Precritical calculations for the 2.9 in. pitch, twmr critical assembly

Critical loadings and precritical calculations for 2.9 inch pitch core in determining feasibility of isotopically enriched tungsten water moderated reactor for use as nuclear rocke

Precritical calculations for the 3.0 in. pitch, beryllium reflected, TWMR critical assembly

Feasibility of isotopically enriched tungsten, water moderated reactor for nuclear rocke

More Options, Fewer Students: Joint Physics and Chemistry Courses at Mount Royal University

Mount Royal University is a new University with only a few majors in the sciences. This limits the number of students interested in chemistry and physics courses and makes it difficult to run advanced courses in these areas. We have responded to this problem by designing joint courses in Thermodynamics, Quantum Mechanics, and Solid State that count for credit as either a chemistry course or a physics course. Students in the courses were interviewed in order to determine whether the difficulty level and balance of topics in the courses was appropriate. This short and tweet will discuss the design decisions and problems with a higher-level multidisciplinary course, as well as some feedback gleaned from student interviews. A newer joint course involving both nuclear science and policy studies will also be described briefly

Wildlife Damage to Agricultural Crops in Pennsylvania: The Farmers\u27 Perspective

Agricultural damage by wildlife is a major concern for both agricultural and wildlife agencies at the state and federal level. Our objective was to estimate wildlife damage to agricultural crops on a statewide basis. We sent questionnaires to 4,958 farmers and 1,003 were returned after 2 mailings. Twenty-five percent of farmers responding to our survey rated the level of wildlife damage to their crops as severe or very severe, 46% as moderate, and 29% had none or very little. Mean levels of crop loss to wildlife ranged from 6% for wheat to 10% for corn grain, and white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) were the most commonly reported cause of damage for all crops except soybeans. Farmers estimated the economic value of damage caused by wildlife to 6 crops (corn grain, silage, alfalfa, soybeans, oats, and wheat) as \u3e $70 million. Ninety-one percent of Pennsylvania farmers allowed deer hunting on their farms, but 62% of the farms were bordered at least partially by land that was posted (no hunting or limited hunting). Fifty-six percent of farmers whose land was bordered by posted land believed adjacent posted land made it difficult for them to control deer numbers and damage on the land they farmed. Thirty-one percent of farmers responding to the questionnaire reported that they had changed farming practices (i.e., no longer farmed a particular field or raised a particular crop) as a consequence of deer damage. Additional methods used to control deer damage included shooting (28%), chasing (13%), fencing (9.3%), repellents (7%), and noise devices (5%). Fencing and shooting were the only methods rated as being at least moderately effective

Analysis of time dynamics in wind records by means of multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis and Fisher-Shannon information plane

The time structure of more than 10 years of hourly wind data measured in one site in northern Italy from April 1996 to December 2007 is analysed. The data are recorded by the Sodar Rass system, which measures the speed and the direction of the wind at several heights above the ground level. To investigate the wind speed time series at seven heights above the ground level we used two different approaches: i) the Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (MF-DFA), which permits the detection of multifractality in nonstationary series, and ii) the Fisher-Shannon (FS) information plane, which allows to discriminate dynamical features in complex time series. Our results point out to the existence of multifractal time fluctuations in wind speed and to a dependence of the results on the height of the wind sensor. Even in the FS information plane a height-dependent pattern is revealed, indicating a good agreement with the multifractality. The obtained results could contribute to a better understanding of the complex dynamics of wind phenomenon

On de-bunking “Fake News” in the post-truth era : how to reduce statistical error in research

The authors note with alarm that statistical noise caused by statistical incompetence is beginning to creep into research on cost overrun in public investment projects, contaminating research with work that does not meet basic standards of validity and reliability. The paper gives examples of such work and proposes three heuristics to root out the problem. First, researchers who are not statisticians, or do not have a strong background in statistics, should abstain from doing statistical analysis, and instead rely on more experienced colleagues, preferably professional statisticians. Second, journal referees should clearly state their level of statistical proficiency to journal editors, so these can set the right referee team. Finally, journal editors should make sure that at least one referee is capable of reviewing the statistical and methodological aspects of a paper. The work under review would have benefitted from observing these simple heuristics, as would any work based on statistical analysis.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Transport and Logistic

The Affective Impact of Financial Skewness on Neural Activity and Choice

Few finance theories consider the influence of “skewness” (or large and asymmetric but unlikely outcomes) on financial choice. We investigated the impact of skewed gambles on subjects' neural activity, self-reported affective responses, and subsequent preferences using functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI). Neurally, skewed gambles elicited more anterior insula activation than symmetric gambles equated for expected value and variance, and positively skewed gambles also specifically elicited more nucleus accumbens (NAcc) activation than negatively skewed gambles. Affectively, positively skewed gambles elicited more positive arousal and negatively skewed gambles elicited more negative arousal than symmetric gambles equated for expected value and variance. Subjects also preferred positively skewed gambles more, but negatively skewed gambles less than symmetric gambles of equal expected value. Individual differences in both NAcc activity and positive arousal predicted preferences for positively skewed gambles. These findings support an anticipatory affect account in which statistical properties of gambles—including skewness—can influence neural activity, affective responses, and ultimately, choice

Metabolically exaggerated cardiac reactions to acute psychological stress: The effects of resting blood pressure status and possible underlying mechanisms

The study aimed to: confirm that acute stress elicits metabolically exaggerated increases in cardiac activity; test whether individuals with elevated resting blood pressure show more exaggerated cardiac reactions to stress than those who are clearly normotensive; and explore the underlying mechanisms. Cardiovascular activity and oxygen consumption were measured pre-, during, and post- mental stress, and during graded submaximal cycling exercise in 11 young men with moderately elevated resting blood pressure and 11 normotensives. Stress provoked increases in cardiac output that were much greater than would be expected from contemporary levels of oxygen consumption. Exaggerated cardiac reactions were larger in the relatively elevated blood pressure group. They also had greater reductions in total peripheral resistance, but not heart rate variability, implying that their more exaggerated cardiac reactions reflected greater β-adrenergic activation

The role of conviction and narrative in decision-making under radical uncertainty

We propose conviction narrative theory (CNT) to broaden decision-making theory for it better to understand and analyse how subjectively means-end rational actors cope in contexts in which the traditional assumptions in decision-making models fail to hold. Conviction narratives enable actors to draw on their beliefs, causal models and rules of thumb to identify opportunities worth acting on, to simulate the future outcome of their actions and to feel sufficiently convinced to act. The framework focuses on how narrative and emotion combine to allow actors to deliberate and to select actions that they think will produce the outcomes they desire. It specifies connections between particular emotions and deliberative thought, hypothesizing that approach and avoidance emotions evoked during narrative simulation play a crucial role. Two mental states, Divided and Integrated, in which narratives can be formed or updated, are introduced and used to explain some familiar problems that traditional models cannot