Filetype
The last ten years have seen a sharp increase in externally supported capacity development initiatives for disaster risk management. However, not all of them have generated sustainable results. The purpose of this paper is to scrutinize the current focus on training as the main tool for capacity development in the context of disaster risk management, and to argue for the necessity to address capac
The neutron-rich nuclei Kr94,96 were studied via projectile Coulomb excitation at the REX-ISOLDE facility at CERN. Level energies of the first excited 2 + states and their absolute E2 transition strengths to the ground state are determined and discussed in the context of the E(21+) and B(E2;21+→01+) systematics of the krypton chain. Contrary to previously published results no sudden onset of defor
To decide how much resources to spend on reducing mortality risk, governmental agencies in several countries turn to the value of a statistical life (VSL). VSL has been shown to vary depending on the size of the risk reduction, which indicates that WTP does not increase near-proportional in relation to risk reduction as suggested by standard economic theory. Chained approach (CA) is a stated prefe
The interactions between chelating agents and metal oxide particles play important roles for the distribution and availability of metal ions in aquatic environments. In this work, the adsorption of ethylenediaminetetraacetate (EDTA) onto goethite (alpha-FeOOH) was studied as a function of pH, time, and background electrolyte concentration at 25.0 degrees C, and the molecular structures of the surf
HbA1C is the stable glucose adduct to the N-terminal group of the beta-chain of HbA0. The measurement of HbA1c in human blood is most important for the long-term control of the glycaemic state in diabetic patients. Because there was no internationally agreed reference method the IFCC Working Group on HbA1c Standardization developed a reference method which is here described. In a first step haemog
The oscillations between glacial and interglacial climate conditions over the past three million years have been characterized by a transfer of immense amounts of water between two of its largest reservoirs on Earth - the ice sheets and the oceans. Since the latest of these oscillations, the Last Glacial Maximum (between about 30,000 and 19,000 years ago), similar to50 million cubic kilometres of
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic disease of the central nervous system, characterized by focal inflammatory lesions with demyelination and axonal loss. It is believed that MS is an immune-mediated disorder with both genetic and environmental contributions to the pathogenesis. Interferons (IFNs) are naturally occurring proteins known to have antiviral, antiproliferative and immunoregulatory eff
This study deals with the furst attempt at postwar European integration in the defense and foreign policy fields. The European army plan was laid forth by Paris in 1950 after Washington demanded a German contribution to Western defense. Claiming that she could not accept a German presence in NATO, France instead drafted a plan for a supranational, European army. This ill-fated proposal occupied mu
BACKGROUND: In health economics, health is regarded as part of an individual's human capital. As such it depreciates over time, and investments in health are made in order to keep the stock of health capital at the desired level. Using this framework for analysis of health-related behaviour and Swedish panel data, we examined whether the presence of asthma or allergy affects perceived health and i
We identified the first set of microsatellites for use in the rock firefinch (Lagonosticta sanguinodorsalis). First, we tested existing passerine microsatellite loci for cross-species amplification success in a small sample of rock firefinches and identified 10 loci that were seemingly polymorphic and easy to score. Secondly, we developed and characterized three microsatellite loci de novo from th
The performance of an iris recognition system depends greatly on how well the iris segmentation part of the system performs its task. The performance of an iris segmenta- tion algorithm can be evaluated using different criteria and methods. Some of the methods evaluate the performance of the segmentation algorithm based on the performance of the whole iris recognition system. Other methods evaluat
When adapting environments for the physically disabled, it is important to encourage and activate not only the person concerned, but also other people involved or affected. A computer aided planning tool has been developed to support the participation of all persons involved, as well as supporting the planner’s (e.g. an occupational therapist) design of the environment. The prototype development a
In this paper we prove threshold saturation for spatially coupled turbo codes (SC-TCs) and braided convolutional codes (BCCs) over the binary erasure channel. We introduce a compact graph representation for the ensembles of SC-TC and BCC codes which simplifies their description and the analysis of the message passing decoding. We demonstrate that by few assumptions in the ensembles of these codes,
Theoretical considerations of eye design allow us to find routes along which the optical structures of eyes may have evolved. If selection constantly favours an increase in the amount of detectable spatial information, a light-sensitive patch will gradually turn into a focused lens eye through continuous small improvements of design. An upper limit for the number of generations required for the co
