The benefits of a health impact assessment in relation to fuel poverty: assessing Luton's affordable warmth strategy and the need for a national strategy

The links between fuel poverty and poor health are well documented, yet there is no statutory requirement on local authorities to develop fuel poverty strategies, which tend to be patchy nationally and differ substantially in quality. Fuel poverty starts from the perspective of income, even though interventions can improve health. The current public health agenda calls for more partnership-based, cost-effective strategies based on sound evidence. Fuel poverty represents a key area where there is currently little local evidence quantifying and qualifying health gain arising from strategic interventions. As a result, this initial study sought to apply the principles of a health impact assessment to Luton’s Affordable Warmth Strategy, exploring the potential to identify health impact arising – as a baseline for future research – in the context of the public health agenda. A national strategy would help ensure the promotion of targeted fuel poverty strategies.

A case based model to assist in the design process in the manufacture of furniture products

This paper describes progress on a project to utilise case based reasoning methods in the design and manufacture of furniture products. The novel feature of this research is that cases are represented as structures in a relational database of products, components and materials. The paper proposes a method for extending the usual "weighted sum" over attribute similarities for a ·single table to encompass relational structures over several tables. The capabilities of the system are discussed, particularly with respect to differing user objectives, such as cost estimation, CAD, cutting scheme re-use, and initial design. It is shown that specification of a target case as a relational structure combined with suitable weights can fulfil several user functions. However, it is also shown that some user functions cannot satisfactorily be specified via a single target case. For these functions it is proposed to allow the specification of a set of target cases. A derived similarity measure between individuals and sets of cases is proposed.

Load-balancing for mesh-based applications on heterogeneous cluster computers

This paper discusses load-balancing issues when using heterogeneous cluster computers. There is a growing trend towards the use of commodity microprocessor clusters. Although today's microprocessors have reached a theoretical peak performance in the range of one GFLOPS/s, heterogeneous clusters of commodity processors are amongst the most challenging parallel systems to programme efficiently. We will outline an approach for optimising the performance of parallel mesh-based applications for heterogeneous cluster computers and present case studies with the GeoFEM code. The focus is on application cost monitoring and load balancing using the DRAMA library.

Combined vertex-based - cell-centred finite volume method for flows in complex geometries

CFD modelling of 'real-life' processes often requires solutions in complex three dimensional geometries, which can often result in meshes where aspects of it are badly distorted. Cell-centred finite volume methods, typical of most commercial CFD tools, are computationally efficient, but can lead to convergence problems on meshes which feature cells with high non-orthogonal shapes. The vertex-based finite volume method handles distorted meshes with relative ease, but is computationally expensive. A combined vertex-based - cell-centred (VB-CC) technique, detailed in this paper, allows solutions on distorted meshes that defeat purely cell-centred physical models to be employed in the solution of other transported quantities. The VB-CC method is validated with benchmark solutions for thermally driven flow and turbulent flow. An early application of this hybrid technique is to three-dimensional flow over an aircraft wing, although it is planned to use it in a wide variety of processing applications in the future.

Case-based retrieval of 3-dimensional shapes for the design of metal castings

This paper describes research into retrieval based on 3-dimensional shapes for use in the metal casting industry. The purpose of the system is to advise a casting engineer on the design aspects of a new casting by reference to similar castings which have been prototyped and tested in the past. The key aspects of the system are the orientation of the shape within the mould, the positions of feeders and chills, and particular advice concerning special problems and solutions, and possible redesign. The main focus of this research is the effectiveness of similarity measures based on 3-dimensional shapes. The approach adopted here is to construct similarity measures based on a graphical representation deriving from a shape decomposition used extensively by experienced casting design engineers. The paper explains the graphical representation and discusses similarity measures based on it. Performance measures for the CBR system are given, and the results for trials of the system are presented. The competence of the current case-base is discussed, with reference to a representation of cases as points in an n-dimensional feature space, and its principal components visualization. A refinement of the case base is performed as a result of the competence analysis and the performance of the case-base before and after refinement is compared.

A policy-definition language and prototype implementation library for policy-based autonomic systems

This paper presents work towards generic policy toolkit support for autonomic computing systems in which the policies themselves can be adapted dynamically and automatically. The work is motivated by three needs: the need for longer-term policy-based adaptation where the policy itself is dynamically adapted to continually maintain or improve its effectiveness despite changing environmental conditions; the need to enable non autonomics-expert practitioners to embed self-managing behaviours with low cost and risk; and the need for adaptive policy mechanisms that are easy to deploy into legacy code. A policy definition language is presented; designed to permit powerful expression of self-managing behaviours. The language is very flexible through the use of simple yet expressive syntax and semantics, and facilitates a very diverse policy behaviour space through both hierarchical and recursive uses of language elements. A prototype library implementation of the policy support mechanisms is described. The library reads and writes policies in well-formed XML script. The implementation extends the state of the art in policy-based autonomics through innovations which include support for multiple policy versions of a given policy type, multiple configuration templates, and meta-policies to dynamically select between policy instances and templates. Most significantly, the scheme supports hot-swapping between policy instances. To illustrate the feasibility and generalised applicability of these tools, two dissimilar example deployment scenarios are examined. The first is taken from an exploratory implementation of self-managing parallel processing, and is used to demonstrate the simple and efficient use of the tools. The second example demonstrates more-advanced functionality, in the context of an envisioned multi-policy stock trading scheme which is sensitive to environmental volatility

Ultra-fine pitch stencil printing for a low cost and low temperature flip-chip assembly process

This paper presents the results of a packaging process based on the stencil printing of isotropic conductive adhesives (ICAs) that form the interconnections of flip-chip bonded electronic packages. Ultra-fine pitch (sub-100-mum), low temperature (100degC), and low cost flip-chip assembly is demonstrated. The article details recent advances in electroformed stencil manufacturing that use microengineering techniques to enable stencil fabrication at apertures sizes down to 20mum and pitches as small as 30mum. The current state of the art for stencil printing of ICAs and solder paste is limited between 150-mum and 200-mum pitch. The ICAs-based interconnects considered in this article have been stencil printed successfully down to 50-mum pitch with consistent printing demonstrated at 90-mum pitch size. The structural integrity or the stencil after framing and printing is also investigated through experimentation and computational modeling. The assembly of a flip-chip package based on copper column bumped die and ICA deposits stencil printed at sub-100-mum pitch is described. Computational fluid dynamics modeling of the print performance provides an indicator on the optimum print parameters. Finally, an organic light emitting diode display chip is packaged using this assembly process

Character-angle based video annotation

A video annotation system includes clips organization, feature description and pattern determination. This paper aims to present a system for basketball zone-defence detection. Particularly, a character-angle based descriptor for feature description is proposed. The well-performed experimental results in basketball zone-defence detection demonstrate that it is robust for both simulations and real-life cases, with less sensitivity to the distribution caused by local translation of subprime defenders. Such a framework can be easily applied to other team-work sports.

The food multimix concept: potential of an innovative food based approach on nutritional status in pregnant women in resource-poor communities

RATIONALE & OBJECTIVES: The food multimix (FFM)concept states that limited food resources can be combined using scientific knowledge to meet nutrient needs of vulnerable groups at low cost utilizing the ‘nutrient strengths’ of individual or candidate foods in composite recipes within a cultural context. METHODS: The method employed the food-to-food approach for recipe development using traditional food ingredients. Recipes were subjected to proximate and micronutrient analysis and optimized to meet at tleast 40% of recommended daily intakes. End products including breads, porridge and soup were developed. RESULTS: FMM products were employed in a feeding trial among 120 healthy pregnant women in Gauteng, South Africa resulting in improvements in serum iron levels from baseline values of 14.59 (=/-7.67) umol/L and 14.02 (=/-8.13) umol/L for control and intervention groups (p=0.71), to 16.03 (=/-5.67) umol/L and 18.66 (=/-9.41) umol/L (p=0.19). The increases from baseline to post-intervention were however statistically significant within groups. Similarly Mean Cell Volume values improved from baseline as well as serum ferritin and transferritin levels. CONCLUSION: The FMM concept has potential value in feeding programs for vulnerable groups including pregnant and lactating mothers.