The Digital Life of Walkable Streets

Walkability has many health, environmental, and economic benefits. That is why web and mobile services have been offering ways of computing walkability scores of individual street segments. Those scores are generally computed from survey data and manual counting (of even trees). However, that is costly, owing to the high time, effort, and financial costs. To partly automate the computation of those scores, we explore the possibility of using the social media data of Flickr and Foursquare to automatically identify safe and walkable streets. We find that unsafe streets tend to be photographed during the day, while walkable streets are tagged with walkability-related keywords. These results open up practical opportunities (for, e.g., room booking services, urban route recommenders, and real-estate sites) and have theoretical implications for researchers who might resort to the use social media data to tackle previously unanswered questions in the area of walkability.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, Proceedings of International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2015

Participatory Militias: An Analysis of an Armed Movement's Online Audience

Armed groups of civilians known as "self-defense forces" have ousted the powerful Knights Templar drug cartel from several towns in Michoacan. This militia uprising has unfolded on social media, particularly in the "VXM" ("Valor por Michoacan," Spanish for "Courage for Michoacan") Facebook page, gathering more than 170,000 fans. Previous work on the Drug War has documented the use of social media for real-time reports of violent clashes. However, VXM goes one step further by taking on a pro-militia propagandist role, engaging in two-way communication with its audience. This paper presents a descriptive analysis of VXM and its audience. We examined nine months of posts, from VXM's inception until May 2014, totaling 6,000 posts by VXM administrators and more than 108,000 comments from its audience. We describe the main conversation themes, post frequency and relationships with offline events and public figures. We also characterize the behavior of VXM's most active audience members. Our work illustrates VXM's online mobilization strategies, and how its audience takes part in defining the narrative of this armed conflict. We conclude by discussing possible applications of our findings for the design of future communication technologies.Comment: Participatory Militias: An Analysis of an Armed Movement's Online Audience. Saiph Savage, Andres Monroy-Hernandez. CSCW: ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 201

Electron penetration in the nucleus and its effect on the quadrupole interaction

A series expansion of the interaction between a nucleus and its surrounding electron distribution provides terms that are well-known in the study of hyperfine interactions: the familiar quadrupole interaction and the less familiar hexadecapole interaction. If the penetration of electrons into the nucleus is taken into account, various corrections to these multipole interactions appear. The best known one is a scalar correction related to the isotope shift and the isomer shift. This paper discusses a related tensor correction, which modifies the quadrupole interaction if electrons penetrate the nucleus: the quadrupole shift. We describe the mathematical formalism and provide first-principles calculations of the quadrupole shift for a large set of solids. Fully relativistic calculations that explicitly take a finite nucleus into account turn out to be mandatory. Our analysis shows that the quadrupole shift becomes appreciably large for heavy elements. Implications for experimental high-precision studies of quadrupole interactions and quadrupole moment ratios are discussed. A literature review of other small quadrupole-like effects is presented as well

Metadata for ATLAS

This document provides an overview of the metadata, which are needed to characterize ATLAS event data at different levels (a complete run, data streams within a run, luminosity blocks within a run, individual events)

Polarised Quark Distributions in the Nucleon from Semi-Inclusive Spin Asymmetries

We present a measurement of semi-inclusive spin asymmetries for positively and negatively charged hadrons from deep inelastic scattering of polarised muons on polarised protons and deuterons in the range $0.003$1 GeV$^2$. Compared to our previous publication on this subject, with the new data the statistical errors have been reduced by nearly a factor of two. From these asymmetries and our inclusive spin asymmetries we determine the polarised quark distributions of valence quarks and non-strange sea quarks at $Q^2$=10 GeV$^2$. The polarised $u$ valence quark distribution, $\Delta u_v(x)$, is positive and the polarisation increases with $x$. The polarised $d$ valence quark distribution, $\Delta d_v(x)$, is negative and the non-strange sea distribution, $\Delta \bar q(x)$, is consistent with zero over the measured range of $x$. We find for the first moments $\int_0^1 \Delta u_v(x) dx = 0.77 \pm 0.10 \pm 0.08$, $\int_0^1 \Delta d_v(x) dx = -0.52 \pm 0.14 \pm 0.09$ and $\int_0^1 \Delta \bar q(x) dx= 0.01 \pm 0.04 \pm 0.03$, where we assumed $\Delta \bar u(x) = \Delta \bar d(x)$. We also determine for the first time the second moments of the valence distributions $\int_0^1 x \Delta q_v(x) dx$.Comment: 17 page

Spatio-temporal crime hotspots and the ambient population

It is well known that, due to that inherent differences in their underlying causal mechanisms, different types of crime will have variable impacts on different groups of people. Furthermore, the locations of vulnerable groups of people are highly temporally dynamic. Hence an accurate estimate of the true population at risk in a given place and time is vital for reliable crime rate calculation and hotspot generation. However, the choice of denominator is fraught with difficulty because data describing popular movements, rather than simply residential location, are limited. This research will make use of new ‘crowd-sourced’ data in an attempt to create more accurate estimates of the population at risk for mobile crimes such as street robbery. Importantly, these data are both spatially and temporally referenced and can therefore be used to estimate crime rate significance in both space and time. Spatio-temporal cluster hunting techniques will be used to identify crime hotspots that are significant given the size of the ambient population in the area at the time

Search for Narrow Diphoton Resonances and for gamma-gamma+W/Z Signatures in p\bar p Collisions at sqrt(s)=1.8 TeV

We present results of searches for diphoton resonances produced both inclusively and also in association with a vector boson (W or Z) using 100 pb^{-1} of p\bar p collisions using the CDF detector. We set upper limits on the product of cross section times branching ratio for both p\bar p\to\gamma\gamma + X and p\bar p\to\gamma\gamma + W/Z. Comparing the inclusive production to the expectations from heavy sgoldstinos we derive limits on the supersymmetry-breaking scale sqrt{F} in the TeV range, depending on the sgoldstino mass and the choice of other parameters. Also, using a NLO prediction for the associated production of a Higgs boson with a W or Z boson, we set an upper limit on the branching ratio for H\to\gamma\gamma. Finally, we set a lower limit on the mass of a `bosophilic' Higgs boson (e.g. one which couples only to \gamma, W, and Z$ bosons with standard model couplings) of 82 GeV/c^2 at 95% confidence level.Comment: 30 pages, 11 figure

Measurement of the Strong Coupling Constant from Inclusive Jet Production at the Tevatron pˉp\bar pp Collider

We report a measurement of the strong coupling constant, $\alpha_s(M_Z)$, extracted from inclusive jet production in $p\bar{p}$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$1800 GeV. The QCD prediction for the evolution of $\alpha_s$ with jet transverse energy $E_T$ is tested over the range 40<$E_T$<450 GeV using $E_T$ for the renormalization scale. The data show good agreement with QCD in the region below 250 GeV. In the text we discuss the data-theory comparison in the region from 250 to 450 GeV. The value of $\alpha_s$ at the mass of the $Z^0$ boson averaged over the range 40<$E_T$<250 GeV is found to be $\alpha_s(M_{Z})= 0.1178 \pm 0.0001{(\rm stat)}^{+0.0081}_{-0.0095}{\rm (exp. syst)}$. The associated theoretical uncertainties are mainly due to the choice of renormalization scale (^{+6%}_{-4%}) and input parton distribution functions (5%).Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, using RevTeX. Submitted to Physical Review Letter

Search for the Supersymmetric Partner of the Top-Quark in ppˉp \bar{p} Collisions at s=1.8TeV\sqrt{s} = 1.8 {\rm TeV}

We report on a search for the supersymmetric partner of the top quark (stop) produced in $t \bar{t}$ events using $110 {\rm pb}^{-1}$ of $p \bar{p}$ collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 1.8 {\rm TeV}$ recorded with the Collider Detector at Fermilab. In the case of a light stop squark, the decay of the top quark into stop plus the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) could have a significant branching ratio. The observed events are consistent with Standard Model $t \bar{t}$ production and decay. Hence, we set limits on the branching ratio of the top quark decaying into stop plus LSP, excluding branching ratios above 45% for a LSP mass up to 40 {\rm GeV/c}$^{2}$.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure

Thrips tabaci (Thysanoptera: Thripidae) and Iris yellow spot virus Associated with Onion Transplants, Onion Volunteers, and Weeds in Colorado

Infestation by onion thrips, Thrips tabaci Lindeman, was determined on transplants of onion (Allium cepa L.) received in Colorado during March and April from out-of-state sources (Imperial Valley, CA; near Phoenix, AZ; and southern Texas) during 2004 to 2008. In the 5 years of the study, 50 to 100% of the transplant lots sampled arrived infested with thrips. Among infested transplant lots, the overall number of thrips averaged 0.15 to 0.63 per plant, with as many as four per plant in some lots. T. tabaci was the dominant thrips species in all seasons and locations of transplant origin. In addition, 19 of 83 (23%) tested lots had plants positive for Iris yellow spot virus. Iris yellow spot virus and T. tabaci were detected in volunteer onion plants as early as 1 May, a few weeks after the summer onion crop was planted, suggesting a possible role of infected volunteer plants in perennation of the virus between onion crops. Iris yellow spot virus and T. tabaci were detected in many common weeds including blue mustard (Chorispora tenella (Pall.) DC), common purslane (Portulaca oleracea L.), field bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis L.), flixweed (Descurainia sophia Webb & Berth.), prickly lettuce (Lactuca serriola L.), and redroot pigweed (Amaranthus retroflexus L.) in early spring near onion fields in Colorado during 2006 to 2009. Confirmation that Iris yellow spot virus and Iris yellow spot virus-infective thrips overwintered in volunteer onions and some common winter annual and perennial weeds emphasizes that managing volunteer onions and weeds is important for management of iris yellow spot, in addition to planting transplants free of thrips and the pathogen.This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by the Society of Southwestern Entomologists and can be found at: http://www.bioone.org/loi/swe