296 research outputs found
Lines in the Sand on the Australian Political Beach
Spatial models of voting behaviour are the dominant paradigm in political science. Consistent with this approach, it will be the case that, ceteris paribus, voters should vote for the party nearest to them on the political spectrum. A key question is how we measure nearness or distance. We investigate this issue by estimating discrete choice models for voting outcomes using the 2001 Australian Election Study survey data. The evidence supports the proposition that it is perceived and not actual distance that performs best. Our findings also suggest that where a voter locates on the political spectrum is almost as good a predictor of their voting outcome as how close they are to the partiesSpatial Competition, Distance Measures, Discrete Choice
Contribution of pulse crop residues and soil to N2O and CO2 emissions in a subsequent wheat crop: a 13C/15N study
Non-Peer Reviewe
Nitrogen supply from belowground residues of lentil and wheat to a subsequent wheat crop
Non-Peer ReviewedLentil (Lens culinaris) plants can form an association with rhizobia and thereby biologically fix much of the nitrogen (N) required for their growth. This not only reduces the need for expensive N fertilizer when the lentil crop is grown, but there is a potential to contribute a net increment of N to the soil that can be utilized by the subsequent crop. However, estimating this net increment of N remains a challenge, because of the difficulty in estimating the amount of root and root-derived N. The purpose of this greenhouse study was to quantify the belowground N (BGN) of lentil and wheat (Triticum aestivum) using shoot 15N labeling and to trace the 15N from BGN into subsequently grown wheat plants. Belowground N comprised 34 and 51 % of total plant N in lentil and wheat, respectively. Biomass production and N uptake by wheat grown on lentil belowground residues (BGR) were 49 and 14 % higher than wheat grown on wheat BGR. Moreover, a higher proportion of added 15N from lentil BGN was recovered in the succeeding wheat crop, indicating that lentil BGN was more readily mineralized than wheat BGN. The disproportionately high increase in yield vs. N uptake for wheat grown on lentil BGR, however, indicates that non-N factors also contributed to the increase in wheat yield. This study highlights the importance of including estimates of BGN when evaluating the positive effects of including lentil crops in rotation with cereals
Long-term degradation of optical devices on the moon
Forty years ago, Apollo astronauts placed the first of several retroreflector
arrays on the lunar surface. Their continued usefulness for laser-ranging might
suggest that the lunar environment does not damage optical devices. However,
new laser ranging data reveal that the efficiency of the three Apollo reflector
arrays is now diminished by a factor of ten at all lunar phases and by an
additional factor of ten when the lunar phase is near full moon. These deficits
did not exist in the earliest years of lunar ranging, indicating that the lunar
environment damages optical equipment on the timescale of decades. Dust or
abrasion on the front faces of the corner-cube prisms may be responsible,
reducing their reflectivity and degrading their thermal performance when
exposed to face-on sunlight at full moon. These mechanisms can be tested using
laboratory simulations and must be understood before designing equipment
destined for the moon.Comment: 9 pages; 4 figures; accepted for publication in Icaru
A gamma- and X-ray detector for cryogenic, high magnetic field applications
As part of an experiment to measure the spectrum of photons emitted in
beta-decay of the free neutron, we developed and operated a detector consisting
of 12 bismuth germanate (BGO) crystals coupled to avalanche photodiodes (APDs).
The detector was operated near liquid nitrogen temperature in the bore of a
superconducting magnet and registered photons with energies from 5 keV to 1000
keV. To enlarge the detection range, we also directly detected soft X-rays with
energies between 0.2 keV and 20 keV with three large area APDs. The
construction and operation of the detector is presented, as well as information
on operation of APDs at cryogenic temperatures
Secure Mobile Support of Independent Sales Agencies
Sales agents depend on mobile support systems for their daily work. Independent sales agencies, however, are not able to facilitate this kind of mobile support on their own due to their small size and lack of the necessary funds. Since their processes correlate with confidential information and include the initiation and alteration of legally binding transactions they have a high need for security. In this contribution we first propose an IT-artifact consisting of a service platform that supports multi-vendor sales processes based on previous work. We then analyze use cases of sales representatives of independent sales agencies using this system and derive their security requirements. We then propose a security extension to the IT-artifact and evaluate this extension by comparing it to existing solutions. Our results show that the proposed artifact extension provides a more convenient and secure solution than already existing approaches
Spatial updating in narratives.
Across two experiments we investigated spatial updating in
environments encoded through narratives. In Experiment 1, in which
participants were given visualization instructions to imagine the protagonist’s
movement, they formed an initial representation during learning but did not
update it during subsequent described movement. In Experiment 2, in which
participants were instructed to physically move in space towards the directions
of the described objects prior to testing, there was evidence for spatial updating.
Overall, findings indicate that physical movement can cause participants to link
a spatial representation of a remote environment to a sensorimotor framework
and update the locations of remote objects while they move
Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector
A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results
Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC
Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC
provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of
lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated
luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with
a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the
transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the
anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the
nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of
the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp.
Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in
the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies
smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating
nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and
transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of
inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous
measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables,
submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are
available at
http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02
- …