Monkeys and Camels and Hippos...Oh My! An Illustrators journey through South Asia

John Thompson, an illustration professor atSyracuseUniversity, informed me in the fall semester of my junior year that he was organizing a painting course which would fly students toIndiafor fifteen days during our winter break. The students would return and spend the next semester creating pieces based on their travels. I knew that the trip would be an incredible experience and that I had to take advantage of this amazing opportunity. While inIndiawe passed stores bursting with colors and patterns, we walked through villages with indigo blankets laid out like patchwork on the hot sandy ground, and we observed carpet weavers designing intricate patterns into their woven masterpieces. We visited little towns and walked on the glistening tiles of the Taj Mahal. Our group included six students, John, and our incredible guide Bhoju, without whom we may not have made it back alive! We hardly knew each other when we met at the airport to begin our journey, but during the time we spent together we became incredibly close. Monkeys and Camels and Hippos...Oh My! is a series of work based on our group experiences while inIndia. The main characters in the story are John and the girls in the class, as well as the people and animals that we encountered during our trip. I took the liberty to abstract and fantasize our journey, creating a story that is largely built on the imagination and personality of our group as we experienced the people, animals, landscapes, food, and culture ofIndia. This book is intended to be read as a graphic novel, but the story is not depicted in standard linear sequential form. Therefore I expect each reader to have their own interpretation, bringing their individual imagination and personality to this tale. Although every piece in the series is not fully painted, there are final sketches in place of any incomplete paintings to enable the reader to follow the story. Enjoy

Designed to Include: A Pilot Study Offering Creative Design Solutions for People Living with Disabilities

People living with disabilities (PLWD) struggle with clothing-related barriers to social participation, which can impact their quality of life and independent living. PLWD navigate both physical and attitudinal barriers and the individual models that frame disability often describe the disability as a personal tragedy or problem that the PLWD must overcome. The aim of this exploratory pilot study was (a) identifying clothing-related problems, and (b) using an inclusive design approach to support the clothing-related problems facing PLWD

Barriers to Independent Living: Unmet Apparel Needs for People Living with Disabilities

People living with a disability (PLWD) struggle to find apparel that fits their needs and the appropriateness of the activities they wish to engage. These unmet apparel needs create barriers to social participation, , and also extend into areas that impact educational and employment opportunities affecting their quality of life (Corrigan, Larson, & Rusch, 2009; Kabel, McBee-Black, & Dimka, 2016). Wingate, Kaiser, & Freeman (1985) suggest that lack of appropriate apparel can make PLWD feel isolated, and Lamb (2001) argued that more research is needed to investigate the barriers that exist for PLWD and the extent to which apparel contributes to social exclusion. Using the social model of disability this qualitative research study was designed to explore the unmet apparel needs of PLWD. The results from the study suggest that identified unmet apparel needs negatively impact the social lives of PLWD, which supports the social model of disability

The Spin Temperature of Warm Interstellar H I

Collisional excitation of the 21cm HI hyperfine transition is not strong enough to thermalize it in warm neutral (``intercloud'') interstellar gas, which we show by simultaneously solving the equations of ionization and collisional equilibrium under typical conditions. Coupling of the 21cm excitation temperature and local gas motions may be established by the Ly-alpha radiation field, but only if strong Galactic Ly-alpha radiation permeates the gas in question. The Ly-alpha radiation tends to impart to the gas its own characteristic temperature, which is determined by the range of gas motions that occur on the spatial scale of the Ly-alpha scattering. In general, the calculation of H I spin temperatures is a more difficult and interesting problem than might have been expected, as is any interpretation of H I spin temperature measurements.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, accepted for A&

Modelling Primordial Gas in Numerical Cosmology

We have reviewed the chemistry and cooling behaviour of low-density (n<10^4 cm^-3) primordial gas and devised a cooling model wich involves 19 collisional and 9 radiative processes and is applicable for temperatures in the range (1 K < T < 10^8 K). We derived new fits of rate coefficients for the photo-attachment of neutral hydrogen, the formation of molecular hydrogen via H-, charge exchange between H2 and H+, electron detachment of H- by neutral hydrogen, dissociative recombination of H2 with slow electrons, photodissociation of H2+, and photodissociation of H2. Further it was found that the molecular hydrogen produced through the gas-phase processes, H2+ + H -> H2 + H+, and H- + H -> H2 + e-, is likely to be converted into its para configuration on a faster time scale than the formation time scale. We have tested the model extensively and shown it to agree well with former studies. We further studied the chemical kinetics in great detail and devised a minimal model which is substantially simpler than the full reaction network but predicts correct abundances. This minimal model shows convincingly that 12 collisional processes are sufficient to model the H, He, H+, H-, He+, He++, and H2 abundances in low density primordial gas for applications with no radiation fields.Comment: 26 pages of text, 4 tables, and 6 eps figures. The paper is also available at http://zeus.ncsa.uiuc.edu:8080/~abel/PGas/bib.html Submitted to New Astronomy. Note that some of the hyperlinks given in the paper are still under constructio

Persistent drying in the tropics linked to natural forcing.

Approximately half of the world's population lives in the tropics, and future changes in the hydrological cycle will impact not just the freshwater supplies but also energy production in areas dependent upon hydroelectric power. It is vital that we understand the mechanisms/processes that affect tropical precipitation and the eventual surface hydrological response to better assess projected future regional precipitation trends and variability. Paleo-climate proxies are well suited for this purpose as they provide long time series that pre-date and complement the present, often short instrumental observations. Here we present paleo-precipitation data from a speleothem located in Mesoamerica that reveal large multi-decadal declines in regional precipitation, whose onset coincides with clusters of large volcanic eruptions during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This reconstruction provides new independent evidence of long-lasting volcanic effects on climate and elucidates key aspects of the causal chain of physical processes determining the tropical climate response to global radiative forcing.A.W. thanks the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology both for hosting his sabbatical and for the analysis of the stable isotopes. A.W. also thanks Cluster of Excellence CliSAP at the University of Hamburg for sponsoring collaboration. Collection of GU-Xi-1 by T.M. was supported through a sabbatical granted by the University of Puerto Rico (Mayagu¨ez) and the National Geographic Society Grant no. 3089-85 to T.M. partially supported survey of the cave and location of the stalagmite. The research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation ATM-1003502. Y.K. was also supported by grant NA10OAR4310137 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration— Climate Program Office. S.F.M.B. acknowledges financial support from the Schweizer National Fond Project CRS122 132646/1. D.B. was supported by National Science Foundation Grant ATM-1003219. G.L. acknowledges support from Helmholtz through PACES and REKLIM. We acknowledge the World Climate Research Program Working Group on Coupled Modeling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modelling groups for producing and making available their model output. Paul Sammarco (LUMCON) is thanked for some advice regarding statistical and data interpretation. This paper is a Lamont Doherty Contribution number 7901. LB was supported by the French National Research Agency under EL PASO grant 10-Blan-608-01.This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available at http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150714/ncomms8627/full/ncomms8627.html

Persistent drying in the tropics linked to natural forcing

Approximately half of the world's population lives in the tropics, and future changes in the hydrological cycle will impact not just the freshwater supplies but also energy production in areas dependent upon hydroelectric power. It is vital that we understand the mechanisms/processes that affect tropical precipitation and the eventual surface hydrological response to better assess projected future regional precipitation trends and variability. Paleo-climate proxies are well suited for this purpose as they provide long time series that pre-date and complement the present, often short instrumental observations. Here we present paleo-precipitation data from a speleothem located in Mesoamerica that reveal large multi-decadal declines in regional precipitation, whose onset coincides with clusters of large volcanic eruptions during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This reconstruction provides new independent evidence of long-lasting volcanic effects on climate and elucidates key aspects of the causal chain of physical processes determining the tropical climate response to global radiative forcing

Trends in Household and Child Food Insecurity Among Families with Young Children from 2007 to 2013

Background: 2007-2013 spanned an economic downturn with rising food costs. While Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits increased during those years by 13.6% from the 2009 American Recovery Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the impact of these competing conditions on household food insecurity (HFI, household food insecure but child food secure) and child food insecurity (CFI, household and child food insecure) in households with infants and toddlers has not been investigated. Objective: To describe HFI and CFI in households participating in SNAP vs. households likely eligible but not participating (No SNAP). Design: Repeat cross-sectional Participants/Setting: 19,999 caregivers of childrenChildren’s HealthWatch survey in emergency and primary care departments in 5 US cities. Main Outcome Measures: The 18-item U.S. Household Food Security Survey (HFSS) measured HFI (≥3 affirmative responses on non-child-specific questions) and CFI (≥2 affirmative responses to eight child-specific questions). Statistical analyses performed: The sample was stratified by SNAP/ No SNAP. Multinomial logistic regression analyses examined the association between SNAP receipt and HFI and CFI. Results: Across the study period, controlling for confounders including year, households with SNAP were 17% less likely to experience HFI (AOR 0.83; 95% CI,0 .75, 0.91; p Conclusions: Receipt of SNAP vs. No SNAP was associated with decreased prevalence of HFI and CFI during much of the economic downturn; this impact waned as the buying power of the boost in benefit amounts during the ARRA period eroded