Electric Vehicles in the Pacific Islands? An Investigation of the Possibilities of Electro-mobility in Samoa

The identification of alternative transport modes is urgently required as fuel price inflation is adversely affecting Samoa’s energy security and increasingly its economic and social well-being. The Samoan government has recognised the society-wide implications of fuel dependency and is moving towards improving fuel use efficiency of the national transport fleet and the identification of viable alternative transport fuels. This research analysed findings from global transport stakeholder organisations and modelled the energy consumption of electric vehicles (BEVs) under Samoan conditions. The results pointed to lower operating cost of BEVs which led to stakeholder support for the eCar pilot project aimed at establishing the feasibility of electro-mobility. The study adopted a postdevelopment approach as it provided information about BEV technology and invited Samoan transport stakeholders to contribute to mutual learning about alternative transport modes via a series of participative workshops. Postdevelopment thinking also pointed to assumptions made under prevailing conceptions of the modernist development project which may see the promotion of electro-mobility in the form of a commercial technology which is unaffordable to the majority of Samoans. The study concludes that in order to make electro-mobility accessible to a wider section of society, the concept of electro-mobility needs to be deconstructed into its components and rebuild to suit Samoa’s conception of modernity. This could literally mean BEV retrofit conversions of second hand cars to take advantage of the well documented energy efficiency of the electric motor and discounting the status enhancing ownership of a commercial BEV

Competition and Incentives

We report on two experiments that identify non-monetary incentive effects of competition. As the number of competitors increases, monetary incentives to engage in cost reduction tend to decrease. We test the hypothesis that there are non-monetary incentive effects of competition going in the opposite direction. In the experiments we change the number of competitors exogenously keeping the monetary incentives to spend effort constant. The first experiment shows that subjects spend significantly more effort in duopolistic and oligopolistic markets than in a monopoly. The second experiment focuses on social comparisons as one potential mechanism for this effect. It shows that competition turns the effort decisions of competing managers into strategic complements

Strange quark matter with effective quark masses

The properties of strange quark matter at zero temperature are investigated including medium effects. The quarks are considered as quasiparticles which acquire an effective mass generated by the interaction with the other quarks of the dense system. Within this approach we find that these medium effects reduce the binding energy of strange quark matter with respect to $^{56}Fe$.Comment: 6 pages, 2 Postscript figures, to be published in Proc. Int. Workshop "Hirschegg'97: QCD Phase Transitions

Acupuncture in acute herpes zoster pain therapy (ACUZoster) - design and protocol of a randomised controlled trial

Background: Acute herpes zoster is a prevalent condition. One of its major symptoms is pain, which can highly influence patient's quality of life. Pain therapy is limited. Acupuncture is supposed to soften neuropathic pain conditions and might therefore act as a therapeutic alternative. Objective of the present study is to investigate whether a 4 week semi-standardised acupuncture is non-inferior to sham laser acupuncture and the anticonvulsive drug gabapentine in the treatment of pain associated with herpes zoster. Methods/Design: Three-armed, randomised, placebo-controlled trial with a total follow-up time of 6 months. Up to estimated 336 patients (interim analyses) with acute herpes zoster pain (VAS > 30 mm) will be randomised to one of three groups (a) semi-standardised acupuncture (168 patients); (b) gabapentine with individualised dosage between 900-3600 mg/d (84 patients); (c) sham laser acupuncture. Intervention takes place over 4 weeks, all patients will receive analgesic therapy (non-opioid analgesics: metamizol or paracetamol and opioids: tramadol or morphine). Therapy phase includes 4 weeks in which group (a) and (c) consist of 12 sessions per patient, (b) visits depend on patients needs. Main outcome measure is to assess the alteration of pain intensity before and 1 week after treatment sessions (visual analogue scale VAS 0-100 mm). Secondary outcome measure are: alteration of pain intensity and frequency of pain attacks; alteration of different aspects of pain evaluated by standardised pain questionnaires (NPI, PDI, SES); effects on quality of life (SF 36); analgesic demand; alteration of sensoric perception by systematic quantitative sensory testing (QST); incidence of postherpetic neuralgia; side effects and cost effectiveness. Credibility of treatments will be assessed. Discussion: This study is the first large-scale randomised placebo controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy of acupuncture compared to gabapentine and sham treatment and will provide valuable new information about the clinical and physiological effects of acupuncture and gabapentine in the treatment of acute herpes zoster pain. The study has been pragmatically designed to ensure that the study findings can be implemented into clinical practice if acupuncture can be shown to be an effective treatment strategy in acute herpes zoster pain

Deciphering the Role of Humoral and Cellular Immune Responses in Different COVID-19 Vaccines - A Comparison of Vaccine Candidate Genes in Roborovski Dwarf Hamsters

With the exception of inactivated vaccines, all SARS-CoV-2 vaccines currently used for clinical application focus on the spike envelope glycoprotein as a virus-specific antigen. Compared to other SARS-CoV-2 genes, mutations in the spike protein gene are more rapidly selected and spread within the population, which carries the risk of impairing the efficacy of spike-based vaccines. It is unclear to what extent the loss of neutralizing antibody epitopes can be compensated by cellular immune responses, and whether the use of other SARS-CoV-2 antigens might cause a more diverse immune response and better long-term protection, particularly in light of the continued evolution towards new SARS-CoV-2 variants. To address this question, we explored immunogenicity and protective effects of adenoviral vectors encoding either the full-length spike protein (S), the nucleocapsid protein (N), the receptor binding domain (RBD) or a hybrid construct of RBD and the membrane protein (M) in a highly susceptible COVID-19 hamster model. All adenoviral vaccines provided life-saving protection against SARS-CoV-2-infection. The most efficient protection was achieved after exposure to full-length spike. However, the nucleocapsid protein, which triggered a robust T-cell response but did not facilitate the formation of neutralizing antibodies, controlled early virus replication efficiently and prevented severe pneumonia. Although the full-length spike protein is an excellent target for vaccines, it does not appear to be the only option for future vaccine design

First international Competition on Runtime Verification: rules, benchmarks, tools, and final results of CRV 2014

The first international Competition on Runtime Verification (CRV) was held in September 2014, in Toronto, Canada, as a satellite event of the 14th international conference on Runtime Verification (RV’14). The event was organized in three tracks: (1) offline monitoring, (2) online monitoring of C programs, and (3) online monitoring of Java programs. In this paper, we report on the phases and rules, a description of the participating teams and their submitted benchmark, the (full) results, as well as the lessons learned from the competition.ICT COST ActionFFG HARMONIAAustrian Science Fund (FWF)31704

Folate Production by Probiotic Bacteria

Probiotic bacteria, mostly belonging to the genera Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, confer a number of health benefits to the host, including vitamin production. With the aim to produce folate-enriched fermented products and/or develop probiotic supplements that accomplish folate biosynthesis in vivo within the colon, bifidobacteria and lactobacilli have been extensively studied for their capability to produce this vitamin. On the basis of physiological studies and genome analysis, wild-type lactobacilli cannot synthesize folate, generally require it for growth, and provide a negative contribution to folate levels in fermented dairy products. Lactobacillus plantarum constitutes an exception among lactobacilli, since it is capable of folate production in presence of para-aminobenzoic acid (pABA) and deserves to be used in animal trials to validate its ability to produce the vitamin in vivo. On the other hand, several folate-producing strains have been selected within the genus Bifidobacterium, with a great variability in the extent of vitamin released in the medium. Most of them belong to the species B. adolescentis and B. pseudocatenulatum, but few folate producing strains are found in the other species as well. Rats fed a probiotic formulation of folate-producing bifidobacteria exhibited increased plasma folate level, confirming that the vitamin is produced in vivo and absorbed. In a human trial, the same supplement raised folate concentration in feces. The use of folate-producing probiotic strains can be regarded as a new perspective in the specific use of probiotics. They could more efficiently confer protection against inflammation and cancer, both exerting the beneficial effects of probiotics and preventing the folate deficiency that is associated with premalignant changes in the colonic epithelia

Neutron anomaly in γN

We study the implications of the flavour SU(3) symmetry for various interpretations (existence of a narrow anti-decuplet resonance, interference of known resonances and a cusp effect) of the neutron anomaly in γN → ηN cross section. We show that the explanation of the neutron anomaly due to interference of known N(1535) and N(1650) resonances implies that N(1650) resonance should have a huge coupling to ϕ-meson – at least 5 times larger than the corresponding ρ0 coupling. In terms of quark degrees of freedom that implies that the well-known N(1650) resonance must be a “cryptoexotic pentaquark”– its wave function should contain predominantly an ss̄ component, implying that the N(1650) resonance is dominantly a pentaquark. The explanation of the neutron anomaly as a cusp effect implies very strong violation of the flavour SU(3) symmetry