644 research outputs found
Crowdfunding in Museums
The successes of websites such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo have propelled the popularity of crowdfunding and have made it a viable mode of fundraising in museums. Museums have used crowdfunding to raise funds for a wide variety of purposes including purchasing property, construction, disaster recovery, exhibition production, educational programs, and artifact conservation. An increasing number of museums have launched campaigns through various crowdfunding websites, experiencing varying degrees of success. In order to use crowdfunding as an effective fundraising tool, it is important to understand all the factors that contribute to the overall achievement of a crowdfunding campaign.
This thesis describes what crowdfunding is and how museums have used crowdfunding to date. It analyzes the key components that lead to a successful crowdfunding campaign. The thesis highlights three important museum case studies: Tesla Science Center’s Let’s Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum, the Smithsonian’s Freer-Sackler Together We’re One: Crowdfunding our Yoga Exhibit, and Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts’ Pennsylvania Top 10 Endangered Artifacts. The case studies are presented alongside relevant literature on crowdfunding strategies and philanthropic trends. In addition, accountability and ethical concerns regarding crowdfunding are presented and discussed. An appendix provides supplemental resources and best practice standards to effectively guide crowdfunding campaigns within museums
The Forest City Landslide
A large and complex landslide in marine shales is impacting the approach roadway and a 4600-ft long bridge carrying U.S. Route 212 over the Oahe Reservoir at Forest City, South Dakota. After extensive investigation and analyses it was determined that the main landslide could be remediated by unloading the slide using a large cut through the escarpment located upslope from the bridge. Although moving with the main slide, the 900- foot long approach embankment is failing in directions differing from the main slide. Preliminary study indicates that the independent slides within the approach embankment can be stabilized by stone columns or reinforced concrete dowels. Partial remediation has been achieved by the installation of stone columns around the embankment toe
Arithmetical properties of Multiple Ramanujan sums
In the present paper, we introduce a multiple Ramanujan sum for arithmetic
functions, which gives a multivariable extension of the generalized Ramanujan
sum studied by D. R. Anderson and T. M. Apostol. We then find fundamental
arithmetic properties of the multiple Ramanujan sum and study several types of
Dirichlet series involving the multiple Ramanujan sum. As an application, we
evaluate higher-dimensional determinants of higher-dimensional matrices, the
entries of which are given by values of the multiple Ramanujan sum.Comment: 19 page
Hall viscosity, orbital spin, and geometry: paired superfluids and quantum Hall systems
The Hall viscosity, a non-dissipative transport coefficient analogous to Hall
conductivity, is considered for quantum fluids in gapped or topological phases.
The relation to mean orbital spin per particle discovered in previous work by
one of us is elucidated with the help of examples, using the geometry of shear
transformations and rotations. For non-interacting particles in a magnetic
field, there are several ways to derive the result (even at non-zero
temperature), including standard linear response theory. Arguments for the
quantization, and the robustness of Hall viscosity to small changes in the
Hamiltonian that preserve rotational invariance, are given. Numerical
calculations of adiabatic transport are performed to check the predictions for
quantum Hall systems, with excellent agreement for trial states. The
coefficient of k^4 in the static structure factor is also considered, and shown
to be exactly related to the orbital spin and robust to perturbations in
rotation invariant systems also.Comment: v2: Now 30 pages, 10 figures; new calculation using disk geometry;
some other improvements; no change in result
Central limit theorem for multiplicative class functions on the symmetric group
Hambly, Keevash, O'Connell and Stark have proven a central limit theorem for
the characteristic polynomial of a permutation matrix with respect to the
uniform measure on the symmetric group. We generalize this result in several
ways. We prove here a central limit theorem for multiplicative class functions
on symmetric group with respect to the Ewens measure and compute the covariance
of the real and the imaginary part in the limit. We also estimate the rate of
convergence with the Wasserstein distance.Comment: 23 pages; the mathematics is the same as in the previous version, but
there are several improvments in the presentation, including a more intuitve
name for the considered function
Haar expectations of ratios of random characteristic polynomials
We compute Haar ensemble averages of ratios of random characteristic
polynomials for the classical Lie groups K = O(N), SO(N), and USp(N). To that
end, we start from the Clifford-Weyl algebera in its canonical realization on
the complex of holomorphic differential forms for a C-vector space V. From it
we construct the Fock representation of an orthosymplectic Lie superalgebra osp
associated to V. Particular attention is paid to defining Howe's oscillator
semigroup and the representation that partially exponentiates the Lie algebra
representation of sp in osp. In the process, by pushing the semigroup
representation to its boundary and arguing by continuity, we provide a
construction of the Shale-Weil-Segal representation of the metaplectic group.
To deal with a product of n ratios of characteristic polynomials, we let V =
C^n \otimes C^N where C^N is equipped with its standard K-representation, and
focus on the subspace of K-equivariant forms. By Howe duality, this is a
highest-weight irreducible representation of the centralizer g of Lie(K) in
osp. We identify the K-Haar expectation of n ratios with the character of this
g-representation, which we show to be uniquely determined by analyticity, Weyl
group invariance, certain weight constraints and a system of differential
equations coming from the Laplace-Casimir invariants of g. We find an explicit
solution to the problem posed by all these conditions. In this way we prove
that the said Haar expectations are expressed by a Weyl-type character formula
for all integers N \ge 1. This completes earlier work by Conrey, Farmer, and
Zirnbauer for the case of U(N).Comment: LaTeX, 70 pages, Complex Analysis and its Synergies (2016) 2:
Does persistent snowpack inhibit degradation of fecal stress indicators?
Physiological stress in wildlife can be a useful indicator of a population’s response to environmental factors. By using non-invasive endocrinological techniques, such as fecal sampling, potential confounding factors associated with the stress of capture can be avoided. A potential drawback of fecal sampling, however, is degradation of samples which may produce aberrant measurements of fecal glucocorticoid metabolites. In vertebrates, glucocorticoids, such as corticosterone, become elevated in response to stress. We sought to gauge the reliability of measurement of fecal glucocorticoid metabolites from white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) fecal samples exposed to a temperate winter with substantial snow cover and cold temperatures for up to 90 days, by repeatedly subsampling fecal samples every 10 days and performing a corticosterone enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Measurements of fecal glucocorticoid metabolites at 10 days were consistent with initial measurements, after which (20 days) they became aberrant following a period of thawing. Consequently, glucocorticoid metabolite levels in feces appear to remain stable under ambient conditions if temperatures remain below freezing at least for 10 days. While it’s possible that samples may remain useful beyond this time frame based on previous laboratory studies of samples stored in a freezer, further work is needed to determine how samples weather in situ under extreme cold (e.g. Arctic) or periods of partial thawing
Modeling Marine Protected Areas for Threatened Eiders in a Climatically Changing Bering Sea
Delineating protected areas for sensitive species is a growing challenge as changing climate alters the geographic pattern of habitats as well as human responses to those shifts. When human impacts are expected within projected ranges of threatened species, there is often demand to demarcate the minimum habitat required to ensure the species\u27 persistence. Because diminished or wide-ranging populations may not occupy all viable (and needed) habitat at once, one must identify thresholds of resources that will support the species even in unoccupied areas. Long-term data on the shifting mosaic of critical resources may indicate ranges of future variability. We addressed these issues for the Spectacled Eider (Somateria fischeri), a federally threatened species that winters in pack ice of the Bering Sea. Changing climate has decreased ice cover and severely reduced the eiders\u27 benthic prey and has increased prospects for expansion of bottom trawling that may further affect prey communities. To assess long-term changes in habitats that will support eiders, we linked data on benthic prey, sea ice, and weather from 1970 to 2001 with a spatially explicit simulation model of eider energy balance that integrated field, laboratory, and remote-sensing studies. Areas estimated to have prey densities adequate for eiders in 1970–1974 did not include most areas that were viable 20 years later (1993–1994). Unless the entire area with adequate prey in 1993–1994 had been protected, the much reduced viable area in 1999–2001 might well have been excluded. During long non-foraging periods (as at night), eiders can save much energy by resting on ice vs. floating on water; thus, loss of ice cover in the future might substantially decrease the area in which prey densities are adequate to offset the eiders\u27 energy needs. For wide-ranging benthivores such as eiders, our results emphasize that fixed protected areas based on current conditions can be too small or inflexible to subsume long-term shifts in habitat conditions. Better knowledge of patterns of natural disturbance experienced by prey communities, and appropriate allocation of human disturbance over seasons or years, may yield alternative strategies to large-scale closures that may be politically and economically problemati
Generalized Involution Models for Wreath Products
We prove that if a finite group has a generalized involution model, as
defined by Bump and Ginzburg, then the wreath product also has a
generalized involution model. This extends the work of Baddeley concerning
involution models for wreath products. As an application, we construct a
Gelfand model for wreath products of the form with abelian, and
give an alternate proof of a recent result due to Adin, Postnikov, and Roichman
describing a particularly elegant Gelfand model for the wreath product \ZZ_r
\wr S_n. We conclude by discussing some notable properties of this
representation and its decomposition into irreducible constituents, proving a
conjecture of Adin, Roichman, and Postnikov's.Comment: 29 page
- …