The Role of the FIU Nature Preserve in Promoting Physical Activity

The FIU Nature Preserve was established over thirty-five years ago as an environmental educational center where visitors could experience and learn about local south Florida ecosystems and organisms. This 16-acre facility in the heart of the MMC campus has recently become a popular outdoor fitness destination since the inauguration of a jogging path during Fall 2013. This study set out to quantify how many people visit the FIU Nature Preserve annually, who they are, and what they are doing there. It is also assessing the effect of the FIU Nature Preserve on the overall health of the university community since studies have found that physical activity and contact with nature are positively associated with good health. A pilot was completed during Fall 2014, and the study is on track to finish March 22, 2015. To measure current visitation, two types of surveys were done on seven days across seven weeks during the spring of 2015, visitation counts and in-person surveys. By understanding the reasons and ways people discover and embark on regular use of natural areas, land managers and policy makers can make more informed decisions. As human population and development continue to grow, new ways to integrate natural areas into our urban environment and our lifestyles must be found. In this way, natural resource conservation could be championed as a way for communities to promote physical activity and good health beyond simply using their intrinsic value

Galaxies infalling into groups: filaments vs. isotropic infall

We perform a comparative analysis of the properties of galaxies infalling into groups classifying them accordingly to whether they are: falling along filamentary structures; or they are falling isotropically. For this purpose, we identify filamentary structures connecting massive groups of galaxies in the SDSS. We perform a comparative analysis of some properties of galaxies in filaments, in the isotropic infall region, in the field, and in groups. We study the luminosity functions (LF) and the dependence of the specific star formation rate (SSFR) on stellar mass, galaxy type, and projected distance to the groups that define the filaments. We find that the LF of galaxies in filaments and in the isotropic infalling region are basically indistinguishable between them, with the possible exception of late-type galaxies. On the other hard, regardless of galaxy type, their LFs are clearly different from that of field or group galaxies. Both of them have characteristic absolute magnitudes and faint end slopes in between the field and group values. More significant differences between galaxies in filaments and in the isotropic infall region are observed when we analyse the SSFR. We find that galaxies in filaments have a systematically higher fraction of galaxies with low SSFR as a function of both, stellar mass and distance to the groups, indicating a stronger quenching of the star formation in the filaments compared to both, the isotropic infalling region, and the field. Our results suggest that some physical mechanisms that determine the differences observed between field galaxies and galaxies in systems, affect galaxies even when they are not yet within the systems.Comment: Accepted in MNRAS, 10 pages, 8 figure

Comparing galaxy populations in compact and loose groups of galaxies III. Effects of environment on star formation

Aims. This paper is part of a series in which we systematically compare the properties of galaxies in compact groups, loose groups, and the field. In this paper we focus our study on the age and star formation in galaxies. Methods. For galaxies in selected samples of compact groups, loose groups, and field galaxies, we compare the distributions of Dn (4000) as an age indicator and the specific star formation rate as an indicator of on-going star formation. We analyse the dependence of these parameters on galaxy type and stellar mass and, for group galaxies, their dependence on the dynamic state of the system. We study the relative fraction of galaxies dominated by old stellar populations as a function of galaxy stellar mass. We perform a similar analysis for galaxies that have high specific star formation rates. Results. Galaxies in compact groups have, on average, older stellar populations than their loose-group or field counterparts. Early-type galaxies in compact groups formed their stars and depleted their gas content more rapidly than in the other environments. We have found evidence of two populations of late-type galaxies in dynamically old compact groups: one with normal specific star formation rates and another with markedly reduced star formation. Conclusions. Processes that transform galaxies from star forming to quiescent act upon galaxies faster and more effectively in compact groups. The unique characteristics of compact groups make them an extreme environment for galaxies, where the transition to quiescence occurs rapidly.Fil: Coenda, Valeria. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Astronomía Teórica y Experimental. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba. Instituto de Astronomía Teórica y Experimental; ArgentinaFil: Muriel, Hernan. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Astronomía Teórica y Experimental. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba. Instituto de Astronomía Teórica y Experimental; ArgentinaFil: Martinez Atencio, Hector Julian. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Astronomía Teórica y Experimental. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba. Instituto de Astronomía Teórica y Experimental; Argentin

A United Vision for a World Without Youth Prisons

On August 21st, 2019 Cities United held a national convening with all of its partners in Hampton Roads, Virginia. During this convening the Youth First Initiative and RISE for Youth were invited by Performing Statistics to conduct a visioning session with young people from different jurisdictions working with Cities United. The goal of the visioning session was to offer young people an opportunity to share their vision for what their communities could look like without youth prisons. It is a platform for young people to reflect back on their own interactions with the justice system and share what could have been done differently to ensure their success if resources were able.This new report serves as a resource for advocates as well as state and local governments to identify concrete and achievable solutions that can be applied in their own communities. Our youth deserve investments in care that recognize and nurture their potential

Gobierno local abierto: diagnóstico en México y Oaxaca

Con un enfoque centrado en el ciudadano y el uso de las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación, la expresión gobierno abierto ha revolucionado la administración pública. Esto ha implicado una alta deliberación, colaboración, participación y publicidad. El objetivo del presente artículo es diagnosticar los estados cuyos municipios siguen el proyecto de gobierno abierto, para lo cual se tomó como muestra a los estados de México y Oaxaca, donde se compararon los estratos de desarrollo humano muy alto y bajo. A partir de ello se formuló la hipótesis de que los gobiernos locales en México responden de forma diferente a la expresión gobierno abierto cuando este tiene que ver de manera directa y proporcional con el desarrollo humano. Es decir, los municipios con mayor desarrollo humano tuvieron también mayor nivel de gobierno abierto, mientras que los gobiernos con menor desarrollo humano alcanzaron niveles inferiores de gobierno abierto. Se estudiaron 30 municipios de ambas entidades, con diez variables a analizar mediante contraste estadístico de chi cuadrada y coeficiente de correlación r de Pearson. Los resultados demostraron que sí existe una relación entre desarrollo humano y gobierno abierto

¿Herederos de Mayo y la Constitución de 1853? Liberalismo y antiliberalismo en el debate sobre la reforma constitucional de 1949

El artículo aborda las reconfiguraciones que los discursos peronista y antiperonista experimentaron en el proceso que condujo a la reforma constitucional de 1949. En particular da cuenta del modo en que la posición ante la tradición liberal se convirtió en un parteaguas en el que se expresó, y profundizó, el enfrentamiento político. Reconstruye los argumentos que peronistas, radicales y socialistas sostuvieron en distintas arenas –el Parlamento Nacional, la tribuna pública, la Convención Constituyente- subrayando cómo en ellos se expresaba una profunda disputa acerca de la historia política argentina y del papel que en esa historia, y en particular en la formulación que en la Constitución de 1853, había cumplido la tradición liberal. El artículo concluye mostrando cómo una perspectiva atenta al carácter co-constitutivo de las identidades permite echar luz sobre la significación de la coyuntura de la reforma constitucional en una historia más larga de las tradiciones políticas argentinas.Fil: Martinez Mazzola, Ricardo Hernan. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de San Martín; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentin

Scheduling Heterogeneous HPC Applications in Next-Generation Exascale Systems

Next generation HPC applications will increasingly time-share system resources with emerging workloads such as in-situ analytics, resilience tasks, runtime adaptation services and power management activities. HPC systems must carefully schedule these co-located codes in order to reduce their impact on application performance. Among the techniques traditionally used to mitigate the performance effects of time- share systems is gang scheduling. This approach, however, leverages global synchronization and time agreement mechanisms that will become hard to support as systems increase in size. Alternative performance interference mitigation approaches must be explored for future HPC systems. This dissertation evaluates the impacts of workload concurrency in future HPC systems. It uses simulation and modeling techniques to study the performance impacts of existing and emerging interference sources on a selection of HPC benchmarks, mini-applications, and applications. It also quantifies the cost and benefits of different approaches to scheduling co-located workloads, studies performance interference mitigation solutions based on gang scheduling, and examines their synchronization requirements. To do so, this dissertation presents and leverages a new Extreme Value Theory- based model to characterize interference sources, and investigate their impact on Bulk Synchronous Parallel (BSP) applications. It demonstrates how this model can be used to analyze the interference attenuation effects of alternative fine-grained OS scheduling approaches based on periodic real time schedulers. This analysis can, in turn, guide the design of those mitigation techniques by providing tools to understand the tradeoffs of selecting scheduling parameters

Groups of galaxies: relationship between environment and galaxy properties

We analyse how the properties of galaxies in groups identified in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey depend on the environment. In particular, we study the relationship between galaxy properties and group mass and group-centric distance. Among the galaxy properties we have considered here, we find that the $g-r$ colour is the most predictive parameter for group mass, while the most predictive pair of properties are $g-r$ colour and $r-$band absolute magnitude. Regarding the position inside the systems, the $g-r$ colour is the best tracer of group-centric distance and the most predictive pair of properties are $g-r$ colour and spectral type taken together. These results remain unchanged when a subsample of high mass groups is analysed. The same happens if the brightest group galaxies are excluded.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, accepted in MNRA

Thermodynamics of charged black holes with a nonlinear electrodynamics source

We study the thermodynamical properties of electrically charged black hole solutions of a nonlinear electrodynamics theory defined by a power p of the Maxwell invariant, which is coupled to Einstein gravity in four and higher spacetime dimensions. Depending on the range of the parameter p, these solutions present different asymptotic behaviors. We compute the Euclidean action with the appropriate boundary term in the grand canonical ensemble. The thermodynamical quantities are identified and in particular, the mass and the charge are shown to be finite for all classes of solutions. Interestingly, a generalized Smarr formula is derived and it is shown that this latter encodes perfectly the different asymptotic behaviors of the black hole solutions. The local stability is analyzed by computing the heat capacity and the electrical permittivity and we find that a set of small black holes are locally stable. In contrast to the standard Reissner-Nordstrom solution, there is a first-order phase transition between a class of these non-linear charged black holes and the Minkowski spacetime.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure