Calculating Risk, Denying Uncertainty: Seismicity and Hydropower Development in Nepal

If Ulrich Beck’s definition of ‘risk society’ describes societies increasingly structured by preoccupations with future environmental threats and related insecurities created by modernization, then Nepal’s hydropower community would appear to be quite the opposite, propelled into environmental denial by twin demands for domestic electricity and revenue earned through hydroelectric export. Our research reveals that prior to the April 2015 earthquake in Nepal, the hydropower community was engaging in what Eviatar Zerubavel calls ‘socially organized denial,’ largely ignoring the uncertainties associated with seismic activity. Earthquakes and tremors were viewed as unavoidable realities that should not impede hydropower development. This denial, we argue, was shaped not only by local political realities and demand for electricity, but also by a larger desire to capitalize on available funds from international finance, which are highly contingent upon Nepal presenting itself as a ‘safe’ zone for investment. Our study focuses on the elites of Nepal’s hydro community: the developers, investors, water experts, and government officials who occupy the ‘upstream’ positions at which scientific knowledge is produced and adjudicated. On one hand, the denial or omission of earthquake potential that we witnessed seems to identify the ineluctable challenges that Nepal faces in attempting to integrate its economy into global markets; on the other hand, it indicates the desire of the private sector to reap profits from hydropower in spite of obvious geophysical dangers. These dangers, we argue, are a bankable risk for these elites. However, for the people directly affected by new hydropower infrastructures, these are risks and uncertainties threatening already vulnerable livelihoods

A resource-advantage perspective on pricing: shifting the focus from ends to means-end in pricing research?

This paper contributes to a long-lasting debate between practitioners who argue that academia is unable to understand what pricing is all about and academics who criticize practitioner pricing approaches for lacking rigor or rationality. The paper conceptualizes a resource-advantage (R-A) perspective on pricing by drawing on the R-A theory of competition. After a review of R-A theory, the paper integrates the price discretion concept and pricing as a spanning competence by introducing a separation between resources that create and resources that extract value, thereby expanding R-A theory to pricing. The perspective aims to shed light on how the process of competition helps organizations to learn/benefit from pricing capabilities. The research shifts the focus of pricing research from an equilibrium-based static view to a dynamic, disequilibrium-provoking pricing competence. In this way, it draws attention to what is perhaps most relevant to pricing in practice: the actual means necessary to determine price

HCI for peace: from idealism to concrete steps

This panel will contribute diverse perspectives on the use of computer technology to promote peace and prevent armed conflict. These perspectives include: the use of social media to promote democracy and citizen participation, the role of computers in helping people communicate across division lines in zones of conflict, how persuasive technology can promote peace, and how interaction design can play a role in post-conflict reconciliation

A New Method to Calibrate the Magnitudes of Type Ia Supernovae at Maximum Light

We present a new empirical method for fitting multicolor light curves of Type Ia supernovae. Our method combines elements from two widely used techniques in the literature: the delta_m15 template fitting method and the Multicolor Light-Curve Shape method. An advantage of our technique is the ease of adding new colors, templates, or parameters to the fitting procedure. We use a large sample of published light curves to calibrate the relations between the absolute magnitudes at maximum and delta_m15 in BVRI filters. We find that individual subsamples from a given survey or publication have significantly tighter relationships between light curve shape and luminosity than the relationship derived from the sum of all the samples, pointing to uncorrected systematic errors in the photometry, mainly in BV filters. Using our method, we calculate luminosity distances and host galaxy reddening to 89 SNe in the Hubble flow and construct a low-z Hubble diagram. The dispersion of the SNe in the Hubble diagram is 0.20 mag, or an error of ~9% in distance to a single SN. Our technique produces similar or smaller dispersion in the low-z Hubble diagram than other techniques in the literature.Comment: 43 pages, 16 figures, 6 tables, accepted by ApJ. For additional material go to http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~prieto/paper_dm15/dm15.htm

Comparing the behavior of orbits in different 3D dynamical models for elliptical galaxies

We study the behavior of orbits in two different galactic dynamical models, describing the motion in the central parts of a triaxial elliptical galaxy with a dense nucleus. Numerical experiments show that both models display regular motion together with extended chaotic regions. A detailed investigation of the properties of motion is made for the 2D and 3D Hamiltonian systems, using a number of different dynamical parameters, such as the Poincare surface of section, the maximal Lyapunov Characteristic Exponent, the S(c) spectrum, the S(w) spectrum and the P(f) indicator. The numerical calculations suggest that the properties of motion in both potentials are very similar. Our results show that one may use different kinds of gravitational potentials in order to describe the motion in triaxial galaxies while obtaining quantitatively similar results.Comment: Published in Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics journa

Fermi-LAT Detection of the Young SuperNova Remnant Tycho

After almost three years of data taking in sky survey mode, the \emph{Fermi}-LAT has detected $\gamma$-ray emission toward the Tycho's Supernova Remnant (SNR). The Tycho SNR is among the youngest remnants in the Galaxy, originating from a Type Ia Supernova in AD 1572. The $\gamma$-ray integral flux from 400 MeV up to 100 GeV has been measured to be (3.5$\pm1.1_{stat}\pm0.7_{syst}$)$\times10^{-9}$ cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$ with a photon index of 2.3$\pm0.2_{stat}\pm0.1_{syst}$

PS1-10jh Continues to Follow the Fallback Accretion Rate of a Tidally Disrupted Star

We present late-time observations of the tidal disruption event candidate PS1-10jh. UV and optical imaging with HST/WFC3 localize the transient to be coincident with the host galaxy nucleus to an accuracy of 0.023 arcsec, corresponding to 66 pc. The UV flux in the F225W filter, measured 3.35 rest-frame years after the peak of the nuclear flare, is consistent with a decline that continues to follow a $t^{-5/3}$ power-law with no spectral evolution. Late epochs of optical spectroscopy obtained with MMT ~ 2 and 4 years after the peak, enable a clean subtraction of the host galaxy from the early spectra, revealing broad helium emission lines on top of a hot continuum, and placing stringent upper limits on the presence of hydrogen line emission. We do not measure Balmer H\delta absorption in the host galaxy strong enough to be indicative of a rare, post-starburst "E+A" galaxy as reported by Arcavi et al. (2014). The light curve of PS1-10jh over a baseline of 3.5 yr is best modeled by fallback accretion of a tidally disrupted star. Its strong broad helium emission relative to hydrogen (He II \lambda 4686/H\alpha > 5) could be indicative of either the hydrogen-poor chemical composition of the disrupted star, or certain conditions in the tidal debris of a solar-composition star in the presence of an optically-thick, extended reprocessing envelope.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ Letter