Evidence of mass failure in the Hess Deep Rift from multi-resolutional bathymetry data

New regional swath and near-bottom bathymetric data provide constraints on shallow structures at the Hess Deep Rift, an oceanic rift that exposes the crust and upper mantle of fast-spreading oceanic lithosphere created at the East Pacific Rise. These data reveal the presence of a lobate structure with a length of ~ 4 km and a width of ~ 6 km south of an Intrarift Ridge, north of Hess Deep. The lobe consists of a series of concentric benches that are widest in the center of the lobe and narrower at the edges, with a dominant bench separating two distinct morphologic regions in the lobe. There are two end-member possible interpretations of this feature: 1) the lobate structure represents a mass failure with little translation that contains coherent blocks that preserve rift-related lineaments; or 2) it represents degraded tectonic structures, and the lobate form is accounted for by, for example, two intersecting faults. We favor the slump interpretation because it more readily accounts for the lobate form of the feature and the curved benches and based on the presence of other similar lobes in this region. In the slump model, secondary structures within the benches may indicate radial spreading during or after failure. The large lobate structure we identify south of the Intrarift Ridge in Hess Deep is one of the first features of its kind identified in an oceanic rift, and illustrates that mass failure may be a significant process in these settings, consistent with the recognition of their importance in mid-ocean ridges, oceanic islands, and continental rifts. Understanding the structure of the Hess Deep Rift is also important for reconstructing the section of fast-spreading oceanic crust exposed here.

Quantifying pursuit diving seabirds' associations with fine-scale physical features in a high tidal energy environment

The rapid increase in the number of tidal stream turbine arrays will create novel and unprecedented levels of anthropogenic activity within habitats characterized by horizontal current speeds exceeding 2 ms−1. However, the potential impacts on pursuit‐diving seabirds exploiting these tidal stream environments remain largely unknown. Identifying similarities between the fine‐scale physical features (100s of metres) suitable for array installations, and those associated with foraging pursuit‐diving seabirds, could identify which species are most vulnerable to either collisions with moving components, or displacement from these installations. A combination of vessel‐based observational surveys, Finite Volume Community Ocean Model outputs and hydroacoustic seabed surveys provided concurrent measures of foraging distributions and physical characteristics at a fine temporal (15 min) and spatial (500 m) resolution across a tidal stream environment suitable for array installations, during both breeding and non‐breeding seasons. These data sets were then used to test for associations between foraging pursuit‐diving seabirds (Atlantic puffins Fratercula arctica, black guillemots Cepphus grylle, common guillemots Uria aalge, European shags Phalacrocorax aristotelis) and physical features. These species were associated with areas of fast horizontal currents, slow horizontal currents, high turbulence, downward vertical currents and also hard–rough seabeds. The identity and strength of associations differed among species, and also within species between seasons, indicative of interspecific and intraspecific variations in habitat use. However, Atlantic puffins were associated particularly strongly with areas of fast horizontal currents during breeding seasons, and European shags with areas of rough–hard seabeds and downward vertical currents during non‐breeding seasons. Synthesis and applications. Atlantic puffins’ strong association with fast horizontal current speeds indicates that they are particularly likely to interact with installations during breeding seasons. Any post‐installation monitoring and mitigation measures should therefore focus on this species and season. The multi‐species associations with high turbulence and downward vertical currents, which often coincide with fast horizontal current speeds, also highlight useful pre‐installation mitigation measures via the omission of devices from these areas, reducing the overall likelihood of interactions. Environmental impact assessments (EIA) generally involve once‐a‐month surveys across 2‐year periods. However, the approaches used in this study show that more focussed surveys can greatly benefit management strategies aiming to reduce the likelihood of negative impacts by facilitating the development of targeted mitigation measures. It is therefore recommended that these approaches contribute towards EIA within development sites.

Pullout test correlations and in-place strength assessment - the European Concrete Frame Building Project

A full-scale, seven-story, reinforced concrete building frame was constructed in-place at the Building Research Establishment's Cardington Laboratory, which encompassed a range of different concrete mixtures and advanced construction techniques. This provided an opportunity to assess in-place nondestructive test methods, namely the pullout test, and more specifically the Danish version, which has been known as the Lok test, on a systematic basis during the construction of the building. It was used in conjunction with both standard and temperature-matched cube specimens to assess its practicality and accuracy under site conditions. Strength correlations were determined using linear and power function regression analysis. Strength predictions from these were found to be in very good agreement with the compressive strengths of temperature-matched cube specimens. When a general correlation is used, however, estimates for compressive strength are likely to have 95% confidence limits of around '20% of the mean value of four results.

A multi-proxy palaeoenvironmental investigation of the findspot of an Iron Age bog body from Oldcroghan, Co. Offaly, Ireland

In 2003, the remains of an Early Iron Age bog body, known as ‘Oldcroghan Man’, were recovered during the cutting of a drainage ditch in a bog in the Irish Midlands. Only some fingernails and a withe fragment remained undisturbed in situ in the drain face, providing the sole evidence for the original position of the body. A detailed reconstruction of the depositional context of the body has been undertaken through multi-proxy analyses of a peat monolith collected at the findspot. The palynological record shows that the surrounding area was the focus of intensive human activity during the Later Bronze Age, but was largely abandoned during the Bronze Age–Iron transition in the mid-first millennium BC. In the mid-4th century BC, a bog pool developed at the site, evidenced in the stratigraphic, plant macrofossil, testate amoebae and coleopteran records. Plant macrofossil and pollen analysis of peat samples associated with the fingernails suggests that the body was deposited in this pool most likely during the 3rd century BC. The absence of carrion beetle fauna points to complete submergence of the body within the pool. Deposition occurred shortly before or around the time that the surrounding area again became the focus of woodland clearance, as seen in the extended pollen record from the peat monolith. This period corresponds to the Early Iron Age in Ireland, during which renewed cultural connections with Britain and continental Europe can be seen in the archaeological record and widespread forest clearance is recorded in pollen records from across Ireland. The palaeoenvironmental results indicate, therefore, that the demise of Oldcroghan Man took place at a pivotal time of socio-economic and perhaps political change.

Health status of children with cerebral palsy living in Europe: a multi-centre study

Aim The aim of this report is to describe the health status of 8–12-year-old children with cerebral palsy (CP) of all severities in Europe using the Child Health Questionnaire (CHQ).

Method A total of 818 children with CP from nine centres in defined geographical areas participated. CP type, gross and fine motor function, additional impairments were classified and family data were obtained. The CHQ was used to measure the parent's perception of their child's physical (PHY) and psychosocial (PSY) health.

Results PHY scores were lower than the reference samples with a median of 46. The severity of gross motor function influenced the CHQ scores significantly in the PHY scale with the lowest scores for children with least gross motor function. There were significant differences between the CP types in PHY with the higher scores for children with unilateral spastic and the lowest scores for children with bilateral spastic and dyskinetic CP type. Fine motor function severity significantly affected both the PHY and PSY scales. The severity of intellectual impairment was significantly associated with CHQ scores in most dimensions with higher scores for higher IQ level in PHY and PSY. Children with seizures during the last year had a significantly lower health compared with children without seizures. The results of the multivariate regression analyses (forward stepwise regression) of CHQ scores on CP subtype, gross and fine motor function, cognitive function, additional impairments, seizures, parental education and employment revealed gross motor function, cognitive level and type of school attended were significant prognostic factors.

Conclusion This report is based on the largest sample to date of children with CP. Health status as measured using the CHQ was affected in all children and was highly variable. Gross motor function level correlates with health from the PHY well-being perspective but the PSY and emotional aspects do not appear to follow the same pattern.

Ten Year Performance Evaluation of a Field-Scale Zero-Valent Iron Permeable Reactive Barrier Installed to Remediate Trichloroethene Contaminated Groundwater

The Monkstown Fe0 PRB, Europe’s oldest commercially installed PRB, had been treating trichloroethene (TCE) contaminated groundwater for about 10 years on the Nortel Network site in Northern Ireland when cores were collected in December, 2006. Groundwater data from 2001-2006 indicated that TCE is being remediated to below detection limits as the contaminated groundwater flows through the PRB, Ca and Fe carbonates, crystalline and amorphous FeS, and Fe (oxy)hydroxides precipitates are present in the Fe0 filing material within the PRB. A greater variety of minerals are associated with a 1 cm thick slightly cemented crust at the entrance of the Fe0 section of the reactive vessel and the discontinuous cemented Fe0 material directly below it. Also, a greater presence of microbial communities occurred in the upper portion of the PRB compared to the lower section which might be due to less favourable conditions (i.e. high pH, low oxygen) for microbial growth in the lower section of the PRB. Visual estimation suggests that the Fe0 filings in the effluent section of the PRB have life-span of 10+ years compared to the Fe0 filings in the thin influent section of the PRB which may have a life span of only ~2-5 more years. Multi-tracer tests indicated that preferential pathways have formed in this PRB over the 10 years of operation.

Habitat for Humanity: Calibrating Best Practice Against the MDGs

Poverty alleviation lies at the heart of contemporary international initiatives on development. The key to development is the creation of an environment in which people can develop their potential, leading productive, creative lives in accordance with their needs, interests and faith. This entails, on the one hand, protecting the vulnerable from things that threaten their survival, such as inadequate nutrition, disease, conflict, natural disasters and the impact of climate change, thereby enhancing the poor’s capabilities to develop resilience in difficult conditions. On the other hand, it also requires a means of empowering the poor to act on their own behalf, as individuals and communities, to secure access to resources and the basic necessities of life such as water, food, shelter, sanitation, health and education. ‘Development’, from this perspective, seeks to address the sources of human insecurity, working towards ‘freedom from want, freedom from fear’ in ways that empower the vulnerable as agents of development (not passive recipients of benefaction).

Recognition of the magnitude of the problems confronted by the poor and failure of past interventions to tackle basic issues of human security led the United Nations (UN) in September 2000 to set out a range of ambitious, but clearly defined, development goals to be achieved by 2015. These are known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The intention of the UN was to mobilise multilateral international organisations, non-governmental organisations and the wider international community to focus attention on fulfilling earlier promises to combat global poverty. This international framework for development prioritises: the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education; promoting gender equality and empowering women; reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and developing a global partnership for development. These goals have been mapped onto specific targets (18 in total) against which outcomes of associated development initiatives can be measured and the international community held to account. If the world achieves the MDGs, more than 500 million people will be lifted out of poverty. However, the challenges the goals represent are formidable. Interim reports on the initiative indicate a need to scale-up efforts and accelerate progress.
Only MDG 7, Target 11 explicitly identifies shelter as a priority, identifying the need to secure ‘by 2020 a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers’. This raises a question over how Habitat for Humanity’s commitment to tackling poverty housing fits within this broader international framework designed to allievate global poverty. From an analysis of HFH case studies, this report argues that the processes by which Habitat for Humanity tackles poverty housing directly engages with the agenda set by the MDGs. This should not be regarded as a beneficial by-product of the delivery of decent, affordable shelter, but rather understood in terms of the ways in which Habitat for Humanity has translated its mission and values into a participatory model that empowers individuals and communities to address the interdependencies between inadequate shelter and other sources of human insecurity. What housing can deliver is as important as what housing itself is.

Examples of the ways in which Habitat for Humanity projects engage with the MDG framework include the incorporation of sustainable livelihoods strategies, up-grading of basic infrastructure and promotion of models of good governance. This includes housing projects that have also offered training to young people in skills used in the construction industry, microfinanced loans for women to start up their own home-based businesses, and the provision of food gardens. These play an important role in lifting families out of poverty and ensuring the sustainability of HFH projects. Studies of the impact of improved shelter and security of livelihood upon family life and the welfare of children evidence higher rates of participation in education, more time dedicated to study and greater individual achievement. Habitat for Humanity projects also typically incorporate measures to up-grade the provision of basic sanitation facilities and supplies of safe, potable drinking water. These measures not only directly help reduce mortality rates (e.g. diarrheal diseases account for around 2 million deaths annually in children under 5), but also, when delivered through HFH project-related ‘community funds’, empower the poor to mobilise community resources, develop local leadership capacities and even secure de facto security of tenure from government authorities.

In the process of translating its mission and values into practical measures, HFH has developed a range of innovative practices that deliver much more than housing alone. The organisation’s participatory model enables both direct beneficiaries and the wider community to tackle the insecurities they face, unlocking latent skills and enterprise, building sustainable livelihood capabilities. HFH plays an important role as a catalyst for change, delivering through the vehicle of housing the means to address the primary causes of poverty itself. Its contribution to wider development priorities deserves better recognition. In calibrating the success of HFH projects in terms of units completed or renovated alone, the significance of the process by which HFH realises these outcomes is often not sufficiently acknowledged, both within the organisation and externally. As the case studies developed in the report illustrate, the methodologies Habitat for Humanity employs to address the issue of poverty housing within the developing world, place the organisation at the centre of a global strategic agenda to address the root causes of poverty through community empowerment and the transformation of structures of governance.

Given this, the global network of HFH affiliates constitutes a unique organisational framework to faciliate sharing resources, ideas and practical experience across a diverse range of cultural, political and institutional environments. This said, it is apparent that work needs to be done to better to faciliate the pooling of experience and lessons learnt from across its affiliates. Much is to be gained from learning from less successful projects, sharing innovative practices, identifying strategic partnerships with donors, other NGOs and CBOs, and engaging with the international development community on how housing fits within a broader agenda to alleviate poverty and promote good governance.

Face Recognition in Global Harmonic Subspace

In this paper, a novel pattern recognition scheme, global harmonic subspace analysis (GHSA), is developed for face recognition. In the proposed scheme, global harmonic features are extracted at the semantic scale to capture the 2-D semantic spatial structures of a face image. Laplacian Eigenmap is applied to discriminate faces in their global harmonic subspace. Experimental results on the Yale and PIE face databases show that the proposed GHSA scheme achieves an improvement in face recognition accuracy when compared with conventional subspace approaches, and a further investigation shows that the proposed GHSA scheme has impressive robustness to noise.

Nonlinear Dynamics of Rotating Multi-Component Pair Plasmas and e-p-i Plasmas

The propagation of small amplitude stationary profile nonlinear electrostatic excitations in a pair plasma is investigated, mainly drawing inspiration from experiments on fullerene pair-ion plasmas. Two distinct pair ion species are considered of opposite polarity and same mass, in addition to a massive charged background species, which is assumed to be stationary, given the frequency scale of interest. In the pair-ion context, the third species is thought of as a background defect (e.g. charged dust) component. On the other hand, the model also applies formally to electron-positron-ion (e-p-i) plasmas, if one neglects electron-positron annihilation. A two-fluid plasma model is employed, incorporating both Lorentz and Coriolis forces, thus taking into account the interplay between the gyroscopic (Larmor) frequency ?c and the (intrinsic) plasma rotation frequency O0. By employing a multi-dimensional reductive perturbation technique, a Zakharov-Kuznetsov (ZK) type equation is derived for the evolution of the electric potential perturbation. Assuming an arbitrary direction of propagation, with respect to the magnetic field, we derive the exact form of nonlinear solutions, and study their characteristics. A parametric analysis is carried out, as regards the effect of the dusty plasma composition (background number density), species temperature(s) and the relative strength of rotation to Larmor frequencies. It is shown that the Larmor and mechanical rotation affect the pulse dynamics via a parallel-to-transverse mode coupling diffusion term, which in fact diverges at ?c ? ±2O0. Pulses collapse at this limit, as nonlinearity fails to balance dispersion. The analysis is complemented by investigating critical plasma compositions, in fact near-symmetric (T- ˜ T+) “pure” (n- ˜ n+) pair plasmas, i.e. when the concentration of the 3rd background species is negligible, case in which the (quadratic) nonlinearity vanishes, so one needs to resort to higher order nonlinear theory. A modified ZK equation is derived and analyzed. Our results are of relevance in pair-ion (fullerene) experiments and also potentially in astrophysical environments, e.g. in pulsars.

Determining the Sun's influence on Lateglacial and Holocene climates: a focus on climate response to centennial-scale solar forcing at 2800 cal. BP

The influence of solar variability on the climate of the Lateglacial and Holocene periods has been the subject of increasing discussion during the last decade. In the Mid-Holocene, several studies have identified cold/wet events that occur at ca 2800 cal. BP and a link with a reduction in solar activity, inferred from the C-14 record, has been postulated. We present results from a multi-proxy study of peat humification, plant macrofossils and testate amoebae from a raised bog at Glen West, northwest Ireland, that indicate that dry bog surface conditions were experienced in the north of Ireland at the time of the solar anomaly starting at 2800 cal. BP. With the aid of C-14 wiggle-matching and tephrochronology, an abrupt shift to wetter conditions is dated to ca 2700 cal. BP, coinciding with a C-14 maximum but clearly post-dating the 2800 cal. BP event identified elsewhere in Europe. We explore the significance of this apparent lag in the Irish record, considering the possible role of the ocean in generating spatial and temporal complexities in the climate patterns of the North Atlantic region. We conclude that these complexities are likely to give rise to time-transgressive climate responses around the North Atlantic that will only be recognised by more critical chronological approaches.

Image segmentation based on multi-scan constraint satisfaction neural network

A novel image segmentation method based on a constraint satisfaction neural network (CSNN) is presented. The new method uses CSNN-based relaxation but with a modified scanning scheme of the image. The pixels are visited with more distant intervals and wider neighborhoods in the first level of the algorithm. The intervals between pixels and their neighborhoods are reduced in the following stages of the algorithm. This method contributes to the formation of more regular segments rapidly and consistently. A cluster validity index to determine the number of segments is also added to complete the proposed method into a fully automatic unsupervised segmentation scheme. The results are compared quantitatively by means of a novel segmentation evaluation criterion. The results are promising.

Work-place social capital and smoking cessation: The Finnish Public Sector Study

AIMS:
To examine whether high social capital at work is associated with an increased likelihood of smoking cessation in baseline smokers.
DESIGN:
Prospective cohort study.
SETTING:
Finland.
PARTICIPANTS:
A total of 4853 employees who reported to be smokers in the baseline survey in 2000-2002 (response rate 68%) and responded to a follow-up survey on smoking status in 2004-2005 (response rate 77%).
MEASUREMENTS:
Work-place social capital was assessed using a validated and psychometrically tested eight-item measure. Control variables included sex, age, socio-economic position, marital status, place of work, heavy drinking, physical activity, body mass index and physician-diagnosed depression.
FINDINGS:
In multi-level logistic regression models adjusted for all the covariates, the odds for being a non-smoker at follow-up were 1.26 [95% confidence interval (CI)=1.03-1.55] times higher for baseline smokers who reported high individual-level social capital than for their counterparts with low social capital. In an analysis stratified by socio-economic position, a significant association between individual-level social capital and smoking cessation was observed in the high socio-economic group [odds ratio (OR) (95% CI)=1.63 (1.01-2.63)], but not in intermediate [(OR=1.10 (0.83-1.47)] or low socio-economic groups [(OR=1.28 (0.86-1.91)]. Work unit-level social capital was not associated with smoking cessation.
CONCLUSIONS:
If the observed associations are causal, these findings suggest that high perceived social capital at work may facilitate smoking cessation among smokers in higher-status jobs.

Cache-Integrated Network Interfaces: Flexible On-Chip Communication and Synchronization for Large-Scale CMPs

Per-core scratchpad memories (or local stores) allow direct inter-core communication, with latency and energy advantages over coherent cache-based communication, especially as CMP architectures become more distributed. We have designed cache-integrated network interfaces, appropriate for scalable multicores, that combine the best of two worlds – the flexibility of caches and the efficiency of scratchpad memories: on-chip SRAM is configurably shared among caching, scratchpad, and virtualized network interface (NI) functions. This paper presents our architecture, which provides local and remote scratchpad access, to either individual words or multiword blocks through RDMA copy. Furthermore, we introduce event responses, as a technique that enables software configurable communication and synchronization primitives. We present three event response mechanisms that expose NI functionality to software, for multiword transfer initiation, completion notifications for software selected sets of arbitrary size transfers, and multi-party synchronization queues. We implemented these mechanisms in a four-core FPGA prototype, and measure the logic overhead over a cache-only design for basic NI functionality to be less than 20%. We also evaluate the on-chip communication performance on the prototype, as well as the performance of synchronization functions with simulation of CMPs with up to 128 cores. We demonstrate efficient synchronization, low-overhead communication, and amortized-overhead bulk transfers, which allow parallelization gains for fine-grain tasks, and efficient exploitation of the hardware bandwidth.

The importance that community pharmacists in Malta place on the introduction of pharmaceutical care

The results from a study to assess the importance Maltese pharmacists placed on various aspects of pharmaceutical care and their willingness to provide such care are reported. A modified version of the Behavioural Pharmaceutical Care Scale (BPCS) questionnaire (consisting of three dimensions and 14 domains) was mailed to the 198 privately owned community pharmacies in Malta. A total of 99 questionnaires were returned following two reminder telephone calls.

An Investigation Into Features For Multi-View Lipreading

For the first time in this paper we present results showing the effect of speaker head pose angle on automatic lip-reading performance over a wide range of closely spaced angles. We analyse the effect head pose has upon the features themselves and show that by selecting coefficients with minimum variance w.r.t. pose angle, recognition performance can be improved when train-test pose angles differ. Experiments are conducted using the initial phase of a unique multi view Audio-Visual database designed specifically for research and development of pose-invariant lip-reading systems. We firstly show that it is the higher order horizontal spatial frequency components that become most detrimental as the pose deviates. Secondly we assess the performance of different feature selection masks across a range of pose angles including a new mask based on Minimum Cross-Pose Variance coefficients. We report a relative improvement of 50% in Word Error Rate when using our selection mask over a common energy based selection during profile view lip-reading.