Compensating for severe nuclear accidents: An expert elucidation

We present the results of a structured discussion held in London in July 2014 involving a panel of experts drawn from three communities: specialists on aspects of risk and insurance; lawyers concerned with issues of nuclear law; and safety and environmental regulators. The discussions were held on the basis of participant anonymity. The process emphasised three considerations: conceptions of loss arising from a severe nuclear accident; the specifics of the Fukushima-Daiichi accident and what it means for policy and strategy going forward; and the future of liability regimes. We observe some stoicism from those closest to implementation of policies and procedures associated with nuclear risks, but a lower level of certainty and confidence among those concerned with nuclear energy regulation

An Opportunistic Approach to Adding Value to a Photograph Collection

The Semantic Web can, among other things, be used for photograph annotation. Many implementations of this idea exist, but all are limited by the fact that a human must manually create the annotations for the photographs, often using a program with which he or she is not familiar. This poster discusses an opportunistic method of photograph annotation that uses logical inference in conjunction with existing data from various sources in order to obtain information about the images being annotated

Theoretical Studies of Catalyst Structure and Kinetics in the MTO Process

Erdöl spielt eine entscheidende Rolle in der Weltwirtschaft und in der chemischen Industrie. Es ist jedoch nicht erneuerbar und schädlich für die Umwelt. Dies hat eine jahrzehntelange Suche nach alternativen Möglichkeiten zur Herstellung von chemischen Rohstoffen und Kraftstoffen aus erneuerbaren Quellen vorangetrieben. Der Methanol-zu-Kohlenwasserstoff (MTH)-Prozess, der auf Olefine im Methanol-zu-Olefin (MTO) Prozess und Benzin im Methanol-zu-Benzin-Prozess abgestimmt werden kann, ist ein vielversprechender Anwärter bei dieser Suche. Der Prozess findet in Zeolith-Katalysatoren statt und ist bereits im industriellen Maßstab praktikabel. Er ist in hohem Maße abstimmbar und hängt stark von Faktoren wie Katalysatorstärke, Zusammensetzung und Form ab. Heutzutage sind Berechnungen mit der Dichtefunktionaltheorie (DFT) eine kostengünstige und weithin akzeptierte Methode, um chemische Vorhersagen zu treffen. In dieser Arbeit werden dft-Berechnungen verwendet, um 1) kinetische Vorhersagen über den MTO-Prozess zu machen und 2) zu untersuchen, wie dieser durch die Katalysatorzusammensetzung beeinflusst wird. Zunächst wird ein mikrokinetisches Modell für 42 Reaktionen aus der Initiierungsphase des MTO-Prozesses und 63 aus dem Olefinzyklus implementiert. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass trotz hoher Barrieren von über 200 kJ/mol der dominante Initiierungsweg in H-SSZ-13 die Dehydrierung von MeOH zur Erzeugung von CO ist, gefolgt von der Methylierung von CO, die zur Bildung der ersten C-C-Bindung führt. Als nächstes werden die Diffusionsbeschränkungen in H-SSZ-13 Zeolith untersucht, wobei die Diffusionsbarrieren zum Passieren des 8-Rings für eine Reihe von symmetrischen Molekülen mit zunehmendem Moleküldurchmesser gefunden werden. Kleine Moleküle wie zum beispiel Ethen sind nicht diffusionsbegrenzt und können leicht zwischen den Zeolith-Hohlräumen hindurchtreten. Oberhalb eines effektiven Durchmessers von 5,3 Å skalieren die Barrierenhöhen linear, wobei Spezies wie Benzol wahrscheinlich immobil sind. Die Auswirkungen einer Änderung des Si/Al-Verhältnisses auf die katalytische Aktivität werden für den gut untersuchten Methanol-Dehydratisierungsweg in H-SSZ-13-Zeolith untersucht. Die Reaktionen werden an einer festen ersten Brønsted-Säure-Stelle (BSS) modelliert, wobei eine zusätzliche BSS in unterschiedlichen Nachbarabständen platziert wird. Motive, bei denen die zweite Stelle an der drittnächsten Nachbarstelle über dem sechsgliedrigen Ring platziert ist, erweisen sich als besonders reaktiv, während die zweitnächste Nachbarstelle über dem viergliedrigen Ring besonders unreaktiv ist. Schließlich wird die Reaktivität der 12 verschiedenen symmetrieungleichen Stellen in H-ZSM-5 für 5 Schlüsselreaktionen aus dem MTO-Prozess verglichen. Es zeigt sich, dass die für die Modellierung häufig verwendete T12-Stelle tatsächlich eine gute Wahl ist, da die meisten dort ablaufenden Reaktionen eine vergleichsweise niedrige Barrierenhöhe aufweisen

Osteoarthritis (OA)

Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common type of arthritis that millions of people struggle with in their day to day lives. OA is often observed in an outpatient pain management setting as it is considered an unavoidable disease process expected in aging individuals. OA is a costly, painful, and debilitating disease. OA goes further than physically limiting patients, it can even affect mental and emotional stability. Although there is not an available cure for OA, there are many preventative manageable treatment options available. Education, evaluation and management of OA is important to be knowledgeable about in order to help patients maintain their ability to stay active and improve their overall quality of life

Does Economic Development Have an Influence on Human Labor Trafficking?

India and China are the top two countries in the world that have the has the highest number of victims of labor trafficking out of every country in the world. Using these countries that have the highest number of victims of labor trafficking, I will conduct a cross sectional analysis analyzing the rate of victims compared to the HDI. The cases of India and China show how HDI influences the number of victims of labor trafficking and this can be generalized to other countries. Generalizing this information to apply to other countries could change how policy is created to address labor trafficking. Policy that incorporates economic development and quality of life will lessen human labor trafficking by addressing the systematic issues that cause it. I hypothesize that the lower the Human Development Index Score the higher the number of victims that are in labor trafficking

Who Controls the Past Controls the Future - Life Annotation in Principle and Practice

The fields of the Semantic Web and Ubiquitous Computing are both relatively new fields within the discipline of Computer Science. Yet both are growing and have begun to overlap as people demand ever-smaller computers with persistent access to the internet. The Semantic Web has the potential to become a global knowledge store duplicating the information on the Web, albeit in a machine-readable form. Such a knowledge base combined with truly ubiquitous systems could provide a great benefit for humans. But what of personal knowledge? Information is generally of more use when linked to other information. Sometimes this information must be kept private, so integrating personal knowledge with the Semantic Web is not desirable. Instead, it should be possible for a computer system to collect and store private knowledge while also being able to augment it with public knowledge from the Web, all without the need for user effort. This thesis begins with a review of both fields, indicating the points at which they overlap. It describes the need for semantic annotation and various processes through which it may be achieved. A method for annotating a human's life using a combination of personal data collected using an ubiquitous system and public data freely available on the Semantic Web is suggested and conceptually compared to human memory. Context-aware computing is described along with its potential to annotate the life of a human being and the hypothesis that today's technology is able to carry out this task is presented. The work then introduces a portable system for automatically logging contextual data and describes a study which used this system to gather life annotations on one specific individual over the course of two years. The implementation of the system and its use is documented and the data collected is presented and evaluated. Finally the thesis offers the conclusion that one type of contextual data is not enough to answer most questions and that multiple forms of data need to be merged in order to get a useful picture of a person's life. The thesis concludes with a brief look into the future of the Semantic Web and how it has the potential to assist in achieving better results in this field of study

Artist Practice in the Elementary Classroom: Redefining Art Teaching Through Artist-Teacher Philosophy

Presently, there is confusion about the definition, role, and pedagogy of artist-teachers and how their practice influences the way art is taught in a K-8 public school setting. In this paper, I present my motivations for pursuing this topic of research, provide a brief history of Western conceptions of artist-teacher, and describe pedagogical characteristics of artist-teachers along with an examination of the teaching environments they create. I used Arts-based research to conduct a multi-site case study in which I first investigated my artist practice and then studied how I translated what I learned into the elementary art classroom. I completed my study in two phases. In Phase 1, I studied the cognitive processes that emerged as an organizing structure for my artist practice. Then, I embedded these cognitive processes to structure a curriculum unit, which I taught to 5th and 6th grade students in Phase 2. In both sites, I collected data through observation, dialogue recordings, and document analysis to investigate what happens when an art teacher like me grounds their teaching practice with their artist practice. My findings illustrate that approaching teaching with artist-teacher philosophy redefines art making as a cognitive process and expands conceptions of developing craft through postmodern art practice. Additionally, in this approach, artist-teachers translate artist practice through conversational pedagogy and teaching is a reflective approach. Recommendations for future research are provided, including recommendation for research about how artist teacher philosophy influences arts-based research and artist practice in teacher training programs, and recommendations for how artist teacher philosophy affects leadership in the broader school communit

I Finally Found a Place Where I Feel Like Home : Understanding the Relationship Between a Sense of Belonging and the Transfer Student Experience

The rate at which college students transfer from one higher education institution to another is steadily increasing. The purpose of the study was to develop a greater understanding of the relationship between a sense of belonging and the transfer student experience. The study implemented a mixed-methods embedded design. A survey adapted from the Basic Human Needs Scale was administered to participants to produce a Belonging composite score. The survey questions were followed by three open-response questions that allowed participants to explain further the relationship between their sense of belonging and transfer student experiences. Quantitative data revealed an above-average sense of belonging, yet qualitative data demonstrated significant complexity, challenges, and variance within the transfer student experience. While means comparisons demonstrated no statistical significance between participants’ gender or previous institution type, participants noted how factors such as on-campus housing, time of transfer, and campus involvement influenced their sense of belonging and overall transfer student experience. Therefore, the significance of recognizing the types of transfer, potential challenges, and complexity of varied experiences serve as the basis for implications discussed