition to phytoplankton aggregation efficiency, the production of exopolymers was measured using Alcian Blue. Bacterial isolates from the Rhodobacterales, Flavobacteriales and Sphingomonadales orders stimulated the highest levels of cell aggregation in phytoplankton cultures. When co-cultured with bacteria, exopolymer concentration accounted for 34.1% of the aggregation observed in T. weissflogii and 27.7% of the aggregation observed in N. oceanica. Bacteria-mediated aggregation of phytoplankton has potentially important implications for mediating vertical carbon flux in the ocean and in extracting phytoplankton cells from suspension for biotechnological applications