A New Way of Looking at Philadelphians

Pew has created a new way of looking at Philadelphians, one rooted in how they think about the city rather than where they show up in demographic categories. The analysis, based on a telephone survey of 1,603 randomly chosen Philadelphians in early 2015, sorts adult city residents into four groups. We have labeled those groups Dissatisfied Citizens, Die-Hard Loyalists, Uncommitted Skeptics, and Enthusiastic Urbanists. This effort was modeled on work done nationally by our colleagues at the Pew Research Center in Washington. Through this type of polling and analysis, the center has sorted Americans into groupings based on values and attitudes, going beyond the simple labels of liberal and conservative. For Philadelphia, we set out to do something similar -- although not on the left-right spectrum -- in hopes of increasing public understanding of the city and its residents

#THENEWMYTHOLOGY

Through a combination of existing philosophies, including that of Martin Heidegger and Joseph Campbell, with the mythologies of Dante's Divine Comedy and Buddhism, I have created a structural basis for the exhibition #THENEWMYTHOLOGY. This structure attempts to deconstruct the traditions of contemporary life, focusing on digital interactions mediated primarily through social media sites. This deconstruction of tradition opens up the possibility of a more authentic understanding and way of Being

Radiation transport and finite element modeling of a detector shield for Sandia National Laboratory

The Z Machine at Sandia National Laboratory is a pulsed powered electron accelerator that is able to produce fusion neutrons by pinching the deuterium and tritium gas with the surrounding high temperature plasma. Neutron detectors are placed in various locations throughout the room in order to detect these fusion neutrons. Plastic scintillating neutron detectors are sensitive to other types of unwanted radiations however. The purpose of this project was to design a shield that would allow the fusion neutrons to enter the detector while preventing the other types of unwanted radiation from getting to that same detector. A shield was designed with layers of high Z and low Z material in order to block the radiation that would be incident on the sides of the shield. Combinations of polyethylene, lead, carbon, iron and tungsten were used to maximize the efficiency of the shield. With the lead contributing a large portion of the total weight of the shield finite element analysis was used to ensure the design safe. Results showed that the structure was designed within the structural limits of the steel that was used. Radiation transport results showed that the shield was 1.37 to 459 times better at reducing the amount of unwanted radiation that would be incident on the shield. The range of effectiveness values are angle of incidence and particle type dependant

Assessing the Universality of Human Rights in the Context of Health

This thesis looks to examine the contemporary potentiality of universal human rights. It begins by noting that within the modern context the idea of universal rights is increasingly challenged by a security dominated discourse. The era of the so called ‘War on Terror’ is defined by diminished appreciation of the concept of human rights, both in terms of government commitments and popular opinion. The central aim of this thesis is to determine whether the idea of universal human rights is justifiable within these contexts. In accordance with this aim, this thesis will utilise important elements of critical jurisprudential accounts of human rights, centred on the work of Costas Douzinas. These elements, based upon challenging the accepted standards/interpretations of legal concepts, will be employed in an attempt to provide an objective appraisal of the sufficiency of prevailing interpretations of the concept of human rights. Through utilisation of Douzinas’ authoritative body of work documenting the presence of human rights in the contemporary world, this thesis will ultimately look to challenge the perception that security and human rights are competing aims. This thesis will argue that the universality of human rights relates to their overarching purpose. In accordance with James Griffin, this thesis will propose that this purpose relates to the actualisation of ‘normative agency’. Through a critical examination of the modern construct of human rights, centred around issues of human healthiness, this thesis will identify the right to health as a foundational claim – in that its fulfilment (either directly or indirectly) is a pre-requisite for the meaningfulness of other protections (and the actualisation of normative agency). This thesis will conclude by examining this concept of human healthiness within the context of national security. Here it will be shown that as both national security and human rights are centred on considerations of subsistence, they are not incompatible, and that the universality of the idea of rights is absolute. Further, it will be shown that this absoluteness reflects a permanence of purpose rather than practical implementation

Assessment of Criticality Safety for Cylindrical Containers to be Used In the Processing of Spent Fuel

The UREX process separates uranium from transuranic wastes (TRU) and fission products (FP). Nuclear reactors require fissile isotopes that will absorb neutrons and break apart into smaller nuclei while releasing a large amount of energy as well as multiple neutrons. Fissile isotopes in spent fuel include not only 235U, but also 239Pu, 241Pu, and several isotopes of americium (Am) and curium (Cm). TRU contains the actinides with atomic numbers greater than that of uranium. This includes Pu, Np, Am, and Cm. When TRU is separated from uranium, the TRU still poses a significant risk of sustaining a chain reaction. This is quantified through the effective neutron multiplication factor, keff. To prevent TRU from becoming critical (sustaining a chain reaction), keff must be maintained at a value of less than 1. The presence of neutron poisons (Sm, Xe, B, Hf, Cd, etc.) will decrease keff. Neutron poisons are found in fission products. The presence of neutron moderators (H, C, Be) or materials that reflect neutrons will enhance keff. To assess keff, Monte Carlo simulation codes are used. The concentration of TRU, process salts, and fission products along with the geometry of the mixture and surrounding reflective material are inputs to these codes

Replication of linkage at chromosome 20p13 and identification of suggestive sex-differential risk loci for autism spectrum disorder.

BackgroundAutism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are male-biased and genetically heterogeneous. While sequencing of sporadic cases has identified de novo risk variants, the heritable genetic contribution and mechanisms driving the male bias are less understood. Here, we aimed to identify familial and sex-differential risk loci in the largest available, uniformly ascertained, densely genotyped sample of multiplex ASD families from the Autism Genetics Resource Exchange (AGRE), and to compare results with earlier findings from AGRE.MethodsFrom a total sample of 1,008 multiplex families, we performed genome-wide, non-parametric linkage analysis in a discovery sample of 847 families, and separately on subsets of families with only male, affected children (male-only, MO) or with at least one female, affected child (female-containing, FC). Loci showing evidence for suggestive linkage (logarithm of odds ≥2.2) in this discovery sample, or in previous AGRE samples, were re-evaluated in an extension study utilizing all 1,008 available families. For regions with genome-wide significant linkage signal in the discovery stage, those families not included in the corresponding discovery sample were then evaluated for independent replication of linkage. Association testing of common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) was also performed within suggestive linkage regions.ResultsWe observed an independent replication of previously observed linkage at chromosome 20p13 (P < 0.01), while loci at 6q27 and 8q13.2 showed suggestive linkage in our extended sample. Suggestive sex-differential linkage was observed at 1p31.3 (MO), 8p21.2 (FC), and 8p12 (FC) in our discovery sample, and the MO signal at 1p31.3 was supported in our expanded sample. No sex-differential signals met replication criteria, and no common SNPs were significantly associated with ASD within any identified linkage regions.ConclusionsWith few exceptions, analyses of subsets of families from the AGRE cohort identify different risk loci, consistent with extreme locus heterogeneity in ASD. Large samples appear to yield more consistent results, and sex-stratified analyses facilitate the identification of sex-differential risk loci, suggesting that linkage analyses in large cohorts are useful for identifying heritable risk loci. Additional work, such as targeted re-sequencing, is needed to identify the specific variants within these loci that are responsible for increasing ASD risk

Black Hole Thermodynamics from Calculations in Strongly-Coupled Gauge Theory

We develop an approximation scheme for the quantum mechanics of N D0-branes at finite temperature in the 't Hooft large-N limit. The entropy of the quantum mechanics calculated using this approximation agrees well with the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of a ten-dimensional non-extremal black hole with 0-brane charge. This result is in accord with the duality conjectured by Itzhaki, Maldacena, Sonnenschein and Yankielowicz. Our approximation scheme provides a model for the density matrix which describes a black hole in the strongly-coupled quantum mechanics.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, latex, (v2 minor corrections