Nowadays, the drastic pollution problems, some of them related with greenhouse gas emissions, have promoted important attempts to face and diminish the global warming effects on the Mexico Valley Metropolitan Zone (MVMZ) as well as on the huge urban zones around the world. To reduce the exhaust gas emissions, many ...

ABSTRACT: The paper reviews a number of challenges associated with reducing degradation and its related emissions through national approaches to REDD+ under UNFCCC policy. It proposes that in many countries, it may in the short run be easier to deal with the kinds of degradation that result from locally driven ...

The rapid urbanisation of many cities in south and south-east Asia has increased the demand for bricks, which are typically supplied from brick kilns in peri-urban areas. We report visible foliar damage to mango, apricot and plum trees in the vicinity of traditional Bull's Trench brick kilns in Peshawar, Pakistan. ...

Analysis of networks and in particular discovering communities within networks has been a focus of recent work in several fields and has diverse applications. Most community detection methods focus on partitioning the entire network into communities, with the expectation of many ties within communities and few ties between. However, many ...

Identification of communities with people that could benefit from adenolymphangitis (ADL) and lymphoedema morbidity management within Lymphatic Filariasis Elimination programmes (NLFEP) in many African countries is a major challenge to programme managers. Another challenge is advocating for proportionate allocation of funds to alleviating the suffering th at afflicted people bear. ...

Community structures are found to exist ubiquitously in a number of systems conveniently represented as complex networks. Partitioning networks into communities is thus important and crucial to both capture and simplify these systems' complexity. The prevalent and standard approach to meet this goal is related to the maximization of a ...

Communication errors contribute to the occurrence of adverse events in various domains of health care. Recent studies surveying perceptions of communication in the operating room have found disparities in the perceived quality of communication among members of the operating room team. Our aim was to characterize the nature of communication ...

Mauro, LeFevre, and Morris (2003) and Campbell (2008) manipulated problem format to assess university students' simple division and subtraction. Large division problems (dividend > 25; e.g., 42 / 6 = _) and large subtraction problems (minuend > 10; e.g., 13 - 6 = _), but not small problems, were solved ...

In this article, we consider the problem of sorting a linear/circular, multi-chromosomal genome by reversals, block-interchanges (i.e., generalized transpositions), and translocations (including fusions and fissions) where the used operations can be weighted differently, which aims to find a sequence of reversal, block-interchange, and translocation operations such that the sum of ...

Children's understanding of the mathematical concepts of inversion and associativity are positively related, as measured by the use of conceptually based shortcut strategies on 3-term inversion problems (i.e., a + b - b, d x e / e) and associativity problems (i.e., a + b - c, d x e ...

Solid waste management (SWM) is one of the most challenging issues faced by developing countries that suffer from serious pollution problems caused by the generation of large waste quantities. This paper presents the case study of SWM in the Nablus district - Palestine. Surveys for household residents' and SWM program ...

Horizontal subsurface constructed wetland (SSFCW) has been widely used to treat wastewater, however the capacity of SSFCW is severely confined by clogging problems which are very common during the lifespan of a SSFCW. Therefore it is of great practical significance to improve the performance of SSFCW. In this study, a ...

Previous research in operator trust toward automated aids has focused primarily on single aids. The current study focuses on how operator trust is affected by the presence of multiple aids. Two competing theories of multiple-trust are presented. A component-specific trust theory predicts that operators will differentially place their trust in ...

A new study of how experience contributes to apparently insightful problem-solving by tool-using crows has shown that operating an apparatus with the beak or a stick promotes novel use of stones on the same apparatus.

Slipping of the Driffin's rod from the operating table is problematic during tonsillectomy. We describe a technique to overcome this problem by using a 'tonsillectomy mat'.

This paper deals with the challenges faced by forensic dentists in a world in which globalisation has become a reality. People travelling across the globe on a daily basis become victims of violent crime, terrorist attacks, human displacement, natural and man made disasters. This has forced colleagues in the profession ...

We study the common fixed point problem for the class of directed operators. This class is important because many commonly used nonlinear operators in convex optimization belong to it. We propose a definition of sparseness of a family of operators and investigate a string-averaging algorithmic scheme that favorably handles the ...

Together with droplet creation, fusion and sorting, the incubation of droplets is one of the most important and essential operations for droplet-based microfluidic assays. This manuscript concerns the development of delay-lines, which are necessary to allow incubation of reactions for precise time periods. We analyze the problems associated with creating ...

Recent imaging studies could show that fact acquisition in arithmetic is associated with decreasing activation in several frontal and parietal areas, and relatively increasing activation within the angular gyrus, indicating a switch from direct calculation to retrieval of a learned fact from memory. So far, however, little is known about ...

An impedance operator describes the mapping of a velocity field across a part of a boundary surface, to the traction field across the same part. Understood to represent the solution of a "direct" problem, i.e., the velocity field describes the problem forcing and the traction field part of the solution, ...

The author discusses the significance, implications and limitations of Manson's work. How did Patrick Manson resolve some of the major problems raised by the filarial worm life cycle? The Amoy physician showed that circulating embryos could only leave the blood via the percutaneous route, thereby requiring a bloodsucking insect. The ...

The Praat acoustics program (Boersma, 2001) is powerful freeware that is widely used bybehavioral scientists working with digital sound. This article describes GSU Praat Tools, a script package that helps simplify and automate such work. The routines use Praat's scripting language to create new menus and commands within the existing ...

An MRI-based approach for the thermometry of an operating packed-bed catalytic reactor was implemented. It was employed for the spatially resolved NMR thermometry of the bed of Pd/gamma-Al2O3 catalyst beads in the course of propylene hydrogenation reaction. This was achieved by detecting the spatially resolved axial 1D profiles of the ...

Extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB) has emerged as a threat to TB control efforts in several high-burden areas, generating international concern. XDR TB is now found in every region of the world, but appears most worrisome in the context of HIV and in resource-limited settings with congregate hospital wards. Here, ...

Reduction of membrane fouling in membrane bioreactors (MBR) by addition of three typical filter aids (aluminum sulfate (Al(2)(SO(4))(3)), polymeric ferric sulfate (PFS) and Chitosan) was investigated. The effects of filter aids on membrane pore blocking, gel layer and cake layer resistance were analyzed respectively. Significant improvement of the sustainable filtration ...

Serious methodological and ethical flaws are detailed in an ethnographic study of a respondent-driven sampling (RDS) project for drug users in Chicago. The study is also disconnected from the larger social context within which the project operated, and from the existing literature on human-subject problems the author claims he "discovered" ...

In the electronic health records (EHR) promised land, medical practices have integrated technology with their daily work flow. Charting is done electronically. Glitches occur rarely; if a problem does arise, practice staff and a supportive vendor handle it efficiently. Employees embrace the EHR and never want to return to paper. ...

Ultrasonic anemometers are often used for studies of 3-D atmospheric turbulence on Earth, due to their robust calibration and fast operation (>10 Hz). The same qualities make ultrasonic anemometry attractive for use on Mars, where similar atmospheric turbulence is found. The low density of Martian atmosphere - a hundredth that ...

In the 2002 film Hable con Ella (Talk to Her), Spanish writer-director Pedro Almodóvar plays with the ambiguity of gender, transcending conventional assumptions about "masculinity" and "femininity." Each of the four main characters holds complex, varied, and, in some cases, gender-bending gender identifications. The theme of gender plasticity is a ...

We present a systematic analysis of the eigenvalue problem associated with free, small-amplitude vibrations in an elastic body possessing piezoelectric, piezomagnetic, and magnetoelectric couplings. An abstract formulation is introduced. The operators in the abstract formulation are shown to be self-adjoint, from which a series of fundamental properties of resonant frequencies ...

INTRODUCTION: Infantile haemangioma is the commonest benign tumour in infancy. While the management of the majority of small haemangiomas consists of simply watching or steroid treatment, giant and moderate size infantile haemangiomas are challenging problems, especially in health systems with limited resources in developing countries. CASE PRESENTATION: A one-year old ...

ABSTRACT: Vectors of trypanosomiasis - tsetse (Glossinidae) in Africa, kissing-bugs (Triatominae) in Latin America - are very different insects but share demographic characteristics that render them highly vulnerable to available control methods. For both, the main operational problems relate to re-invasion of treated areas, and the solution seems to be ...

This paper examines the barriers to mitigating mercury pollution at small-scale gold mines in the Guianas (Guyana, French Guiana and Suriname), and prescribes recommendations for overcoming these obstacles. Whilst considerable attention has been paid to analysing the environmental impacts of operations in the region, minimal research has been undertaken to ...

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis of 34 forecasted high West Nile virus (WNV) risk communities in British Columbia (BC), Canada was useful to assess feasibility and planning of the operational logistics of an emergency spray event in advance of a WNV outbreak. The geographic coverage and operational time required to ...

Iterative shrinkage/thresholding (IST) algorithms have been recently proposed to handle a class of convex unconstrained optimization problems arising in image restoration and other linear inverse problems. This class of problems results from combining a linear observation model with a nonquadratic regularizer (e.g., total variation or wavelet-based regularization). It happens that ...

A non-Hermitian operator with a real spectrum and a complete set of eigenvectors may serve as the Hamiltonian operator for a unitary quantum system provided that one makes an appropriate choice for the defining the inner product of physical Hilbert state. We study the consequences of such a choice for ...

Research traditionally has focused on the development of individual symptoms in those who experienced trauma directly but has overlooked the interpersonal impact of trauma. The current study reports data from 45 male Army soldiers who recently returned from a military deployment to Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom) or Afghanistan (Operation Enduring ...

Taking inspiration from the interacting process among organizations in human societies, this correspondence designs a kind of structured population and corresponding evolutionary operators to form a novel algorithm, Organizational Evolutionary Algorithm (OEA), for solving both unconstrained and constrained optimization problems. In OEA, a population consists of organizations, and an organization ...

The Green-Kubo-Nakano formula should be modified in relativistic hydrodynamics because of the problem of acausality and the breaking of sum rules. In this Rapid Communication, we propose a formula to calculate the transport coefficients of causal hydrodynamics based on the projection operator method. As concrete examples, we derive the expressions ...

RATIONALE AND AIMS: Research suggests that there are problems of communication effectiveness in surgery. Here we describe the content, initiators and recipients of communications that intrude or interfere with individual surgical cases. We also consider the level at which the surgical team and its team members are distracted by these ...

The simplicity and high safety profile of the new generation family of devices, and in particular of the last generation of occluder device, has given impetus to the diffusion of patent foramen ovale (PFO) transcatheter closure, which appears to be very simple and safe. Paradoxically, the pathophysiology of PFO is ...

The following results provide a comparison between net airborne contamination produced by the traditional form of kiln used in Northern Mexico and by those modified according to a design by Dr. Robert Marquez. What has become known as the MK style kiln was intended to significantly reduce contaminant emissions. The ...

We study the relaxation of a passive scalar towards the uniform equilibrium distribution in an advection-diffusion problem where the phase space for the pure advection problem is a mixture of chaotic domains and elliptic islands. Since the advection-diffusion problem is linear, the relaxation can be characterized by the eigenvalues and ...

In a 15 February 2006 decision, the Supreme Court of British Columbia effectively ordered the City of surrey to licence the surrey HIV/AIDS Centre Society as a medical office. As a result, the Society did not have to submit to city council a community impact statement and study in order ...

Let X be a Spin manifold with boundary, such that the Spin structure is defined near the boundary by an almost complex structure, which is either strictly pseudoconvex or pseudoconcave (and hence contact). Using generalized Szego projectors, we define modified partial differential-Neumann boundary conditions, Reo, for spinors, which lead to ...

Sorting permutations by transpositions is an important problem in genome rearrangements. A transposition is a rearrangement operation in which a segment is cut out of the permutation and pasted in a different location. The complexity of this problem is still open and it has been a 10-year-old open problem to ...

A quantum version of the Monty Hall problem, based upon the Positive Operator Valued Measures (POVM) formalism, is proposed. It is shown that basic normalization and symmetry arguments lead univocally to the associated POVM elements, and that the classical probabilities associated with the Monty Hall scenario are recovered for a ...

The available expertise on managing and operating solid waste management (SWM) facilities varies among countries and among types of facilities. Few experts are willing to record their experience, while few researchers systematically investigate the chains of events that could trigger operational failures in a facility; expertise acquisition and dissemination, in ...

The global spread of wireless networks brings a great opportunity for their use in environmental studies. Weather, atmospheric conditions, and constituents cause propagation impairments on radio links. As such, while providing communication facilities, existing wireless communication systems can be used as a widely distributed, high-resolution atmospheric observation network, operating in ...

This paper presents the new methodology of management of dredging operations. Derived partly from existing methodologies (OECD, PNUE, AIPCN), it aims to be more comprehensive, mixing the qualities and the complementarities of previous methodologies. The application of the methodology has been carried out on the site of the Port of ...