Applicability of adapted reservoir operation for water stress mitigation under dry year conditions

This paper introduces the conjunctive use of a deterministic water quality model and water balance criteria for supporting the assessment of simulation and to evaluate the effectiveness of proposed operation strategies. By this, the applicability of enhanced reservoir operation strategies addressing both water quality as well as water quantity aspects under water deficit conditions in dry years can be shown. Arguments will be developed to address stakeholders and decision makers in the context of a more conservative past operation regime. Results are presented for the Kaparas reservoir, which is located in the lower Amu Darya River, on the border of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. As being one out of four large reservoirs of the Tuyamuyun Hydro Complex (THC), the Kaparas reservoir could be increasingly used for drinking water supply for the lower Amu Darya region. The results for the dry year 2001 indicates that the combination of simulation together with practical assessment criteria confirm the applicability of adapted operation rules for THC reservoirs and ways can be found to supply the local population (of the lower Amu Darya region) with more potable water of higher quality even subject to a parallel reduction of water deficits. Future aggravation of water stress due to increasing population growth and water quality deterioration will require a more comprehensive consideration of water quality aspects in many arid and semi arid regions. The experience gained during this study emphasizes the fact that classical deterministic water quality models provide effective tools to address even more complex water quality problems under water stressed conditions, provided processing of results is performed, to support the decision making process

Assessing the Structural Prerequisites for an Efficient Russian Political Market

Applying the market metaphor the first part of the article outlines a conceptual model for assessing the efficiency of the Russian political system. In the Russian transitional context the development of democracy also has to be included in such an assessment. Using Robert Dahl's classic criteria of democracy and Douglass C. North's factors determining transaction costs a scheme is suggested for assessing the efficiency of the Russian political market, looking at the "structure" of this market as well as actors behaviour ("agency"). In the second part of the article, essential structural developments of the Russian political market are analysed and the implications of these developments are discussed. The conclusion is that a number of recent reforms affecting the structure of the Russian political market will improve the prerequisites for efficiency of citizens' participation in political life. Finally, the usefulness of applying the market metaphor in analyses of the political system is discussed

Is the Russian Virtual Economy Coming to an End? Institutional Change in the Arkhangelsk Forest Sector

Since the spring of 1997, the Forestry Program at IIASA has been engaged in a study called "Institutions and the Emergence of Markets-Transition in the Russian Forest Sector". The IIASA research group has looked at problems related to the institutions governing the Russian forest sector. In its first phase (1998-2001) the study sought to identify institutional problems hampering the further development of the Russian forest sector. Case studies were performed in eight Russian regions. In its second phase (2000-2002), so-called policy exercise workshops were held in four of the eight case study regions. In these workshops the findings of the case studies were presented to the stakeholders in the respective regions and a discussion was initiated about future regional forest policies. In a third phase, starting in 2003, after the in-house research activity was over, the study has been continued outside the institute by a member of the previous IIASA team. A follow-up study of the behavior forest sector enterprises in one of the previous case study regions (Arkhangelsk Oblast) has been conducted with the purpose of assessing the recent development of the institutional set-up characterizing the so-called virtual economy. The present report presents the findings of this assessment. The report should be possible to read independently of earlier published reports from IIASAs study of Russian forest institutions. All reports from the study published so far are listed in Appendix B. On behalf of Professor Sten Nilsson, Deputy Director and Leader of IIASAs Forestry Program, I would like to express our gratitude to Dr. Mikhail Y. Varakin, Arkhangelsk State Technical University, Arkhangelsk. Without his dedicated work this report would not have been possible

psbA mutation (Ala251 to Val) in Chenopodium album resistant to triazinones

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Constraint-preserving boundary conditions in the 3+1 first-order approach

A set of energy-momentum constraint-preserving boundary conditions is proposed for the first-order Z4 case. The stability of a simple numerical implementation is tested in the linear regime (robust stability test), both with the standard corner and vertex treatment and with a modified finite-differences stencil for boundary points which avoids corners and vertices even in cartesian-like grids. Moreover, the proposed boundary conditions are tested in a strong field scenario, the Gowdy waves metric, showing the expected rate of convergence. The accumulated amount of energy-momentum constraint violations is similar or even smaller than the one generated by either periodic or reflection conditions, which are exact in the Gowdy waves case. As a side theoretical result, a new symmetrizer is explicitly given, which extends the parametric domain of symmetric hyperbolicity for the Z4 formalism. The application of these results to first-order BSSN-like formalisms is also considered.Comment: Revised version, with conclusive numerical evidence. 23 pages, 12 figure

The Pion-Nucleon coupling constant from np charge exchange scattering

A novel extrapolation method has been used to deduce the charged Pion-Nucleon coupling constant from backward $np$ differential scattering cross sections. We applied it to new measurements performed at 162 MeV at the The Svedberg Laboratory in Uppsala. In the angular range $150^\circ-180^\circ$, the carefully normalized data are steeper than those of most previous measurements. The extracted value, $g^2_{\pi^\pm} = 14.52 \pm 0.26$, in good agreement with the classical value, is higher than those determined in recent nucleon-nucleon partial-wave analyses.Comment: 6 pages, 3 encapsulated figures, epsfig, menu97.cls (included

Mortality following a brain tumour diagnosis in patients with multiple sclerosis

Objectives: As brain tumours and their treatment may theoretically have a poorer prognosis in inflammatory central nervous system diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS), all-cause mortality following a brain tumour diagnosis was compared between patients with and without MS. The potential role of age at tumour diagnosis was also examined. Setting: Hospital inpatients in Sweden with assessment of mortality in hospital or following discharge. Participants: Swedish national registers identified 20 543 patients with an MS diagnosis (1969-2005) and they were matched individually to produce a comparison cohort of 204 163 members of the general population without MS. Everyone with a primary brain tumour diagnosis was selected for this study: 111 with MS and 907 without MS. Primary and secondary outcome measures: 5-year mortality risk following brain tumour diagnosis and age at brain tumour diagnosis. Results: A non-statistically significant lower mortality risk among patients with MS (lower for those with tumours of high-grade and uncertain-grade malignancy and no notable difference for low-grade tumours) produced an unadjusted HR (and 95% CI) of 0.75 (0.56 to 1.02). After adjustment for age at diagnosis, grade of malignancy, sex, region of residence and socioeconomic index, the HR is 0.91 (0.67-1.24). The change in estimate was largely due to adjustment for age at brain tumour diagnosis, as patients with MS were on average 4.7 years younger at brain tumour diagnosis than those in the comparison cohort (p<0.001). Conclusions: Younger age at tumour diagnosis may contribute to mortality reduction in those with highgrade and uncertain-grade brain tumours. Survival following a brain tumour is not worse in patients with MS; even after age at brain tumour diagnosis and grade of malignancy are taken into account

Institutions and the Emergence of Markets - Transition in the Tomsk Forest Sector

Godkänd; 1998; 20070515 (keni

Identifying Agile Requirements Engineering Patterns in Industry

Agile Software Development (ASD) is gaining in popularity in today´s business world. Industry is adopting agile methodologies both to accelerate value delivery and to enhance the ability to deal with changing requirements. However, ASD has a great impact on how Requirements Engineering (RE) is carried out in agile environments. The integration of Human-Centered Design (HCD) plays an important role due to the focus on user and stakeholder involvement. To this end, we aim to introduce agile RE patterns as main objective of this paper. On the one hand, we will describe our pattern mining process based on empirical research in literature and industry. On the other hand, we will discuss our results and provide two examples of agile RE patterns. In sum, the pattern mining process identifies 41 agile RE patterns. The accumulated knowledge will be shared by means of a web application.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2016-76956-C3-2-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED