Material dependence of Casimir forces: gradient expansion beyond proximity

A widely used method for estimating Casimir interactions [H. B. G. Casimir, Proc. K. Ned. Akad. Wet. 51, 793 (1948)] between gently curved material surfaces at short distances is the proximity force approximation (PFA). While this approximation is asymptotically exact at vanishing separations, quantifying corrections to PFA has been notoriously difficult. Here we use a derivative expansion to compute the leading curvature correction to PFA for metals (gold) and insulators (SiO$_2$) at room temperature. We derive an explicit expression for the amplitude $\hat\theta_1$ of the PFA correction to the force gradient for axially symmetric surfaces. In the non-retarded limit, the corrections to the Casimir free energy are found to scale logarithmically with distance. For gold, $\hat\theta_1$ has an unusually large temperature dependence.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Chapter Power Struggles in the Management of Wildlife Resources: The Case of Burunge Wildlife Management Area, Tanzania

Through a cross-sectional research design, this study examined power struggles in Burunge Wildlife Management Area (WMA) in Tanzania. Four out of ten villages comprising the WMA were purposively selected, and data were collected via focus group discussions, key informant interviews, questionnaires to household heads, and a literature review. Results showed that the central government, investors and non-government organisations held institutional and strategic powers, while the democratically elected Village Councils held structural powers and lost most of their pre-WMA institutional powers to a legally required new institution, the Authorised Association. Therefore, Village Councils lost influence on strategic, institutional and management decisions pertinent to the WMA and their constituencies’ livelihoods. Accordingly, Burunge WMA de-democratised wildlife management by eroding the relevance of Village Councils to their constituencies. The study also found power struggles over revenues, land management and access to resources among the stakeholders, mainly due to a divergence of interests. However, there was no conflict management mechanism in place. Hence, we recommend that the institutional powers to establish, govern and dissolve WMAs should go back to Village Councils. The purpose is to establish economic incentive structures that promote (i) wildlife conservation, (ii) an equitable distribution of associated costs and benefits between Village Councils forming WMAs and (iii) an equitable distribution of costs and benefits between WMAs and higher levels of government as well as international conservation NGOs

Power Struggles in the Management of Wildlife Resources: The Case of Burunge Wildlife Management Area, Tanzania

Through a cross-sectional research design, this study examined power struggles in Burunge Wildlife Management Area (WMA) in Tanzania. Four out of ten villages comprising the WMA were purposively selected, and data were collected via focus group discussions, key informant interviews, questionnaires to household heads, and a literature review. Results showed that the central government, investors and non-government organisations held institutional and strategic powers, while the democratically elected Village Councils held structural powers and lost most of their pre-WMA institutional powers to a legally required new institution, the Authorised Association. Therefore, Village Councils lost influence on strategic, institutional and management decisions pertinent to the WMA and their constituencies’ livelihoods. Accordingly, Burunge WMA de-democratised wildlife management by eroding the relevance of Village Councils to their constituencies. The study also found power struggles over revenues, land management and access to resources among the stakeholders, mainly due to a divergence of interests. However, there was no conflict management mechanism in place. Hence, we recommend that the institutional powers to establish, govern and dissolve WMAs should go back to Village Councils. The purpose is to establish economic incentive structures that promote (i) wildlife conservation, (ii) an equitable distribution of associated costs and benefits between Village Councils forming WMAs and (iii) an equitable distribution of costs and benefits between WMAs and higher levels of government as well as international conservation NGOs

Beherrschung stark korrelierter Logistik- und Produktions-Prozesse: Schlussbericht zu dem IGF-Vorhaben Beherrschung stark korrelierter Logistik- und Produktions-Prozesse (Autokorrelierte Auftragsstroeme)

Im Rahmen des Forschungsvorhabens wurde das Wirken von Autokorrelation auf das Verhalten von Materialflusssystemen anhand von Realdaten analysiert. Hintergrund waren theoretische Untersuchungen, die einen deutlichen Einfluss von abhängigen Ereignissen auf die Leistung von Materialflusssystemen erkennen lassen. Mit Hilfe der Projektpartner konnte eine große Menge von Echtdaten zusammengetragen werden. Insgesamt wurden 52 Datensätze auf zeitliche Abhängigkeiten der Ereignisse untersucht. Dabei bestätigte sich die Vermutung, dass Autokorrelation durch z. B. Batchbildung oder Prioritätsregeln allgegenwärtig in Erscheinung tritt. In ca. 95 % aller Datensätze konnte signifikant Autokorrelation nachgewiesen werden. Im Rahmen der Untersuchung konnten eine Reihe unterschiedlicher Korrelationsstrukturen nachgewiesen werden. Diese unterschieden sich sowohl in der Stärke, in der Ausprägung (positiv oder negativ) als auch im Abklingverhalten. Der größte Einfluss auf das Systemverhalten geht von der Stärke und der Ausprägung der Autokorrelationskoefizienten aus. Im Rahmen des Projektes konnten unterschiedliche Verfahren zur Erzeugung autokorrelierter Ereignisse identifiziert und bewertet werden. Beispielhaft zu erwähnen ist die TES-Methode, der Minification- bzw. Maxification-Ansatz oder spezielle Markov-Ketten. Als am besten geeignet hat sich der sog. ARTA-Ansatz herausgestellt. Der ARTA-Ansatz wurde in einer Java-basierenden Software-Bibliothek namens „JARTA“ umgesetzt. Diese ist frei verfügbar sowie variabel und einfach einsetzbar. Durch das Forschungsvorhaben wurde das Bewusstsein um das Auftreten und Wirken von Autokorrelation in logistischen Systemen geschärft. Projektpartner bestätigen, dass durch gezielte Untersuchung auf Abhängigkeiten Fehler bei der Systementwicklung und beim Systembetrieb verringert werden konnten

Aerosol Chemistry Resolved by Mass Spectrometry: Linking Field Measurements of Cloud Condensation Nuclei Activity to Organic Aerosol Composition

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in Environmental Science & Technology, copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.6b01675Aerosol hygroscopic properties were linked to its chemical composition by using complementary online mass spectrometric techniques in a comprehensive chemical characterization study at a rural mountaintop station in central Germany in August 2012. In particular, atmospheric pressure chemical ionization mass spectrometry ((−)APCI-MS) provided measurements of organic acids, organosulfates, and nitrooxy-organosulfates in the particle phase at 1 min time resolution. Offline analysis of filter samples enabled us to determine the molecular composition of signals appearing in the online (−)APCI-MS spectra. Aerosol mass spectrometry (AMS) provided quantitative measurements of total submicrometer organics, nitrate, sulfate, and ammonium. Inorganic sulfate measurements were achieved by semionline ion chromatography and were compared to the AMS total sulfate mass. We found that up to 40% of the total sulfate mass fraction can be covalently bonded to organic molecules. This finding is supported by both on- and offline soft ionization techniques, which confirmed the presence of several organosulfates and nitrooxy-organosulfates in the particle phase. The chemical composition analysis was compared to hygroscopicity measurements derived from a cloud condensation nuclei counter. We observed that the hygroscopicity parameter (κ) that is derived from organic mass fractions determined by AMS measurements may overestimate the observed κ up to 0.2 if a high fraction of sulfate is bonded to organic molecules and little photochemical aging is exhibited

A mechanistic hydro-epidemiological model of liver fluke risk

The majority of existing models for predicting disease risk in response to climate change are empirical. These models exploit correlations between historical data, rather than explicitly describing relationships between cause and response variables. Therefore, they are unsuitable for capturing impacts beyond historically observed variability and have limited ability to guide interventions. In this study, we integrate environmental and epidemiological processes into a new mechanistic model, taking the widespread parasitic disease of fasciolosis as an example. The model simulates environmental suitability for disease transmission at a daily time step and 25 m resolution, explicitly linking the parasite life cycle to key weather-water-environment conditions. Using epidemiological data, we show that the model can reproduce observed infection levels in time and space for two case studies in the UK. To overcome data limitations, we propose a calibration approach combining Monte Carlo sampling and expert opinion, which allows constraint of the model in a process-based way, including a quantification of uncertainty. The simulated disease dynamics agree with information from the literature, and comparison with a widely used empirical risk index shows that the new model provides better insight into the time-space patterns of infection, which will be valuable for decision support.</p

Aging and condensed phase chemistry affects the hygroscopicity of ambient SOA

Secondary inorganic and organic aerosol particles are ubiquitous constituents in the atmosphere. They are largely produced through the photo-oxidation of gaseous precursor molecules, such as SO2, NOx and VOCs, from both anthropogenic and natural sources. Once grown to atmospherically relevant sizes, they can act as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and thus affect earth’s climate (IPCC, 2013). However, their chemical composition can vary considerably over their atmospheric lifetime (up to one week) as a result of which, their physico-chemical properties may change significantly due to chemical transformation processes (Jimenez et al., 2009). One of these properties is hygroscopicity, which largely depends on the chemical composition. Linking both, measured chemical composition and hygroscopicity helps to advance our current understanding of the hygroscopicity parametrisation. In this work we investigated how photochemical aging of the organic aerosol fraction and chemical reactions between inorganic and organic compounds can affect the hygroscopicity parameter κ (Petters and Kreidenweis, 2007). The measurements were conducted at the semi-rural Taunus Observatory/ Germany during summer 2012. An extensive suite of particle phase characterizing instrumentation was applied for the detailed composition analysis of submicron aerosol: We used online atmospheric pressure chemical ionization mass spectrometry (APCI-MS) (Vogel et al., 2013), aerosol mass spectrometry (AMS), and filter sampling for laboratory based analysis using ultrahigh performance liquid chromatography coupled to electrospray ionization ultrahigh resolution (OrbitrapTM) mass spectrometry (UHPLC/ESI-UHRMS). The AMS allows quantification of total organics, sulfate and nitrate, whereas the APCI-MS can identify single organic species (organic acids, organosulfates, nitrooxy-organosulfates), both at a high measurement frequencies (< 1 minute). The UHPLC/ESI-UHRMS analysis of filter samples provides vital information helping to understand the complex online spectra of the APCI-MS by the unambiguous determination of the elemental composition of different organic compounds. Furthermore, we used a MARGA (Monitor for Aerosols and Gases in Ambient Air) to measure the concentration of purely inorganic sulfate in PM10. Finally a CCN counter coupled to a differential mobility analyser (DMA) and to a condensation particle counter (CPC) was used to measure size-resolved CCN efficiency spectra and to derive the hygroscopicity parameter κ. We determined the κ-value of the ambient aerosol from size resolved chemical composition measurements by the AMS and compared it to the measured values of the CCN efficiency spectra. The relative evolution of the aerosol aging was determined by measuring the ratio of two biogenic acids: the aging product 1,2,3-methyl-butane-tricarboxylic acid (MBTCA) and the first generation oxidation product pinic acid by the online APCI-MS. The occurrence of organosulfates and nitrooxy-organosulfates was observed by the ultrahigh resolution MS analysis and the online APCI-MS. Comparison of the total sulfate concentration measured by the AMS with the sulfate measurements by the MARGA allowed for the determination of the fraction of sulfate which is bonded to organic molecules. We observed that photochemical aging and the formation of (hydrophobic) nitrooxy-organosulfates is responsible for the observed bias between the predicted and measured κ-value

Pion interferometry in Au+Au collisions at sqrt[sNN]=200GeV

We present a systematic analysis of two-pion interferometry in Au+Au collisions at sqrt[sNN]=200GeV using the STAR detector at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. We extract the Hanbury-Brown and Twiss radii and study their multiplicity, transverse momentum, and azimuthal angle dependence. The Gaussianness of the correlation function is studied. Estimates of the geometrical and dynamical structure of the freeze-out source are extracted by fits with blast-wave parametrizations. The expansion of the source and its relation with the initial energy density distribution is studied

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts