How Mobile Devices are Transforming Disaster Relief and Public Safety

With its growing usage, mobile technology is greatly improving disaster relief and public safety efforts. Countries around the world face threats from natural disasters, climate change, civil unrest, terrorist attacks, and criminal activities, among others. Mobile devices, tablets, and smart phones enable emergency providers and the general public to manage these challenges and mitigate public safety concerns.In this paper, part of the Brookings Mobile Economy Project, we focus on how mobile technology provides an early warning system, aids in emergency coordination, and improves public communications. In particular, we review how mobile devices assist with public safety, disaster planning, and crisis response. We explain how these devices are instrumental in the design and functioning of integrated, multi-layered communications networks. We demonstrate how they have helped save lives and ameliorate human suffering throughout the world

Timescales for dynamical relaxation to the Born rule

We illustrate through explicit numerical calculations how the Born-rule probability densities of non-relativistic quantum mechanics emerge naturally from the particle dynamics of de Broglie-Bohm pilot-wave theory. The time evolution of a particle distribution initially not equal to the absolute square of the wave function is calculated for a particle in a two-dimensional infinite potential square well. Under the de Broglie-Bohm ontology, the box contains an objectively-existing 'pilot wave' which guides the electron trajectory, and this is represented mathematically by a Schroedinger wave function composed of a finite out-of-phase superposition of M energy eigenstates (with M ranging from 4 to 64). The electron density distributions are found to evolve naturally into the Born-rule ones and stay there; in analogy with the classical case this represents a decay to 'quantum equilibrium'. The proximity to equilibrium is characterized by the coarse-grained subquantum H-function which is found to decrease roughly exponentially towards zero over the course of time. The timescale tau for this relaxation is calculated for various values of M and the coarse-graining length epsilon. Its dependence on M is found to disagree with an earlier theoretical prediction. A power law - tau inversely proportional to M - is found to be fairly robust for all coarse-graining lengths and, although a weak dependence of tau on epsilon is observed, it does not appear to follow any straightforward scaling. A theoretical analysis is presented to explain these results. This improvement in our understanding of timescales for relaxation to quantum equilibrium is likely to be of use in the development of models of relaxation in the early universe, with a view to constraining possible violations of the Born rule in inflationary cosmology.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figures; Replacement with small number of changes reflecting referees' comment

Biofilms and cyclic di-GMP (c-di-GMP) signaling: lessons from Pseudomonas aeruginosa and other bacteria

The cyclic di-GMP (c-di-GMP) second messenger represents a signaling system that regulates many bacterial behaviors and is of key importance for driving the lifestyle switch between motile loner cells and biofilm formers. This review provides an up-to-date compendium of c-di-GMP pathways connected to biofilm formation, biofilm-associated motilities, and other functionalities in the ubiquitous and opportunistic human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. This bacterium is frequently adopted as a model organism to study bacterial biofilm formation. Importantly, its versatility and adaptation capabilities are linked with a broad range of complex regulatory networks, including a large set of genes involved in c-di-GMP biosynthesis, degradation, and transmission

Radiation reaction and quantum damped harmonic oscillator

By taking a Klein-Gordon field as the environment of an harmonic oscillator and using a new method for dealing with quantum dissipative systems (minimal coupling method), the quantum dynamics and radiation reaction for a quantum damped harmonic oscillator investigated. Applying perturbation method, some transition probabilities indicating the way energy flows between oscillator, reservoir and quantum vacuum, obtainedComment: 12 pages. Accepted for publication in Mod. Phys. Lett.

Two frequency beam-loading compensation in the drive-beam accelerator of the CLIC Test Facility

The CLIC Test Facility (CTF) is a prototype two-beam accelerator, in which a high-current "drive beam" is used to generate the RF power for the main-beam accelerator. The drive-beam accelerator consists of two S-band structures which accelerate a bunch train with a total charge of 500 nC. The substantial beam loading is compensated by operating the two accelerating structures at 7.81 MHz above and below the bunch repetition frequency, respectively. This introduces a change of RF phase from bunch to bunch, which leads, together with off-crest injection into the accelerator, to an approximate compensation of the beam loading. Due to the sinusoidal time-dependency of the RF field, an energy spread of about 7% remains in the bunch train. A set of idler cavities has been installed to reduce this residual energy spread further. In this paper, the considerations that motivated the choice of the parameters of the beam-loading compensation system, together with the experimental results, are presented

Effect of metal clusters on the swelling of gold-fluorocarbon-polymer composite films

We have investigated the phenomenon of swelling due to acetone diffusion in fluorocarbon polymer films doped with different gold concentrations below the percolation threshold. The presence of the gold clusters in the polymer is shown to improve the mixing between the fluorocarbon polymer and the acetone, which is not a good solvent for this kind of polymers. In order to explain the experimental results the stoichiometry and the morphology of the polymer--metal system have been studied and a modified version of the Flory--Huggins model has been developed

First Results for the Solar Neighborhood of the Asiago Red Clump Survey

The Asiago Red Clump Spectroscopic Survey (ARCS) is an ongoing survey that provides atmospheric parameters, distances and space velocities of a well selected sample of Red Clump stars distributed along the celestial equator. We used the ARCS catalog for a preliminary investigation of the Galactic disk in the Solar Neighborhood, in particular we focused on detection and characterization of moving groups.Comment: 2 pages, 1 figure, to appear in the proceedings of "Assembling the Puzzle of the Milky Way", Le Grand Bornand (April 17-22, 2011), C. Reyle, A. Robin, M. Schultheis (eds.

Web services and historical cadastral maps: the first step in the implementation of the Web C.A.R.T.E. system

In the State Archive of Como, Northern Italy, about 15000 historical cadastral maps corresponding to 246 current municipalities of Como and Lecco districts are preserved. These maps belong to different cadastral productions: the Theresian cadastre, promoted in 1718 by Emperor Carl VI and come into force in 1760 during the reign of Maria Teresa; the Lombardo- Veneto cadastre, started in 1854 and completed, with continuous updates during the time, at the end of the century; and finally some maps of 1905 belonging to the New Lands Cadastre, the first national geometric cadastre after Italian unification of 1861. Maps have not only a considerable artistic value but mostly a cultural and historical one, since they constitute a great source to derive an accurate representation of the territory and its evolutions. For these reasons, the old maps represent nowadays a valuable instrument for historians, scholars and professionals working both in the historical research field and in the urban and territorial planning. The project Web C.A.R.T.E. (Web Catalogo e Archivio delle Rappresentazioni del Territorio e delle sue Evoluzioni), sponsored by the Fondazione Provinciale della Comunità Comasca Onlus, has been started to enhance the immense cartographic heritage of the State Archive of Como using the most recent technologies of map processing and web services. After the maps digitization step, performed by the State Archive in agreement with the interested municipalities, a georeferencing and warping procedure is needed to place the cadastral maps in the actual Italian reference system, thus making it possible to overlap them to the current cartography. Being the most of the maps divided in sheets, that have been surveyed and drawn independently from each other, the preliminary step has been to combine the sheets in a single map by applying to them a roto- translation with a scale variation. The georeferencing of unified maps has then been performed and tested in different software and GIS packages to determine the optimal solution. Finally PCI Geomatica OrthoEngine has been chosen, thanks to its variety of implemented mathematical models and to the possibility of inserting not only Ground Control Points (points of known coordinates, both in the actual cartography and in the historical map, that are used to compute the mathematical model) but also Check Points, points with known coordinates that are not included in the transformation and can therefore be used to check the model accuracy. The residuals of the transformation have then been used to determine the best georeferencing model for each cadastral map, confirming the choice with statistical techniques. The following step has been the documentation of georeference d maps in terms of metadata, a series of information needed to precisely identify the data and get information about their content, accuracy, accessibility and usage constrains. Metadata schema are currently defined by national and international standards: at the Italian level, the CNIPA (Centro Nazionale per l’Informatica nella Pubblica Amministrazione) proposed in 2006 a standard which is in agreement with the European Directive INSPIRE and defines a common set of metadata related to all kinds of geographic information used by national Public Administrations. Metadata for the historical georeferenced maps have therefore been compiled according to the Italian standard; last step has been their publication on the Internet through GeoNetwork, an open source web geo-catalogue that allows users to immediately identify a data and derive (from its metadata) information about language, spatial extent, reference system, responsible person or agency, accessibility, possible limitations on the usage, data origin and production process, and other features. Digitized and georeferenced maps, accompanied by their metadata, can finally be visualized and navigated online through the implementation of a dedicated webGIS. The realization of this viewing service implies the usage of software and tools both from the server and the client-side. Applying FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) solutions, a system with interactive functionalities and able to manage large raster maps has been developed. The entire service is currently in a test phase to verify its fulfilment of specific requests and needs expressed by experts from the State Archive; for this reason it may be possible that new and improved solutions will be introduced in the future