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Sedimentation of drops has been widely investigated, although a relatively small number of studies have accounted for the presence of a bounding wall, presumably because of the associated analytical difficulties. In addition, these drops almost always contain impurities in the form of surfactants, which alter the interfacial properties, thereby changing the flow characteristics and the settling dynamics. Therefore, a more physically accurate description of settling should account for both the presence of a bounding wall as well as surfactants, a paradigm that remains poorly addressed. As such, here we analyse the effect of surfactants on a drop settling towards a solid wall in the limit of small deformation. We only account for the interfacial transport of the surface impurities and use bipolar coordinates to represent the fluid motion. Assuming the surfactant transport to be diffusion dominated, asymptotic solutions for the velocity field are derived and are subsequently used to analyse the settling dynamics and deformation of the drop. We show that the surfactants slow down the drop and may either augment or reduce the deformation by a small amount depending on the location of the drop. The effect of surfactant becomes most prominent near the wall, wherein the drop experiences the largest hydrodynamic drag. The changing flow patterns caused by the wall also redistributes the surfactant around the interface, resulting in asymmetric depletion and accumulation near the poles. Our results might have potential significance in areas such as separation processes as well as droplet based microfluidics.
We numerically investigated the phenomenon of non-Gaussian normal diffusion of a Brownian colloidal particle in a periodic array of planar counter-rotating convection rolls. At high Péclet numbers, normal diffusion is observed to occur at all times with non-Gaussian transient statistics. This effect vanishes with increasing the observation time. The displacement distributions decay either slower or faster than a Gaussian function, depending on the flow parameters. The sign of their excess kurtosis is related to the difference between two dynamical time scales, namely, the mean exit time of the particle out of a convection roll and its circulation period inside it.
Paratesticular sarcoma are extremely rare malignant tumours. Unlike other sites, they tend to be lower grade and have higher propensity of lymphatic spread. They tend to fail locally and occasionally in the regional lymph nodes. In the absence of target volume delineation guidelines and technical illustration of conformal planning, we have made an attempt to illustrate conformal planning methodology and define target volume based on current evidence in a case of paratesticular sarcoma.
Methods:
We are presenting a case of 62-year-old male who presented with 15-cm scrotal swelling and underwent high inguinal orchidectomy with ligation of spermatic cord. Histopathology presented a well-differentiated leiomyosarcoma of epididymis. Post-operative radiotherapy target volume included the tumour bed, ipsilateral inguinal nodes and lower pelvic nodes as the clinical target volume.
Conclusion:
Adjuvant radiotherapy using advanced delivery technique such as volumetric arc technique can provide good dose distribution with good sparing of organs at risk. The downside of conformal radiation delivery is that it is a resource-intensive and has no established target volume delineation guidelines.
IFRS 17 Insurance Contracts is a new accounting standard currently expected to come into force on 1 January 2023. It supersedes IFRS 4 Insurance Contracts. IFRS 17 establishes key principles that entities must apply in all aspects of the accounting of insurance contracts. In doing so, the Standard aims to increase the usefulness, comparability, transparency and quality of financial statements.
A fundamental concept introduced by IFRS 17 is the contractual service margin (CSM). This represents the unearned profit that an entity expects to earn as it provides services. However, as a principles-based standard, IFRS 17 results in entities having to apply significant judgement when determining the inputs, assumptions and techniques it uses to determine the CSM at each reporting period.
In general, the Standard resolves broad categories of mismatches which arise under IFRS 4. Notable examples include mismatches between assets recorded at current market value and liabilities calculated using fixed discount rates as well as inconsistencies in the timing of profit recognition over the duration of an insurance contract. However, there are requirements of IFRS 17 that may create economic or accounting mismatches of its own. For example, new mismatches could arise between the measurement of underlying contracts and the corresponding reinsurance held. Additionally, mismatches can still arise between the measurement of liabilities and the assets that support the liabilities.
This paper explores the technical, operational and commercial issues that arise across these and other areas focusing on the CSM. As a standard that is still very much in its infancy, and for which wider consensus on topics is yet to be achieved, this paper aims to provide readers with a deeper understanding of the issues and opportunities that accompany it.
Corticosteroid therapy has become an important modality of treatment for diseases in which rapid control of immunoinflammatory processes is required. However, one of the serious, but less known adverse effect of this therapy is cardiac arrhythmias. This includes both tachyarrhythmias and bradyarrhythmias. Corticosteroid use may also be associated with electrolyte imbalances like hypokalaemia by its mineralocorticoid activity. Those side effects are mainly seen with high-dose intravenous methyl-prednisolone or oral pulse dose prednisolone therapy. Here we report our experience in a child with warm idiopathic autoimmune haemolytic anaemia who developed sinus bradyarrhythmias and treatment refractory hypokalaemia during low-dose steroid therapy with reduction in heart rate by 60% of baseline.
The objective of this research was to investigate the factors of assessment that students undergoing authentic assessment perceived to be significant regarding their academic achievement. This project advanced past research by the authors which found that the academic achievement of seafarer students was significantly higher in a formatively implemented authentic assessment compared with a summative traditional assessment. The academic achievement (assessment scores) was based on the students’ performance in analysing information presented in a real-world context (authentic assessment) as opposed to the analysis of information presented devoid of a real-world context (traditional assessment). Using the data obtained from students undergoing the authentic assessment, this project correlated their perceptions of authenticity for factors of assessment to their scores in the associated task. Stage 1 focused on deriving the factors conceptually from the definition of the authentic assessment by the authors, based on which a perception survey questionnaire was designed. Stage 2 extracted new factors through a factor analysis conducted using the software SPSS. Both stages of investigation found that the factor of transparency of criteria was a significant predictor of the students’ academic achievement.
Chapter 1 introduces the book’s main theme, namely the growing global contest over the future of coal. Three main aspects are identified – the changing world-historical status of coal as the fuel of development, the shifting significance of the coal commodity in economic growth, and its impact as a central driver of climate change and ecological exhaustion. Government-led development ideology remains closely bound up with the extraction of coal as a source of energy security, yet is increasingly exposed and contested. Increased populist rejection of climate policy in the name of fossil fuel reliance reflects the growing intensity of this contest. Pro-coal political forces gain most traction where they are most threatened, in high-income coal-producing countries such as in the US, Canada and Australia, as well as in the EU. In newly industrialising contexts with lower emissions targets, such as in India, coal is challenged by new low-cost renewable energy, and by immediate health imperatives.
Chapter 8 develops a series of comparative themes from the experience of coal and climate change in India, Australia and Germany. In each country, we find that coal’s legitimacy crisis has created sharp contradictions in wider society, as well as within state institutions, and that local contests over new mines are rapidly undermining the social value of coal. Coal’s value to ‘development’ reflects its cultural narration as a valuable commodity and source of energy and in concluding we chart the way these narratives are contested, and are changing. In particular the chapter shows how anti-coal groups have gained strategic traction in the context of growing contradictions in national climate and energy policy. In this we return to the book’s initial provocation, expressed in the coal conundrum of increased coal extraction coupled with climate instability, arguing the conundrum is on the way to being resolved, for a post-coal future.
Chapter 4 focusses on proposed brown coal mines for Lusatia, a region of Eastern Germany on the Polish border. The mines aimed to extend existing concessions, supplying coal for the nearby power generators. They were owned by the Swedish state-owned corporation Vattenfall, which sold them to a Czech conglomerate in 2016. The developmentalist argument for the mining is addressed first, especially in terms of its strategic value for German ‘energy security’. We examine the debates about coal’s economic necessity as a ‘transition fuel’ in Germany’s Energiewende, and its environmental or climate impacts. These themes are then developed in analysing the governance framework for the mine approval and opposition to it. The chapter shows how local opponents mobilise established conceptions of home or ‘heimat’ against the mining. These scripts, centred on local values of belonging in place, are integrated with concerns about impacts on livelihood and environment, and with concerns about climate change. The direct contradiction between Germany’s post-industrial ‘green economy’ and its determination to expand emissions-intensive brown coal is particularly powerful, not least as it destabilises technocratic authority.
Chapter 7 takes the historical analysis into the present day and charts a significant unravelling in the coal-industrial complex. Investor uncertainty about the future viability of energy installations has shifted into a dramatic (and long-awaited) process of capital flight from coal to renewables. Perhaps most revealing, the coal sector itself has begun hedging its losses by investing in renewables. The chapter discusses the reasons for this shift. The Paris Agreement’s 2050 deadline for ‘net-zero carbon’, which, at the time of writing in 2019, was well within the investor horizon for coal-fired power plants, has imposed a growing perception of risk associated with coal facilities. It has also precipitated an unexpected realignment of low-income economies to seek new industrial strategies linked to the renewables sectors, creating a new state-renewables nexus to rival coal.
The Introduction to the book defines coal as a key driver of climate change and outlines the urgent need for a global transition to renewable energy. It discusses the approach taken in the book, of comparing how new coal mines are contested, and justifies the focus on India, Australia and Germany. It outlines the book's research questions, its inter-disciplinary method and its chapter-by-chapter structure.
Chapter 2 investigates the proposal for a new thermal coal mine in Chhattisgarh, Central India. The proposed mine is located in an emerging coal-mining region that feeds power stations mainly for industry. The mine would destroy forested lands and displace a large number of villages populated by Indian indigenous Adivasi people. The proponent for the mine, Adani, is a major privately owned industrial conglomerate seeking the coal to fuel its industrial concerns. The national government strongly favours expanded coal extraction, and the mine forms part of its privatization effort, designed to stimulate the sector. Within civil society there is strong village-level opposition to the mine, with concerns centred on land and livelihood. Alliances of villages opposing the mine find allies at the regional level and are able to disrupt regional politics; they also are able to make legal claims at the national level, and link with national and international environmental NGOs. Arguments for sustainable energy gain momentum especially when there are viable renewable alternatives. The struggle is skewed by coercion, with anti-mine campaigners subjected to surveillance and arbitrary detention by Indian state security.