The Preferences Of Exercise And Physical Activity In Individuals With An Intellectual Disability

The purpose of this study was to explore the preferences of exercise and physical activity in individuals with an intellectual disability. It took place during Bear Play, a physical activity program geared towards working with individuals with a disability at Missouri State University. This project was facilitated through the partnership of Missouri State University\u27s Kinesiology department and the Arc of The Ozarks. A convenience sample was drawn from individuals participating in the program during the 2015-2016 academic year. Each participant was asked to complete a survey. Data were collected by using a survey administered on an IPAD and covered many activities under the topics of anaerobic exercise, aerobic exercise, flexibility activities, sport activities, and recreational activities. Using descriptive statistics, only a slight difference was found between preference for exercise and physical activities. Strong evidence provided support that respondents preferred participating with others in all themes represented on the survey instead of alone. These results provide practical application and considerations for program design and providing choice for individuals with an intellectual disability

Spontaneous R-Parity Breaking, Stop LSP Decays and the Neutrino Mass Hierarchy

The MSSM with right-handed neutrino supermultiplets, gauged B-L symmetry and a non-vanishing sneutrino expectation value is the minimal theory that spontaneously breaks R-parity and is consistent with the bounds on proton stability and lepton number violation. This minimal B-L MSSM can have a colored/charged LSP, of which a stop LSP is the most amenable to observation at the LHC. We study the R-parity violating decays of a stop LSP into a bottom quark and charged leptons--the dominant modes for a generic "admixture" stop. A numerical analysis of the relative branching ratios of these decay channels is given using a wide scan over the parameter space. The fact that R-parity is violated in this theory by a vacuum expectation value of a sneutrino links these branching ratios directly to the neutrino mass hierarchy. It is shown how a discovery of bottom-charged lepton events at the LHC can potentially determine whether the neutrino masses are in a normal or inverted hierarchy, as well as determining the theta_23 neutrino mixing angle. Finally, present LHC bounds on these leptoquark signatures are used to put lower bounds on the stop mass.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures, upgraded stop lower bound analysis, version accepted by PL

Do Work Barriers for Justice-Impacted Individuals Incentivize Criminal Behavior?

This study explores the legal barriers created by state governments for justice-impacted individuals. The more work barriers the state creates for someone with a criminal record, the more attractive illegal activities become. We examine differences across states in the data set provided by the National Inventory of Collateral Consequences of Conviction. We compare incarceration rates, unemployment rates, and labor force participation rates to the number of rules that affect someone with a criminal background. Our results predict that states with more collateral consequences will have higher per-capita imprisonment, higher unemployment, and lower labor force participation rates

Modernizing Aging Pipe Infrastructure in Irrigation Districts

Many irrigation and water districts in California convey water through aging concrete pipelines. In addition to huge problems with leaks and failures, districts also struggle to provide turnout deliveries with more flexible schedules. This paper discusses the problems that are encountered, and various approaches that have been or can be used. The specific pipeline designs that are discussed in this paper are generally gravity flow, flowing downhill from a canal. Most of these pipelines were originally installed under the assumptions that farmers would need high flows at low pressures for surface irrigation

Conditioning of Velocity Profiles in Pipelines

This paper reports on the testing of a relatively simple flow conditioner for pipelines. This research found that a pipeline velocity flow conditioner that is constructed with an internal cone, having an inside diameter of 80 percent of the pipeline ID, provided the best results. It provided good velocity conditioning at a distance of two diameters downstream of an obstruction. The minor loss is equal to the velocity head of the flow in the original pipeline diameter

A Parameterized Centrality Metric for Network Analysis

A variety of metrics have been proposed to measure the relative importance of nodes in a network. One of these, alpha-centrality [Bonacich, 2001], measures the number of attenuated paths that exist between nodes. We introduce a normalized version of this metric and use it to study network structure, specifically, to rank nodes and find community structure of the network. Specifically, we extend the modularity-maximization method [Newman and Girvan, 2004] for community detection to use this metric as the measure of node connectivity. Normalized alpha-centrality is a powerful tool for network analysis, since it contains a tunable parameter that sets the length scale of interactions. By studying how rankings and discovered communities change when this parameter is varied allows us to identify locally and globally important nodes and structures. We apply the proposed method to several benchmark networks and show that it leads to better insight into network structure than alternative methods.Comment: 11 pages, submitted to Physical Review

User preferences and willingness to pay for safe drinking water: Experimental evidence from rural Tanzania.

Almost half of all deaths from drinking microbiologically unsafe water occur in Sub-Saharan Africa. Household water treatment and safe storage (HWTS) systems, when consistently used, can provide safer drinking water and improve health. Social marketing to increase adoption and use of HWTS depends both on the prices of and preferences for these systems. This study included 556 households from rural Tanzania across two low-income districts with low-quality water sources. Over 9 months in 2012 and 2013, we experimentally evaluated consumer preferences for six "low-cost" HWTS options, including boiling, through an ordinal ranking protocol. We estimated consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for these options, using a modified auction. We allowed respondents to pay for the durable HWTS systems with cash, chickens or mobile money; a significant minority chose chickens as payment. Overall, our participants favored boiling, the ceramic pot filter and, where water was turbid, PuR™ (a combined flocculant-disinfectant). The revealed WTP for all products was far below retail prices, indicating that significant scale-up may need significant subsidies. Our work will inform programs and policies aimed at scaling up HWTS to improve the health of resource-constrained communities that must rely on poor-quality, and sometimes turbid, drinking water sources