`It's your body, your baby, your birth': planning and achieving a home birth

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Nominal GDP Targeting: A Policy Recommendation to Meet the Fed’s Dual Mandate

This paper was written in early December 2014 in response to the Federal Reserve Challenge Team’s argument for a regime change in the Federal Reserve to nominal GDP targeting as the appropriate policy to return the U.S. economy to long-term sustainable economic growth. After the 2007 recession, the FOMC took extraordinary measures to minimize the collateral damage caused by bank balance sheets weighed down with mortgage-backed securities and other below-investment grade assets. The periodic “stress tests” and use of emergency lending facilities were historically unprecedented, however, the economy six years later was still growing slowly in part due to market uncertainty with FOMC forward guidance policy. This paper argues that the Fed is justified in using a policy that risks short-term rapid inflation in order to meet the “dual mandate” of full employment and price stability, and to prevent cyclical unemployment in the economy from deteriorating into structural unemployment

Predator empire: the geopolitics of U.S. drone warfare

This paper critically assesses the CIA’s drone program and proposes that the use of unmanned aerial vehicles is driving an increasingly paramilitarized U.S. national security strategy. The paper suggests that large-scale ground wars are being eclipsed by fleets of weaponized drones capable of targeted killings across the planet. Evidence for this shift is found in key security documents that mobilize an amorphous war against vaguely defined al-Qa’ida “affiliates”. This is further legitimized by the White House’s presentation of drone warfare as a bureaucratic task managed by a “disposition matrix”. Such abstract narratives are challenged through the voices of people living in the tribal areas of Pakistan. What I call the Predator Empire names the biopolitical power that catalogues and eliminates threatening “patterns of life”. This permanent war is enabled by a topological spatial power that folds the environments of the “affiliate” into the surveillance machinery of the Homeland

NASA's Aircraft Icing Analysis Program

An overview of the NASA ongoing efforts to develop an aircraft icing analysis capability is presented. Discussions are included of the overall and long term objectives of the program as well as current capabilities and limitations of the various computer codes being developed. Descriptions are given of codes being developed to analyze two and three dimensional trajectories of water droplets, airfoil ice accretion, aerodynamic performance degradation of components and complete aircraft configurations, electrothermal deicer, fluid freezing point depressant antideicer and electro-impulse deicer. The need for bench mark and verification data to support the code development is also discussed, and selected results of experimental programs are presented

Microanalysis of dissolved iron and phosphate in pore waters of hypersaline sediment

Diurnal fluctuations of reduced iron concentrations, expected to occur in reduced sediments in the photic zone, were studied. Iron concentration was compared to O2-H2S, a microcanalysis of sulfate reduction was performed, as well as an examination of diurnal concentration of dissolved phosphate and changes in interstitial CO2. The iron profiles suggest a strong correlation between iron remobilization and processes occurring in the light. Phosphate profiles suggest the removal of phosphate is strongly correlated with precipitation of oxidized iron in the upper 2 mm to 5 mm of the sediments. Pore water CO2 concentrations and carbon isotope ratios are presented. These data are from the analyses of minisediment cores collected from the 42 per mil salt pond and incubated in the laboratory under light and dark conditions

Magnetospheric electron density measurements from upper hybrid resonance noise observed by IMP-6

A band of natural radio noise between the local electron plasma frequency and the upper hybrid resonance frequency is observed by the IMP-6 satellite. The band exists over a large range of geocentric radial distances extending from inside the plasmapause boundary to greater than 10 earth radii in the outer magnetosphere. The center frequency of the noise band decreases with increasing radial distance, and changes abruptly at the plasmapause boundary. The broadband electric field strength of this noise is very small, seldom exceeding 10 microvolts/meter, and probably could not be detected without using long electric antennas of IMP-6. It is believed that this noise is produced by incoherent Cerenkov emission from super-thermal electrons. In some cases a second very narrow noise band was observed at a frequency slightly above the second harmonic of the electron gyrofrequency

Massive neutrinos and magnetic fields in the early universe

Primordial magnetic fields and massive neutrinos can leave an interesting signal in the CMB temperature and polarization. We perform a systematic analysis of general perturbations in the radiation-dominated universe, accounting for any primordial magnetic field and including leading-order effects of the neutrino mass. We show that massive neutrinos qualitatively change the large-scale perturbations sourced by magnetic fields, but that the effect is much smaller than previously claimed. We calculate the CMB power spectra sourced by inhomogeneous primordial magnetic fields, from before and after neutrino decoupling, including scalar, vector and tensor modes, and consistently modeling the correlation between the density and anisotropic stress sources. In an appendix we present general series solutions for the possible regular primordial perturbations

Depositing spacing layers on magnetic film with liquid phase epitaxy

Liquid phase epitaxy spacing layer is compatible with systems which are hard-bubble proofed by use of second magnetic garnet film as capping layer. Composite is superior in that: circuit fabrication time is reduced; adherence is superior; visibility is better; and, good match of thermal expansion coefficients is provided