Progress with air quality management in the 60 years since the UK clean air act, 1956. Lessons, failures, challenges and opportunities

© 2016 WIT Press, www.witpress.com. This paper explores the challenges, opportunities and progress made with managing air quality since the United Kingdom parliament passed the Clean Air Act, 1956. It seeks to identify the factors contributing to successful management of air quality and the factors that have acted, or continue to do so, as barriers to progress. The public health catastrophe of the 1952 London Smog created the political momentum for the 1956 Act to be passed. The nature of the contemporary air pollution challenge is reviewed in terms of the public health burden, the economic cost and the governmental response. The contemporary response is considered inadequate for the scale and intensity of the problem

Euclidean Distances, soft and spectral Clustering on Weighted Graphs

We define a class of Euclidean distances on weighted graphs, enabling to perform thermodynamic soft graph clustering. The class can be constructed form the "raw coordinates" encountered in spectral clustering, and can be extended by means of higher-dimensional embeddings (Schoenberg transformations). Geographical flow data, properly conditioned, illustrate the procedure as well as visualization aspects.Comment: accepted for presentation (and further publication) at the ECML PKDD 2010 conferenc

Towards Person Identification and Re-identification with Attributes

Abstract. Visual identification of an individual in a crowded environ-ment observed by a distributed camera network is critical to a variety of tasks including commercial space management, border control, and crime prevention. Automatic re-identification of a human from public space CCTV video is challenging due to spatiotemporal visual feature varia-tions and strong visual similarity in people’s appearance, compounded by low-resolution and poor quality video data. Relying on re-identification using a probe image is limiting, as a linguistic description of an individ-ual’s profile may often be the only available cues. In this work, we show how mid-level semantic attributes can be used synergistically with low-level features for both identification and re-identification. Specifically, we learn an attribute-centric representation to describe people, and a met-ric for comparing attribute profiles to disambiguate individuals. This differs from existing approaches to re-identification which rely purely on bottom-up statistics of low-level features: it allows improved robustness to view and lighting; and can be used for identification as well as re-identification. Experiments demonstrate the flexibility and effectiveness of our approach compared to existing feature representations when ap-plied to benchmark datasets.

The fracture behaviour of adhesively-bonded composite joints: Effects of rate of test and mode of loading

AbstractThe present paper discusses the results of an investigation into the effects of test rate and the mode of loading on the fracture energy, Gc, of adhesively-bonded fibre-composite joints. Various carbon-fibre reinforced-polymer (CFRP) matrix composite substrates have been bonded using two different types of automotive structural epoxy-adhesives. They have been tested via loading the bonded joints in mode I (tensile), mode II (in-plane shear) and mixed-mode I/II from slow rates (i.e., of about 10−5m/s) up to relatively high rates of test of about 15m/s. The high-rate tests were photographed using a high-speed digital video camera to record the deformation of the joint and the fracture behaviour. An analysis strategy has been developed for the various modes of loading (i) to account for the observed fracture behaviour, (ii) to circumvent the problems posed by oscillations in the load traces due to the presence of dynamic effects in the faster tests, and (iii) to account for the kinetic energy associated with the moving specimen arms in the faster tests. Based on the analysis strategy developed, the effect of the test rate on the fracture energy, Gc, for the different loading modes for the joints has been ascertained. Furthermore, various different fracture paths were observed in the tests. They were either cohesive, in the adhesive layer, or interlaminar in the composite substrates. The exact fracture path observed was a function of (i) the type of composite substrate, (ii) the type of adhesive, and (iii) the mode of loading employed. However, the nature of the fracture path was found to be quite insensitive to the test rate. Essentially, it was found that joints subjected to mixed-mode I/II loading were more likely to exhibit an interlaminar fracture path in the composite substrates than when loaded in either pure modes I or II. The propensity for a given joint to exhibit such a fracture path via delamination of the composite substrate has been explained by calculating the transverse tensile stresses induced in the loaded composite arms, and comparing this value to the measured transverse tensile strength of the composite. Following this approach, the underlying reasons for the observed fracture path were identified and could be predicted. Also, the proposed scheme provides a route to design against delamination failure occurring in adhesively-bonded fibre-composite test specimens

Hide your pain : social threat increases pain reports and aggression, but reduces facial pain expression and empathy

Earlier research studying the effects of social threat on the experience and expression of pain led to mixed results. In this study, female participants (N = 32) came to the lab with 2 confederates. Both confederates administered a total of 10 painful electrocutaneous stimuli to the participant. The framing of the administration was manipulated in a within-subjects design: In the low social threat condition the participant was told that the confederate could choose between 10 and 20 pain stimuli, thus they believed that this confederate chose to administer the minimum allowed number of pain stimuli. In the high social threat condition the confederate had a choice between 1 and 10 stimuli, thus they believed that this confederate chose to administer the maximum allowed number of stimuli. Participants reported on the intensity, unpleasantness, and threat value of the painful stimuli, and their facial expression was recorded. Moreover, aggression and empathy toward the confederates were assessed. As hypothesized, participants reported increased pain intensity, unpleasantness, and threat in the high social threat condition compared to the low social threat condition, but showed less facial pain expression. Finally, participants exhibited increased aggression and reduced empathy toward the confederate in the high social threat condition. Perspective: Social threat reduces painful facial expression, but simultaneously increases pain reports, leading to a double burden of the person in pain. Additionally, social threat affected social relationships by increasing aggression and reducing empathy for the other

M DWARF ACTIVITY in the PAN-STARRS1 MEDIUM-DEEP SURVEY: FIRST CATALOG and ROTATION PERIODS

We report on an ongoing project to investigate activity in the M dwarf stellar population observed by the Pan-STARRS1 Medium-Deep Survey (PS1-MDS). Using a custom-built pipeline, we refine an initial sample of ∼4 million sources in PS1-MDS to a sample of 184,148 candidate cool stars using color cuts. Motivated by the well-known relationship between rotation and stellar activity, we use a multiband periodogram analysis and visual vetting to identify 270 sources that are likely rotating M dwarfs. We derive a new set of polynomials relating M dwarf PS1 colors to fundamental stellar parameters and use them to estimate the masses, distances, effective temperatures, and bolometric luminosities of our sample. We present a catalog containing these values, our measured rotation periods, and cross-matches to other surveys. Our final sample spans periods of ≲1-130 days in stars with estimated effective temperatures of ∼2700-4000 K. Twenty-two of our sources have X-ray cross-matches, and they are found to be relatively X-ray bright as would be expected from selection effects. Our data set provides evidence that Kepler-based searches have not been sensitive to very slowly rotating stars (P rot 70 day), implying that the observed emergence of very slow rotators in studies of low-mass stars may be a systematic effect. We also see a lack of low-amplitude (<2%) variability in objects with intermediate (10-40 day) rotation periods, which, considered in conjunction with other observational results, may be a signpost of a loss of magnetic complexity associated with a phase of rapid spin-down in intermediate-age M dwarfs. This work represents just a first step in exploring stellar variability in data from the PS1-MDS and, in the farther future, Large Synoptic Survey Telescope

Inclusive eta' Production from the Upsilon(1S)

Using the CLEO II detector at CESR, we measure the eta' - gluon - gluon form-factor in Y(1S) decays. This form-factor especially at large eta' energies may provide an explanation of the large rate for B -> Xs eta'. Our data do not support a large anomalous coupling at higher q^2 and thus the large eta' rate remains a mystery, possibly requiring a non-Standard Model explanation.Comment: 14 pages postscript, also available through http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/public/CLNS, submitted to PR