System study of the carbon dioxide observational platform system (CO-OPS): Project overview

The resulting options from a system study for a near-space, geo-stationary, observational monitoring platform system for use in the Department of Energy's (DOE) National Carbon Dioxide Observational Platform System (CO-OPS) on the greenhouse effect are discussed. CO-OPS is being designed to operate continuously for periods of up to 3 months in quasi-fixed position over most global regional targets of interest and could make horizon observations over a land-sea area of circular diameter up to about 600 to 800 statute miles. This affords the scientific and engineering community a low-cost means of operating their payloads for monitoring the regional parameters they deem relevant to their investigations of the carbon dioxide greenhouse effect at one-tenth the cost of most currently utilized comparable remote sensing techniques

The Elusive Experience of Agency

I here present some doubts about whether Mandik’s (2010) proposed intermediacy and recurrence constraints are necessary and sufficient for agentive experience. I also argue that in order to vindicate the conclusion that agentive experience is an exclusively perceptual phenomenon (Prinz, 2007), it is not enough to show that the predictions produced by forward models of planned motor actions are conveyed by mock sensory signals. Rather, it must also be shown that the outputs of “comparator” mechanisms that compare these predictions against actual sensory feedback are also coded in a perceptual representational format

The experience of coping with chronic pain : a phenomenological investigation

The goal of this investigation was to describe the thematic structure of how people experience and cope with chronic pain. To accomplish this task, phenomenological interviews were conducted with twelve different participants who had chronic pain for at least six months duration.Participants responded to a research question which asked them to describe how they coped with chronic pain.All interviews were audio taped and then transcribed.Following this, individual protocols were interpreted within the context of a phenomenological research group. In this group, an attempt is made to describe the thematic structure of the experience of coping with chronic pain as articulated by participants. On the basis of these procedures, a two part thematic structure emerged: one describing the experience of chronic pain and the second describing how participants coped with the pain. Four themes described the experience of chronic pain itself: (1) Invisibility toothers, (2) Limitations, (3) Out of control, and(4) Separation. Five themes emerged to describe the ways in which participants reported coping with each of these various themes Characterizing the experience of chronic pain: (1) Hiding/Revealing, (2) Accepting/Denying,VI(3) Enduring/Managing, (4) Connecting/Withdrawing, and(5) Monitoring/Evaluating/Deciding. Taken together, these themes formed the structure of coping with chronic pain for participants in this study.Each of these themes was inextricably connected with one another despite the fact that all emerged as figure within the context of a changed way of life for participants. The themes of coping were derived from the themes of the experience of pain and represented a method by which participants sought to modulate the experience of chronic pain. In describing one theme, it was necessary to include aspects of the other themes.The findings of the current study are related to the existing literature in the field of counseling psychology and to that of medicine. Suggestions for researchers,therapists, and health care providers are offered;implications for the treatment of chronic pain also were discussed. These suggestions and implications are derived from the current investigation, which emphasizes the interrelatedness of all aspects of the experience of coping with chronic pain

Perceiving the Present: Systematization of Illusions or Illusion of Systematization?

Mark Changizi et al. (2008) claim that it is possible systematically to organize more than 50 kinds of illusions in a 7 × 4 matrix of 28 classes. This systematization, they further maintain, can be explained by the operation of a single visual processing latency correction mechanism that they call “perceiving the present” (PTP). This brief report raises some concerns about the way a number of illusions are classified by the proposed systematization. It also poses two general problems—one empirical and one conceptual—for the PTP approach

Evaluation of the gn-->pi-p differential cross sections in the Delta-isobar region

Differential cross sections for the process gn-->pi-p have been extracted from MAMI-B measurements of gd-->pi-pp, accounting for final-state interaction effects, using a diagrammatic technique taking into account the NN and piN final-state interaction amplitudes. Results are compared to previous measurements of the inverse process, pi-p--> ng, and recent multipole analyses.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. v2: Further clarifications and minor changes. A new figure inserte

On the Extraction of Cross Sections for pi0 and eta Photoproduction off Neutrons from Deuteron Data

We discuss the procedure of extracting the photoproduction cross section for neutral pseudoscalar mesons off neutrons from deuteron data. The main statement is that the final-state interaction (FSI) corrections for the proton and neutron target are in general not equal, but for pi0 production there are special cases were they have to be identical and there are large regions in the parameter space of incident photon energy and pion polar angle, \theta^*, where they happen to be quite similar. The corrections for both target nucleons are practically identical for $\pi_0$ production in the energy range of the Delta(1232)3/2+ resonance due to the specific isospin structure of this excitation. Also above the $\Delta$-isobar range large differences between proton and neutron correction factors are only predicted for extreme forward angles ($\theta^*$ < 20 deg), but the results are similar for larger angles. Numerical results for the gp-->pi0p and gn-->pi0n correction factors are discussed. Also the model description for the available data on the differential gd-->pi0pn cross sections are given.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures; v2 fixed several minor typo

Extracting the photoproduction cross section off the neutron gn-->pi-p from deuteron data with FSI effects

The incoherent pion photoproduction reaction gd-->pi-pp is considered theoretically in a wide energy region Eth =< Eg =< 2700 MeV. The model applied contains the impulse approximation as well as the NN- and piN-FSI amplitudes. The aim of the paper is to study a reliable way for getting the information on elementary gn-->pi-p reaction cross section beyond the impulse approximation for gd-->pi-pp. For the elementary gN-->piN, NN-->NN, and piN-->piN amplitudes, the results of the GW DAC are used. There are no additional theoretical constraints. The calculated cross section dSigma/dOmega(gd->pi-pp) are compared with existing data. The procedure used to extract information on the differential cross section dSigma/dOmega(gn-->pi-p) on the neutron from the deuteron data using the FSI correction factor R is discussed. The calculations for R versus pi-p CM angle \theta_1 of the outgoing pion are performed at different photon-beam energies with kinematical cuts for "quasi-free" process gn-->pi-p. The results show a sizeable FSI effect R \neq 1 from S-wave part of pp-FSI at small angles close to \theta_1 ~ 0: this region narrows as the photon energy increases. At larger angles, the effect is small (|R-1|<<1) and agrees with estimations of FSI in the Glauber approach.Comment: 28 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl

Extended Partial-Wave Analysis of piN Scattering Data

We present results from a comprehensive partial-wave analysis of pi+-p elastic scattering and charge-exchange data, covering the region from threshold to 2.6 GeV in the lab pion kinetic energy, employing a coupled-channel formalism to simultaneously fit pi-p-->eta n data to 0.8 GeV. Our main result, solution SP06, utilizes a complete set of forward and fixed-t dispersion relation constraints applied to the piN elastic amplitude. The results of these analyses are compared with previous solutions in terms of their resonance spectra and preferred values for couplings and low-energy parameters.Comment: 21 pages, 11 figure