Absorbance of the OH Radical in a Specific Wavelength Interval Near 309A

The absorbance of the OH radical as a function of optical density was studied by computing the absorbance for an incident radiation in the wavelength interval 3089A-3097A. The absorbance was studied for 3 different temperatures and various values of the parameters specifying the line shapes and magnitude of the spectral absorption coefficient

Numerical modelling of MPA-CVD reactors with the discontinuous Galerkin finite element method

In this article we develop a fully self consistent mathematical model describing the formation of a hydrogen plasma in a microwave power assisted chemical vapour deposition (MPA-CVD) reactor employed for the manufacture of synthetic diamond. The underlying multi-physics model includes constituent equations for the background gas mass average velocity, gas temperature, electromagnetic field energy and plasma density. The proposed mathematical model is numerically approximated based on exploiting the discontinuous Galerkin finite element method. We demonstrate the practical performance of this computational approach on a variety of CVD reactor geometries for a range of operating conditions

Comparing verbal autopsy cause of death findings as determined by physician coding and probabilistic modelling: a public health analysis of 54 000 deaths in Africa and Asia.

BACKGROUND: Coverage of civil registration and vital statistics varies globally, with most deaths in Africa and Asia remaining either unregistered or registered without cause of death. One important constraint has been a lack of fit-for-purpose tools for registering deaths and assigning causes in situations where no doctor is involved. Verbal autopsy (interviewing care-givers and witnesses to deaths and interpreting their information into causes of death) is the only available solution. Automated interpretation of verbal autopsy data into cause of death information is essential for rapid, consistent and affordable processing. METHODS: Verbal autopsy archives covering 54 182 deaths from five African and Asian countries were sourced on the basis of their geographical, epidemiological and methodological diversity, with existing physician-coded causes of death attributed. These data were unified into the WHO 2012 verbal autopsy standard format, and processed using the InterVA-4 model. Cause-specific mortality fractions from InterVA-4 and physician codes were calculated for each of 60 WHO 2012 cause categories, by age group, sex and source. Results from the two approaches were assessed for concordance and ratios of fractions by cause category. As an alternative metric, the Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed ranks test with two one-sided tests for stochastic equivalence was used. FINDINGS: The overall concordance correlation coefficient between InterVA-4 and physician codes was 0.83 (95% CI 0.75 to 0.91) and this increased to 0.97 (95% CI 0.96 to 0.99) when HIV/AIDS and pulmonary TB deaths were combined into a single category. Over half (53%) of the cause category ratios between InterVA-4 and physician codes by source were not significantly different from unity at the 99% level, increasing to 62% by age group. Wilcoxon tests for stochastic equivalence also demonstrated equivalence. CONCLUSIONS: These findings show strong concordance between InterVA-4 and physician-coded findings over this large and diverse data set. Although these analyses cannot prove that either approach constitutes absolute truth, there was high public health equivalence between the findings. Given the urgent need for adequate cause of death data from settings where deaths currently pass unregistered, and since the WHO 2012 verbal autopsy standard and InterVA-4 tools represent relatively simple, cheap and available methods for determining cause of death on a large scale, they should be used as current tools of choice to fill gaps in cause of death data

The Lifetime of FRIIs in Groups and Clusters: Implications for Radio-Mode Feedback

We determine the maximum lifetime t_max of 52 FRII radio sources found in 26 central group galaxies from cross correlation of the Berlind SDSS group catalog with the VLA FIRST survey. Mock catalogs of FRII sources were produced to match the selection criteria of FIRST and the redshift distribution of our parent sample, while an analytical model was used to calculate source sizes and luminosities. The maximum lifetime of FRII sources was then determined via a comparison of the observed and model projected length distributions. We estimate the average FRII lifetime is 1.5x10^7 years and the duty cycle is ~8x10^8 years. Degeneracies between t_max and the model parameters: jet power distribution, axial ratio, energy injection index, and ambient density introduce at most a factor of two uncertainty in our lifetime estimate. In addition, we calculate the radio active galactic nuclei (AGN) fraction in central group galaxies as a function of several group and host galaxy properties. The lifetime of radio sources recorded here is consistent with the quasar lifetime, even though these FRIIs have substantially sub-Eddington accretion. These results suggest a fiducial time frame for energy injection from AGN in feedback models. If the morphology of a given extended radio source is set by large-scale environment, while the lifetime is determined by the details of the accretion physics, this FRII lifetime is relevant for all extended radio sources.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ. High resolution paper available at http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~bird/BMK07.pd

International Coercion, Emulation and Policy Diffusion: Market-Oriented Infrastructure Reforms, 1977-1999

Why do some countries adopt market-oriented reforms such as deregulation, privatization and liberalization of competition in their infrastructure industries while others do not? Why did the pace of adoption accelerate in the 1990s? Building on neo-institutional theory in sociology, we argue that the domestic adoption of market-oriented reforms is strongly influenced by international pressures of coercion and emulation. We find robust support for these arguments with an event-history analysis of the determinants of reform in the telecommunications and electricity sectors of as many as 205 countries and territories between 1977 and 1999. Our results also suggest that the coercive effect of multilateral lending from the IMF, the World Bank or Regional Development Banks is increasing over time, a finding that is consistent with anecdotal evidence that multilateral organizations have broadened the scope of the “conditionality” terms specifying market-oriented reforms imposed on borrowing countries. We discuss the possibility that, by pressuring countries into policy reform, cross-national coercion and emulation may not produce ideal outcomes.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40099/3/wp713.pd

The Molecular Biogeography of the Indo-Pacific: Testing Hypotheses With Multispecies Genetic Patterns

Aim: To test hypothesized biogeographic partitions of the tropical Indo-Pacific Ocean with phylogeographic data from 56 taxa, and to evaluate the strength and nature of barriers emerging from this test. \u3eLocation: The Indo-Pacific Ocean. Time Period: Pliocene through the Holocene. Major Taxa Studied: Fifty-six marine species. Methods: We tested eight biogeographic hypotheses for partitioning of the Indo-Pacific using a novel modification to analysis of molecular variance. Putative barriers to gene flow emerging from this analysis were evaluated for pairwise ΦST, and these ΦST distributions were compared to distributions from randomized datasets and simple coalescent simulations of vicariance arising from the Last Glacial Maximum. We then weighed the relative contribution of distance versus environmental or geographic barriers to pairwise ΦST with a distance-based redundancy analysis (dbRDA). Results: We observed a diversity of outcomes, although the majority of species fit a few broad biogeographic regions. Repeated coalescent simulation of a simple vicariance model yielded a wide distribution of pairwise ΦST that was very similar to empirical distributions observed across five putative barriers to gene flow. Three of these barriers had median ΦST that were significantly larger than random expectation. Only 21 of 52 species analysed with dbRDA rejected the null model. Among these, 15 had overwater distance as a significant predictor of pairwise ΦST, while 11 were significant for geographic or environmental barriers other than distance. Main Conclusions: Although there is support for three previously described barriers, phylogeographic discordance in the Indo-Pacific Ocean indicates incongruity between processes shaping the distributions of diversity at the species and population levels. Among the many possible causes of this incongruity, genetic drift provides the most compelling explanation: given massive effective population sizes of Indo-Pacific species, even hard vicariance for tens of thousands of years can yield ΦST values that range from 0 to nearly 0.5

Extensive air showers with TeV-scale quantum gravity

One of the possible consequences of the existence of extra degrees of freedom beyond the electroweak scale is the increase of neutrino-nucleon cross sections ($\sigma_{\nu N}$) beyond Standard Model predictions. At ultra-high energies this may allow the existence of neutrino-initiated extensive air showers. In this paper, we examine the most relevant observables of such showers. Our analysis indicates that the future Pierre Auger Observatory could be potentially powerful in probing models with large compact dimensions.Comment: 7 pages revtex, 5 eps fig