8,079 research outputs found
Economic Consequences of Mandated Grading and Food Safety Assurance: Ex Ante Analysis of the Federal Marketing Order for California Pistachios
Crop Production/Industries, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Marketing,
Pan-Africanism: a contorted delirium or a pseudonationalist paradigm? Revivalist critique
This essaic-article goes against established conventions that there is anything ethno-cultural (and hence national) about the so-called African tribes. Drawing largely from the culture history of precolonial/prepolitical Africans—that is, the Bantu/Cushitic-Ethiopians (Azanians)—the author has demonstrated vividly that far from being distinct ethno-culture national communities, the so-called tribes of African states are better considered subculture groups, whose regional culture practices erstwhile paid tribute to their nation’s main culture center in Karnak. For example, using the culture symbols and practices of some local groups and linking them to the predynastic and dynastic Pharaonic periods, I argued that there is compelling evidence against qualifying Africa’s tribes as distinct ethno-culture national entities. In genuine culture context, I stressed that the Ritual of Resurrection and its twin culture process of the mummification of deceased indigenous Pharaohs tend to suggest that the object of the Bantu/Cushitic-Ethiopians national culture was life (in its eternal manifestation) and then resurrection later, and that there are recurring (culturally sanctioned) ethical examples among the culture custodians of these subculture groups that generally pay tribute to the overarching culture norm. Furthermore, the fact that the Ritual of Resurrection began in the Delta region and ended at the Sources of the Nile, where the spirit of the deceased indigenous Pharaohs was introduced into the spiritual world of their ancestors, contradicts conventional perceptions that ancient Egypt was a distinct national community isolated from precolonial/prepolitical Africa/Azania
Neuropsychological constraints to human data production on a global scale
Which are the factors underlying human information production on a global
level? In order to gain an insight into this question we study a corpus of
252-633 Million publicly available data files on the Internet corresponding to
an overall storage volume of 284-675 Terabytes. Analyzing the file size
distribution for several distinct data types we find indications that the
neuropsychological capacity of the human brain to process and record
information may constitute the dominant limiting factor for the overall growth
of globally stored information, with real-world economic constraints having
only a negligible influence. This supposition draws support from the
observation that the files size distributions follow a power law for data
without a time component, like images, and a log-normal distribution for
multimedia files, for which time is a defining qualia.Comment: to be published in: European Physical Journal
ALMA sub-mm maser and dust distribution of VY Canis Majoris
Cool, evolved stars have copious, enriched winds. The structure of these
winds and the way they are accelerated is not well known. We need to improve
our understanding by studying the dynamics from the pulsating stellar surface
to about 10 stellar radii, where radiation pressure on dust is fully effective.
Some red supergiants have highly asymmetric nebulae, implicating additional
forces. We retrieved ALMA Science Verification data providing images of sub-mm
line and continuum emission from VY CMa. This enables us to locate water masers
with milli-arcsec precision and resolve the dusty continuum. The 658-, 321- and
325-GHz masers lie in irregular, thick shells at increasing distances from the
centre of expansion. For the first time this is confirmed as the stellar
position, coinciding with a compact peak offset to the NW of the brightest
continuum emission. The maser shells (and dust formation zone) overlap but
avoid each other on tens-au scales. Their distribution is broadly consistent
with excitation models but the conditions and kinematics appear to be
complicated by wind collisions, clumping and asymmetries.Comment: Letter 4 pages, 5 figures plus appendix with 3 figures. Accepted by
Astronomy and Astrophysics Letter
The Otterbein Miscellany - June 1982
https://digitalcommons.otterbein.edu/miscellany/1006/thumbnail.jp
The Otterbein Miscellany - December 1980
https://digitalcommons.otterbein.edu/miscellany/1014/thumbnail.jp
The extended atmospheres of Mira variables probed by VLTI, VLBA, and APEX
We present an overview on our project to study the extended atmospheres and
dust formation zones of Mira stars using coordinated observations with the Very
Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), and
the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX). The data are interpreted using an
approach of combining recent dynamic model atmospheres with a radiative
transfer model of the dust shell, and combining the resulting model structure
with a maser propagation model.Comment: 5 pages, to appear in Proc. of "Why Galaxies Care About AGB Stars
II", ASP Conf. Ser., Franz Kerschbaum, Thomas Lebzelter, and Bob Wing (eds.
HIP 38939B: A New Benchmark T Dwarf in the Galactic Plane Discovered with Pan-STARRS1
We report the discovery of a wide brown dwarf companion to the mildly
metal-poor ([Fe/H]=-0.24), low galactic latitude (b = 1.88 deg) K4V star HIP
38939. The companion was discovered by its common proper motion with the
primary and its red optical (Pan-STARRS1) and blue infrared (2MASS) colors. It
has a projected separation of 1630 AU and a near-infrared spectral type of
T4.5. As such it is one of only three known companions to a main sequence star
which have early/mid-T spectral types (the others being HN Peg B and eps Indi
B). Using chromospheric activity we estimate an age for the primary of
900{+1900,-600} Myr. This value is also in agreement with the age derived from
the star's weak ROSAT detection. Comparison with evolutionary models for this
age range indicates that HIP 38939B falls in the mass range 38+/-20 Mjup with
an effective temperature range of 1090+/-60 K. Fitting our spectrum with
atmospheric models gives a best fitting temperature of 1100 K. We include our
object in an analysis of the population of benchmark T dwarfs and find that
while older atmospheric models appeared to over-predict the temperature of the
coolest objects compared to evolutionary models, more recent atmospheric models
provide better agreement.Comment: ApJ, in press. Tiny changes incorporated into final version: added
analysis of likelihood of companionship, clarified the fitting proceedure,
and updated the benchmark analysis to highlight when the quoted evolutionary
models use the atmospheric model they are being compared to as a boundary
conditio
Virtual Machine Support for Many-Core Architectures: Decoupling Abstract from Concrete Concurrency Models
The upcoming many-core architectures require software developers to exploit
concurrency to utilize available computational power. Today's high-level
language virtual machines (VMs), which are a cornerstone of software
development, do not provide sufficient abstraction for concurrency concepts. We
analyze concrete and abstract concurrency models and identify the challenges
they impose for VMs. To provide sufficient concurrency support in VMs, we
propose to integrate concurrency operations into VM instruction sets.
Since there will always be VMs optimized for special purposes, our goal is to
develop a methodology to design instruction sets with concurrency support.
Therefore, we also propose a list of trade-offs that have to be investigated to
advise the design of such instruction sets.
As a first experiment, we implemented one instruction set extension for
shared memory and one for non-shared memory concurrency. From our experimental
results, we derived a list of requirements for a full-grown experimental
environment for further research
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