687 research outputs found
Application of Business Analytics Approaches to Address Climate-Change-Related Challenges
Climate change is an existential threat facing humanity, civilization, and the natural world. It poses many multi-layered challenges that call for enhanced data-driven decision support methods to help inform society of ways to address the deep uncertainty and incomplete knowledge on climate change issues. This research primarily aims to apply management, decision, information, and data science theories and techniques to propose, build, and evaluate novel data-driven methodologies to improve understanding of climate-change-related challenges. Given that we pursue this work in the College of Management, each essay applies one or more of the three distinct business analytics approaches (i.e., descriptive, prescriptive, and predictive analysis) to aid in developing decision support capabilities. Given the rapid growth in data availability, we evaluate important data characteristics for each analysis, focusing on the data source, granularity, volume, structure, and quality. The final analysis consideration is the methods used on the data output to help coalesce the various model outputs into understandable visualizations, tables, and takeaways. We pursue three distinct business analytics challenges. First, we start with a natural language processing analysis to gain insights into the evolving climate change adaptation discussion in the scientific literature. We then create a stochastic network optimization model with recourse to provide coastal decision-makers with a cost-benefit analysis tool to simultaneously assess risks and costs to protect their community against rising seas. Finally, we create a decision support tool for helping organizations reduce greenhouse gas emissions through strategic sustainable energy purchasing. Although the three essays vary on their specific business analysis approaches, they all have a common theme of applying business analytics techniques to analyze, evaluate, visualize, and understand different facets of the climate change threat
Tuberculous meningitis in children: a forgotten public health emergency
Tuberculous meningitis (TBM) remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality in children with tuberculosis (TB), yet there are currently no estimates of the global burden of paediatric TBM. Due to frequent non-specific clinical presentation and limited and inadequate diagnostic tests, children with TBM are often diagnosed late or die undiagnosed. Even when diagnosed and treated, 20% of children with TBM die. Of survivors, the majority have substantial neurological disability with significant negative impact on children and their families. Surveillance data on this devastating form of TB can help to quantify the contribution of TBM to the overall burden, morbidity and mortality of TB in children and the epidemiology of TB more broadly. Paediatric TBM usually occurs shortly after primary infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis and reflects ongoing TB transmission to children. In this article we explain the public health importance of paediatric TBM, discuss the epidemiology within the context of overall TB control and health system functioning and the limitations of current surveillance strategies. We provide a clear rationale for the benefit of improved surveillance of paediatric TBM using a TB care cascade framework to support monitoring and evaluation of paediatric TB, and TB control more broadly. Considering the public health implications of a diagnosis of TBM in children, we provide recommendations to strengthen paediatric TBM surveillance and outline how improved surveillance can help us identify opportunities for prevention, earlier diagnosis and improved care to minimize the impact of TBM on children globally
Molecular Hydrogen in the FUSE Translucent Lines of Sight: The Full Sample
We report total abundances and related parameters for the full sample of the
FUSE survey of molecular hydrogen in 38 translucent lines of sight. New results
are presented for the "second half" of the survey involving 15 lines of sight
to supplement data for the first 23 lines of sight already published. We assess
the correlations between molecular hydrogen and various extinction parameters
in the full sample, which covers a broader range of conditions than the initial
sample. In particular, we are now able to confirm that many, but not all, lines
of sight with shallow far-UV extinction curves and large values of the
total-to-selective extinction ratio, = / -- characteristic
of larger than average dust grains -- are associated with particularly low
hydrogen molecular fractions (). In the lines of sight with large
, there is in fact a wide range in molecular fractions, despite the
expectation that the larger grains should lead to less H formation.
However, we see specific evidence that the molecular fractions in this
sub-sample are inversely related to the estimated strength of the UV radiation
field and thus the latter factor is more important in this regime. We have
provided an update to previous values of the gas-to-dust ratio, (H)/, based on direct measurements of (H) and (H I).
Although our value is nearly identical to that found with Copernicus data, it
extends the relationship by a factor of 2 in reddening. Finally, as the new
lines of sight generally show low to moderate molecular fractions, we still
find little evidence for single monolithic "translucent clouds" with 1.Comment: 35 pages, 5 tables, 7 figures, accepted for publication in The
Astrophysical Journal Supplements Serie
Mantle 3He distribution and deep circulation in the Indian Ocean
Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2004. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 109 (2004): C06012, doi:10.1029/2003JC002028.The World Ocean Circulation Experiment Indian Ocean helium isotope data are mapped and features of intermediate and deep circulation are inferred and discussed. The 3He added to the deep Indian Ocean originates from (1) a strong source on the mid-ocean ridge at about 19°S/65°E, (2) a source located in the Gulf of Aden in the northwestern Indian Ocean, (3) sources located in the convergent margins in the northeastern Indian Ocean, and (4) water imported from the Indonesian Seas. The main circulation features inferred from the 3He distribution include (1) deep (2000–3000 m) eastward flow in the central Indian Ocean, which overflows into the West Australian Basin through saddles in the Ninetyeast Ridge, (2) a deep (2000–3000 m) southwestward flow in the western Indian Ocean, and (3) influx of Banda Sea Intermediate Waters associated with the deep core (1000–1500 m) of the through flow from the Pacific Ocean. The large-scale 3He distribution is consonant with the known pathways of deep and bottom water circulation in the Indian Ocean.National Science Foundation support is acknowledged for the
UM part of the work through grants OCE-9820131 and OCE-998150.
Support for the LDEO portion of the work was obtained from the National
Science Foundation through awards OCE 94-13162 and OCE 98-20130
All Six Planets Known to Orbit Kepler-11 Have Low Densities
The Kepler-11 planetary system contains six transiting planets ranging in
size from 1.8 to 4.2 times the radius of Earth. Five of these planets orbit in
a tightly-packed configuration with periods between 10 and 47 days. We perform
a dynamical analysis of the system based upon transit timing variations
observed in more than three years of \ik photometric data. Stellar parameters
are derived using a combination of spectral classification and constraints on
the star's density derived from transit profiles together with planetary
eccentricity vectors provided by our dynamical study. Combining masses of the
planets relative to the star from our dynamical study and radii of the planets
relative to the star from transit depths together with deduced stellar
properties yields measurements of the radii of all six planets, masses of the
five inner planets, and an upper bound to the mass of the outermost planet,
whose orbital period is 118 days. We find mass-radius combinations for all six
planets that imply that substantial fractions of their volumes are occupied by
constituents that are less dense than rock. The Kepler-11 system contains the
lowest mass exoplanets for which both mass and radius have been measured.Comment: 39 pages, 10 figure
Size Segregation and Convection of Granular Mixtures Almost Completely Packed in the Rotating Thin Box
Size segregation of granular mixtures which are almost completely packed in a
rotating drum is discussed with an effective simulation and a brief analysis.
Instead of a 3D drum, we simulate 2D rotating thin box which is almost
completely packed with granular mixtures. The phase inversion of radially
segregated pattern which was found in a 3D experiment are qualitatively
reproduced with this simulation, and a brief analysis is followed. Moreover in
our simulation, a global convection appears after radial segregation pattern is
formed, and this convection induces axially segregated pattern.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, PACS number(s): 45.70.-n, 45.70.M
Studies of Diffuse Interstellar Bands. V. Pairwise Correlations of Eight Strong DIBs and Neutral Hydrogen, Molecular Hydrogen, and Color Excess
We establish correlations between equivalent widths of eight diffuse
interstellar bands (DIBs), and examine their correlations with atomic hydrogen,
molecular hydrogen, and EB-V . The DIBs are centered at \lambda\lambda 5780.5,
6204.5, 6283.8, 6196.0, 6613.6, 5705.1, 5797.1, and 5487.7, in decreasing order
of Pearson\^as correlation coefficient with N(H) (here defined as the column
density of neutral hydrogen), ranging from 0.96 to 0.82. We find the equivalent
width of \lambda 5780.5 is better correlated with column densities of H than
with E(B-V) or H2, confirming earlier results based on smaller datasets. We
show the same is true for six of the seven other DIBs presented here. Despite
this similarity, the eight strong DIBs chosen are not well enough correlated
with each other to suggest they come from the same carrier. We further conclude
that these eight DIBs are more likely to be associated with H than with H2, and
hence are not preferentially located in the densest, most UV shielded parts of
interstellar clouds. We suggest they arise from different molecules found in
diffuse H regions with very little H (molecular fraction f<0.01). Of the 133
stars with available data in our study, there are three with significantly
weaker \lambda 5780.5 than our mean H-5780.5 relationship, all of which are in
regions of high radiation fields, as previously noted by Herbig. The
correlations will be useful in deriving interstellar parameters when direct
methods are not available. For instance, with care, the value of N(H) can be
derived from W{\lambda}(5780.5).Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal; 37 pages, 11
figures, 6 table
A FUSE Survey of Interstellar Molecular Hydrogen in the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds
We describe a moderate-resolution FUSE survey of H2 along 70 sight lines to
the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds, using hot stars as background sources.
FUSE spectra of 67% of observed Magellanic Cloud sources (52% of LMC and 92% of
SMC) exhibit absorption lines from the H2 Lyman and Werner bands between 912
and 1120 A. Our survey is sensitive to N(H2) >= 10^14 cm^-2; the highest column
densities are log N(H2) = 19.9 in the LMC and 20.6 in the SMC. We find reduced
H2 abundances in the Magellanic Clouds relative to the Milky Way, with average
molecular fractions = 0.010 (+0.005, -0.002) for the SMC and =
0.012 (+0.006, -0.003) for the LMC, compared with = 0.095 for the
Galactic disk over a similar range of reddening. The dominant uncertainty in
this measurement results from the systematic differences between 21 cm radio
emission and Lya in pencil-beam sight lines as measures of N(HI). These results
imply that the diffuse H2 masses of the LMC and SMC are 8 x 10^6 Msun and 2 x
10^6 Msun, respectively, 2% and 0.5% of the H I masses derived from 21 cm
emission measurements. The LMC and SMC abundance patterns can be reproduced in
ensembles of model clouds with a reduced H2 formation rate coefficient, R ~ 3 x
10^-18 cm^3 s^-1, and incident radiation fields ranging from 10 - 100 times the
Galactic mean value. We find that these high-radiation, low-formation-rate
models can also explain the enhanced N(4)/N(2) and N(5)/N(3) rotational
excitation ratios in the Clouds. We use H2 column densities in low rotational
states (J = 0 and 1) to derive a mean kinetic and/or rotational temperature
= 82 +/- 21 K for clouds with N(H2) >= 10^16 cm^-2, similar to Galactic
gas. We discuss the implications of this work for theories of star formation in
low-metallicity environments. [Abstract abridged]Comment: 30 pages emulateapj, 14 figures (7 color), 7 tables, accepted for
publication in the Astrophysical Journal, figures 11 and 12 compressed at
slight loss of quality, see http://casa.colorado.edu/~tumlinso/h2/ for full
version
- …