Currnent and likely future performance of advanced natural ventilation

Advanced natural ventilation (ANV), often characterised by the use of dedicated ventilation stacks, shafts and other architecture features such as atria, light wells, has gained popularity for natural ventilation design in recent decades. In this research, a prototype ANV system is proposed, and the likely thermal performance in a range of UK climatic conditions predicted using dynamic thermal simulation. The simulations showed that ANV has greater resilience to future climatic conditions in the north of the UK than in the south-east and that, for the assumed internal heat gains, the design studied is unlikely to maintain comfortable conditions in the southeast of England beyond the middle of this century

Library log analysis and its implications for studying online information seeking behavior of cultural groups

Log analysis, as one of the less overtly intrusive ways to study information seeking behavior online, has been used to closely monitor patterns of user system usage looking at activities and actions since the 1980s (Villén-Rueda et al., 2007). However, to date there have been limited studies discussing its usage in respect of information seeking behaviors of cultural groups in the academic library context. With the growth in international student numbers, the increasing remote use of the library service and a globally connected digital environment, the particular needs and behaviors of different cultural groups, when studying in different settings, merits far greater attention. This paper uses a library log analysis in order to explore international Chinese users' usage of an academic library in the UK and discusses the implication of it as a research method in Library and Information Studies (LIS) research, reflecting on the potential for greater analysis of different cultural groups. The findings demonstrate that log analysis can be used as a method to better understand particular cultural groups information seeking behaviors; it also discusses the limitations of log analysis and gives suggestions for future research work

La gent gran als centres penitenciaris

Una falsa certesa que transcendeix a la societat és que la gent gran no té una capacitat criminal rellevant. Els últims anys s’ha constatat un augment de la població presa de més de seixanta anys, circumstància que està associada, especialment, a l’increment de la longevitat. A més, aquest sector de la població té moltes més necessitats i demandes que els joves, i són influenciades, sens dubte, per les condicions ambientals carceràries que agreujaran els processos d’envelliment. Això no obstant, no s’identifiquen ni mòduls especials ni recursos específics que puguin satisfer les necessitats de la gent gran interna. Aquesta mancança provoca que sorgeixin, d’una banda, tot un seguit de limitacions i problemes associats, i, de l’altra, problemes vinculats a l’edat, com poden ser un augment prou significatiu de les limitacions i dels trastorns. Aquest article fa un repàs jurídic a les principals disposicions i als articles que es refereixen a aquell col·lectiu, i també analitza les característiques principals dels presos d’edat avançada. Entre les estratègies principals es recomanen polítiques sanitàries de prevenció que impedeixin l’elevat desenvolupament de patologies i així, combinat amb una millora de la qualitat de vida, s’evitarien els elevats costos que arrosseguen. Això a banda, es recomana que es revisin els protocols d’excarceració i que se n’avaluïn els beneficis, no solament per als presos grans, sinó també per a la comunitat. Així mateix, es proposen una sèrie d’estratègies que millorarien les intervencions actuals: més acompanyament familiar, millores en la interacció amb altres interns joves i programes de reinserció específics per als més grans, entre d’altres.Una falsa certeza que trasciende a la sociedad es que las personas mayores no poseen una capacidad criminal relevante. En los últimos años se identifica un incremento de la población reclusa mayor de sesenta años, asociado, especialmente, a un incremento de la longevidad. Pero además este sector de la población presenta un conjunto de necesidades y de demandas mayor que los más jóvenes, influenciadas, sin duda, por las condiciones ambientales carcelarias que exarcerbarán los procesos de envejecimiento. Sin embargo, no se identifican ni módulos especiales ni recursos específicos que puedan satisfacer las necesidades de los presos mayores, por lo que se desarrollan toda una serie de limitaciones y problemáticas que se vincularan a esas carencias, por un lado, y a los problemas asociados a la edad, por otro, así como un significativo incremento de limitaciones y trastornos. Este artículo realiza un repaso jurídico a las principales disposiciones y artículos que se refieren a ese colectivo, y analiza las principales características de los reos mayores. Entre las principales estrategias se recomiendan políticas sanitarias de prevención que impidan el elevado desarrollo de patologías y, combinado una mejora calidad de vida, que se eviten los elevados costes asociados. Por otro lado, se recomienda una revisión de los protocolos de excarcelación, evaluando los beneficios, no solo para los prisioneros mayores, sino también para la Comunidad. De igual modo, también se referencian una serie de estrategias que desarrollarían mejoras en las intervenciones actuales: un mayor acompañamiento familiar, mejoras en la interacción con otros presos jóvenes y programas de reinserción específicos para los más mayores, entre otras

Manual de abonos químicos para uso de los labradores de la provincia de Segovia

Copia digital. Valladolid : Junta de Castilla y León. Consejería de Cultura y Turismo, 2009-201

Observation of confined current ribbon in JET plasmas

we report the identification of a localised current structure inside the JET plasma. It is a field aligned closed helical ribbon, carrying current in the same direction as the background current profile (co-current), rotating toroidally with the ion velocity (co-rotating). It appears to be located at a flat spot in the plasma pressure profile, at the top of the pedestal. The structure appears spontaneously in low density, high rotation plasmas, and can last up to 1.4 s, a time comparable to a local resistive time. It considerably delays the appearance of the first ELM.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

Conversion of the death inhibitor ARC to a killer activates pancreatic β cell death in diabetes

Loss of insulin-secreting pancreatic β cells through apoptosis contributes to the progression of type 2 diabetes, but underlying mechanisms remain elusive. Here, we identify a pathway in which the cell death inhibitor ARC paradoxically becomes a killer during diabetes. While cytoplasmic ARC maintains β cell viability and pancreatic architecture, a pool of ARC relocates to the nucleus to induce β cell apoptosis in humans with diabetes and several pathophysiologically distinct mouse models. β cell death results through the coordinate downregulation of serpins (serine protease inhibitors) not previously known to be synthesized and secreted by β cells. Loss of the serpin α1-antitrypsin from the extracellular space unleashes elastase, triggering the disruption of β cell anchorage and subsequent cell death. Administration of α1-antitrypsin to mice with diabetes prevents β cell death and metabolic abnormalities. These data uncover a pathway for β cell loss in type 2 diabetes and identify an FDA-approved drug that may impede progression of this syndrome

Balance and harmony in the Gallup World Poll: The development of the Global Wellbeing Initiative module

Over recent decades, scholarship on wellbeing has flourished. However, this has been critiqued as Western-centric, firstly in terms of the location of research participants and scholars, and moreover in terms of the very ideas and values through which wellbeing is understood. In response to such issues, the Global Wellbeing Initiative – a partnership between Gallup and the Wellbeing for Planet Earth foundation – was created to look at wellbeing from a more global perspective. The centrepiece of this initiative is a survey module in the Gallup World Poll. This paper charts the evolution of this module to date, from its initial incarnation in the 2020 poll (featuring items on various aspects of wellbeing) to a finalized 2022 iteration (which focuses specifically on balance and harmony). With the 2022 version now intended to stay consistent longitudinally, this paper establishes a valuable baseline for this important project which will contribute to a more inclusive and comprehensive understanding of wellbeing

Deep neural network or dermatologist?

Deep learning techniques have proven high accuracy for identifying melanoma in digitised dermoscopic images. A strength is that these methods are not constrained by features that are pre-defined by human semantics. A down-side is that it is difficult to understand the rationale of the model predictions and to identify potential failure modes. This is a major barrier to adoption of deep learning in clinical practice. In this paper we ask if two existing local interpretability methods, Grad-CAM and Kernel SHAP, can shed light on convolutional neural networks trained in the context of melanoma detection. Our contributions are (i) we first explore the domain space via a reproducible, end-to-end learning framework that creates a suite of 30 models, all trained on a publicly available data set (HAM10000), (ii) we next explore the reliability of GradCAM and Kernel SHAP in this context via some basic sanity check experiments (iii) finally, we investigate a random selection of models from our suite using GradCAM and Kernel SHAP. We show that despite high accuracy, the models will occasionally assign importance to features that are not relevant to the diagnostic task. We also show that models of similar accuracy will produce different explanations as measured by these methods. This work represents first steps in bridging the gap between model accuracy and interpretability in the domain of skin cancer classification

Multicriteria evaluation of discharge simulation in Dynamic Global Vegetation Models

PublishedJournal Article© 2015. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. In this study, we assessed the performance of discharge simulations by coupling the runoff from seven Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVMs; LPJ, ORCHIDEE, Sheffield-DGVM, TRIFFID, LPJ-GUESS, CLM4CN, and OCN) to one river routing model for 16 large river basins. The results show that the seasonal cycle of river discharge is generally modeled well in the low and middle latitudes but not in the high latitudes, where the peak discharge (due to snow and ice melting) is underestimated. For the annual mean discharge, the DGVMs chained with the routing model show an underestimation. Furthermore, the 30 year trend of discharge is also underestimated. For the interannual variability of discharge, a skill score based on overlapping of probability density functions (PDFs) suggests that most models correctly reproduce the observed variability (correlation coefficient higher than 0.5; i.e., models account for 50% of observed interannual variability) except for the Lena, Yenisei, Yukon, and the Congo river basins. In addition, we compared the simulated runoff from different simulations where models were forced with either fixed or varying land use. This suggests that both seasonal and annual mean runoff has been little affected by land use change but that the trend itself of runoff is sensitive to land use change. None of the models when considered individually show significantly better performances than any other and in all basins. This suggests that based on current modeling capability, a regional-weighted average of multimodel ensemble projections might be appropriate to reduce the bias in future projection of global river discharge.National Natural Science Foundation of China. Grant Numbers: 41125004, 31321061, Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection. Grant Number: 201209031, 111 Project. Grant Number: B14001, National Youth Top-notch Talent Support Program in China, Imbalance-P ERC-synergy, TRENDY, Global River Discharge Cente