cometadata/datacite-rtg-text-other-reclassification-records huggingface dataset:
Modeling the Seasonal Variability of the Plasma Environment in Saturn's Magnetosphere between Main Rings and Mimas
Creators: name: Tseng, W. -L.
name: Johnson, R. E.
name: Elrod, M. K.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2011
Subjects: subject: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: The detection of O2+ and O+ ions over Saturn's main rings by the Cassini INMS and CAPS instruments at Saturn orbit insertion (SOI) in 2004 confirmed the existence of the ring atmosphere and ionosphere. The source mechanism was suggested to be primarily photolytic decomposition of water ice producing neutral O2 and H2 (Johnson et al., 2006). Therefore, we predicted that there would be seasonal variations in the ring atmosphere and ionosphere due to the orientation of the ring plane to the sun (Tseng et al., 2010). The atoms and molecules scattered out of the ring atmosphere by ion-molecule collisions are an important source for the inner magnetosphere (Johnson et al., 2006; Martens et al. 2008; Tseng et al., 2010 and 2011). This source competes with water products from the Enceladus' plumes, which, although possibly variable, do not appear to have a seasonal variability (Smith et al., 2010). Recently, we found that the plasma density, composition and temperature in the region from 2.5 to 3.5 RS exhibited significant seasonal variation between 2004 and 2010 (Elrod et al., 2011). Here we present a one-box ion chemistry model to explain the complex and highly variable plasma environment observed by the CAPS instrument on Cassini. We combine the water products from Enceladus with the molecules scattered from a corrected ring atmosphere, in order to describe the temporal changes in ion densities, composition and temperature detected by CAPS. We found that the observed temporal variations are primarily seasonal, due to the predicted seasonal variation in the ring atmosphere, and are consistent with a compressed magnetosphere at SOI.
description: This is submitted to P&SS
On the origin of galactic cosmic rays
Creators: name: Istomin, Ya. N.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2011
Subjects: subject: Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: It is shown that the relativistic jet, emitted from the center of the Galaxy during its activity, possessed power and energy spectrum of accelerated protons sufficient to explain the current cosmic rays distribution in the Galaxy. Proton acceleration takes place on the light cylinder surface formed by the rotation of a massive black hole carring into rotation the radial magnetic field and the magnetosphere. Observed in gamma, x-ray and radio bands bubbles above and below the galactic plane can be remnants of this bipolar get. The size of the bubble defines the time of the jet's start, $\simeq 2.4\cdot 10^7$ years ago. The jet worked more than $10^7$ years, but less than $2.4\cdot10^7$ years.
description: 15 pages, 5 figures
National Common Minimum Programme of the Congress-Led United Progressive Alliance: Policy Reform and Public Investment Requirements
Creators: name: Bajpai, Nirupam
name: Sachs, Jeffrey D.
Publisher: name: Columbia University
Year: 2004
Subjects: Managerial economics
Regional planning
South Asians

description: The National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP) of the Congress led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) lays down some of the key areas of focus of the new government in Delhi that came into office in May 2004. This note attempts to identify and analyze what the key policy reform measures and the public investment requirements might be in order to attain some of the critical objectives of the NCMP. In terms of the thrust areas highlighted in the NCMP, focusing on rural development -- agriculture, infrastructure, R&D, agro-based industries and higher public spending in health and education are the most prominent ones. At the heart of the NCMP is the following assessment. India's poverty reduction must be built on two pillars: rapid economic growth and targeted investments aimed at the poorest of the poor. The rapid economic growth is to be based largely on the private sector, including foreign direct investments into India. Thus, the budget, for example supports many critical areas of market reform and growth promotion, including financial sector deepening, export promotion, liberalization of foreign direct investment. We are of the view that India's rural development would essentially require an agriculture-led growth strategy. In short, the rural development strategy for India may perhaps focus along the following lines -- agriculture-led growth as the main area of focus; under which, some of the key objectives may be: a) Productivity improvements, including agricultural extension, research and development, and crop diversification; b) Bringing in larger areas under irrigation so as to reduce monsoon dependence; c) Enhanced focus on agricultural exports, and much greater focus on building up rural infrastructure, with specific focus on power, roads, and availability of safe drinking water. Just as in China, a careful balance will have to be struck between two kinds of investments in the rural hinterland (e.g. in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar): physical infrastructure in roads, rail, airports, and telecomms to bring these regions closer to the international markets, and investments in human capital, mainly education and health, to raise the productivity of the rural population. The latter investments may end up attracting jobs to the interior, eager to benefit from an increasingly skilled labor force; or it may provoke large-scale migration to more economical coastal regions. Either way, however, the currently impoverished populations would benefit from rising living standards, wherever in India they are enjoyed.
Interaction Histories and Short Term Memory: Enactive Development of Turn-taking Behaviors in a Childlike Humanoid Robot
Creators: name: Broz, Frank
name: Nehaniv, Chrystopher L.
name: Kose-Bagci, Hatice
name: Dautenhahn, Kerstin
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2012
Subjects: subject: Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
subject: Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems (nlin.AO)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: In this article, an enactive architecture is described that allows a humanoid robot to learn to compose simple actions into turn-taking behaviors while playing interaction games with a human partner. The robot's action choices are reinforced by social feedback from the human in the form of visual attention and measures of behavioral synchronization. We demonstrate that the system can acquire and switch between behaviors learned through interaction based on social feedback from the human partner. The role of reinforcement based on a short term memory of the interaction is experimentally investigated. Results indicate that feedback based only on the immediate state is insufficient to learn certain turn-taking behaviors. Therefore some history of the interaction must be considered in the acquisition of turn-taking, which can be efficiently handled through the use of short term memory.
Verifying Computations with Streaming Interactive Proofs
Creators: name: Cormode, Graham
name: Thaler, Justin
name: Yi, Ke
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2011
Subjects: subject: Databases (cs.DB)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: When computation is outsourced, the data owner would like to be assured that the desired computation has been performed correctly by the service provider. In theory, proof systems can give the necessary assurance, but prior work is not sufficiently scalable or practical. In this paper, we develop new proof protocols for verifying computations which are streaming in nature: the verifier (data owner) needs only logarithmic space and a single pass over the input, and after observing the input follows a simple protocol with a prover (service provider) that takes logarithmic communication spread over a logarithmic number of rounds. These ensure that the computation is performed correctly: that the service provider has not made any errors or missed out some data. The guarantee is very strong: even if the service provider deliberately tries to cheat, there is only vanishingly small probability of doing so undetected, while a correct computation is always accepted. We first observe that some theoretical results can be modified to work with streaming verifiers, showing that there are efficient protocols for problems in the complexity classes NP and NC. Our main results then seek to bridge the gap between theory and practice by developing usable protocols for a variety of problems of central importance in streaming and database processing. All these problems require linear space in the traditional streaming model, and therefore our protocols demonstrate that adding a prover can exponentially reduce the effort needed by the verifier. Our experimental results show that our protocols are practical and scalable.
description: VLDB2012
Evolutionary Metadynamics: a Novel Method to Predict Crystal Structures
Creators: name: Zhu, Qiang
name: Oganov, Artem R.
name: Lyakhov, Andriy O.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2012
Subjects: subject: Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: A novel method for crystal structure prediction, based on metadynamics and evolutionary algorithms, is presented here. This technique can be used to produce efficiently both the ground state and metastable states easily reachable from a reasonable initial structure. We use the cell shape as collective variable and evolutionary variation operators developed in the context of the USPEX method [Oganov, Glass, \textit{J. Chem. Phys.}, 2006, \textbf{124}, 244704; Lyakhov \textit{et al., Comp. Phys. Comm.}, 2010, \textbf{181}, 1623; Oganov \textit{et al., Acc. Chem. Res.}, 2011, \textbf{44}, 227] to equilibrate the system as a function of the collective variables. We illustrate how this approach helps one to find stable and metastable states for Al$_2$SiO$_5$, SiO$_2$, MgSiO$_3$, and carbon. Apart from predicting crystal structures, the new method can also provide insight into mechanisms of phase transitions.
description: 7 pages, 7 figures; CrystEngComm 2012, The Royal Society of Chemistry
Model Districts as a Roadmap for Public Health Scale-up in India
Creators: name: Bajpai, Nirupam
name: Towle, Megan
name: Vynatheya, Jyothi
Publisher: name: Columbia University
Year: 2011
Subjects: Economics
South Asians
Public health

description: While India has experienced some improvements in health indicators in recent years in terms of Millennium Development Goals 1, 4, and 5, the country still has some of the lowest indicators for reproductive and child health in the world. Public investment in primary health care must increase to achieve health targets, and the health system needs to be reformed to ensure efficient and effective delivery of high quality health services. While the Government of India's National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), launched in 2005, has made great strides in improving access to quality primary healthcare in rural areas, significant gaps remain. The Model Districts project is a joint initiative between the Earth Institute, Columbia University, and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. Its goal is to demonstrate which health and nutrition interventions are required to narrow policy practice gaps in the NRHM in five regionally representative districts across India. The project's strategy is to target interventions and additional public health spending at the intersection of the six building blocks of health systems strengthening (infrastructure, data management, governance, financing, supply chain management, and frontline health worker capacity) and five areas along the continuum of care for mothers and children (antenatal care, safe delivery, immediate postnatal care, early childhood development and nutrition, and routine and sick child care). The Model Districts scale‐up model is supported by a robust baseline and monitoring and evaluation plan, pilot interventions at the block level, growth and expansion to the district level based on learning exchanges within and across districts, and finally national level scale‐up through policy adaptation and replication. This working paper signifies the beginning of the Model Districts project's contribution to research on the health system strengthening requirements for rural India, and is intended for use in policy making and health programming.
Collective excitations in the neutron star inner crust
Creators: name: Di Gallo, L.
name: Oertel, M.
name: Urban, M.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2011
Subjects: subject: Nuclear Theory (nucl-th)
subject: High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We study the spectrum of collective excitations in the inhomogeneous phases in the neutron star inner crust within a superfluid hydrodynamics approach. Our aim is to describe the whole range of wavelengths, from the long-wavelength limit which can be described by macroscopic approaches and which is crucial for the low-energy part of the spectrum, to wavelengths of the order of the dimensions of the Wigner-Seitz cells, corresponding to the modes usually described in microscopic calculations. As an application, we will discuss the contribution of these collective modes to the specific heat of the "lasagna" phase in comparison with other known contributions.
description: 10 pages, 4 figures, v2: one reference added and typos corrected
India's Decade of Development: Looking Back at the Last 10 Years, and Looking Forward to the Next 20
Creators: name: Bajpai, Nirupam
name: Sachs, Jeffrey D.
Publisher: name: Columbia University
Year: 2011
Subjects: Sustainable urban development
Infrastructure (Economics)
Human capital
Rural development
Economics
South Asians

description: In 2011, looking back at the first decade of the 21st century — 2000-2010 — we strongly believe that this decade indeed can be called — India's Decade of Development. We elaborate why. Going forward however, India will face enormous challenges in the areas of rural development, urban sustainability, national infrastructure, and human capital and population. India will add hundreds of millions of people to the urban economy in the years and decades ahead. India’s cities need to be safe, efficient, pleasant to live in, supported by infrastructure (water, sewerage, electricity, transport, etc.), able to create jobs which are globally competitive, etc. Briefly put, India needs a revolution in sustainable urban planning. Sustainable cities mean: walk able, mix used areas, public transport, urban planning, public health and other services, and climate resilient especially coastal cities. To be able to create large scale job opportunities will mean solid systems of education-apprenticeship, vocational training, etc., perhaps along the German lines that link schooling with early labor-market entry. On the national infrastructure front, inter-city rail upgrading, sustainable and secure energy, watershed management (river-linking to the extent that this is a sound and safe concept), dams policy, fiber connectivity nationally, ports and airports, etc. India will also need an integrated, life-cycle, population scale vision of human capital accumulation. This includes: Population stabilization and early childhood development, especially to overcome the scars of under-nutrition, which may be India’s greatest plague. On the education front, education for all with improvements in quality of education (to improve teaching and learning outcomes) and education-to-job linkages will be critical. Manpower for skill and occupational needs in the next twenty years will be high as the economy urbanizes, modernizes, and becomes more service-sector oriented. India is moving from the phase of market reforms (1990-2010) to the new era of sustainable development. The priority now must be not only on growth, but on the triple bottom line of growth, equity/inclusion, and environmental sustainability. The sustainability challenge will occupy India and the world for decades, not just for years. All countries face the challenge of adapting to ongoing climate change, managing growing water scarcity, protecting endangered ecosystems and species, etc. As one of the world's most crowded country, India faces this challenge more urgently than others.
Optical benthic imagery survey in a lacustrine basin using an autonomous underwater vehicle
Creators: name: Pike, Weston John
Publisher: name: University of British Columbia
Year: 2011

description: Photographs are needed to map and characterize fine-scale benthic features and underwater habitats. Acoustic imaging methods lack sufficient resolution, colour and the ability to define many low reflectance features. Other optical methods such as LiDAR also lack spectral information important in the identification of biological features. Historically, photographs of benthic surfaces are collected over small areas or single line transects. Here techniques are developed and optimized to perform an extensive optical benthic survey remotely with an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) over the area of a lacustrine basin. The technique was applied to surveys at Pavilion and Kelly Lake, B.C., and Lake Tahoe, CA, USA. The major challenges associated with the photographic surveys included overcoming AUV performance and stability issues associated with steep bathymetry, through-water light attenuation, limited light availability, and camera system limitations. Photographic imaging with a small AUV and CCD camera was optimized for the lacustrine environment, through manipulation of the non-optimal hardware. Benthic features were identified and mapped in Pavilion Lake, revealing profundal zonation patterns of previously unexplored epipelic flora.
Algorithm acceleration using graphics processors
Creators: name: Biffard, Ryan
Publisher: name: University of Calgary
Year: 2007

description: Bibliography: p. 60-62
description: Some pages are in colour.
description: Recently graphics processors have been developed that allow programmers to execute small programs on their specialized rendering hardware. Although the original intent of these customizable rendering programs was to manipulate textures and images for gaming purposes, they are becoming more capable at performing general purpose algorithms. This thesis examines different algorithms implemented on a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). These algorithms include: image processing, cardiac tis­sue simulation using cellular automata and sparse matrix operations. It was found that all algorithms showed speed improvements using the GPU over the CPU. The greatest speed improvements found were sparse matrix operations, where the GPU performed operations up to 14 times faster than the CPU.
Supersymmetry and Mass Gap in 2+1 Dimensions: A Gauge Invariant Hamiltonian Analysis
Creators: name: Agarwal, Abhishek
name: Nair, V. P.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2012
Subjects: subject: High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
subject: Mathematical Physics (math-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: A Hamiltonian formulation of Yang-Mills-Chern-Simons theories with $0\leq N\leq 4$ supersymmetry in terms of gauge-invariant variables is presented, generalizing earlier work on nonsupersymmetric gauge theories. Special attention is paid to the volume measure of integration (over the gauge orbit space of the fields) which occurs in the inner product for the wave functions and arguments relating it to the renormalization of the Chern-Simons level number and to mass-gaps in the spectrum of the Hamiltonians are presented. The expression for the integration measure is consistent with the absence of mass gap for theories with extended supersymmetry (in the absence of additional matter hypermultiplets and/or Chern-Simons couplings), while for the minimally supersymmetric case, there is a mass-gap, the scale of which is set by a renormalized level number, in agreement with indications from existing literature. The realization of the supersymmetry algebra and the Hamiltonian in terms of the gauge invariant variables is also presented.
description: 31 pages, References added, typos corrected
India's Economic Reforms: The Steps Ahead
Creators: name: Bajpai, Nirupam
name: Sachs, Jeffrey D.
Publisher: name: Columbia University
Year: 1997
Subjects: Economics

description: In this paper we suggest further steps that India needs to take in the process of her economic reforms. While the reform measures undertaken during 1991–96 have led to considerable deregulation and liberalization of the Indian economy, a lot still remains on India's unfinished reform agenda. The experience of East Asian countries along with that of China is taken into account in suggesting relevant lessons for the future course of India's economic reforms. Among other things, we highlight the need for much greater openness of the economy, deregulation of the private sector, exit policy, and reform of the labour and land laws. Besides, in our view, the government needs to focus its attention to, and provide larger resources for, primary health and primary education. The main quantitative conclusion is that India can expect per capita economic growth of a mere 3.5% per year under current policies, but could raise the overall per capita growth rate to as much as 7% per year under extensive market reforms that delivered a national saving rate and efficient market institutions similar to those of East Asia.
A MovingObject Index for Efficient Query Processing with Peer-Wise Location Privacy
Creators: name: Lin, Dan
name: Jensen, Christian S.
name: Zhang, Rui
name: Xiao, Lu
name: Lu, Jiaheng
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2011
Subjects: subject: Databases (cs.DB)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: With the growing use of location-based services, location privacy attracts increasing attention from users, industry, and the research community. While considerable effort has been devoted to inventing techniques that prevent service providers from knowing a user's exact location, relatively little attention has been paid to enabling so-called peer-wise privacy--the protection of a user's location from unauthorized peer users. This paper identifies an important efficiency problem in existing peer-privacy approaches that simply apply a filtering step to identify users that are located in a query range, but that do not want to disclose their location to the querying peer. To solve this problem, we propose a novel, privacy-policy enabled index called the PEB-tree that seamlessly integrates location proximity and policy compatibility. We propose efficient algorithms that use the PEB-tree for processing privacy-aware range and kNN queries. Extensive experiments suggest that the PEB-tree enables efficient query processing.
description: VLDB2012
Foreign Direct Investment in India: Issues and Problems
Creators: name: Bajpai, Nirupam
name: Sachs, Jeffrey D.
Publisher: name: Columbia University
Year: 2000
Subjects: Managerial economics
Investments, Foreign
Economics
Finance

description: In this paper, we have attempted to identify the issues and problems associated with India's current foreign direct investment regime, and more importantly the other associated factors responsible for India's unattractiveness as an investment location. Despite India offering a large domestic market, rule of law, low labor costs, and a well working democracy, her performance in attracting FDI flows has been far from satisfactory. A restrictive FDI regime, high import tariffs, exit barriers for firms, stringent labor laws, poor quality infrastructure, centralized decision-making processes, and a very limited scale of export processing zones make India an unattractive investment location.
Economic Reforms in China and India: Selected Issues in Industrial Policy
Creators: name: Bajpai, Nirupam
name: Jian, Tianlun
name: Sachs, Jeffrey D.
Publisher: name: Columbia University
Year: 1997
Subjects: Managerial economics
Economics
Asians
South Asians

description: In this paper we compare the reform experiences of China and India focusing on three specific areas of industrial policy. We begin with a comparison of the macro economic performance of the two countries and find that except on the inflation front China is better placed than India. China has grown at almost double the rate of India largely because of very high savings and investment rates. Of course, economic reforms have provided the necessary policy environment for China to attain and sustain high growth. First we compare the extent of deregulation in China and India in the areas of prices, labor and land laws, and exit policy for firms. We find that the non-state sector of China, which is the main driving force of China's impressive growth has performed so well largely because it operates primarily under market conditions. China has gone far ahead of India in respect of deregulation of their non-state sector. Price reforms have been extensive, labor is mobile, labor laws are liberal, and firms are free to enter and exit from the market. The results achieved in the process speak for themselves. In India, by contrast, much needs to be done for private sector deregulation, price reform has been limited, labor and land laws are stringent, and while firms have no entry barriers, they do, however, face strong exit barriers. Second, we draw comparison between the Chinese township and village enterprises and the Indian small scale industries. While these have been promoted in both the countries through preferential policies, however, their objectives have been different, and hence the results. Chinese small enterprises are given initial support only as against the policy in India wherein incentives are available as long as a firm remains in small scale. Moreover, in India, items are reserved to be produced exclusively by the small scale industry. While both have grown overtime, the ones in China have grown much faster. Finally, we compare special economic zones of China with export processing zones of India. We find that although both the countries have offered similar incentives to prospective investors, the story is very different in the two countries. The zones in China have been highly successful in attracting foreign investment, promoting exports, and generating employment than they have been in India. We identify a number of factors for the performance differentials in the two countries.
PT-Symmetric Quantum Electrodynamics and Unitarity
Creators: name: Milton, Kimball A.
name: Abalo, E. K.
name: Parashar, Prachi
name: Pourtolami, Nima
name: Wagner, J.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2012
Subjects: subject: High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
subject: Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: More than 15 years ago, a new approach to quantum mechanics was suggested, in which Hermiticity of the Hamiltonian was to be replaced by invariance under a discrete symmetry, the product of parity and time-reversal symmetry, $\mathcal{PT}$. It was shown that if $\mathcal{PT}$ is unbroken, energies were, in fact, positive, and unitarity was satisifed. Since quantum mechanics is quantum field theory in 1 dimension, time, it was natural to extend this idea to higher-dimensional field theory, and in fact an apparently viable version of $\mathcal{PT}$-invariant quantum electrodynamics was proposed. However, it has proved difficult to establish that the unitarity of the scattering matrix, for example, the Källén spectral representation for the photon propagator, can be maintained in this theory. This has led to questions of whether, in fact, even quantum mechanical systems are consistent with probability conservation when Green's functions are examined, since the latter have to possess physical requirements of analyticity. The status of $\mathcal{PT}$QED will be reviewed in this report, as well as the general issue of unitarity.
description: 13 pages, 2 figures. Revised version includes new evidence for the violation of unitarity
Causes of change in Northern Hemisphere winter meridional winds and regional hydroclimate
Creators: name: Simpson, Isla R.
name: Seager, Richard
name: Ting, Mingfang
name: Shaw, Tiffany Ann
Publisher: name: Columbia University
Year: 2016
Subjects: Hydrology
Atmospheric circulation
Precipitation variability
Climatic changes
Meridional winds

description: A critical aspect of human-induced climate change is how it will affect precipitation around the world. Broadly speaking, warming increases atmospheric moisture holding capacity, intensifies moisture transports and makes sub-tropical dry regions drier and tropical and mid-to-high-latitude wet regions wetter. Extra-tropical precipitation patterns vary strongly with longitude, however, owing to the control exerted by the storm tracks and quasi-stationary highs and lows or stationary waves. Regional precipitation change will, therefore, also depend on how these aspects of the circulation respond. Current climate models robustly predict a change in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) winter stationary wave field that brings wetting southerlies to the west coast of North America, and drying northerlies to interior southwest North America and the eastern Mediterranean. Here we show that this change in the meridional wind field is caused by strengthened zonal mean westerlies in the sub-tropical upper troposphere, which alters the character of intermediate-scale stationary waves. Thus, a robust and easily understood model response to global warming is the prime cause of these regional wind changes. However, the majority of models probably overestimate the magnitude of this response because of biases in their climatological representation of the relevant waves, suggesting that winter season wetting of the North American west coast will be notably less than projected by the multi-model mean.
HIV Testing Policy and Serious Mental Illness
Creators: name: Walkup, James
name: Satriano, James J.
name: Barry, Danielle
name: Sadler, Pablo
name: Cournos, Francine
Publisher: name: Columbia University
Year: 2002
Subjects: HIV-positive persons
Mentally ill
Informed consent (Medical law)
Medical ethics

description: Objectives. Using opinion data from experts, we examined the context of the argument for mandatory testing of psychiatric patients. Methods. Vignettes were distributed to experts on HIV and mental illness. Respondents were asked to provide appropriateness ratings for different hypothetical clinical decisions regarding HIV management. Results. Respondents were reluctant to impose testing without informed consent in most circumstances. The presence of risk factors or danger to another increased appropriateness ratings modestly. Conclusions. Despite experts’ tendency to emphasize individual rights, public reluctance to mandate testing is unlikely to extend to people with serious mental illness. No argument for mandatory testing can be persuasive if improved voluntary testing can achieve adequate detection rates. Voluntary testing protocols should be studied to determine which successfully identify infected individuals. (Am J Public Health. 2002;92: 1931–1939)
Herschel / HIFI observations of CO, H2O and NH3 in Mon R2
Creators: name: Pilleri, P.
name: Fuente, A.
name: Cernicharo, J.
name: Ossenkopf, V.
name: Berné, O.
name: Gerin, M.
name: Pety, J.
name: Goicoechea, J. R.
name: Rizzo, J. R.
name: Montillaud, J.
name: González-García, M.
name: Joblin, C.
name: Bourlot, J. Le
name: Petit, F. Le
name: Kramer, C.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2012
Subjects: subject: Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Context. Mon R2 is the only ultracompact HII region (UCHII) where the associated photon-dominated region (PDR) can be resolved with Herschel. Due to its brightness and proximity, it is the best source to investigate the chemistry and physics of highly UV-irradiated PDRs. Aims. Our goal is to estimate the abundance of H2O and NH3 in this region and investigate their origin. Methods. We present new observations obtained with HIFI and the IRAM-30m telescope. Using a large velocity gradient approach, we model the line intensities and derive an average abundance of H2O and NH3 across the region. Finally, we model the line profiles with a non-local radiative transfer model and compare these results with the abundance predicted by the Meudon PDR code. Results. The variations of the line profiles and intensities indicate complex geometrical and kinematical patterns. The H2O lines present a strong absorption at the ambient velocity and emission in high velocity wings towards the HII region. The spatial distribution of the o-H2^18O line shows that the its emission arises in the PDR surrounding the HII region. By modeling the o-H2^18O emission we derive a mean abundance of o-H2O of ~10^-8 relative to H2. The ortho-H2O abundance is however larger, ~1x10^-7, in the high velocity wings. Possible explanations for this larger abundance include an expanding hot PDR and/or an outflow. Ammonia seems to be present only in the envelope with an average abundance of ~2x10^-9 relative to H2. Conclusions. The Meudon PDR code can account for the measured water abundance in the high velocity gas as long as we assume that it originates from a <1 mag hot expanding layer of the PDR, i.e. that the outflow has only a minor contribution to this emission. To explain the abundances in the rest of the cloud the molecular freeze out and grain surface chemistry would need to be included.
description: 12 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables. Accepted for publication in A&A. Abstract shortened. Updated references, language editing applied in v2
Study on driver’s active emergency response in dangerous traffic scenes based on driving simulator
Creators: name: Ma, Shuai
name: Xu, Shucai
name: Song, Jiafeng
name: Wang, Kejun
name: Qin, Haoyi
name: Wang, Ruixiang
Publisher: name: Taylor & Francis
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Medicine
subject: Neuroscience
subject: Physiology
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Pharmacology
subject: Environmental Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: Developmental Biology
subject: Mental Health

description: A driver’s active emergency response in dangerous traffic scenes consists of two parts, including reaction behavior and physiological state. In dangerous traffic scenes, the driver’s active emergency response has an important impact on human collision injury. Clarifying the driver’s active emergency response is an important prerequisite for the study of human collision injury under nonstandard posture. Therefore, this study investigates the driver’s active emergency response in different inevitable collision scenes using driving simulator. A driving simulator with a high-speed camera system and human physiological signal acquisition system was first built. Then, three typical vehicle dangerous collision scenes were developed, including frontal collision, side collision, and rear-end collision. Finally, twenty participants (15 males and 5 females) were recruited for a driving experiment, and their active emergency responses were recorded and analyzed. All subjects would rotate the steering wheel to the left or right in the active emergency state, and the rotation of the hand would also cause the subject’s upper body to tilt in the same direction. The maximum angle for male subjects to rotate the steering wheel was 59.98°, while for the female subjects, it was 44.28°. In addition, the maximum grip force between the male subjects and the steering wheel was 280.5 N, compared to 192.5 N for female subjects. Compared to the female participants, the male participants not only have a greater rotation angle and a greater grip force on the steering wheel, but also have greater pressure on the brake pedal, and the foot moves quickly from the accelerator pedal to the brake pedal and presses the brake pedal. Drivers have different active emergency responses to different vehicle collision scenes. Quantitative statistics of driver’s active emergency response will have important guiding significance for the analysis of the impact of human active emergency response on human injury characteristics in subsequent vehicle collision experiments.
Urban Refugee Education: Strengthening Policies and Practices for Access, Quality, and Inclusion
Creators: name: Mendenhall, Mary
name: Russell, S. Garnett
name: Bruckner, Elizabeth
Publisher: name: Columbia University
Year: 2017
Subjects: Refugees--Services for
Refugee children--Education
Education and state
School management and organization

description: The number of forcibly displaced people across the globe has increased dramatically in the past two decades, exceeding 65 million in 2016--a level not seen since the period directly following World War II. The image of refugees living together in camps is no longer the norm. Sixty percent of today’s refugees live scattered and embedded across large urban areas. The urbanization of refugees is creating new obstacles for refugee children who find it difficult or impossible to attend school, even though they are entitled by international law to do so. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, half the world’s displaced people are children under 18. Half of refugee children are enrolled in primary school, 22 percent in secondary school and only one percent in higher education. Adding to the complications of urbanization, longer conflicts have increased the average worldwide duration of refugee status to 20 years. Millions of refugee children are spending their entire childhoods in exile without ever attending school, despite their right to obtain an education. Despite much public discussion of the global refugee crisis in wealthy, westernized nations, 86 percent of all displaced people reside in the “Global South,” in poor, developing countries, often in countries adjacent to their homelands. That is where we focused our study. This report presents findings of our survey of 190 professionals involved in the delivery of educational services to refugees in 16 countries, including an in-depth studies of refugee education in three cities--Beirut, Lebanon; Nairobi, Kenya; and Quito, Ecuador. The report includes policy recommendations based on our findings.
Lulac on Partisan Gerrymandering: Some Clarity, More Uncertainty
Creators: name: Briffault, Richard
Publisher: name: Columbia University
Year: 2006
Subjects: subject: Partisanship
subject: Apportionment (Election law)
subject: Democracy
subject: Gerrymandering
subject: Law
subject: FOS: Law

description: LULAC’s treatment of the partisan gerrymandering question, thus, may be as significant for the continuing divisions and uncertainties it reveals as for the result it achieved. A majority of the Court is willing to grapple with the gerrymandering issue but that majority is internally torn over what makes partisan gerrymandering a constitutional problem and when judicial intervention is appropriate. The Court’s difficulty is understandable. Gerrymandering is a challenge to democratic self-government, but judicial intervention requires a judicially manageable theory of democracy compatible with the Constitution and our political institutions. It remains to be seen whether the Court can agree upon such a theory. Vieth and LULAC suggest that the outlook is not promising.
Perfluorinated compounds in landfill leachate and their effect on the performance of sodium bentonite landfill liners
Creators: name: Li, Belinda
Publisher: name: University of British Columbia
Year: 2011

description: Perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) are a class of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) with potential major health and environmental concerns. PFCs are thermally and chemically stable, and do not readily degrade in the environment. PFCs have been detected in numerous environmental matrices, including surface water, ground water and sediment. PFCs are used for surface treatments for paper and textiles, industrial surfactants, insecticides and fire-fighting foams. Given their widespread use, products that contain PFCs have been, and continue to be disposed in landfills after their useful lives. Typical landfills have liners made of compacted clay (e.g. sodium bentonite) to prevent contaminants in leachate from migrating into the surrounding environment. Research was conducted to characterize geographic and temporal distributions of PFCs in landfill leachate in Canada and to investigate PFC retention on sodium bentonite. Landfill leachate was collected from 29 landfills across Canada and analyzed for up to 18 PFCs. PFCs were ubiquitous in landfill leachate samples from across Canada and varied considerably with concentrations, generally being lower in the North than in the South. At one landfill, PFCs were analyzed in landfill gas condensate and water from a nearby river. Concentrations in both of these matrices were less than the landfill leachate. At another landfill, PFCs in landfill leachate were monitored for five months. Some PFCs varied temporally, whereas others remained relatively constant. The temporal variations were attributed to the presence of PFC precursors. There were strong correlations between PFC precursors and corresponding major degradation end-products. PFCs of similar size were also well-correlated with each other. Batch adsorption tests were conducted in which sodium bentonite was contacted with water and landfill leachate spiked with PFCs to measure the sorption of PFCs on sodium bentonite. PFCs in landfill leachate do not readily bind to sodium bentonite. Leaching cell tests were conducted in which compacted sand-bentonite admix columns were permeated with water, landfill leachate and PFC spiked landfill leachate. Similar hydraulic conductivity values were produced under each condition, indicating that PFCs do not significantly compromise the performance of bentonite liners. The sand-bentonite admix also appears to retain PFCs under the leaching cell test conditions.
Evaluation of Measurement Techniques for the Adsorption of Asphaltenes onto Metal Oxide Nanoparticles
Creators: name: Ezeonyeka, Nkiru Lucia
Publisher: name: Graduate Studies
Year: 2018
Subjects: subject: Asphaltenes
subject: Adsorption
subject: UV-Vis Spectroscopy
subject: Thermogravimetric analysis
subject: XRD
subject: Nanoparticles
subject: TGA
subject: Applied Sciences
subject: Engineering

description: The adsorption of asphaltenes onto nanoparticles (NPs) has received a lot of attention in the recent years owing to its important application in areas such as heavy oil recovery. The effect of the measurement technique on the adsorption isotherms has never been addressed, however. In this work, the adsorption of n-heptane-precipitated asphaltenes, C7-asphaltenes, from toluene model solutions onto three metal oxide NPs; namely Fe2O3, Fe3O4, and Al2O3, was studied. Most results on asphaltenes adsorption employed UV-Vis spectroscopy, especially when using conventional adsorbents. More recently, and with advent of NPs, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) has also been used. In this investigation, asphaltenes uptake calculated from UV-Vis spectroscopy at three different wavelengths were compared with thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) results. Although the adsorption trends followed Langmuir isotherms, instrument as well as wavelength-dependent adsorption coefficients were obtained. TGA results are believed to be more reliable, provided complete oxidation and account of mass loss due to NPs is attained. UV-Vis measurements, on the other hand, may be impacted by the chemical structure of the asphaltenes sub fractions as well as their state of association. Al2O3 showed the highest adsorption capacity of 385 ± 5 mg/g, followed by Fe3O4 and Fe2O3. However, based on mg/m2, Fe2O3 displayed the highest adsorption capacity. TGA analysis revealed that the NPs promoted the oxidation of adsorbed asphaltenes in a reverse order to their adsorption capacity, qmax (mg/g) (Al2O3 > Fe2O3 ≈ Fe3O4). This trend is in line with a previous observation of mass-dependent thermo-oxidative profile and surface exposure role, rather than a catalyst role, of the NPs.
A non-boundary nef divisor on $\bar{M}_{0,12}$
Creators: name: Pixton, Aaron
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2011
Subjects: subject: Algebraic Geometry (math.AG)
subject: FOS: Mathematics
subject: 14H10

description: We describe a nef divisor $D_P$ on $\bar{M}_{0,12}$ that is not numerically equivalent to an effective sum of boundary divisors.
description: 7 pages
The $O(\alpha^2)$ Initial State QED Corrections to $e^+e^-$ Annihilation to a Neutral Vector Boson Revisited
Creators: name: Blümlein, J.
name: De Freitas, A.
name: Raab, C. G.
name: Schönwald, K.
Publisher: name: Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, DESY, Hamburg
Year: 2019

description: We calculate the non-singlet, the pure singlet contribution, and their interference term, at $O(\alpha^2)$ due to electron-pair initial state radiation to $e^+ e^-$ annihilation into a neutral vector boson in a direct analytic computation without any approximation. The correction is represented in terms of iterated incomplete elliptic integrals. Performing the limit $s \gg m_e^2$ we find discrepancies with the earlier results of Ref. [1] and confirm results obtained in Ref. [2] where the effective method of massive operator matrix elements has been used, which works for all but the power corrections in $m^2/s$. In this way, we also confirm the validity of the factorization of massive partons in the Drell-Yan process. We also add non-logarithmic terms at $O(\alpha^2)$ which have not been considered in \cite{Berends:1987ab}. The corrections are of central importance for precision analyzes in $e^+e^-$ annihilation into $\gamma^*/Z^*$ at high luminosity.
Russian case inflection: Processing costs and benefits
Creators: name: Vasilyeva, Maria D.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2019

description: Mechanisms underlying the processing and storage of morphological case are still debatable in psycholinguistics. The key questions concern the nature of the special status of the nominative, the homogeneity\slash heterogeneity of oblique case forms, the impact of case syncretism and paradigmatic relations on nominal processing and the organization of the mental lexicon. We investigate these issues turning to Russian nominal processing. We performed two experiments with feminine and masculine nouns in different cases (experiment 1: nouns in singular, experiment 2: nouns in plural) using the visual lexical decision task. In this task, we measure the speed and accuracy with which the participant classifies sequences of letters as words or non-words. Evidence from both experiments indicates that differences in processing exist not only between the nominative and the other case forms, but also among the obliques. Experiment 1 points to the influence of wordform and exponent ambiguity, while experiment 2 reveals effects that are specific for case per se. We discuss the role of zero vs. overt phonological form, grammatical features, (non-)accidental homonymy, context, frequency, inflectional and relative entropy in case recognition.