The costs of uncoordinated infrastructure management in multi-reservoir river basins

Though there are surprisingly few estimates of the economic benefits of coordinated infrastructure development and operations in international river basins, there is a widespread belief that improved cooperation is beneficial for managing water scarcity and variability. Hydro-economic optimization models are commonly-used for identifying efficient allocation of water across time and space, but such models typically assume full coordination. In the real world, investment and operational decisions for specific projects are often made without full consideration of potential downstream impacts. This paper describes a tractable methodology for evaluating the economic benefits of infrastructure coordination. We demonstrate its application over a range of water availability scenarios in a catchment of the Mekong located in Lao PDR, the Nam Ngum River Basin. Results from this basin suggest that coordination improves system net benefits from irrigation and hydropower by approximately 3–12% (or US$12-53 million/yr) assuming moderate levels of flood control, and that the magnitude of coordination benefits generally increases with the level of water availability and with inflow variability. Similar analyses would be useful for developing a systematic understanding of the factors that increase the costs of non-cooperation in river basin systems worldwide, and would likely help to improve targeting of efforts to stimulate complicated negotiations over water resources

Radial and orbital excitations of static-light mesons

We present results for the spectrum of static-light mesons from Nf=2 lattice QCD. These results were obtained using all-to-all light quark propagators on an anisotropic lattice, yielding an improved signal resolution when compared to more conventional lattice techniques. With a light quark mass close to the strange quark, we have measured the splittings between the ground-state S-wave static-light meson and higher excitations. We attempt to identify the quantum numbers of the excited states in the context of the reduced spatial symmetries of the lattice.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figure

Development of a Low-Cost Robotics Platform that Facilitates the Enhancement of Microcomputer Structures and Interfacing Learning Objectives

Robotics has become a common educational tool to teach basic concepts in mathematics, science, engineering, technology, world affairs, and much more. Programs such as For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) robotics are demonstrating that the recipe for student inspiration and learning involves robotics, problem solving, teamwork, and friendly competition. The successes of FIRST robotics programs and results from universities that have integrated robotics platforms into their curriculum provide evidence that infusing robotics platforms and curriculum into engineering departments better their capabilities and increase attractiveness to current and future students. This effort details the design and development of a low-cost robotics platform and seamless set of supporting curriculum. The platform and seamless curriculum set is implemented in the West Virginia University\u27s Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering (LCSEE) microcomputer structures and interfacing laboratory, an undergraduate computer engineering course. The results provide detailed information on the robotics platform as well as detailed information on the seamless set of modules that make up the curriculum. The results demonstrate that a subset of students become significantly more motivated and are more willing to work additional hours to improve upon their design as compared to traditional laboratory sessions. These results are significant and demonstrate that robotics and seamless curriculum sets provide a solid platform to introduce computer engineering concepts that inspire and motivate students

Downtrodden yet Determined: Exploring the History of Black Males in Professional Basketball and How the Players Association Addresses Their Welfare

Professional athletes are paid for their labor and it is often believed they have a weaker argument of exploitation. However, labor disputes in professional sports suggest athletes do not always receive fair compensation for their contributions to league and team success. Any professional athlete, regardless of their race, may claim to endure unjust wages relative to their fellow athlete peers, yet Black professional athletes’ history of exploitation inspires greater concerns. The purpose of this study was twofold: 1) to explore and trace the historical development of basketball in the United States (US) and the critical role Black males played in its growth and commercial development, and 2) to illuminate the perspectives and experiences of Black male professional basketball players concerning the role the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) and National Basketball Retired Players Association (NBRPA), collectively considered as the Players Association for this study, played in their welfare and addressing issues of exploitation. While drawing from the conceptual framework of anti-colonial thought, an exploratory case study was employed in which in-depth interviews were conducted with a list of Black male professional basketball players who are members of the Players Association. The general findings of this study revealed six major themes. From the perspectives of the participants, it was implied that there was a 1) history of lived experiences of racism, 2) Black players are insulated from racism but not disbarred from it, 3) superstars have the most social impact potential, 4) progress is accomplished through strategic responsiveness to interest convergence (SRIC), 5) the NBPA is serviceable but limited, and 6) Black male professional basketball players are leaders of self-determination for Black communities. Implications for theory, policy, practice, and future research are discussed

The influence of the Sexual Harassment and Assault Response and Prevention Program on norms and society in the United States Army

How effective has SHARP been in preventing Sexual Assault and Harassment in the US Army? The U.S. Army has used the Sexual Harassment and Assault Response and Prevention program (SHARP) since 2008 as a way to address the prevalence of sexual assault and harassment among its ranks. However, current research by the Department of Defense show that the rate of both assault and harassment has not significantly declined over the years. Existing literature also discussed that there are a number of cultural norms within the Army and military as a whole that continue to perpetuate an environment where concepts of male masculinity and gender inequality exist. The research for this study involved conducting a survey of soldiers to get a better sense of how they thought the program influenced the Army as a whole and themselves as an individual. While the SHARP program is effective in educating soldiers that the problems of sexual violence exist, the key finding is that it does not target the societal and gendered norms that have existed in the Army that perpetuate a culture which is conducive to harassment and assault. By failing to do so, SHARP has had little effect in reducing the number of incidents. However, progress, such as increased reporting and increased awareness, highlight that SHARP is not inherently broken. Instead, it must evolve in its educational focus to have greater results in the reduction of sexual assault and harassment incidents in the future

Simulation of the ATLAS ITk strip endcap modules for testbeam reconstruction and analysis

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is planned to be upgraded to the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), increasing the rate of collisions and producing more particles passing through the detectors. This increased production rate will require upgrades to the detectors in order to cope with the large increase in data collection and radiation as well as improving the tracking and particle reconstruction in the higher occupancy environment. A major upgrade to ATLAS, one of the LHC detectors, will be replacing the current Inner Detector (ID) with a fully silicon semi-conductor based Inner Tracker (ITk). The research and development phase of the ITk requires a simulation of the sensors for performance simulations and testing the sensors in testbeams. The ITk strip end-cap sensors will use radial geometries, however the current testbeam telescope simulation software (AllPix) and reconstruction software (EUTelescope) are designed with cartesian geometries. Presented is the work behind implementing a radial geometry for one of the ITk strip endcap sensors, the R0 module, in the simulation software of Allpix and the reconstruction software of EUTelescope. Included in this work is the simulation of the propagation of the charge deposited in the sensor by the beam. The simulated data, as well as data from the actual EUDET testbeam telescope at DESY, Hamburg are both reconstructed with the same reconstruction software and analysed using the same post-reconstruction software. A comparison of the simulation to experiment is then performed, in particular to study the residuals, efficiency and charge sharing of the R0 module