The sustainable delivery of sexual violence prevention education in schools

Sexual violence is a crime that cannot be ignored: it causes our communities significant consequences including heavy economic costs, and evidence of its effects can be seen in our criminal justice system, public health system, Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC), and education system, particularly in our schools. Many agencies throughout New Zealand work to end sexual violence. Auckland-based Rape Prevention Education: Whakatu Mauri (RPE) is one such agency, and is committed to preventing sexual violence by providing a range of programmes and initiatives, information, education, and advocacy to a broad range of audiences. Up until early 2014 RPE employed one or two full-time positions dedicated to co-ordinating and training a large pool (up to 15) of educators on casual contracts to deliver their main school-based programmes, BodySafe – approximately 450 modules per year, delivered to some 20 high schools. Each year several of the contract educators, many of whom were tertiary students, found secure full time employment elsewhere. To retain sufficient contract educators to deliver its BodySafe contract meant that RPE had to recruit, induct and train new educators two to three times every year. This model was expensive, resource intense, and ultimately untenable. The Executive Director and core staff at RPE wanted to develop a more efficient and stable model of delivery that fitted its scarce resources. To enable RPE to know what the most efficient model was nationally and internationally, with Ministry of Justice funding, RPE commissioned Massey University to undertake this report reviewing national and international research on sexual violence prevention education (SVPE). [Background from Executive Summary.]Rape Prevention Education: Whakatu Maur

Hydrology and Sedimentology of Dynamic Rill Networks Volume II: Hydrologic Model for Dynamic Rill Networks

A comprehensive model has been developed for use in modeling the hydrologic response of rill network systems. The model, which is called HYMODRIN, is composed of both a hydrologic runoff component and a hydraulic channel routing component. The hydrologic component of the model uses a Green Ampt infiltration approach linked with a nonlinear reservoir runoff model. The channel routing component of the model is baaed on a finite element solution of the diffusion wave equations. In order to account for backwater effects the model employs a dual level iteration scheme. The model may be used in either a stand alone mode or as part of a comprehensive integrated rill erosion model. In the latter case, the hydrologic data for the rill network and the associated interrill flow areas is provided by a geographic-hydrologic interface model called GHIM. This model accepts data from a digital elevation model and translates it into a form compatible with the hydrologic model. This report contains the theoretical development and operating instructions for both GHIM and HYMODRIN. Computer listings for both programs are provided

The Interplanetary Network Supplement to the BeppoSAX Gamma-Ray Burst Catalogs

Between 1996 July and 2002 April, one or more spacecraft of the interplanetary network detected 787 cosmic gamma-ray bursts that were also detected by the Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor and/or Wide-Field X-Ray Camera experiments aboard the BeppoSAX spacecraft. During this period, the network consisted of up to six spacecraft, and using triangulation, the localizations of 475 bursts were obtained. We present the localization data for these events.Comment: 89 pages, 3 figures. Submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Serie

Analysis of the rotation period of asteroids (1865) Cerberus, (2100) Ra-Shalom, and (3103) Eger - search for the YORP effect

The spin state of small asteroids can change on a long timescale by the Yarkovsky-O'Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack (YORP) effect, the net torque that arises from anisotropically scattered sunlight and proper thermal radiation from an irregularly-shaped asteroid. The secular change in the rotation period caused by the YORP effect can be detected by analysis of asteroid photometric lightcurves. We analyzed photometric lightcurves of near-Earth asteroids (1865) Cerberus, (2100) Ra-Shalom, and (3103) Eger with the aim to detect possible deviations from the constant rotation caused by the YORP effect. We carried out new photometric observations of the three asteroids, combined the new lightcurves with archived data, and used the lightcurve inversion method to model the asteroid shape, pole direction, and rotation rate. The YORP effect was modeled as a linear change in the rotation rate in time d\omega /dt. Values of d\omega/ dt derived from observations were compared with the values predicted by theory. We derived physical models for all three asteroids. We had to model Eger as a nonconvex body because the convex model failed to fit the lightcurves observed at high phase angles. We probably detected the acceleration of the rotation rate of Eger d\omega / dt = (1.4 +/- 0.6) x 10^{-8} rad/d (3\sigma error), which corresponds to a decrease in the rotation period by 4.2 ms/yr. The photometry of Cerberus and Ra-Shalom was consistent with a constant-period model, and no secular change in the spin rate was detected. We could only constrain maximum values of |d\omega / dt| < 8 x 10^{-9} rad/d for Cerberus, and |d\omega / dt| < 3 x 10^{-8} rad/d for Ra-Shalom

APASS Landolt-Sloan BVgri photometry of RAVE stars. I. Data, effective temperatures and reddenings

We provide APASS photometry in the Landolt BV and Sloan g'r'i' bands for all the 425,743 stars included in the latest 4th RAVE Data Release. The internal accuracy of the APASS photometry of RAVE stars, expressed as error of the mean of data obtained and separately calibrated over a median of 4 distinct observing epochs and distributed between 2009 and 2013, is 0.013, 0.012, 0.012, 0.014 and 0.021 mag for B, V, g', r' and i' band, respectively. The equally high external accuracy of APASS photometry has been verified on secondary Landolt and Sloan photometric standard stars not involved in the APASS calibration process, and on a large body of literature data on field and cluster stars, confirming the absence of offsets and trends. Compared with the Carlsberg Meridian Catalog (CMC-15), APASS astrometry of RAVE stars is accurate to a median value of 0.098 arcsec. Brightness distribution functions for the RAVE stars have been derived in all bands. APASS photometry of RAVE stars, augmented by 2MASS JHK infrared data, has been chi2 fitted to a densely populated synthetic photometric library designed to widely explore in temperature, surface gravity, metallicity and reddening. Resulting Teff and E(B-V), computed over a range of options, are provided and discussed, and will be kept updated in response to future APASS and RAVE data releases. In the process it is found that the reddening caused by an homogeneous slab of dust, extending for 140 pc on either side of the Galactic plane and responsible for E(B-V,poles)=0.036 +/- 0.002 at the galactic poles, is a suitable approximation of the actual reddening encountered at Galactic latitudes |b|>=25 deg.Comment: Astronomical Journal, in press. Resolution of Figures degrated to match arXiv file size limit

Variability in black hole accretion discs

Observations of accreting systems often show significant variability (10-20 percent of accretion luminosity) on timescales much longer than expected for the disc regions releasing most of the luminosity. We propose an explicit physical model for disc variability, consistent with Lyubarskii's (1997) general scheme for solving this problem. We suggest that local dynamo processes can affect the evolution of an accretion disc by driving angular momentum loss in the form of an outflow (a wind or jet). We model the dynamo as a small-scale stochastic phenomenon, operating on roughly the local dynamical timescale. We argue that large-scale outflow can only occur when the small-scale random processes in neighbouring disc annuli give rise by chance to a coherent large-scale magnetic field. This occurs on much longer timescales, and causes a bright large-amplitude flare as a wide range of disc radii evolve in a coherent fashion. Most of the time, dynamo action instead produces small-amplitude flickering. We reproduce power spectra similar to those observed, including a 1/f power spectrum below a break frequency given by the magnetic alignment timescale at the inner disc edge. However the relation between the black hole mass and the value of the break frequency is less straightforward than often assumed in the literature. The effect of an outer disc edge is to flatten the spectrum below the magnetic alignment frequency there. We also find a correlation between the variability amplitude and luminosity, similar to that found in some AGN.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures; MNRAS accepte