Galaxy population properties in the rich clusters MS0839.8+2938, 1224.7+2007 and 1231.3+1542

This paper discusses the galaxy populations of three rich clusters, with redshift 0.19 (0839+29), 0.24 (1231+15), and 0.32 (1224+20), from the database of the CNOC1 consortium. The data consist of spectra of 52 cluster members for 0839+29, 30 members for 1224+15, and 82 members for 1231+15, and there are comparable numbers of field galaxy spectra. 0839+29 is compact with no strong radial gradients, and possibly dusty. 1224+20 is isolated in redshift, has low velocity dispersion around the cD galaxy, and low 4000A break. 1231+15 is asymmetrical and we discuss the possibility that it may be a recent merger of two old clusters. We find few galaxies in 0839+29 and 1231+15 with ongoing or recently truncated star-formation.Comment: 16 pages and 20 diagrams, to appear in A

High speed shadowgraphy for the study of liquid drops

The book contains invited lectures and selected contributions presented at the Enzo Levi and XVII Annual Meeting of the Fluid Dynamic Division of the Mexican Physical Society in 2011.This was work was sponsored by EPSRC grant number RG5560

A financial analysis of the effect of the mix of crop and sheep enterprises on the risk profile of dryland farms in south-eastern Australia

This study analyses the financial risk faced by representative mixed-enterprise farm businesses in four regions of south-eastern Australia. It uses discrete stochastic programming to optimise the ten-year cash flow margins produced by these farms operating three different farming systems. Monte Carlo analysis is used to produce a risk profile for each scenario, derived from multiple runs of this optimised model, randomised for commodity prices and decadal growing season rainfall since 1920. This analysis shows that the performance of the enterprise mixes at each site is characterised more by the level of variability of possible outcomes than by the mean values of financial outputs. It demonstrates that relying on mean values for climate and prices disguises the considerable risks involved with cropping in this area. Diversification into a Merino sheep enterprise marginally reduced the probability of financial loss at all sites. This study emphasises the fact that the variability, or risk, associated with all scenarios far exceeds the likely change in cash margins due to innovation and good management. It further shows that farm managers should give a higher priority to adopting innovations which reduce costs, rather than increase productivity, in order to reduce risk. Further analysis shows that the current static measures of financial performance (gross margins, profit and cash margins) do not characterise the risk-adjusted performance of the various farming systems and almost certainly result in a flawed specification of best-practice farm management in south-eastern Australia.Farm Management,

Reporting ethics committee approval and patient consent by study design in five general medical journals.

BACKGROUND: Authors are required to describe in their manuscripts ethical approval from an appropriate committee and how consent was obtained from participants when research involves human participants. OBJECTIVE: To assess the reporting of these protections for several study designs in general medical journals. DESIGN: A consecutive series of research papers published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, BMJ, JAMA, Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine between February and May 2003 were reviewed for the reporting of ethical approval and patient consent. Ethical approval, name of approving committee, type of consent, data source and whether the study used data collected as part of a study reported elsewhere were recorded. Differences in failure to report approval and consent by study design, journal and vulnerable study population were evaluated using multivariable logistic regression. RESULTS: Ethical approval and consent were not mentioned in 31% and 47% of manuscripts, respectively. 88 (27%) papers failed to report both approval and consent. Failure to mention ethical approval or consent was significantly more likely in all study designs (except case-control and qualitative studies) than in randomised controlled trials (RCTs). Failure to mention approval was most common in the BMJ and was significantly more likely than in The New England Journal of Medicine. Failure to mention consent was most common in the BMJ and was significantly more likely than in all other journals. No significant differences in approval or consent were found when comparing studies of vulnerable and non-vulnerable participants. CONCLUSION: The reporting of ethical approval and consent in RCTs has improved, but journals are less good at reporting this information for other study designs. Journals should publish this information for all research on human participants

The evolution of Radio Loud Quasar host galaxies: AO observations at z = 3

We report on ESO--VLT adaptive optics imaging of one radio-loud quasar at z $\sim$ 3. In spite of the large distance of the object we are able to detect its surrounding extended nebulosity the properties of which are consistent with an underlying massive galaxy of M$_K$ $\sim$ --27 and effective radius R$_e$ = 7 kpc. As far as we know this is the clearest detection of a radio loud quasar host at high redshift. The host luminosity is indicative of the existence of massive spheroids even at this early cosmic epoch. The host luminosity is about 1 magnitude fainter than the expected value based on the average trend of the host galaxies of RLQ at lower redshift. The result, which however is based on a single object, suggests that at z $\sim$ 3 there is a deviation from a luminosity--redshift dependence regulated only by passive evolution.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, TeX uses elsart.cls, from workshop "QSO Host Galaxies: Evolution and Environment" (Univ. Leiden, Aug. 22-26, 2005

Economics of managing acid soils in dryland mixed cropping systems: comparing gross margins with whole-farm analysis derived using a business process model

A 12-year experiment designed to show the benefits of applying lime to acid soils when growing annual pasture, perennial pasture, and annual crops in rotations with annual or perennial pastures, provides the context for comparing methods of economic analysis. In this study enterprise gross margins are compared with whole-farm cumulative monthly cash flows derived using a business process model. The current study gave gross margins comparable with those of a recently published study based on the first 12 years of the same field experiment at Book Book near Wagga Wagga in southern NSW (Li et al., 2010). Both gross margin analyses indicated positive results for all treatments. However, because key fixed and capital cost items were not taken into account in the gross margin analysis the financial benefits of the treatments were overstated. In the whole-farm analysis, a full set of accounts (including fixed and capital costs) was developed for the experimental combinations of prime lamb and dryland cropping enterprises and used to generate a monthly cash flow sequence for each treatment over the 12-year term of the experiment. This full financial analysis, where all costs are included, showed all mixed treatments (cropping and grazing) accumulated unsustainable losses over the period of the trial. The grazing-only treatments generated positive cash lows over the 12 year period, but 2 accumulated high levels of debt in the initial years. None of these outcomes were predicted by gross margins, which were consistently positive for all treatments. This paper concludes that the analysis of trial results benefits from interpretation in the context of whole-farm analysis, verified by district experience. Relying on gross margin analysis alone would have supported loss-making outcomes in this trial. This conclusion has important ramifications for analysis of all systems trials.Agribusiness,

Complex responses to movement-based disease control: when livestock trading helps

Livestock disease controls are often linked to movements between farms, for example, via quarantine and pre- or post-movement testing. Designing effective controls, therefore, benefits from accurate assessment of herd-to-herd transmission. Household models of human infections make use of R*, the number of groups infected by an initial infected group, which is a metapopulation level analogue of the basic reproduction number R0 that provides a better characterization of disease spread in a metapopulation. However, existing approaches to calculate R* do not account for individual movements between locations which means we lack suitable tools for livestock systems. We address this gap using next-generation matrix approaches to capture movements explicitly and introduce novel tools to calculate R* in any populations coupled by individual movements. We show that depletion of infectives in the source group, which hastens its recovery, is a phenomenon with important implications for design and efficacy of movement-based controls. Underpinning our results is the observation that R* peaks at intermediate livestock movement rates. Consequently, under movement-based controls, infection could be controlled at high movement rates but persist at intermediate rates. Thus, once control schemes are present in a livestock system, a reduction in movements can counterintuitively lead to increased disease prevalence. We illustrate our results using four important livestock diseases (bovine viral diarrhoea, bovine herpes virus, Johne's disease and Escherichia coli O157) that each persist across different movement rate ranges with the consequence that a change in livestock movements could help control one disease, but exacerbate another

Algebraic Torsion in Contact Manifolds

We extract a nonnegative integer-valued invariant, which we call the "order of algebraic torsion", from the Symplectic Field Theory of a closed contact manifold, and show that its finiteness gives obstructions to the existence of symplectic fillings and exact symplectic cobordisms. A contact manifold has algebraic torsion of order zero if and only if it is algebraically overtwisted (i.e. has trivial contact homology), and any contact 3-manifold with positive Giroux torsion has algebraic torsion of order one (though the converse is not true). We also construct examples for each nonnegative k of contact 3-manifolds that have algebraic torsion of order k but not k - 1, and derive consequences for contact surgeries on such manifolds. The appendix by Michael Hutchings gives an alternative proof of our cobordism obstructions in dimension three using a refinement of the contact invariant in Embedded Contact Homology.Comment: 53 pages, 4 figures, with an appendix by Michael Hutchings; v.3 is a final update to agree with the published paper, and also corrects a minor error that appeared in the published version of the appendi