Relationship Between Political Parties and CO2 Emissions : Are emissions from Norwegian municipalities influenced by political parties?

In this thesis, we investigate the relationship between political parties and carbon dioxide emissions in Norwegian municipalities from 2009 to 2021. We initially use a panel data approach to analyse Norway’s eight largest political parties. Afterwards, we use regression discontinuity design (RDD), where we focus on the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, which represent the opposite sides of the political spectrum. To account for the different characteristics of the municipalities, we divide them into three clusters using k-means clustering. Our results reveal that the Labour Party is associated with an increase in total emissions, while the Conservative Party has no statistically significant effect. Robustness checks confirm these results, indicating an average 11,6% increase in emissions when the Labour Party is in charge. In conclusion, our findings show that there is a relationship between political parties and emissions.nhhma

Task-based acceleration of bidirectional recurrent neural networks on multi-core architectures

This paper proposes a novel parallel execution model for Bidirectional Recurrent Neural Networks (BRNNs), B-Par (Bidirectional-Parallelization), which exploits data and control dependencies for forward and reverse input computations. B-Par divides BRNN workloads across different parallel tasks by defining input and output dependencies for each RNN cell in both forward and reverse orders. B-Par does not require per-layer barriers to synchronize the parallel execution of BRNNs. We evaluate B-Par considering the TIDIGITS speech database and the Wikipedia data-set. Our experiments indicate that B-Par outperforms the state-of-the-art deep learning frameworks TensorFlow-Keras and Pytorch by achieving up to 2.34× and 9.16× speed-ups, respectively, on modern multi-core CPU architectures while preserving accuracy. Moreover, we analyze in detail aspects like task granularity, locality, or parallel efficiency to illustrate the benefits of B-Par.This work is partially supported by the Generalitat de Catalunya (contract 2017-SGR-1414) and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology through the PID2019- 107255GB project. Marc Casas has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness under the Ramon y Cajal fellowship No. RYC-2017-23269.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

QUANTUM PHENOMENA IN ZERO DIMENSIONS: QUANTUM DOTS

Quantum phenomena in zero dimensions: quantum dots because of many interesting and important applications currently in use by this nanotechnology. The use fulness and application of quantum dots technologically continues to expand and research is striving to bring their benefits to more and more technologically applied fields. SMALLER...smaller...smaller-In the semiconductor industry, this mantra translates to faster...... faster.....faster. The question is, how small can we go? At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the answer may be: as small as quantum dots. Quantum dot has some attractive advantages: long-term photostability, higher fluorescent outcome, narrower fluorescence emission, sensitivity to the electric and magnetic f

The management of large perforations of duodenal ulcers

BACKGROUND: Duodenal ulcer perforations are a common surgical emergency, but literature is silent on the exact definition, incidence, management and complications of large perforations of duodenal ulcers. METHODS: The case files of 162 patients who underwent emergency laparotomy for duodenal ulcer perforations over a period of three years (2001 – 2003) were retrospectively reviewed and sorted into groups based on the size of the perforations – one group was defined as 'small 'perforations (less than 1 cm in diameter), another 'large' (when the perforation was more than 1 cm but less than 3 cms), and the third, 'giant'(when the perforation exceeded 3 cm). These groups of patients were then compared with each other in regard to the patient particulars, duration of symptoms, surgery performed and the outcome. RESULTS: A total of 40 patients were identified to have duodenal ulcer perforations more than 1 cm in size, thus accounting for nearly 25 % of all duodenal ulcer perforations operated during this period. These patients had a significantly higher incidence of leak, morbidity and mortality when compared to those with smaller perforations. CONCLUSION: There are three distinct types of perforations of duodenal ulcers that are encountered in clinical practice. The first, are the 'small' perforations that are easy to manage and have low morbidity and mortality. The second are the 'large' perforations, that are also not uncommon, and omental patch closure gives the best results even in this subset of patients. The word 'giant' should be reserved for perforations that exceed 3 cms in diameter, and these are extremely uncommon

Psychiatric morbidity and marital satisfaction: an empirical study on spouse of alcohol dependent cases in Barak valley, North-East India

Background: Alcohol dependence poses serious threats to the healthy functioning of the family apparatus in a multitude of ways. The deleterious impact of alcohol dependence on the couple remains an area of genuine concern for mental health professionals across the world.Methods: 69 cases were selected consecutively from the Psychiatry Outpatient department fulfilling the ICD-10 criteria of alcohol dependence syndrome and the spouse of these cases were assessed to evaluate the pattern and severity of psychiatric morbidity and marital satisfaction. Statistical associations were found between the important variables.Results: Out of the 69 cases, we found that mean age of the alcohol dependent cases was 40.75±8.21 while that of their spouse was 33.91±7.86 years Most of the alcoholics had 1-9 years of alcohol dependence (86.95%) and severe alcohol dependence (47.82%) based on SADD score. Majority of the spouse of the alcoholics suffered from psychiatric illness (60.86%) with the most common diagnosis being depressive disorder (30.43%) based on ICD-10 criteria. Most of the spouse had lower level of marital satisfaction and presence of marital dissatisfaction was significantly associated with a more severe dependence among their alcoholic husbands. Increased duration of alcohol consumption was associated with higher severity of alcohol dependence. Also, the presence of psychiatric morbidity in the spouse was associated with increased years and higher severity of alcohol dependence.Conclusions: If the spouses are psychologically healthy, a good support system is ensured for them which is necessary to maintain motivation levels to leave alcohol

A Social Dimensional Cyber Threat Model with Formal Concept Analysis and Fact-Proposition Inference

Cyberspace has increasingly become a medium to express outrage, conduct protests, take revenge, spread opinions, and stir up issues. Many cyber attacks can be linked to current and historic events in the social, political, economic, and cultural (SPEC) dimensions of human conflicts in the physical world. These SPEC factors are often the root cause of many cyber attacks. Understanding the relationships between past and current SPEC events and cyber attacks can help understand and better prepare people for impending cyber attacks. The focus of this paper is to analyze these attacks in social dimensions and build a threat model based on past and current social events. A reasoning technique based on a novel combination of Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) and hierarchical fact-proposition space (FPS) inference is applied to build the model

Subject Retention in Prehospital Stroke Research Using a Telephone-Based Physician-Investigator Driven Enrollment Method.

Background and purposeSubject retention into clinical trials is vital, and prehospital enrollment may be associated with higher rates of subject withdrawal than more traditional methods of enrollment. We describe rates of subject retention in a prehospital trial of acute stroke therapy.MethodsAll subjects were enrolled into the NIH Field Administration of Stroke Therapy-Magnesium (FAST-MAG) phase 3 clinical trial. Paramedics screened eligible subjects and contacted the physician-investigator using a dedicated in-ambulance cellular phone. Physician-investigators obtained explicit informed consent from the subject or on-scene legally authorized representative (LAR) who reviewed and signed a consent form. Exception from informed consent (EFIC) was utilized in later stages of the study.ResultsThere were 1,700 subjects enrolled; 1,017 provided consent (60%), 662 were enrolled via LAR (39%), and 21 were enrolled via EFIC (1%). Of the 1,700 patients, 1,413 (83%) completed the 90-day visit, 265 (16%) died prior to the 90-day visit, and 22 (1.3%) withdrew from the study before completion. There were no differences in rates of withdrawal by method of study enrolment, i.e., self-consent (n = 14), 1.4%; LAR (n = 8), 1.2%; EFIC (n = 0) 0%.ConclusionThere was a high rate of retention when subjects were enrolled into prehospital stroke research using a phone-based method to obtain explicit consent

Galaxia: a code to generate a synthetic survey of the Milky Way

We present here a fast code for creating a synthetic survey of the Milky Way. Given one or more color-magnitude bounds, a survey size and geometry, the code returns a catalog of stars in accordance with a given model of the Milky Way. The model can be specified by a set of density distributions or as an N-body realization. We provide fast and efficient algorithms for sampling both types of models. As compared to earlier sampling schemes which generate stars at specified locations along a line of sight, our scheme can generate a continuous and smooth distribution of stars over any given volume. The code is quite general and flexible and can accept input in the form of a star formation rate, age metallicity relation, age velocity dispersion relation and analytic density distribution functions. Theoretical isochrones are then used to generate a catalog of stars and support is available for a wide range of photometric bands. As a concrete example we implement the Besancon Milky Way model for the disc. For the stellar halo we employ the simulated stellar halo N-body models of Bullock & Johnston (2005). In order to sample N-body models, we present a scheme that disperses the stars spawned by an N-body particle, in such a way that the phase space density of the spawned stars is consistent with that of the N-body particles. The code is ideally suited to generating synthetic data sets that mimic near future wide area surveys such as GAIA, LSST and HERMES. As an application we study the prospect of identifying structures in the stellar halo with a simulated GAIA survey. We plan to make the code publicly available at http://galaxia.sourceforge.net.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap

The Role of Astrocytes in Remyelination.

Remyelination is the regeneration of myelin sheaths following demyelination. This regenerative process is critical for the re-establishment of axonal conduction velocity and metabolic support to the axons. Successful remyelination in the CNS generally depends on the activation, proliferation, and differentiation of oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs). However, other cell types play critical roles in establishing where a lesion is conducive for regeneration. In the last few years, several studies have described beneficial and detrimental roles played by astrocytes in remyelination. This review will discuss recent developments in the concept of astrocyte reactivity, what is known about the astrocytic contribution to remyelination, and highlight future avenues of investigation.The authors’ laboratory is supported by funding from the UK Multiple Sclerosis Society (MS50), The Adelson Medical Research Foundation, and a core support grant from the Wellcome and MRC to the Wellcome-Medical Research Council Cambridge Stem Cell Institute (203151/Z/16/Z). KSR is supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canad