The Living Murray NSW Market Purchase Measure: A survey of participants in permanent water trading for the environment

The Living Murray Initiative was established to recover 500 Gigalitres in average annual flows to address the declining environmental health of the Murray-Darling river system. The NSW Market Purchase Measure was initiated by the New South Wales Government as part of The Living Murray Initiative with the aim of purchasing up to 125 Gigalitres of high and medium reliability entitlements within the NSW southern connected part of the Murray-Darling Basin. The commencement of this measure provided an opportunity to survey participants in permanent water trading for an environmental outcome to determine general land use and socio-economic information as well as specific information regarding their current water use, future intentions and their opinion of the implementation of the water purchase process. The results of the survey will also assist in understanding the nature of the participants in this process relative to the broader irrigator/regional population. Importantly, the survey outcomes will help to improve understanding of participant circumstances and provide important lessons for future water purchase programs.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

The Affect of Host Plant on Aphid Population Growth

Citation: Dostal, E. (2017). The Affect of Host Plant on Aphid Population Growth . 1st Annual Undergraduate Research Experience in Entomology Symposium, November 16, 2016. Manhattam, KS.Damage from aphids to wheat plants is noticeable from a distance and can result in water stress, reduced plant growth and wilting. Different aphids are said to cause different colorations when damaging the plants. The comparison of aphid performance on a set of closely related species can help identify traits related to plant defense and aphid performance. Such studies can help inform future experiments that study specific mechanisms of plant resistance. Its important to know what causes aphids to damage some plants more than others so we can find ways to prevent it. I observed the effects that wheat, barley and sorghum have on the population growth rate of corn leaf aphids and green bugs. Also, the effect the aphids have on the plants and how much they damage each type. Will one aphid species have an exceptionally higher rate of reproduction on a specific plant? Is aphid population growth affected by competition between species? I found the green bug population grew faster than the corn leaf aphids and they preferred the wheat, which in return resulted in the wheat having the highest plant damage

Resonant tunneling of electromagnetic waves through polariton gaps

We consider resonant tunneling of electromagnetic waves through an optical barrier formed by dielectric layers with the frequency dispersion of their dielectric permiability. The frequency region between lower and upper polariton branches in these materials presents a stop band for electromagnetic waves. We show that resonance tunneling through this kind of barriers is qualitatevely different from tunneling through other kind of optical barriers as well as from quantum mechanic tunneling through a rectangular barrier. We find that the width of the resonance maxima of the transmission coeffcient tends to zero as frequency approach the lower boundary of the stop band in a very sharp non-analytical way. Resonance transmission peaks give rise to new photonic bands inside the stop band if one considers periodical array of the layers.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Multibarrier tunneling

We study the tunneling through an arbitrary number of finite rectangular opaque barriers and generalize earlier results by showing that the total tunneling phase time depends neither on the barrier thickness nor on the inter-barrier separation. We also predict two novel peculiar features of the system considered, namely the independence of the transit time (for non resonant tunneling) and the resonant frequency on the number of barriers crossed, which can be directly tested in photonic experiments. A thorough analysis of the role played by inter-barrier multiple reflections and a physical interpretation of the results obtained is reported, showing that multibarrier tunneling is a highly non-local phenomenon.Comment: RevTex, 7 pages, 1 eps figur

Small Corrections to the Tunneling Phase Time Formulation

After reexamining the above barrier diffusion problem where we notice that the wave packet collision implies the existence of {\em multiple} reflected and transmitted wave packets, we analyze the way of obtaining phase times for tunneling/reflecting particles in a particular colliding configuration where the idea of multiple peak decomposition is recovered. To partially overcome the analytical incongruities which frequently rise up when the stationary phase method is adopted for computing the (tunneling) phase time expressions, we present a theoretical exercise involving a symmetrical collision between two identical wave packets and a unidimensional squared potential barrier where the scattered wave packets can be recomposed by summing the amplitudes of simultaneously reflected and transmitted wave components so that the conditions for applying the stationary phase principle are totally recovered. Lessons concerning the use of the stationary phase method are drawn.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure

Downs, Stokes and the Dynamics of Electoral Choice

A six-wave 2005–09 national panel survey conducted in conjunction with the British Election Study provided data for an investigation of sources of stability and change in voters’ party preferences. The authors test competing spatial and valence theories of party choice and investigate the hypothesis that spatial calculations provide cues for making valence judgements. Analyses reveal that valence mechanisms – heuristics based on party leader images, party performance evaluations and mutable partisan attachments – outperform a spatial model in terms of strength of direct effects on party choice. However, spatial effects still have sizeable indirect effects on the vote via their influence on valence judgements. The results of exogeneity tests bolster claims about the flow of influence from spatial calculations to valence judgments to electoral choice.</jats:p

Negative phase time for Scattering at Quantum Wells: A Microwave Analogy Experiment

If a quantum mechanical particle is scattered by a potential well, the wave function of the particle can propagate with negative phase time. Due to the analogy of the Schr\"odinger and the Helmholtz equation this phenomenon is expected to be observable for electromagnetic wave propagation. Experimental data of electromagnetic wells realized by wave guides filled with different dielectrics confirm this conjecture now.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure