Why is the NSW prison population growing?

This paper provides a preliminary analysis of the rapid rise in the NSW prison population from January 2013 to March 2014. Method: Descriptive analysis of court, crime, arrest and correctional data, and ARIMA modelling of prison trends. Results: The key factors responsible for the recent rise in the NSW prison population appear to be a higher rate of arrest for serious crime and an increase in the proportion of convicted offenders given a prison sentence. There is no evidence that prisoners during 2013 are spending longer in custody but there is evidence the length of stay in custody may increase over the coming year. If the current trend in inmate numbers continues, the NSW prison population will rise by another 17 per cent (i.e., to about 12,500 inmates) by March 2015. Conclusion: Early consideration should be given to measures that reduce the demand for prison accommodation and/or expand prison capacity

T1ρ-based fibril-reinforced poroviscoelastic constitutive relation of human articular cartilage using inverse finite element technology

BackgroundMapping of T1ρ relaxation time is a quantitative magnetic resonance (MR) method and is frequently used for analyzing microstructural and compositional changes in cartilage tissues. However, there is still a lack of study investigating the link between T1ρ relaxation time and a feasible constitutive relation of cartilage which can be used to model complicated mechanical behaviors of cartilage accurately and properly.MethodsThree-dimensional finite element (FE) models of ten in vitro human tibial cartilage samples were reconstructed such that each element was assigned by material-level parameters, which were determined by a corresponding T1ρ value from MR maps. A T1ρ-based fibril-reinforced poroviscoelastic (FRPE) constitutive relation for human cartilage was developed through an inverse FE optimization technique between the experimental and simulated indentations.ResultsA two-parameter exponential relationship was obtained between the T1ρ and the volume fraction of the hydrated solid matrix in the T1ρ-based FRPE constitutive relation. Compared with the common FRPE constitutive relation (i.e., without T1ρ), the T1ρ-based FRPE constitutive relation indicated similar indentation depth results but revealed some different local changes of the stress distribution in cartilages.ConclusionsOur results suggested that the T1ρ-based FRPE constitutive relation may improve the detection of changes in the heterogeneous, anisotropic, and nonlinear mechanical properties of human cartilage tissues associated with joint pathologies such as osteoarthritis (OA). Incorporating T1ρ relaxation time will provide a more precise assessment of human cartilage based on the individual in vivo MR quantification

Ipratropium/Salbutamol Comparator Versus Originator for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Exacerbations : USA Observational Cohort Study Using the Clinformatics™ Health Claims Database

Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank Priyanka Raju Konduru of Observational and Pragmatic Research Institute Pte Ltd (OPRI) for assistance with data extraction. This study was sponsored and funded by Teva Branded Pharmaceutical Products, R&D, Inc. Lynanne McGuire, PhD, of MedVal Scientific Information Services, LLC (Princeton, NJ, USA) provided medical writing and editorial assistance. This manuscript was prepared according to the International Society for Medical Publication Professionals’ ‘Good Publication Practice for Communicating Company-Sponsored Medical Research: the GPP3 Guidelines.’ Funding to support medical writing assistance was provided to MedVal by Teva Branded Pharmaceutical Products R&D, Inc., Frazer, PA, USA. Teva provided a full review of the article and provided funding of the journal’s article processing charges. All named authors meet the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) criteria for authorship for this manuscript, take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, and have given final approval to the version to be published. All authors had full access to all of the data in this study and take complete responsibility for the integrity of the data and accuracy of the data analysis.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Electrochemical Quartz Crystal Microbalance (EQCM) Study of Ion Dynamics in Nanoporous Carbons

Electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance (EQCM) and cyclic voltammetry (CV) measurements were used to characterize ion adsorption in carbide-derived carbon (CDC) with two different average pore sizes (1 and 0.65 nm), from neat and solvated 1-Ethyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (EMI-TFSI) electrolytes. From the electrode mass change in neat EMI-TFSI, it was shown that one net charge stored corresponds almost to one single ion at high polarization; in that case, no ion-pairing or charge screening by co-ions were observed. In 2 M EMI-TFSI in acetonitrile electrolyte, experimental solvation numbers were estimated for EMI+ cation, showing a partial desolvation when cations were adsorbed in confined carbon pores. The extent of desolvation increased when decreasing the carbon pore size (from 1 down to 0.65 nm). The results also suggest that EMI+ cation owns higher mobility than TFSI- anion in these electrolytes

Effects of salinity and water quality parameters on the breeding and larva rearing of black molly Poecilia sphenops in laboratory condition

A study was conducted to determine the effects of salinities (0, 3 and 6 PSU) and other water quality parameters on the breeding and larva rearing of black molly Poecilia sphenops (Valenciennes 1846) under laboratory condition. Each treatment was carried out in triplicates. Results showed that water salinity of 6 PSU represented the highest breeding success compared to salinities of 0 and 3 PSU. Nevertheless, no significant differences (p > 0.05) were observed at these three salinities for fry production in captivity. Moreover no significant differences were observed in weight increment when salinity raised from 3 to 6 PSU, however, these two treatments differed significantly when compared with 0 PSU. The survival rate was not significantly varied in comparison with 0 PSU. The highest total length increment was found at water salinity of 6 PSU followed by 0 and 3 PSU. Results on water quality parameters denoted no significant differences (p > 0.05) for all treatments except on ammonia (NH3) rates. The highest ammonia level was found at 0 PSU followed by 3 and 6 PSU. The findings of the present study suggested to culture black molly (P. sphenops) in a slight saline condition from 3 to 6 PSU

Analysis of the strut and feed blockage effects in radio telescopes with compact UWB feeds

The international radio astronomy community is currently pursuing the development of a giant radio telescope known as the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). The SKA reference design consists of several wideband antenna technologies, including reflector antennas fed with novel multi-beam Phased Array Feeds (PAF) and/or wide band Single Pixel Feeds (SPFs) that can operate at frequencies from 1 to 10 GHz [1], [2]. The baseline of this design represents an array of several hundred to a few thousand reflector antennas of 15-m diameter and that will realize sensitivity of 10,000 m 2/K. During the past years, several different reflector and feed concepts have been proposed and examined, but only a small number of these design options (that have a sufficient level of maturity) will be built and tested in a set-up that is closely resembling the final SKA system [3]. These tests are aimed to evaluate the overall system performance as well as construction and operational costs. The final choices for the dish and feed evaluation tests might include: (i) off-set Gregorian and axi-symmetric reflector antennas and; (ii) an optimized octave corrugated horn and the single-pixel wideband feeds such as quad-ridged horn and Eleven antenna [2], [4]

Impact of sudden stratospheric warmings on United Kingdom mortality

Sudden stratospheric warmings (SSWs) during boreal winter are one of the main drivers of sub‐seasonal climate variability in the Northern Hemisphere. Although the impact of SSW events on surface climate and climate extremes has been clearly demonstrated, the impact of the resulting climate anomalies on society has not been so widely considered. In the United Kingdom (UK), SSWs are associated with cold weather, which is linked to significant increases in mortality. This study demonstrates, for the first time, that SSWs are linked to increases in mortality in the UK. A distributed lag nonlinear model and standard parameter settings from the literature is used to construct a daily time series of UK deaths attributable to cold weather between 1991 and 2018. Weekly mortality associated with SSWs is diagnosed using a superposed epoch analysis of attributed mortality for the 15 SSW events in this period. SSW associated mortality peaks between 3 and 5 weeks after SSW central date and leads to, on average, 620 additional deaths in the same period. Given that the impacts of SSWs can be skilfully predicted on sub‐seasonal timescales, this suggests that health and social care systems could derive substantial benefit from sub‐seasonal forecasts during SSWs

CopyRNeRF: Protecting the CopyRight of Neural Radiance Fields

Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) have the potential to be a major representation of media. Since training a NeRF has never been an easy task, the protection of its model copyright should be a priority. In this paper, by analyzing the pros and cons of possible copyright protection solutions, we propose to protect the copyright of NeRF models by replacing the original color representation in NeRF with a watermarked color representation. Then, a distortion-resistant rendering scheme is designed to guarantee robust message extraction in 2D renderings of NeRF. Our proposed method can directly protect the copyright of NeRF models while maintaining high rendering quality and bit accuracy when compared among optional solutions.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, accepted by iccv 2023 non-camera-ready versio