Advice to a New Child Services Leader

Offers advice to new leaders of child services agencies in the areas of leadership, administration, communication, and data. Discusses developing a strategy for change, building a management team, working with the media, and measuring workload

Sonora exploratory study for the detection of wheat-leaf rust

The applicability of LANDSAT remote sensing technology to the detection of a wheat-leaf-rust epidemic in Sonora, Mexico, during 1977 was investigated. LANDSAT data acquired during crop years 1975-76 and 1976-77 were clustered, classified, and analyzed in order to detect agricultural changes. Analysis of 1977 data indicates a significant proportion of the identified wheat is stressed (potentially rust-infected). Additional analyses show a significant increase in fallowing during the year, as well as a substantial decrease in reservoir levels in the Sonora agricultural region. Ground observations are required to substantiate these analyses. The possibility exists that heat-rust is not LANDSAT detectable and that the clusters identified as containing stressed signatures represent different varieties of wheat or perhaps nonwheat crops

Mutual Fund Expense Disclosures: A Behavioral Perspective

Mutual funds have enjoyed phenomenal growth with their numbers exceeding the number of public companies and their assets aggregating in excess of $9 trillion. Increasingly they are the investment instrument of choice by the proverbial widows, widowers and orphans, and a few school teachers are included as well. But how are best can that choice be one that is not only informed but informed in a way more likely to elicit a wise decision? This paper examines from a behavioral perspective how regulation can best disclose information related to two key factors for investors to compare competing mutual funds: fund returns and fund expenses. Our analysis reflects that the current disclosure process is deficient because it fails to reflect the insights of research on judgment and decision making, and particularly the need to distinguish between the availability of information and its processability by its user. The message of our article is straightforward: if regulators adhered to the insights provided by our paper, not only investors, but also the fund\u27s directors, would be greatly empowered so that better returns and lower costs could be expected

Boundary Conditions for Three-Body Scattering in Configuration Space

The asymptotic behavior of three-body scattering wave functions in configuration space is studied by considering a model equation that has the same asymptotic form as the Faddeev equations. Boundary conditions for the wave function are derived, and their validity is verified by numerical calculations. It is shown that these boundary conditions for the partial differential equation can be used to obtain accurate numerical solutions for the wave function.Comment: 25 pages, revtex, 9 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev. C, epsfig.sty require

Scattering Calculations with Wavelets

We show that the use of wavelet bases for solving the momentum-space scattering integral equation leads to sparse matrices which can simplify the solution. Wavelet bases are applied to calculate the K-matrix for nucleon-nucleon scattering with the s-wave Malfliet-Tjon V potential. We introduce a new method, which uses special properties of the wavelets, for evaluating the singular part of the integral. Analysis of this test problem indicates that a significant reduction in computational size can be achieved for realistic few-body scattering problems.Comment: 26 pages, Latex, 6 eps figure

Superluminal propagation of an optical pulse in a Doppler broadened three-state, single channel active Raman gain medium

Using a single channel active Raman gain medium we show a $(220\pm 20)$ns advance time for an optical pulse of $\tau_{FWHM}=15.4 \mu$s propagating through a 10 cm medium, a lead time that is comparable to what was reported previously. In addition, we have verified experimentally all the features associated with this single channel Raman gain system. Our results show that the reported gain-assisted superluminal propagation should not be attributed to the interference between the two frequencies of the pump field.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Testing hypotheses of the cause of peripheral thinning of the Greenland Ice Sheet: is land-terminating ice thinning at anomalously high rates?

Recent observations have shown that the periphery of the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) is thinning rapidly and that this thinning is greatest around marine-terminating outlet glaciers. Several theories have been proposed which provide a link between climate and ice thinning. We present surface elevation change (<i>dh/dt</i>) data from NASA's Program for Arctic Regional Climate Assessment (PARCA) laser altimetry surveys for fourteen and eleven of the largest outlet glaciers in Southern Greenland from 1993 to 1998 and 1998 to 2006 respectively to test the applicability of these theories to the GrIS. <br><br> Initially, outlet glacier <i>dh/dt</i> data are compared with data from concurrent surveys over inland ice (slow flowing ice that is not obviously draining into an outlet glacier) to confirm the effect of ice flow on surface thinning rates. Land-terminating and marine-terminating outlet glacier <i>dh/dt</i> data are then compared from 1993 to 1998 and from 1998 to 2006. Finally, ablation anomalies (the difference between the "normal" ablation rate from 1970 to 2000 and the ablation rate in the time period of interest) calculated with a positive degree day model are compared to both marine-terminating and land-terminating outlet glacier <i>dh/dt</i> data. <br><br> Our results support earlier conclusions that certain marine-terminating outlet glaciers have thinned much more than land-terminating outlet glaciers during both time periods. Furthermore we show that these differences are not limited to the largest, fastest-flowing outlet glaciers – almost all marine-terminating outlet glaciers are thinning more than land-terminating outlet glaciers. There was a four fold increase in mean marine-terminating outlet glacier thinning rates below 1000 m elevation between the periods 1993 to 1998 and 1998 to 2006, while thinning rates of land-terminating outlet glaciers remained statistically unchanged. This suggests that a change in a controlling mechanism specific to the thinning rates of marine-terminating outlet glaciers occurred in the late 1990s and that this change did not affect thinning rates of land-terminating outlet glaciers. <br><br> Thinning rates of land-terminating outlet glaciers are statistically the same as ablation anomalies, while thinning rates of marine-terminating outlet glaciers are not. Thinning of land-terminating outlet glaciers therefore seems to be a response to changes in local mass balance (principally increases in air temperature) while thinning of marine-terminating outlet glaciers is principally controlled by ice dynamics. The mechanism by which this dynamic thinning occurs is still not clear although its association with marine-terminating outlet glaciers suggests perturbations at marine termini (calving) as the likely cause