Frack Off! Is Municipal Zoning a Significant Threat to Hydraulic Fracturing in Michigan?

Article published in the Michigan State University School of Law Student Scholarship Collection

Lime and Ice Project : an overview of the geology and geomorphology of part of the Hambleton and Howardian Hills for the North York Moors National Park Authority

This report provides an overview of the geology and landscape that characterises the Hambleton Hills and part of the Howardian Hills that together comprise the North York Moors National Park Authority (NYMNPA) ‘Lime and Ice’ project area. This outreach and community project is centred on the Sutton Bank Visitor Centre and aims to inform and excite visitors about the geology and landscape of this beautiful area. Underpinning an understanding of the natural history and the development of the area is an appreciation of the geological evolution of the Jurassic bedrock geology (‘lime’) and the impact of the last ice-age (‘ice’) that left a thin veneer of overlying glacial deposits over part of the area. A 200 million year geological history that records ancient shallow seas, rivers and deltas, major earth movements and the later impact of major glaciations, especially the last ice-age, is brought to life here to illustrate the dynamic Earth history and our more recent influence on the landscape. The report covers the geographic scope of the ‘Lime and Ice’ Project area (Section 1) which includes part of the North York Moors National Park, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and the Coxwold-Gilling gap sandwiched between these designated areas. An overview of the geomorphology of the area (Section 2) comprising the upland moors of the Hambletons Hills, the low ground below the main escarpment and the rolling Howardian Hills sets the scene. The main part of the report (Section 3) describes the geological history and resources of the Jurassic rocks in the area in the context of the wider Cleveland (Yorkshire) Basin, with special reference to the local outcrops and landscape features. This is followed by a description of the influence of the last ice-age and subsequent post-glacial mass movement features that have sculpted and moulded the landscape that we appreciate today. The later sections cover the major Earth movements that have folded, faulted (displaced) and uplifted the rocks during the last 200 million years (Section 4) and the Section 5 provides an overview of our human exploitation of the natural geological resources of the area. A bibliography of source material and further reading is provided. Technical and/or geological terms are highlighted by grey shading; these may require further explanation for the nonspecialist in a Glossary depending on the knowledge of the intended audience and advice from the NYMNPA

Correspondence in Quasiperiodic and Chaotic Maps: Quantization via the von Neumann Equation

A generalized approach to the quantization of a large class of maps on a torus, i.e. quantization via the von Neumann Equation, is described and a number of issues related to the quantization of model systems are discussed. The approach yields well behaved mixed quantum states for tori for which the corresponding Schrodinger equation has no solutions, as well as an extended spectrum for tori where the Schrodinger equation can be solved. Quantum-classical correspondence is demonstrated for the class of mappings considered, with the Wigner-Weyl density $\rho(p,q,t)$ going to the correct classical limit. An application to the cat map yields, in a direct manner, nonchaotic quantum dynamics, plus the exact chaotic classical propagator in the correspondence limit.Comment: 36 pages, RevTex preprint forma

New observations of the NGC 1275 phenomenon

Wetensch. publicatieFaculteit der Wiskunde en Natuurwetenschappe

The cost of simplifying air travel when modeling disease spread

Background: Air travel plays a key role in the spread of many pathogens. Modeling the long distance spread of infectious disease in these cases requires an air travel model. Highly detailed air transportation models can be over determined and computationally problematic. We compared the predictions of a simplified air transport model with those of a model of all routes and assessed the impact of differences on models of infectious disease. Methodology/Principal Findings: Using U.S. ticket data from 2007, we compared a simplified "pipe" model, in which individuals flow in and out of the air transport system based on the number of arrivals and departures from a given airport, to a fully saturated model where all routes are modeled individually. We also compared the pipe model to a "gravity" model where the probability of travel is scaled by physical distance; the gravity model did not differ significantly from the pipe model. The pipe model roughly approximated actual air travel, but tended to overestimate the number of trips between small airports and underestimate travel between major east and west coast airports. For most routes, the maximum number of false (or missed) introductions of disease is small (<1 per day) but for a few routes this rate is greatly underestimated by the pipe model. Conclusions/Significance: If our interest is in large scale regional and national effects of disease, the simplified pipe model may be adequate. If we are interested in specific effects of interventions on particular air routes or the time for the disease to reach a particular location, a more complex point-to-point model will be more accurate. For many problems a hybrid model that independently models some frequently traveled routes may be the best choice. Regardless of the model used, the effect of simplifications and sensitivity to errors in parameter estimation should be analyzed

Phonological, visual, and semantic coding strategies and children's short-term picture memory span

Three experiments addressed controversies in the previous literature on the development of phonological and other forms of short-term memory coding in children, using assessments of picture memory span that ruled out potentially confounding effects of verbal input and output. Picture materials were varied in terms of phonological similarity, visual similarity, semantic similarity, and word length. Older children (6/8-year-olds), but not younger children (4/5-year-olds), demonstrated robust and consistent phonological similarity and word length effects, indicating that they were using phonological coding strategies. This confirmed findings initially reported by Conrad (1971), but subsequently questioned by other authors. However, in contrast to some previous research, little evidence was found for a distinct visual coding stage at 4 years, casting doubt on assumptions that this is a developmental stage that consistently precedes phonological coding. There was some evidence for a dual visual and phonological coding stage prior to exclusive use of phonological coding at around 5-6 years. Evidence for semantic similarity effects was limited, suggesting that semantic coding is not a key method by which young children recall lists of pictures

Resonant transmission through an open quantum dot

We have measured the low-temperature transport properties of a quantum dot formed in a one-dimensional channel. In zero magnetic field this device shows quantized ballistic conductance plateaus with resonant tunneling peaks in each transition region between plateaus. Studies of this structure as a function of applied perpendicular magnetic field and source-drain bias indicate that resonant structure deriving from tightly bound states is split by Coulomb charging at zero magnetic field.Comment: To be published in Phys. Rev. B (1997). 8 LaTex pages with 5 figure

Sunflower population, row width and row direction

This archival publication may not reflect current scientific knowledge or recommendations. Current information available from Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station. http://www.maes.umn.ed

Primordial black holes in braneworld cosmologies: Accretion after formation

We recently studied the formation and evaporation of primordial black holes in a simple braneworld cosmology, namely Randall-Sundrum Type II. Here we study the effect of accretion from the cosmological background onto the black holes after formation. While it is generally believed that in the standard cosmology such accretion is of negligible importance, we find that during the high-energy regime of braneworld cosmology accretion can be the dominant effect and lead to a mass increase of potentially orders of magnitude. However, unfortunately the growth is exponentially sensitive to the accretion efficiency, which cannot be determined accurately. Since accretion becomes unimportant once the high-energy regime is over, it does not affect any constraints expressed at the time of black hole evaporation, but it can change the interpretation of those constraints in terms of early Universe formation rates.Comment: 6 pages RevTeX4 file. Extension to discussion of thermal balance and grey-body factor

Multi-Center non-BPS Black Holes - the Solution

We construct multi-center, non-supersymmetric four-dimensional solutions describing a rotating anti-D6-D2 black hole and an arbitrary number of D4-D2-D0 black holes in a line. These solutions correspond to an arbitrary number of extremal non-BPS black rings in a Taub-NUT space with a rotating three-charge black hole in the middle. The positions of the centers are determined by solving a set of "bubble" or "integrability" equations that contain cubic polynomials of the inter-center distance, and that allow scaling solutions even when the total four-dimensional angular momentum of the scaling centers is non-zero.Comment: 16 pages, LaTe