Epic Human Failure on June 30, 2013

Nineteen Prescott Fire Department, Granite Mountain Hot Shot (GMHS) wildland firefighters and supervisors (WFF), perished on the June 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire (YHF) in Arizona. The firefighters left their Safety Zone during forecast, outflow winds, triggering explosive fire behavior in drought-stressed chaparral. Why would an experienced WFF Crew, leave ‘good black’ and travel downslope through a brush-filled chimney, contrary to their training and experience? An organized Serious Accident Investigation Team (SAIT) found, “… no indication of negligence, reckless actions, or violations of policy or protocol.” Despite this, many WFF professionals deemed the catastrophe, “… the final, fatal link, in a long chain of bad decisions with good outcomes.” This paper is a theoretical and realistic examination of plausible, faulty, human decisions with prior good outcomes; internal and external impacts, influencing the GMHS; and two explanations for this catastrophe: Individual Blame Logic and Organizational Function Logic, and proposed preventive mitigations

Experiencing space–time: the stretched lifeworlds of migrant workers in India

In the relatively rare instances when the spatialities of temporary migrant work, workers’ journeys, and labour-market negotiations have been the subject of scholarly attention, there has been little work that integrates time into the analysis. Building on a case study of low-paid and insecure migrant manual workers in the context of rapid economic growth in India, we examine both material and subjective dimensions of these workers’ spatiotemporal experiences. What does it mean to live life stretched out, multiplyattached to places across national space? What kinds of place attachments emerge for people temporarily sojourning in, rather than moving to, new places to reside and work? Our analysis of the spatiotemporalities of migrant workers’ experiences in India suggests that, over time, this group of workers use their own agency to seek to avoid the experience of humiliation and indignity in employment relations. Like David Harvey, we argue that money needs to be integrated into such analysis, along with space and time. The paper sheds light on processes of exclusion, inequality and diff erentiation, unequal power geometries, and social topographies that contrast with neoliberalist narratives of ‘Indian shining

Supersymmetric black rings and three-charge supertubes

We present supergravity solutions for 1/8-supersymmetric black supertubes with three charges and three dipoles. Their reduction to five dimensions yields supersymmetric black rings with regular horizons and two independent angular momenta. The general solution contains seven independent parameters and provides the first example of non-uniqueness of supersymmetric black holes. In ten dimensions, the solutions can be realized as D1-D5-P black supertubes. We also present a worldvolume construction of a supertube that exhibits three dipoles explicitly. This description allows an arbitrary cross-section but captures only one of the angular momenta.Comment: 59 pages, 6 figures; v2: minor correction

Temperatures of dust and gas in S~140

In dense parts of interstellar clouds (> 10^5 cm^-3), dust & gas are expected to be in thermal equilibrium, being coupled via collisions. However, previous studies have shown that the temperatures of the dust & gas may remain decoupled even at higher densities. We study in detail the temperatures of dust & gas in the photon-dominated region S 140, especially around the deeply embedded infrared sources IRS 1-3 and at the ionization front. We derive the dust temperature and column density by combining Herschel PACS continuum observations with SOFIA observations at 37 $\mu$m and SCUBA at 450 $\mu$m. We model these observations using greybody fits and the DUSTY radiative transfer code. For the gas part we use RADEX to model the CO 1-0, CO 2-1, 13CO 1-0 and C18O 1-0 emission lines mapped with the IRAM-30m over a 4' field. Around IRS 1-3, we use HIFI observations of single-points and cuts in CO 9-8, 13CO 10-9 and C18O 9-8 to constrain the amount of warm gas, using the best fitting dust model derived with DUSTY as input to the non-local radiative transfer model RATRAN. We find that the gas temperature around the infrared sources varies between 35 and 55K and that the gas is systematically warmer than the dust by ~5-15K despite the high gas density. In addition we observe an increase of the gas temperature from 30-35K in the surrounding up to 40-45K towards the ionization front, most likely due to the UV radiation from the external star. Furthermore, detailed models of the temperature structure close to IRS 1 show that the gas is warmer and/or denser than what we model. Finally, modelling of the dust emission from the sub-mm peak SMM 1 constrains its luminosity to a few ~10^2 Lo. We conclude that the gas heating in the S 140 region is very efficient even at high densities, most likely due to the deep UV penetration from the embedded sources in a clumpy medium and/or oblique shocks.Comment: 15 pages, 23 figures, 4 tables, accepted for publication in A&

Locally Optimal Load Balancing

This work studies distributed algorithms for locally optimal load-balancing: We are given a graph of maximum degree $\Delta$, and each node has up to $L$ units of load. The task is to distribute the load more evenly so that the loads of adjacent nodes differ by at most $1$. If the graph is a path ($\Delta = 2$), it is easy to solve the fractional version of the problem in $O(L)$ communication rounds, independently of the number of nodes. We show that this is tight, and we show that it is possible to solve also the discrete version of the problem in $O(L)$ rounds in paths. For the general case ($\Delta > 2$), we show that fractional load balancing can be solved in $\operatorname{poly}(L,\Delta)$ rounds and discrete load balancing in $f(L,\Delta)$ rounds for some function $f$, independently of the number of nodes.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figure

Marine structure derived calcium phosphate-polymer biocomposites for local antibiotic delivery

© 2015 by the authors. Hydrothermally converted coralline hydroxyapatite (HAp) particles loaded with medically active substances were used to develop polylactic acid (PLA) thin film composites for slow drug delivery systems. The effects of HAp particles within PLA matrix on the gentamicin (GM) release and release kinetics were studied. The gentamicin release kinetics seemed to follow Power law Korsmeyer Peppas model with mainly diffusional process with a number of different drug transport mechanisms. Statistical analysis shows very significant difference on the release of gentamicin between GM containing PLA (PLAGM) and GM containing HAp microspheres within PLA matrix (PLAHApGM) devices, which PLAHApGM displays lower release rates. The use of HAp particles improved drug stabilization and higher drug encapsulation efficiency of the carrier. HAp is also the source of Ca2+ for the regeneration and repair of diseased bone tissue. The release profiles, exhibited a steady state release rate with significant antimicrobial activity against Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) (SH1000) even at high concentration of bacteria. The devices also indicated significant ability to control the growth of bacterial even after four weeks of drug release. Clinical release profiles can be easily tuned from drug-HAp physicochemical interactions and degradation kinetics of polymer matrix. The developed systems could be applied to prevent microbial adhesion to medical implant surfaces and to treat infections mainly caused by S. aureus in surgery

Quantum Black Holes

Static solutions of large-$N$ quantum dilaton gravity in $1+1$ dimensions are analyzed and found to exhibit some unusual behavior. As expected from previous work, infinite-mass solutions are found describing a black hole in equilibrium with a bath of Hawking radiation. Surprisingly, the finite mass solutions are found to approach zero coupling both at the horizon and spatial infinity, with a ``bounce'' off of strong coupling in between. Several new zero mass solutions -- candidate quantum vacua -- are also described.Comment: 14 pages + 6 figure