1,061 research outputs found
Developing a Framework to Identify Local Business and Government Vulnerability to Sea-Level Rise: A Case Study of Coastal Virginia
In this paper we develop methods for identifying local business and government vulnerabilities to sea-level rise and the natural hazards associated with it. Unlike the fairly large literature on measuring social vulnerability to natural hazards, there are very few papers that discuss methods for measuring local business or local government vulnerability even though businesses and governments are also differentially affected natural hazards. Our goal is to create measures that are easily replicable using readily available data and that are easy to explain to local planners, policy makers, and citizens. We implement our measures of local business and government vulnerability for our study area, Coastal Virginia. We then combine those measures with a physical vulnerability measure to identify the areas in Coastal Virginia where planners and policy makers need to more closely examine the potential impacts of sea-level rise on their local businesses and government. While our methods are tailored to Coastal Virginia, they could be easily applied in other areas threatened by sea-level rise
Onset of anomalous diffusion from local motion rules
Anomalous diffusion processes, in particular superdiffusive ones, are known to be efficient strategies for searching and navigation by animals and also in human mobility. One way to create such regimes are Lévy flights, where the walkers are allowed to perform jumps, the " flights " , that can eventually be very long as their length distribution is asymptotically power-law distributed. In our work, we present a model in which walkers are allowed to perform, on a 1D lattice, " cascades " of n unitary steps instead of one jump of a randomly generated length, as in the Lévy case, where n is drawn from a cascade distribution pn. We show that this local mechanism may give rise to superdiffusion or normal diffusion when pn is distributed as a power law. We also introduce waiting times that are power-law distributed as well and therefore the probability distribution scaling is steered by the two PDF's power-law exponents. As a perspective, our approach may engender a possible generalization of anomalous diffusion in context where distances are difficult to define, as in the case of complex networks, and also provide an interesting model for diffusion in temporal networks
Projet en organisation au GRIS-Québec
L'objectif du présent rapport de stage est, en premier lieu, d'établir une analyse interne et externe du GRIS-Québec. Cela permet de rendre compte des forces, faiblesses, opportunités et menaces de l’organisme. En deuxième lieu, les résultats de l’analyse mettent en évidence les tendances actuelles et les faits indispensables qui doivent se trouver dans l’audit des besoins communicationnels de l’OSBL. Il devient dès lors possible de mettre en place un plan de communication global pertinent et complet avec des objectifs et des indicateurs de performance répondant aux besoins du GRIS-Québec
Heat Shock Proteins as Danger Signals for Cancer Detection
First discovered in 1962, heat shock proteins (HSPs) are highly studied with about 35,500 publications on the subject to date. HSPs are highly conserved, function as molecular chaperones for a large panel of “client” proteins and have strong cytoprotective properties. Induced by many different stress signals, they promote cell survival in adverse conditions. Therefore, their roles have been investigated in several conditions and pathologies where HSPs accumulate, such as in cancer. Among the diverse mammalian HSPs, some members share several features that may qualify them as cancer biomarkers. This review focuses mainly on three inducible HSPs: HSP27, HPS70, and HSP90. Our survey of recent literature highlights some recurring weaknesses in studies of the HSPs, but also identifies findings that indicate that some HSPs have potential as cancer biomarkers for successful clinical applications
Accredited qualifications for capacity development in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation
Increasingly practitioners and policy makers working
across the globe are recognising the importance of
bringing together disaster risk reduction and climate
change adaptation. From studies across 15 Pacific island
nations, a key barrier to improving national resilience
to disaster risks and climate change impacts has been
identified as a lack of capacity and expertise resulting
from the absence of sustainable accredited and quality
assured formal training programmes in the disaster risk
reduction and climate change adaptation sectors. In the
2016 UNISDR Science and Technology Conference
on the Implementation of the Sendai Framework for
Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, it was raised that
most of the training material available are not reviewed
either through a peer-to-peer mechanism or by the
scientific community and are, thus, not following quality
assurance standards. In response to these identified
barriers, this paper focuses on a call for accredited formal
qualifications for capacity development identified in the
2015 United Nations landmark agreements in DRR and
CCA and uses the Pacific Islands Region of where this
is now being implemented with the launch of the Pacific
Regional Federation of Resilience Professionals, for
DRR and CCA. A key issue is providing an accreditation
and quality assurance mechanism that is shared across
boundaries. This paper argues that by using the United
Nations landmark agreements of 2015, support for a
regionally accredited capacity development that ensures
all countries can produce, access and effectively use
scientific information for disaster risk reduction and
climate change adaptation. The newly launched Pacific
Regional Federation of Resilience Professionals who
work in disaster risk reduction and climate change
adaptation may offer a model that can be used more
widely
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