THE ECONOMIC PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNITED STATES: IS THE ORGANIZATION MAN DESTROYING OUR TRADITIONAL INDIVIDUALISM?

Public Economics,

Analyzing Citation-Distance Networks for Evaluating Publication Impact

Studying citation patterns of scholarly articles has been of interest to many researchers from various disciplines. While the relationship of citations and scientific impact has been widely studied in the literature, in this paper we develop the idea of analyzing the semantic distance of scholarly articles in a citation network (citation-distance network) to uncover patterns that reflect scientific impact. More specifically, we compare two types of publications in terms of their citation-distance patterns, seminal publications and literature reviews, and focus on their referencing patterns as well as on publications which cite them. We show that seminal publications are associated with a larger semantic distance, measured using the content of the articles, between their references and the citing publications, while literature reviews tend to cite publications from a wider range of topics. Our motivation is to understand and utilize this information to create new research evaluation metrics which would better reflect scientific impact

Optimization of Direct-Write 3D Two Photon Photolithography in Poly (methyl methacrylate)

Direct-write multiphoton photolithography (DWMP) is a technique which exploits the localization of multi-photon processes which occur at a tightly focused femtosecond laser to write 3D patterns in a photosensitive polymer. In conventional photolithography devices are fabricated by using masks to tailor light exposure onto photo sensitive material, developing the photoresist, and this process is driven by a single photon. DWMP differs in that the energy of at least two photons is required to reach criticality for exposure chemistry. This means that whereas traditional photolithography will polymerize a material throughout the volume of the beam, DWMP will only polymerize a material where the probability of two or more photons interacting with a molecule simultaneously is incredibly high, i.e. at the focus. This is the essential idea behind DWMP which allows arbitrary 3D shapes to be created, in contrast to traditional photolithography where devices are produced in layers with strict limitations on complexity. DWMP also allows for the creation of very small, high resolution shapes. This is possible because of the tight laser focus which produces “voxels” (volume-pixels) of polymerized material. To zeroth order the dimensions of a voxel can be estimated by a Gaussian laser’s diffraction limit. However in the DWMP case, because two or more photons must interact at the beam waist to induce polymerization the effective volume is reduced in proportion to the number of photons required for the interaction. This reduces the effective volume further as a function of the cross-sectional intensity, allowing for voxels smaller than the diffraction limit. The majority of DWMP work to date has used negative photoresists, in which exposed material is made less soluble. This results in solidified material where the focus was scanned and is useful for creating high resolution freeform structures. Here we explore and attempt to optimize DWMP with regards to the positive resist Poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) using short wavelength (~387 nm) light. Not only is PMMA a widely used and durable material in the biological community, but because it is a positive resist it is the exposed rather than unexposed material which is removed upon development. This property combined with the complexity allowed by DWMP should make it possible to make wells and intricate channels imbedded on all sides within a block of PMMA. Such a technique would prove useful in the creation of arbitrary microfluidic devices, as are often needed for biological research. We find that the technique is indeed viable while outlining a general method and defining future work to optimize the resolution of the process.No embargoAcademic Major: Physic

The more things change the more they stay the same: Assessing the immediate impact of the licensing act (2004) on attendances to accident & emergency departments

This paper reports on a survey of 39 Accident and Emergency departments (AED) in England regarding presentations over a three month time period before and after the changes in the Licensing Act (2003) which came into force in November 2005. The time periods reported are January – March 2005 (the PRE period) and January – March 2006 (the POST period). Our data indicated NO significant change in the number of attendances that could be related to alcohol consumption (hereafter referred to as ‘attendances’) in the first two months following increased availability. In the third month there was a significant decrease in ‘attendances’. There was considerable variation in the changes in ‘attendances’ between participating AEDs. The pattern of ‘attendances’ on weekdays (Monday – Thursday) was unchanged. Following increased availability ‘attendances’ on Saturday fell, but increased on Fridays and Sundays. There were no changes in the pattern of ‘attendances’ across the 24 hour period, with most patients presenting at around Midday. Rates of ‘attendances’ for Assault and Head Injury fell significantly following the change in availability. The number of ‘attendances’ where alcohol was specifically mentioned increased significantly during the POST period. Prior to the increase in availability, the number of ‘attendances’ where alcohol was specifically mentioned peaked sharply around Midnight. Following the change in the law, there was a general increase in such ‘attendances’ from 11PM through to 3AM. Although there was a general increase in alcohol specified ‘attendances’ across the week, there was a significant increase in such ‘attendances’ on a Sunday. Data from one Northern and one Southern Local Ambulance Service was provided to complement the data obtained from individual AEDs. The number of alcohol related ambulance call outs for the LAS and NEAS increased following the change in the law

Exploring the relationship between development and disasters : Bir Hospital as a microcosm of this relationship : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Philosophy in Development Studies at Massey University

Irreqular Pagination Page 129 is missingThe question is asked as to whether there is a relationship between development and disasters. To answer this question these two words must first be defined. The simplest definitions are that development is good change and a disaster is the result of an interaction between an event and a vulnerable community. From the literature it was found that the relationship between development and disasters fell into two broad categories; a financial relationship and a contributory relationship. The financial relationship was primarily that disasters diverted funds away from development. This occurred in two ways. One is that funds earmarked for development were re-directed into relief following a disaster. The other is that a disaster can destroy past development investment in a community and reduce community potential for future development. The contributory relationship was that development could either reduce or increase a community's vulnerability to a disaster-producing event. A 1998 vulnerability assessment report of the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal identified that Bir Hospital was vulnerable to the impact of an earthquake. Bir Hospital was taken as a case study to demonstrate the contributory relationship between development and disasters. This case study identified whether past development activities had contributed to this vulnerability and could future development activities reduce the vulnerability of Bir Hospital. In preparation for the detailed assessment of Bir Hospital the experiences of other hospitals in disaster situations was researched and standards for measuring a hospital's vulnerability were identified. The outcome of the vulnerability assessment of Bir Hospital was that the hospital is extremely vulnerable to the impact of an earthquake and that development activities in the past had contributed to this. There is strong potential for future development to reduce the vulnerability of the hospital. The overall conclusion is that there is a definite relationship between development and disasters. This relationship can be either positive or negative. In recognition of this relationship it is recommended that development practitioners and disaster managers work closely together

Experimental demonstration and improvement of chemical EOR techniques in heavy oils

textHeavy oil resources are huge and are currently produced largely with steam-driven technology. The purpose of this research was to evaluate an alternative to steam flooding in heavy oils: chemical EOR. Acidic components abundant in heavy crude oils can be converted to soaps at high pH with alkali, reducing the interfacial tension (IFT) between oil and water to ultra-low levels. In an attempt to harness this property, engineers developed alkaline and alkaline-polymer (AP) flooding EOR processes, which met limited success. The primary problem with AP flooding was the soap is usually too hydrophobic, its optimum salinity is low and the ultra-low IFT salinity range narrow (Nelson 1983). Adding a hydrophilic co-surfactant to the process solved the problem, and is known as ASP flooding. AP floods also form persistent, unpredictable and often highly viscous emulsions, which result in high pressure drops and low injection rates. Addition of co-solvents such as a light alcohol (typically 1 wt %) improves the performance of AP floods; researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have coined the term ACP (Alkaline Co-solvent Polymer) for this new process. ACP has significant advantages relative to other chemical flooding modes to recover heavy oils. It is less costly than using surfactant, and has none of the design challenges associated with surfactant. It shows the benefit of nearly 100% displacement sweep efficiency in core floods when properly implemented, as heavy oils tend to produce significant IFT reducing soaps. The use of polymer for mobility control ensures good sweep efficiency is also achieved. Since heavy oils can be extremely viscous at reservoir temperature, moderate reservoir heating to reduce oil viscosity is beneficial. In a series of core flood experiments, moderately elevated temperatures (25-75°C) were used in evaluating ACP flooding in heavy oils. The experiments used only small amounts of inexpensive co-solvents while recovering >90% of remaining heavy oil in a core, without need for any surfactant. The most successful experiments showed that a small increase in temperature (25°) can have very positive impacts on core flood performance. These results are very encouraging for heavy oil recovery with chemical EOR.Petroleum and Geosystems Engineerin

Text and Graph Based Approach for Analyzing Patterns of Research Collaboration: An analysis of the TrueImpactDataset

Patterns of scientific collaboration and their effect on scientific production have been the subject of many studies. In this paper, we analyze the nature of ties between co-authors and study collaboration patterns in science from the perspective of semantic similarity of authors who wrote a paper together and the strength of ties between these authors (i.e. how frequently have they previously collaborated together). These two views of scientific collaboration are used to analyze publications in the TrueImpactDataset (Herrmannova et al., 2017) (Herrmannova et al., 2017), a new dataset containing two types of publications – publications regarded as seminal and publications regarded as literature reviews by field experts. We show there are distinct differences between seminal publications and literature reviews in terms of author similarity and the strength of ties between their authors. In particular, we find that seminal publications tend to be written by authors who have previously worked on dissimilar problems (i.e. authors from different fields or even disciplines), and by authors who are not frequent collaborators. On the other hand, literature reviews in our dataset tend to be the result of an established collaboration within a discipline. This demonstrates that our method provides meaningful information about potential future impacts of a publication which does not require citation information

Research Collaboration Analysis Using Text and Graph Features

Patterns of scientific collaboration and their effect on scientific production have been the subject of many studies. In this paper we analyze the nature of ties between co-authors and study collaboration patterns in science from the perspective of semantic similarity of authors who wrote a paper together and the strength of ties between these authors (i.e. how much have they previously collaborated together). These two views of scientific collaboration are used to analyze publications in the TrueImpactDataset [11], a new dataset containing two types of publications - publications regarded as seminal and publications regarded as literature reviews by field experts. We show there are distinct differences between seminal publications and literature reviews in terms of author similarity and the strength of ties between their authors. In particular, we find that seminal publications tend to be written by authors who have previously worked on dissimilar problems (i.e. authors from different fields or even disciplines), and by authors who are not frequent collaborators. On the other hand, literature reviews in our dataset tend to be the result of an established collaboration within a discipline. This demonstrates that our method provides meaningful information about potential future impacts of a publication which does not require citation information

Experimental demonstration and improvement of chemical EOR techniques in heavy oils

textHeavy oil resources are huge and are currently produced largely with steam-driven technology. The purpose of this research was to evaluate an alternative to steam flooding in heavy oils: chemical EOR. Acidic components abundant in heavy crude oils can be converted to soaps at high pH with alkali, reducing the interfacial tension (IFT) between oil and water to ultra-low levels. In an attempt to harness this property, engineers developed alkaline and alkaline-polymer (AP) flooding EOR processes, which met limited success. The primary problem with AP flooding was the soap is usually too hydrophobic, its optimum salinity is low and the ultra-low IFT salinity range narrow (Nelson 1983). Adding a hydrophilic co-surfactant to the process solved the problem, and is known as ASP flooding. AP floods also form persistent, unpredictable and often highly viscous emulsions, which result in high pressure drops and low injection rates. Addition of co-solvents such as a light alcohol (typically 1 wt %) improves the performance of AP floods; researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have coined the term ACP (Alkaline Co-solvent Polymer) for this new process. ACP has significant advantages relative to other chemical flooding modes to recover heavy oils. It is less costly than using surfactant, and has none of the design challenges associated with surfactant. It shows the benefit of nearly 100% displacement sweep efficiency in core floods when properly implemented, as heavy oils tend to produce significant IFT reducing soaps. The use of polymer for mobility control ensures good sweep efficiency is also achieved. Since heavy oils can be extremely viscous at reservoir temperature, moderate reservoir heating to reduce oil viscosity is beneficial. In a series of core flood experiments, moderately elevated temperatures (25-75°C) were used in evaluating ACP flooding in heavy oils. The experiments used only small amounts of inexpensive co-solvents while recovering >90% of remaining heavy oil in a core, without need for any surfactant. The most successful experiments showed that a small increase in temperature (25°) can have very positive impacts on core flood performance. These results are very encouraging for heavy oil recovery with chemical EOR.Petroleum and Geosystems Engineerin

Student Perceptions of Campus Safety Within the Virginia Community College System

This research examined Virginia community college students\u27 perceptions of campus safety. A survey of 11,161 students revealed the crimes students most feared being a victim of while on the community college campus and the areas in which they felt the most and least safe. The research also demonstrated the effect certain variables had on students\u27 overall perception of campus safety. The variables studied included student demographics, the presence and type of security personnel, and the rurality of the campus setting. The campuses with the highest and lowest degrees of perceived safety were then further studied via case studies to gather detailed information, which may assist college administrators and policymakers in improving campus safety on community college campuses