Exploring the value of Scotland's environment

Protection of the environment can be regarded as representing a substantial cost to business. However, it is typically considered from the point of view of effect on company profitability, rather than its relative importance to human kind. This paper estimates the value of Scotland's natural environment by applying the methodology developed by Costanza et al (1997a and b) for estimation of the value of the earth's ecosystem services. Ecosystem services provide the vital functions to support life on Earth, such as flows of materials and energy. Since the study's publication, further research has sought to apply this global methodology to a regional and national level (for example Loomis et al, 2000, Farber and Griner, 2000 and Stevens et al, 2000). The value derived for Scotland provides a useful context for understanding the scale and importance of Scotland's natural habitats and it helps to reinforce the message that the environment is central to human welfare (Williams et al, 2003). The valuation of ecosystem services in monetary terms provokes theoretical, practical and philosophical arguments. This paper does not seek to revisit in depth these debates; rather the valuation should be taken as a starting point for setting the importance of Scotland's ecosystems in an interesting perspective. A recent edition of the journal Ecological Economics (Costanza and Farber, 2002) was devoted to considering some of these issues and providing many avenues for further exploration

Historical and Country Study Research, Monument Protection Activity in Volyn Region in 1920–1930s: Modern Ukrainian Historiography of Problem.

У статті зроблено спробу проаналізувати сучасні українські історіографічні дослідження історико-краєзнавчої й пам’яткоохоронної роботи на Волині в 1920–1930-х рр.The thesis focuses on the basic stages and important peculiarities of historiographical, historical and country study researches and monument protection activity in Volyn region in 1920–1930s

Вступ до спеціальності

Метою викладання навчальної дисципліни “Вступ до спеціальності” є ознайомлення студентів із змістом навчальної програми, змістом основних понять і напрямками навчального процесу по підготовці майбутніх спеціалістів-істориків. Основними завданнями вивчення дисципліни “Вступ до спеціальності” є засвоєння студентами знань на рівні вищої школи про предмет, принципи і особливості історичної науки, про її суспільну роль і значення. Студенти знайомляться також із проблемами методології та філософськими основами історичної науки, з категоріальним апаратом та основними поняттями і термінами. Одержують елементарні знання з проблем джерелознавства, знайомляться із системою наукових історичних установ та культурно-освітніх закладів історичного профілю

Development of a Detector Control System for the ATLAS Pixel Detector

The innermost part of the ATLAS experiment will be a pixel detector containing around 1750 individual detector modules. A detector control system (DCS) is required to handle thousands of I/O channels with varying characteristics. The main building blocks of the pixel DCS are the cooling system, the power supplies and the thermal interlock system, responsible for the ultimate safety of the pixel sensors. The ATLAS Embedded Local Monitor Board (ELMB), a multi purpose front end I/O system with a CAN interface, is foreseen for several monitoring and control tasks. The Supervisory, Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system will use PVSS, a commercial software product chosen for the CERN LHC experiments. We report on the status of the different building blocks of the ATLAS pixel DCS.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, ICALEPCS 200

Kaposi's sarcoma in a patient with erythroblastopenia and thymoma: Reactivation after topical corticosteroids

We report a 69-year-old female with erythroblastopenia and thymoma who developed lesions of Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) after thymectomy, 2 months after the initiation of therapy with methylprednisolone. Control of mucocutaneous KS lesions was obtained with radiotherapy, interferon alfa-2b and withdrawal of systemic immunosuppressive therapy. Erosive oral lichen planus appeared later, and after therapy with topical corticosteroids a new lesion of KS developed that regressed after withdrawal of topical corticosteroids. The detection of HHV-8 only in lesional skin supports the hypothesis that this virus can trigger the development of KS lesions

Історія України нового та новітнього часу

Метою викладання навчальної дисципліни «Історія України нового та новітнього часу» є формування у студентів цілісного та об’єктивного уявлення на рівні вимог вищої школи про особливості політичного, соціально-економічного, національно-культурного розвитку України у нову та новітню епоху. Основними завданнями вивчення дисципліни «Історія України нового та новітнього часу » є: поглиблено вивчити найважливіші питання історії України окресленого періоду, звернувши увагу на відродженні української державності, зародження нових явищ в економічному житті українських земель, процес формування української ментальності, національних рухів, тенденції формування надбань української культури

Brown dwarf census with the Dark Energy Survey year 3 data and the thin disc scale height of early L types

27 pages, 18 figuresIn this paper we present a catalogue of 11 745 brown dwarfs with spectral types ranging from L0 to T9, photometrically classified using data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) year 3 release matched to the Vista Hemisphere Survey (VHS) DR3 and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) data, covering ≈2400 deg2 up to iAB = 22. The classification method follows the same phototype method previously applied to SDSS-UKIDSS-WISE data. The most significant difference comes from the use of DES data instead of SDSS, which allow us to classify almost an order of magnitude more brown dwarfs than any previous search and reaching distances beyond 400 pc for the earliest types. Next, we also present and validate the GalmodBD simulation, which produces brown dwarf number counts as a function of structural parameters with realistic photometric properties of a given survey. We use this simulation to estimate the completeness and purity of our photometric LT catalogue down to iAB = 22, as well as to compare to the observed number of LT types. We put constraints on the thin disc scale height for the early L (L0–L3) population to be around 450 pc, in agreement with previous findings. For completeness, we also publish in a separate table a catalogue of 20 863 M dwarfs that passed our colour cut with spectral types greater than M6. Both the LT and the late M catalogues are found at DES release page https://des.ncsa.illinois.edu/releases/other/y3-mlt.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Phenotypic redshifts with self-organizing maps: A novel method to characterize redshift distributions of source galaxies for weak lensing

Wide-field imaging surveys such as the Dark Energy Survey (DES) rely on coarse measurements of spectral energy distributions in a few filters to estimate the redshift distribution of source galaxies. In this regime, sample variance, shot noise, and selection effects limit the attainable accuracy of redshift calibration and thus of cosmological constraints. We present a new method to combine wide-field, few-filter measurements with catalogs from deep fields with additional filters and sufficiently low photometric noise to break degeneracies in photometric redshifts. The multi-band deep field is used as an intermediary between wide-field observations and accurate redshifts, greatly reducing sample variance, shot noise, and selection effects. Our implementation of the method uses self-organizing maps to group galaxies into phenotypes based on their observed fluxes, and is tested using a mock DES catalog created from N-body simulations. It yields a typical uncertainty on the mean redshift in each of five tomographic bins for an idealized simulation of the DES Year 3 weak-lensing tomographic analysis of $\sigma_{\Delta z} = 0.007$, which is a 60% improvement compared to the Year 1 analysis. Although the implementation of the method is tailored to DES, its formalism can be applied to other large photometric surveys with a similar observing strategy.Comment: 24 pages, 11 figures; matches version accepted to MNRA