Interactive Planetarium Project

The Interactive Planetarium Project will design and build the software framework for connectivity between the Digistar 6 planetarium projection software and the smartphones of all audience members in the Jim and Linda Lee Planetarium. The goal of this project is to make planetarium shows more participatory, add a feature to our planetarium shows that many other universities do not yet have, and create a framework for future students and faculty to build from. To demonstrate our technology, we will make a real-time competitive trivia game able to support 60 concurrent users (number of expected audience members in the planetarium). The framework created by the Interactive Planetarium Project will serve as a unique opportunity that will allow future students to explore and create more complex interactive software within the planetarium with mass scale audience participation. The project will also be an additive to the current STEM Outreach program, gaining the attention of outside communities to this new experience provided at the Jim and Linda Lee Planetarium, with the potential to be used not just for video games played by the audience but also for interactive planetarium shows, surveys or group activities. This project is based on modern web programming paradigms as well as research in the Human-Computer Interaction space. Smartphones are ubiquitous and the ability for them to interact with the world around us is a frontier that is still being explored. This project aims to explore how smartphones can make shows and performances more engaging and participatory

World Democracy and World Development: A Macro-systemic Level Causal Analysis of Democracy and Economic Development, 1960-2018

The long-term progressions of political freedom and economic wealth have characterized the post-World War era. The scholarly debate on how democracy and economic development are related, although having continued over multiple decades, is still lively. Does a more democratic world lead to a wealthier world? Does a more affluent world ensure a freer world? Or are political development and economic development separate processes independent from each other? This present study aims to help establish the causality between political development and economic development at a macro systemic level. I identify the possible causal mechanisms for the democracy-development nexus and draw a testable hypothesis. Empirically, I set up a set of vector autoregression-based Granger causality tests. The test results do not support any causal relationship between world democracy and world development

Economic Interdependence, Polity Type, Conflict and Peace: When Does Interdependence Cause Peace and Cause War?

Competing IR paradigms have long debated the relationship between trade and conflict. Some view trade as causing interstate conflict whereas others see it as pacifying interstate relations. To address this ongoing scholarly debate, this study proposes an interactive relationship of interdependence and polity type in affecting peace. I argue that trade interdependence differently affects interstate relations between democracies and autocracies: interdependence causes conflict for autocracies while causing peace for democracies. This interactive hypothesis is tested against the directed-dyad sample of 1950-2001 for which all the relevant data are jointly available. My probit analysis reveals that interdependence increases the probability of conflict initiation for autocratic challengers but decreases it for democratic challengers

Economic Sanctions and Leader Survival, 1945-2006

Our study joins recent scholarship that examines the political impact of economic sanctions on targeted societies. While some studies find that sanctions destabilize the incumbent leadership of targeted countries, others reveal no relationship between sanctions and political survival. In this study, we seek to clarify the effect of economic sanctions on leader survival by identifying and addressing the contrasting and conditional expectations for the political effects of sanctions underspecified in previous research. We also provide the most comprehensive statistical test, for the 1945 to 2006 period. Our analysis shows that economic sanctions help targeted autocratic leaders to extend their stay in power. However, sanctions are found to exert no discernable political effects to targeted leaders in democracies

How Does Economic Development Lead to Peace?: Economic Development and Interstate Armed Conflict, 1950-2011

Zones of peace in the world are found to be where economically advanced democracies are grouped together. Indeed, these countries not only enjoy political freedom and economic affluence but also peaceful foreign relations. While numerous studies have advanced theoretical arguments and documented empirical evidence on the democratic peace, relatively scant attention has been paid to how economic development brings about international peace. Representative studies on the economic peace have shown serious theoretical and empirical loopholes in establishing the relationship between development and peace. This present study identifies four related but distinct explanations drawing upon the rich theoretical tradition of the economic peace encompassing both classical literature and modern scholarship. It also offers a more comprehensive test against the all dyad year data of 1950-2011. The findings show that the rate of armed conflict is lower for developed dyads than undeveloped dyads and mixed dyads. Developed countries rarely fight each other

Free Trade and the Environment under the GATT/WTO: Negative or Compatible Relationship?

How has the WTO handled global environmental issues? Does it favor the values of free trade or environmental protection? This paper provides a descriptive assessment on the two competing arguments about free trade and the environment under the GATT/WTO. One view sees free trade as harming the environment, whereas the other perspective sees it as contributing to environmental protection. To assess the efforts of the GATT/WTO for environmental protection, we examine environmental dispute cases and environmental notifications by member countries under the GATT/ WTO. We find that in earlier times, the WTO decisions in the dispute cases were prone to the first argument viewing free trade as harmful for the environmental protection. However, an increasing number of environmental-related notifications under the WTO by its member countries may indicate an improvement in the WTOs efforts to protect the environment, suggesting more recent support for the California effect

Imprint of a dissolved cobalt basaltic source on the Kerguelen Plateau

International audienceProcesses of cobalt (Co) entrainment from shelf sediments over the Kerguelen Plateau were studied during the KEOPS (Kerguelen Ocean Plateau compared Study) in order to explain the exceptionally high dissolved cobalt concentrations that have been measured in the surface waters above the Kerguelen Plateau, and in intermediate and deep waters above its eastern slope. Lateral advection and dissolution of Co contained in basalt sediments around Heard Island, a main source of lithogenic Co in the study area, were shown to imprint the process of surface enrichment over the plateau. Dissolved Co enrichment was strongest at the intercept of the eastern slope with intermediate and deep waters, probably due to more efficient mobilisation of the sediments in the slope current, in addition to advection of Co-enriched and low-oxygenated ocean water masses. In surface waters, the strong sedimentary Co inputs were estimated to be much higher than biological Co uptake in phytoplankton blooms, underlining the potential use of dissolved cobalt as tracer of the natural iron fertilization above the Kerguelen Plateau. Based on a simple steady-state balance equation of the external input of dissolved iron over the plateau, the fertilization of iron inferred by using dissolved Co as a tracer of basalt sources is estimated to be 28 × 102 ± 21 × 102 t yr−1 in surface waters of the Kerguelen Plateau. This estimate is consistent with preceding ones (Zhang et al., 2008; Chever et al., 2010), and the calculated iron supply matches with the phytoplankton demand (Sarthou et al., 2008)

Androgen deprivation therapy is associated with decreased second primary lung cancer risk in the United States veterans with prostate cancer

OBJECTIVES We investigated whether androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) in prostate cancer patients was associated with a decreased risk for second primary lung cancer in US veterans. METHODS Prostate cancer diagnoses in the US Veterans Affairs Cancer Registry between 1999 and 2008 were identified. Use of hormonal therapy and diagnoses of second primary lung cancer were determined from the registry. Synchronous prostate and lung cancers, defined as 2 diagnoses made within 1 year, were excluded from the analysis. Cancer-free survival was estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method and hazard ratios were estimated using Cox proportional hazard models. RESULTS Among the 63,141 identified patients with prostate cancer, 18,707 subjects were eligible for the study. Hormonal therapy was used in 38% of patients and the median follow-up period was 28 months. ADT use was associated with longer lung cancer-free survival in prostate cancer patients (log-rank p=0.01). After adjusting for age, race, smoking and prostate cancer stage, ADT use was associated with decreased lung cancer risk by 15, 21, and 24% after 1, 2, and 3 years, respectively. CONCLUSIONS ADT in prostate cancer patients may be associated with decreased second primary lung cancer risk among US veterans

One-dimensional metal-organic framework photonic crystals used as platforms for vapor sorption.

We present the fabrication of one-dimensional photonic crystals (Bragg stacks) based on a microporous metal–organic framework material and mesoporous titanium dioxide. The Bragg stack heterostructures were obtained using two complementary synthesis approaches utilizing the bottom-up assembly of heterogeneous, i.e. two-component photonic crystal multilayer structures. Zeolitic imidazolate framework ZIF-8 and mesoporous titanium dioxide were chosen as functional components with different refractive indices. While ZIF-8 is intended to impart molecular selectivity, mesoporous TiO2 is used to ensure high refractive index contrast and to guarantee molecular diffusion within the Bragg stack. The combination of micro- and mesoporosity within one scaffold endows the 1D-MOF PC with characteristic adsorption properties upon exposure to various organic vapors. In this context, the sorption behavior of the photonic material was studied as a function of partial pressure of organic vapors. The results show that the multilayered photonic heterostructures are sensitive and selective towards a series of chemically similar solvent vapors. It is thus anticipated that the concept of multilayer heterogeneous photonic structures will provide a versatile platform for future selective, label-free optical sensors

Exercise training improves vascular mitochondrial function

Exercise training is recognized to improve cardiac and skeletal muscle mitochondrial respiratory capacity; however, the impact of chronic exercise on vascular mitochondrial respiratory function is unknown. We hypothesized that exercise training concomitantly increases both vascular mitochondrial respiratory capacity and vascular function. Arteries from both sedentary (SED) and swim-trained (EX, 5 wk) mice were compared in terms of mitochondrial respiratory function, mitochondrial content, markers of mitochondrial biogenesis, redox balance, nitric oxide (NO) signaling, and vessel function. Mitochondrial complex I and complex I + II state 3 respiration and the respiratory control ratio (complex I + II state 3 respiration/complex I state 2 respiration) were greater in vessels from EX relative to SED mice, despite similar levels of arterial citrate synthase activity and mitochondrial DNA content. Furthermore, compared with the SED mice, arteries from EX mice displayed elevated transcript levels of peroxisome proliferative activated receptor-γ coactivator-1α and the downstream targets cytochrome c oxidase subunit IV isoform 1, isocitrate dehydrogenase (Idh) 2, and Idh3a, increased manganese superoxide dismutase protein expression, increased endothelial NO synthase phosphorylation (Ser1177), and suppressed reactive oxygen species generation (all P \u3c 0.05). Although there were no differences in EX and SED mice concerning endothelium-dependent and endothelium-independent vasorelaxation, phenylephrine-induced vasocontraction was blunted in vessels from EX compared with SED mice, and this effect was normalized by NOS inhibition. These training-induced increases in vascular mitochondrial respiratory capacity and evidence of improved redox balance, which may, at least in part, be attributable to elevated NO bioavailability, have the potential to protect against age- and disease-related challenges to arterial function