The Momentum Distribution of Liquid 3^3He

We present high-resolution neutron Compton scattering measurements of liquid $^3$He below its renormalized Fermi temperature. Theoretical predictions are in excellent agreement with the experimental data when instrumental resolution and final state effects are accounted for. Our results resolve the long-standing inconsistency between theoretical and experimental estimates of the average atomic kinetic energy.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

2.5D Infrared Range and Bearing System for Collective Robotics

In the growing field of collective robotics, spatial co-ordination between robots is often critical and usually achieved via local relative positioning sensors. We believe that range and bearing sensing, based on infrared technology, has the potential to fulfil the strict requirements of real-world collective robots. These requirements include: small size, light weight, large range, high refresh rate, immunity against tilting and misalignment, immunity against ambient light changes, and good range and bearing accuracy. Currently, there are no range and bearing systems that have been designed to cope with such strict requirements. This paper presents a custom range and bearing system, based on a novel cascaded filtering technology, complemented by hybrid infrared/Radio Frequency (RF) communication, which has been designed specifically to meet all these expectations. The system has been characterised and tested, proving its viability

High Magnetic Shear Gain in a Liquid Sodium Stable Couette Flow Experiment; A Prelude to an alpha-Omega Dynamo

The $\Omega$-phase of the liquid sodium $\alpha$-$\Omega$ dynamo experiment at NMIMT in cooperation with LANL has successfully demonstrated the production of a high toroidal field, $B_{\phi} \simeq 8\times B_r$ from the radial component of an applied poloidal magnetic field, $B_r$. This enhanced toroidal field is produced by rotational shear in stable Couette flow within liquid sodium at $Rm \simeq 120$. The small turbulence in stable Taylor-Couette flow is caused by Ekman flow where $(\delta v/v)^2 \sim 10^{-3}$. This high $\Omega$-gain in low turbulence flow contrasts with a smaller $\Omega$-gain in higher turbulence, Helmholtz-unstable shear flows. This result supports the ansatz that large scale astrophysical magnetic fields are created within semi-coherent large scale motions in which turbulence plays only a smaller diffusive role that enables magnetic flux linkage.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, submitted PRL revised version: add one author, minor typo'

Toward a 21st-century health care system: Recommendations for health care reform

The coverage, cost, and quality problems of the U.S. health care system are evident. Sustainable health care reform must go beyond financing expanded access to care to substantially changing the organization and delivery of care. The FRESH-Thinking Project (www.fresh-thinking.org) held a series of workshops during which physicians, health policy experts, health insurance executives, business leaders, hospital administrators, economists, and others who represent diverse perspectives came together. This group agreed that the following 8 recommendations are fundamental to successful reform: 1. Replace the current fee-for-service payment system with a payment system that encourages and rewards innovation in the efficient delivery of quality care. The new payment system should invest in the development of outcome measures to guide payment. 2. Establish a securely funded, independent agency to sponsor and evaluate research on the comparative effectiveness of drugs, devices, and other medical interventions. 3. Simplify and rationalize federal and state laws and regulations to facilitate organizational innovation, support care coordination, and streamline financial and administrative functions. 4. Develop a health information technology infrastructure with national standards of interoperability to promote data exchange. 5. Create a national health database with the participation of all payers, delivery systems, and others who own health care data. Agree on methods to make de-identified information from this database on clinical interventions, patient outcomes, and costs available to researchers. 6. Identify revenue sources, including a cap on the tax exclusion of employer-based health insurance, to subsidize health care coverage with the goal of insuring all Americans. 7. Create state or regional insurance exchanges to pool risk, so that Americans without access to employer-based or other group insurance could obtain a standard benefits package through these exchanges. Employers should also be allowed to participate in these exchanges for their employees' coverage. 8. Create a health coverage board with broad stakeholder representation to determine and periodically update the affordable standard benefit package available through state or regional insurance exchanges

Participation as Post-Fordist Politics: Demos, New Labour, and Science Policy

In recent years, British science policy has seen a significant shift ‘from deficit to dialogue’ in conceptualizing the relationship between science and the public. Academics in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) have been influential as advocates of the new public engagement agenda. However, this participatory agenda has deeper roots in the political ideology of the Third Way. A framing of participation as a politics suited to post-Fordist conditions was put forward in the magazine Marxism Today in the late 1980s, developed in the Demos thinktank in the 1990s, and influenced policy of the New Labour government. The encouragement of public participation and deliberation in relation to science and technology has been part of a broader implementation of participatory mechanisms under New Labour. This participatory program has been explicitly oriented toward producing forms of social consciousness and activity seen as essential to a viable knowledge economy and consumer society. STS arguments for public engagement in science have gained influence insofar as they have intersected with the Third Way politics of post-Fordism

Modeling Host Genetic Regulation of Influenza Pathogenesis in the Collaborative Cross

Genetic variation contributes to host responses and outcomes following infection by influenza A virus or other viral infections. Yet narrow windows of disease symptoms and confounding environmental factors have made it difficult to identify polymorphic genes that contribute to differential disease outcomes in human populations. Therefore, to control for these confounding environmental variables in a system that models the levels of genetic diversity found in outbred populations such as humans, we used incipient lines of the highly genetically diverse Collaborative Cross (CC) recombinant inbred (RI) panel (the pre-CC population) to study how genetic variation impacts influenza associated disease across a genetically diverse population. A wide range of variation in influenza disease related phenotypes including virus replication, virus-induced inflammation, and weight loss was observed. Many of the disease associated phenotypes were correlated, with viral replication and virus-induced inflammation being predictors of virus-induced weight loss. Despite these correlations, pre-CC mice with unique and novel disease phenotype combinations were observed. We also identified sets of transcripts (modules) that were correlated with aspects of disease. In order to identify how host genetic polymorphisms contribute to the observed variation in disease, we conducted quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping. We identified several QTL contributing to specific aspects of the host response including virus-induced weight loss, titer, pulmonary edema, neutrophil recruitment to the airways, and transcriptional expression. Existing whole-genome sequence data was applied to identify high priority candidate genes within QTL regions. A key host response QTL was located at the site of the known anti-influenza Mx1 gene. We sequenced the coding regions of Mx1 in the eight CC founder strains, and identified a novel Mx1 allele that showed reduced ability to inhibit viral replication, while maintaining protection from weight loss

Multiwaveband polarimetric observations of 15 active galactic nuclei at high frequencies: correlated polarization behaviour

Peer reviewe

A New Zealand perspective on centennial-scale Southern Hemisphere westerly wind shifts during the last two millennia

The strength and latitudinal position of the Southern Hemisphere westerly winds control regional climate and influence the global carbon cycle by physically regulating Southern Ocean CO_2 exchange with the atmosphere. However, the mechanisms driving interannual to millennial variability of the westerlies remain poorly understood. Here, we present an 1800-yr record of westerly wind variability recorded in New Zealand fjord sediments. Located west of the Southern Alps, fjord basins receive large amounts of westerly-driven orographic precipitation (>6 m yr^(−1)) and strong winds lead to vigorous fjord mixing. Because of these links, reconstructing precipitation and fjord circulation provides information on westerly wind behavior over southwest New Zealand. Applying a multiproxy approach, we find several intervals of inferred regional wind variability. The intervals of 1450-1400, 825-775, 575-550, and 50-0 cal yr BP were anomalously wet, while 325-300 and 250-225 cal yr BP were anomalously dry. These interpreted intervals appear to be in phase with regional paleoclimate records. Two centennial-scale wet intervals align with a multi-centennial warm interval identified in the Pages2k Australasian temperature reconstruction, while the drier intervals generally occur during cooler times. The wet/dry intervals presented here are matched by opposite wind and/or precipitation trends reconstructed from the windfield core in Chile and the southern windfield margin in Antarctica. Such spatial patterns support the notion of centennial-scale latitudinal wind shifts or contraction/expansion of the core. Consistent with observations, all sites show wind strengthening from ∼50 cal yr BP to present, indicating an overall intensification of winds that is observed in modern instrumental and reanalysis data sets