Green construction in India: gaining a deeper understanding

A workshop on green construction was organized in New Delhi in July 2008 by Jamia Millia University, India and University of Salford, U.K., aiming to increase 'green' practices that are environmentally friendly and energy efficient. The workshop included participants from regulatory bodies, public and private construction companies and researchers. The object of the workshop was to provide an opportunity to capture issues, challenges and research issues in green practices throughout the supply chain in the construction sector in India. The methodology constituted a survey that was provided to all participants, where eight questions were composed by the facilitators. The participants were asked about their views on voluntary and compulsory ways of assessment and audit of green implementation in India. The findings of the workshop featured major challenges, drivers, initiatives, and the ways of effective implementation as well as enforcement on the discussed topic

Transport coefficients for an inelastic gas around uniform shear flow: Linear stability analysis

The inelastic Boltzmann equation for a granular gas is applied to spatially inhomogeneous states close to the uniform shear flow. A normal solution is obtained via a Chapman-Enskog-like expansion around a local shear flow distribution. The heat and momentum fluxes are determined to first order in the deviations of the hydrodynamic field gradients from their values in the reference state. The corresponding transport coefficients are determined from a set of coupled linear integral equations which are approximately solved by using a kinetic model of the Boltzmann equation. The main new ingredient in this expansion is that the reference state $f^{(0)}$ (zeroth-order approximation) retains all the hydrodynamic orders in the shear rate. In addition, since the collisional cooling cannot be compensated locally for viscous heating, the distribution $f^{(0)}$ depends on time through its dependence on temperature. This means that in general, for a given degree of inelasticity, the complete nonlinear dependence of the transport coefficients on the shear rate requires the analysis of the {\em unsteady} hydrodynamic behavior. To simplify the analysis, the steady state conditions have been considered here in order to perform a linear stability analysis of the hydrodynamic equations with respect to the uniform shear flow state. Conditions for instabilities at long wavelengths are identified and discussed.Comment: 7 figures; previous stability analysis modifie

Raman spectroscopy of the low dimensional antiferromagnet with large Neel temperature SrRu2O6

We report results of the Raman measurements for SrRu$_2$O$_6$ having extraordinary high N$\acute{\textrm{e}}$el temperature for a layered material. No additional phonon modes were detected at the temperature of magnetic transition thus excluding lowering of the symmetry in the magnetically ordered phase. An unusual increase in softening and damping of some phonons as the temperature approaches $T_N$ indicate the appearance of a continuum of interacting electronic excitations at $T\geq300K$. We also observe an intensive Raman response at 2050 cm$^{-1}$. Analysis of the polarization dependence and comparison with available theoretical data shows that this peak likely originates from the transitions between molecular orbitals previously proposed to explain the magnetic properties of SrRu$_2$O$_6$

The hard X-ray perspective on the soft X-ray excess

The X-ray spectra of many active galactic nuclei (AGN) exhibit a `soft excess' below 1keV, whose physical origin remains unclear. Diverse models have been suggested to account for it, including ionised reflection of X-rays from the inner part of the accretion disc, ionised winds/absorbers, and Comptonisation. The ionised reflection model suggests a natural link between the prominence of the soft excess and the Compton reflection hump strength above 10keV, but it has not been clear what hard X-ray signatures, if any, are expected from the other soft X-ray candidate models. Additionally, it has not been possible up until recently to obtain high-quality simultaneous measurements of both soft and hard X-ray emission necessary to distinguish these models, but upcoming joint XMM-NuSTAR programmes provide precisely this opportunity. In this paper, we present an extensive analysis of simulations of XMM+NuSTAR observations, using two candidate soft excess models as inputs, to determine whether such campaigns can disambiguate between them by using hard and soft X-ray observations in tandem. The simulated spectra are fit with the simplest "observer's model" of a black body and neutral reflection to characterise the strength of the soft and hard excesses. A plot of the strength of the hard excess against the soft excess strength provides a diagnostic plot which allows the soft excess production mechanism to be determined in individual sources and samples using current state-of-the-art and next generation hard X-ray enabled observatories. This approach can be straightforwardly extended to other candidate models for the soft excess.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ. Added reference

Protocol for a mixed methods process evaluation of the Smoking Treatment Optimisation in Pharmacies (STOP) trial

This article is a preprint from medRxiv and has not been peer-reviewe

Fantastic plastic? Experimental evaluation of polyurethane bone substitutes as proxies for human bone in trauma simulations

Recent years have seen steady improvements in the recognition and interpretation of violence related injuries in human skeletal remains. Such work has at times benefited from the involvement of biological anthropologists in forensic casework and has often relied upon comparison of documented examples with trauma observed in skeletal remains. In cases where no such example exists investigators must turn to experimentation. The selection of experimental samples is problematic as animal proxies may be too dissimilar to humans and human cadavers may be undesirable for a raft of reasons. The current article examines a third alternative in the form of polyurethane plates and spheres marketed as viable proxies for human bone in ballistic experiments. Through subjecting these samples to a range of impacts from both modern and archaic missile weapons it was established that such material generally responds similarly to bone on a broad, macroscopic scale but when examined in closer detail exhibits a range of dissimilarities that call for caution in extrapolating such results to real bone

Understanding recruitment and retention in the NHS community pharmacy stop smoking service: perceptions of smoking cessation advisers

NIHR Programme Grants for Applied Research Programme (RP-PG-0609-10181

The Strange and Spooky Battle over Bats and Black Dresses: The Commodification of Whitby Goth Weekend and the Loss of a Subculture

From counterculture to subculture to the ubiquity of every black-clad wannabe vampire hanging around the centre of Western cities, Goth has transcended a musical style to become a part of everyday leisure and popular culture. The music’s cultural terrain has been extensively mapped in the first decade of this century. In this article, we examine the phenomenon of the Whitby Goth Weekend, a modern Goth music festival, which has contributed to (and has been altered by) the heritage-tourism marketing of Whitby as the holiday resort of Dracula (the place where Bram Stoker imagined the Vampire Count arriving one dark and stormy night). We examine marketing literature and websites that sell Whitby as a spooky town, and suggest that this strategy has driven the success of the Goth festival. We explore the development of the festival and the politics of its ownership, and its increasing visibility as a mainstream tourist destination for those who want to dress up for the weekend. By interviewing Goths from the north of England, we suggest that the mainstreaming of the festival has led to it becoming less attractive to those more established, older Goths who see the subculture’s authenticity as being rooted in the post-punk era, and who believe that Goth subculture should be something one lives full-time