Dust devils on Earth and Mars: Extension of particle threshold laboratory simulations

Abstract not available

Industrial Energy Efficiency: Using New Technologies to Reduce Energy Use in Industry and Manufacturing

Key facts: -Industry uses over one-third of the energy consumed in the United States.- Oil and natural gas provide nearly four-fifths of industrial energy; the rest comes mostly from electricity and coal. - Between 1990 and 2003, US industrial output has grown 25 percent but industrial energy use has increased only by 2 percent

Enantioselective synthesis of non-proteinogenic 2-arylallyl-α-amino acids via Pd/In catalytic cascades

An efficient synthesis of both R- and S-enantiomers of 2-arylallyl-α-amino acids via a diastereoselective Pd/In mediated catalytic allylation of chiral N-sulfinyl-α-imino esters is described. The potential for further enhancement of molecular complexity and creating contiguous chiral centres by interfacing these processes with catalytic cyclisation–anion capture methodology is demonstrated

A method for visualization of invariant sets of dynamical systems based on the ergodic partition

We provide an algorithm for visualization of invariant sets of dynamical systems with a smooth invariant measure. The algorithm is based on a constructive proof of the ergodic partition theorem for automorphisms of compact metric spaces. The ergodic partition of a compact metric space A, under the dynamics of a continuous automorphism T, is shown to be the product of measurable partitions of the space induced by the time averages of a set of functions on A. The numerical algorithm consists of computing the time averages of a chosen set of functions and partitioning the phase space into their level sets. The method is applied to the three-dimensional ABC map for which the dynamics was visualized by other methods in Feingold et al

Real-time representations of the output gap

Methods are described for the appropriate use of data obtained and analysed in real time to represent the output gap. The methods employ cointegrating VAR techniques to model real-time measures and realizations of output series jointly. The model is used to mitigate the impact of data revisions; to generate appropriate forecasts that can deliver economically meaningful output trends and that can take into account the end-of-sample problems encountered in measuring these trends; and to calculate probability forecasts that convey in a clear way the uncertainties associated with the gap measures. The methods are applied to data for the United States 1965q4–2004q4, and the improvements over standard methods are illustrated

The Utilization of Sports for Peace and Unity in Society

There are many ongoing conflicts in the world. Many methods to end these conflicts have been attempted with various levels of success. A United Nations study in 2003 determined that sports should be increasingly used as a method to bring about peace in the world. This finding can be supported when looking at the ways sports united divided nations and, at times, brought unity among nations. Along with this, sports have seen a dramatic rise in popularity due to the revolution of technology and the rise of media. As the media and technology continue to develop, sports will continue to grow alongside them as worldwide phenomena. Thus, sport should be used by nations and communities as a strong, reliable option to resolve conflicts and bring about peace and unity

Survivor Funds

This Article explains how to create “survivor funds”—short-term investment funds that would pay more to those investors who live until the end of the fund’s term than to those who die before then. For example, instead of just investing in a ten-year bond and dividing the proceeds among the investors at the end of the bond term, a survivor fund would invest in that ten-year bond but divide the proceeds only among those who survived the full ten years. These survivor funds would be attractive investments because the survivors would get a greater return on their investments, while the decedents, for obvious reasons, would not care. Survivor funds would work like short-term tontines. Basically, a tontine is a financial product that combines features of an annuity and a lottery. In a simple tontine, a group of investors pools their money together to buy a portfolio of investments, and, as investors die, their shares are forfeited, often with the entire fund going to the last survivor. For example, imagine that ten 65-year-old men each contribute $1000 to a fund that buys a large diamond for$10,000 and that the men agree that the last “survivor will get the diamond. Accordingly, after the ninth man dies, the tenth man gets the diamond, and he can keep it or sell it. Of course, the survivor principle—that the share of each, at death, is enjoyed by the survivors—can be used to design financial products that would benefit multiple survivors, not just the last survivor. For example, elsewhere, we showed how tontines could be used to create so-called “tontine annuities” and “tontine pensions” that would benefit lots of retirees. In this Article, we show how the survivor principle can be used to create survivor funds that would only make payments to those who survive for a specified number of years