The Scorecard on Development, 19602016: China and the Global Economic Rebound

This report looks at the rate of progress of economic, health, and social indicators, including per capita GDP, mortality, life expectancy, and education for all countries with available data. It examines the twenty-first century rebound for the majority of low- and middle-income countries after an unusual long-term decline in the rate of progress on most of these indicators in the last two decades of the twentieth century. It discuss the role of China in the twenty-first-century rebound, and the possible role of major policy changes that took place in many low- and middle-income countries, as well as other policy and institutional influences.The report is the latest edition of a series that began in 2001; the last version was published in 2011. The first two editions of the Scorecard (2001 and 2005) documented a then ongoing, historic long-term economic failure that occurred in the 1980s and '90s, before most low- and middle-income countries began to experience an economic rebound

Contemporary Issues in Protein Requirements and Consumption for Resistance Trained Athletes

In recent years an explosion of research papers concerning protein consumption has been published. The need to consolidate this information has become critical from both practical and future research standpoints. For this reason, the following paper presents an in depth analysis of contemporary issues in protein requirements and consumption for resistance trained athletes. Specifically, the paper covers: 1.) protein requirements for resistance trained athletes; 2.) the effect of the digestion rate of protein on muscular protein balance; 3.) the optimal timing of protein intake relative to exercise; 4.) the optimal pattern of protein ingestion, relative to how an individual should consume their protein throughout a 24 hour period, and what sources are utilized during this time frame; 5.) protein composition and its interaction with measures of protein balance and strength performance; 6.) the combination of protein and carbohydrates on plasma insulin levels and protein balance; 7.) the efficacy of protein supplements and whole food protein sources. Our goal is to provide the reader with practical information in optimizing protein intake as well as for provision of sound advice to their clients. Finally, special care was taken to provide future research implications

Characterizing G-Loading, Swirl Direction and Rayleigh Losses in an Ultra Compact Combustor

Previous research has been conducted showing significant benefits on combustion efficiency and stability by creating high centripetally accelerated, also known as g-loaded, combustion environments. Ultra Compact Combustor systems decrease size and weight of the overall engine by burning in a circumferential direction around a hybrid vane row where the high equivalence ratio cavity flow is quick quenched to lean by the core flow. The hybrid vane row integrates the compressor, combustor, and turbine for further length reduction and weight savings. Fuel and air are brought into the cavity and combusted in a high g-loaded environment driven by air injection at an angle tangent to the cavity outer diameter. The Air Force Research Lab and Air Force Institute of Technology have worked previously on compact combustor designs, and a new, high g-loaded, Ultra Compact Combustor has been designed to study flow characteristics in the cavity and core to help understand integration issues with engine systems

CHARACTERIZATION OF ROTARY BELL ATOMIZERS THROUGH IMAGE ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES

Three methods were developed to better understand and characterize the near-field dynamic processes of rotary bell atomization. The methods were developed with the goal of possible integration into industry to identify equipment changes through changes in the primary atomization of the bell. The first technique utilized high-speed imaging to capture qualitative ligament breakup and, in combination with a developed image processing technique and PIV software, was able to gain statistical size and velocity information about both ligaments and droplets in the image data. A second technique, using an Nd:YAG laser with an optical filter, was used to capture size statistics at even higher rotational speeds than the first technique, and was utilized to find differences between serrated and unserrated bell ligament and droplet data. The final technique was incorporating proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) into image data of a side-profile view of a damaged and undamaged bell during operation. This was done to capture differences between the data sets to come up with a characterization for identifying if a bell is damaged or not for future industrial integration

Density-Dependent Response of an Ultracold Plasma to Few-Cycle Radio-Frequency Pulses

Ultracold neutral plasmas exhibit a density-dependent resonant response to applied radio-frequency (RF) fields in the frequency range of several MHz to hundreds of MHz for achievable densities. We have conducted measurements where short bursts of RF were applied to these plasmas, with pulse durations as short as two cycles. We still observed a density-dependent resonant response to these short pulses. However, the too rapid timescale of the response, the dependence of the response on the sign of the driving field, the response as the number of pulses was increased, and the difference in plasma response to radial and axially applied RF fields are inconsistent with the plasma response being due to local resonant heating of electrons in the plasma. Instead, our results are consistent with rapid energy transfer from collective motion of the entire electron cloud to electrons in high-energy orbits. In addition to providing a potentially more robust way to measure ultracold neutral plasma densities, these measurements demonstrate the importance of collective motion in the energy transport in these systems.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

The Experiences of Stakeholders in District-University Administrator Preparation Partnerships

Collaborative partnerships between school districts and universities focused on school leadership development are a part of a recent effort to provide the field of public education with leadership for the 21st century. The research clearly indicates that the demand for educational administrators far outweighs the number of available qualified candidates. This qualitative research proposal, influenced by the research tradition of phenomenology, was designed to examine an important but often overlooked component of the school district–university partnership process. The stakeholders, representatives from both the school district and the university involved in the partnership, are key to the successful development and implementation of these joint leadership development efforts. Their backgrounds, experiences, and support are important for the potential success and key relationships needed to create and sustain effective school district–university partnerships. It is their experience that this research proposal is designed to capture

Input Data Preparation for AI Gravity Prediction Pipeline

The AI Gravity Project uses machine learning techniques to predict the actual value of gravity anomalies in places where data cannot be physically collected due to multiple constraining factors. Artificial intelligence is used to predict these anomalies. The predicted anomalies combined with the physically collected anomalies will eventually be combined to create higher resolution gravity models of the Earth. Here, the details of the first steps of the AI Gravity Project are presented. This includes the data pulling, cleaning, and analyzing the data prior to training the model