Towards A Short to Medium Term Mitigation Strategy to Address the External Air and Sea Connectivity Challenges posed by the COVID-19 Pandemic for Northern Ireland

The overall aim of the research is the preparation of a short to medium term Access Mitigation Strategy to respond to the challenges posed for the business, travel, leisure and tourism sectors by the physical and psychological impacts on travel access to/from Northern Ireland during/post the COVID-19 Pandemic. The research programme reflects the need to understand the implications of the COVID-19 crisis on accessibility to/from Northern Ireland given the region’s heavy reliance on air and sea access for trade, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and tourism. This includes the fall-out from COVID-19 (and additional factors including Flybe, Brexit) on the capacity of air and sea routes, how demand has and will be impacted in the future because of changing behaviours and what actions need to be taken to minimise these effects and keep Northern Ireland open for business. The project objectives are as follows: To establish the current position and near to medium term prospects for air and sea connectivity to Northern Ireland (including Irish Sea ports and airports); review the contribution of air and sea links to the performance of the Northern Ireland Economy and Wider Society; assess the factors shaping this position and their impact on demand for external travel before, during and post the Coronavirus Pandemic; develop a range of future scenarios around passenger transport by air and sea to inform the development of a range of mitigation policy interventions to maximise the accessibility of the region; table recommendations for a mitigation policy to maximise accessibility of the region; and assess the potential for funding and financing a Short to Medium Term Access Mitigation Strategy for the region. The research findings and its recommendations are informed by robust empirical evidence bases and include proven public policy interventions to maximise the region’s access and openness to business and tourism related travel going forward

Algorithms to Compute the Lyndon Array

We first describe three algorithms for computing the Lyndon array that have been suggested in the literature, but for which no structured exposition has been given. Two of these algorithms execute in quadratic time in the worst case, the third achieves linear time, but at the expense of prior computation of both the suffix array and the inverse suffix array of x. We then go on to describe two variants of a new algorithm that avoids prior computation of global data structures and executes in worst-case n log n time. Experimental evidence suggests that all but one of these five algorithms require only linear execution time in practice, with the two new algorithms faster by a small factor. We conjecture that there exists a fast and worst-case linear-time algorithm to compute the Lyndon array that is also elementary (making no use of global data structures such as the suffix array)

Interação de micorriza vesicular-arbuscular com leguminosas em solos ácidos.

Este trabalho apresenta uma abordagem para MVA e acidez do solo; Simbiose MVA ? Rhizobium-leguminosa; Dependência de MVA e Micorrizas e pesquisa na região amazônica.bitstream/item/60903/1/Doc55-micorrizaarbuscular.pd

Relations between social comparisons and physical activity among women in midlife with elevated risk for cardiovascular disease: an ecological momentary assessment study.

Women in midlife (ages 40-60) show decreases in physical activity (PA) that exacerbate risk for cardiovascular disease. Social comparisons (i.e., self-evaluations relative to others) are known to influence PA in other groups, but their association in this population is unknown. The present study used ecological momentary assessment to examine this relation among women in midlife with hypertension or another CVD risk condition (N = 75,

Immediate replacement of fishing with dairying by the earliest farmers of the NE Atlantic archipelagos

The appearance of farming, from its inception in the Near East around 12 000 years ago, finally reached the northwestern extremes of Europe by the fourth millennium BC or shortly thereafter. Various models have been invoked to explain the Neolithization of northern Europe; however, resolving these different scenarios has proved problematic due to poor faunal preservation and the lack of specificity achievable for commonly applied proxies. Here, we present new multi-proxy evidence, which qualitatively and quantitatively maps subsistence change in the northeast Atlantic archipelagos from the Late Mesolithic into the Neolithic and beyond. A model involving significant retention of hunter–gatherer–fisher influences was tested against one of the dominant adoptions of farming using a novel suite of lipid biomarkers, including dihydroxy fatty acids, ω-(o-alkylphenyl)alkanoic acids and stable carbon isotope signatures of individual fatty acids preserved in cooking vessels. These new findings, together with archaeozoological and human skeletal collagen bulk stable carbon isotope proxies, unequivocally confirm rejection of marine resources by early farmers coinciding with the adoption of intensive dairy farming. This pattern of Neolithization contrasts markedly to that occurring contemporaneously in the Baltic, suggesting that geographically distinct ecological and cultural influences dictated the evolution of subsistence practices at this critical phase of European prehistory

Comment on ``Conduction states in oxide perovskites: Three manifestations of Ti3+^{3 +} Jahn-Teller polarons in barium titanate''

In this comment to [S. Lenjer, O. F. Schirmer, H. Hesse, and Th. W. Kool, Phys. Rev. B {\bf 66}, 165106 (2002)] we discuss the electronic structure of oxygen vacancies in perovskites. First principles computations are in favour of rather deep levels in these vacancies, and Lenjer et al suggest that the electrons' interaction energy is negative, but data on electroconductivity are against.Comment: 2 pages, no figure

The in vitro and in vivo anti-tumour activity of N-AcMEL-(Fab')2 conjugates.

To increase the accessibility of drug-antibody complexes to tumours and to decrease non-specific binding via Fc receptors N-acetyl-melphalan (N-AcMEL) was conjugated to F(ab')2 fragments. These fragments were synthesised by pepsin degradation of IgG MoAb. Up to 20 molecules of N-AcMEL could be successfully coupled to each F(ab')2 fragment (compared with 25 molecules/intact IgG) with retention of both drug and antibody activity. The N-AcMEL-F(ab')2 conjugates demonstrated specific cytotoxicity in vitro however despite the absence of non specific Fc receptor binding and greater permeability when using F(ab')2 fragments, the N-AcMEL-F(ab')2 and N-AcMEL-IgG conjugates had similar anti-tumour activity in vivo. Conjugates made with whole IgG and F(ab')2 were equally effective in eradicating subcutaneous solid tumours in mice when injected intravenously. The lower immunogenicity of F(ab')2 fragments compared with whole IgG and the similar cytotoxicity of their conjugates, suggests that the F(ab')2 conjugate has greater clinical utility

The nature of iron-oxygen vacancy defect centers in PbTiO3

The iron(III) center in ferroelectric PbTiO3 together with an oxygen vacancy forms a charged defect associate, oriented along the crystallographic c-axis. Its microscopic structure has been analyzed in detail comparing results from a semi-empirical Newman superposition model analysis based on finestructure data and from calculations using density functional theory. Both methods give evidence for a substitution of Fe3+ for Ti4+ as an acceptor center. The position of the iron ion in the ferroelectric phase is found to be similar to the B-site in the paraelectric phase. Partial charge compensation is locally provided by a directly coordinated oxygen vacancy. Using high-resolution synchrotron powder diffraction, it was verified that lead titanate remains tetragonal down to 12 K, exhibiting a c/a-ratio of 1.0721.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, accepted in Phys. Rev.