308 research outputs found
Proof of the determinantal form of the spontaneous magnetization of the superintegrable chiral Potts model
No full textThe superintegrable chiral Potts model has many resemblances to the Ising model, so it is natural to look for algebraic properties similar to those found for the Ising model by Onsager, Kaufman and Yang. The spontaneous magnetization can be written in terms of a sum over the elements of a matrix . The author conjectured the form of the elements, and this conjecture has been verified by Iorgov et al. The author also conjectured in 2008 that this sum could be expressed as a determinant, and has recently evaluated the determinant to obtain the known result for . Here we prove that the sum and the determinant are indeed identical expressions. Since the order parameters of the superintegrable chiral Potts model are also those of the more general solvable chiral Potts model, this completes the algebraic calculation of for the general model.
doi:10.1017/S144618111000078
Public views of the UK media and government reaction to the 2009 swine flu pandemic
No full text<p>Background: The first cases of influenza A/H1N1 (swine flu) were confirmed in the UK on 27th April 2009, after a novel virus first identified in Mexico rapidly evolved into a pandemic. The swine flu outbreak was the first pandemic in more than 40 years and for many, their first encounter with a major influenza outbreak. This study examines public understandings of the pandemic, exploring how people deciphered the threat and perceived they could control the risks.</p>
<p>Methods: Purposive sampling was used to recruit seventy three people (61 women and 12 men) to take part in 14 focus group discussions around the time of the second wave in swine flu cases.</p>
<p>Results: These discussions showed that there was little evidence of the public over-reacting, that people believed the threat of contracting swine flu was inevitable, and that they assessed their own self-efficacy for protecting against it to be low. Respondents assessed a greater risk to their health from the vaccine than from the disease. Such findings could have led to apathy about following the UK Governments recommended health protective behaviours, and a sub-optimal level of vaccine uptake. More generally, people were confused about the difference between seasonal influenza and swine flu and their vaccines.</p>
<p>Conclusions: This research suggests a gap in public understandings which could hinder attempts to communicate about novel flu viruses in the future. There was general support for the government's handling of the pandemic, although its public awareness campaign was deemed ineffectual as few people changed their current hand hygiene practices. There was less support for the media who were deemed to have over-reported the swine flu pandemic.</p>
Using ecological and field survey data to establish a national list of the wild bee pollinators of crops
No full textMM was funded by grant INIA-RTA2013-00139-C03-01 (MINECO and FEDER)Hutchinson, L.A., Oliver, T.H., Breeze, T.D., Bailes, E.J., Brünjes, L., Campbell, A.J., Erhardt, A., de Groot, G.A., Földesi, R., García, D., Goulson, D., Hainaut, H., Hambäck, P.A., Holzschuh, A., Jauker, F., Klatt, B.K., Klein, A.-M., Kleijn, D., Kovács-Hostyánszki, A., Krimmer, E., McKerchar, M., Miñarro, M., Phillips, B.B., Potts, S.G., Pufal, G., Radzevičiūtė, R., Roberts, S.P.M., Samnegård, U., Schulze, J., Shaw, R.F., Tscharntke, T., Vereecken, N.J., Westbury, D.B., Westphal, C., Wietzke, A., Woodcock, B.A., Garratt, M.P.D
NORMAL COORDINATES FOR VINYL FLUORIDE AND THE SEVEN DEUTEROVINYL FLUORIDES
No full text B. Bak and D. Christensen, Spectrochim, Acta 12, 355 (1958). J. R. Scherer and W. J. Potts, J. Chem Phys. 31, 1691 (1959).Author Institution: Department of Chemistry, Thermodynamic Research Center Texas A\&M UniversityAnnual coordinate calculation was carried out for these eight isotopic molecules based mainly on the experimental data reported by Bak and A perturbation program was used and the most general quadratic valence force potential function was assumed. A six-constant potential function did reproduce very closely the 24 out-of-plane vibrations. The results agree very well with those of Scherer and A least-squares fit of the 72 calculated to the observed in-plane frequencies was obtained using a 45-constant potential function. On the basis of these calculations, the in-plane fundamental vibrational assignments of Bak and Christensen were reexamined and modified. The new assignments as well as the final set of potential functions will be presented and discussed
Fauna and paleoenvironments of the Homa Peninsula, Western Kenya
No full textThe Homa Peninsula has been known to science since 1911, and
fossil specimens from the area comprise many type specimens
for common African mammalian paleospecies. Here we discuss
the fauna and the paleoenvironmental information from the
Homa Peninsula. The Homa Peninsula is a 200 km2 area in Homa
Bay County, situated on the southern margin of the Winam Gulf
of Lake Victoria in Kenya (Figure 29.1). Lake Victoria is estimated
to be the third largest lake in the world, with a surface area
of 68,900 km2 and a maximum length of approximately 616 km.
Although its catchment is extensive, it is relatively shallow compared
to any other lake of similar size, with a maximum depth
of 84 m. Lake Victoria is located in a depression formed by the
western and eastern branches of the East African Rift System
(EARS), and is at an average elevation of 1135 m a.s.l. (Database
for Hydrological Time Series of Inland Waters, 2017)
The television work of Alfred Hitchcock
No full textThe thesis uses close textual analysis to study and evaluate the television work of Alfred Hitchcock. The corpus consists of the twenty shows personally directed by Hitchcock, including his appearances before and after those shows. In response to most previous writing, which tends to compare the programmes with Hitchcock’s films (often unfairly) the thesis emphasises them as products of television. Programmes are evaluated on the basis of their perceived success as television- if they harness conditions related to television production and integrate them with narrative themes or to create meaning. Hitchcock is considered to be the major creative force in each programme.
Chapter One provides a variety of important contexts including a brief history of US television of the 1950s, key literature on Hitchcock and analyses of contemporaneous programmes not directed by Hitchcock. The textual analysis chapters (2-8) consider aesthetic or thematic programme aspects. Chapter Two studies the various roles played by Hitchcock’s appearances as series host. Chapter Three considers the impact of censorship on programmes frequently dealing with murder, violence and insanity. Chapter Four analyses Hitchcock’s implementation of varieties of voice-over narration, a common device in short dramatic forms. Chapter Five studies Hitchcock’s use of point-of-view shots, particularly in relation to their role in the delivery of the narrative twist. Chapter Six considers the key Hitchcock theme of detachment from the world. Chapter Seven looks at moments from the programmes which demonstrate how aesthetic is influenced by television production conditions.
Hitchcock created a number of television masterpieces. His achievements in television are in many ways comparable in quality and consistency to his theatrical films. Even when considered in the context of other 1950s US anthology dramas, the Hitchcock-directed programmes are superior on many levels. Elements of his film style were highly suited to television production. Many of his greatest achievements embrace and harness television production conditions in their presentation strategies to create an integration of style and meaning
PISA:: Recent developments in offshore wind turbine monopile design
No full textThis paper provides a brief overview of the Pile Soil Analysis (PISA) project, recently completed in the UK. The research was aimed at developing new design methods for laterally loaded monopile foundations, such as those supporting offshore wind turbine structures. The paper first describes the background to the project and briefly outlines the key research elements completed. The paper concludes with a brief description of the anticipated impact of the work and describes initiatives that have followed since.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Geo-engineerin
More on the density of analytic polynomials in abstract Hardy spaces
No full textLet be the sequence of the Fej\'er kernels on the unit circle . The first author recently proved that if is a separable Banach function space on such that the Hardy-Littlewood maximaloperator is bounded on its associate space , then for every as . This implies that the set of analyticpolynomials is dense in the abstract Hardy space built upon a separable Banach function space such that is bounded on . In this note we show that there exists a separable weighted space such that the sequence does not always converge to in the norm of . On the other hand, we prove that the set is dense in under the assumption that is merely separable.<br/
A Decision Support Tool for the Valuation of Variations on Civil Engineering Projects
No full textThe valuation of variations has been recognised as a prime cause of conflict and dispute in construction management. Such disputes often concern the prices and/or rates to be applied to the varied works. Previous research has identified the subjectivity of the decision-maker in interpreting the valuation rules to be the major problem, particularly with regard to defining the work conditions and/or characteristics during a variation event. Findings of a survey, conducted to elicit the views and perceptions of experienced practitioners towards interpreting the valuation rules are presented. The development of a decision-making tool based on a robust framework for valuing variations in civil engineering projects is described. The tool was developed by analysing changes in various decision attributes. The result of the changes was then mapped to relevant sets developed using fuzzy-logic principles. Various operators were used to perform the fuzzy-aggregation operation. The modelling technique was demonstrated to be reliable in replicating the decision-making process performed by experienced practitioners. As such is considered a suitable aid for decision-making involved in valuing variations on civil engineering works. The results of the analysis reported here have suggested the fuzzy-logic as an appropriate tool to model human decision-making, particularly in valuing variations on civil engineering works. This is considered an essential progress of the current study in modelling human decision-making process, particularly since there are so many unknown aspects associated with such a process. The modelling technique successfully developed here is then used as the main algorithm for decision-making in the subsequently developed Knowledge Based System (KBS) which is intended to assist practitioners minimise conflict and dispute arising from the valuation of variations
Maximum entropy Potts Hamiltonian models of protein fitness and applications to HIV-1 proteins
No full textProtein evolution is governed by a balance of mutation and selection that act on an ensemble of protein sequence variants. The acquisition of a mutation and the effect it has on a variant's prevalence in this ensemble depends on networks of interactions with the rest of the protein sequence, a phenomenon known as epistasis. Evidence of this epistatic interaction network can be extracted from protein sequence alignments in the form of pairwise correlations. In this dissertation, we focus on building models derived from statistical physics of correlated mutation patterns and from them, extracting information that describes the protein fitness landscape and the interdependency of specific mutation patterns with drug-resistance. Using HIV-1 protease as our model system, we extract the pair correlations present in conventional multiple protein sequence alignments to build maximum entropy Potts Hamiltonian models of the drug-experienced HIV-1 protease mutational landscape. We demonstrate that these models are able to predict higher order sequence statistics and the fitness effects of multiple simultaneous mutations. Using the Hamiltonian to score individual protease sequences, we are able to identify the mutation patterns that responsible for promoting protease inhibitor resistance. As Hamiltonian models of sequence covariation is a growing field, we provide a first-order analytic framework to quantify the error in the model's predictions and provide a retrospective error analysis on the models published in the literature. Lastly, we provide an overview of related research efforts to study drug resistance within HIV-1 protease and its substrate, and to computationally screen putative drug candidates targeting HIV-1 integrase.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby William F. Flyn
- …
