Cumulative Risk and a Call for Action in Environmental Justice Communities

Health disparities, social inequalities, and environmental injustice cumulatively affect individual and community vulnerability and overall health; yet health researchers, social scientists and environmental scientists generally study them separately. Cumulative risk assessment in poor, racially segregated, economically isolated and medically underserved communities needs to account for their multiple layers of vulnerability, including greater susceptibility, greater exposure, less preparedness to cope, and less ability to recover in the face of exposure. Recommendations for evidence-based action in environmental justice communities include: reducing pollution in communities of highest burden; building on community resources; redressing inequality when doing community-based research; and creating a screening framework to identify communities of greatest risk

Deformation of a flexible fiber in a viscous flow past an obstacle

We study the deformation and transport of elastic fibers in a viscous Hele-Shaw flow with curved streamlines. The variations of the global velocity and orientation of the fiber follow closely those of the local flow velocity. The ratios of the curvatures of the fibers by the corresponding curvatures of the streamlines reflect a balance between elastic and viscous forces: this ratio is shown experimentally to be determined by a dimensionless {\it Sperm number} $Sp$ combining the characteristic parameters of the flow (transverse velocity gradient, viscosity, fiber diameter/cell gap ratio) and those of the fiber (diameter, effective length, Young's modulus). For short fibers, the effective length is that of the fiber; for long ones, it is equal to the transverse characteristic length of the flow. For $S\_p \lesssim 250$, the ratio of the curvatures increases linearly with $Sp$; For $S\_p \gtrsim 250$, the fiber reaches the same curvature as the streamlines

Transverse transport in graphite

Graphite is a layered material showing a strong anisotropy. Among the unconventional properties reported by experiments, the electronic transport along the c-axis, which has direct implications in order to build graphitic devices, remains a controversial topic. We study the influence of inelastic scattering on the electron tunnelling between layers. In the presence of electron electron interactions, tunnelling processes are modified by inelastic scattering events.Comment: 9 pages, no figures Proceedings of the Graphene Conference, MPI PKS Dresden, September 200

Ermakov Systems with Multiplicative Noise

Using the Euler-Maruyama numerical method, we present calculations of the Ermakov-Lewis invariant and the dynamic, geometric, and total phases for several cases of stochastic parametric oscillators, including the simplest case of the stochastic harmonic oscillator. The results are compared with the corresponding numerical noiseless cases to evaluate the effect of the noise. Besides, the noiseless cases are analytic and their analytic solutions are briefly presented. The Ermakov-Lewis invariant is not affected by the multiplicative noise in the three particular examples presented in this work, whereas there is a shift effect in the case of the phasesComment: 12 pages, 4 figures, 22 reference

Bimodality as a signal of Liquid-Gas phase transition in nuclei?

We use the HIPSE (Heavy-Ion Phase-Space Exploration) Model to discuss the origin of the bimodality in charge asymmetry observed in nuclear reactions around the Fermi energy. We show that it may be related to the important angular momentum (spin) transferred into the quasi-projectile before secondary decay. As the spin overcomes the critical value, a sudden opening of decay channels is induced and leads to a bimodal distribution for the charge asymmetry. In the model, it is not assigned to a liquid-gas phase transition but to specific instabilities in nuclei with high spin. Therefore, we propose to use these reactions to study instabilities in rotating nuclear droplets.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures Accepted to PR

Boosting the Kerr-geometry into an arbitrary direction

We generalize previous work \cite{BaNa3} on the ultrarelativistic limit of the Kerr-geometry by lifting the restriction on boosting along the axis of symmetry.Comment: latex2e, no figure