Re-engineering a nanodosimetry Monte Carlo code into Geant4: software design and first results

A set of physics models for nanodosimetry simulation is being re-engineered for use in Geant4-based simulations. This extension of Geant4 capabilities is part of a larger scale R&D project for multi-scale simulation involving adaptable, co-working condensed and discrete transport schemes. The project in progress reengineers the physics modeling capabilities associated with an existing FORTRAN track-structure code for nanodosimetry into a software design suitable to collaborate with an object oriented simulation kernel. The first experience and results of the ongoing re-engineering process are presented.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures and images, to appear in proceedings of the Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference 2009, Orland

Observational Bounds on Modified Gravity Models

Modified gravity provides a possible explanation for the currently observed cosmic accelaration. In this paper, we study general classes of modified gravity models. The Einstein-Hilbert action is modified by using general functions of the Ricci and the Gauss-Bonnet scalars, both in the metric and in the Palatini formalisms. We do not use an explicit form for the functions, but a general form with a valid Taylor expansion up to second order about redshift zero in the Riemann-scalars. The coefficients of this expansion are then reconstructed via the cosmic expansion history measured using current cosmological observations. These are the quantities of interest for theoretical considerations relating to ghosts and instabilities. We find that current data provide interesting constraints on the coefficients. The next-generation dark energy surveys should shrink the allowed parameter space for modifed gravity models quite dramatically.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figures, uses RevTe

Jurisprudential massage: legal fictions, radical citizenship and the epistemics of dissent in post-socialist China

While China leads the global race to high‐tech surveillance, a homegrown low‐tech institution of dissent management is currently experiencing a surprising revival: dispute mediation. Drawing on Confucian and socialist practices of justice, Yunnanese dispute mediators are today considerably innovating the jurisprudential techniques that frame the composition of conflict and the meaning of state laws in dispute settings. Jurisprudential massage is the emic term given to one such technique. Here I show how this technique stands for the deployment of therapeutic analogies and legal fictions with the aim of reorienting the political sensibilities of disputants toward a neo‐paternalistic form of citizenship. Contributing to the anthropology of law and resistance, this article shows how civil dissent cannot only be physically quenched through state coercion and silenced by pervasive surveillance or tactical buyouts but can also be ushered off the political stage by a selective redrawing of the epistemic foundation of legality

As ‘techno-politics’ holds sway, is a water commons possible in China?

So far the debate about China’s current environmental issues has given little consideration to already existing popular alternatives to the top-down, growth-compatible governance of the country’s endangered natural resources. Forty years of Party-sanctified insistence on pursuing relentless economic development has seemingly muffled the few dissenting voices and suppressed alternative discourses in natural resource management — such as those concerned with stewardship, care, maintenance, or even rejuvenation of the Chinese environment

Ghosts in the shell: the promises of water users' associations and the double life of Elinor Ostrom's design principles in rural China

Water is a matter of great concern for the PRC, especially for its agricultural sector, besieged by shortage, soil degradation, and raising production costs. Because of this, Water Users' Associations (WUA) are garnering domestic attention as a cost-effective solution for growth-compatible sustainability. These associations are inspired by Elinor Ostrom's design principles for the management of common resources. Through long-term ethnography among various stakeholders of the Yunnanese water sector, this article challenges the notion that the implementation of Ostrom-inspired WUAs in the Chinese countryside is fulfilling the associations' accompanying promises of sustainable growth. Instead, this study finds that Chinese WUAs proliferate thanks to pre-existing promises of collective prosperity. North-eastern Yunnan is rich in social arrangements for sustainable water management that predate the introduction of WUAs and make their ordinary operations possible. WUAs proponents conveniently blame the failure they see in Ostrom-inspired organisations on said arrangements while retaining faith in Ostrom's design principles. An ethnography of Ostrom-inspired associations can salvage Ostrom's intellectual project from the prescriptive readings of development planners and her critics. Yet, it also shows that alternative sustainable arrangements in human projects for the environment may become less plausible once captured by the prescriptive episteme of development planners. Keywords: China, water, WUA, Ostrom, sustainability, developmen

2-D and 3-D Radiation Transfer Models of High-Mass Star Formation

2-D and 3-D radiation transfer models of forming stars generally produce bluer 1-10 micron colors than 1-D models of the same evolutionary state and envelope mass. Therefore, 1-D models of the shortwave radiation will generally estimate a lower envelope mass and later evolutionary state than multidimensional models. 1-D models are probably reasonable for very young sources, or longwave analysis (wavelengths > 100 microns). In our 3-D models of high-mass stars in clumpy molecular clouds, we find no correlation between the depth of the 10 micron silicate feature and the longwave (> 100 micron) SED (which sets the envelope mass), even when the average optical extinction of the envelope is >100 magnitudes. This is in agreement with the observations of Faison et al. (1998) of several UltraCompact HII (UCHII) regions, suggesting that many of these sources are more evolved than embedded protostars. We have calculated a large grid of 2-D models and find substantial overlap between different evolutionary states in the mid-IR color-color diagrams. We have developed a model fitter to work in conjunction with the grid to analyze large datasets. This grid and fitter will be expanded and tested in 2005 and released to the public in 2006.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, to appear in the proceedings of IAU Symp 227, Massive Star Birth: A Crossroads of Astrophysics, (Cesaroni R., Churchwell E., Felli M., Walmsley C. editors

Food Sovereignty as a model for scholar-led open access publishing

As large commercial publishers adapt their business models to profit from an increasingly open access (OA) scholarly publishing landscape, there has been an increased focus on alternate scholar-led and diamond forms of open access. Andrea E. Pia and Filippo Zerilli, argue that to effectively compete and outcompete traditional publishers and bibliometrics, scholar-led publications can learn from the slow food and food sovereignty movements that have constructed co-operative systems for quality assessment that bypass the commercial mainstream

Justice after carbon: is there a place for justice in China-led hydropower transition?

Is it possible to reconcile the economic impetus towards a more sustainably powered economy with the equally important requirement for the protection of richly biodiverse, socio-natural communities? Can sustainable energy transition be just? Andrea Pia and Clarissa Ruzol reflect on a workshop to discuss Chinese-led sustainable energy interventions for Southeast Asia