Assessment of the Foster Care Pilot Project in Albania

CELCIS was contracted by UNICEF Albania in August, 2013, to carry out an evaluation of the pilot foster care project (FCPP). UNICEF had contributed to funding for a foster care project which operated in Tirana and Shkodra. The operational aspects of the projects were run by two non-governmental organisations (NGOs) called Bethany Social Services (BSS) and Every Child Albania (EC). The consultants carried out a brief literature review and a desk review of relevant documentation. They also undertook a period of fieldwork in Albania, interviewing key stakeholders and carrying out observational visits

A concurrent precursor inflow method for Large Eddy Simulations and applications to finite length wind farms

In order to enable simulations of developing wind turbine array boundary layers with highly realistic inflow conditions a concurrent precursor method for Large Eddy Simulations is proposed. In this method we consider two domains simultaneously, i.e. in one domain a turbulent Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL) without wind turbines is simulated in order to generate the turbulent inflow conditions for a second domain in which the wind turbines are placed. The benefit of this approach is that a) it avoids the need for large databases in which the turbulent inflow conditions are stored and the correspondingly slow I/O operations and b) we are sure that the simulations are not negatively affected by statically swept fixed inflow fields or synthetic fields lacking the proper ABL coherent structures. Sample applications are presented, in which, in agreement with field data a strong decrease of the power output of downstream wind-turbines with respect to the first row of wind-turbines is observed for perfectly aligned inflow.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure

Family of 4-phase latch protocols

Journal ArticleA complete family of untimed asynchronous 4-phase pipeline protocols is derived and characterised. This family contains all untimed protocols where data becomes valid before the request signal rises. Starting with a specification of the most parallel such protocol, rules are provided for concurrency reduction to systematically generate the family of all 137 related protocols that can be pipelined. Graphical and textual nomenclatures are developed to represent protocol properties and behaviours. The protocols are categorised according to their behaviours when composed into linear and structured parallel pipelines. Six basic categories emerge, along with several properties such as a single state that determines whether a protocol is fully or half buffered. When equivalence classes are calculated for parallel pipeline behaviours they are dominated by 15 shapes (all of which are delay-insensitive) which are related by a simple lattice. Several published circuits are shown to map to 16 of our 137 family members. This work enhances the understanding of handshake protocols, their properties, and relationships between different implementations in terms of concurrency and behavioural properties

The importance of planetary rotation period for ocean heat transport

The climate, and hence potential habitability, of a planet crucially depends on how its atmospheric and oceanic circulation transports heat from warmer to cooler regions. However, previous studies of planetary climate have concentrated on modelling the dynamics of their atmospheres whilst dramatically simplifying the treatment of the oceans, which neglects or misrepresents the effect of the ocean in the total heat transport. Even the majority of studies with a dynamic ocean have used a simple so-called aquaplanet having no continental barriers, which is a configuration which dramatically changes the oceanic dynamics. Here the significance of the response of poleward ocean heat transport to planetary rotation period is shown with a simple meridional barrier – the simplest representation of any continental configuration. The poleward ocean heat transport increases significantly as the planetary rotation period is increased. The peak heat transport more than doubles when the rotation period is increased by a factor of ten. There are also significant changes to ocean temperature at depth, with implications for the carbon cycle. There is strong agreement between the model results and a scale analysis of the governing equations. This result highlights the importance of both planetary rotation period and the ocean circulation when considering planetary habitability

The uniform primality conjecture for elliptic curves

An elliptic divisibility sequence, generated by a point in the image of a rational isogeny, is shown to possess a uniformly bounded number of prime terms. This result applies over the rational numbers, assuming Lang's conjecture, and over the rational function field, unconditionally. In the latter case, a uniform bound is obtained on the index of a prime term. Sharpened versions of these techniques are shown to lead to explicit results where all the irreducible terms can be computed.Comment: 24 pages, 1 figur