Pre-terrestrial oxidation products in carbonaceous meteorites identified by Mossbauer spectroscopy

The occurrence of ferric bearing assemblages, comprising phyllosilicates, oxide hydroxides and magnetite, in carbonaceous chondrites (CC) indicates that these meteorites underwent pre-terrestrial, sub-aqueous oxidation reactions. Reported here are results of a Mossbauer spectral study of a suite of CC demonstrating that a variety of ferrous and ferric bearing phases may be distinguished in different classes of this meteorite type

Economies and diseconomies of scale in the American two-year colleges

The economies of scale concept holds that as an enterprise increases its output, the cost per unit of output decreases. The concept also holds that as the production output increases further a point is reached at which the cost per unit of output increases, marking the start of diseconomies of scale. Furthermore, the concept holds whether the enterprise is a manufacturing or education institution.;Community college financial, enrollment, and award data for the ten years between 1976 through 1985 were obtained from the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES). Appropriate data selection produced a sample of 758 state, local, or state-local community colleges in existence for each of the 10 years between 1976 and 1985. This was nearly 80 per cent of the public community college total.;A parabolic relationship between cost per student and enrollment was hypothesized. The hypothesis was tested by using regression analysis with forced entry of the independent variable(s).;The hypothesis was not supported. Emerging from 20 models with various terms expressing direct and inverse relationships between dependent and independent variable(s), Y = (a) (X**-b) (EXP**(cX)) was the best fit. This decaying exponential model possessed the highest multiple R of any of the 20 equations tried. Furthermore, the decaying exponential, after being transformed to the natural logarithm form, met regression analysis\u27 assumptions for the underlying data (normality, linearity, and equal variance) better than any of the 20 equations modelled

Caching and Visualizing Statistical Analyses

We present the cacher and CodeDepends packages for R, which provide tools for (1) caching and analyzing the code for statistical analyses and (2) distributing these analyses to others in an efficient manner over the web. The cacher package takes objects created by evaluating R expressions and stores them in key-value databases. These databases of cached objects can subsequently be assembled into “cache packages” for distribution over the web. The cacher package also provides tools to help readers examine the data and code in a statistical analysis and reproduce, modify, or improve upon the results. In addition, readers can easily conduct alternate analyses of the data. The CodeDepends package provides complementary tools for analyzing and visualizing the code for a statistical analysis and this functionality has been integrated into the cacher package. In this chapter we describe the cacher and CodeDepends packages and provide examples of how they can be used for reproducible research

Rehearsal and pedometer reactivity in children.

The main purpose of this study was to investigate whether rehearsal, defined as the tendency to recurrently ruminate over upsetting aversive experiences, had an effect on pedometry reactivity. A total of 156 Hong Kong Chinese children aged 9–12 years were recruited. Participants completed the Rehearsal Scale for Children-Chinese (RSC-C; Ling, Maxwell, Masters, & McManus, 2010) and wore the pedometers for 3 consecutive weeks. The mean number of steps was significantly higher in Week 1 than in Week 3. High rehearsers showed a larger decrease in mean number of steps from Week 1 to Week 3 than low rehearsers. Future physical activity intervention studies should adjust for reactivity in their baseline measurements and should further examine the relationship between habitual PA and individual propensities for rehearsal

AIR POLLUTION IMPACTS AND SOURCES UNDER A CHANGING CLIMATE: A CASE STUDY FOR SCUNTHORPE, UK

Climate change may affect local air quality by altering the emission, dispersion, chemical transformation and deposition of air pollutants. This study evaluates the effects of climate change in a real-life mixed land-use situation where there are adjacent urban and industrial activities and also fugitive emissions from stockpiles and unpaved roads. For this example we show how windspeed and time-of-day dependent ‘bi-polar plots’ created from ambient monitoring data can be used to learn more about the nature of sources responsible for exceedances of particulate matter air quality standards, and hence to assess how sensitive their impacts are to climate change. Unpaved roads and wind-blown fugitive sources such as stockpiles and coal handling beds in the industrial area appear to contribute substantially to raised air-quality impacts. The effect of climate change on impacts from these sources may differ from its effect on impacts from conventional combustion sources

Disability benefit growth and disability reform in the US: lessons from other OECD nations

Abstract Unsustainable growth in program costs and beneficiaries, together with a growing recognition that even people with severe impairments can work, led to fundamental disability policy reforms in the Netherlands, Sweden, and Great Britain. In Australia, rapid growth in disability recipiency led to more modest reforms. Here we describe the factors driving unsustainable DI program growth in the U.S., show their similarity to the factors that led to unsustainable growth in these other four OECD countries, and discuss the reforms each country implemented to regain control over their cash transfer disability program. Although each country took a unique path to making and implementing fundamental reforms, shared lessons emerge from their experiences. JEL codes J14, J18</jats:p

Implications for the origin of dwarf early-type galaxies: a detailed look at the isolated rotating dwarf early-type galaxy CG 611, with ramifications for the Fundamental Plane's (S_K)^2 kinematic scaling and the spin-ellipticity diagram

Selected from a sample of nine, isolated, dwarf early-type galaxies (ETGs) having the same range of kinematic properties as dwarf ETGs in clusters, we use CG 611 (LEDA 2108986) to address the Nature versus Nurture debate regarding the formation of dwarf ETGs. The presence of faint disk structures and rotation within some cluster dwarf ETGs has often been heralded as evidence that they were once late-type spiral or dwarf irregular galaxies prior to experiencing a cluster-induced transformation into an ETG. However, CG 611 also contains significant stellar rotation (~20 km/s) over its inner half light radius, R_(e,maj)=0.71 kpc, and its stellar structure and kinematics resemble those of cluster ETGs. In addition to hosting a faint young nuclear spiral within a possible intermediate-scale stellar disk, CG 611 has accreted an intermediate-scale, counter-rotating gas disk. It is therefore apparent that dwarf ETGs can be built by accretion events, as opposed to disk-stripping scenarios. We go on to discuss how both dwarf and ordinary ETGs with intermediate-scale disks, whether under (de)construction or not, are not fully represented by the kinematic scaling S_0.5=sqrt{ 0.5(V_rot)^2 + sigma^2 }, and we also introduce a modified spin-ellipticity diagram, lambda(R)-epsilon(R), with the potential to track galaxies with such disks.Comment: 15 pages (includes 9 figures and an extensive 2+ page reference list