Observations of Subarcsecond Bright Dots in the Transition Region above Sunspots with the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph

Observations with the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) have revealed numerous sub-arcsecond bright dots in the transition region above sunspots. These bright dots are seen in the 1400\AA{} and 1330\AA{} slit-jaw images. They are clearly present in all sunspots we investigated, mostly in the penumbrae, but also occasionally in some umbrae and light bridges. The bright dots in the penumbrae typically appear slightly elongated, with the two dimensions being 300--600 km and 250--450 km, respectively. The long sides of these dots are often nearly parallel to the bright filamentary structures in the penumbrae but sometimes clearly deviate from the radial direction. Their lifetimes are mostly less than one minute, although some dots last for a few minutes or even longer. Their intensities are often a few times stronger than the intensities of the surrounding environment in the slit-jaw images. About half of the bright dots show apparent movement with speeds of $\sim$10--40~km~s$^{-1}$ in the radial direction. Spectra of a few bright dots were obtained and the Si~{\sc{iv}}~1402.77\AA{} line profiles in these dots are significantly broadened. The line intensity can be enhanced by one to two orders of magnitude. Some relatively bright and long-lasting dots are also observed in several passbands of the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory, and they appear to be located at the bases of loop-like structures. Many of these bright dots are likely associated with small-scale energy release events at the transition region footpoints of magnetic loops.Comment: 5 figures, will appear in ApJ

California Wellness Study: American Indians and Obesity

This paper identifies the prevalence and predictors of obesity among California’s American Indian adults. A cross-sectional study was conducted at 13 rural sites. Indian healthcare clinics served as the sampling frame and were selected because of their proximity and access to the target population. Four-hundred and fifty adult American Indians participated; 74 percent were female and 26 percent were male. The average age was 40, ranging from 18-74. Measures included socio-demographics, general health, BMI, type 2 diabetes, exercise and dietary habits. Eighty-two percent were overweight, obese or morbidly obese. Chisquare tests revealed three variables significantly associated with BMI categories: having type 2 diabetes, female gender and poor general health status. A logistic regression model for obese/morbidly obese (BMI > 30) versus overweight/normal (BMI < 30) persons found gender and diabetes status as significant predictors, while general health status showed trend. Females had 1.59 greater odds of being obese than males (p=0.04). Those that do not have diabetes are less likely to be obese (p=0.02). Those that do not have good general health were 2.5 times more likely to be obese than those that have good general health (p=0.06). Overall goodness of fit was significant (p=0.0009). It is important to identify individuals and population who are normal/overweight, obese/morbidly obese so support and interventions can be planned and implemented

Communication Pathways: HPV Information and Message Barriers Reported among American Indian College Students

Background and Purpose: American Indians (AI) are reported to have high human papillomavirus (HPV) infection rates. This study explores communication pathways among AI college students reporting sources and influences of HPV information. Methods: Eight focus groups with 53 AI students were conducted at four Southwest universities. Questions probed HPV knowledge and attitudes, health beliefs, cultural influences, message barriers, and communication pathways. Data was analyzed using Grounded Theory methods. Results: Schools and television commercials were common information sources; less frequently mentioned were parents and the tribal community. Preferred communication pathways were siblings, relatives and physicians. Barriers to communication included lack of information sources, stigma, traditional viewpoints limiting discussions related to sexuality, and under-representation of AIs in health media. Sources of HPV information and preferences for communication pathways influences and perceived receptiveness of various channels were identified. Conclusion: Education and health messages must take into account AI cultural perspectives, as well as informational and communication preferences. Strategies to reduce information/ communication gaps include improving inter-family communication and facilitating school-based, clinic-based and tribal community health events about protecting sexual and reproductive health. Message barriers must be addressed to reduce HPV-related morbidity and mortality

Mitt navn er…/ My name is…/ Mein Name ist… Mehrsprachigkeit als Ressource in DaF-Lehrbüchern an norwegischen Schulen

Flerspråklighet er et relevant tema etter innføringen av begrepet "Flerspråklighet" som kjerneelement i den nye læreplanen, LK20 - Fagfornyelsen, i 2020. I denne masteroppgaven ser jeg på hvordan flerspråklighet kommer til uttrykk i den forrige læreplanen, LK06, og den nye, LK20, og hvordan dette blir implementert i to ulike læreverk for tysk som fremmedspråk hos 8. klasseelever som lærer tysk for første gang

Sikkerhet på havbunnen SAFETY-I OG SAFETY-II I UNDERVANNSINDUSTRIEN OG REGELVERKET – ENDRE REGELVERK ELLER ENDRE PRAKSIS?

Denne oppgaven omhandler sikkerhet på havbunnen. Nærmere bestemt havbunnsinfrastrukturen tilknyttet norsk oljeutvinning på sokkelen. Siden oppblomstringen på slutten av 1990-tallet, til i dag, er det installert over 500 havbunnsinstallasjoner, mellom 15 og 20000 km med rørledninger, og over 750 stigerør på norsk sokkel. Dette antas å stige i tiden fremover samtidig som det er en økende trend i antall levetidsforlengelser. Drift og oppfølging av integritet på havbunnsinfrastrukturen har begrensinger eksempelvis med tanke på inspeksjon, vedlikehold og modifikasjon. Særlig sammenlignet med utstyr på en overflateinnretning, hvor tilgjengelighet og mulighetene for verifikasjon av tilstand og modifikasjoner oftest er langt bedre. Denne oppgaven har tatt utgangspunkt i en analyse av dagens praksis knyttet til drift på havbunnsinfrastrukturen, og sett den i lys av to ulike tilnærminger til sikkerhet; Safety-I og Safety-II. Disse blir i noen sammenhenger referert til som gammel og ny sikkerhetstenkning. Tilsvarende er det gjort en analyse av petroleumsregelverket hvor dette er målt mot de samme tilnærmingene. Basert på analysene er dagens praksis vurdert å passe godt inn i en Safety-I-ramme, mens målt mot intensjonen i regelverket vurderes Safety-II å være bedre egnet. Diskusjonen av de to analysene viser flere områder hvor dagens praksis bør forbedres, både i lys av utviklingen som har skjedd innenfor sikkerhetstenkning, men også målt mot gjeldende regelverk. Anbefalingene er tenkt å være løsningsorienterte og reflekterer et perspektiv som er forankret i Safety II og i gjeldende sikkerhetskrav i HMS-regelverket. For systemer i drift, men særlig for nye prosjekter, er det et stort potensial til å øke sikkerheten i å anvende mer av den teknologien som er tilgjengelig for overvåkning. Og mye av anledningen til å være proaktiv og å fange opp svake signaler ligger her. Det er også et stort potensial i å tilgjengeliggjøre den informasjonen selskapene allerede har om systemene sine på en slik måte at de enklere kan se helhet og harmonisere de vurderingene som gjøres av integritet. Mye av de integritetsvurderingene som gjøres er også gjenstand for en, ofte subjektiv, kvalitativ vurdering. Det virker å være et stort behov for å harmonisere denne type vurderinger både internt hos de respektive selskap, men også på tvers av industrien. Det er også et gjennomgående emne at det i hovedsak er de tekniske barrierene som omtales i forbindelse med barriere- og sikkerhetsarbeidet, mens de organisatoriske og operasjonelle elementene er utelatt. Basert på analysen fremstår disse like fullt som essensielle i sikkerhetsarbeidet. Særlig med henblikk på å forebygge ulykker og å agere når en ulykke inntreffer. Det virker også å være en klar tendens innen læring av hendelser, at man trekkes mot de som kategoriseres som mest alvorlige, mens de «mindre alvorlige» hendelse virker å i mindre grad prioriteres. De «mindre alvorlige» hendelsene representerer like fullt operasjoner eller systemer som ikke fungerte slik man hadde forutsett, og inneholder potensielt mye nyttig kunnskap som, om den forstås og tilgjengeliggjøres, vil kunne hjelpe en organisasjon i å være i forkant av en større hendelse. En del endringer bør gjøres i tidlig fase, og her er både myndigheter, lisenser og selskapsledelse ansvarlige for å kontinuerlig forbedre dagens praksis. For systemer i drift vil det i større grad avhenge av selskapsledelse og driftsorganisasjon, og begges vilje til å kontinuerlig arbeide med en forbedring av sikkerheten, men også her har myndighetene et stort ansvar i å påpeke krav i regelverket, samt å ansvarliggjøre både lisenser, selskapsledelse og driftsorganisasjonene.This thesis treats subsea safety. More specifically, the seabed infrastructure associated with the oil & gas industry on the Norwegian continental shelf. Since the boom in the late 1990s, until today, more than 500 subsea installations, between 15 and 20,000 km of pipelines, and more than 750 risers have been installed. This is expected to increase in the time ahead, and at the same time there is an increasing trend in the number of life extensions. Operation and integrity management of the subsea infrastructure has limitations, for example with regards to inspection, maintenance and modification. Especially compared to equipment on a surface facility, where the availability and possibilities for verification of condition and modifications often is far better. This thesis has been based on an analysis of current practice related to the operation of the subsea infrastructure, and compared to two different approaches to safety; Safety-I and Safety-II. These are in some contexts referred to as the old and the new way of safety. Correspondingly, an analysis has been made of the petroleum regulations where these have been measured against the same approaches. Based on the analyzes, current practice is considered to fit well into a Safety-I framework, while measured against the intention in the regulations, Safety-II is considered to be better suited. The discussion of the two analyzes shows several areas where current practice should be improved, both in light of the developments that have taken place in safety thinking, but also measured against current regulations. The recommendations are intended to be solution-oriented and reflect a perspective that is anchored in Safety II and current safety requirements in the HSE regulations. For systems in operation, but especially for new projects, there is a great potential to increase the safety by using more of the technology available for monitoring. And much of the opportunity to be proactive and to capture weak signals lies here. There is also great potential in making available the information companies already have about their systems, in such a way that they can be more capable to see the whole picture and harmonize the integrity assessments. Many of the integrity assessments are also the subject of an, often subjective, qualitative evaluation. There seems to be a great need to harmonize this type of evaluations both internally in each company, but also across the industry. It is also a common topic that it is mainly the technical barriers that are discussed in connection with the barrier and safety work, while the organizational and operational elements are omitted. Based on the analysis, these appear to be essential in the safety work. Especially with respect to preventing accidents and acting when an accident occurs. There also seems to be a clear tendency when learning from incidents, that one is drawn towards those who are categorized as most serious, while the "less serious" events seem to be given less priority. The "less serious" incidents however still represent operations or systems that did not work as expected, and will potentially contain a lot of useful knowledge that, if understood and made available, will help an organization to be ahead of a major incident. A number of changes should be made at an early stage of projects, and here both the authorities, licenses and company management are responsible for continuously improving current practice. Improvements for systems in operation, will to a greater extent depend on corporate management and the operational organization, and that both are willing to work continuously to improve safety. The authorities have a great responsibility in pointing out requirements in the regulations, as well as making both licenses and corporate management responsible, in addition to the operating organizations

Economic empowerment of women displaced by conflict requires transformative change

People displaced by conflict want and need to earn money and to provide for their families. In her recent research Zeynep Kaya uncovered the varied experiences of refugee and internally displaced women in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and calls for an holistic approach to improving their chances of economic empowerment

From candidate identification to planet characterization : a machine learning approach

This thesis is broken into three main sections tracing the steps of the development of a new framework to search for and characterize planets from the WASP survey. While all methods were developed specifically for the WASP project, the principles are easily transferable to any ground or space based survey. In the first part of the thesis, I discuss the development of two machine learning methods, a Random Forest Classifier and a Convolutional Neural Network, that are able to find new exoplanet candidates from WASP archival data and lightcurves. In preparing the training dataset, I also created a standardized catalog of 1,041 false positives from SuperWASP, the northern component of WASP, that were verified with additional observations from other instruments. The second part of the thesis begins by discussing the results of the machine learning methods. In the analysis of the resulting probabilities, several patterns began to emerge that indicated the differing predictions between the algorithms carry useful information in itself. This realization sparked the development of a new “stacking” framework where the predictions of a number of different machine learning methods areused as the input to a second-level classifier that makes the final prediction. This method is straightforward to implement and demonstrates an improved performance over any individual classifier, making the stacked approach ideal for future large surveys. I use the model to classify and rank more than 100,000 lightcurves in the WASP archive that do not yet have a disposition associated with them and discuss the candidates that are rated most favourably. Finally, in part three I discuss what to do once a candidate is confirmed to be a planet. In particular, I describe a new MCMC method that combines the likelihood fits of transit and radial velocity data with prior knowledge from several sources including optical and infrared spectrophotometric measurements and the parallax measurements from Gaia to constrain the stellar parameters. I apply the method to characterize two new hot Jupiter planets found by the WASP collaboration and confirmed with SOPHIE and TESS measurements. WASP-186b is a dense (4.22 ± 0.18MJ, 1.11 ± 0.03RJ ) planet on an eccentric (e=0.33 ± 0.01) 5-day orbit around a mid-F type star. While also in a ~5 day orbit, WASP-187b is puffed up (0.8 ± 0.09MJ, 1.64 ± 0.05RJ ) and orbiting a star that has begun evolving away from the main sequence

Risiko og pengepolitikk

Norge er tett sammenvevd med den globale økonomien, et system som er så stort, komplisert og uforutsigbart at det ikke er mulig å sikre seg mot alle utviklinger og plutselige sjokk. Norges Bank har et betydelig ansvar for å sikre den norske økonomien, og en tilsvarende betydelig makt til å påvirke de økonomiske realitetene som befolkningen står overfor. Det er også en institusjon som er preget av både sentralisering og spesialisering, noe som kompliserer mulighetene for effektivt tilsyn og demokratisk kontroll. Utgangspunktet for denne oppgaven er spørsmålet om hvorvidt nåværende risikoanalyser har tatt tilstrekkelig høyde for risikoen som ligger i sentralbankens maktutøvelse, særlig sett i lys av at sentralbanken selv, samt Direktoratet for samfunnssikkerhet og beredskap (DSB), ser ut til å fokusere utelukkende på eksterne sjokk der sentralbanken fyller rollen som en økonomisk nødetat. Vi har eksempler på at en sentralbank også har evnen til å ødelegge en økonomi. I denne masteroppgaven prøver jeg å vise at muligheten for en sentralbankinitiert økonomisk krise ikke trenger å være sannsynlig for å fortjene oppmerksomhet

Personlige utfordringer i samtale med barn

This is a paper where the focus of the research has changed along the way, and there has therefore been conducted two methods of data gathering. A total of four philosophically inspired conversations with children, and five interviews with professionals have been conducted, and a twofold analysis has been performed. The purpose of this examination, is to investigate which personal challenges that can arise in conversations with children, and how these can be handled. Using a hermenautical interpretation, my role as a researcher is analysed in an excerpt from the philosophically inspired conversations, while a thematic analysis is used to analyse the content of the data material from the interviews. These challenges are directed against us adults as professionals, and not at the children. Another purpose of the examination, is to investigate if the kindergarten field can benefit from the findings in this paper, since the interviews have been conducted with professionals from different disciplines. At the core of this paper, is my inspiration from the perspective of knowledge used in hermeneutics. All the choices I have made, relating to theory, methodology, analysis and discussion, is therefore built on the material on epistemology presented in chapter 3. A short summary of my findings as an interpreter, is that the personal challenges in professionals, that can arise in conversations with children, often stem from emotions and/or blind spots. Emotions is then something that can have consequences for the communication through the non-verbal, as it is here the eventual emotion of the personal is conveyed. Here, it is up to the children to interpret. Since the findings on blind spots show that we can be blind regarding to our own reactions, by having unresolved conditions, these blind spots can also make us unaware our signaling of personal challenges. This is then signaled through nonverbal communication, and is something that can impact the self-esteem of the children. Furthermore, I view that which is said on self-development in the interviews with the professionals, as especially interesting. This relating to the fact that in Rammeplan for barnehagens innhold og oppgaver (2011), and the new revised plan (due in 2016), I interpret actual references that point to how kindergarten teachers have to be capable of self-development.Master i barnehagepedagogik

Maintaining intravenous volume mitigates hypothermia-induced myocardial dysfunction and accumulation of intracellular Ca2+

Previous research exploring pathophysiological mechanisms underlying circulatory collapse after rewarming victims of severe accidental hypothermia has documented post-hypothermic cardiac dysfunction and hypothermia-induced elevation of intracellular Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]i) in myocardial cells. The aim of the present study was to examine if maintaining euvolaemia during rewarming mitigates cardiac dysfunction and/or normalizes elevated myocardial [Ca2+]i. A total of 21 male Wistar rats (300 g) were surface cooled to 15◦C, then maintained at 15◦C for 4 h, and subsequently rewarmed to 37◦C. The rats were randomly assigned to one of three groups: (1) non-intervention control (n = 7), (2) dextran treated (i.v. 12 ml/kg dextran 70; n = 7), or (3) crystalloid treated (24 ml/kg 0.9% i.v. saline; n = 7). Infusions occurred during the first 30 min of rewarming. Arterial blood pressure, stroke volume (SV), cardiac output (CO), contractility (dP/dtmax) and blood gas changes were measured. Post-hypothermic changes in [Ca2+]i were measured using the method of radiolabelled Ca2+ ( 45Ca2+). Untreated controls displayed post-hypothermic cardiac dysfunction with significantly reduced CO, SV and dP/dtmax. In contrast, rats receiving crystalloid or dextran treatment showed a return to pre-hypothermic control levels of CO and SV after rewarming, with the dextran group displaying significantly better amelioration of post-hypothermic cardiac dysfunction than the crystalloid group. Compared to the post-hypothermic increase in myocardial [Ca2+]i in non-treated controls, [Ca2+]i values with crystalloid and dextran did not increase to the same extent after rewarming. Volume replacement with crystalloid or dextran during rewarming abolishes posthypothermic cardiac dysfunction, and partially mitigates the hypothermia-induced elevation of [Ca2+]i