Suitability of chlorine bulk decay models for planning and management of water distribution systems

Effective disinfection planning and management in large, complex water distribution systems requires an accurate network water quality model. This model should be based on reaction kinetics, which describes disinfectant loss from bulk water over time, within experimental error. Models in the literature were reviewed for their ability to meet this requirement in real networks. Essential features were identified as accuracy, simplicity, computational efficiency, and ability to describe consistently the effects of initial chlorine dose, temperature variation, and successive rechlorinations. A reaction scheme of two organic constituents reacting with free chlorine was found to be necessary and sufficient to provide the required features. Recent release of the multispecies extension (MSX) to EPANET and MWH Soft's H2OMap Water MSX network software enables users to implement this and other multiple-reactant bulk decay models in real system simulations.

The place of information and communication technology-mediated consultations in primary care : GPs' perspectives

Background: New information and communication technologies such as email and text messaging have been shown to be useful in some aspects of primary care service delivery. Little is known about Scottish GPs’ attitudes towards the adoption of these technologies as routine consultation tools.

Objectives: To explore GPs’ perceptions of the potential place of new non-face-to-face consultation technologies in the routine delivery of primary care; to explore GPs’ perceived barriers to the introduction of these technologies and to identify the processes by which GPs feel that new consultation technologies could be incorporated into routine primary care.

Methods: Qualitative interview study: 20 in-depth semi-structured interviews carried out with maximum variation sample of GPs across Scotland.

Results: Whilst the face-to-face consultation was seen as central to much of the clinical and diagnostic work of primary care, many GPs were conditionally willing to consider using new technologies in the future, particularly to carry out administrative or less complex tasks and therefore maximize practice efficiency and patient convenience. Key considerations were access to appropriate training, IT support and medico-legal guidance.

Conclusions: GPs are conditionally willing to use new consultation media if clinically appropriate and if medico-legal and technical support is available.

Book review : Ethics and organizational practice : questioning the moral foundations of management

The arena of ethics and business is a colossus: thousands of books, multiple dedicated journals, de rigueur organizational ethics policies and CSR initiatives - most of which we can be fairly confident would receive poor reviews by the editors and authors of Ethics and organizational practice: Questioning the moral foundations of management. This edited collection is a self-identified ‘critical’ take on business ethics, one that according to the editors’ introduction wishes to ‘expose business ethics to its crises’ and ‘critically investigate(s) what ethics means’. The ‘critical’ which Muhr, Sørensen and Vallentin invoke is one that would be familiar to authors and readers of Critical Management Studies – that is, to use Fournier and Grey’s (2000) oft-referenced depiction, the study of management and organization that is non-performative with regards to managerialist concerns of efficiency and profitability, that seeks to denaturalize taken-for-granted legitimations, and the normalization of current organizational practices and ideologies, and one which demonstrates significant reflexivity with regard to the philosophies and methodologies it deploys. To the above, we may also add pluralism, and indeed some playfulness, with a wide diversity of conceptual, theoretical, historical and popular sources mined for their potential to help us reconsider the organizational present.

From design for ecologically sustainability to facilities management through building intelligence and knowledge management

Ecological sustainability basically concerns environmental protection and social benefits. An ecologically sustainable development is based upon reduced energy usage, increased efficiency, and upheld social responsibility; and it should be properly evaluated by financial, environmental and social aspects. Council House 2 (CH2) is claimed to change the way of Australia approaches in ecologically sustainable design and construction. This is the ‘Six-Star design and built’ green star facility assessed by the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA), and the 10-story city council building was completed and opened in 2006, totally A$11.3 million was invested for the sustainability features. CH2 protects the environment, when it compares with the old council house, and is expected to reduce electricity consumption by 85%; reduce gas consumption by 87%; produce only 13% of the emissions; and reduce water mains supply by 72%. In this paper, the author examines its design reports and the researches paper, in the form of knowledge base, to case-study how the sustainability, effectiveness and efficiency of CH2 work. By leveraging the existing CH2 sustainability knowledge, design and building professions can learn and imitate it in further ‘green’ design without ‘re-inventing the wheel’; facilities executives can also use the existing knowledge to identify steps to boost up the facilities’ operating efficiency.

Sustainability leading to building intelligence - knowledge sharing and transfer

A sustainable building regards energy use and greenhouse gas emissions as major components, and its sustainability is within a larger context of benefits about productivity, efficiency, health and safety, and serviceability. An intelligent building requires a quality building automation system design which increases productivity, reduces operational costs and protects the people using the facilities. Council House 2 (CH2) is claimed to change the way Australia approaches ecologically sustainable design and construction. Its building intelligence can be evaluated by energy and water efficiency and quality of indoor environments that elevate productivity and lower operational costs. This paper uses triangulation techniques, based upon the "Building Intelligence Quotient" by the Continental Automated Buildings Association (CABA) and "Green Star Rating" by the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA), to cross-verify CH2’s sustainability and intelligence. The author examines 18 design reports and 10 research papers to case-study the effectiveness and efficiency of CH2 and concludes that it is not just another sustainable construction but an intelligent building per se. By leveraging the existing knowledge base of green rating, building professions can measure the intelligence without "reinventing the wheel".

Chemiluminescence detection flow cells for flow injection analysis and high-performance liquid chromatography

We have examined a range of new and previously described flow cells for chemiluminescence detection. The reactions of acidic potassium permanganate with morphine and amoxicillin were used as model systems representing the many fast chemiluminescence reactions between oxidising agents and organic analytes, and the preliminary partial reduction of the reagent was exploited to further increase the rates of reaction. The comparison was then extended to high-performance liquid chromatography separations of α- and β-adrenergic agonists, with permanganate chemiluminescence detection. Flow cells constructed by machining novel channel designs into white polymer materials (sealed with transparent films or plates) have enabled improvements in mixing efficiency and overall transmission of light to the photodetector.

The productivity and performance of Australia’s major banks since deregulation

The aim of this study is to present some measures of the performance of banks operating in Australia since the deregulation of the Australian financial system in early 1980s; including the periods of financial market instability (the early 1990s and mid to late 2000s). In undertaking this measurement two approaches will be used. The first simply applies standard financial indicators. The second approach applies data envelopment analysis (DEA), to determine Malmquist indices of the levels of and the changes in the efficiency and productivity of Australian banks. The empirical results demonstrate the effect of deregulation and periodic financial crisis’s on the performance of individual banks, and the major part of the Australian banking sector. Overall the productivity performance of the Australian banks tended to improve considerably in those periods of strongest economic growth (i.e. the mid 1980s and 2000s).

Proline residues within spacer peptide p1 are important for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 infectivity, protein processing, and genomic RNA dimer stability

The full-length human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) mRNA encodes two precursor polyproteins, Gag and GagProPol. An infrequent ribosomal frameshifting event allows these proteins to be synthesized from the same mRNA in a predetermined ratio of 20 Gag proteins for each GagProPol. The RNA frameshift signal consists of a slippery sequence and a hairpin stem-loop whose thermodynamic stability has been shown in in vitro translation systems to be critical to frameshifting efficiency. In this study we examined the frameshift region of HIV-1, investigating the effects of altering stem-loop stability in the context of the complete viral genome and assessing the role of the Gag spacer peptide p1 and the GagProPol transframe (TF) protein that are encoded in this region. By creating a series of frameshift region mutants that systematically altered the stability of the frameshift stem-loop and the protein sequences of the p1 spacer peptide and TF protein, we have demonstrated the importance of stem-loop thermodynamic stability in frameshifting efficiency and viral infectivity. Multiple changes to the amino acid sequence of p1 resulted in altered protein processing, reduced genomic RNA dimer stability, and abolished viral infectivity. The role of the two highly conserved proline residues in p1 (position 7 and 13) was also investigated. Replacement of the two proline residues by leucines resulted in mutants with altered protein processing and reduced genomic RNA dimer stability that were also noninfectious. The unique ability of proline to confer conformational constraints on a peptide suggests that the correct folding of p1 may be important for viral function.

Design and analysis of a multilayer localized surface plasmon resonance graphene biosensor

This paper describes a multilayer localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) graphene biosensor that includes a layer of graphene sheet on top of the gold layer, and the use of different coupled configuration of a laser beam. The study also investigates the enhancement of the sensitivity and detection accuracy of the biosensor through monitoring biomolecular interactions of biotin-streptavidin with the graphene layer on the gold thin film. Additionally, the role of thin films of gold, silver, copper and aluminum in the performance of the biosensor is separately investigated for monitoring the binding of streptavidin to the biotin groups. The performance of the LSPR graphene biosensor is theoretically and numerically assessed in terms of sensitivity, adsorption efficiency, and detection accuracy under varying conditions, including the thickness of biomolecule layer, number of graphene layers and operating wavelength. Enhanced sensitivity and improved adsorption efficiency are obtained for the LSPR graphene biosensor in comparison with its conventional counterpart; however, detection accuracy under the same resonance condition is reduced by 5.2% with a single graphene sheet. This reduction in detection accuracy (signal to noise ratio) can be compensated for by introducing an additional layer of silica doped B2O3 (sdB2O3) placed under the graphene layer. The role of prism configuration, prism angle and the interface medium (air and water) is also analyzed and it is found that the LSPR graphene biosensor has better sensitivity with triangular prism, higher prism angle, lower operating wavelength and larger number of graphene layers. The approach involves a plot of a reflectivity curve as a function of the incidence angle. The outcomes of this investigation highlight the ideal functioning condition corresponding to the best design parameters.

CodePipe : an opportunistic feeding and routing protocol for reliable multicast with pipelined network coding

Multicast is an important mechanism in modern wireless networks and has attracted significant efforts to improve its performance with different metrics including throughput, delay, energy efficiency, etc. Traditionally, an ideal loss-free channel model is widely used to facilitate routing protocol design. However, the quality of wireless links would be affected or even jeopardized by many factors like collisions, fading or the noise of environment. In this paper, we propose a reliable multicast protocol, called CodePipe, with advanced performance in terms of energy-efficiency, throughput and fairness in lossy wireless networks. Built upon opportunistic routing and random linear network coding, CodePipe not only simplifies transmission coordination between nodes, but also improves the multicast throughput significantly by exploiting both intra-batch and inter-batch coding opportunities. In particular, four key techniques, namely, LP-based opportunistic routing structure, opportunistic feeding, fast batch moving and inter-batch coding, are proposed to offer substantial improvement in throughput, energy-efficiency and fairness. We evaluate CodePipe on ns2 simulator by comparing with other two state-of-art multicast protocols, MORE and Pacifier. Simulation results show that CodePipe significantly outperforms both of them.

Skeletal muscle nitric oxide signalling and exercise: a focus on glucose metabolism

Nitric oxide (NO) is an important vasodilator and regulator in the cardiovascular system, and this link was the subject of a Nobel prize in 1998. However, NO also plays many other regulatory roles, including thrombosis, immune function, neural activity, and gastrointestinal function. Low concentrations of NO are thought to have important signaling effects. In contrast, high concentrations of NO can interact with reactive oxygen species, causing damage to cells and cellular components.

A less-recognized site of NO production is within skeletal muscle, where small increases are thought to have beneficial effects such as regulating glucose uptake and possibly blood flow, but higher levels of production are thought to lead to deleterious effects such as an association with insulin resistance.

This review will discuss the role of NO in skeletal muscle during and following exercise, including in mitochondrial biogenesis, muscle efficiency, and blood flow with a particular focus on its potential role in regulating skeletal muscle glucose uptake during exercise.

Design and analysis of efficient rectifiers for wireless power harvesting in DBS devices

This paper presents an analysis of optimum rectifier circuits for wireless energy harvesting in deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices. Since DBS demands compact and low power consumption devices, small, high conversion efficient, and high output voltage rectifiers need to be developed. The investigation that is presented in this paper is analytical and simulated based. Analysis on a variety of circuit configurations brings more evidence to improve the performance of rectifiers. Analytical parameters influencing the output DC voltage and the efficiency of the rectifiers are described. The operating frequency of the 915 MHz industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) radio band is used in this study. The maximum conversion efficiency of the LC matched half wave rectifier, the Greinacher voltage doubler, the Delon doubler, and the 2-stage voltage multiplier is obtained as 56.34%, 74.45%, 71.48%, and 31.44%, respectively, at the 30 dBm input power level. The corresponding maximum output DC voltages are 6.27 V, 16.83 V, 13.36 V, and 9.20 V. Thus the Greinacher voltage doubler is deemed as the best configuration according to the conversion efficiency and the output voltage measurements.

Integrated thermal and energy management of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles

In this research, the significant influence of engine and cabin thermal management on the fuel efficiency and emissions of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles is investigated. A practical solution to implement an optimal energy management strategy of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles which considers the temperature noise factor is introduced.

Guest editors' introduction : Special issue on trust, security, and privacy in parallel and distributed systems

In modern computing paradigms, most computing systems, e.g., cluster computing, grid computing, cloud computing, the Internet, telecommunication networks, Cyber- Physical Systems (CPS), and Machine-to-Machine communication networks (M2M), are parallel and distributed systems. While providing improved expandability, manageability, efficiency, and reliability, parallel and distributed systems increase their security weaknesses to an unprecedented scale. As the system devices are widely connected, their vulnerabilities are shared by the entire system. Because tasks are allocated to, and information is exchanged among the system devices that may belong to different users, trust, security, and privacy issues have yet to be resolved. This special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS) highlights recent advances in trust, security, and privacy for emerging parallel and distributed systems. This special issue was initiated by Dr. Xu Li, Dr. Patrick McDaniel, Dr. Radha Poovendran, and Dr. Guojun Wang. Due to a large number of submissions, Dr. Zhenfu Cao, Dr. Keqiu Li, and Dr. Yang Xiang were later invited to the editorial team. Dr. Xu Li was responsible for coordinating the paper review process. In response to the call for papers, we received 150 effective submissions, out of which 24 are included in this special issue after rigorous review and careful revision, presenting an acceptance ratio of 16 percent. The accepted papers are divided into three groups, covering issues related to trust, security, and privacy, respectively.

The synthesis and evaluation of novel, C2-symmetric organocatalysts

This thesis presents the synthesis and evaluation of a series of C2-symmetric, diprolinamide based organocatalysts. These catalysts were designed to investigate the effect that catalyst bridge length imparted on activity and chiral selectivity through catalytic site cooperation. Evaluation of these compounds led to the postulation of a novel “chiral pocket” transition state that will aid in the design of future catalysts.