2,055 research outputs found
Demographic change, children's families and child support policy in the United States
This paper describes recent demographic trends affecting families in the United States and considers how these trends may alter the definition of "family." The paper focuses on trends that affect minor children's family experience. Demographic changes have increased the percentage of children for whom family membership and household membership do not coincide. As a result, rights to children and adults' responsibilities for children are less clearly defined now than in the past. This greater ambiguity affects child well-being because children's access to resources, both time and attention as well as material goods, depends on their ties to adults. U.S. family policies, such as the recent child support reforms, work against demographic trends by emphasizing biological over social ties and reinforcing the importance of biological parents' responsibilities to children.
High-Temperature Alkali Vapor Cells with Anti-Relaxation Surface Coatings
Antirelaxation surface coatings allow long spin relaxation times in
alkali-metal cells without buffer gas, enabling faster diffusion of the alkali
atoms throughout the cell and giving larger signals due to narrower optical
linewidths. Effective coatings were previously unavailable for operation at
temperatures above 80 C. We demonstrate that octadecyltrichlorosilane (OTS) can
allow potassium or rubidium atoms to experience hundreds of collisions with the
cell surface before depolarizing, and that an OTS coating remains effective up
to about 170 C for both potassium and rubidium. We consider the experimental
concerns of operating without buffer gas and with minimal quenching gas at high
vapor density, studying the stricter need for effective quenching of excited
atoms and deriving the optical rotation signal shape for atoms with resolved
hyperfine structure in the spin-temperature regime. As an example of a
high-temperature application of antirelaxation coated alkali vapor cells, we
operate a spin-exchange relaxation-free atomic magnetometer with sensitivity of
6 fT/sqrt(Hz) and magnetic linewidth as narrow as 2 Hz.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures. The following article appeared in Journal of
Applied Physics and may be found at http://link.aip.org/link/?jap/106/11490
The Microsoft 2016 Conversational Speech Recognition System
We describe Microsoft's conversational speech recognition system, in which we
combine recent developments in neural-network-based acoustic and language
modeling to advance the state of the art on the Switchboard recognition task.
Inspired by machine learning ensemble techniques, the system uses a range of
convolutional and recurrent neural networks. I-vector modeling and lattice-free
MMI training provide significant gains for all acoustic model architectures.
Language model rescoring with multiple forward and backward running RNNLMs, and
word posterior-based system combination provide a 20% boost. The best single
system uses a ResNet architecture acoustic model with RNNLM rescoring, and
achieves a word error rate of 6.9% on the NIST 2000 Switchboard task. The
combined system has an error rate of 6.2%, representing an improvement over
previously reported results on this benchmark task
Acting together: ensemble as a democratic process in art and life
Traditionally drama in schools has been seen either as a learning medium with a wide range of curricular uses or as a subject in its own right. This paper argues that the importance of drama in schools is in the processes of social and artistic engagement and experiencing of drama rather than in its outcomes. The paper contrasts the pro-social emphasis in the ensemble model of drama with the pro-technical and limited range of learning in subject-based approaches which foreground technical knowledge of periods, plays, styles and genres. The ensemble-based approach is positioned in the context of professional theatre understandings of ensemble artistry and in the context of revolutionary shifts from the pro-technical to the pro-social in educational and cultural policy making in England. Using ideas drawn from McGrath and Castoriadis, the paper claims that the ensemble approach provides young people with a model of democratic living
Photodissociation of p-process nuclei studied by bremsstrahlung induced activation
A research program has been started to study experimentally the
near-threshold photodissociation of nuclides in the chain of cosmic heavy
element production with bremsstrahlung from the ELBE accelerator. An important
prerequisite for such studies is good knowledge of the bremsstrahlung
distribution which was determined by measuring the photodissociation of the
deuteron and by comparison with model calculations. First data were obtained
for the astrophysically important target nucleus 92-Mo by observing the
radioactive decay of the nuclides produced by bremsstrahlung irradiation at
end-point energies between 11.8 MeV and 14.0 MeV. The results are compared to
recent statistical model calculations.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures, Proceedings Nuclear Physics in Astrophysics II,
May 16-20, 2005, Debrecen, Hungary. The original publication is available at
www.eurphysj.or
Investigation of Anti-Relaxation Coatings for Alkali-Metal Vapor Cells Using Surface Science Techniques
Many technologies based on cells containing alkali-metal atomic vapor benefit
from the use of anti-relaxation surface coatings in order to preserve atomic
spin polarization. In particular, paraffin has been used for this purpose for
several decades and has been demonstrated to allow an atom to experience up to
10,000 collisions with the walls of its container without depolarizing, but the
details of its operation remain poorly understood. We apply modern surface and
bulk techniques to the study of paraffin coatings, in order to characterize the
properties that enable the effective preservation of alkali spin polarization.
These methods include Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, differential
scanning calorimetry, atomic force microscopy, near-edge X-ray absorption fine
structure spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. We also compare
the light-induced atomic desorption yields of several different paraffin
materials. Experimental results include the determination that crystallinity of
the coating material is unnecessary, and the detection of C=C double bonds
present within a particular class of effective paraffin coatings. Further study
should lead to the development of more robust paraffin anti-relaxation
coatings, as well as the design and synthesis of new classes of coating
materials.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figures. Copyright 2010 American Institute of Physics.
This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires
prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The
following article appeared in the Journal of Chemical Physics and may be
found at http://link.aip.org/link/?JCP/133/14470
Continuous Commissioning® Leading Energy Project Process - An Industry Approach
Continuous Commissioning (CC®) is an ongoing process to resolve operating problems, improve comfort, optimize energy use, and identify retrofits for existing commercial and institutional buildings and central plant facilities. This process was initiated in 1992 and formally documented in 1999 by the Energy Research Journal and in 2002 by the Continuous Commissioning Guidebook for Federal Energy Managers. The CC process has been very successful for many public facilities. A significant amount of energy savings has been achieved and documented.
Recently, the authors developed the Continuous Commissioning Leading Energy Project process and demonstrated this process in over a dozen projects. This process is named the Continuous Commissioning Leading Energy Project process (CCLEP). Qualified engineering firms can apply the CCLEP process to the private and public sectors, new and existing buildings, and to retrofit and commissioning projects.
This paper presents the CCLEP process and the results from seven completed projects
Fertility, Living Arrangements, Care and Mobility
There are four main interconnecting themes around which the contributions in this book are based. This introductory chapter aims to establish the broad context for the chapters that follow by discussing each of the themes. It does so by setting these themes within the overarching demographic challenge of the twenty-first century – demographic ageing. Each chapter is introduced in the context of the specific theme to which it primarily relates and there is a summary of the data sets used by the contributors to illustrate the wide range of cross-sectional and longitudinal data analysed
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