Does My Hair Bother You? Part 2

I stopped shaving my legs in May. The decision to quit shaving was part social experiment, but a lot of it had to do with NOT HAVING TO SHAVE MY LEGS ANYMORE. Honestly I didn’t make the decision to stop shaving my leg hair as some sort of feminist statement. I really just found it stupid how society pressures women to have smooth “sexy” legs. How did this pressure begin? Historically women didn’t shave their legs or underarms in the United States; however, hair removal was a common cultural practice in many other parts of the world such as in Ancient Egypt, Greece, and some Native American tribes for centuries. In some societies, the practice was purely religious. In ancient Greece and Rome, the presence of hair on the body indicated poverty and filth. [excerpt

Fearless: Adrienne Ellis

Taking the initiative to change college policies related to LGBTQ issues, restructuring a sustainable community garden in Gettysburg over the summer, and continually being motivated to change and challenge the powers that be through her love of people, Adrienne Ellis ’14 fearlessly fights for what she believes to help the people she loves— everybody. [excerpt

Exotic Baryons in Two-Dimensional QCD

Two-dimensional QCD has often been used as a laboratory for studying the full four-dimensional theory, providing, for example, an explicit realization of baryons as solitons. We review aspects of conventional baryons in two-dimensional QCD, including the classical and quantum contributions to their masses. We then discuss the spectrum of exotic baryons in two-dimensional QCD, commenting on the solitonic radius inferred from the excitation spectrum as well as the two-dimensional version of the Goldberger-Treiman relation relating meson couplings to current matrix elements. Two-dimensional QCD provides strong overall support to the chiral-soliton picture for the structure of normal and exotic baryons in four dimensions.Comment: 15 pages latex, no figure

MCFM for the Tevatron and the LHC

A summary is given of the current status of the next-to-leading order (NLO) parton-level integrator MCFM. Some details are given about the Higgs + 2-jet process and the production and decay of $t \bar{t}$, both of which have recently been added to the code. Using MCFM, comparisons between the Tevatron running at $\sqrt{s}=2$~TeV and the LHC running at $\sqrt{s}=7$~TeV are made for standard model process including the production of Higgs bosons. The case for running the Tevatron until 16fb$^{-1}$ are accumulated by both detectors is sketched.Comment: Talk presented by R.K Ellis at Loops and Legs in Quantum Field Theory 2010, Woerlitz, Germany, April 25-30, 2010, (6 pages and 4 figures

Direction Judgement Errors in Perspective Displays

Spatial information transfer characteristics of perspective situation displays were investigated by having eight subjects judge the directions of displayed targets relative to a fixed position in the center of computer generated perspective scenes. Their errors in judging azimuth angles varied sinusoidally with the azimuth of the targets. Errors alternated between clockwise and counterclock wise from one direction quadrant to the next. As the perspective geometry was varied between telephoto lens and wide angle lens views, the direction of error gradually reversed in all quadrants. The results can be explained by systematic differences between the three-dimensional stimulus angles and the perspective projections of those angles onto the display screen

Automatic Detection of Clear-Sky Periods From Irradiance Data

Recent degradation studies have highlighted the importance of considering cloud cover when calculating degradation rates, finding more reliable values when the data are restricted to clear sky periods. Several automated methods of determining clear sky periods have been previously developed, but parameterizing and testing the models has been difficult. In this paper, we use clear sky classifications determined from satellite data to develop an algorithm that determines clear sky periods using only measured irradiance values and modeled clear sky irradiance as inputs. This method is tested on global horizontal irradiance (GHI) data from ground collectors at six sites across the United States and compared against independent satellite-based classifications. First, 30 separate models were optimized on each individual site at GHI data intervals of 1, 5, 10, 15, and 30 min (sampled on the first minute of the interval). The models had an average F0.5 score of 0.949 ± 0.035 on a holdout test set. Next, optimizations were performed by aggregating data from different locations at the same interval, yielding one model per data interval. This paper yielded an average F0.5 of 0.946 ± 0.037. A final, 'universal' optimization that was trained on data from all sites at all intervals provided an F0.5 score of 0.943 ± 0.040. The optimizations all provide improvements on a prior, unoptimized clear sky detection algorithm that produces F0.5 scores that average to 0.903 ± 0.067. Our paper indicates that a single algorithm can accurately classify clear sky periods across locations and data sampling intervals

Environmental taxes and policies for developing countries

Increasing urbanization and industrialization can exacerbate pollution problems in developing countries. Tax revenues in developing countries are too low to support adequate infrastructure for treating and disposing of wastes, but the problem is also attributable to the classic problem of externalities in productiion and consumption."Externalities"means that the costs of environmental degradation are not considered by the private decisionmakers undertaking the activities that cause the problems. Two types of policies are commonly considered to correct this market failure and improve the allocation of resources: command-and-control policies (such as emmission and abatement standards) and market-based incentive policies (such as emissions charges, taxes on production and consumption, and marketable pollution quotas), which raise the price of such activities for the perpetrators. Market based incentives theoretically reduce pollution at least cost and increase government revenues, but may require costly monitoring to be effective, and are usually implemented in an environment of imperfect information about the costs of abatement. Sometimes command and control policies make more economic sense in this environment. Efficiency gains from curbing pollution in developing countries may be large. Some polluting activities are subsidized, so curtailing them brings both fiscal and environmental benefits. Taxing polluting inputs and outputs is a particularly attractive policy in developing countries which often lack experience in administering and enforcing other types of environmental regulation. Corrective taxes make use of existing administrative structures and increase tax revenues, which can be spent on public goods to improve environmental quality (including treatment facilities for water and sewage, waste disposal, and sanitation) or can be used to reduce other taxes (which are often highly distortionary in countries with a narrow tax base). Which goods and inputs to single out for corrective taxation depends on the main sources of pollution, which varies from country to country. Air pollution from vehicles is growing in many countries where increased fuel taxes, perhaps coupled with improved regulations for vehicle maintenance, may be desirable. Higher taxes on high sulphur coal would curb both industiral and household emissions of sulphur dioxide. Charges can be implemented for fixed site easy to monitor industrial emissions. Subsidies to industries that cause pollution should be phased out and those industries should be subjected to higher than average tax rates.Water and Industry,Economic Theory&Research,Urban Services to the Poor,Urban Services to the Poor,Environmental Economics&Policies