Poverty in a North American Context

From the Introduction Understanding the impact of poverty can be aided by careful measurement. Statisticians and economists, both within the government and in the private sector, collect and analyze such statistics. Disagreement about the interpretation of those figures can make it difficult for most people to know how they should respond to specific cases of poverty they encounter. For a meaningful discussion to take place, the existing understanding should be presented. This report summarizes the existing research on poverty and provides the interested reader with resources to continue learning about the topic. This report does not offer policy advice or direction to organizations seeking to engage with the problems surrounding poverty. The experience of poverty is contingent on a variety of factors that describe a person’s quality of life. Relevant factors of an individual’s likelihood to experience poverty include: education, family composition, race, type of community (rural or urban), region of the country, and medical history

EEG Microstates in Neurofeedback Attention Training

Attention has come under acute focus within the neuropsychological world in past decades, and the rise of brain-computer interfaces (BCI) during EEG offers a means to personalize attention training therapies. Semi-stable EEG topographies, called “microstates,” have been found to be functionally relevant to attention-oriented tasks and shown to influence awareness in the time period directly before a stimulus. In a BCI designed to train attention, we may expect to see a group difference in microstates. Specifically, it could be that microstate D—functionally relevant to attention and task-switching—increases while microstate C—functionally relevant to task-negative and saliency networks—decreases within the group that successfully learns via neurofeedback. The reversed pattern may be true in groups that either fails to learn through neurofeedback or received sham neurofeedback. We may also expect microstates D and C to relate to a behavioral outcome measure that indexes training performance. Accordingly, we used EEGLAB to process BCI attention-training data, derive microstate topographies for individual participants, cluster grand mean topographies for the entire study group, and extract temporal statistics to measure microstate temporal presence during pre-stimulus training. Overall, microstate D had greater temporal presence in those who successfully self-regulated neural cognition during the BCI task compared to those who could not achieve this; microstate C had greater temporal presence in those who could not self-regulate neural cognition during the BCI task compared to those who did so successfully. This analysis highlights differences in BCI performance but failed to find meaningful changes over training

Direct grating writing: single-step Bragg grating and waveguide fabrication for telecommunications and sensing applications

Direct Grating Writing (DGW) has been developed over the past decade as a means of rapidly prototyping waveguides with integrated Bragg grating structures in silica-on-silicon substrates [1]. The technique allows complicated waveguide structures and Bragg grating arrays to be fabricated and characterised in house

Bonding Performance of the Ten Species in the Spruce-Pine-Fir (South) Lumber Grouping for Cross-laminated Timber

Cross-laminated timber (CLT) is an engineered wood product made of three or more orthogonally bonded layers of lumber that are glued together with structural adhesives to form a panel intended for roofs, floors, or walls. Currently, there are no CLT manufacturers in the Northeastern U.S. despite the region having vast forestlands of commercial softwood timber. Sitting atop one of the planet’s largest population centers, Maine is the region’s primary wood basket, the most heavily forested state in the nation (as a percentage of land area) containing over 27 billion cubic feet of wood, i.e., live trees, on its forest land (USDA Forest Service, 2002). For CLT manufacturing in the Northeast, spruce-pine-fir-south (SPF-S) is the target grouping, with five major sawmills in the region producing 500 MMBF of dimensional lumber each year

Observations of rotationally resolved C3 in translucent sight lines

The rotationally resolved spectrum of the A ^1Pi_u <- X ^1Sigma^+_g 000-000 transition of C3, centered at 4051.6A, has been observed along 10 translucent lines of sight. To interpret these spectra, a new method for the determination of column densities and analysis of excitation profiles involving the simulation and fitting of observed spectra has been developed. The populations of lower rotational levels (J<14) in C3 are best fit by thermal distributions that are consistent with the kinetic temperatures determined from the excitation profile of C2. Just as in the case of C2, higher rotational levels (J>14) of C3 show increased nonthermal population distributions in clouds which have been determined to have total gas densities below ~500 cm-3.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa

Unusually Weak Diffuse Interstellar Bands toward HD 62542

As part of an extensive survey of diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs), we have obtained optical spectra of the moderately reddened B5V star HD 62542, which is known to have an unusual UV extinction curve of the type usually identified with dark clouds. The typically strongest of the commonly catalogued DIBs covered by the spectra -- those at 5780, 5797, 6270, 6284, and 6614 A -- are essentially absent in this line of sight, in marked contrast with other lines of sight of similar reddening. We compare the HD 62542 line of sight with others exhibiting a range of extinction properties and molecular abundances and interpret the weakness of the DIBs as an extreme case of deficient DIB formation in a dense cloud whose more diffuse outer layers have been stripped away. We comment on the challenges these observations pose for identifying the carriers of the diffuse bands.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures; aastex; accepted by Ap

A FEROS spectroscopic study of the extreme O supergiant He 3-759

We present a study of the extreme O-type supergiant He 3-759 using new high-resolution FEROS data, revealing that it is a near spectroscopic twin of HD 151804 (O8 Iaf). We investigate the extinction towards He 3-759 using a variety of methods, revealing A_V ~ 4.7 mag. If we assume He 3-759 has an identical absolute K-band magnitude to HD 151804 we find that it lies in the Sagittarius-Carina spiral arm at a distance of ~6.5 kpc. We derive the physical and wind properties for He 3-759, revealing T* = 30.5 kK, log L/L(sun) = 5.9 and dM/dt = 10^-5.17 M(sun)/yr for a clumped wind whose terminal velocity is estimated at 1000 km/s. The atmosphere of He 3-759 is enriched in helium (X_He = 49%) and nitrogen (X_N = 0.3%). A reanalysis of HD 151804 and HD 152408 (WN9ha) reveals similar parameters except that the WN9ha star possesses a stronger wind and reduced surface hydrogen content. HD 151804 and HD 152408 lie within the Sco OB1 association, with initial masses of ~60 M(sun) and ages ~2.7 Myr, consistent with NGC 6231 cluster members using standard Geneva isochrones. Improved agreement with observed surface abundances are obtained for similar initial masses with more recent Geneva group predictions from which higher ages of ~3.75 Myr are obtained. No young, massive star cluster is known to be associated with He 3-759.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted for A&

Studies of Diffuse Interstellar Bands. V. Pairwise Correlations of Eight Strong DIBs and Neutral Hydrogen, Molecular Hydrogen, and Color Excess

We establish correlations between equivalent widths of eight diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs), and examine their correlations with atomic hydrogen, molecular hydrogen, and EB-V . The DIBs are centered at \lambda\lambda 5780.5, 6204.5, 6283.8, 6196.0, 6613.6, 5705.1, 5797.1, and 5487.7, in decreasing order of Pearson\^as correlation coefficient with N(H) (here defined as the column density of neutral hydrogen), ranging from 0.96 to 0.82. We find the equivalent width of \lambda 5780.5 is better correlated with column densities of H than with E(B-V) or H2, confirming earlier results based on smaller datasets. We show the same is true for six of the seven other DIBs presented here. Despite this similarity, the eight strong DIBs chosen are not well enough correlated with each other to suggest they come from the same carrier. We further conclude that these eight DIBs are more likely to be associated with H than with H2, and hence are not preferentially located in the densest, most UV shielded parts of interstellar clouds. We suggest they arise from different molecules found in diffuse H regions with very little H (molecular fraction f<0.01). Of the 133 stars with available data in our study, there are three with significantly weaker \lambda 5780.5 than our mean H-5780.5 relationship, all of which are in regions of high radiation fields, as previously noted by Herbig. The correlations will be useful in deriving interstellar parameters when direct methods are not available. For instance, with care, the value of N(H) can be derived from W{\lambda}(5780.5).Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal; 37 pages, 11 figures, 6 table

Framing and the health policy process: a scoping review.

Framing research seeks to understand the forces that shape human behaviour in the policy process. It assumes that policy is a social construct and can be cast in a variety of ways to imply multiple legitimate value considerations. Frames provide the cognitive means of making sense of the social world, but discordance among them forms the basis of policy contestation. Framing, as both theory and method, has proven to generate considerable insight into the nature of policy debates in a variety of disciplines. Despite its salience for understanding health policy debates; however, little is known about the ways frames influence the health policy process. A scoping review using the Arksey and O'Malley framework was conducted. The literature on framing in the health sector was reviewed using nine health and social science databases. Articles were included that explicitly reported theory and methods used, data source(s), at least one frame, frame sponsor and evidence of a given frame's effect on the health policy process. A total of 52 articles, from 1996 to 2014, and representing 12 countries, were identified. Much of the research came from the policy studies/political science literature (n = 17) and used a constructivist epistemology. The term 'frame' was used as a label to describe a variety of ideas, packaged as values, social problems, metaphors or arguments. Frames were characterized at various levels of abstraction ranging from general ideological orientations to specific policy positions. Most articles presented multiple frames and showed how actors advocated for them in a highly contested political process. Framing is increasingly an important, yet overlooked aspect of the policy process. Further analysis on frames, framing processes and frame conflict can help researchers and policymakers to understand opaque and highly charged policy issues, which may facilitate the resolution of protracted policy controversies

An introduction to classical molecular dynamics simulation for experimental scattering users

Classical molecular dynamics simulations are a common component of multi-modal analyses from scattering measurements, such as small-angle scattering and diffraction. Users of these experimental techniques often have no formal training in the theory and practice of molecular dynamics simulation, leading to the possibility of these simulations being treated as a "black box" analysis technique. In this article, we describe an open educational resource (OER) designed to introduce classical molecular dynamics to users of scattering methods. This resource is available as a series of interactive web pages, which can be easily accessed by students, and as an open source software repository, which can be freely copied, modified, and redistributed by educators. The topic covered in this OER includes classical atomistic modelling, parameterising interatomic potentials, molecular dynamics simulations, typical sources of error, and some of the approaches to using simulations in the analysis of scattering data.Comment: Electronic Supplementary Information (ESI) available: All analysis/plotting scripts and figure files, allowing for a fully reproducible, and automated, analysis workflow for the work presented is available at \url{https://github.com/arm61/sim_and_scat_paper} (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.2556826) under a CC BY-SA 4.0 licens