Patients as Reviewers of Quality and Safety.

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Potential of semi-structural and non-structural adaptation strategies to reduce future flood risk: Case study for the Meuse

Flood risk throughout Europe has increased in the last few decades, and is projected to increase further owing to continued development in flood-prone areas and climate change. In recent years, studies have shown that adequate undertaking of semi-structural and non-structural measures can considerably decrease the costs of floods for households. However, there is little insight into how such measures can decrease the risk beyond the local level, now and in the future. To gain such insights, a modelling framework using the Damagescanner model with land-use and inundation maps for 2000 and 2030 was developed and applied to the Meuse river basin, in the region of Limburg, in the southeast of the Netherlands. The research suggests that annual flood risk may increase by up to 185% by 2030 compared with 2000, as a result of combined land-use and climate changes. The independent contributions of climate change and land-use change to the simulated increase are 108% and 37%, respectively. The risk-reduction capacity of the implementation of spatial zoning measures, which are meant to limit and regulate developments in flood-prone areas, is between 25% and 45%. Mitigation factors applied to assess the potential impact of three mitigation strategies (dry-proofing, wet-proofing, and the combination of dry- and wet-proofing) in residential areas show that these strategies have a risk-reduction capacity of between 21% and 40%, depending on their rate of implementation. Combining spatial zoning and mitigation measures could reduce the total increase in risk by up to 60%. Policy implications of these results are discussed. They focus on the undertaking of effective mitigation measures, and possible ways to increase their implementation by households

Non-Abelian (p,q) Strings in the Warped Deformed Conifold

We calculate the tension of $(p,q)$-strings in the warped deformed conifold using the non-Abelian DBI action. In the large flux limit, we find exact agreement with the recent expression obtained by Firouzjahi, Leblond and Henry-Tye up to and including order $1/M^2$ terms if $q$ is also taken to be large. Furthermore using the finite $q$ prescription for the symmetrised trace operation we anticipate the most general expression for the tension valid for any $(p,q)$. We find that even in this instance, corrections to the tension scale as $1/M^2$ which is not consistent with simple Casimir scaling.Comment: 18 pages, Latex, 1 figure; Added a discussion of the case when the warp factor parameter $b\neq 1$ and typos correcte

Nonstationary Stochastic Resonance in a Single Neuron-Like System

Stochastic resonance holds much promise for the detection of weak signals in the presence of relatively loud noise. Following the discovery of nondynamical and of aperiodic stochastic resonance, it was recently shown that the phenomenon can manifest itself even in the presence of nonstationary signals. This was found in a composite system of differentiated trigger mechanisms mounted in parallel, which suggests that it could be realized in some elementary neural networks or nonlinear electronic circuits. Here, we find that even an individual trigger system may be able to detect weak nonstationary signals using stochastic resonance. The very simple modification to the trigger mechanism that makes this possible is reminiscent of some aspects of actual neuron physics. Stochastic resonance may thus become relevant to more types of biological or electronic systems injected with an ever broader class of realistic signals.Comment: Plain Latex, 7 figure

X-wave mediated instability of plane waves in Kerr media

Plane waves in Kerr media spontaneously generate paraxial X-waves (i.e. non-dispersive and non-diffractive pulsed beams) that get amplified along propagation. This effect can be considered a form of conical emission (i.e. spatio-temporal modulational instability), and can be used as a key for the interpretation of the out of axis energy emission in the splitting process of focused pulses in normally dispersive materials. A new class of spatio-temporal localized wave patterns is identified. X-waves instability, and nonlinear X-waves, are also expected in periodical Bose condensed gases.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure

Action prediction in 10-month-old infants at high and low familial risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder

Contains fulltext : 190105pos.pdf (postprint version ) (Closed access)Background: Several studies have reported action prediction difficulties in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Although action prediction develops in infancy, little is known about prediction abilities in infants at risk for ASD. Methods: Using eye tracking, we measured action anticipations in 52 10-month-old infants at high and low familial risk for ASD. Infants were repeatedly presented with actions during which a familiar object (cup/phone) was either brought to a location usually associated with the object (cup-to-mouth/phone-to-ear; usual condition) or to an unusual location (cup-to-ear/phone-to-mouth; unusual condition). We assessed infants' anticipations to the actual target location (i.e., the location where the object was actually brought; the mouth in cup-to-mouth/phone-to-mouth actions; the ear in cup-to-ear/phone-to-ear actions) and the alternative target location (the ear in cup-to-mouth/phone-to-mouth actions; the mouth in cup-to-ear/phone-to-ear actions). Results: Anticipation frequencies were modulated by object knowledge across all infants: We found more frequent anticipations towards the alternative target location for unusual compared to usual actions. This effect was in particular present for mouth anticipations which were also overall more frequent than ear anticipations. Across usual and unusual actions, infants showed more frequent anticipations towards the actual target location, potentially representing a learning effect elicited by the repeated action presentation. Importantly, there were no differences between the low- and high-risk infants in predictive eye movements. Conclusion: Whereas our results suggest that familial risk for ASD does not affect action prediction in infancy, future research needs to investigate whether differences are apparent in those high-risk infants who later receive a diagnosis.13 p

An interactive visualization and data portal tool (PALTIDE) for relative sea level and palaeotidal simulations of the northwest European shelf seas since the Last Glacial Maximum

Relative sea level (RSL) predictions based on glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) simulations and palaeotidal predictions generated by hydrodynamic models using GIA-generated palaeotopographies are available in the published literature, and datasets are available via data repositories. However, these data are often difficult to extract for specific locations or timeslices, requiring users to request datasets from corresponding authors. To overcome the intractability of these data and to enable users to interrogate datasets themselves without requiring offline requests, we have developed PALTIDE, an online visualization tool with intuitive user interface accessible at https://shiny.bangor.ac.uk/paleotidal/. The model domain for this interactive visualization tool is the northwest European continental shelf, covering the period from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) to the present day, and is based on previous GIA simulations by Bradley and colleagues and hydrodynamic simulations using Regional Ocean Modelling System (ROMS) published by Ward and colleagues. The tool is developed in R and utilizes a number of packages including shiny and bslib for the frontend, and arrow, raster and the tidyverse for backend data processing. The tool enables visualizations and data downloads for RSL, tidal amplitude and tide-dependent parameters for any location within the model domain over 1000-year timesteps from the LGM to the present

Forage quality, mineral constituents, and performance of beef yearlings grazing two crested wheatgrasses

In the central Great Plains, crested wheatgrasses (Agropyron cristatum (L.) Gaetner and A. desertorium (Fischer ex Link) Schultes] are best utilized for early spring and late fall grazing. The principal objective of this study was to determine if beef (Bos taurus L.) yearlings grazing 'Ruff' (A. cristatum) during the spring grazing season had higher average daily gains and gains per hectare than cattle grazing `Nordan' (A. desertorum). These cultivars were evaluated in grazing trials (four replications) in eastern Nebraska in 1985, 1986, and 1987. The 0.8-ha pastures were seeded in the fall of 1983 on a Typic Argiudoll soil and were fertilized annually with 68 to 90 kg N ha-1. Grazing was for 6 wk each spring by yearling steers with a beginning average weight of 250 kg. Averaged over 3 yr, Ruff produced higher gains per hectare than Nordan (272 vs 245 kg ha-1) probably because it produced more herbage because of its better persistence. At the end of the trial, the averge basal cover of Ruff and Nordan were 21 and 6%, respectively. Three-year mean average daily gains were Ruff = 1.28 vs. Nordan = 1.34 kg d-1, which were unexpected, because Ruff generally had higher forage quality as measured by an array of parameters. Ruff forage had a higher, less desirable grass tetany ratio [K/(Mg +Ca)) than Nordan (2.6 vs. 2.3) averaged over 3 yr. Cattle grazing Ruff had lower blood serum Mg levels than cattle grazing Nordan (15.4 vs. 16.2 mg L-1, both of which were below the hypomagnesemia threshold of 18 mg L-1. This condition may have reduced intake and animal gains. These results indicate the need for evaluating pasture and range grass cultivars under grazing conditions

Egocentric activity monitoring and recovery

This paper presents a novel approach for real-time egocentric activity recognition in which component atomic events are characterised in terms of binary relationships between parts of the body and manipulated objects. The key contribution is to summarise, within a histogram, the relationships that hold over a fixed time interval. This histogram is then classified into one of a number of atomic events. The relationships encode both the types of body parts and objects involved (e.g. wrist, hammer) together with a quantised representation of their distance apart and the normalised rate of change in this distance. The quantisation and classifier are both configured in a prior learning phase from training data. An activity is represented by a Markov model over atomic events. We show the application of the method in the prediction of the next atomic event within a manual procedure (e.g. assembling a simple device) and the detection of deviations from an expected procedure. This could be used for example in training operators in the use or servicing of a piece of equipment, or the assembly of a device from components. We evaluate our approach (’Bag-of-Relations’) on two datasets: ‘labelling and packaging bottles’ and ‘hammering nails and driving screws’, and show superior performance to existing Bag-of-Features methods that work with histograms derived from image features [1]. Finally, we show that the combination of data from vision and inertial (IMU) sensors outperforms either modality alone

A look at the consumption behaviours along Ghana’s slave routes.

This study examines the consumption behaviours of four types of visitors to sites associated with the Transatlantic Slave Trade in Ghana. A questionnaire was used to elicit information regarding sites they intended or actually visited, perceived differences regarding site experiences and impressions of the heritage product itself. The results show that visitors were highly selective in their consumption patterns, although the sites in the country’s south were the major attractions and generators for all purposes. There is evidence that trip motive and connection to slavery influence consumption behaviour, as some visitors are willing to invest effort, expense and time to consume truly unique learning experiences. The findings were interpreted as evidence that site managers may need to design strategies using visitor profile and consumption patterns to deliver a coordinated and integrated appeal to the target visitor group