What role for public health in genetics and vice versa?

Some epidemiologists and geneticists claim that integrating genetics into public health policies and programs is necessary and unavoidable. OBJECTIVE: To examine the extent to which further integration of public health and genetics is warranted. METHODS: Synthesis of the literature in four areas: research, genetic services, regulation, and education. The analysis is limited to human genetics. RESULTS: Public support for basic genetic research has and will continue to lead to new applications and to further understanding of human origins and dispersions. Some applied research, particularly for genetic risk factors for common complex diseases, has low yield and is better supported by private funds. The only genetic service for which a public health role is paramount is newborn screening. With the patenting of genes, and the proliferation of commercial interests in genetic tests and directly advertising them to the public, regulation by public health agencies is increasingly important. As most genetic testing and other services will be provided in the personal health care system, education about genetics is best left to the educational and medical systems. Public health practitioners should be aware of the limitations of genetic tests. CONCLUSIONS: There is little need for further integration of genetic services and education into public health especially in countries in which public and private health services are dichotomized. Newborn screening and follow-up, however, are most safely and effectively provided under public health auspices. The most important area for strengthening the public health role is in the regulation of genetic tests and other genetic services provided primarily by the private sector. Continued support for basic genetic research is needed.     

Genetic algorithm optimization for finned channel performance

Compared to a smooth channel,a finned channel provides a higher heat transfer coefficient;increasing the fin height enhances the heat transfer.However,this heat transfer enhancement is associated with an increase in the pressure drop.This leads to an increased pumping power requirement so that one may seek an optimum design for such systems.The main goal of this paper is to define the exact location and size of fins in such a way that a minimal pressure drop coincides with an optimal heat transfer based on the genetic algorithm.Each fin arrangement is considered a solution to the problem (an individual for genetic algorithm).An initial population is generated randomly at the first step.Then the algorithm has been searched among these solutions and made new solutions iteratively by its functions to find an optimum design as reported in this article.     

Qualifications of public health geneticists?

Public health genetics is a rapidly emerging field that is not well defined. One way of helping to define the field is to describe the competences of the professionals who participate in it. The information presented here attempts to define the knowledge base, skills, and attitudes needed to be a public health geneticist. It is hoped that this information will be used to create a uniform definition of public health genetics, and also help education programs train individuals who want to participate in the field.     

Genetic counselling: evolution or involution?

The need for genetic counselling derives from the peculiarities of genetic information, as compared to other biomedical tests, with particular reference to (a) its predictive character; (b) the existing gap between the ability to diagnose and to treat an inherited disorder, and (c) the psychological, social and ethical problems that genetic testing can raise. Counselling is traditionally performed by healthcare professionals, specifically trained to help individuals to develop ways of dealing with genetic information and gain a better understanding of the problems related with it. The growing number of genetic tests (for rare Mendelian as well as for common disorders), the development of easier and cheaper molecular techniques, the increasing tendency of physicians to have recourse to genetic tests, by-passing alternative diagnostic procedures, are all factors that contribute to the vast increase in the demand for genetic tests, a demand which is significantly out of step with the available numbers of trained counsellors. This paper discusses possible solutions, including the institution of committees with regulatory powers on genetic testing, the promotion of studies on models of genetic services, on programmes to monitor the services currently offered by test providers, and the expansion of training programmes and of employment opportunities for genetic counsellors.     

Graphical Illustrations for the Nur-Byerlee-Carroll Proof of the Formula for the Biot Effective Stress Coefficient in?Poroelasticity

This work presents a graphically illustrated version of the Nur-Byerlee-Carroll proof of the formula for the Biot effective stress coefficient in poroelasticity. The original elegant proof was provided by Nur and Byerlee (J. Geophys. Res. 76:6414, 1971) for isotropic materials and extended by Carroll (J. Geophys. Res. 84:7510?C7512, 1979) to anisotropic materials. Although the application of this result is in poroelasticity or in the analysis of composite materials, the proof is an analytical thought experiment in linear elasticity, and should be appreciated as such.     

Public engagement as a means of restoring public trust in science--hitting the notes, but missing the music?

This paper analyses the recent widespread moves to 'restore' public trust in science by developing an avowedly two-way, public dialogue with science initiatives. Noting how previously discredited and supposedly abandoned public deficit explanations of 'mistrust' have actually been continually reinvented, it argues that this is a symptom of a continuing failure of scientific and policy institutions to place their own science-policy institutional culture into the frame of dialogue, as possible contributory cause of the public mistrust problem.     

Multi-soliton solutions for the coupled nonlinear Schr?dinger-type equations

Nonlinear Schr?dinger-type equations can model the nonlinear waves in fluids, plasmas, nonlinear optics and atmosphere. In this paper, integrable coupled nonlinear Schr?dinger-type equations are investigated. With the aid of symbolic computation, the equations are transformed into their bilinear forms, by virtue of which the multi-soliton solutions are derived. Soliton interactions are analyzed, the elastic interactions are seen, while the dark, anti-dark, M- and W-shape solitons are exhibited with some parameters selected. The propagating solitons can preserve their properties after the interaction, and the profiles of them depend on the corresponding dispersion relations. The amplitudes, velocities of the solitons are found to be influenced by the coefficient of the original equations, which is detailed in the paper.     

The spectre of coercion: is public health genetics the route to policies of enforced disease prevention?

The paper discusses options for disease prevention in Public Health Genetics and attempts to assess the probability that coercive strategies might be chosen in public health policies that impose duties to undergo genetic testing. Given the social values, legal and political cultures and professional orientations in Western Europe and the United States, which provide the terms of reference for this assessment, it is unlikely that the preventive options which might emerge from human genetics in the future will trigger policies that force preventive behavior upon people, except in the cases where such enforcement is designed to protect third parties.     

Stability analysis and modeling for the three-dimensionalDarcy-Forchheimer stagnation point nano?uid ?owtowards a moving surface?

正Yuming CHU1,2, M. I. KHAN3,, M. I. U. REHMAN4, S. KADRY5,S. QAYYUM4, M. WAQAS6     

How far the wake of a wind farm can persist for?

With the increased penetration of wind energy in our nation’s energy portfolio, wind farms are placed in a way close to each other. Thus, their wakes have to be fully considered in the design and operation of a wind farm. In this study, we investigate the wake of a wind farm using large-eddy simulation with wind turbine rotor modelled by the actuator disk model. The simulated results show that the wake of a wind farm can persist for a long distance in its downstream. For the considered wind farm layout, the velocity in the wake recovers 95% of that of the undisturbed inflow at 55 rotor diameters downstream from its last row, suggesting that the wake of a wind farm should be fully considered in the optimal design and operation for its downstream wind farms.     

Back to the Future? A Re-examination of the Aerodynamics of Flettner-Thom Rotors for Maritime Propulsion

The paper examines, by way of a 3-dimensional, unsteady-RANS analysis, the high-Reynolds-number turbulent flow normal to a cylinder rotating about its axis, thus continuing the re-evaluation of this flow configuration as a potential means of providing low-cost ship propulsion. Comparisons are made between the available experimental and LES data both for the bare cylinder, as employed in Flettner’s notable Atlantic crossing, and the variant advocated by Thom in which close-packed discs are distributed along the cylinder. Our results display close agreement with available experimental and LES data other than the results of Thom (1934). We conclude that the addition of discs by the latter led, at the relatively low Reynolds numbers of his experiments, to the boundary layer on the cylinder being thinned to a point at which the boundary layers became laminar or transitional, thus leading to higher lift coefficients than pertain in turbulent flow.     

The Difference Methods for the Solution of Singular-Perturbation for the Elliptic-Parabolic Differential Equation

In this paper it is discussed the difference method for the solution of singular perturbation pro-blems for the elliptic equations,involving small parameter in the higher derivatives.Asε=0 theoriginal equations are degenerated into the parabolic equations.Authors constructed special difference schemes by means of the boundary layer properties ofthe solutions of these problems as well as investigated the convergence of this scheme and asymptoticbehaviour of the solutions.Finally,a numerical example is given.     

Darboux transformation for an integrable generalization of the nonlinear Schr?dinger equation

A Darboux transformation for an integrable generalization of the coupled nonlinear Schr?dinger equation is derived with the help of the gauge transformation between the Lax pair. As a reduction, a Darboux transformation for an integrable generalization of the nonlinear Schr?dinger equation is obtained, from which some new solutions for the integrable generalization of the nonlinear Schr?dinger equation are given.     

Do general viscoelastic stresses for the flow of an upper convected Maxwell fluid satisfy the momentum equation?

Given a general velocity field consistent with the stagnation point flow, can the viscoelastic stresses arising in the flow of an upper convected Maxwell fluid found by solving the constitutive equation also satisfy the momentum equation? Consideration is given to the study of the stress tensor arising in the steady flow of an upper convected Maxwell (UCM) fluid with a velocity field consistent with the stagnation point flow. By the method of characteristics, exact solutions to the partial differential equations arising in the approximating model of the viscoelastic stresses in the flow of an upper convected Maxwell (UCM) fluid are obtained for the three components of the stress tensor, for reasonably general velocity fields. We are able to account for the effects of variable boundary data at the inflow by considering the viscoelastic stresses over two spatial variables. Furthermore, we assume a relatively general velocity field. As a special case, some results present in the recent literature are obtained; it is known that these special case solutions do not satisfy the momentum equation. In the general case we consider, we find that the general solution will not satisfy the momentum equation except in a limited restricted case. We discuss how this shortcoming might be rectified by use of a more general velocity field.     

Role of the Pressure for Validity of the Energy Equality for Solutions of the Navier–Stokes Equation

We prove that a weak solution of the Navier–Stokes system satisfies the energy equality if the associated pressure is locally square integrable. A similar statement is shown to hold for the Euler system.     

How to define the storage and loss moduli for a rheologically nonlinear material?

A large amplitude oscillatory shear (LAOS) is considered in the strain-controlled regime, and the interrelation between the Fourier transform and the stress decomposition approaches is established. Several definitions of the generalized storage and loss moduli are examined in a unified conceptual scheme based on the Lissajous–Bowditch plots. An illustrative example of evaluating the generalized moduli from a LAOS flow is given.     

Collision operators for Stark line shapes: When does the unified theory fail?

It is shown that the unified theory for Stark broadening leads to incorrect results when correlated emitter–perturber collisions are present. With a kinetic theory treatment, we propose an extension of the model able to account for such correlations. The treatment presents analogies with renormalization techniques and the resulting collision operator has a structure similar to that obtained within the unified theory. We illustrate the applicability of the model through calculations of hydrogen line shapes in ideal cases.     

Optimal Results for the Nonhomogeneous Initial-Boundary Value Problem for the Two-Dimensional Navier–Stokes Equations

In this work we study the fully nonhomogeneous initial boundary value problem for the two-dimensional time-dependent Navier–Stokes equations in a general open space domain in R² with low regularity assumptions on the initial and the boundary value data. We show that the perturbed Navier–Stokes operator is a diffeomorphism from a suitable function space onto its own dual and as a corollary we get that the Navier–Stokes equations are uniquely solvable in these spaces and that the solution depends smoothly on all involved data. Our source data space and solution space are in complete natural duality and in this sense, without any smallness assumptions on the data, we solve the equations for data with optimally low regularity in both space and time.