Noon Edition

NANNY Martin sprawled against the corner of the building and stared directly into the brilliance of the street light. He felt like crying - the champagne had made him feel like crying, and the little gold statue in his hand made him feel like crying

Measuring Performance: The State Management Report Card for 2008

Grades each state's management performance, based on five criteria in each of the categories of money, people, infrastructure, and information. Includes an overview of each category with average grades and grade distribution maps

Data exploration systems for databases

Data exploration systems apply machine learning techniques, multivariate statistical methods, information theory, and database theory to databases to identify significant relationships among the data and summarize information. The result of applying data exploration systems should be a better understanding of the structure of the data and a perspective of the data enabling an analyst to form hypotheses for interpreting the data. This paper argues that data exploration systems need a minimum amount of domain knowledge to guide both the statistical strategy and the interpretation of the resulting patterns discovered by these systems

The composition, mechanisms of action and infusion parameters of cardioplegic solutions as determinants of recovery in rabbit isolated hearts (Langendorff)

Imperial Users onl

Social network characteristics as they relate to the mental health of refugees

This study (N=168) builds on a long lineage of scholarly work connecting social networks to mental health by exploring relationships between refugee social network compositions—network size, proportion of same sex ties, proportion of same community ties, and role heterogeneity—and self-reported symptoms of PTSD, depression, and anxiety. This study finds that newly resettled refugee social networks are small and social isolation is common; approximately 30% of participants reported having no local social network ties. For refugees with local social network ties, the composition of social networks does appear to matter. Having more same sex ties was negatively associated with higher mental health symptoms while having more role heterogeneity was positively associated with higher mental health symptoms. Refugees level of exposure to trauma and income satisfaction were also significantly related to increased mental health symptoms. Qualitative interview data contextualizes and expands on quantitative findings and suggests that refugees have important social relationships with distant family and friends and begin to build relationships within their local communities that can address problems with isolation and mental health disparities

Inflation as a Probe of Short Distance Physics

We show that a string-inspired Planck scale modification of general relativity can have observable cosmological effects. Specifically, we present a complete analysis of the inflationary perturbation spectrum produced by a phenomenological Lagrangian that has a standard form on large scales but incorporates a string-inspired short distance cutoff, and find a deviation from the standard result. We use the de Sitter calculation as the basis of a qualitative analysis of other inflationary backgrounds, arguing that in these cases the cutoff could have a more pronounced effect, changing the shape of the spectrum. Moreover, the computational approach developed here can be used to provide unambiguous calculations of the perturbation spectrum in other heuristic models that modify trans-Planckian physics and thereby determine their impact on the inflationary perturbation spectrum. Finally, we argue that this model may provide an exception to constraints, recently proposed by Tanaka and Starobinsky, on the ability of Planck-scale physics to modify the cosmological spectrum.Comment: revtex, 8 pages, eps figures included, references adde

Hydrologic Modelling With a Spatial Database.

Hydrologic modelling can be enhanced and improved through the utilization of a Geographic Information System (GIS). Information can be stored and analyzed by the tools available within a GIS to create a spatial database that realistically represents a watershed for hydrologic modelling. This study presents an approach whereby the data available in the GIS determine the modelling strategy. The soil, topography and land cover data for the watershed were analyzed with the spatial analysis tools of a GIS to determine the hydrologic response areas. The coordinate values that define the locations and boundaries of features in the GIS were used to identify which hydrologic response areas contributed to the flow at a particular inlet and to calculate the flow length for those areas. The coordinate values were also used to identify the storm drain that connected to the next downstream inlet and thereby permitted the discharge to be automatically routed downstream. The discharge was calculated using a modified version of the SCS runoff equations for the calculation of the effective rainfall and the kinematic wave routing formulation. The discharge for each hydrologic response area was combined and routed to determine the total discharge for two drainage areas within the watershed. The effects of spatial and scalar changes on the discharge were also investigated. The results show that when the resolution of the hydrologic response areas was changed it had very little impact on the discharge at the outlet of the two areas investigated. However, the results also indicated that when all the surfaces that contributed to the discharge at the inlet became impervious there was an increase in the peak discharge of 63.5% at the inlet and only 2.9% at the outlet. The discharge was also found to be sensitive to the surface roughness coefficient, as the investigation showed that the peak discharge from a pervious surface changed as much as 92.3% when the roughness coefficient was varied between 0.01 and 0.100. It was concluded that the inlet of a drainage network should be the location at which the effects of change on the discharge are evaluated