4,110 research outputs found
Mega-gifts in American Philanthropy: Giving Patterns 2001-2003
The researchers collected data on more than 8,000 gifts of $10 million or above in order to compile this report. Higher education, health, and cultural arts organizations receive the lion's share of the largest gifts that individuals, foundations, and corporations contribute to American philanthropy
Mega-gifts in Jewish Philanthropy: Giving Patterns 2001-2003
The report on Jewish giving provides an analysis of gifts of $1 million or above from 2001 to 2003. The research examines the distribution of dollars by recipient type, donor type, region, and other categories
Neutrinos And Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
The early universe provides a unique laboratory for probing the frontiers of
particle physics in general and neutrino physics in particular. The primordial
abundances of the relic nuclei produced during the first few minutes of the
evolution of the Universe depend on the electron neutrinos through the
charged-current weak interactions among neutrons and protons (and electrons and
positrons and neutrinos), and on all flavors of neutrinos through their
contributions to the total energy density which regulates the universal
expansion rate. The latter contribution also plays a role in determining the
spectrum of the temperature fluctuations imprinted on the Cosmic Background
Radiation (CBR) some 400 thousand years later. Using deuterium as a baryometer
and helium-4 as a chronometer, the predictions of BBN and the CBR are compared
to observations. The successes of, as well as challenges to the standard models
of particle physics and cosmology are identified. While systematic
uncertainties may be the source of some of the current tensions, it could be
that the data are pointing the way to new physics. In particular, BBN and the
CBR are used to address the questions of whether or not the relic neutrinos
were fully populated in the early universe and, to limit the magnitude of any
lepton asymmetry which may be concealed in the neutrinos.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 129,
"Neutrino Physics"; to appear in Physics Scripta, eds., L Bergstrom, O.
Botner, P. Carlson, P. O. Hulth, and T. Ohlsso
Theory and Numerics of Gravitational Waves from Preheating after Inflation
Preheating after inflation involves large, time-dependent field
inhomogeneities, which act as a classical source of gravitational radiation.
The resulting spectrum might be probed by direct detection experiments if
inflation occurs at a low enough energy scale. In this paper, we develop a
theory and algorithm to calculate, analytically and numerically, the spectrum
of energy density in gravitational waves produced from an inhomogeneous
background of stochastic scalar fields in an expanding universe. We derive some
generic analytical results for the emission of gravity waves by stochastic
media of random fields, which can test the validity/accuracy of numerical
calculations. We contrast our method with other numerical methods in the
literature, and then we apply it to preheating after chaotic inflation. In this
case, we are able to check analytically our numerical results, which differ
significantly from previous works. We discuss how the gravity wave spectrum
builds up with time and find that the amplitude and the frequency of its peak
depend in a relatively simple way on the characteristic spatial scale amplified
during preheating. We then estimate the peak frequency and amplitude of the
spectrum produced in two models of preheating after hybrid inflation, which for
some parameters may be relevant for gravity wave interferometric experiments.Comment: 28 pages, 10 figures, refs added, published versio
A Computational Pipeline for High- Throughput Discovery of cis-Regulatory Noncoding RNA in Prokaryotes
Noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) are important functional RNAs that do not code for proteins. We present a highly efficient computational pipeline for discovering cis-regulatory ncRNA motifs de novo. The pipeline differs from previous methods in that it is structure-oriented, does not require a multiple-sequence alignment as input, and is capable of detecting RNA motifs with low sequence conservation. We also integrate RNA motif prediction with RNA homolog search, which improves the quality of the RNA motifs significantly. Here, we report the results of applying this pipeline to Firmicute bacteria. Our top-ranking motifs include most known Firmicute elements found in the RNA family database (Rfam). Comparing our motif models with Rfam's hand-curated motif models, we achieve high accuracy in both membership prediction and base-pair–level secondary structure prediction (at least 75% average sensitivity and specificity on both tasks). Of the ncRNA candidates not in Rfam, we find compelling evidence that some of them are functional, and analyze several potential ribosomal protein leaders in depth
One loop corrections to quantum hadrodynamics with vector mesons
The renormalized elastic scattering amplitude to one loop is
calculated in the chiral limit in the model and in a Quantum
Hadrodynamic model (QHD-III) with vector mesons. It is argued that QHD-III
reduces to the linear model in the limit that the vector meson masses
become large. The pion decay constant is also calculated to 1-loop in the
model, and at tree level in QHD-III; it is shown that the coefficient
of the tree level term in the scattering amplitude equals . The
1-loop correction of in QHD-III violates strong isospin current
conservation. Thus,it is concluded that QHD-III can, at best, only describe the
strongly interacting nuclear sector.Comment: 6 page
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Influence Of Radiation And Multivalent Cation Additions On Phase Separation And Crystallization Of Glass
The major objectives of this proposed investigation are as follows: (1) To investigate the influence of multivalent cations on the thermodynamics and kinetics of phase separation and crystallization in simple model glasses. (2) To study the influence of a and b particle, heavy ion bombardment and g irradiation on phase separation and crystallization in simple model glasses. (3) To examine the structural changes produced by radiation just prior to the onset of phase separation and/or crystallization. (4) To develop models to explain the observed effects of multivalent cations and radiation on phase separation and crystallization. (5) To utilize the results of these experimental and modeling studies to provide guidelines for the allowed range of composition choices and processing conditions in order to avoid the formation of unwanted phases in nuclear waste disposal glasses
Mossbauer and optical spectroscopic study of temperature and redox effects on iron local environments in a Fe-doped (0.5 mol% Fe2O3)18Na2O–72SiO2 glass
Local environments of ferric and ferrous irons were systematically studied with Mössbauer (at liquid helium temperature)and ultraviolet–visible–near infrared spectroscopic methods for various 18Na2O–72SiO2 glasses doped with 0.5 mol% Fe2O3. These were prepared at temperatures of 1300–1600 °C in ambient air or at 1500 °C under reducing conditions with oxygen partial pressures from 12.3 to 0.27 x 10-7 atmospheres. The Mössbauer spectroscopic method identified three types of local environments, which were represented by the Fe3+ sextet, the Fe3+ doublet, and the Fe2+ doublet. The Fe3+ sextet ions were assigned to “isolated” octahedral ions. Under reducing conditions, the octahedral Fe3+ ions were readily converted into octahedral ferrous ions. The Fe3+ doublet exists both in octahedral and tetrahedral environment, mainly as tetrahedral sites in the reduced samples. The tetrahedral ions were found stable against reduction to ferrous ions. The Fe2+ doublet sites existed in octahedral coordination. Combining results from both spectroscopic studies, the 1120- and 2020-nm optical bands were assigned to octahedral ferrous ions with a different degree of distortion rather than different coordinations. Further, we assigned the 375-nm band to the transition of octahedral ferric ions that are sensitive to the change of oxygen partial pressure in glass melting and 415-, 435-, and 485-nm bands to the transitions of the tetrahedral ferric ions that are insensitive to oxidation states of the melt. The effect of ferric and ferrous ions with different coordination environments on the glass immiscibility was elucidated
The Peculiar Motions of Early-Type Galaxies in Two Distant Regions VI: The Maximum Likelihood Gaussian Algorithm
The EFAR project is designed to measure the properties and peculiar motions
of early-type galaxies in two distant regions. Here we describe the maximum
likelihood algorithm we developed to investigate the correlations between the
parameters of the EFAR database. One-, two-, and three-dimensional gaussian
models are constructed to determine the mean value and intrinsic spread of the
parameters, and the slopes and intrinsic parallel and orthogonal spread of the
Mgb'-Mg2, Mg2-sigma, Mgb'-sigma relations, and the Fundamental Plane. In the
latter case, the cluster peculiar velocities are also determined. We show that
this method is superior to ``canonical'' approaches of least-squares type,
which give biased slopes and biased peculiar velocities. We test the algorithm
with Monte Carlo simulations of mock EFAR catalogues and derive the systematic
and random errors on the estimated parameters. We find that random errors are
always dominant. We estimate the influence of systematic errors due to the way
clusters were selected and the hard limits and uncertainties in the selection
function parameters for the galaxies. We explore the influence of uniform
distributions in the Fundamental Plane parameters and the errors. We conclude
that the mean peculiar motions of the EFAR clusters can be determined reliably.
In particular, the placement of the two EFAR sample regions relative to the
Lauer and Postman dipole allows us to strongly constrain the amplitude of the
bulk motion in this direction.Comment: 43 pages, 19 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
Effective Field Theory Dimensional Regularization
A Lorentz-covariant regularization scheme for effective field theories with
an arbitrary number of propagating heavy and light particles is given. This
regularization scheme leaves the low-energy analytic structure of Greens
functions intact and preserves all the symmetries of the underlying Lagrangian.
The power divergences of regularized loop integrals are controlled by the
low-energy kinematic variables. Simple diagrammatic rules are derived for the
regularization of arbitrary one-loop graphs and the generalization to higher
loops is discussed.Comment: 22 pages, 11 figures and 1 tabl
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