Using heat maps to identify areas prone to violence against women in the public sphere

The lack of accessible crime data, especially geolocations, in developing countries often acts as a barrier to identifying environmental or situational factors in high crime areas that might contribute to the facilitation of those crimes. This paper presents a methodology for conducting fieldwork for creating heat maps to identify areas prone to violence against women (VAW) in Corregidora, Mexico. Heat maps were produced based on household survey data. The results were used to select specific high concentration locations to conduct structured observations and inductive visual analysis at street level in order to identify if and what situational factors might influence the perpetration of VAW in those locations. Four broad features were identified in the urban built environment during the site visits linked to the facilitation of opportunities for the commission of VAW: (1) lacking infrastructure, (2) presence of physical obstacles, (3) poor visibility and (4) restricted pedestrian mobility. The paper demonstrates the utility of this method for aiding situational crime prevention strategies in areas where official spatial crime data is unavailable or lacking. This study presents a relatively low cost (although labour intensive) and independent method of aiding crime prevention strategies, which will hopefully be of practical value for organisations in areas with poor crime recording practices and limited access to expensive mapping technologies

Next Generation Optical Access Networks: from TDM to WDM

Postprint (author’s final draft

Energy-saving mechanism in WDM/TDM-PON based on upstream network traffic

One of the main challenges of Passive Optical Networks (PONs) is the resource (bandwidth and wavelength) management. Since it has been shown that access networks consume a significant part of the overall energy of the telecom networks, the resource management schemes should also consider energy minimization strategies. To sustain the increased bandwidth demand of emerging applications in the access section of the network, it is expected that next generation optical access networks will adopt the wavelength division/time division multiplexing (WDM/TDM) technique to increase PONs capacity. Compared with traditional PONs, the architecture of a WDM/TDM-PON requires more transceivers/receivers, hence they are expected to consume more energy. In this paper, we focus on the energy minimization in WDM/TDM-PONs and we propose an energy-efficient Dynamic Bandwidth and Wavelength Allocation mechanism whose objective is to turn off, whenever possible, the unnecessary upstream traffic receivers at the Optical Line Terminal (OLT). We evaluate our mechanism in different scenarios and show that the proper use of upstream channels leads to relevant energy savings. Our proposed energy-saving mechanism is able to save energy at the OLT while maintaining the introduced penalties in terms of packet delay and cycle time within an acceptable range. We might highlight the benefits of our proposal as a mechanism that maximizes the channel utilization. Detailed implementation of the proposed algorithm is presented, and simulation results are reported to quantify energy savings and effects on network performance on different network scenarios

Improving exercise capacity and quality of life using non-invasive heart failure treatments: evidence from clinical trials

Endpoints of large-scale trials in chronic heart failure have mostly been defined to evaluate treatments with regard to hospitalizations and mortality. However, patients with heart failure are also affected by very severe reductions in exercise capacity and quality of life. We aimed to evaluate the effects of heart failure treatments on these endpoints using available evidence from randomized trials. Interventions with evidence for improvements in exercise capacity include physical exercise, intravenous iron supplementation in patients with iron deficiency, and – with less certainty – testosterone in highly selected patients. Erythropoiesis-stimulating agents have been reported to improve exercise capacity in anaemic patients with heart failure. Sinus rhythm may have some advantage when compared with atrial fibrillation, particularly in patients undergoing pulmonary vein isolation. Studies assessing treatments for heart failure co-morbidities such as sleep-disordered breathing, diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease and depression have reported improvements of exercise capacity and quality of life; however, the available data are limited and not always consistent. The available evidence for positive effects of pharmacologic interventions using angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blockers, beta-blockers, and mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists on exercise capacity and quality of life is limited. Studies with ivabradine and with sacubitril/valsartan suggest beneficial effects at improving quality of life; however, the evidence base is limited in particular for exercise capacity. The data for heart failure with preserved ejection fraction are even less positive, only sacubitril/valsartan and spironolactone have shown some effectiveness at improving quality of life. In conclusion, the evidence for state-of-the-art heart failure treatments with regard to exercise capacity and quality of life is limited and appears not robust enough to permit recommendations for heart failure. The treatment of co-morbidities may be important for these patient-related outcomes. Additional studies on functional capacity and quality of life in heart failure are required

The Sensitivity of HAWC to High-Mass Dark Matter Annihilations

The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory is a wide field-of-view detector sensitive to gamma rays of 100 GeV to a few hundred TeV. Located in central Mexico at 19 degrees North latitude and 4100 m above sea level, HAWC will observe gamma rays and cosmic rays with an array of water Cherenkov detectors. The full HAWC array is scheduled to be operational in Spring 2015. In this paper, we study the HAWC sensitivity to the gamma-ray signatures of high-mass (multi- TeV) dark matter annihilation. The HAWC observatory will be sensitive to diverse searches for dark matter annihilation, including annihilation from extended dark matter sources, the diffuse gamma-ray emission from dark matter annihilation, and gamma-ray emission from non-luminous dark matter subhalos. Here we consider the HAWC sensitivity to a subset of these sources, including dwarf galaxies, the M31 galaxy, the Virgo cluster, and the Galactic center. We simulate the HAWC response to gamma rays from these sources in several well-motivated dark matter annihilation channels. If no gamma-ray excess is observed, we show the limits HAWC can place on the dark matter cross-section from these sources. In particular, in the case of dark matter annihilation into gauge bosons, HAWC will be able to detect a narrow range of dark matter masses to cross-sections below thermal. HAWC should also be sensitive to non-thermal cross-sections for masses up to nearly 1000 TeV. The constraints placed by HAWC on the dark matter cross-section from known sources should be competitive with current limits in the mass range where HAWC has similar sensitivity. HAWC can additionally explore higher dark matter masses than are currently constrained.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, version to be published in PR