Fitting the Viking lander surface pressure cycle with a Mars General Circulation Model

We present a systematic attempt to fit the Viking lander surface pressure cycle using a Mars General Circulation Model, MarsWRF. Following the earlier study by Wood and Paige (1992) using a one-dimensional model, high-precision fitting was achieved by tuning five time-independent parameters: the albedo and emissivity of the seasonal caps of the two hemispheres and the total CO_2 inventory in the atmosphere frost system. We used a linear iterative method to derive the best fit parameters: albedo of the northern cap = 0.795, emissivity of the northern cap = 0.485, albedo of the southern cap = 0.461, emissivity of the southern cap = 0.785, and total CO_2 mass = 2.83 × 10^(16) kg. If these parameters are used in MarsWRF, the smoothed surface pressure residual at the VL1 site is always smaller than several Pascal through a year. As in other similar studies, the best fit parameters do not match well with the current estimation of the seasonal cap radiative properties, suggesting that important physics contributing to the energy balance not explicitly included in MarsWRF have been effectively aliased into the derived parameters. One such effect is likely the variation of thermal conductivity with depth in the regolith due to the presence of water ice. Including such a parameterization in the fitting process improves the reasonableness of the best fit cap properties, mostly improving the emissivities. The conductivities required in the north to provide the best fit are higher than those required in the south. A completely physically reasonable set of fit parameters could still not be attained. Like all prior published GCM simulations, none of the cases considered are capable of predicting a residual southern CO_2 cap

Chapel Hill, Missouri: Lost Visions of America's Vanguard on the Western Frontier 1820 to 1865

Title from PDF of title page, viewed on September 30, 2014Thesis advisor: Diane Mutti BurkeVitaIncludes bibliographic references (pages 151-159)Thesis (M. A.)--Dept. of History. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2014Despite its present circumstance as an extinct Missouri town in the geographic heart of the Midwest, Chapel Hill College was once the vanguard of the burgeoning American empire. In 1852, Chapel Hill College stood as a monument to the triumph of the small slaveholding society that migrated laterally across the Mississippi and settled in western Missouri. The school's success and inevitable failure is a microcosm of the history of migration into western Missouri that was aided and abetted by government, churches, and men perched atop the pinnacle of power. The history of the region around Chapel Hill has been eclipsed by the rise of Kansas City, Bleeding Kansas, and the Civil War. From the 1840s until the mid 1850s the towns southwest of present day Kansas City thrived along with the trade and travel connected to the Santa Fe and Texas trails. The communities around Chapel Hill, Pleasant Hill, and Lone Jack were flourishing until they were destroyed by the tumult of the Border War that merged into the general violence of the Civil War. Several small Missouri towns went up in smoke and along with them went their histories. Chapel Hill is exactly such a town. This thesis examines the factors that created the town and the college on the geographic edge of the American frontier. It argues that settlers to the area had historic and cultural roots that eased their migration. Technological innovations expedited their move west and shaped the way they thought of the future. The society that built the school was supported economically and militarily by government, underpinned by smallscale slavery, and girded by religion. It further argues that the wealth generated from the Santa Fe trade created a local economy that allowed the school to briefly thrive. The school and town were destroyed during the war and have virtually disappeared in the historic record. According to the scant historic record, the school closed amidst a drought and a downturn in the economy. This thesis examines evidence that suggests the swirling political storm over Bleeding Kansas was an additional cause for the closing of the schoolAbstract -- List of illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- Dedication -- Introduction -- Charter generation -- Pearl on a string -- Recipe for war -- This unhappy struggle-- Conclusion -- Appendix -- Photograph permissions -- List of reference

Effects of Cooperative and Individual Integrated Learning System on Attitudes and Achievement in Mathematics

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of a computer-based Integrated Learning Systems (ILS) model used with adult high school students engaging mathematics activities. This study examined achievement, attitudinal and behavior differences between students completing ILS activities in a traditional, individualized format compared to cooperative learning groups

Observation of quantum interference as a function of Berry's phase in a complex Hadamard optical network

Emerging models of quantum computation driven by multi-photon quantum interference, while not universal, may offer an exponential advantage over classical computers for certain problems. Implementing these circuits via geometric phase gates could mitigate requirements for error correction to achieve fault tolerance while retaining their relative physical simplicity. We report an experiment in which a geometric phase is embedded in an optical network with no closed-loops, enabling quantum interference between two photons as a function of the phase.Comment: Comments welcom

The use of numbers by journalists in the coverage of crises: a study of seven humanitarian emergencies in the UK press

Numbers are used across the communication of humanitarian crises to identify the scale of suffering, to refer to the causes of emergencies and to outline the solutions provided by the international community. But these numbers do not operate in an apolitical, scientific capacity; instead, they are intimately linked to notions of power and governance. Therefore, it is important to understand how those communicating quantitative information engage with these numbers. The use of numbers by journalists working for UK news media organisations is the focus of this thesis. My research design centres on seven humanitarian crises that occurred during 2017: Manus Island detention centre, Hurricane Irma, La Puebla earthquake, NHS winter crisis, Rohingya refugee crisis, conflict in Yemen and the South Sudan famine. These emergencies are analysed through a mixed-methods process that involved five stages. First, a content analysis of a corpus of 978 articles on humanitarian crises. Second, a focused thematic analysis of specific articles. Third, a case study approach to place certain stories within an information flow. Fourth, the analysis of publicly accessibly interviews with journalists who use numbers. Fifth, the collection and analysis of semi-structured interviews with journalists who authored at least one article in my corpus. My findings outline that the use of numbers is widespread across news coverage of humanitarian crises. There was a stark difference, however, between the way the domestic “humanitarian crisis” (the NHS winter crisis) was covered compared to the six international crises. My textual analysis highlighted how those covering international crises often used the numbers they received from humanitarian sources uncritically. In doing so, reporters often legitimised the interventionist policies put forward by these statistical sources – facilitating humanitarian governance. Those that covered the NHS winter crisis, on the other hand, were more likely to derive statistics from publicly accessible databases. These statistics were often used to criticise the NHS and the government, pointing to significant problems within the health service. In this context, more emphasis is placed on the concept of “open-book governance” where the logics of the database, and the power of certain institutions to manipulate these databases, is of primary concern. These findings make three clear contributions to scholarship. First, the thesis provides a nuanced and comprehensive insight to journalists’ use of numbers. Second, it emphasises the need to examine quantitative governance through its communication. Third, my findings emphasise the role that numbers have in meaning-making. Taken together, this thesis offers important theoretical and empirical insights into the communication of numbers during humanitarian crises

Consumer Behaviors Of Drone Delivery

Drone delivery was first introduced to the world by Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos on a 60 minutes episode. With the evolution of e-commerce and B2C delivery, Bezos had thought of a way to reduce the shipping time in an emerging market. He claimed that Amazon could deliver the product to the consumer quicker and more efficiently. Major players would follow suit by creating their own drone delivery service such as: DHL, Google, Dominos and UPS. This paper will focus on consumers’ perspectives of the future of drone delivery and analyze their willingness to adopt the service. An anonymous survey was conducted to see if there were consistent groupings of people that had similar viewpoints about drone delivery. The survey questions were based on a literature review regarding risks/insurance issues for commercial flight of drones and the diffusion of innovation theory. A cluster analysis, using SAS software, resulted in 4 groups of people that were compared to the 5 groups from Roger’s Adopter Category theory. The results suggested that almost 50% of the respondents would utilize a drone delivery service. That’s a significant increase given the fact that most if not all of them have never utilized or even seen a drone delivery service

Carbon Dioxide Removal via Passive Thermal Approaches

A paper describes a regenerable approach to separate carbon dioxide from other cabin gases by means of cooling until the carbon dioxide forms carbon dioxide ice on the walls of the physical device. Currently, NASA space vehicles remove carbon dioxide by reaction with lithium hydroxide (LiOH) or by adsorption to an amine, a zeolite, or other sorbent. Use of lithium hydroxide, though reliable and well-understood, requires significant mass for all but the shortest missions in the form of lithium hydroxide pellets, because the reaction of carbon dioxide with lithium hydroxide is essentially irreversible. This approach is regenerable, uses less power than other historical approaches, and it is almost entirely passive, so it is more economical to operate and potentially maintenance- free for long-duration missions. In carbon dioxide removal mode, this approach passes a bone-dry stream of crew cabin atmospheric gas through a metal channel in thermal contact with a radiator. The radiator is pointed to reject thermal loads only to space. Within the channel, the working stream is cooled to the sublimation temperature of carbon dioxide at the prevailing cabin pressure, leading to formation of carbon dioxide ice on the channel walls. After a prescribed time or accumulation of carbon dioxide ice, for regeneration of the device, the channel is closed off from the crew cabin and the carbon dioxide ice is sublimed and either vented to the environment or accumulated for recovery of oxygen in a fully regenerative life support system

Race/Socioeconomic Status and COVID-19: A Narrative Review

Background: COVID-19 infection has resulted in more than 620 million infections and 6.6 million deaths. Since the pandemic, many articles have been published on socioeconomic and racial disparities in COVID-19 infection and its outcomes. This article aims to review the impact of race and socioeconomic status on COVID-19 infection and vice versa. Findings: Most studies showed an increase in COVID infections and hospitalizations in communities of color, with some showing higher mortality rates while others did not. Social determinants, including insurance and care access, food security, housing security appear to have worsened over the same period for these communities. Our review also showed social determinants accentuated morbidity and mortality of COVID-19 infections and the pandemic also made the disparities in social determinants of health more pronounced. Conclusion: Socioeconomic factors are associated with poorer health outcomes, and these were exacerbated during the COVID pandemic. Many of these social determinants of health are believed to be modifiable. More research is needed to identify interventions that can positively impact social determinants and have downstream effects on health

A Struggle Against Underdevelopment in the Geography of Rural Terrorism in South-South Nigeria

Two major pictures commonly associated with rural South-South Nigeria are poverty and spatial underdevelopment. Efforts of successive government to address these two nightmarish problems had not yielded much success. While the search for lasting solution among policy makers and academic scholars is still on, a new phenomenon called “rural terrorism” has suddenly emerged in the rural geography of South-South Nigeria. Rural terrorism though new in this part of the globe has become a plague in rural South-South Nigeria. Serious questions have emerged in research circle as to the ‘why’ and ‘how’ as it relates to “rural terrorism”. Through a clinical research, this paper was able to established that the birth and spread of “rural terrorism” was a response by the youths of the area to the geography of spatial and economic underdevelopment of the region; a means to survival in an economically poor and socially backward region. This paper has suggested that increased investment in the socio-economic development of the region will help in curbing this menace. This work is a product of the combination of intense field work and the work of previous scholars relating to the subject matter. Keywords: Terrorism, Rural, South-South, Poverty, Nigeri