A water vision for Johnstone

The Water Vision is based on ideas from The Netherlands which promote communication with the public on key water related issues in a local authority area. A Water Vision for Johnstone was developed in Renfrewshire, Scotland where serious flooding has occurred in the past and new, predominantly non-structural approaches to surface water management were demanded. The paper outlines the development of a ‘Water Vision for Johnstone’ which became a key outcome of the Interreg III B project ‘Urban Water’.The Water Toets (Assessments) are statutory procedures in the Netherlands which come into play from the concept stage of developments onwards to full implementation. They are undertaken jointly on behalf of the spatial planning authority and the water authorities to evaluate the impact of development on the water network. In contrast, the Water Vision is a less well-defined process to identify community needs and aspirations but in many areas the vision is essential to support the Water Toets. The Water Vision is initiated by planning officers from the municipalities asking very basic questions of their communities about what they required of the water network. It was felt that adopting such a proactive approach where virtually any question about water bodies and drainage infrastructure could be asked, would not be practicable in the UK and it was decided to assemble information about water issues in the area, the agencies involved and potential ways forward, before approaching the public.Johnstone was selected as a test area as it was felt that this locality included many of the water related problems that can be found throughout Renfrewshire. Key water issues were identified and a range of possible solutions provided. Problems, solutions and organisations responsible for different aspects of the water network are described in the document, using images and plans to facilitate the public awareness. Normally the man in the street would not be expected to be as familiar with the nature of water-related problems as the general public in the Netherlands. The Water Vision is yet to go to public consultation as it is currently primarily a planning tool in which council processes are embedded. However, it is planned that workshops including all key stakeholders involved in water management will be held. Those bodies currently responsible for water management will then be encouraged to discuss the various options and opportunities available in a creative and integrated manner. By working together as a team in addressing water related issues it will be possible to develop a vision for the future that better assists the public in moving forward together

Virtual integration platform for computational fluid dynamics

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tools used in shipbuilding industry involve multiple disciplines, such as resistance, manoeuvring, and cavitation. Traditionally, the analysis was performed separately and sequentially in each discipline, which often resulted in conflict and inconsistency of hydrodynamic prediction. In an effort to solve such problems for future CFD computations, a Virtual Integration Platform (VIP) has been developed in the University of Strathclyde within two EU FP6 projects - VIRTUE and SAFEDOR1. The VIP provides a holistic collaborative environment for designers with features such as Project/Process Management, Distributed Tools Integration, Global Optimisation, Version Management, and Knowledge Management. These features enhance collaboration among customers, ship design companies, shipyards, and consultancies not least because they bring together the best expertise and resources around the world. The platform has been tested in seven European ship design companies including consultancies. Its main functionalities along with advances are presented in this paper with two industrial applications

Overdiagnosis in breast cancer screening: the importance of length of observation period and lead time

PMCID: PMC3706885This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Mechanical characterization of a customized decellularized scaffold for vascular tissue engineering.

Several challenges persist when attempting to utilize decellularized tissue as a scaffold for vascular tissue engineering. Namely: poor cell infiltration/migration, excessive culture times associated with repopulating the scaffolds, and the achievement of a quiescent medial layer. In an attempt to create an optimum vascular scaffold, we customized the properties of decellularized porcine carotid arteries by: (i) creating cavities within the medial layer to allow direct injection of cells, and (ii) controlling the amount of collagen digestion to increase the porosity. Histological examination of our customized scaffold revealed a highly porous tissue structure containing consistent medial cavities running longitudinally through the porous scaffold wall. Mechanical testing of the customized scaffold showed that our minimal localized disruption to the ECM does not have a detrimental effect on the bulk mechanical response of the tissue. The results demonstrate that an increased stiffness and reduced distensibility occurs after decellularization when compared to the native tissue, however post scaffold customization we can revert the scaffold tensile properties back to that of the native tissue. This most noteworthy result occurs in the elastin dominant phase of the tensile response of the scaffold, indicating that no disruption has occurred to the elastin network by our decellularization and customization techniques. Additionally, the bulk seeding potential of the customized scaffold was demonstrated by direct injection of human smooth muscle cells through the medial cavities. The optimum cell dispersion was observed in the highest porosity scaffold, with large cell numbers retained within the medial layer after 24 h static culture. In summary, this study presents a novel customized decellularized vascular scaffold that has the capability of bulk seeding the media, and in tandem to this method, the porosity of the scaffold has been increased without compromising the mechanical integrity

Dynamical Mean Field Theory of the Antiferromagnetic Metal to Antiferromagnetic Insulator Transition

We study the antiferromagnetic metal to antiferromagnetic insulator using dynamical mean field theory and exact diagonalization methods. We find two qualitatively different behaviors depending on the degree of magnetic correlations. For strong correlations combined with magnetic frustration, the transition can be described in terms of a renormalized slater theory, with a continuous gap closure driven by the magnetism but strongly renormalized by correlations. For weak magnetic correlations, the transition is weakly first order.Comment: 4 pages, uses epsfig,4 figures,notational errors rectifie

Stability of the doped antiferromagnetic state of the t-t'-Hubbard model

The next-nearest-neighbour hopping term t' is shown to stabilize the AF state of the doped Hubbard model with respect to transverse perturbations in the order- parameter by strongly suppressing the intraband particle-hole processes. For a fixed sign of t', this stabilization is found to be significantly different for electron and hole doping, which qualitatively explains the observed difference in the degree of robustness of the AF state in the electron-doped (Nd_{2-x}Ce_{x}CuO_{4}) and hole-doped (La_{2-x}Sr_{x}CuO_{4}) cuprates. The t'-U phase diagram is obtained for both signs of the t' term, showing the different regions of stability and instability of the doped antiferromagnet. Doping is shown to suppress the t'-induced frustration due to the competing interaction J'. A study of transverse spin fluctuations in the metallic AF state reveals that the decay of magnons into particle-hole excitations yields an interesting low-energy result \Gamma \sim \omega for magnon damping.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure

Complexities in the estimation of overdiagnosis in breast cancer screening

There is interest in estimating and attributing temporal changes in incidence of breast cancer in relation to the initiation of screening programmes, in particular to estimation of overdiagnosis of breast cancer as a result of screening. In this paper, we show how screening introduces complexities of analysis and interpretation of incidence data. For example, lead time brings forward time- and age-related increases in incidence. In addition, risk factors such as hormone replacement therapy use have been changing contemporaneously with the introduction of screening. Although we do not indicate exactly how such complexities should be corrected for, we use some simple informal adjustments to show how they may account for a substantial proportion of increased incidence, which might otherwise erroneously have been attributed to overdiagnosis. We illustrate this using an example of analysis of breast cancer incidence data from Sweden