Property Value Assessment Growth Limits, Tax Base Erosion and Regional In-Migration

In 1994 a limit on the growth of property values for tax purposes was imposed in Michigan. One consequence of the newly imposed assessment growth cap was an emerging differential in tax prices between potential new property owners and long-time property owners. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of this growing tax price differential on migration patterns. Using county level data on migration activity over the 1994-2006 period, we present evidence that differential tax prices resulting from the assessment growth cap have reduced in-migration.regional migration, tax base erosion, property tax, Michigan

A normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) time-series of idle agriculture lands: A preliminary study

In this paper, the NDVI time-series collected from the study area between year 2003 and 2005 of all land cover types are plotted and compared. The study area is the agricultural zones in Banphai District, Khonkean, Thailand. The LANDSAT satellite images of different dates were first transformed into a time series of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) images before the investigation. It can be visually observed that the NDVI time series of the Idle Agriculture Land (IAL) has the NDVI values closed to zero. In other words, the trend of the NDVI values remains, approximately, unchanged about the zero level for the whole period of the study time. In contrast, the non-idle areas hold a higher level of the NDVI variation. The NDVI values above 0.5 can be found in these non-idle areas during the growing seasons. Thus, it can be hypothesized that the NDVI time-series of the different land cover types can be used for IAL classification. This outcome is a prerequisite to the follow-up study of the NDVI pattern classification that will be done in the near future

Turbulence and wind speed profiles for simulating the TMT AO performances

The site testing campaign of the Thirty Meter Telescope gathered an extensive amount of turbulence profiles. This data is modeled to describe the statistical characteristics of each site and act as "standard atmospheres" for use in AO simulations

Discovery of 15-second oscillations in Hubble Space Telescope observations of WZ Sagittae following the 2001 outburst

We report the discovery of 15-s oscillations in ultraviolet observations of WZ Sge obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope approximately one month after the peak of the 2001 outburst. This is the earliest detection of oscillations in WZ Sge following an outburst and the first time that a signal near 15 s has been seen to be dominant. The oscillations are quite strong (amplitude about 5%), but not particularly coherent. In one instance, the oscillation period changed by 0.7 s between successive observations separated by less than 1 hour. We have also found evidence for weaker signals with periods near 6.5 s in some of our data. We discuss the implications of our results for the models that have been proposed to account for the 28-s oscillations seen in quiescence. If the periods of the 15-s oscillations can be identified with the periods of revolution of material rotating about the white dwarf, the mass of the white dwarf must satisfy M_WD > 0.71 M_sun. The corresponding limit for the 6.5-s signals is M_WD > 1.03 M_sun.Comment: accepted for publication in ApJ Letters; 13 pages, 4 postscript figures; new version corrects a few typos and matches version that will appear in ApJ

High spectral resolution time-resolved optical spectroscopy of V893 Sco

We present high resolution time-resolved optical spectra of the high inclination short orbital period dwarf nova V893 Sco. We performed spectral analysis through radial velocity measurements, Doppler mapping, and ratioed Doppler maps. Our results indicate that V893 Sco's accretion disk is dissimilar to WZ Sge's accretion disk, and does not fit any of the current accretion disk models. We derive the system parameters M1 and i, and present evidence for V893 Sco as a very young cataclysmic variable and an ER UMa star. We advance the hypothesis that all ER UMa stars may be newly formed cataclysmic variables.Comment: 23 pages (total), 8 figures, accepted by Ap

Noise Source Analysis for Simulated Turbulent Jets

Large Eddy Simulation (LES) is an efficient computational approach to study turbulent flows and has seen increasing application to the study of jet noise. The main challenge of LES has been the realistic simulation of experiments at reasonable cost. Recent LES studies have been realistic enough to gain important insight into jet noise from the large amount of data generated. This study attempts to characterize the sources of noise from a turbulent jet via analysis of the LES results. Three different analysis tools are implemented. The first two are comparable to analyses used on experimental data: two-point cross-correlations between far-field pressure signals, and correlations of near-field density fluctuations with far-field pressure. The third analyzes a 2-D plane of flow field data over time and masks selected frequency components to highlight which flow features correspond to certain frequency ranges. Noise produced by the simulated jet shows similar directional behavior as has been found in experiments. Sound waves are shown to be more coherent at low angles to the downstream jet axis and more random at high angles. Separating the pressure fluctuations by frequency masking shows how noise at different frequencies corresponds to near-field flow structures and possibly shed light on the sources of noise. All three analyses support a model that posits two jet noise sources that behave in distinct ways

The Impact of Changes in Religion on Health Among Sexual Minority Mormons

The current study presents data from the first longitudinal examination of sexual minority (SM) Mormons (n = 132). Over the course of 2 years, SM Mormons reported decreased psychological (e.g., orthodox beliefs), behavioral (e.g., service attendance), and social (interpersonal religious commitment) religiousness. Analyses revealed that, at baseline, service attendance was related to lower levels of meaning in life and higher levels of depression at time 2, while interpersonal religious commitment at baseline was related to higher levels of meaning in life and lower levels of depression. Latent change scores of religiousness suggested that decreases in interpersonal religious commitment over the 2 years predicted higher levels of depression and lower levels meaning in life at time 2. We suggest that these results highlight the inherent difficulty in holding both a Mormon and SM identity, with trends implying that SM Mormons tend to disengage from their religious identity