2,431 research outputs found
Risk, precaution and science: towards a more constructive policy debate. Talking point on the precautionary principle
Few issues in contemporary risk policy are as momentous or contentious as the precautionary principle. Since it first emerged in German environmental policy, it has been championed by environmentalists and consumer protection groups, and resisted by the industries they oppose (Raffensperger & Tickner, 1999). Various versions of the principle now proliferate across different national and international jurisdictions and policy areas (Fisher, 2002). From a guiding theme in European Commission (EC) environmental policy, it has become a general principle of EC law (CEC, 2000; Vos & Wendler, 2006). Its influence has extended from the regulation of environmental, technological and health risks to the wider governance of science, innovation and trade (O'Riordan & Cameron, 1994)
The point of maximum curvature as a marker for physiological time series
We present a geometric analysis of the model of Stirling. In particular we analyze the curvature of a heart rate time series in response to a step like increment in the exercise intensity. We present solutions for the point of maximum curvature which can be used as a marker of physiological interest. This marker defines the point after which the heart rate no longer continues to rapidly rise and instead follows either a steady state or slow rise. These methods are then applied to find analytic solutions for a mono exponential model which is commonly used in the literature to model the response to a moderate exercise intensity. Numerical solutions are then found for the full model and parameter values presented in Stirling
The CEDAR Project
We describe the plans and objectives of the CEDAR project (Combined e-Science
Data Analysis Resource for High Energy Physics) newly funded by the PPARC
e-Science programme in the UK. CEDAR will combine the strengths of the well
established and widely used HEPDATA database of HEP data and the innovative
JetWeb data/Monte Carlo comparison facility, built on the HZTOOL package, and
will exploit developing grid technology. The current status and future plans of
both of these individual sub-projects within the CEDAR framework are described,
showing how they will cohesively provide (a) an extensive archive of Reaction
Data, (b) validation and tuning of Monte Carlo programs against these reaction
data sets, and (c) a validated code repository for a wide range of HEP code
such as parton distribution functions and other calculation codes used by
particle physicists. Once established it is envisaged CEDAR will become an
important Grid tool used by LHC experimentalists in their analyses and may well
serve as a model in other branches of science where there is a need to compare
data and complex simulations.Comment: 4 pages, 4 postscript figures, uses CHEP2004.cls. Presented at
Computing in High-Energy Physics (CHEP'04), Interlaken, Switzerland, 27th
September - 1st October 200
Direct Nitrous Oxide Emissions From Tropical And Sub-Tropical Agricultural Systems : A Review and Modelling of Emission Factors
We acknowledge the financial support from the CGIAR Research Programs on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). Grant ref. n. P25.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
HepForge: A lightweight development environment for HEP software
Setting up the infrastructure to manage a software project can become a task
as significant writing the software itself. A variety of useful open source
tools are available, such as Web-based viewers for version control systems,
"wikis" for collaborative discussions and bug-tracking systems, but their use
in high-energy physics, outside large collaborations, is insubstantial.
Understandably, physicists would rather do physics than configure project
management tools.
We introduce the CEDAR HepForge system, which provides a lightweight
development environment for HEP software. Services available as part of
HepForge include the above-mentioned tools as well as mailing lists, shell
accounts, archiving of releases and low-maintenance Web space. HepForge also
exists to promote best-practice software development methods and to provide a
central repository for re-usable HEP software and phenomenology codes.Comment: 3 pages, 0 figures. To be published in proceedings of CHEP06. Refers
to the HepForge facility at http://hepforge.cedar.ac.u
Opening Up the Politics of Knowledge and Power in Bioscience
Public engagement is not in tension with science, but actually a way to be more rigorous - as well as more democratic - about social choice of biotechnology
HepData and JetWeb: HEP data archiving and model validation
The CEDAR collaboration is extending and combining the JetWeb and HepData
systems to provide a single service for tuning and validating models of
high-energy physics processes. The centrepiece of this activity is the fitting
by JetWeb of observables computed from Monte Carlo event generator events
against their experimentally determined distributions, as stored in HepData.
Caching the results of the JetWeb simulation and comparison stages provides a
single cumulative database of event generator tunings, fitted against a wide
range of experimental quantities. An important feature of this integration is a
family of XML data formats, called HepML.Comment: 4 pages, 0 figures. To be published in proceedings of CHEP0
Questions on uncertainties in parton distributions
A discussion is presented of the manner in which uncertainties in parton distributions
and related quantities are determined. One of the central problems
is the criteria used to judge what variation of the parameters describing a set
of partons is acceptable within the context of a global fit. Various ways of
addressing this question are outlined
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