Do sovereign wealth funds mitigate authoritarian rule?: a statistical analysis of sovereign wealth funds and the resource curse.

The famous oil baron\u27 John Paul Getty once defined his secret to success in three parts, Rise early, work hard, strike oil. This recipe, however, has not lead to political and economic success for oil-reliant, emerging market states. Rather than experiencing a resource blessing, these states have been plagued by a resource curse. This project introduces and tests my theory that sovereign wealth funds offer an exit to the resource curse and pathway back to the resource blessing. This theory is based on two observations I noticed during previous research on the subject: states with sovereign wealth funds boost occupational specialization and government transparency. Since both of these factors are believed to be necessary for democratization, then states with sovereign wealth funds should be less authoritarian. My findings suggest that the political transparency claim is true and that sovereign wealth funds do increase occupational specialization. However, the findings also suggest that occupational specialization is no longer a causal mechanism of the resource curse

Light Dark Matter Detection Prospects at Neutrino Experiments

We consider the prospects for the detection of relatively light dark matter through direct annihilation to neutrinos. We specifically focus on the detection possibilities of water Cherenkov and liquid scintillator neutrino detection devices. We find in particular that liquid scintillator detectors may potentially provide excellent detection prospects for dark matter in the 4-10 GeV mass range. These experiments can provide excellent corroborative checks of the DAMA/LIBRA annual modulation signal, but may yield results for low mass dark matter in any case. We identify important tests of the ratio of electron to muon neutrino events (and neutrino versus anti-neutrino events), which discriminate against background atmospheric neutrinos. In addition, the fraction of events which arise from muon neutrinos or anti-neutrinos ($R_{\mu}$ and $R_{\bar \mu}$) can potentially yield information about the branching fractions of hypothetical dark matter annihilations into different neutrino flavors. These results apply to neutrinos from secondary and tertiary decays as well, but will suffer from decreased detectability.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures, pdflatex, references, one figure and comments on electron neutrino bounds and on spin-dependent scattering limits added. Figures updated

Receptor-Induced Thiolate Couples Env Activation to Retrovirus Fusion and Infection

According to current models of retrovirus infection, receptor binding to the surface subunit (SU) of the envelope glycoprotein (Env) triggers a conformational change in the transmembrane subunit (TM) that mediates virus fusion to cell membranes. To understand how this occurs, we investigated the role of the receptor Tva in avian leukosis virus-A (ALV-A) infection. We find that Tva binding induced the formation of a reactive thiolate on Cys38 (Cys38-S−) in SU. Both chemical and genetic inactivation of Cys38-S− completely abrogated ALV fusion and infection. Remarkably, Cys38-S− does not mediate isomerization of the SU-TM disulfide bond and is not required for Tva-induced activation of TM, including pre-hairpin association with membranes and low pH assembly of helical bundles. These findings indicate that, contrary to current models, receptor activation of TM is not sufficient for ALV fusion and infection and that formation of a reactive thiolate is an additional receptor-dependent step

Dark Matter Detection With Electron Neutrinos in Liquid Scintillation Detectors

We consider the prospects for liquid scintillation experiments (with a focus on KamLAND) to detect the flux of electron neutrinos arising from dark matter annihilation in the core of the sun. We show that, with data already taken, KamLAND can provide the greatest sensitivity to the dark matter-proton spin-dependent scattering cross-section for dark matter lighter than 20 GeV. It is also possible to probe the dark matter-nucleon spin-independent scattering cross-section for isospin-violating dark matter lighter than 10 GeV. KamLAND can thus potentially confirm the dark matter interpretation of the DAMA and CoGeNT signals, utilizing data already taken.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, PDFLaTeX; v2: references added, figures updated, more detailed comparison of liquid scintillation and water Cerenkov detectors (journal version

Assessing Social Learning Outcomes Through Participatory Mind Mapping

This article presents a method for using mind mapping to assess social learning outcomes in collaborative environmental restoration and participatory natural resource management initiatives. Using mind mapping for preassessment and postassessment can reveal changes in individual and collective thinking about critical social and ecological issues. On the basis of results from four youth-based environmental restoration programs in Boulder, Colorado, and New York and Cattaraugus Territory, New York, we suggest that mind mapping can serve as an effective data collection strategy and as a method for analyzing cognitive change in environmental restoration programs and civic ecology more broadly

Tuning biexciton binding and anti-binding in core/shell quantum dots

We use a path integral quantum Monte Carlo method to simulate excitons and biexcitons in core shell nanocrystals with Type-I, II and quasi-Type II band alignments. Quantum Monte Carlo techniques allow for all quantum correlations to be included when determining the thermal ground state, thus producing accurate predictions of biexciton binding. These subtle quantum correlations are found to cause the biexciton to be binding with Type-I carrier localization and strongly anti-binding with Type-II carrier localization, in agreement with experiment for both core shell nanocrystals and dot in rod nanocrystal structures. Simple treatments based on perturbative approaches are shown to miss this important transition in the biexciton binding. Understanding these correlations offers prospects to engineer strong biexciton anti-binding which is crucial to the design of nanocrystals for single exciton lasing applications.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figure

Discovery of a Metal-Line Absorber Associated with a Local Dwarf Starburst Galaxy

We present optical and near-infrared images, H I 21 cm emission maps, optical spectroscopy, and Hubble Space Telescope/Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph ultraviolet spectroscopy of the QSO/galaxy pair SBS 1122+594/IC 691. The QSO sight line lies at a position angle of 27 degrees from the minor axis of the nearby dwarf starburst galaxy IC 691 (cz_gal = 1204+-3 km/s, L_B ~ 0.09 L*, current star formation rate = 0.08-0.24 solar masses per year) and 33 kpc (6.6 arcmin) from its nucleus. We find that IC 691 has an H I mass of M_HI = (3.6+-0.1) x 10^8 solar masses and a dynamical mass of M_dyn = (3.1+-0.5) x 10^10 solar masses. The UV spectrum of SBS 1122+594 shows a metal-line (Ly-alpha + C IV) absorber near the redshift of IC 691 at cz_abs = 1110+-30 km/s. Since IC 691 is a dwarf starburst and the SBS 1122+594 sight line lies in the expected location for an outflowing wind, we propose that the best model for producing this metal-line absorber is a starburst wind from IC 691. We place consistent metallicity limits on IC 691 ([Z/Zsun] ~ -0.7) and the metal-line absorber ([Z/Zsun] < -0.3). We also find that the galaxy's escape velocity at the absorber location is v_esc = 80+-10 km/s and derive a wind velocity of v_w = 160+-50 km/s. Thus, the evidence suggests that IC 691 produces an unbound starburst wind that escapes from its gravitational potential to transport metals and energy to the surrounding intergalactic medium.Comment: 31 pages, 8 figures; AJ in press; a version with high resolution figures can be downloaded from http://casa.colorado.edu/~keeney/research/papers/IC691.pd

Molecular and Physiological Responses of Diatoms to Variable Levels of Irradiance and Nitrogen Availability: Growth of Skeletonema Costatum in Simulated Upwelling Conditions

Molecular mechanisms that drive metabolic acclimation to environmental shifts have been poorly characterized in phytoplankton. In this laboratory study. the response of light- and N-limited Skeletonema costatum cells to an increase in light and NO3 availability was examined. C assimilation was depressed relative to N assimilation early in enrichment, and the photosynthetic quotient (O2: CO2) increased, consistent with the shunting of reducing equivalents from CO2 fixation to NO3- reduction. The concomitant increase in dark respiration was consistent with the increased energetic demand associated with macromolecular synthesis. The accelerations of N-specific rates of NO3- uptake and nitrate reductase activity (NRA) over the first 24 h were comparable to observations for coastal upwelling systems. Increases in cell-specific rates of these processes, however, were confined to the first 8 h of enrichment. The abundance of 18S ribosomal ribonucleic acid (rRNA) increased immediately after the environmental shift, followed by increases in levels of NR-specific mRNA that coincided with the acceleration in NO3- assimilation. NRA, however, exhibited a diurnal rhythm that did not correspond to changes in NR protein abundance, suggesting that enzyme activity was also regulated by direct modulation of existing NR protein by light and NO3- availability