59 research outputs found
sj-docx-1-jop-10.1177_02698811231161583 – Supplemental material for Co-use of cannabis and alcohol before and after Canada legalized nonmedical cannabis: A repeat cross-sectional study
No full textSupplemental material, sj-docx-1-jop-10.1177_02698811231161583 for Co-use of cannabis and alcohol before and after Canada legalized nonmedical cannabis: A repeat cross-sectional study by Erin Hobin, Ashini Weerasinghe, Sadie Boniface, Amir Englund, Elle Wadsworth and David Hammond in Journal of Psychopharmacology</p
Does believing alcohol causes cancer moderate the relationship between consumer awareness of the alcohol-cancer link and support for alcohol policies? findings from a Canadian cross-sectional study.
No full textINTRODUCTION: Extending research observing an association between awareness that alcohol causes cancer and support for alcohol policies, this study examined if believing or accepting alcohol causes cancer moderates the relationship between awareness of alcohol as a carcinogen and policy support.
METHODS: Adult alcohol consumers (n = 5180) in Canada completed an online survey in March-April 2023. Four separate logistic regression models were conducted with policy support affecting alcohol availability, pricing, marketing and labelling as outcomes to assess if believing alcohol causes seven types of cancer moderates the relationship between awareness of the alcohol-cancer link and support for alcohol policies. An interaction between awareness and belief was included as a predictor, adjusting for covariates.
RESULTS: Overall, 29.3% were aware alcohol causes seven types of cancer and, of those aware, 83.6% believed this link. Those both aware of and believing that alcohol causes cancer had higher odds of supporting policies restricting alcohol availability (OR 1.76, 95% CI 1.13, 2.74) and marketing (OR 1.75, 95% CI 1.16, 2.64) than those not aware and did not believe. Consumers who were both aware of and believed the alcohol-cancer link had higher odds of supporting labelling policies (OR 1.59, 95% CI 1.05, 2.40), although this was not significant after adjusting for multiple comparisons.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: This study highlights that believing alcohol is a carcinogen moderates the relationship between awareness of the alcohol-cancer link and support for policies restricting alcohol availability and marketing. Future longitudinal studies are needed to test interventions for effectively raising awareness and strengthening belief and acceptance of alcohol-related cancer risks
Fire performance of concrete flat slabs
No full text© 2020 Pasindu Laknath Weerasinghe Thalpe GurugeConcrete flat slabs are widely used, especially in multi-storey buildings, because of their resource efficiency and fast construction. The requirements for fire safety critically affect the overall design of these slabs. Fire design guidelines which are based on research carried out a few decades ago hinder the effective use of concrete flat slabs as they impose strict thickness and cover requirements. Since then, material properties of concrete have significantly changed, and construction methods have evolved considerably. Therefore, new research is needed to assess the fire performance of concrete flat slabs and provide a research base to improve the current fire safety design guidelines for concrete flat slabs.
Among the limited number of fire tests performed on concrete flat slabs, most of them were simply supported isolated specimens which did not take into account the continuity of the slab. Therefore, the author conducted a large-scale fire test on a laterally restrained flat slab specimen simulating the effect of adjacent slab panels in case of a fire. Recent studies emphasise the importance of capturing the behaviour during the cooling phase as there is a risk of failure also during that phase. Hence, the experiment was extended to measure the thermal and structural response during the cooling phase. Results indicate that the fire resistance level (FRL) of the restrained flat slab has been improved compared to the FRLs predicted by the design standards. The use of restrained support conditions which allows the development of membrane actions could be the reason for improved FRL.
Although fire tests provide vital information on the behaviour of flat slabs in fire, they are very expensive and time-consuming. As an alternative, numerical methods can be utilized to capture the effects of elevated temperatures on concrete flat slabs. Building upon the existing material models for concrete and steel at elevated temperatures, the author introduced the use of explicit coupled-temperature analysis technique in finite element software ABAQUS to determine the thermal and structural response of concrete flat slabs in fire. The models also account for the transient thermal creep of concrete when heated and change of material properties during the cooling phase. The developed models were validated with the experimental results from the fire test carried out by the author, along with two more independent fire tests.
A validated numerical modelling technique was then employed in a parametric study to evaluate the influence of the thickness, the span between columns and the reinforcement arrangement on the FRL of concrete flat slabs. The aim of the study was to further understand the new design rules imposed by the latest Australian concrete design code. Outcomes of the analysis further validate some amendments incorporated in the design code while suggesting improvements to the critical distance rule.
The current construction industry prefers performance-based fire design over prescription-based fire design as it yields more optimized solutions on a case by case basis. In order to apply such methods to concrete flat slab fire design, a case study was conducted to model an actual fire scenario within a compartment in a multi-storey building and its effects on the flat slab. Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS), a computational fluid dynamics based fire simulation software was implemented to capture the growth and decay of a compartment fire incorporating the combustible material characteristics of the furniture inside. Different fire scenarios were simulated, taking into account the different ventilation conditions. Critical temperature fields generated from the fire simulation were then applied to a FE model to assess the structural response. The predicted structural response for the actual fire scenario is significantly different from the response when the flat slab was subjected to standard design fire. This observation further highlights the importance of performance-based fire design approach, which takes building-specific parameters into account rather than generalized fire curves
Highly realistic scenario based training simulates the psychophysiology of real world use of force encounters: implications for improved police officer performance
No full textThis is the publisher's version of an article published by Ubrica Global Journal System.Much police ‘Use of Force (UOF)’ training focuses on range shooting, classroom-based learning, and minimal exposure to realistic scenarios. Consequently, police officers may not be prepared for real-world critical incidents, due to lack of experience making UOF decisions during high stress. This study compared two SWAT (“Special Weapons and Tactics”) teams (n=24) to examine the best-simulated physiological stress responses in real-world law enforcement UOF encounters. Results revealed officer physiological stress to highly realistic scenario training was significantly correlated to the stress responses of active duty police officers. Stress responses during classroom-based scenario trainings were minimal, and not significantly related to stress responses experienced during realistic training scenarios or activity duty emergency calls
Improving Citation Network Scoring by Incorporating Author and Program Committee Reputation
No full textPublication venues play an important role in the
scholarly communication process. The number of publication
venues has been increasing yearly, making it difficult for
researchers to determine the most suitable venue for their
publication. Most existing methods use citation count as the metric
to measure the reputation of publication venues. However, this
does not take into account the quality of citations. Therefore, it is
vital to have a publication venue quality estimation mechanism.
The ultimate goal of this research project is to develop a novel
approach for ranking publication venues by considering
publication history. The main aim of this research work is to
propose a mechanism to identify the key Computer Science
journals and conferences from various fields of research. Our
approach is completely based on the citation network represented
by publications. A modified version of the PageRank algorithm is
used to compute the ranking scores for each publication. In our
publication ranking method, there are many aspects that
contribute to the importance of a publication, including the
number of citations, the rating of the citing publications, the time
metric and the authors’ reputation. Known publication venue
scores have been formulated by using the scores of the
publications. New publication venue ranking is taken care by the
scores of Program Committee members which derive from their
ranking scores as authors. Experimental results show that our
publication ranking method reduces the bias against more recent
publications, while also providing a more accurate way to
determine publication quality
Improving citation network scoring by incorporating author and program committee reputation
No full textChromium oxide loaded silica aerogels: novel visible light photocatalytic materials for environmental remediation
No full textVarious photocatalytic systems have been reported for degradation of harmful air pollutants. Most of the reported catalysts are based on well-known semiconducting material, Titanium Dioxide (TiO[subscript 2]), while some are based on other materials such as Silicon Dioxide (SiO[subscript 2]), various Zeolites. However, titania based systems are very popular in this regard and the most of the photocatalytic processes that involve titania are considered non-localized. Thus, to study the photocatalytic ability of a localized system, novel aerogel based samples were studied using silica and chromium and tested for photocatalytic activities. The new photocatalytic systems were prepared to obtain aerogel silica as the matrix material by cohydrolyzing silica precursor with chromium(III) ions to obtain chromium loaded silica materials. Later, these prepared samples were compared to chromium loaded titania and mixed silica-titania systems. All the prepared systems have high surface areas compared to the systems that have been reported in literature. Samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction, Diffusive reflectance UV spectroscopy, and BET surface analysis methods. The kinetics of photocatalytic degradation of a model pollutant, acetaldehyde, was performed using a Shimadzu GCMS-QP 5000 instrument and a glass reactor with a quartz window. Change in photocatalytic activity was found with various molar ratios of SiO[subscript 2] to TiO[subscript 2]. From all the systems, chromium loaded pure SiO[subscript 2] showed the highest activity towards acetaldehyde degradation compared to mixed systems and TiO[subscript 2] based systems. The interesting photocatalytic activity of silica based materials occurs due to the efficient insertion of chromium ions into silica matrix to generate reactive sites. The photo excitation is believed to occur at molecular orbital level at localized chromium sites
Particle Swarm Optimization Simulation via Optimal Halton Sequences
No full textAbstractInspired by the social behavior of the bird flocking or fish schooling, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a population based stochastic optimization method developed by Eberhart and Kennedy in 1995. It has been used across a wide range of applications. Faure, Halton and Vander Corput sequences have been used for initializing the swarm in PSO. Quasirandom(or low-discrepancy) sequences such as Faure, Halton, Vander Corput etc are deterministic and suffers from correlations between radical inverse functions with different bases used for different dimensions. In this paper, we investigate the effect of initializing the swarm with scrambled optimal Halton sequence, which is a randomized quasirandom sequence. This ensures that we still have the uniformity properties of quasirandom sequences while preserving the stochastic behavior for particles in the swarm. Numerical experiments are conducted with benchmark objective functions with high dimensions to verify the convergence and effectiveness of the proposed initialization of PSO
Intramolecular (4+2); and tandem intermolecular (4+2);/intramolecular (3+2); cycloaddition of nitroalkenes with achiral and chiral dienophiles
No full textNitroalkenes tethered with activated and unactivated olefins were prepared. Intramolecular cycloadditions with both acyclic and cyclic dienophiles in the presence of SnCl\sb4 were investigated. Nitroalkenes tethered with three methylene units to a Z-dienophile afforded trans fused nitronates. The cycloaddition towards larger rings were unsuccessful. Cyclic dienophiles cyclized to form fused ring nitronates with extremely high selectivity. The ring fusion between the carbocycles was dependent on the ring size of the dienophile. However, cycloaddition to afford spiro ring nitronates were unsuccessful.The tandem intermolecular (4+2) intramolecular (3+2) cycloaddition with 2,3-dimethyl-2-butene afforded nitroso acetals in good yields. Using enol ethers as dienophiles, nitroso acetals were obtained as a mixture of anomers. These anomers were transformed to either -hydroxy lactams or 1,3-amino alcohols upon hydrogenolysis. The rate of the (3+2) cycloaddition is dependent on the tether length, geometry and the substitution on the dipolarophile and nitronate. For two methylene tethered nitroalkenes, the (3+2) cycloaddition undergoes via a syn endo pathway while three methylene tethered nitroalkenes undergo a syn exo pathway.The use of camphor derived chiral enol ethers allowed the demonstration asymmetric tandem cycloadditions. These nitroso acetals were transformed to optically active -hydroxy lactams with high recovery of the chiral auxiliary. The optical purities 98% ee were achieved with the vinyl and the (E)-1-propenyl ethers, while only 50% ee was obtained with the (Z)-1-propenyl ether. The high diastereoselectivity arises from a strong endo preference for the enol ethers during the (4+2) cycloaddition step. The mechanism and transition structures for cycloadditions are described.Made available in DSpace on 2011-05-07T12:05:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2
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