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