We Saw Not Clearly Nor Understood: The Economic Background of the Ethiopian-Eritrean War

In 1991 hope reigned in Ethiopia. There was a peaceful transition of governments after a long period of civil strife. The main guerrilla movements in Ethiopia, the TPLF and the EPLF emerged from the war as brothers-in-arms ready to embark on a new era of peace and prosperity. Just seven years later, Eritrea invaded Ethiopia and a war ensued that cost 70,000 lives and did incalculable damage. This paper explores the economic relations between the two countries to show their significance in the eruption of the Ethiopian-Eritrean War. There are three recurring themes in the recent economic history of these two nations: protectionism, Eritrean status, and the introduction of Eritrea’s new currency, the Nakfa. My work explores the ideas of the TPLF and EPLF when they were emerging guerrilla movements. An examination of the economic climate of the region sheds light on the policy concerns of the governments, culminating with the introduction of the Nakfa, which was the point of no return. It is through these concepts that the decade preceding the war must be analyzed. In this paper, I re-examine statistics, policies, and documents with the hope of revealing a new understanding of the implications of economic relations, and maybe providing a better avenue through which to pursue peace

Creed vs. Deed: Secession, Legitimacy, and the Use of Child Soldiers

The use of child soldiers has troubled human rights activists, policy-makers, and local communities for decades. Although rebellions around the world routinely use children in their activities, many do not. Despite its overwhelming importance for conflict resolution, the topic of child soldiers remains understudied. My research blends classic rational choice and constructivist themes to develop an explanation for when child soldiers will be used, and when they will be avoided. The likelihood of child recruitment is influenced by the value of international opinion; this is determined by the groups\u27 long-term goals. Secessionist rebellions desire to have their own state. However, statehood is jealously guarded by the international community and is only granted under extreme circumstances. The use of child soldiers has been condemned around the world as a crime against humanity, and it can curtail international support. Thus, secessionists should be the least likely rebel type to use child soldiers out of a concern to appear legitimate. Opportunistic rebellions face few constraints in their recruitment efforts. They do not desire international support because their long-term goal is the same as their short term goal: profit. Instead of refraining from using children in order to curry favor with external parties, they will abduct, adopt, and abuse children because they are cheaper to employ than adults. Opportunists are unconcerned with losing legitimacy or reducing the chances of victory. Therefore, they should be the most likely to use child soldiers. Concern for costs can affect all rebels. As duration grows, constraints over long-term legitimacy diminish. Therefore, all rebellions should be more likely to use child soldiers as duration increases. I test my theory quantitatively by looking at 103 rebel groups active between 1998-2008. I explore rebellions in Somalia, Colombia, Afghanistan and Sudan to further elucidate the causal mechanisms. There is considerable empirical support for the theory. These results offer policy-relevant conclusions in the areas of rehabilitation and conflict resolution. More importantly, they offer a workable strategy to curb the use of child soldiers in civil war

Virtual Canine Lameness: the development of a training tool

Lameness is commonly encountered in veterinary practice, however precise visual lameness detection requires experience. This skill is challenging to teach: exposure of students to many patients is needed to learn the necessary perceptual skills; however patients might not be readily available. Video recordings of patients can be useful, but depend on the quality of recording and variety of cases available. They are limited to two dimensional views which don’t fully replicate a real-life three dimensional examination. Following on the success of an equine lameness training tool (www.lamenesstrainer.com) developed at the Royal Veterinary College; a 3D virtual canine lameness tool is being developed to teach students to reliably recognize canine lameness. We collected 3D motion capture data from 10 non-lame Labrador retrievers at walk and trot on a treadmill. Data were captured using eight Oqus7 cameras (Qualisys, Sweden). The movement of these dogs was recorded based on 32 reflective markers positioned over key anatomical locations. Marker positions for twenty steady strides for one dog were averaged to drive the skeleton movement of a matching 3D dog model in Autodesk MotionBuilder. The final clips were rendered to show a realistic-looking shaded wireframe of the dog model at normal walk and trot. Varying types and degrees of lameness were then introduced to this animation based on previous kinematic studies. Next stages of work will involve the inclusion of this model in a tool to enable it to be used for veterinary education; once validated it will be released as an Open Educational Resource

Using smart meters to estimate low voltage losses

Losses on low voltage networks are often substantial. For example, in the UK they have been estimated as being 4% of the energy supplied by low voltage networks. However, the breakdown of the losses to individual conductors and their split over time are poorly understood as generally only the peak demands and average loads over several months have been recorded. The introduction of domestic smart meters has the potential to change this. How domestic smart meter readings can be used to estimate the actual losses is analysed. In particular, the accuracy of using 30 minute readings compared with 1 minute readings, and how this accuracy could be improved, were investigated. This was achieved by assigning the data recorded by 100 smart meters with a time resolution of 1 minute to three test networks. Smart meter data from three sources were used in the investigation. It was found that 30 minute resolution data underestimated the losses by between 9% and 24%. By fitting an appropriate model to the data, it was possible to reduce the inaccuracy by approximately 50%. Having a smart meter time resolution of 10 minutes rather than 30 gave little improvement to the accuracy

Randomized clinical trial of a brief and extensive dyadic intervention for advanced cancer patients and their family caregivers

Background Few intervention programs assist patients and their family caregivers to manage advanced cancer and maintain their quality of life (QOL). This study examined (i) whether patient–caregiver dyads (i.e., pairs) randomly assigned to a brief or extensive dyadic intervention (the FOCUS Program) had better outcomes than dyads randomly assigned to usual care and (ii) whether patients' risk for distress and other factors moderated the effect of the brief or extensive program on outcomes. Methods Advanced cancer patients and their caregivers ( N  = 484 dyads) were stratified by patients' baseline risk for distress (high versus low), cancer type (lung, colorectal, breast, or prostate), and research site and then randomly assigned to a brief (three‐session) or extensive (six‐session) intervention or control. The interventions offered dyads information and support. Intermediary outcomes were appraisals (i.e., appraisal of illness/caregiving, uncertainty, and hopelessness) and resources (i.e., coping, interpersonal relationships, and self‐efficacy). The primary outcome was QOL. Data were collected prior to intervention and post‐intervention (3 and 6 months from baseline). The final sample was 302 dyads. Repeated measures MANCOVA was used to evaluate outcomes. Results Significant group by time interactions showed that there was an improvement in dyads' coping ( p  < 0.05), self‐efficacy ( p  < 0.05), and social QOL ( p  < 0.01) and in caregivers' emotional QOL ( p  < 0.05). Effects varied by intervention dose. Most effects were found at 3 months only. Risk for distress accounted for very few moderation effects. Conclusions Both brief and extensive programs had positive outcomes for patient–caregiver dyads, but few sustained effects. Patient–caregiver dyads benefit when viewed as the ‘unit of care’. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/96760/1/pon3036.pd

The Bits of Silence : Redundant Traffic in VoIP

Human conversation is characterized by brief pauses and so-called turn-taking behavior between the speakers. In the context of VoIP, this means that there are frequent periods where the microphone captures only background noise – or even silence whenever the microphone is muted. The bits transmitted from such silence periods introduce overhead in terms of data usage, energy consumption, and network infrastructure costs. In this paper, we contribute by shedding light on these costs for VoIP applications. We systematically measure the performance of six popular mobile VoIP applications with controlled human conversation and acoustic setup. Our analysis demonstrates that significant savings can indeed be achievable - with the best performing silence suppression technique being effective on 75% of silent pauses in the conversation in a quiet place. This results in 2-5 times data savings, and 50-90% lower energy consumption compared to the next better alternative. Even then, the effectiveness of silence suppression can be sensitive to the amount of background noise, underlying speech codec, and the device being used. The codec characteristics and performance do not depend on the network type. However, silence suppression makes VoIP traffic network friendly as much as VoLTE traffic. Our results provide new insights into VoIP performance and offer a motivation for further enhancements, such as performance-aware codec selection, that can significantly benefit a wide variety of voice assisted applications, as such intelligent home assistants and other speech codec enabled IoT devices.Peer reviewe

Validation of 3D neutronic-thermalhydraulic coupled codes RELAP5/PARCSv2.7 and TRACEv5.0P3/PARCSv3.0 against a PWR control rod drop transient

[EN] In nuclear safety field, neutronic and thermalhydraulic codes performance is an important issue. New capabilities implementation, as well as models and tools improvements are a significant part of the community effort in looking for better Nuclear Power Plants (NPP) designs. A procedure to analyze the PWR response to local deviations on neutronic or thermalhydraulic parameters is being developed. This procedure includes the simulation of Incore and Excore neutron flux detectors signals. A control rod drop real plant transient is used to validate the used codes and their new capabilities. Cross-section data are obtained by means of the SIMTAB methodology. Detailed thermalhydraulic models were developed: RELAP5 and TRACE models simulate three different azimuthal zones. Besides, TRACE model is performed with a fully 3D core, thus, the cross-flow can be obtained. A cartesian vessel represents the fuel assemblies and a cylindrical vessel the bypass and downcomer. Simulated detectors signals are obtained and compared with the real data collected during a control rod drop trial at a PWR NPP and also with data obtained with SIMULATE-3K code.The authors would like to acknowledge the economic support provided by Centrales Nucleares Almaraz-Trillo (CNAT) and IBERDROLA Ingeniería y Construcción (Iberinco) for the realization of this work, and express their great appreciation to Arturo López, Juan Antonio Bermejo and Alberto Ortego for their valuable collaboration and their willingness to develop this work. This work has also been supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, through the projects NUC-MULTPHYS (ENE2012-34585) and VALIUN-3D (ENE2011-22823), and the Generalitat Valenciana (GVA), through the project PROMETEO II/2014/008.Garcia-Fenoll, M.; Mesado Melia, C.; Barrachina, T.; Miró Herrero, R.; Verdú Martín, GJ.; Bermejo, JA.; López, A.... (2017). Validation of 3D neutronic-thermalhydraulic coupled codes RELAP5/PARCSv2.7 and TRACEv5.0P3/PARCSv3.0 against a PWR control rod drop transient. Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology. 54(8):908-919. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223131.2017.1329035S90891954

Intranasal Oxytocin Blocks Alcohol Withdrawal in Human Subjects

The neuropeptide, oxytocin, has been reported to block tolerance formation to alcohol and decrease withdrawal symptoms in alcohol-dependent rodents. Numerous recent studies in human subjects indicate that oxytocin administered by the intranasal route penetrates into and exerts effects within the brain

Genomic Epidemiology of Complex, Multispecies, Plasmid-Borne bla KPC Carbapenemase in Enterobacterales in the United Kingdom from 2009 to 2014.

Carbapenem resistance in Enterobacterales is a public health threat. Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (encoded by alleles of the bla KPC family) is one of the most common transmissible carbapenem resistance mechanisms worldwide. The dissemination of bla KPC historically has been associated with distinct K. pneumoniae lineages (clonal group 258 [CG258]), a particular plasmid family (pKpQIL), and a composite transposon (Tn4401). In the United Kingdom, bla KPC has represented a large-scale, persistent management challenge for some hospitals, particularly in North West England. The dissemination of bla KPC has evolved to be polyclonal and polyspecies, but the genetic mechanisms underpinning this evolution have not been elucidated in detail; this study used short-read whole-genome sequencing of 604 bla KPC-positive isolates (Illumina) and long-read assembly (PacBio)/polishing (Illumina) of 21 isolates for characterization. We observed the dissemination of bla KPC (predominantly bla KPC-2; 573/604 [95%] isolates) across eight species and more than 100 known sequence types. Although there was some variation at the transposon level (mostly Tn4401a, 584/604 [97%] isolates; predominantly with ATTGA-ATTGA target site duplications, 465/604 [77%] isolates), bla KPC spread appears to have been supported by highly fluid, modular exchange of larger genetic segments among plasmid populations dominated by IncFIB (580/604 isolates), IncFII (545/604 isolates), and IncR (252/604 isolates) replicons. The subset of reconstructed plasmid sequences (21 isolates, 77 plasmids) also highlighted modular exchange among non-bla KPC and bla KPC plasmids and the common presence of multiple replicons within bla KPC plasmid structures (>60%). The substantial genomic plasticity observed has important implications for our understanding of the epidemiology of transmissible carbapenem resistance in Enterobacterales for the implementation of adequate surveillance approaches and for control