Effect of jumping style on the performance of large and medium elite agility dogs

Dog agility is a rapidly progressing sport worldwide. Consequentially, research and methods to improve technique and performance are becoming highly sought after. Video data were collected of elite agility dogs during a training session, with downstream analysis examining differences in apparent topline angle and jumping speed of large and medium dogs as well as collie breeds and non-collie breeds. The study further examined any correlations between topline angle and jumping speed. Findings suggest that there is a difference between the jump kinematics of large and medium dogs (P=0.001) and between collie breeds and non-collie breeds (P<0.001) with collie breeds jumping faster than non-collie breeds (P=0.013). This information could be used to inform future training regimes and competitive strategies in a breed and size specific way, with the aim to improve long-term health and welfare of canine participants, whilst also ensuring that training and competitive expectations are within biological capabilities

Interrupting the social amplification of risk process: a case study in collective emissions reduction

One of the main approaches we have for studying the progressive divergence of understandings around a risk issue is that of social risk amplification. This article describes a case study of a particular environmental contaminant, a chemical flame retardant that could be interpreted as having produced a risk amplifying process. It describes in particular how a group of industrial organizations acted collectively to reduce emissions of this contaminant, in an apparent attempt to avert regulation and boycotts—that is, to intercept the social amplification process and avoid its secondary effects. The aim of the study was to investigate the constitutive qualities of this collective action: the qualities that defined it and made it effective in the eyes of those involved. These include institutionalisation and independence, the ability to confer individual as well as collective benefit, the capacity to attract (rather than avoid) criticism, and the ‘branding’ that helps communicate what otherwise appear to be a set of unconnected, local actions. Although the risk amplification framework has been criticised for implying that there is some externally given risk level that is subsequently amplified, it does appear to capture the mentality of actors involved in issues of this kind. They talk and act as though they believe they are participants in a risk amplification process

Joint Leverage and Maturity Choices in Real Estate Firms: The Role of the REIT Status

We explore the interdependence of leverage and debt maturity choices in Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and unregulated listed real estate investment companies in the U.S. for the period 1973-2011. We find that the leverage and maturity choices of all listed real estate firms are interdependent, but in contrast to industrial firms, they are not made simultaneously. Across the different types of real estate firms considered, we find substantial differences in the nature of the relationship between leverage and maturity. Leverage determines maturity in non-REITs, whereas maturity is a determinant of leverage in REITs.We suggest that the observed differences reflect the effects of the REIT regulation, rather than solely being a function of real estate as the underlying asset class.We also present novel evidence that the relationship between leverage and maturity in both firm types can be used to moderate the effects of other exogenous financing policies.This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11146-012-9379-7

Key dating features for timber-framed dwellings in Surrey

This article is made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund. Copyright @ The Vernacular Architecture Group 2013. MORE OpenChoice articles are open access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0.The main component of the Surrey Dendrochronology Project is the accurate dating of 177 ‘dwellings’, nearly all by tree-ring analysis. The dates are used to establish date ranges for 52 ‘key features’, which cover many aspects of timber-framing from building type to details of carpentry. It is shown that changes of method and fashion were in many cases surprisingly rapid, almost abrupt in historical terms. Previous dating criteria for timber-framed dwellings in the county have been refined and new criteria introduced. Clusters of change from the 1440s and the 1540s are shown and some possible historical links suggested.The Heritage Lottery Fund, the Domestic Buildings Research Group (Surrey), the Surrey Archaeological Society and the historical societies of Charlwood, Farnham and Nutfield

Dynamical evolution of the Universe in the quark-hadron phase transition and possible nugget formation

We study the dynamics of first-order phase transition in the early Universe when it was $10-50 \mu s$ old with quarks and gluons condensing into hadrons. We look at how the Universe evolved through the phase transition in small as well as large super cooling scenario, specifically exploring the formation of quark nuggets and their possible survival. The nucleation of the hadron phase introduces new distance scales in the Universe, which we estimate along with the hadron fraction, temperature, nucleation time etc. It is of interest to explore whether there is a relic signature of this transition in the form of quark nuggets which might be identified with the recently observed dark objects in our galactic halo and account for the Dark Matter in the Universe at present.Comment: LaTeX file with four postscript figure

Curvature energy effects on strange quark matter nucleation at finite density

We consider the effects of the curvature energy term on thermal strange quark matter nucleation in dense neutron matter. Lower bounds on the temperature at which this process can take place are given and compared to those without the curvature term.Comment: PlainTex, 6 pp., IAG-USP Rep.5

Symmetry structure and phase transitions

We study chiral symmetry structure at finite density and temperature in the presence of external magnetic field and gravity, a situation relevant in the early Universe and in the core of compact stars. We then investigate the dynamical evolution of phase transition in the expanding early Universe and possible formation of quark nuggets and their survival.Comment: Plenary talk given at the 4th. ICPAQGP held at Jaipur, India from Nov 26-30, 2001.laTex 2e file with 8 ps figures and 12 page

A Proper Motion Survey for White Dwarfs with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2

We have performed a search for halo white dwarfs as high proper motion objects in a second epoch WFPC2 image of the Groth-Westphal strip. We identify 24 high proper motion objects with mu > 0.014 ''/yr. Five of these high proper motion objects are identified as strong white dwarf candidates on the basis of their position in a reduced proper motion diagram. We create a model of the Milky Way thin disk, thick disk and stellar halo and find that this sample of white dwarfs is clearly an excess above the < 2 detections expected from these known stellar populations. The origin of the excess signal is less clear. Possibly, the excess cannot be explained without invoking a fourth galactic component: a white dwarf dark halo. We present a statistical separation of our sample into the four components and estimate the corresponding local white dwarf densities using only the directly observable variables, V, V-I, and mu. For all Galactic models explored, our sample separates into about 3 disk white dwarfs and 2 halo white dwarfs. However, the further subdivision into the thin and thick disk and the stellar and dark halo, and the subsequent calculation of the local densities are sensitive to the input parameters of our model for each Galactic component. Using the lowest mean mass model for the dark halo we find a 7% white dwarf halo and six times the canonical value for the thin disk white dwarf density (at marginal statistical significance), but possible systematic errors due to uncertainty in the model parameters likely dominate these statistical error bars. The white dwarf halo can be reduced to around 1.5% of the halo dark matter by changing the initial mass function slightly. The local thin disk white dwarf density in our solution can be made consistent with the canonical value by assuming a larger thin disk scaleheight of 500 pc.Comment: revised version, accepted by ApJ, results unchanged, discussion expande

Relics of the Cosmological QCD Phase Transition

The abundance and size distribution of quark nuggets (QN), formed a few microseconds after the big bang due to first order QCD phase transition in the early universe, has been estimated. It appears that stable QNs could be a viable candidate for cosmological dark matter. The evolution of baryon inhomogeneity due to evaporated (unstable) QNs are also examined.Comment: To appear in Physical Review

Can a galaxy redshift survey measure dark energy clustering?

(abridged) A wide-field galaxy redshift survey allows one to probe galaxy clustering at largest spatial scales, which carries an invaluable information on horizon-scale physics complementarily to the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Assuming the planned survey consisting of z~1 and z~3 surveys with areas of 2000 and 300 square degrees, respectively, we study the prospects for probing dark energy clustering from the measured galaxy power spectrum, assuming the dynamical properties of dark energy are specified in terms of the equation of state and the effective sound speed c_e in the context of an adiabatic cold dark matter dominated model. The dark energy clustering adds a power to the galaxy power spectrum amplitude at spatial scales greater than the sound horizon, and the enhancement is sensitive to redshift evolution of the net dark energy density, i.e. the equation of state. We find that the galaxy survey, when combined with Planck, can distinguish dark energy clustering from a smooth dark energy model such as the quintessence model (c_e=1), when c_e<0.04 (0.02) in the case of the constant equation of state w_0=-0.9 (-0.95). An ultimate full-sky survey of z~1 galaxies allows the detection when c_e<0.08 (0.04) for w_0=0.9 (-0.95). We also investigate a degeneracy between the dark energy clustering and the non-relativistic neutrinos implied from the neutrino oscillation experiments, because the two effects both induce a scale-dependent modification in the galaxy power spectrum shape at largest spatial scales accessible from the galaxy survey. It is shown that a wider redshift coverage can efficiently separate the two effects by utilizing the different redshift dependences, where dark energy clustering is apparent only at low redshifts z<1.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures; minor changes to match the published versio