Observation of a quenched moment of inertia in a rotating strongly interacting Fermi gas

We make a model-independent measurement of the moment of inertia of a rotating, expanding strongly-interacting Fermi gas. Quenching of the moment of inertia is observed for energies both below and above the superfluid transition. This shows that a strongly interacting Fermi gas with angular momentum can support irrotational flow in both the superfluid and collisional normal fluid regimes.Comment: 4 pages 5 figure

Comments: Immigration and Modern Slavery: How the Laws of One Fail to Provide Justice to Victims of the Other

On the first Sunday in February, Americans across the country look forward to the game of the year—the Super Bowl. Most sports fans would likely compare the anticipation and excitement of this game to that of a young child waking up on Christmas morning. This game brings in thousands of supporters to the host city each year and draws millions of television viewers. With the flashy lights, spirited fans, and debuting commercials, this game would appear to be the highlight of any person’s day. But looking behind the scenes, that is not always the case. This vast crowd also appeals to “a sector of violent, organized criminal activity that operates in plain sight without notice . . . .” We call this human sex trafficking

Wind mapping in Venus' upper mesosphere with the IRAM-Plateau de Bure interferometer

The dynamics of the upper mesosphere of Venus (~85-115 km) have been characterized as a combination of a retrograde superrotating zonal wind (RSZ) with a subsolar-to-antisolar flow (SSAS). Numerous mm-wave single-dish observations have been obtained and could directly measure mesospheric line-of-sight winds by mapping Doppler-shifts on CO rotational lines, but their limited spatial resolution makes their interpretation difficult. By using interferometric facilities, one can obtain better resolution on Doppler-shifts maps, allowing in particular to put firmer constraints on the respective contributions of the SSAS and RSZ circulations to the global mesospheric wind field. We report on interferometric observations of the CO(1-0) line obtained with the IRAM-Plateau de Bure interferometer in November 2007 and June 2009, that could map the upper mesosphere dynamics on the morning hemisphere with a very good spatial resolution (3.5-5.5"). All the obtained measurements show, with a remarkably good temporal stability, that the wind globally flows in the (sky) East-West direction, corresponding in the observed geometry either to an unexpected prograde zonal wind or a SSAS flow. A very localized inversion of the wind direction, that could correspond to a RSZ wind, is also repeatedly detected in the night hemisphere. The presence of significant meridional winds is not evidenced. Using models with different combinations of zonal and SSAS winds, we find that the data is best reproduced by a dominant SSAS flow with a maximal velocity at the terminator of ~200 m/s, displaying large diurnal and latitudinal asymmetries, combined with an equatorial RSZ wind of 70-100 m/s, overall indicating a wind-field structure consistent with but much more complex than the usual representation of the mesospheric dynamics.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&

Comments: Immigration and Modern Slavery: How the Laws of One Fail to Provide Justice to Victims of the Other

On the first Sunday in February, Americans across the country look forward to the game of the year—the Super Bowl. Most sports fans would likely compare the anticipation and excitement of this game to that of a young child waking up on Christmas morning. This game brings in thousands of supporters to the host city each year and draws millions of television viewers. With the flashy lights, spirited fans, and debuting commercials, this game would appear to be the highlight of any person’s day. But looking behind the scenes, that is not always the case. This vast crowd also appeals to “a sector of violent, organized criminal activity that operates in plain sight without notice . . . .” We call this human sex trafficking

Life at the Meridian: The Subjectivity of Ethics in the Works of Albert Camus and Friedrich Nietzsche

This paper endeavors to respond to the questions: can ethics can be unbound from its traditional rootedness in religious systems? If so, what contributions did Nietzsche make to liberate value from the shackles of Western morality? To what degree is Camus one of the “new philosophers” Nietzsche calls for in On the Genealogy of Morals? In an attempt to demonstrate that ethics can and do exist vividly in the realm of the non-religious, this paper will begin by illustrating the metaphysical door Nietzsche opens through his use of aphorisms in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and his investigation of the history of Western values in On the Genealogy of Morals. In these nihilistic inquiries Nietzsche collects and sorts values, razes traditional morals of the religious to the ground, and constructs a worldview based on an overman’s (Ubermensch) “will to power.” While Nietzsche is opening a necessary and legitimate door, in reality this mindset is akin to Ivan Karamazov’s “everything is permitted” declaration that allows all actions, even those as extreme as murder. At this point Albert Camus responds to Nietzsche in his books The Stranger, The Myth of Sisyphus, and The Rebel by re-imagining the deserted space beyond Nietzsche’s door. By actively rejecting any type of unifying principle, be it nihilism, religion, or objective conclusions about the world, Camus advocates for an individualistic and ultimately subjective mode of thought. Within this imagined space one is fundamentally free but proportionally lonely and responsible for one’s actions. Void of eternal hope and set free from traditional values, an individual is filled with the opportunity for creativity and constructs a universe for oneself

Convolutional Radio Modulation Recognition Networks

We study the adaptation of convolutional neural networks to the complex temporal radio signal domain. We compare the efficacy of radio modulation classification using naively learned features against using expert features which are widely used in the field today and we show significant performance improvements. We show that blind temporal learning on large and densely encoded time series using deep convolutional neural networks is viable and a strong candidate approach for this task especially at low signal to noise ratio

Realizing farmers’ rights through community-based agricultural biodiversity management

This brief has been prepared by Bioversity International for delegates to the 2016 Global Consultation on Farmers’ Rights. The brief aims to raise awareness among delegates and Contracting Parties to the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) of the crucial contribution that a community-based approach to the conservation and sustainable use of agricultural biodiversity can make to realizing farmers’ rights and empowering men and women smallholder farmers. At the Sixth Session of the Governing Body, under Resolution 5/2015, the Secretariat was requested “to engage Contracting Parties and relevant organizations to take initiatives to gather information at national, regional and global levels for exchanging views, experiences and best practices on the implementation of Farmers’ Rights”. This brief aims to contribute to that body of information