407 research outputs found
Review Of Marche Des Arts Du Spectacle Africain (Masa \u2797)
A panoply of over fifty dance, music, and theatre events from twenty African countries was performed at seven different venues, including indoor and outdoor theatres, clubs, concert halls, courtyards, gardens, and a sports stadium. The Moroccan company Ballet-Théâtre Zinoun presented Psyché Ou La Légende D\u27Adonis, a revisiting of the Adonis legend in which the balletic movement vocabulary and neoclassical choreographic techniques were interspersed with scenes in which a narrator alternated the words of Arab poets with riffs on his soprano saxophone
Modeling highway runoff pollutant levels using a data driven model
Pollutants accumulated on road pavement during dry periods are washed off the surface with runoff water during rainfall events, presenting a potentially hazardous non-point source of pollution. Estimation of pollutant loads in these runoff waters is required for developin
Reducing Access Disparities in Networks using Edge Augmentation
In social networks, a node's position is a form of \it{social capital}.
Better-positioned members not only benefit from (faster) access to diverse
information, but innately have more potential influence on information spread.
Structural biases often arise from network formation, and can lead to
significant disparities in information access based on position. Further,
processes such as link recommendation can exacerbate this inequality by relying
on network structure to augment connectivity.
We argue that one can understand and quantify this social capital through the
lens of information flow in the network. We consider the setting where all
nodes may be sources of distinct information, and a node's (dis)advantage deems
its ability to access all information available on the network. We introduce
three new measures of advantage (broadcast, influence, and control), which are
quantified in terms of position in the network using \it{access signatures} --
vectors that represent a node's ability to share information. We then consider
the problem of improving equity by making interventions to increase the access
of the least-advantaged nodes. We argue that edge augmentation is most
appropriate for mitigating bias in the network structure, and frame a budgeted
intervention problem for maximizing minimum pairwise access.
Finally, we propose heuristic strategies for selecting edge augmentations and
empirically evaluate their performance on a corpus of real-world social
networks. We demonstrate that a small number of interventions significantly
increase the broadcast measure of access for the least-advantaged nodes (over 5
times more than random), and also improve the minimum influence. Additional
analysis shows that these interventions can also dramatically shrink the gap in
advantage between nodes (over \%82) and reduce disparities between their access
signatures
Bright single-photon sources in bottom-up tailored nanowires
The ability to achieve near-unity light extraction efficiency is necessary
for a truly deterministic single photon source. The most promising method to
reach such high efficiencies is based on embedding single photon emitters in
tapered photonic waveguides defined by top-down etching techniques. However,
light extraction efficiencies in current top-down approaches are limited by
fabrication imperfections and etching induced defects. The efficiency is
further tempered by randomly positioned off-axis quantum emitters. Here, we
present perfectly positioned single quantum dots on the axis of a tailored
nanowire waveguide using bottom-up growth. In comparison to quantum dots in
nanowires without waveguide, we demonstrate a 24-fold enhancement in the single
photon flux, corresponding to a light extraction efficiency of 42 %. Such high
efficiencies in one-dimensional nanowires are promising to transfer quantum
information over large distances between remote stationary qubits using flying
qubits within the same nanowire p-n junction.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figure
Urban rainwater harvesting systems: Research, implementation and future perspectives.
Published onlineJournal ArticleReviewThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from IWA Publishing via the DOI in this record.While the practice of rainwater harvesting (RWH) can be traced back millennia, the degree of its modern implementation varies greatly across the world, often with systems that do not maximize potential benefits. With a global focus, the pertinent practical, theoretical and social aspects of RWH are reviewed in order to ascertain the state of the art. Avenues for future research are also identified. A major finding is that the degree of RWH systems implementation and the technology selection are strongly influenced by economic constraints and local regulations. Moreover, despite design protocols having been set up in many countries, recommendations are still often organized only with the objective of conserving water without considering other potential benefits associated with the multiple-purpose nature of RWH. It is suggested that future work on RWH addresses three priority challenges. Firstly, more empirical data on system operation is needed to allow improved modelling by taking into account multiple objectives of RWH systems. Secondly, maintenance aspects and how they may impact the quality of collected rainwater should be explored in the future as a way to increase confidence on rainwater use. Finally, research should be devoted to the understanding of how institutional and socio-political support can be best targeted to improve system efficacy and community acceptance
Information access representations and social capital in networks
Social network position confers power and social capital. In the setting of
online social networks that have massive reach, creating mathematical
representations of social capital is an important step towards understanding
how network position can differentially confer advantage to different groups
and how network position can itself be a source of advantage. In this paper, we
use well established models for information flow on networks as a base to
propose a formal descriptor of the network position of a node as represented by
its information access. Combining these descriptors allows a full
representation of social capital across the network. Using real-world networks,
we demonstrate that this representation allows the identification of
differences between groups based on network specific measures of inequality of
access
Towards deterministic optical quantum computation with coherently driven atomic ensembles
Scalable and efficient quantum computation with photonic qubits requires (i)
deterministic sources of single-photons, (ii) giant nonlinearities capable of
entangling pairs of photons, and (iii) reliable single-photon detectors. In
addition, an optical quantum computer would need a robust reversible photon
storage devise. Here we discuss several related techniques, based on the
coherent manipulation of atomic ensembles in the regime of electromagnetically
induced transparency, that are capable of implementing all of the above
prerequisites for deterministic optical quantum computation with single
photons.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure
Impact of system factors on the water saving efficiency of household grey water recycling
Copyright © 2010 Taylor & Francis. This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Desalination and Water Treatment Volume 24, Issue 1-3 (2010), available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.5004/dwt.2010.1542A general concern when considering the implementation of domestic grey water recycling is to understand the impacts of system factors on water saving efficiency. Key factors include household occupancy, storage volumes, treatment capacity and operating mode. Earlier investigations of the impacts of these key factors were based on a one-tank system only. This paper presents the results of an investigation into the effect of these factors on the performance of a more realistic ‘two tank’ system with treatment using an object based household water cycle model. A Monte-Carlo simulation technique was adopted to generate domestic water appliance usage data which allows long-term prediction of the system's performance to be made. Model results reveal the constraints of treatment capacity, storage tank sizes and operating mode on percentage of potable water saved. A treatment capacity threshold has been discovered at which water saving efficiency is maximised for a given pair of grey and treated grey water tank. Results from the analysis suggest that the previous one-tank model significantly underestimates the tank volumes required for a given target water saving efficiency
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