Semi-Contained Neutrino Events in MACRO

Updated results are presented of low-energy ($\bar{E_\nu} \sim 5 GeV$) neutrino interactions observed by the MACRO detector. Two analyses (of different topologies) are presented; individually, and especially in their ratio, they are inconsistent with no oscillations and consistent with maximal mixing at $\Delta m^2$ of a few times $10^{-3}$.Comment: Paper presented at DPF2000, the American Physical Society's Division of Particles and Fields conferenc

Suffering for Salvation: Nikolai Klyuev\u27s Poetics of Brotherhood and Deliverance

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College

Trading in influence: a research agenda for New Zealand?

In November 2015 the Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill was passed by Parliament. An omnibus bill, it amended numerous different acts in relation to (among other things) money laundering, organised crime, corruption and bribery offences. One of its stated aims was to bring New Zealand legislation up to date to enable New Zealand to finally ratify the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC), which it did in December that year. The merits and potential demerits of the bill have been discussed previously (Macaulay and Gregory, 2015), but one thing that requires further attention is the creation of a new offence of ‘trading in influence’

“I Want to be Honest”: The Rhetoric of Sincerity in Soviet Russian Literature, 1953-1970

This dissertation chronicles the discourse of sincerity in state published Soviet Russian literature and criticism from Stalin’s death in 1953 to 1970. It presents a means of reading sincerity as a literary device in fiction and poetry that corresponds to an understanding of sincerity as rhetoric. This view holds that sincerity is a socially determined effect of language and affect. As such, the dissertation begins by analyzing the valences of sincerity during the Thaw, exploring them in connection with writers of the Village Prose and Youth Prose movements as well as in the poetry of Evgenii Evtushenko. From this survey of different literary trends, a general framework of a shift from an essentialist to a performative conception of sincerity in Russian official literature is presented. This dissertation argues that there was a gradual process which saw authoritative discourse and a discourse of sincerity exist in tension with each other in the early Thaw before performativity seeped into sincerity rhetoric in the Youth Prose of the early ‘60s. An awareness of sincerity as rhetorical or performative language flourished in postmodernist literature and late Soviet underground art, creating a mode that was self-conscious of the impossibility of essential sincerity while still seeking a way to be sincere

An evaluation of remotely sensed wetland mapping

Landscape management is based on the maintenance of natural ecosystems and recognizes the importance of maintaining the habitat diversity of all ecosystem types. Acquiring information about the size, distribution and location of wetlands is the first step towards evaluating their habitat value in a landscape perspective. An explicit review about the strengths and limitations of any landcover database is critical prior to input into the decision making process. Techniques were developed for characterizing wetland habitat components in a landscape context utilizing remote sensing and geographic information system technologies. A hierarchy of remotely sensed data ranging from 1:5000 colour infrared aerial photography to LANDSAT Thematic Mapper satellite data was employed to compare detail of information available at each scale of data. These techniques included evaluation of ground-based wetland classification systems, air photo interpretation, investigation of approaches to image classification, and development of accuracy assessment techniques. The developed techniques were applied to a Northwestern Ontario landscape to produce a thematic layer of wetland habitat information. The effectiveness of these techniques was evaluated by assessing the accuracy of each remote sensing scale for mapping the broad scale wetland habitat at the physiognomic group level. 1:5,000 and 1:10,000 scale colour infrared aerial photography provided the best thematic accuracy at 94 percent, whereas 1:20,000 scale allowed wetland mapping at 84 percent accuracy. Satellite based mapping using Landsat Thematic Mapper integrated with digital Forest Resource Inventory map data allowed wetlands to be mapped with 72 percent accuracy. Combining physiognomically similar wetland classes increased satellite based mapping accuracy to 81 percent

Avoiding a Lemons Market by Including Uncertainty in the Kyoto Protocol: Same Mechanism - Improved Rules

In its current form the Kyoto Protocol does not consider the issue of uncertainty in the process of mutual recognition of emission reductions between Parties. We argue that lack of appropriate institutions that police emission reporting will lead to a disintegration of the carbon market due to competition induced quality deterioration of reporting. The introduction of a verification clause in the Protocols rules would be a first step towards avoiding disintegrative tendencies and carry the potential of improving the Protocols effectiveness. Building on a physical approach of verification times we derive an economic model of optimal emission and uncertainty reduction to reach a verifiable emission target. In such a set-up, depending on its competitive advantage, a Party can choose to reduce emissions and/or the associated uncertainties or trade verified certificates. Thus, the proposed model is intended to help prioritize efforts to reach verifiable emission reductions with least costs within a Kyoto type framework

Fecal Microbiota Transplantation: An Update on Clinical Practice

Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) is an infusion in the colon, or the delivery through the upper gastrointestinal tract, of stool from a healthy donor to a recipient with a disease believed to be related to an unhealthy gut microbiome. FMT has been successfully used to treat recurrent Clostridium difficile infection (rCDI). The short-term success of FMT in rCDI has led to investigations of its application to other gastrointestinal disorders and extra-intestinal diseases with presumed gut dysbiosis. Despite the promising results of FMT in these conditions, several barriers remain, including determining the characteristics of a healthy microbiome, ensuring the safety of the recipient with respect to long-term outcomes, adequate monitoring of the recipient of fecal material, achieving high-quality control, and maintaining reasonable costs. For these reasons, establishing uniform protocols for stool preparation, finding the best modes of FMT administration, maintaining large databases of donors and recipients, and assuring that oral ingestion is equivalent to the more widely accepted colonoscopic infusion are issues that need to be addressed

Caribou conservation and recovery in Ontario: development and implementation of the Caribou Conservation Plan

The range of Ontario’s woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) (forest-dwelling ecotype) has receded northward substantially over many decades, leading to its current Threatened designation. Ontario released its Caribou Conservation Plan (CCP) in the fall of 2009. This policy responded to public input and recommendations from the Ontario Woodland Caribou Recovery Team and the Caribou Science Review Panel, and outlines conservation and recovery actions to conserve and recover caribou. Within an adaptive management framework, the CCP builds upon a recent history of managing at large landscape scales in Ontario to implement a range management approach as the basis for recovery actions. These commitments and actions include enhanced research and monitoring, improved caribou habitat planning at the landscape scale, an integrated range analysis approach using advanced assessment tools to evaluate thresholds of habitat amount, arrangement and disturbance, the assessment of probability of persistence, consideration of cumulative effects, meeting forest management silvicultural performance requirements, consideration of caribou recovery implications when managing other wildlife, an initial focus on the southern edge of caribou distribution where threats are most significant, improved outreach and stewardship, and consideration of Aboriginal Traditional Knowledge in recovery actions. Implementation of the CCP signifies a long-term provincial commitment to caribou recovery, initially focusing on identified priorities within the CCP

A global analysis of the complex landscape of isoforms and regulatory networks of p63 in human cells and tissues

Expression database. Column A contains the names of the 1099 TFs in humans. Columns B–BC provide the expression of the TFs in FPKM (fragments per kilobase of transcript per million), as calculated by Analysis Pipeline 1, across the 40 cell-types (52 experiments). (CSV 553 kb

Small representations of finite classical groups

Finite group theorists have established many formulas that express interesting properties of a finite group in terms of sums of characters of the group. An obstacle to applying these formulas is lack of control over the dimensions of representations of the group. In particular, the representations of small dimensions tend to contribute the largest terms to these sums, so a systematic knowledge of these small representations could lead to proofs of important conjectures which are currently out of reach. Despite the classification by Lusztig of the irreducible representations of finite groups of Lie type, it seems that this aspect remains obscure. In this note we develop a language which seems to be adequate for the description of the "small" representations of finite classical groups and puts in the forefront the notion of rank of a representation. We describe a method, the "eta correspondence", to construct small representations, and we conjecture that our construction is exhaustive. We also give a strong estimate on the dimension of small representations in terms of their rank. For the sake of clarity, in this note we describe in detail only the case of the finite symplectic groups.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publications in the proceedings of the conference on the occasion of Roger Howe's 70th birthday (1-5 June 2015, Yale University, New Haven, CT