Testing Detrital Zircon age Bias in Tectonic Provenance: Examples from Modern Alluvium in the South Island, New Zealand

Detrital zircon (DZ) grains from 13 drainages across the South Island, New Zealand, were U-Pb dated to ascertain how accurately their ages reflect the geologic record of exposed bedrock. With the proliferation of inexpensive and easily accessible ion microprobes and laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometers, DZ dating has become the dominant chronometer for elucidating tectonic systematics. Zircon’s physical and chemical resilience makes it an ideal candidate for U-Pb geochronometry, but is also a potential source of bias. Zircon’s resilience in sedimentary systems means it rarely occurs as first order detritus. N = 966 zircon grains from Modern alluvium were U-Pb dated and statistically scrutinized against sedimentary and plutonic bedrock grain-age compilations in the published literature. Cross-correlation, Likeness, Similarity, and Kolmogorov-Smirnoff tests were employed to better understand how well DZ in modern alluvium are representing the bedrock. Even with minimal analyses of populations, grain-age distributions in the modern alluvium are missing from the bedrock on the South Island, New Zealand. Thus, although DZ is a significant tool for constraining some aspects of tectonics and sedimentary provenance it needs to be interpreted cautiously in assuming a one-to-one relationship between potential bedrock source and sedimentary sink

Expert predictions of the 2016 EU referendum

The U.K. Political Studies Association today released the results of its survey of expert predictions of the 2016 EU referendum. The survey was distributed to members of the Association as well as a large number of survey researchers from major polling companies in Britain and to journalists from the print and broadcast media. We asked respondents to share their predictions of the outcome, the probability of Britain voting leaving the EU, the final vote shares for each side, and the level of turnout

Boston New Media Library

The Boston New Media Library mixes new media elements with those of a traditional library

Holding the Hope? Therapist and Client Perspectives on Long Covid Recovery: A Q-Methodology

The aim of this thesis is to explore the role of psychological understanding and support for people living with Long covid in the United Kingdom. It is made up of three components in pursuit of this aim, including a synthesis of literature pertaining to psychological wellbeing and Long covid; an empirical study exploring recovery from Long covid, and an executive summary which presents these findings to the target groups. Paper One is a literature review which synthesises current literature pertaining to Long covid and its potential impact on mental health and wellbeing. It utilises Ryff’s model of psychological wellbeing as a tool to formulate and understand the distress experienced by people living with the illness. The literature used is largely qualitative, representing the voices of those living with Long covid. The quality of the research is assessed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Program (CASP) qualitative checklist, alongside the Mixed-Methods Assessment Tool. Clinical implications and future research recommendations are then made. Paper Two is an empirical study, reporting on the results of research into Long covid using Q-Methodology. This study consists of two sets of participants: therapists working within a Long covid Hub, and service users who had received talking therapies for Long covid. Their responses are analysed using factor analysis and compared within and between subjects, using participants’ qualitative feedback to give context to their perspectives. From the factor analysis, four key statements arose including Psychological Pathways to Recovery, Social Context and Agency, Physiological Recovery Goals and Personal Meaning Making. These factors are considered within a Hope theory framework, with clinical implications and recommendations for future research offered. Paper Three is an executive summary designed to summarise the findings of the research project. This will be shared with local services, the sponsoring Trust, and interested client groups

Lessons from a Marine Spatial Planning data management process for Ireland

Peer-reviewedThis paper presents a framework containing ten components to deliver a data management process for the storage and management of data used for Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) in Ireland. The work includes a data process flow and a recommended solution architecture. The architecture includes a central data catalogue and a spatial storage system. The components of the process are presented to maximise the reuse potential of any dataset within an MSP context. The terms ‘Suitability’ and ‘Readiness’ in the MSP context are offered as both formal and considered assessments of data, as is the applicability of a data stewardship maturity matrix. How data contained in such a storage system can be published externally to potential consumers of these data is also explored. The process presents a means of managing data and metadata to ensure data lineage is optimised by carrying information about the origin of and the processing applied to the data; to evaluate the quality and relevance of geospatial datasets for use in MSP decisions in Ireland. The process was piloted in the National Marine Planning Framework for Ireland in the development of draft map products; feedback from the public consultation is ongoing and not presented

Long Phase Coherence Time and Number Squeezing of two Bose-Einstein Condensates on an Atom Chip

We measured the relative phase of two Bose-Einstein condensates confined in an radio frequency induced double well potential on an atom chip. We observed phase coherence between the separated condensates for times up to 200 ms after splitting, a factor of 10 beyond the phase diffusion limit expected for a coherent state in our experimental conditions (20 ms). The enhanced coherence time is attributed to number squeezing of the initial state by a factor of 10. In addition, we demonstrated a rotationally sensitive (Sagnac) geometry for a guided atom interferometer by propagating the split condensates.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Physical instrumental vetoes for gravitational-wave burst triggers

We present a robust strategy to \emph{veto} certain classes of instrumental glitches that appear at the output of interferometric gravitational-wave (GW) detectors.This veto method is `physical' in the sense that, in order to veto a burst trigger, we make use of our knowledge of the coupling of different detector subsystems to the main detector output. The main idea behind this method is that the noise in an instrumental channel X can be \emph{transferred} to the detector output (channel H) using the \emph{transfer function} from X to H, provided the noise coupling is \emph{linear} and the transfer function is \emph{unique}. If a non-stationarity in channel H is causally related to one in channel X, the two have to be consistent with the transfer function. We formulate two methods for testing the consistency between the burst triggers in channel X and channel H. One method makes use of the \emph{null-stream} constructed from channel H and the \emph{transferred} channel X, and the second involves cross-correlating the two. We demonstrate the efficiency of the veto by `injecting' instrumental glitches in the hardware of the GEO 600 detector. The \emph{veto safety} is demonstrated by performing GW-like hardware injections. We also show an example application of this method using 5 days of data from the fifth science run of GEO 600. The method is found to have very high veto efficiency with a very low accidental veto rate.Comment: Minor changes, To appear in Phys. Rev.

Legislative behaviour absent re‐election incentives: findings from a natural experiment in the Arkansas Senate

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141545/1/rssa12293.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141545/2/rssa12293-sup-0001-SupInfo.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141545/3/rssa12293_am.pd

The Cool and Deliberate Sense of the Community : \u3cem\u3eThe Federalist\u3c/em\u3e on Congress

The American civic canon holds that the Constitution creates three branches of government that are both separate and “equal.” Publius’s essays on Congress cast serious doubt on this supposition, at least with respect to the extent of each branch’s influence on the workings of the national regime. It is no mistake that both the Constitution and The Federalist treat Congress as the first branch of government. It is “justly regarded” as such, Louis Fisher says, primarily because of the appropriations power elucidated in Federalist 58. The Federalist understands Congress, George W. Carey writes, “to be the heart of the proposed system.” Even the doubts and concerns that Publius expresses about Congress reflect regard for its authority. Federalist 51, for example, acknowledges that the legislature “necessarily predominates” (Fed. 51, 350) in a republic, but it also seeks a remedy for the “inconveniency” this poses to the separation of powers. Institutionally, Congress has the power both to constitute and discipline the other branches, which have no comparable authority over it. Even when defending executive energy, Publius describes it as secondary to legislative deliberation. The centrality of the legislative branch is demonstrable not only institutionally but also theoretically, for it is here that Publius places his greatest hopes for solving one of his most fundamental problems: the reconciliation of a government with sufficient authority and energy on the one hand, with the preservation of both public and personal liberty, on the other – a concern that Hamilton and Madison respectively expressed in Federalist 1 and 37

A Nonsingular Brans Wormhole: An Analogue to Naked Black Holes

In a recent paper, we showed the Jordan frame vacuum Brans Class I solution provided a wormhole analogue to Horowitz-Ross naked black hole in the wormhole range -3/2<{\omega}<-4/3. Thereafter, the solution has been criticized by some authors that, because of the presence of singularity in that solution within this range, a wormhole interpretation of it is untenable. While the criticism is correct, we show here that (i) a singularity-free wormhole can actually be obtained from Class I solution by performing a kind of Wick rotation on it, resulting into what Brans listed as his independent Class II solution (ii) the Class II solution has all the necessary properties of a regular wormhole in a revised range -2<{\omega}<-3/2 and finally, (iii) naked black holes, as described by Horowitz and Ross, are spacetimes where the tidal forces attain their maxima above the black hole horizon. We show that in the non-singular Class II spacetime this maxima is attained above the throat and thus can be treated as a wormhole analogue. Some related issues are also addressed.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figure