Intramolecular vibrational energy redistribution as state space diffusion: Classical-quantum correspondence

We study the intramolecular vibrational energy redistribution (IVR) dynamics of an effective spectroscopic Hamiltonian describing the four coupled high frequency modes of CDBrClF. The IVR dynamics ensuing from nearly isoenergetic zeroth-order states, an edge (overtone) and an interior (combination) state, is studied from a state space diffusion perspective. A wavelet based time-frequency analysis reveals an inhomogeneous phase space due to the trapping of classical trajectories. Consequently the interior state has a smaller effective IVR dimension as compared to the edge state.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

A Game Theoretic Approach to Analyse Cooperation between Rural Households in Northern Nigeria

To improve the livelihood of the poor in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) much attention has been paid to the development of new agricultural technologies. We hypothesize that farmers can also improve their livelihood through cooperation. Partial cooperation, in which knowledge is shared or bargaining power improved, is relatively common in SSA, while cooperation where all resources are fully shared, which we address, has rarely been investigated. An important pre-requisite to establish such cooperation, is the need for a fair division rule for the gains of the cooperation. This paper combines linear programming and cooperative game theory to model the effects of cooperation of (individual) households on income and farm plans. Linear programming establishes insight in the optimal farm plans in cooperation, and cooperative game theory is used to generate fair division rules. The model is applied to a village in Northern Nigeria. Households are clustered based on socio-economic parameters, and we explore cooperation between clusters. Cooperation leads to increased income and results in changes in farm plans, because more efficient use of resources leads to more intensified agriculture (labour intensive – high value crops).Cooperations, Linear Programming, Nigeria, Livelihood, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Consumer/Household Economics, Environmental Economics and Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, International Relations/Trade, Marketing, Productivity Analysis, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

The Host Community Perceptions of Volunteer Tourists in the Northern Tourist circuit, Tanzania. Implications for Sustainable Tourism

The role of volunteer tourism as an agent to foster global citizenship has been widely addressed by the literature. However, the conceptualizations of ‘volunteer tourism’ and ‘volunteer tourists’ in the context of global citizenship are still lacking important nuances and require more attention from both the research and teaching communities. The rationale for conducting this study arises from the current literature defining volunteer tourists based on the perspective where the majority of volunteer sending organizations and volunteer tourists come from – the primarily Western, developed country perspective. This study argues that this imbalance must be addressed and in response examines the perceptions and conceptualizations of ‘volunteer tourists’ from the perspective of a host community in a developing country To gain a rich understanding of the characteristics, dynamics and challenges related to a community in a developing country and to capture a multitude of perspectives on volunteer tourists from within the host community a case study approach was adopted which focuses on a village in the Northern Tourist Circuit of Tanzania. 40 semi-structured interviews were conducted with different community stakeholders, including private sector and public sector employees, people working for the non-profit sector and local people without affiliation to any of the three sectors. In order to minimize limitations associated with trust and to overcome potential language barriers, the interviews were conducted by a Tanzanian researcher in either Swahili or English. This study found that host community stakeholders struggled with the term ‘volunteer tourist’ and different conceptualizations were exhibited by different groups of respondents. For instance, ‘sponsor’ is a term used by local people and the non-profit sector, which illustrates a framing of ‘volunteer tourists’ as people who provide ongoing financial support for children’s education or particular causes. The non-profit sector also referred to ‘volunteer tourists’ as ‘donors’ in viewing them as people who donate money to the organization. The private sector on the other hand framed ‘volunteer tourists’ as ‘niche tourists’; people who are tourists but with needs that differ slightly from the main-stream tourists in this part of Africa. The terms ‘international workers’ and ‘NGO employees’ were used by the public sector which places emphasis on the public sector’s governance perspective. This study then reveals that the meanings attached to ‘volunteer tourists’ by the host community stakeholders significantly differ from the meaning that is attached to the volunteer tourists when viewed from the developed country perspective

Defining the issue: Social movements\u27 Framing Strategies in Neocolonial Senegal

This study examined framing strategies of protest movements in Dakar Senegal, particularly those focused on issues of foreign exploitation. Two major groups were surveyed, FRAPP and Cos M23, with interview notes and transcripts forming the basis of frame analysis. The findings showed that Cos M23 utilized a narrow frame that focused on linking certain sets of behaviors to being a good citizen, while FRAPP created a larger discursive framework in which diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational framing strategies were present in order to both link France and western imperialism to issues as well as induce the general public to take actions against those diagnosed issues. These findings provide valuable non-western insight on framing strategies and help provide data on domestic civil society activism in Senegal

Understanding Public Opinion in Debates over Biomedical Research: Looking beyond Political Partisanship to Focus on Beliefs about Science and Society

As social scientists have investigated the political and social factors influencing public opinion in science-related policy debates, there has been growing interest in the implications of this research for public communication and outreach. Given the level of political polarization in the United States, much of the focus has been on partisan differences in public opinion, the strategies employed by political leaders and advocates that promote those differences, and the counter-strategies for overcoming them. Yet this focus on partisan differences tends to overlook the processes by which core beliefs about science and society impact public opinion and how these schema are often activated by specific frames of reference embedded in media coverage and popular discourse. In this study, analyzing cross-sectional, nationally representative survey data collected between 2002 and 2010, we investigate the relative influence of political partisanship and science-related schema on Americans' support for embryonic stem cell research. In comparison to the influence of partisan identity, our findings suggest that generalized beliefs about science and society were more chronically accessible, less volatile in relation to media attention and focusing events, and an overall stronger influence on public opinion. Classifying respondents into four unique audience groups based on their beliefs about science and society, we additionally find that individuals within each of these groups split relatively evenly by partisanship but differ on other important dimensions. The implications for public engagement and future research on controversies related to biomedical science are discussed

Analyzing intramolecular vibrational energy redistribution via the overlap intensity-level velocity correlator

Numerous experimental and theoretical studies have established that intramolecular vibrational energy redistribution (IVR) in isolated molecules has a heirarchical tier structure. The tier structure implies strong correlations between the energy level motions of a quantum system and its intensity-weighted spectrum. A measure, which explicitly accounts for this correaltion, was first introduced by one of us as a sensitive probe of phase space localization. It correlates eigenlevel velocities with the overlap intensities between the eigenstates and some localized state of interest. A semiclassical theory for the correlation is developed for systems that are classically integrable and complements earlier work focusing exclusively on the chaotic case. Application to a model two dimensional effective spectroscopic Hamiltonian shows that the correlation measure can provide information about the terms in the molecular Hamiltonian which play an important role in an energy range of interest and the character of the dynamics. Moreover, the correlation function is capable of highlighting relevant phase space structures including the local resonance features associated with a specific bright state. In addition to being ideally suited for multidimensional systems with a large density of states, the measure can also be used to gain insights into the phase space transport and localization. It is argued that the overlap intensity-level velocity correlation function provides a novel way of studying vibrational energy redistribution in isolated molecules. The correlation function is ideally suited to analyzing the parametric spectra of molecules in external fields.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures (low resolution