3,788 research outputs found
Improving Rural Educational Attainment
More often than not, policymakers focus on school-based strategies to spur improvements in the educational progress of students. The 2002 No Child Left Behind Act, which demands greater school accountability for student performance, is a case in point. Yet, what happens in the classroom is only part of the story.In fact, as Lionel J. Beaulieu, Glenn D. Israel and Ronald C. Wimberley show in their chapter in "Challenges for Rural America in the Twenty-First Century", family characteristics have from 5 to 10 times as much impact as school characteristics on reading and math scores of rural U.S. eighth graders.In addition, community characteristics have as much impact as school characteristics on test scores, although both community and chool characteristics tend to be more important in geographically isolated rural areas than those adjacent to metropolitan areas. Clearly, helping rural youth succeed academically is the collective responsibility of families, schools, and communities.This issue brief is a joint product of the Rural Sociological Society and the National Coalition for Rural Entrepreneurship, a collaboration of four Regional Rural Development Centers: The Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development, the Southern Rural Development Center, the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development, and the Western Rural Development Center. Funding was also made available from the Ford Foundation.This brief is part of a policy brief series by the Rural Sociological Society and the Regional Rural Development Centers that stresses the importance of community collective action and developing the capacity of people and organizations to meet the community's needsThe Rural Sociological Society and the Regional Rural Development Centers creates new Public Policy Issue Brief series based on its recent book, "Challenges for Rural America in the Twenty-First Century".The briefs synthesize the context and substance of important issues raised in the book and address alternative policy options, with the goal of bringing important research to the policy community
Tracking the phase-transition energy in disassembly of hot nuclei
In efforts to determine phase transitions in the disintegration of highly
excited heavy nuclei, a popular practice is to parametrise the yields of
isotopes as a function of temperature in the form
, where 's are the measured yields
and and are fitted to the yields. Here would be
interpreted as the phase transition temperature. For finite systems such as
those obtained in nuclear collisions, this parametrisation is only approximate
and hence allows for extraction of in more than one way. In this work we
look in detail at how values of differ, depending on methods of
extraction. It should be mentioned that for finite systems, this approximate
parametrisation works not only at the critical point, but also for first order
phase transitions (at least in some models). Thus the approximate fit is no
guarantee that one is seeing a critical phenomenon. A different but more
conventional search for the nuclear phase transition would look for a maximum
in the specific heat as a function of temperature . In this case is
interpreted as the phase transition temperature. Ideally and would
coincide. We invesigate this possibility, both in theory and from the ISiS
data, performing both canonical () and microcanonical ()
calculations. Although more than one value of can be extracted from the
approximate parmetrisation, the work here points to the best value from among
the choices. Several interesting results, seen in theoretical calculations, are
borne out in experiment.Comment: Revtex, 10 pages including 8 figures and 2 table
The first radial velocity measurements of a microlensing event: no evidence for the predicted binary
The gravitational microlensing technique allows the discovery of exoplanets
around stars distributed in the disk of the galaxy towards the bulge. However,
the alignment of two stars that led to the discovery is unique over the
timescale of a human life and cannot be re-observed. Moreover, the target host
is often very faint and located in a crowded region. These difficulties hamper
and often make impossible the follow-up of the target and study of its possible
companions. Gould et al. (2013) predicted the radial-velocity curve of a binary
system, OGLE-2011-BLG-0417, discovered and characterised from a microlensing
event by Shin et al. (2012). We used the UVES spectrograph mounted at the VLT,
ESO to derive precise radial-velocity measurements of OGLE-2011-BLG-0417. To
gather high-precision on faint targets of microlensing events, we proposed to
use the source star as a reference to measure the lens radial velocities. We
obtained ten radial velocities on the putative V=18 lens with a dispersion of
~100 m/s, spread over one year. Our measurements do not confirm the
microlensing prediction for this binary system. The most likely scenario is
that the assumed V=18 mag lens is actually a blend and not the primary lens
that is 2 magnitude fainter. Further observations and analyses are needed to
understand the microlensing observation and infer on the nature and
characteristics of the lens itself.Comment: submitted on 3rd June 2015 to A&ALette
Juvenile growth and crown morphological plasticity of eastern white pines (Pinus strobus L.) planted along a natural light gradient: Results after six years
Underplanting white pine (Pinus strobus L.) is a promising method to reduce competition and protect against white pine weevil (Pissodes strobi (Peck)) damage. However, shading caused by over-story trees can reduce growth, vigor and survival of white pine. The objective of this study was to determine tile effects of a light gradient on the growth and overall crown morphology of white pine saplings planted in 3-meter strips within a hardwood forest some six years earlier. In 1994, we measured total height and diameter, leader length (in 1994) and numerous crown morphological variables. We then estimated the light environment above the crown of 63 young white pine saplings representing six families of close provenance. White pine grew well (i.e., >20 cm in height/year) for the first six years when planted at light levels between 10 and 66% of full sunlight. Total height and diameter after six years tended to decline more sharply below 30% full sunlight, confirming earlier experiments made in controlled conditions. No significant changes in crown morphology were evident along the light gradient. This lack of crown morphological plasticity presumably contributes to limiting the ability of while pine to grow and compete in a very low light environment. Various silvicultural options are discussed in light of the results obtained in this study
REGIONAL ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF A WATERSHED PLANNING PROCESS TO REDUCE EROSION AND STREAM SEDIMENTATION
Farm-level and watershed-wide land-use changes resulting from policy initiatives are linked to a regional input/output model. As a result not only can the direct economic impacts at the farm and watershed levels be determined, so too can the direct and induced economic impacts at the regional level.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,
Cepheid models based on self-consistent stellar evolution and pulsation calculations: the right answer?
We have computed stellar evolutionary models for stars in a mass range
characteristic of Cepheid variables (3) for different
metallicities representative of the Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds
populations. The stellar evolution calculations are coupled to a linear non
adiabatic stability analysis to get self-consistent mass-period-luminosity
relations. The period - luminosity relation as a function of metallicity is
analysed and compared to the recent EROS observations in the Magellanic Clouds.
The models reproduce the observed width of the instability strips for the SMC
and LMC. We determine a statistical P-L relationship, taking into account the
evolutionary timescales and a mass distribution given by a Salpeter mass
function. Excellent agreement is found with the SMC PL relationship determined
by Sasselov et al. (1997). The models reproduce the change of slope in the P-L
relationship near days discovered recently by the EROS
collaboration (Bauer 1997; Bauer et al. 1998) and thus explain this feature in
term of stellar evolution. Some discrepancy, however, remains for the LMC
Cepheids. The models are also in good agreement with Beat Cepheids observed by
the MACHO and EROS collaborations. We show that most of the 1H/2H Beat Cepheids
have not yet ignited central helium burning; they are just evolving off the
Main Sequence toward the red giant branch.Comment: 18 pages, Latex file, uses aasms4.sty, accepted for publication in
ApJ Letter
MOA-2011-BLG-293Lb: First Microlensing Planet possibly in the Habitable Zone
We used Keck adaptive optics observations to identify the first planet
discovered by microlensing to lie in or near the habitable zone, i.e., at
projected separation AU from its host, being the highest microlensing mass definitely identified.
The planet has a mass , and could in principle
have habitable moons. This is also the first planet to be identified as being
in the Galactic bulge with good confidence: kpc. The
planet/host masses and distance were previously not known, but only estimated
using Bayesian priors based on a Galactic model (Yee et al. 2012). These
estimates had suggested that the planet might be a super-Jupiter orbiting an M
dwarf, a very rare class of planets. We obtained high-resolution images
using Keck adaptive optics to detect the lens and so test this hypothesis. We
clearly detect light from a G dwarf at the position of the event, and exclude
all interpretations other than that this is the lens with high confidence
(95%), using a new astrometric technique. The calibrated magnitude of the
planet host star is . We infer the following probabilities
for the three possible orbital configurations of the gas giant planet: 53% to
be in the habitable zone, 35% to be near the habitable zone, and 12% to be
beyond the snow line, depending on the atmospherical conditions and the
uncertainties on the semimajor axis.Comment: Accepted by ApJ, 21 pages, 4 figure
A Southern Hemisphere origin for campanulid angiosperms, with traces of the break-up of Gondwana
Background
New powerful biogeographic methods have focused attention on long-standing hypotheses regarding the influence of the break-up of Gondwana on the biogeography of Southern Hemisphere plant groups. Studies to date have often concluded that these groups are too young to have been influenced by these ancient continental movements. Here we examine a much larger and older angiosperm clade, the Campanulidae, and infer its biogeographic history by combining Bayesian divergence time information with a likelihood-based biogeographic model focused on the Gondwanan landmasses. Results
Our analyses imply that campanulids likely originated in the middle Albian (~105 Ma), and that a substantial portion of the early evolutionary history of campanulids took place in the Southern Hemisphere, despite their greater species richness in the Northern Hemisphere today. We also discovered several disjunctions that show biogeographic and temporal correspondence with the break-up of Gondwana. Conclusions
While it is possible to discern traces of the break-up of Gondwana in clades that are old enough, it will generally be difficult to be confident in continental movement as the prime cause of geographic disjunctions. This follows from the need for the geographic disjunction, the inferred biogeographic scenario, and the dating of the lineage splitting events to be consistent with the causal hypothesis
Two Suns in The Sky: Stellar Multiplicity in Exoplanet Systems
We present results of a reconnaissance for stellar companions to all 131
radial-velocity-detected candidate extrasolar planetary systems known as of
July 1, 2005. CPM companions were investigated using the multi-epoch DSS
images, and confirmed by matching the trigonometric parallax distances of the
primaries to companion distances estimated photometrically. We also attempt to
confirm or refute companions listed in the Washington Double Star Catalog, the
Catalogs of Nearby Stars, in Hipparcos results, and in Duquennoy & Mayor
(1991).
Our findings indicate that a lower limit of 30 (23%) of the 131 exoplanet
systems have stellar companions. We report new stellar companions to HD 38529
and HD 188015, and a new candidate companion to HD 169830. We confirm many
previously reported stellar companions, including six stars in five systems
that are recognized for the first time as companions to exoplanet hosts. We
have found evidence that 20 entries in the Washington Double Star Catalog are
not gravitationally bound companions. At least three, and possibly five, of the
exoplanet systems reside in triple star systems. Three exoplanet systems have
potentially close-in stellar companions ~ 20 AU away from the primary. Finally,
two of the exoplanet systems contain white dwarf companions. This comprehensive
assessment of exoplanet systems indicates that solar systems are found in a
variety of stellar multiplicity environments - singles, binaries, and triples;
and that planets survive the post-main-sequence evolution of companion stars.Comment: 52 pages, 7 figures, Accepted for publication in Ap
Optimizing the Model of the Viking-400 UAS
This project intends to update and redesign imperfections in the scanned 3D CAD model of the Viking 400 aircraft. This aircraft, similar to the Sierra-B UAS, will carry payloads of scientific instruments for research purposes. The goals of this project are to modify the current scanned model such that it better represents the physical qualities of the aircraft, as well as creating the features that are missing from the model. As the model was imported from a different software, many of the critical surfaces did not accurately reflect the actual aircraft. Those parts of the model were redesigned entirely so that they can be edited for future use, as well as correctly representing the aircraft as it is now. Additionally, parts of the aircraft that did not appear in the scanned model were designed and added to the new model. In order to prioritize ease of use for future missions, the model has been reorganized in a logical fashion that enables modification of specific parts of the aircraft. The organization of this model imitates the drawing tree of the Sierra-B, with the intention of maintaining a functional system of redesign, analysis, and implementation. Ultimately, this project will be a catalyst for making Viking 400 into a functional aircraft and increasing scientific research in airborne vehicles
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