6,489 research outputs found
Microwave radiative transfer studies of precipitation
Since the deployment of the DMSP SSM/I microwave imagers in 1987, increased utilization of passive microwave radiometry throughout the 10 - 100 GHz spectrum has occurred for measurement of atmospheric constituents and terrestrial surfaces. Our efforts have focused on observations and analysis of the microwave radiative transfer behavior of precipitating clouds. We have focused particular attention on combining both aircraft and SSM/I radiometer imagery with ground-based multiparameter radar observations. As part of this and the past NASA contract, we have developed a multi-stream, polarized radiative transfer model which incorporates scattering. The model has the capability to be initialized with cloud model output or multiparameter radar products. This model provides the necessary 'link' between the passive microwave radiometer and active microwave radar observations. This unique arrangement has allowed the brightness temperatures (TB) to be compared against quantities such as rainfall, liquid/ice water paths, and the vertical structure of the cloud. Quantification of the amounts of ice and water in precipitating clouds is required for understanding of the global energy balance
Dead Roses and Blooming Deserts: The Medical History of a New Deal Icon
Although a memorial plaque at the Hoover Dam sets the number of workers killed during its construction at ninety-six, the real figure was nearly double. In fact, the figure would have been much higher had it not been for the precedent-setting effort by the federal government, contactors, and workers to save as many lives as possible on the project. Aside from its long unrecognized value as a jobs program, much needed stimulus to the fledging Las Vegas economy, and status as one of the “man-made wonders of the world,” Hoover Dam represented a major step forward for the American occupational health movement. Even though construction began during the last years of Republican rule, a time generally considered to be devoid of government intervention in behalf of labor, a variety of factors combined to make the project a crucial turning point in the history of occupational health care. Joseph Stevens, Dennis McBride, and other historians of the dam have briefly described health conditions and the efforts undertaken to promote health, but none has emphasized this watershed effect and how the project’s considerable health risks forced the federal government to prod Six Companies Inc., to undertake major initiatives to protect workers on the job. Eventually, the contractor developed a system to provide job-related healthcare on the dam site and in Boulder City before the New Deal, actions which boosted the entire occupational health movement
Bank competition and financial stability
Under the traditional"competition-fragility"view, more bank competition erodes market power, decreases profit margins, and results in reduced franchise value that encourages bank risk taking. Under the alternative"competition-stability"view, more market power in the loan market may result in greater bank risk as the higher interest rates charged to loan customers make it more difficult to repay loans and exacerbate moral hazard and adverse selection problems. But even if market power in the loan market results in riskier loan portfolios, the overall risks of banks need not increase if banks protect their franchise values by increasing their equity capital or engaging in other risk-mitigating techniques. The authors test these theories by regressing measures of loan risk, bank risk, and bank equity capital on several measures of market power, as well as indicators of the business environment, using data for 8,235 banks in 23 developed nations. The results suggest that - consistent with the traditional"competition-fragility"view - banks with a greater degree of market power also have less overall risk exposure. The data also provide some support for one element of the"competition-stability"view - that market power increases loan portfolio risk. The authors show that this risk may be offset in part by higher equity capital ratios.Banks&Banking Reform,Debt Markets,Access to Finance,,Markets and Market Access
Transversity and Collins functions from SIDIS and e+e- data
A global analysis of the experimental data on azimuthal asymmetries in
semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering (SIDIS), from the HERMES and COMPASS
Collaborations, and in e+e- --> h1 h2 X processes, from the BELLE
Collaboration, is performed. It results in the extraction of the Collins
fragmentation function and, for the first time, of the transversity
distribution function for u and d quarks. These turn out to have opposite signs
and to be sizably smaller than their positivity bounds. Predictions for the
azimuthal asymmetry A_{UT}^{sin(phi_h + phi_S)}, as will soon be measured at
JLab and COMPASS operating on a transversely polarized proton target, are then
presented.Comment: Revised version to appear in Phys. Rev. D. Few misprints corrected,
new figure
The Sivers Function from SIDIS Data
We study the Sivers effect in transverse single spin asymmetries (SSA) for
pion and kaon production in Semi-Inclusive Deep Inelastic Scattering (SIDIS)
processes. We perform a fit of A^{sin(phi_h-phi_S)}_UT taking into account the
recent data from HERMES and COMPASS Collaborations, which allow a new
determination of the Sivers distribution functions for quark and anti-quark
with u, d and also s flavours. Estimates for forthcoming SIDIS experiments at
COMPASS and JLab are given.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure. To appear in the proceedings of the XVI
International Workshop on Deep-Inelastic Scattering and Related Subjects, DIS
2008, London, U.K., 7-11 April 200
Heavy Metals Distribution and Pollution in the Sediments of the Wadi Gaza Mouth, Eastern Mediterranean Coast, Palestine
Wadi Gaza is the most important wetland in Gaza Strip. Due to the difficult economic conditions, the Israeli occupation and lack of the resources, Wadi Gaza became a place for solid and liquid waste disposal from surrounding provinces. The aim of this study is to assess the heavy metals in the sediments of the Wadi Gaza, North, and South of downstream along the beach of Gaza Strip. This was achieved through sediment sampling along the course of the Wadi downstream; north and south of the beach sands, and the geochemical analysis was done in the Ministry of Health Laboratories. The concentrations of Mn, Zn, Ni, Cd, Cu, and Pb were determined in the sediments, using atomic absorption spectrophotometer
Some Properties of Thymus Cathepsin D
Cathepsin D has been purified from calf thymus using
ammonium sulphate precipitation and gel chromatography on
Se.phadex G-100. Preparative electrophoresis in polyacrylamide
gel, used as the final step in the purification procedure, yielded
four active forms of cathepsin D that dissociated further .into
several polypepUde bands in the presence of sodium dodecyl
sulphate. All four forms were stable over a range of pH from
4-11. They were completely inhibited by pepstatin whereas other
metal ions had no appreciable effect upon their activity
Geometry: The leading parameter for the Poisson’s ratio of bending-dominated cellular solids
Control over the deformation behaviour that a cellular structure shows in response to imposed external forces is a requirement for the effective design of mechanical metamaterials, in particular those with negative Poisson’s ratio. This article sheds light on the old question of the relationship between geometric microstructure and mechanical response, by comparison of the deformation properties of bar-and-joint-frameworks with those of their realisation as a cellular solid made from linear-elastic material. For ordered planar tessellation models, we find a classification in terms of the number of degrees of freedom of the framework model: first, in cases where the geometry uniquely prescribes a single deformation mode of the framework model, the mechanical deformation and Poisson’s ratio of the linearly-elastic cellular solid closely follow those of the unique deformation mode; the result is a bending-dominated deformation with negligible dependence of the effective Poisson’s ratio on the underlying material’s Poisson’s ratio and small values of the effective Young’s modulus. Second, in the case of rigid structures or when geometric degeneracy prevents the bending-dominated deformation mode, the effective Poisson’s ratio is material-dependent and the Young’s modulus View the MathML sourceE˜cs large. All analysed structures of this type have positive values of the Poisson’s ratio and large values of View the MathML sourceE˜cs. Third, in the case, where the framework has multiple deformation modes, geometry alone does not suffice to determine the mechanical deformation. These results clarify the relationship between mechanical properties of a linear-elastic cellular solid and its corresponding bar-and-joint framework abstraction. They also raise the question if, in essence, auxetic behaviour is restricted to the geometry-guided class of bending-dominated structures corresponding to unique mechanisms, with inherently low values of the Young’s modulus
Minkowski Tensors of Anisotropic Spatial Structure
This article describes the theoretical foundation of and explicit algorithms
for a novel approach to morphology and anisotropy analysis of complex spatial
structure using tensor-valued Minkowski functionals, the so-called Minkowski
tensors. Minkowski tensors are generalisations of the well-known scalar
Minkowski functionals and are explicitly sensitive to anisotropic aspects of
morphology, relevant for example for elastic moduli or permeability of
microstructured materials. Here we derive explicit linear-time algorithms to
compute these tensorial measures for three-dimensional shapes. These apply to
representations of any object that can be represented by a triangulation of its
bounding surface; their application is illustrated for the polyhedral Voronoi
cellular complexes of jammed sphere configurations, and for triangulations of a
biopolymer fibre network obtained by confocal microscopy. The article further
bridges the substantial notational and conceptual gap between the different but
equivalent approaches to scalar or tensorial Minkowski functionals in
mathematics and in physics, hence making the mathematical measure theoretic
method more readily accessible for future application in the physical sciences
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