10,433 research outputs found
Funding Resilient Infrastructure in New Jersey: Attitudes Following a Natural Disaster
Recent major natural disasters in New Jersey have demonstrated the need to increase the resilience of transportation infrastructure. This research examines public attitudes toward revenue sources that can be dedicated to protecting vulnerable areas, most notably the transportation linkages on which the state depends. A statewide survey was conducted to gather data approximately four months following Superstorm Sandy, the costliest natural disaster in the state’s history. The authors’ objective was to sample public attitudes while the impacts of the disaster were still fresh. They found little support for temporary tax increases to improve resiliency, with the most positive support for taxing visitors (i.e., a hotel and recreational tax) and for a 30-year bond measure (i.e., taxing the future). This observation seemingly contradicts broad support for investing in new infrastructure, as well as maintaining and protecting existing infrastructure. Multivariate analysis to understand the underlying attitudes toward raising revenue found that more left-leaning or communitarian attitudes are associated with more support for gasoline, income, or sales taxes devoted to mitigating vulnerability. Those who supported investment in transit and protecting infrastructure also were more likely to support these taxes. There was no parallel finding of factors associated with taxing visitors or issuing bonds
A pharmacological cocktail for arresting actin dynamics in living cells.
The actin cytoskeleton is regulated by factors that influence polymer assembly, disassembly, and network rearrangement. Drugs that inhibit these events have been used to test the role of actin dynamics in a wide range of cellular processes. Previous methods of arresting actin rearrangements take minutes to act and work well in some contexts, but can lead to significant actin reorganization in cells with rapid actin dynamics, such as neutrophils. In this paper, we report a pharmacological cocktail that not only arrests actin dynamics but also preserves the structure of the existing actin network in neutrophil-like HL-60 cells, human fibrosarcoma HT1080 cells, and mouse NIH 3T3 fibroblast cells. Our cocktail induces an arrest of actin dynamics that initiates within seconds and persists for longer than 10 min, during which time cells maintain their responsivity to external stimuli. With this cocktail, we demonstrate that actin dynamics, and not simply morphological polarity or actin accumulation at the leading edge, are required for the spatial persistence of Rac activation in HL-60 cells. Our drug combination preserves the structure of the existing cytoskeleton while blocking actin assembly, disassembly, and rearrangement, and should prove useful for investigating the role of actin dynamics in a wide range of cellular signaling contexts
Long-term material compatibility testing system
System includes procedure for hermetically sealing solid materials and fluids in glass ampoule and use of temperature-controlled facility containing sample holder, which permits sample containers to be retrieved safely and conveniently. Solid material and fluid are sealed within chemically-clean glass ampoule according to highly detailed procedure
The Effects of Bose-Condensates on Single Inclusive Spectra and Bose-Einstein Correlations
The implications of the formation of a Bose condensate on one- and
two-particle spectra are studied for ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus
collisions in the framework of a hydrodynamic description. It is found that
single particle spectra are considerably enhanced at low momenta. The
Bose-Einstein correlation function has an intercept below two. For pion pairs
in the central region a two-component structure may appear in the correlation
function, which is different from that found in quantum optics. The chaoticity
parameter is strongly momentum dependent.Comment: 16 pages, 1 Postscript figur
Interactive cutting path analysis programs
The operation of numerically controlled machine tools is interactively simulated. Four programs were developed to graphically display the cutting paths for a Monarch lathe, Cintimatic mill, Strippit sheet metal punch, and the wiring path for a Standard wire wrap machine. These programs are run on a IMLAC PDS-ID graphic display system under the DOS-3 disk operating system. The cutting path analysis programs accept input via both paper tape and disk file
Transform-limited pulses are not optimal for resonant multiphoton transitions
Maximizing nonlinear light-matter interactions is a primary motive for
compressing laser pulses to achieve ultrashort transform limited pulses. Here
we show how, by appropriately shaping the pulses, resonant multiphoton
transitions can be enhanced significantly beyond the level achieved by
maximizing the pulse's peak intensity. We demonstrate the counterintuitive
nature of this effect with an experiment in a resonant two-photon absorption,
in which, by selectively removing certain spectral bands, the peak intensity of
the pulse is reduced by a factor of 40, yet the absorption rate is doubled.
Furthermore, by suitably designing the spectral phase of the pulse, we increase
the absorption rate by a factor of 7.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Oscillations of solar and atmospheric neutrinos
Motivated by recent results from SuperKamiokande, we study both solar and
atmospheric neutrino fluxes in the context of oscillations of the three known
neutrinos. We aim at a global view which identifies the various possibilities,
rather than attempting the most accurate determination of the parameters of
each scenario. For solar neutrinos we emphasise the importance of performing a
general analysis, independent of any particular solar model and we consider the
possibility that any one of the techniques --- chlorine, gallium or water
Cerenkov --- has a large unknown systematic error, so that its results should
be discarded. The atmospheric neutrino anomaly is studied by paying special
attention to the ratios of upward and downward going nu_e and nu_mu fluxes.
Both anomalies can be described in a minimal scheme where the respective
oscillation frequencies are widely separated or in non-minimal schemes with two
comparable oscillation frequencies. We discuss explicit forms of neutrino mass
matrices in which both atmospheric and solar neutrino fluxes are explained. In
the minimal scheme we identify only two `zeroth order' textures that can result
from unbroken symmetries. Finally we discuss experimental strategies for the
determination of the various oscillation parameters.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures. Final version: one reference added; fit of
atmospheric neutrinos improve
Second order equation of motion for electromagnetic radiation back-reaction
We take the viewpoint that the physically acceptable solutions of the
Lorentz--Dirac equation for radiation back-reaction are actually determined by
a second order equation of motion, the self-force being given as a function of
spacetime location and velocity. We propose three different methods to obtain
this self-force function. For two example systems, we determine the second
order equation of motion exactly in the nonrelativistic regime via each of
these three methods, the three methods leading to the same result. We reveal
that, for both systems considered, back-reaction induces a damping proportional
to velocity and, in addition, it decreases the effect of the external force.Comment: 13 page
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