Tracking decision-making during architectural design

There is a powerful cocktail of circumstances governing the way decisions are made during the architectural design process of a building project. There is considerable potential for misunderstandings, inappropriate changes, change which give rise to unforeseen difficulties, decisions which are not notified to all interested parties, and many other similar problems. The paper presents research conducted within the frame of the EPSRC funded ADS project aiming at addressing the problems linked with the evolution and changing environment of project information to support better decision-making. The paper presents the conceptual framework as well as the software environment that has been developed to support decision-making during building projects, and reports on work carried out on the application of the approach to the architectural design stage. This decision-tracking environment has been evaluated and validated by professionals and practitioners from industry using several instruments as described in the paper

Genomic homogeneity in fibrolamellar carcinomas

Background-Fibrolamellar carcinoma (FLC) is a variant of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) with distinctive clinical and histological features. To date there have been few studies on the genotypic aspects of FLC and no previous attempts have been made to use the arbitrarily primed-polymerase chain reaction (AF-FCR) technique to detect genetic alterations in this disease.Aim-The aim of this study was to assess the degree of genomic heterogeneity of FEC using the AP-PCR technique. Methods-A fetal of 50 tissue samples of primary and metastatic FLCs from seven patients were microdissected. AP-PCR amplification of each genomic DNA sample was carried out using two arbitrary primers.Results-DNA fingerprints of the primary FLCs and all their metastatic lesions (both synchronous and metachronous disease) were identical in an individual patient. The fingerprints were different between tumours of different patients. No evidence of intratumour heterogeneity was observed.Conclusions-Such genomic homogeneity in FLCs may explain their indolent growth. The absence of clonal evolution, which is present in other tumours (particularly HCCs), may explain the distinct behaviour in this tumour. The tumorigenic pathway and degree of somatic genomic changes in this disease may be less complex than in HCC

Cardiovascular magnetic resonance reference ranges for the heart and aorta in Chinese at 3T.

Cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) reference ranges have not been well established in Chinese. Here we determined normal cardiac and aortic reference ranges in healthy Singaporean Chinese and investigated how these data might affect clinical interpretation of CMR scans.In 180 healthy Singaporean Chinese (20 to 69 years old; males, n = 91), comprehensive cardiac assessment was performed using the steady state free precision technique (3T Ingenia, Philips) and images were analysed by two independent observers (CMR42, Circle Cardiovascular Imaging). Measurements were internally validated using standardized approaches: left ventricular mass (LVM) was measured in diastole and systole (with and without papillary muscles) and stroke volumes were compared in both ventricles. All reference ranges were stratified by sex and age; and indeterminate/borderline regions were defined statistically at the limits of the normal reference ranges. Results were compared with clinical measurements reported in the same individuals.LVM was equivalent in both phases (mean difference 3.0 ± 2.5 g; P = 0.22) and stroke volumes were not significantly different in the left and right ventricles (P = 0.91). Compared to females, males had larger left and right ventricular volumes (P  0.05 for all measures). In both sexes, age correlated negatively with left and right ventricular volumes; and positively with aortic sinus and sinotubular junction diameters (P < 0.0001 for all). There was excellent agreement in indexed stroke volumes in the left and right ventricles (0.1±5.7 mL/m2, 0.7±6.2 mL/m2, respectively), LVM (0.6±6.4 g/m2), atrial sizes and aortic root dimensions between values reported in clinical reports and our measured reference ranges.Comprehensive sex and age-corrected CMR reference ranges at 3T have been established in Singaporean Chinese. This is an important step for clinical practice and research studies of the heart and aorta in Asia

PENYULUHAN TENTANG KEBUTUHAN PERAWATAN BBLR

Bayi berat badan lahir rendah (BBLR) adalah bayi dengan berat badan lahirnya kurang 2500gr tanpa memandang masa kehamilan. Berat badan lahir adalah berat badan yang ditimbang dalam 1 jam setelah bayi lahir. Bayi berat lahir rendah terjadi karena kehamilan prematur, bayi kecil masa kehamilan dan kombinasi keduanya. Bayi kurang bulan adalah bayi yang lahir sebelum umur kehamilan mencapai 37 minggu. Tujuan penyuluhan ini untuk mengetahui kebutuhan perawatan yang di butuhkan oleh Bayi dengan Berat Badan Lahir Rendah (BBLR). Metode yang digunakan dalam kegiatan serangkaian tahap antara lain dengan penyuluhan/edukasi. Memberikan materi berupa pengertian BBLR, faktor penyebab dan perawatan BBLR. Hasil yang dicapai setelah mengikuti penyuluhan dan diskusi masyarakat Kelurahan Tanjung Gusta mengetahui tentang perawatan bayi BBLR

Early Predictors Of Creative Writing At Age 9

The present study investigated the extent to which creative expressiveness in writing at age 9 could be predicted by early human figure drawing ability and general cognitive ability, measured at age 4. Participants (N=277) were members of the Twins Early Development Study, for whom measures of human figure drawing and general cognitive ability were available at age 4 and a measure of creative writing was available at age 9. Creativity was measured with the Consensual Assessment Technique, which is a commonly used technique to estimate creativity of a product. Each story, based on three pictures shown to children, was coded on 10 dimensions by five independent judges. Creative Expressiveness score was created as a composite measure of dimensions that correlated highly with creativity dimension. Human figure drawing ability, measured by The Draw-A-Child test at 4, was found to be a weak but significant predictor of Creative Expressiveness at age 9 (r =.17). General cognitive ability at 4 did not predict Creative Expressiveness in writing at 9. It is concluded that examining individual differences in human figure drawing ability may provide a promising direction for exploring the early antecedents of creativity throughout childhood

Creative Storytelling In Childhood Is Related To Exam Performance At Age 16

Creativity is only partly recognised in education. A recent meta-analysis estimated a correlation of r = 0.22 between creativity and educational achievement across many international student samples of all educational levels. In the meta-analysis, creativity was measured with a variety of measures, including divergent thinking and remote association tasks. The differences in the measures influenced the strength of the relationship between creativity and educational achievement. More research is needed to establish reliable measures of creativity, especially in primary school children, whose creativity remains poorly evaluated. The present study measured creativity in written stories in children at age 9 using the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT). The study employed a longitudinal design, using CAT creativity scores as a predictor of educational achievement at age 16. Each of the stories from 59 children were coded by 6 different judges for 10 dimensions, including creativity. The inter-rater reliabilities between the judges for the 10 dimensions were high (α = .76 - .95). Among the dimensions, a factor analysis revealed two factors: Creative Expressiveness and Logic. The Creative Expressiveness factor explained an additional 7 % of variance in English grades, but not in Maths, beyond intelligence, previous achievement and personality traits associated with creativity. Overall, the study showed that CAT is a robust and reliable measure to detect verbal creativity in childhood. The results also suggest that early creativity predicts later academic achievement, calling for more attention to early creativity assessment and development

Material-independent crack arrest statistics: Application to indentation experiments

An extensive experimental study of indentation and crack arrest statistics is presented for four different brittle materials (alumina, silicon carbide, silicon nitride, glass). Evidence is given that the crack length statistics can be described by a universal (i.e. material independent) distribution. The latter directly derives from results obtained when modeling crack propagation as a depinning phenomenon. Crack arrest (or effective toughness) statistics appears to be fully characterized by two parameters, namely, an asymptotic crack length (or macroscopic toughness) value and a power law size dependent width. The experimental knowledge of the crack arrest statistics at one given scale thus gives access to its knowledge at all scales

Doped-carbon electrocatalysts with trimodal porosity from a homogeneous polypeptide gel

One of the biggest challenges for materials science is to design facile routes to structurally complex materials, which is particularly important for global applications such as fuel cells. Doped nanostructured carbons are targeted as noble metal-free electrocatalysts for this purpose. Their intended widespread use, however, necessitates simple and robust preparation methods that do not compromise on material performance. Here, we demonstrate a versatile one-pot synthesis of nitrogen-doped carbons that exploits the templating ability of biological polymers. Starting with just metal nitrates and gelatin, multiphase C/Fe3C/MgO nanomaterials are formed, which are then etched to produce active carbon electrocatalysts with accessible trimodal porosity. These show remarkable performance in the oxygen reduction reaction – a key process in proton exchange membrane fuel cells. The activity is comparable to commercial platinum catalysts and shows improved stability with reduced crossover effects. This simple method offers a new route to widely applicable porous multicomponent nanocomposites

Optimal Design of Robust Combinatorial Mechanisms for Substitutable Goods

In this paper we consider multidimensional mechanism design problem for selling discrete substitutable items to a group of buyers. Previous work on this problem mostly focus on stochastic description of valuations used by the seller. However, in certain applications, no prior information regarding buyers' preferences is known. To address this issue, we consider uncertain valuations and formulate the problem in a robust optimization framework: the objective is to minimize the maximum regret. For a special case of revenue-maximizing pricing problem we present a solution method based on mixed-integer linear programming formulation

Inventory Policy for Retail Stores: A Multi-Item EOQ Model Considering Permissible Delay in Payment and Limited Warehouse Capacity

The retail industry such as minimarkets has many products consisting of several types of products that have expiration dates. Their warehouses have limited capacity, making it difficult to make decision about optimum inventory. Most of the suppliers will give permissible delay in payment, that can be used to increase income potential through earned by considering the risk of fines imposed if payments are exceeded and help companies raise capital before generating sales. These three factors must be considered when developing the inventory model. The purpose of this study is to develop a multi-item inventory model by considering perishable or damaged products, permissible delay in payment in limited warehouse. Model development is carried out in 2 stages. The first stage was the development of a multi-item EOQ model by considering product defects and permissible delay in payment. The second stage model is by adding a capacity constraint factor to the model.  The results obtained are getting the optimal order quantity by considering the number of product types, product damage factors, late payments in limited warehouses, the best ordering policy can be found, and it is known that the total inventory costs to changes in parameters are good and sensitive to changes in percentage, interest percentage, payment allowances, and warehouse capacity through sensitivity tests