Framing Conservation, Colonialism and Care: Captive Endangered Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus) in Nepal

Captive elephants face numerous challenges as they navigate life in Nepalese elephant stables, or hattisars. Used as human conveyance, government anti-poaching patrol team members and rescue vehicles, these elephants work with and for humans. Numerous NGOS and INGOs are active in the lives of these animals. The United Elephant Owners’ Cooperative (UEOC) oversees the day-to-day operations of tourist safaris, while the National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC) offers VIPs elephant rides and transport for researchers needing to access Chitwan National Park. In addition, numerous elephant advocacy organizations have arisen with the goal of changing the riding culture and improving the lives of captive elephants. This thesis seeks to examine the motivations of these NGOs and INGOs, along with their ethical approaches to elephant health and welfare, asking are the motivations of these organizations similar enough to work together towards a common goal? Or are their ethical norms so different that get in each other’s way? Using an ordinary language and ordinary ethics theoretical framework, this thesis attempts to identify norms consistent across cultures and organisations and reframe them in ways which allow those organisations to create more successful outcomes. This study also includes an assessment of the elephant stables in the Sauraha area of Nepal. These stables, and their multi-species occupants, serve as cynosures for an examination of the health and welfare of captive elephants and mahouts. By connecting these stables, their occupants and NGOS/INGOS interested in elephant care, this study can offer suggestions to improve the health and welfare of tourism elephants

USING A RAPID PROTOTYPING MACHINE IN THE INTEGRATED KINEMATICS, DYNAMICS, AND MACHINE DESIGN LAB

According to a recent trend, two different labs - the Machine Design lab, and Kinematics, and Dynamics lab are combined into one integrated lab. The time students spend on their projects is halved. To save the quality of undergraduate education, an ew methodology has to be developed. The paper explains the methodology developed by the author while teaching the integrated Kinematics, Dynamics, and Machine Design Lab (MECH 488) at the Mechanical Engineering Department of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The objective of the aforementioned lab is to teach the students, who have no design experience, how to select proper tools (firom kinematics, dynamics, and machine design), and how to apply these tools in designing reliable and machinable parts. In this lab, the students actually make the parts using a rapid prototyping machin

Cosmology with a decaying vacuum

Properties of unstable false vacuum states are analyzed from the point of view of the quantum theory of unstable states. Some of false vacuum states survive up to times when their survival probability has a non-exponential form. At times much latter than the transition time, when contributions to the survival probability of its exponential and non-exponential parts are comparable, the survival probability as a function of time t has an inverse power-like form. We show that at this time region the instantaneous energy of the false vacuum states tends to the energy of the true vacuum state as $1/t^{2}$ for $t \to \infty$.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, based on a talk given at Multiverse and Fundamental Cosmology (Multicosmofun'12), Szczecin, Poland, 10-14 September 2012. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1006.2417 by other author

Ambiguity in dynamic contracts

We study a continuous-time principal-agent model in which the principal is ambiguity averse about the agent's effort cost. The robust contract generates a seemingly excessive pay-performance sensitivity. The worst-case effort cost is high after good performance, but low after bad performance, which leads to overcompensation and undercompensation respectively and provides a new rationale for performance-sensitive debt. We also characterize the agent's incentives when the contract is misspecified, i.e., he is offered the robust contract, but his true effort cost differs from the worst case. Then, termination can induce shirking, the strength of incentives is hump-shaped, and agents close to firing prefer riskier projects, while those close to getting paid prefer safer ones. This feature resembles careers in organizations, most notably risk-shifting and the quiet life

Universe from vacuum in loop-string cosmology

In this paper we study the description of the Universe based on the low energy superstring theory modified by the Loop Quantum Gravity effects.This approach was proposed by De Risi et al. in the Phys. Rev. D {\bf 76} (2007) 103531. We show that in the contrast with the string motivated pre-Big Bang scenario, the cosmological realisation of the $t$-duality transformation is not necessary to avoid an initial singularity. In the model considered the universe starts its evolution in the vacuum phase at time $t\to - \infty$. In this phase the scale factor $a\to 0$, energy density $\rho \to 0$ and coupling of the interactions $g^2_s \to 0$. After this stage the universe evolves to the non-singular hot Big Bang phase $\rho \to \rho_{\text{max}} < \infty$. Then the standard classical universe emerges. During the whole evolution the scale factor increases monotonically. We solve this model analytically. We also propose and solve numerically the model with an additional dilaton potential in which the universe starts the evolution from the asymptotically free vacuum phase $g^2_s \to 0$ and then evolves non-singularly to the emerging dark energy dominated phase with the saturated coupling constant $g^2_s \to \text{const}$.Comment: JHEP3 LaTeX class, 19 pages, 9 figures, v2: added some comments and references, v3: new numerical result added, new figure

Cosmological Acceleration from Virtual Gravitons

Intrinsic properties of the space itself and quantum fluctuations of its geometry are sufficient to provide a mechanism for the acceleration of cosmological expansion (dark energy effect). Applying Bogoliubov-Born-Green-Kirkwood-Yvon hierarchy approach to self-consistent equations of one-loop quantum gravity, we found exact solutions that yield acceleration. The permanent creation and annihilation of virtual gravitons is not in exact balance because of the expansion of the Universe. The excess energy comes from the spontaneous process of graviton creation and is trapped by the background. It provides the macroscopic quantum effect of cosmic acceleration.Comment: 6 pages, REVTeX