541 research outputs found
Biobank: Who'd bank on it?
The document attached has been archived with permission from the editor of the Medical Journal of Australia. An external link to the publisher’s copy is included
A self-contained wind speed, direction and location system for buoys and ships in the World Ocean Circulation Experiment
Knowledge of the absolute wind velocity near the surface of the ocean is a requirement of the World Ocean Circulation
Experiment (WOCE) and other large programs directed towards understanding air-sea interactions and how ocean circulation and
climate are interrelated. The measurement is made possible using IMET (Improved METeorology) modules, a next generation
meteorological data acquisition system developed as part of the WOCE program. An IMET system consists of a set of intelligent
modules for each measurement variable, with data being recorded on a computer, typically PC-based. The IMET wind module
includes a propeller for wind speed, a vane and optical encoder for wind direction, a flux gate compass for the north reference, and
microprocessor-based electronics for control and data formatting. The IMET Global Positioning System (GPS) module includes a
five chanel GPS receiver and microprocessor based electronics for control and data formatting. These modules, as part of the
complete measurement suite, result in a self-contained system that can make accurate measurements from research ships, drifting
and moored buoys, and volunteer observing ships (VOS).Funding was provided by Grant No. OCE-8709614 from the National Science Foundation
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The Human Dimension of Pollution Policy Implementation: Air Quality in Rural China
The People's Republic of China is experiencing severe air pollution with very serious public health and economic consequences. Over the past decade, the Chinese government has sought to utilize bureaucratic, political, legal and educational vehicles to address these problems. This paper examines the ways in which those policy measures have been communicated to, understood by, and acted upon by the citizenry, drawing in important part on household and epidemiological surveys conducted in Anhui. Our study suggests that the central government's message has yet to be absorbed to the degree intended and then considers both why this has been the case and how the effectiveness of policy mechanisms might be enhanced
Land Use and Salinity Drive Changes in SAV Abundance and Community Composition
Conserving and restoring submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) are key management goals for estuaries worldwide because SAV integrates many aspects of water quality and provides a wide range of ecosystem services. Management strategies are typically focused on aggregated abundance of several SAV species, because species cannot be easily distinguished in remotely sensed data. Human land use and shoreline alteration have been shown to negatively impact SAV abundance, but the effects have varied with study, spatial scale, and location. The differences in reported effects may be partly due to the focus on abundance, which overlooks within-community and among-community dynamics that generate total SAV abundance. We analyzed long-term SAV aerial survey data (1984-2009) and ground observations of community composition (1984-2012) in subestuaries of Chesapeake Bay to integrate variations in abundance with differences in community composition. We identified five communities (mixed freshwater, milfoil-Zannichellia, mixed mesohaline, Zannichellia, and Ruppia-Zostera). Temporal variations in SAV abundance were more strongly related to community identity than to terrestrial stressors, and responses to stressors differed among communities and among species. In one fifth of the subestuaries, the community identity changed during the study, and the probability of such a change was positively related to the prevalence of riprapped shoreline in the subestuary. Mixed freshwater communities had the highest rates of recovery, and this may have been driven by Hydrilla verticillata, which was the single best predictor of SAV recovery rate. Additional species-specific and community-specific research will likely yield better understanding of the factors affecting community identity and SAV abundance, more accurate predictive models, and more effective management strategies
Crowdsourcing Cybersecurity: Cyber Attack Detection using Social Media
Social media is often viewed as a sensor into various societal events such as
disease outbreaks, protests, and elections. We describe the use of social media
as a crowdsourced sensor to gain insight into ongoing cyber-attacks. Our
approach detects a broad range of cyber-attacks (e.g., distributed denial of
service (DDOS) attacks, data breaches, and account hijacking) in an
unsupervised manner using just a limited fixed set of seed event triggers. A
new query expansion strategy based on convolutional kernels and dependency
parses helps model reporting structure and aids in identifying key event
characteristics. Through a large-scale analysis over Twitter, we demonstrate
that our approach consistently identifies and encodes events, outperforming
existing methods.Comment: 13 single column pages, 5 figures, submitted to KDD 201
Quality, morale and the new contract with GPs
In UK general practice the goodwill that has sustained the GP workforce is waning
Perceived colorectal cancer candidacy and the role of candidacy in colorectal cancer screening
Screening is a well-established tool to advance earlier cancer diagnosis. We used Davison’s concept of ‘candidacy’ to explore how individuals draw on collectively constructed images of ‘typical’ colorectal cancer (CRC) sufferers, or ‘candidates’, in order to evaluate their own risk and to ascertain the impact of candidacy on screening participation in CRC. We interviewed 61 individuals who were invited to participate in the Scottish Bowel Screening Programme. Of these, 37 were screeners (17 men and 20 women) and 24 non-screeners (13 men and 11 women). To analyse these data we used a coding frame that drew on: symptoms, risk factors, and retrospective and prospective candidacy. Few participants could identify a definite bowel cancer candidate and notions of candidacy were largely predicated on luck in the sense that anyone could be a candidate for CRC and there was little evidence to support a linear relationship between feelings of risk and screening decisions. Often participants described screening as part of a wider portfolio of being healthy and referred to feeling obliged to look after themselves. Our study suggests that rather than candidates for bowel cancer, screeners viewed themselves as candidates for screening by which screening decisions pointed towards the acceptance and normalisation of the rhetoric of personal responsibility for health. These findings have related theoretical and practical implications; the moral structure that underpins the new public health can be witnessed practically in the narratives by which those who see themselves as candidates for screening embrace wider positive health practices.</p
CLIVAR Mode Water Dynamics Experiment (CLIMODE) fall 2005, R/V Oceanus voyage 419, November 9, 2005–November 27, 2005
CLIMODE (CLIVAR Mode Water Dynamic Experiment) is a program designed to understand and quantify the processes
responsible for the formation and dissipation of North Atlantic subtropical mode water, also called Eighteen Degree Water (EDW).
Among these processes, the amount of buoyancy loss at the ocean-atmosphere interface is still uncertain and needs to be accurately
quantified. In November 2005, a cruise was made aboard R/V Oceanus in the region of the separated Gulf Stream, where intense
oceanic heat loss to the atmosphere is believed to trigger the formation of EDW. During that cruise, one surface mooring with
IMET meteorological instruments was anchored in the core of the Gulf Stream as well as two moored profilers on its southeastern
edge. Surface drifters, APEX floats and bobby RAFOS floats were also deployed along with two other moorings with sound
sources. CTD profiles and water samples were also carried out. This array of instruments will permit a characterization of EDW
with high spatial and temporal resolutions, and accurate in-situ measurements of air-sea fluxes in the formation region. The
present report documents this cruise, the instruments that were deployed and the array of measurements that was set in place.Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. OCE 04-24536
The Fermi GBM Gamma-Ray Burst Spectral Catalog: Four Years Of Data
In this catalog we present the updated set of spectral analyses of GRBs
detected by the Fermi Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor (GBM) during its first four years
of operation. It contains two types of spectra, time-integrated spectral fits
and spectral fits at the brightest time bin, from 943 triggered GRBs. Four
different spectral models were fitted to the data, resulting in a compendium of
more than 7500 spectra. The analysis was performed similarly, but not
identically to Goldstein et al. 2012. All 487 GRBs from the first two years
have been re-fitted using the same methodology as that of the 456 GRBs in years
three and four. We describe, in detail, our procedure and criteria for the
analysis, and present the results in the form of parameter distributions both
for the observer-frame and rest-frame quantities. The data files containing the
complete results are available from the High-Energy Astrophysics Science
Archive Research Center (HEASARC).Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ
Stratus 9/VOCALS ninth setting of the Stratus Ocean Reference Station & VOCALS Regional Experiment
The Ocean Reference Station at 20°S, 85°W under the stratus clouds west of northern Chile is
being maintained to provide ongoing climate-quality records of surface meteorology; air-sea
fluxes of heat, freshwater, and momentum; and of upper ocean temperature, salinity, and velocity
variability. The Stratus Ocean Reference Station (ORS Stratus) is supported by the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Observation Program. It is
recovered and redeployed annually, with cruises that have come between October and December.
During the 2008 cruise on the NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown to the ORS Stratus site, the primary
activities were recovery of the Stratus 8 WHOI surface mooring that had been deployed in
October 2007, deployment of a new (Stratus 9) WHOI surface mooring at that site; in-situ
calibration of the buoy meteorological sensors by comparison with instrumentation put on board
by staff of the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL); and observations of the stratus
clouds and lower atmosphere by NOAA ESRL. A buoy for the Pacific tsunami warning system
was also serviced in collaboration with the Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service of the
Chilean Navy (SHOA). The DART (Deep-Ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunami) carries
IMET sensors and subsurface oceanographic instruments. A DART II buoy was deployed north
of the STRATUS buoy, by personnel from the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC)
Argo floats and drifters were launched, and CTD casts carried out during the cruise.
The ORS Stratus buoys are equipped with two Improved Meteorological (IMET) systems, which
provide surface wind speed and direction, air temperature, relative humidity, barometric
pressure, incoming shortwave radiation, incoming longwave radiation, precipitation rate, and sea
surface temperature. Additionally, the Stratus 8 buoy received a partial CO2 detector from the
Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL). IMET data are made available in near real
time using satellite telemetry. The mooring line carries instruments to measure ocean salinity,
temperature, and currents.
The ESRL instrumentation used during the 2008 cruise included cloud radar, radiosonde
balloons, and sensors for mean and turbulent surface meteorology.
Finally, the cruise hosted a teacher participating in NOAA’s Teacher at Sea Program.Funding was provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
under Grant No. NA17RJ1223 for the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Ocean Research (CICOR)
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