Special coatings control temperature of structures

Special coatings in the form of paints that exhibit controlled ratios of sunlight absorptivity to grey-body emissivity control the temperature of structures in space flight. These finishes exhibit good resistance to ultraviolet radiation and do not discolor

How Political Violence Helps Explain Organized Crime: A Case Study of Mexico\u27s War on Drugs

This thesis examines research from the disciplines of political science and criminal justice to develop a theory that explains geographic variation in violence related to organized crime. Large-scale organized crime violence exhibits characteristics of both ordinary crime violence and political violence, but these subjects are generally analyzed separately. However, as large-scale organized crime has become more prevalent and violent in recent years, most notably in Latin America, studies, including this one, have attempted to cross disciplinary boundaries in order to better explain trends in organized crime onset, termination and violence. This thesis argues that although the overall goal of organized crime groups is not to take control of a country, both organized crime groups and insurgent groups confront the state\u27s monopoly on violence, leading to evident similarities in the way they use violence to attain their goals. They both use violence to maintain control over resources, take control from other groups and retaliate against the government. Previous literature has demonstrated that control is directly linked to geographic variation in political violence and through case studies of organized crime violence in Honduras and Brazil, as well as negative binomial regression analysis of organized crime violence in Mexico, this thesis finds that control is also directly linked to geographic variation in organized crime violence

Approximating Eigenvalues for Double Well Potentials.

One dimensional double well potentials usually refer to those potentials which have two equivalent or non-equivalent minima. They have been used to model diverse systems ranging from the electronic structure of diatomic molecules to electron-lattice coupling in high temperature superconductors [1][2]. However, one difficulty to the utility of these models is that exact analytical solutions for almost all double well potentials have not been found, in spite of the fact that this type of potential is constantly utilized as an illustra­tive example in the literature. Despite intensive research into this problem, only a few types of double wells have been exactly solved to date [3]. The most common way to estimate the eigenvalues of the double well potential is through numerical methods. The usefulness of the system would be greatly enhanced if the true eigenfunctions could be determined for every case. The goal of this thesis is to find a good analytical scheme to obtain the eigenfunctions for the Schrodinger equation with polynomial double well poten­tial (V(x) = x4 - {3x2 where {3 is a positive integer). To achieve this goal, a combination of two methods are used: the linear combination of atomic orbitals to form molecular or­bitals (LCAO-MO) method, and the Rayleigh-Ritz ·method using variational parameters. Specifically, the trial wavefunctions are expressed in terms of two linear combinations, namely: \Jl(x, a, /3, 81, ... , 8n )Left and \Jl(x, a, /3, 81, ... , 8n )right· It is found that coupling occurs in Gerard functions and anticoupling in un-Gerard. In each method, w contains a complete set of wave functions known to be the exact solutions of the harmonic oscilla­tor. Then the variational parameters are optimized to get the approximate eigenfunction and eigenvalues. The results show that the calculated energy agrees with the numerical re­sults over the entire range of the coupling parameters. The greater the number of terms used to represent \u27l/J the more accurate the eigenvalues, position and expectation values. . We also use the resultant wave functions to verify the Heisenburg uncertainty relation by calculating the expectation values of \u3c x2 \u3e and \u3c p2 \u3e, i.e. the position and momen­tum operators. Thus we determine an approximation method that is useful for revealing the properties of the physical systems that can be modeled with these potentials

Inductive Inference with Additional Information

AbstractWe consider the problem of inductively inferring a grammar for a language, given (positive) examples of the language and putative (possibly faulty) grammars for the complement of the language. The criterion of success is identification in the limit, defined by E. M. Gold (1967, Inform. and Control10, 447–474). Additional information is useful insofar as it allows the identification of language classes that would not be identified with positive examples alone. An infinite sequence of grammars past some finite position are correct for the complement of the input language, is not as useful a form of additional information as a single correct grammar for the complement. Grammars that are almost correct for the complement (that is, that make finitely many errors) are not as useful as correct grammars, and the usefulness of a grammar decreases with increasing numbers of errors

Afghanistan : Tuberculosis

Afghanistan, a country in the Middle East, faces the epidemic of an infectious bacterial lung disease called Tuberculosis, or TB. Tuberculosis is fairly easy to spread, as the bacteria that causes it are spread from one person to another through tiny droplets released into the air via coughs and sneezes. Despite the widespread amounts of individuals affected with TB, it is known to be easily curable using a six month treatment. And so public health officials have implemented a program called DOTS, or Directly Observed Treatment Short Course in Kabul City to test the effectiveness of this treatment. The DOTS program over the course of five years was proven to be successful, and raised the TSR (treatment success rate) exponentially, making the curing of Afghanistan’s epidemic more possible in the future

The Relationship between a Nation-State Being Land-Locked and Its Economic Development

This research will look at the relationship between a nation-state being landlocked and its economic development. Based on the literature, my theory is that landlocked nation-states will have less economic development than coastal nation-states. Also, the more that a nation-state is landlocked, measured as the more countries around it and the farther away it is from the coast, the less economic development it will have. I will look at a dataset related to economic growth and compare countries to evaluate my theory

Principal mentoring as a retention and effectiveness strategy in comprehensive improvement schools.

This qualitative study examines Comprehensive Improvement Schools (CSI) principals’ experiences with mentoring programs and their perceptions of how such programs may mitigate administrative attrition. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight practicing CSI principals and the study utilized the pragmatic framework. The interviews captured principal’s experiences with being a principal mentee during their first year of CSI principalship, and what actions or activities in their mentorships aided their retention in the position. The analysis suggested several recommendations for practice in principal mentoring programs to increase school leader retention. At the heart of these recommendations was an emphasis on the importance of the trust-based relationship between the mentor and mentee and ample time for on- demand support from the mentor. Further nuanced recommendations were developed from the principals’ experience and the body of literature regarding principal mentorship. These recommendations can be utilized by local school districts and state education departments to construct model principal mentoring programs

Gastronomical Adventure in the Tropics

Kenneth Fulk, \u2739, describes experimental cookery at its best in the South Pacifi