Exploring the Quality of Life of People in North Eastern and Southern Thailand.

The assumption that development brings not only material prosperity but also a better overall quality of life lies at the heart of the development project. Against this, critics assert that development can undermine social cohesion and threaten cultural integrity. Rarely, however, is the impact of development on wellbeing rigourously analysed using empirical data. This is what the Wellbeing in Developing Countries Group at the University of Bath aims to do drawing on fieldwork carried out in four developing countries, which addresses the themes of resources, needs, agency and structure, and subjective Quality of life (QoL). The first phase of the QoL research in Thailand aimed to explore the categories and components of quality of life for people from different backgrounds and locations with the aim of developing methods for QoL assessment in the third phase of the WeD QoL research. The study presents data obtained from rural and peri-urban sites in Southern and Northeastern Thailand (two villages in Songkhla and three in Khon Kaen, Mukdaharn, and Roi-et). Participants were divided into six groups by gender and age, and were divided again by religion (Buddhist and Muslim) and wealth status in the South. Data collection was conducted between October and December 2004 using focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews, and the Person Generated Index. Content analysis was used for data analysis. The use of a qualitative approach enabled the gathering of empirical data that reflects the sources of difficulty and happiness in the lives of participants. Respondents identified 26 aspects to their quality of life, including family relations, health and longevity, income and having money, jobs, housing, education, debt, and so on. The results reveal clear similarities and differences in the role of traditions, religious beliefs, and values in the lives of people living in remote rural or peri-urban areas in Northeastern and Southern Thailand. These results, together with the findings from Peru, Ethiopia, and Bangladesh, will inform the rest of the WeD research and be used to develop measures to assess the quality of life of people living in developing countries

The Stark effect in atomic and molecular Rydberg states

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D171994 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Wave-packet isotope separation using phase-locked pulses

The possibility of employing phase-locked pairs of optical pulses to separate mixtures of two or three isotopes was demonstrated. In particular, the time scale of isotope separation based on spatially separated wave packets was improved by exploiting phase-locked pairs of pulse instead of a single short laser pulse

Controlling the angular momentum composition of a Rydberg electron wave packet

Sequences of phase-locked laser pulses have been employed to control the orbital angular momentum character of an electron wave packet, which is initially created from a superposition of s and d Rydberg series. By an intelligent choice of phase, which depends on the excitation energy and the quantum defects, we are able to selectively pump down either all or a fraction of one or other angular momentum component, and by employing multichannel quantum-defect theory we are able to analyze the quantum-state distribution in detail

Frequency doubling and Fourier domain shaping the output of a femtosecond optical parametric amplifier: easy access to tuneable femtosecond pulse shapes in the deep ultraviolet

Tuneable, shaped, ultraviolet (UV) femtosecond laser pulses are produced by shaping and frequency doubling the output of a commercial optical parametric amplifier (OPA). A reflective mode, folded, pulse shaping assembly employing a spatial light modulator (SLM) shapes femtosecond pulses in the visible region of the spectrum. The shaped visible light pulses are frequency doubled to generate phase- and amplitude-shaped, ultrashort light pulses in the deep ultraviolet. This approach benefits from a simple experimental setup and the potential for tuning the central frequency of the shaped ultraviolet waveform. A number of pulse shapes have been synthesised and characterised using cross-correlation frequency resolved optical gating (XFROG). This pulse shaping method can be employed for coherent control experiments in the ultraviolet region of the spectrum where many organic molecules have strong absorption bands

Controlling the radial dynamics of Rydberg wavepackets in Xe using phase-locked optical pulse sequences

We employ a sequence of two phase-locked optical pulses, separated by half a classical orbit period, to control the radial dynamics of electron wavepackets in Xe. We eliminate either even or odd principal quantum number states from the wavepacket and distinguish between these systems by looking at the wavepacket spectrum at different partial revivals. The experimentally observed dynamics are compared with calculations based on multichannel quantum defect theory and the observations are interpreted in terms of the time and phase evolution of the population amplitudes of the Rydberg states contributing to the wavepacke

Optical control of the rotational angular momentum of a molecular Rydberg wave packet

An intuitive scheme for controlling the rotational quantum state of a Rydberg molecule is demonstrated experimentally. We determine the accumulated phase difference between the various components of a molecular electron wave packet, and then employ a sequence of phase-locked optical pulses to selectively enhance or depopulate specific rotational states. The angular momentum composition of the resulting wave packet, and the efficiency of the control scheme, is determined by calculating the multipulse response of the time-dependent Rydberg populations

Observation and control of dissociating and autoionizing Rydberg electron wave packets in NO

The dynamics of predissociating Rydberg electron wave packets are observed using the optical Ramsey method. The time-resolved spectra are hydrogenic and are very well modeled by assuming that only one p Rydberg series contributes to the dynamics. This is in contrast with previous observations of autoionizing Rydberg electron wave packets [Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 2552 (1999)], which show quite dramatic deviations from hydrogenic behavior above the Born–Oppenheimer limit. The origin of these deviations lies in the interplay between electronic and molecular phase. By exploiting these phases we are able to control the ratio of predissociaton to autoionization