The optical M\"{o}bius strip cavity: Tailoring geometric phases and far fields

The M\"{o}bius strip, a long sheet of paper whose ends are glued together after a $180^{\circ}$ twist, has remarkable geometric and topological properties. Here, we consider dielectric M\"{o}bius strips of finite width and investigate the interplay between geometric properties and resonant light propagation. We show how the polarization dynamics of the electromagnetic wave depends on the topological properties, and demonstrate how the geometric phase can be manipulated between $0$ and $\pi$ through the system geometry. The loss of the M\"{o}bius character in thick cavities and for small twist segment lengths allows one to manipulate the polarization dynamics and the far-field emission, and opens the venue for applications.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Power to the people : evidence from a randomized field experiment of a community-based monitoring project in Uganda

This paper analyzes the importance of strengthening the relationship of accountability between health service providers and citizens for improving access to and quality of health care. How this is to be achieved, and whether it works, however, remain open questions. The paper presents a randomized field experiment on increasing community-based monitoring. As communities began to more extensively monitor the provider, both the quality and quantity of health service provision improved. One year into the program, there are large increases in utilization, significant weight-for-age z-score gains of infants, and markedly lower deaths among children. The findings on staff behavior suggest that the improvements in quality and quantity of health service delivery resulted from an increased effort by the staff to serve the community. Overall, the results suggest that community monitoring can play an important role in improving service delivery when traditional top-down supervision is ineffective.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Housing&Human Habitats,Health Economics&Finance,Disease Control&Prevention,Health Systems Development&Reform

A strategy for workplace health promotion on German dairy farms

Studies across the globe have shown that at least 3 out of 5 milkers experience pain in the musculoskeletal system (MSS), mostly in the upper extremities (DOUPHRATE et al., 2014, JAKOB, 2011, KOLSTRUP, 2012, PINZKE, 2003, TUURE & ALASUUTARI, 2009, KAUKE et al., 2010, THINIUS, 2012). The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. It is well known that dairy farming, and milking in particular is coupled with several risk factors for developing musculoskeletal disorders (KOLSTRUP, 2012). Technical measures seem to be insufficient to avoid physical overload. Therefore a more comprehensive approach seems to be necessary. In this study, four physical therapists, eight dairy executives and 25 milking parlor operatives were interviewed using guideline-based interviews concerning workplace health promotion and health in general. The results showed that most executives were open towards workplace health promotion as long as it is free and beyond working hours. But the interviews with the workers showed, that they do not necessarily prioritize health issues. Other issues such as communication between employer and employee as well as receiving credit for their work may increase contentment. Therefore, a multifactoral strategy is needed to cope with (health) issues on German dairy farms

Fruit removal forces of early stage pickling cucumbers for harvest automation

European growers are demanding selective mechanical harvesting solutions, such as robotic solutions, because hand harvesting is extremely labour intensive. Mechanical harvesting depends on low fruit retention forces between fruit and plant. Over two consecutive growing seasons, including a winter greenhouse trial, more than 1 600 samples were taken to determine the fruit removal force of early stage cucumbers for pickling and canning. Compared to studies with other fruit the fruit removal force of cucumbers was fairly high and also showed a large degree of variation. A significant percentage of the harvest had stalk residues, which cause the expenditure of extra man-hours on the processing lines. It was therefore concluded, that mere pulling is not sufficient to disconnect the fruit. Harvesting robots require an extra device for ease of separation

Measuring Human Capital with Social Media Data and Machine Learning

In response to persistent gaps in the availability of survey data, a new strand of research leverages alternative data sources through machine learning to track global development. While previous applications have been successful at predicting outcomes such as wealth, poverty or population density, we show that educational outcomes can be accurately estimated using geo-coded Twitter data and machine learning. Based on various input features, including user and tweet characteristics, topics, spelling mistakes, and network indicators, we can account for ~70 percent of the variation in educational attainment in Mexican municipalities and US counties

Super-directional light emission and emission reversal from micro cavity arrays

Optical microdisk cavities with certain asymmetric shapes are known to possess unidirectional far-field emission properties. Here, we investigate arrays of these dielectric microresonators with respect to their emission properties resulting from the coherent behaviour of the coupled constituents. This approach is inspired by electronic mesoscopic physics where the additional interference effects are known to enhance the properties of the individual system. As an example we study the linear arrangement of nominally identical Lima\c{c}on-shaped cavities and find mostly an increase of the portion of directional emitted light while its angular spread is largely diminished from 20 degrees for the single cavity to about 3 degrees for a linear array of 10 Lima\c{c}on resonators, in fair agreement with a simple array model. Moreover, by varying the inter-cavity distance we observe windows of reversion of the emission directionality and super-directionality that can be interesting for applications. We introduce a generalized array factor model that takes the coupling into account.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, supplemental materia

Die Auswirkungen der transitionsperiode auf das Sportsmanagement

The question of marketing management, being one of the most important components of sports management in general, is today clearly one of the key issues of funding sports in the transition countries. Eastern European countries are confronting large problems in financing sport as a result of the per capita Gross Domestic Product in most of them being much lower than the GDP of Western countries. The transformation of their companies is relatively slow (denationalization, moves towards a market economy...), therefore virtually no funding is available from that source to significantly replace the extensive financial resources for sport that came out of the state budgets of the former political system. In part, the same situation applies to Slovenia. Certain answers to global questions of sports marketing in Slovenia have been collected through questionnaires answered to by 156 legal sports entities. We calculated a frequency distribution of those replies separately for each group, and the contingency tables showing the relationships between the groups, while the average of the replies has been calculated with an accompanying analysis of variance. Hypotheses of the differences between groups have been tested with the help of the F test and CHI2 test. Zero hypotheses have been rejected by 5%error. Given that the proportion of funds coming from public sources has been relatively stable in Slovenia (albeit compared to the total 1998 budget it has been decreasing), funds emerging from private sources have been significantly increasing. In the opinion of the respondent legal entities, Slovenian companies can no longer manage to give sufficient financial support to top sports, and are too involved in supporting lower ranked levels of certain sports events, whereas their support for sports for all is very poor. In any event, the future of sports should not be completely left to the marketing rules.Die Problematik des Marketings, als eines der wichtigsten Teile des Sportmanagements im allgemeinen, ist heutzutage sicherlich eine der entscheidendsten Fragen der Finanzierung des Sports in Transitionsländern. Die osteuropäischen Lander kämpfen mit den großen finanziellen Problemen im Sportbereich, da das Bruttosozialprodukt pro Einwohnerin meisten von diesen Ländern bedeutend niedrieger als in westeuropäischen Ländern ist. Die Umwandlung der Geschäftsfirmen verlauft ziemlich langsam (Denationalisierung, Marktwirtschaft). Deshalb kommen aus dieser Quelle keine Geldmittel, die zum größeren Teil die ausgiebigen Finanzmittel ersetzen könnten, die in den ehemaligen politischen Systemen für den Sport aus der Staatskasse gegeben wurden. Teilweise bezieht sich das auch auf Slowenien. Einige Antworte auf globale Fragen des Sportmarketings in Slowenien wurden mittels einer Umfrage an 156 gesetzlichen Sporteinheiten gesammelt. Die Distributionsrate der Antworte auf jede einzelne Gruppe der Fragen, sowie die die Beziehungen zwischen Gruppen darstellende Kontingenztabellen wurden dargestellt. Der Durchschnitt der Antworte wurde mittels der Varianzanalyse gerechnet. Die Hypothesen über die Verschiedenheiten zwischen Gruppen wurden mittels des F-Tests und Chi-Quadrat-Tests geprüft. Die Nullhypothesen wurden mit dem 5-prozentigem Fehler abgewiesen. Hinsichtlich der Tatsache, dass die Finanzierung aus den öffentlichen Quellen in Slowenien relativ stabil war (obwohl im Vergleich mit dem Gesamtbudget für 1998 etwas reduziert), haben die Geldmittel aus Privatquellen bedeutend zugenommen. Nach der Meinung der befragten gesetzlichen Sporteinheiten, gelingt es den slowenischen Geschäftsfirmen kaum mehr, genügende finanzielle Unterstützung dem Höchstleistungssport anzubieten. Andererseits unterstützen sie einige Sportarten niedrigerer Qualität zu viel, während ihre Hilfe dem “Sport für alle” sehr arm ist. Jedenfalls sind sich die Befragten einig, dass Sport nicht ausschließlich den Marketinggesetzen überlassen werden sollte