An Orthogonal Test of the LL-functions Ratios Conjecture, II

Recently Conrey, Farmer, and Zirnbauer developed the L-functions Ratios conjecture, which gives a recipe that predicts a wealth of statistics, from moments to spacings between adjacent zeros and values of L-functions. The problem with this method is that several of its steps involve ignoring error terms of size comparable to the main term; amazingly, the errors seem to cancel and the resulting prediction is expected to be accurate up to square-root cancellation. We prove the accuracy of the Ratios Conjecture's prediction for the 1-level density of families of cuspidal newforms of constant sign (up to square-root agreement for support in (-1,1), and up to a power savings in (-2,2)), and discuss the arithmetic significance of the lower order terms. This is the most involved test of the Ratios Conjecture's predictions to date, as it is known that the error terms dropped in some of the steps do not cancel, but rather contribute a main term! Specifically, these are the non-diagonal terms in the Petersson formula, which lead to a Bessel-Kloosterman sum which contributes only when the support of the Fourier transform of the test function exceeds (-1, 1).Comment: 36 pages, first draf

Pest management and food production: looking to the future

In their comprehensive paper, Montague Yudelman, Annu Ratta, and David Nygaard examine the key issues with regard to pest management and food production over the coming decades. They draw attention to the lack of adequate information on the magnitude and impact of pest losses; with out such information, policy makers are handicapped when devising strategies for meeting food needs. The authors address both chemical and nonchemical approaches to pest management, high lighting the importance of biotechnology. There is growing public sentiment against biotechnology but little appreciation as yet of its contributions to alleviating hunger by, among other things, controlling pest losses. The authors also adress the important subject of the roles of different actors in pest management, most notably the private sector. A world with out pests is unrealistic and probably undesirable. However, a world with severely reduced losses of food production to pests is achievable by 2020. This paper shows us how.Food crops Diseases and pests Control., Pests Integrated control.,

Change in the Education System in England and Wales since the Second World War Part 2:The Developing Pattern 1950s and 1960s

Change in the Education System in England and Wales Part 2:The Developing Pattern - 1950s and 1960s focuses on issues of decentralisation of systems and levels of provision arising around, from, and subsequent to the 1944 Education Act. The crystallisation of issues surrounding Political and Professional Attitudes; the Eleven Plus; Secondary Modern Schools (with a concentration on the West Riding County Council) and the Persistence of Inequality of Opportunity are described and assessed. This is a reflective evaluation of the 1950s and 1960s based on an understanding of the difficulties experienced by both professionals and politicians involved in fashioning the reorganisation of secondary education. The context is the basis for the thrust of the article’s argument that what was being negotiated was the relationship between central and local government and between local government and localities

Change in the Education System in England and Wales in the last 70 years (Part 1: 1944 – 1949)

Change in the Education System in England and Wales in the last 70 years (Part 1: 1944 – 1949) examines in detail the development of the national education system and its effects on regional localities from the 1944 Education Act to the present time. The paper’s approach is both through an analysis of processes that have fuelled the changes in that time as well as demonstrating experientially that although the 1944 Education Act was an evolutionary attempt to create a new educational situation in post-war Britain it succeeded as the enabling legislation for the development of the national system of education in England and Wales after the Second World War. Concluding that subsequent developments have been in accord with the Act or have been enabled by the add-on legislation of succeeding governments because the educational themes, which developed later, have their origin in the intentions; the spirit, the mandatory or permissive mix of the 1944 Act; and in reactions to it

The Integral of the Riemann ξ-Function

ABSTRACT. This paper studies the integral of the Riemann ξ-function defined by ξ(−1)(s) = ∫ s 1/2 ξ(w)dw. More generally, it studies a one-parameter family of func-tions given by Fourier integrals and satisfying a functional equation. Members of this family are shown to have only finitely many zeros on the critical line, with ξ(−1)(s) having exactly one zero on the critical line, at s = 12. It is also shown there are ze-ros of ξ(−1)(s) that lie arbitrarily far away from the critical line. An analogue of the de-Bruijn-Newman constant is introduced for this family, and shown to be infinite. 1

Influence of Incident Wavelength and Detector Material Selection on Fluorescence in the Application of Raman Spectroscopy to a Fungal Fermentation Process

Raman spectroscopy is a novel tool used in the on-line monitoring and control of bioprocesses, offering both quantitative and qualitative determination of key process variables through spectroscopic analysis. However, the wide-spread application of Raman spectroscopy analysers to industrial fermentation processes has been hindered by problems related to the high background fluorescence signal associated with the analysis of biological samples. To address this issue, we investigated the influence of fluorescence on the spectra collected from two Raman spectroscopic devices with different wavelengths and detectors in the analysis of the critical process parameters (CPPs) and critical quality attributes (CQAs) of a fungal fermentation process. The spectra collected using a Raman analyser with the shorter wavelength (903 nm) and a charged coupled device detector (CCD) was corrupted by high fluorescence and was therefore unusable in the prediction of these CPPs and CQAs. In contrast, the spectra collected using a Raman analyser with the longer wavelength (993 nm) and an indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) detector was only moderately affected by fluorescence and enabled the generation of accurate estimates of the fermentation's critical variables. This novel work is the first direct comparison of two different Raman spectroscopy probes on the same process highlighting the significant detrimental effect caused by high fluorescence on spectra recorded throughout fermentation runs. Furthermore, this paper demonstrates the importance of correctly selecting both the incident wavelength and detector material type of the Raman spectroscopy devices to ensure corrupting fluorescence is minimised during bioprocess monitoring applications

Diamonds are Forever

We defend the thesis that every necessarily true proposition is always true. Since not every proposition that is always true is necessarily true, our thesis is at odds with theories of modality and time, such as those of Kit Fine and David Kaplan, which posit a fundamental symmetry between modal and tense operators. According to such theories, just as it is a contingent matter what is true at a given time, it is likewise a temporary matter what is true at a given possible world; so a proposition that is now true at all worlds, and thus necessarily true, may yet at some past or future time be false in the actual world, and thus not always true. We reconstruct and criticize several lines of argument in favor of this picture, and then argue against the picture on the grounds that it is inconsistent with certain sorts of contingency in the structure of time