Coping with oil spills: oil exposure and anxiety among residents of Gulf Coast states after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

In April 2010, a fatal explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico resulted in the largest marine oil spill in history. This research describes the association of oil exposure with anxiety after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and evaluates effect modification by self-mastery, emotional support and cleanup participation. To assess the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conducted the Gulf States Population Survey (GSPS), a random-digit-dial telephone cross-sectional survey completed between December 2010 and December 2011 with 38,361 responses in four different Gulf Coast states: Louisiana, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. Anxiety severity was measured using the Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) symptom inventory. We used Tobit regression to model underlying anxiety as a function of oil exposure and hypothesised effect modifiers, adjusting for socio-demographics. Latent anxiety was higher among those with direct contact with oil than among those who did not have direct contact with oil in confounder-adjusted models [β = 2.84, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.78, 4.91]. Among individuals with direct contact with oil, there was no significant interaction between participating in cleanup activities and emotional support for anxiety (p = 0.20). However, among those with direct contact with oil, in confounder-adjusted models, participation in oil spill cleanup activities was associated with lower latent anxiety (β = −3.55, 95% CI: −6.15, −0.95). Oil contact was associated with greater anxiety, but this association appeared to be mitigated by cleanup participation

One loop renormalization of the four-dimensional theory for quantum dilaton gravity.

We study the one loop renormalization in the most general metric-dilaton theory with the second derivative terms only. The general theory can be divided into two classes, models of one are equivalent to conformally coupled with gravity scalar field and also to general relativity with cosmological term. The models of second class have one extra degree of freedom which corresponds to dilaton. We calculate the one loop divergences for the models of second class and find that the arbitrary functions of dilaton in the starting action can be fine-tuned in such a manner that all the higher derivative counterterms disappear on shell. The only structures in both classical action and counterterms, which survive on shell, are the potential (cosmological) ones. They can be removed by renormalization of the dilaton field which acquire the nontrivial anomalous dimension, that leads to the effective running of the cosmological constant. For some of the renormalizable solutions of the theory the observable low energy value of the cosmological constant is small as compared with the Newtonian constant. We also discuss another application of our result.Comment: 21 pages, latex, no figures

Excluded Volume Effects in the Quark Meson Coupling Model

Excluded volume effects are incorporated in the quark meson coupling model to take into account in a phenomenological way the hard core repulsion of the nuclear force. The formalism employed is thermodynamically consistent and does not violate causality. The effects of the excluded volume on in-medium nucleon properties and the nuclear matter equation of state are investigated as a function of the size of the hard core. It is found that in-medium nucleon properties are not altered significantly by the excluded volume, even for large hard core radii, and the equation of state becomes stiffer as the size of the hard core increases.Comment: 14 pages, revtex, 6 figure

Parity Violation in Proton-Proton Scattering

Measurements of parity-violating longitudinal analyzing powers (normalized asymmetries) in polarized proton-proton scattering provide a unique window on the interplay between the weak and strong interactions between and within hadrons. Several new proton-proton parity violation experiments are presently either being performed or are being prepared for execution in the near future: at TRIUMF at 221 MeV and 450 MeV and at COSY (Kernforschungsanlage Juelich) at 230 MeV and near 1.3 GeV. These experiments are intended to provide stringent constraints on the set of six effective weak meson-nucleon coupling constants, which characterize the weak interaction between hadrons in the energy domain where meson exchange models provide an appropriate description. The 221 MeV is unique in that it selects a single transition amplitude (3P2-1D2) and consequently constrains the weak meson-nucleon coupling constant h_rho{pp}. The TRIUMF 221 MeV proton-proton parity violation experiment is described in some detail. A preliminary result for the longitudinal analyzing power is Az = (1.1 +/-0.4 +/-0.4) x 10^-7. Further proton-proton parity violation experiments are commented on. The anomaly at 6 GeV/c requires that a new multi-GeV proton-proton parity violation experiment be performed.Comment: 13 Pages LaTeX, 5 PostScript figures, uses espcrc1.sty. Invited talk at QULEN97, International Conference on Quark Lepton Nuclear Physics -- Nonperturbative QCD Hadron Physics & Electroweak Nuclear Processes --, Osaka, Japan May 20--23, 199

Tritium Beta Decay, Neutrino Mass Matrices and Interactions Beyond the Standard Model

The interference of charge-changing interactions, weaker than the V-A Standard Model (SM) interaction and having a different Lorentz structure, with that SM interaction, can, in principle, produce effects near the end point of the Tritium beta decay spectrum which are of a different character from those produced by the purely kinematic effect of neutrino mass expected in the simplest extension of the SM. We show that the existence of more than one mass eigenstate can lead to interference effects at the end point that are stronger than those occurring over the entire spectrum. We discuss these effects both for the special case of Dirac neutrinos and the more general case of Majorana neutrinos and show that, for the present precision of the experiments, one formula should suffice to express the interference effects in all cases. Implications for "sterile" neutrinos are noted.Comment: 32 pages, LaTeX, 6 figures, PostScript; full discussion and changes in notation from Phys. Lett. B440 (1998) 89, nucl-th/9807057; submitted to Phys. Rev.

Isospin-Violating Meson-Nucleon Vertices as an Alternate Mechanism of Charge-Symmetry Breaking

We compute isospin-violating meson-nucleon coupling constants and their consequent charge-symmetry-breaking nucleon-nucleon potentials. The couplings result from evaluating matrix elements of quark currents between nucleon states in a nonrelativistic constituent quark model; the isospin violations arise from the difference in the up and down constituent quark masses. We find, in particular, that isospin violation in the omega-meson--nucleon vertex dominates the class IV CSB potential obtained from these considerations. We evaluate the resulting spin-singlet--triplet mixing angles, the quantities germane to the difference of neutron and proton analyzing powers measured in elastic $\vec{n}-\vec{p}$ scattering, and find them commensurate to those computed originally using the on-shell value of the $\rho$-$\omega$ mixing amplitude. The use of the on-shell $\rho$-$\omega$ mixing amplitude at $q^2=0$ has been called into question; rather, the amplitude is zero in a wide class of models. Our model possesses no contribution from $\rho$-$\omega$ mixing at $q^2=0$, and we find that omega-meson exchange suffices to explain the measured $n-p$ analyzing power difference~at~183 MeV.Comment: 20 pages, revtex, 3 uuencoded PostScript figure

Optical Detection of a Single Nuclear Spin

We propose a method to optically detect the spin state of a 31-P nucleus embedded in a 28-Si matrix. The nuclear-electron hyperfine splitting of the 31-P neutral-donor ground state can be resolved via a direct frequency discrimination measurement of the 31-P bound exciton photoluminescence using single photon detectors. The measurement time is expected to be shorter than the lifetime of the nuclear spin at 4 K and 10 T.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Astrophysical structures from primordial quantum black holes

The characteristic sizes of astrophysical structures, up to the whole observed Universe, can be recovered, in principle, assuming that gravity is the overall interaction assembling systems starting from microscopic scales, whose order of magnitude is ruled by the Planck length and the related Compton wavelength. This result agrees with the absence of screening mechanisms for the gravitational interaction and could be connected to the presence of Yukawa corrections in the Newtonian potential which introduce typical interaction lengths. This result directly comes out from quantization of primordial black holes and then characteristic interaction lengths directly emerge from quantum field theory.Comment: 11 page

Four Lessons in Versatility or How Query Languages Adapt to the Web

Exposing not only human-centered information, but machine-processable data on the Web is one of the commonalities of recent Web trends. It has enabled a new kind of applications and businesses where the data is used in ways not foreseen by the data providers. Yet this exposition has fractured the Web into islands of data, each in different Web formats: Some providers choose XML, others RDF, again others JSON or OWL, for their data, even in similar domains. This fracturing stifles innovation as application builders have to cope not only with one Web stack (e.g., XML technology) but with several ones, each of considerable complexity. With Xcerpt we have developed a rule- and pattern based query language that aims to give shield application builders from much of this complexity: In a single query language XML and RDF data can be accessed, processed, combined, and re-published. Though the need for combined access to XML and RDF data has been recognized in previous work (including the W3C’s GRDDL), our approach differs in four main aspects: (1) We provide a single language (rather than two separate or embedded languages), thus minimizing the conceptual overhead of dealing with disparate data formats. (2) Both the declarative (logic-based) and the operational semantics are unified in that they apply for querying XML and RDF in the same way. (3) We show that the resulting query language can be implemented reusing traditional database technology, if desirable. Nevertheless, we also give a unified evaluation approach based on interval labelings of graphs that is at least as fast as existing approaches for tree-shaped XML data, yet provides linear time and space querying also for many RDF graphs. We believe that Web query languages are the right tool for declarative data access in Web applications and that Xcerpt is a significant step towards a more convenient, yet highly efficient data access in a “Web of Data”

Tribute to Professor David Bruck

A tribute to Professor David I. Bruck, who served on the faculty of the Washington and Lee University School of Law from 2004 to 2020. Bruck directed W&L\u27s death penalty defense clinic, the Virginia Capital Case Clearinghouse, also known as VC3 . He became Professor of Law, Emeritus in 2020