The relationship between size of living space and subjective well-being

Against a background of shrinking new homes and forebodings of “rabbit hutch Britain”, the relationship between size of living space and subjective well-being has never been more topical in the UK. Using the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and fixed effects regressions, this paper is the first to examine this relationship comprehensively. Two pathways are proposed between space and subjective well-being. First, space facilitates values and activities. Second, space signals wealth which in turn influences social status. It is proposed that wealth is a more important determinant of status for men than women, and that pathway two is therefore gendered. Part one of the paper examines the effect of a change in number of rooms per person on housing satisfaction and subjective well-being in the BHPS as a whole. Despite having a similar effect on the housing satisfaction of both genders, an increase in living space has only a (weak) positive linear effect on the life satisfaction and mental health of men. This suggests that space affects subjective well-being through pathway two, status. Part two of the paper tracks the housing satisfaction and subjective well-being over time of those individuals who move for “larger accommodation”. Consistent with various theories of adaptation, housing satisfaction increases in the year of the move; then decreases slightly before levelling out. Moving for “larger accommodation” has no positive impact on subjective well-being. Overall the results imply a weak positive relationship between size of living space and subjective well-being, but only for men.

Cross layer based protocols for energy aware and critical data delivery related applications using wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been an exciting topic in recent years. The services offered by a WSN can be classified into three major categories: monitoring, alerting, and information on demand. WSNs have been used for a variety of applications related to the environment (agriculture, water and forest fire detection), the military, buildings, health (elderly people and home monitoring), disaster relief, and area or industrial monitoring. In most WSNs tasks like processing the sensed data, making decisions and generating emergency messages are carried out by a remote server, hence the need for efficient means of transferring data across the network. Because of the range of applications and types of WSN there is a need for different kinds of MAC and routing protocols in order to guarantee delivery of data from the source nodes to the server (or sink). In order to minimize energy consumption and increase performance in areas such as reliability of data delivery, extensive research has been conducted and documented in the literature on designing energy efficient protocols for each individual layer. The most common way to conserve energy in WSNs involves using the MAC layer to put the transceiver and the processor of the sensor node into a low power, sleep state when they are not being used. Hence the energy wasted due to collisions, overhearing and idle listening is reduced. As a result of this strategy for saving energy, the routing protocols need new solutions that take into account the sleep state of some nodes, and which also enable the lifetime of the entire network to be increased by distributing energy usage between nodes over time. This could mean that a combined MAC and routing protocol could significantly improve WSNs because the interaction between the MAC and network layers lets nodes be active at the same time in order to deal with data transmission. In the research presented in this thesis, a cross-layer protocol based on MAC and routing protocols was designed in order to improve the capability of WSNs for a range of different applications. Simulation results, based on a range of realistic scenarios, show that these new protocols improve WSNs by reducing their energy consumption as well as enabling them to support mobile nodes, where necessary. A number of conference and journal papers have been published to disseminate these results for a range of applications.

Histological Outcomes on the Development of New Space-making Devices for Maxillary Sinus Floor Augmentation

Background: Previous studies have pointed out that the mere elevation of the maxillary sinus membrane promotes bone formation without the use of augmentation materials. Purpose: This experimental study aimed at evaluating if the two-stage procedure for sinus floor augmentation could benefit from the use of a space-making device in order to increase the bone volume to enable later implant installation with good primary stability. Materials and Methods: Six male tufted capuchin primates (Cebus apella) were subjected to extraction of the three premolars and the first molar on both sides of the maxilla to create an edentulous area. The sinuses were opened using the lateral bone-wall window technique, and the membrane was elevated. One resorbable space-making device was inserted in each maxillary sinus, and the bone window was returned in place. The animals were euthanatized after 6 months, and biopsy blocks containing the whole maxillary sinus and surrounding soft tissues were prepared for ground sections. Results: The histological examination of the specimens showed bone formation in contact with both the schneiderian membrane and the device in most cases even when the device was displaced. The process of bone formation indicates that this technique is potentially useful for two-stage sinus floor augmentation. The lack of stabilization of the device within the sinus demands further improvement of space-makers for predictable bone augmentation. Conclusions: It is concluded that (1) the device used in this study did not trigger any important inflammatory reaction; (2) when the sinus membrane was elevated, bone formation was a constant finding; and (3) an ideal space-making device should be stable and elevate the membrane to ensure a maintained connection between the membrane and the secluded space.

Unilateral Correction of Space Loss in the Mixed Dentition

Distalization of maxillary molars is indicated for correction of Class II dental malocclusion and for space gain in cases of space deficiency. The ideal treatment with an intraoral fixed appliance for molar distalization should fulfill the following requirements: patient compliance; acceptable esthetics; comfort; minimum anterior anchor loss (as evidenced by inclination of incisors); bodily movement of the molars to avoid undesirable effects and unstable outcomes; and minimum time required during sessions for placement and activations. The purpose of this paper was to present an alternative treatment for space recovery in the area of the maxillary right second premolar when there has been significant mesial movement of the permanent maxillary right first molar. We used a modified appliance that allows unilateral molar distalization in cases of unilateral tooth/arch size discrepancy using the opposite side as anchor, thus reducing the mesialization of the anterior teeth. (Pediatr Dent 2008;30:334-41) Received August 17, 2006 / Last Revision October 17, 2007 / Revision Accepted October 17, 2007

Contribution to the ground-based follow-up of the Gaia space mission

The Gaia Space Mission [Mignard, F., 2005. The three-dimensional universe with Gaia. ESA/SP-576; Perryman, M., 2005. The three-dimensional universe with Gaia. ESA/SP-576] will observe several transient events as supernovae, microlensing, gamma ray bursts and new Solar System objects. The satellite, due to its scanning law, will detect these events but will not be able to monitor them. So, to take these events into consideration and to perform further studies it is necessary to follow them with Earth-based observations. These observations could be efficiently done by a ground-based network of well-equipped telescopes scattered in both hemispheres. Here we focus our attention at the new Solar System objects to be discovered and observed by the Gaia satellite [Mignard, F., 2002. Observations of Solar System objects by Gaia I. Detection of NEOS. Astron. Astrophys. 393, 727] mainly asteroids, NEOs and comets. A dedicated ground-based network of telescopes as proposed by Thuillot [2005. The three-dimensional universe with Gaia. ESA/SP-576] will allow to monitor those events, to avoid losing them and to perform a quick characterization of some physical properties which will be important for the identification of these objects in further measurements by Gaia. We present in this paper, the beginning of the organization of a Latin-American ground-based network of telescopes and observers joining several institutions in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and other Latin-American countries aiming to contribute to the follow-up of Gaia science alerts for Solar System objects. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Exoplanet discoveries with the CoRoT space observatory

The CoRoT space observatory is a project which is led by the French space agency CNES and leading space research institutes in Austria, Brazil, Belgium, Germany and Spain and also the European Space Agency ESA. CoRoT observed since its launch in December 27, 2006 about 100 000 stars for the exoplanet channel, during 150 days uninterrupted high-precision photometry. Since the The CoRoT-team has several exoplanet candidates which are currently analyzed under its study, we report here the discoveries of nine exoplanets which were observed by CoRoT. Discovered exoplanets such as CoRoT-3b populate the brown dwarf desert and close the gap of measured physical properties between usual gas giants and very low mass stars. CoRoT discoveries extended the known range of planet masses down to about 4.8 Earth-masses (CoRoT-7b) and up to 21 Jupiter masses (CoRoT-3b), the radii to about 1.68 x 0.09 R (Earth) (CoRoT-7b) and up to the most inflated hot Jupiter with 1.49 x 0.09 R (Earth) found so far (CoRoT-1b), and the transiting exoplanet with the longest period of 95.274 days (CoRoT-9b). Giant exoplanets have been detected at low metallicity, rapidly rotating and active, spotted stars. Two CoRoT planets have host stars with the lowest content of heavy elements known to show a transit hinting towards a different planethost-star-metallicity relation then the one found by radial-velocity search programs. Finally the properties of the CoRoT-7b prove that rocky planets with a density close to Earth exist outside the Solar System. Finally the detection of the secondary transit of CoRoT-1b at a sensitivity level of 10(-5) and the very clear detection of the ""super-Earth"" CoRoT-7b at 3.5 x 10(-4) relative flux are promising evidence that the space observatory is being able to detect even smaller exoplanets with the size of the Earth.

Slicing the metric space to provide quick indexing of complex data in the main memory

Searching in a dataset for elements that are similar to a given query element is a core problem in applications that manage complex data, and has been aided by metric access methods (MAMs). A growing number of applications require indices that must be built faster and repeatedly, also providing faster response for similarity queries. The increase in the main memory capacity and its lowering costs also motivate using memory-based MAMs. In this paper. we propose the Onion-tree, a new and robust dynamic memory-based MAM that slices the metric space into disjoint subspaces to provide quick indexing of complex data. It introduces three major characteristics: (i) a partitioning method that controls the number of disjoint subspaces generated at each node; (ii) a replacement technique that can change the leaf node pivots in insertion operations; and (iii) range and k-NN extended query algorithms to support the new partitioning method, including a new visit order of the subspaces in k-NN queries. Performance tests with both real-world and synthetic datasets showed that the Onion-tree is very compact. Comparisons of the Onion-tree with the MM-tree and a memory-based version of the Slim-tree showed that the Onion-tree was always faster to build the index. The experiments also showed that the Onion-tree significantly improved range and k-NN query processing performance and was the most efficient MAM, followed by the MM-tree, which in turn outperformed the Slim-tree in almost all the tests. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

An incremental space to visualize dynamic data sets

In Information Visualization, adding and removing data elements can strongly impact the underlying visual space. We have developed an inherently incremental technique (incBoard) that maintains a coherent disposition of elements from a dynamic multidimensional data set on a 2D grid as the set changes. Here, we introduce a novel layout that uses pairwise similarity from grid neighbors, as defined in incBoard, to reposition elements on the visual space, free from constraints imposed by the grid. The board continues to be updated and can be displayed alongside the new space. As similar items are placed together, while dissimilar neighbors are moved apart, it supports users in the identification of clusters and subsets of related elements. Densely populated areas identified in the incSpace can be efficiently explored with the corresponding incBoard visualization, which is not susceptible to occlusion. The solution remains inherently incremental and maintains a coherent disposition of elements, even for fully renewed sets. The algorithm considers relative positions for the initial placement of elements, and raw dissimilarity to fine tune the visualization. It has low computational cost, with complexity depending only on the size of the currently viewed subset, V. Thus, a data set of size N can be sequentially displayed in O(N) time, reaching O(N (2)) only if the complete set is simultaneously displayed.