Stratospheric constituent distributions from balloon-based limb thermal emission measurements

This research task deals with an analysis of infrared thermal emission observations of the Earth's atmosphere for determination of trace constituent distributions. Infrared limb thermal emission spectra in the 700-2000 cm(exp -1) region were obtained with a liquid nitrogen cooled Michelson interferometer-spectrometer (SIRIS) on a balloon flight launched from Palestine, Texas, at nighttime on September 15-16, 1986. An important objective of this work is to obtain simultaneously measured vertical mixing ratio profiles of O3, H2O, N2O, NO2, N2O5, HNO3 and ClONO2 and compare with measurements made with a variety of techniques by other groups as well as with photochemical model calculations. A portion of the observed spectra obtained by SIRIS from the balloon flight on September 15-16, 1986, has been analyzed with a focus on calculation of the total nighttime odd nitrogen budget from the simultaneously measured profiles of important members of the NO(sub x) family. The measurements permit first direct determination of the nighttime total odd nitrogen concentrations NO(sub y) and the partitioning of the important elements of the NO(sub x) family

An Evaluation of the Stearns County Domestic Violence Court: In Relation to Recidivism

Stearns County, Minnesota implemented a new court system to only handle domestic violence cases. It started in 2008 and its sole purpose is to reduce recidivism. This is the latest policy in a long list to try and curb the epidemic that is domestic violence. The purpose of this research is to analyze how effective the court has been in its goal. The data used in this research is from 2008 to when it was collected in October of 2014. The analysis will include descriptive statistics, t-tests, logistic regression and ARIMA modelling for its analysis and will analyze on characteristic variables, such as race, sex and age, as well as legal variables, such as number of violations, sentencing date, if the offender recidivated or not and etc.. The findings from the analysis show that the court is more than likely not reducing recidivism

Stratospheric sounding by infrared heterodyne spectroscopy

Intensity profiles of infrared spectral lines of stratospheric constituents can be fully resolved with a heterodyne spectrometer of sufficiently high resolution. The constituents' vertical distributions can then be evaluated accurately by analytic inversion of the measured line profiles. Estimates of the detection sensitivity of a heterodyne receiver are given in terms of minimum detectable volume mixing ratios of stratospheric constituents, indicating a large number of minor constituents which can be studied. Stratospheric spectral line shapes, and the resolution required to measure them are discussed in light of calculated synthetic line profiles for some stratospheric molecules in a model atmosphere. The inversion technique for evaluation of gas concentration profiles is briefly described and applications to synthetic lines of O3, CO2, CH4 and N2O are given

Probing the Quark-Gluon Plasma at the LHC with Z0^{0}- tagged Jets in CMS

An important tool in quark-gluon plasma studies at RHIC has been the measurement of dijets investigated via leading hadron correlations. With much higher rates for hard processes at the Large Hadron Collider, studies of Z^0tagged jets become possible. A clear experimental signature is provided by the measurement of muon pairs from the Z^0 decays, for which CMS is an ideally suited detector. Instead of measuring back-to-back correlations of two strongly interacting particles, one side is replaced by an electromagnetic probe which propagates through the plasma undisturbed and provides a measurement of the energy of the initial hard scattering. We propose to use lepton-pair tagged jets to study medium-induced partonic energy loss and to measure in-medium parton fragmentation functions. The lepton pairs from semileptonic decays of heavy meson pairs (B overline {B} and D overline{D}) are a background source for the dilepton jet tag signal. We present the calculated signal rates (using PYTHIA) and background rates (using HVQMNR). We also discuss strategies for maximizing the signal-to-background ratio

Thermal emission spectroscopy of the middle atmosphere

The general objective of this research is to obtain, via remote sensing, simultaneous measurements of the vertical distributions of stratospheric temperature, ozone, and trace constituents that participate in the catalytic destruction of ozone (NO(sub y): NO, NO2, NO3, HNO3, ClONO2, N2O5, HNO4; Cl(sub x): HOCl), and the source gases for the catalytic cycles (H2O, CH4, N2O, CF2Cl2, CFCl3, CCl4, CH3Cl, CHF2Cl, etc.). Data are collected during a complete diurnal cycle in order to test our present understanding of ozone chemistry and its associate catalytic cycles. The instrumentation employed is an emission-mode, balloon-borne, liquid-nitrogen-cooled Michelson interferometer-spectrometer (SIRIS), covering the mid-infrared range with a spectral resolution of 0.020 cm(exp -1). Cryogenic cooling combined with the use of extrinsic silicon photoconductor detectors allows the detection of weak emission features of stratospheric gaseous species. Vertical distributions of these species are inferred from scans of the thermal emission of the limb in a sequence of elevation angles. The fourth SIRIS balloon flight was carried out from Palestine, Texas on September 15-16, 1986 with 9 hours of nighttime data (40 km). High quality data with spectral resolution 0.022 cm(exp -1), were obtained for numerous limb sequences. Fifteen stratospheric species have been identified to date from this flight: five species from the NO(sub y) family (HNO3, NO2, NO, ClONO2, N2O5), plus CO2, O3, H2O, N2O, CH4, CCl3F, CCl2F2, CHF2Cl, CF4, and CCl4. The nighttime values of N2O5, ClONO2, and total odd nitrogen have been measured for the first time, and compared to model results. Analysis of the diurnal variation of N2O5 within the 1984 and 1986 data sets, and of the 1984 ClONO2 measurements, were presented in the literature. The demonstrated ability of SIRIS to measure all the major NO(sub y) species, and therefore to determine the partitioning of the nitrogen family over a continuous diurnal cycle, is a powerful tool in the verification and improvement of photochemical modeling

Saturn's Atmospheric Composition from Observations by the Cassini/Composite Infrared Spectrometer

Thermal emission infrared observation of Saturn s atmosphere are being made by the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) aboard the Cassini spacecraft since its insertion in Saturn s orbit on July 2nd, 2004. The measurements made in both limb and nadir modes of observations consist of infrared spectra in the 10-1400/cm region with a variable spectral resolution of 0.53/cm and 2.8/cm, and exhibit rotational and vibrational spectral features that may be analyzed for retrieval of the thermal structure and constituent distribution of Saturn s atmosphere. In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis of the CIRS infrared observed spectra for retrieval of Saturn s atmospheric composition focusing on the distributions of some selected hydrocarbons, phosphine, ammonia, and possible determination of the isotopic ratios of some species with sufficiently strong isolated spectral features. A comparison of the retrieved constituent distributions with the available data in the literature will be made

The Atmospheres of Titan and Saturn in the Infrared from Cassini: The Interplay Between Observation and Laboratory Studies

The Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) aboard the Cassini spacecraft has been recording spectra of Saturn and Titan since its arrival in the Saturn system in 2004. CIRS, a Fourier transform spectrometer, observes the thermal infrared spectrum of both atmospheres from 10 to 1500/cm with resolutions up to 0.5/cm (Flasar et al. 2004). From these data CIRS provides global coverage of the molecular composition of the stratosphere and troposphere, as well as maps of temperature and winds. From such studies CIRS helps reveal the chemistry and evolutionary history of Saturn and Titan and their relationships to other Solar System bodies. The Cassini mission is continuing until 2017, permitting CIRS to search for atmospheric changes during more than a Saturnian season. By combining with results from Voyager (1980, 1981) the baseline becomes more than one Saturnian year (Coustenis et al. 2011). CIRS spectroscopy of the atmospheres of Saturn and Titan has raised a variety of questions that require new laboratory studies. A complete understanding of the CIRS high-resolution atmospheric spectra cannot be fully achieved without new or improved line positions and intensities for some trace molecules (e.g., Nixon et al. 2009). Isotopic variants of some of the more abundant species often need improved line parameters in order to derive isotopic ratios (e.g., Coustenis et al. 2008 and Fletcher et a!. 2009). Isotopic ratios contain information about the history of an atmosphere if experimental fractionation rates are available (Jennings et al. 2009). Some aerosol and haze features continue to defy identification and will not be explained without better knowledge of how these materials are formed and until we obtain their laboratory spectra. The interaction between CIRS investigations and laboratory research has been productive and has already led to new discoveries

Beable trajectories for revealing quantum control mechanisms

The dynamics induced while controlling quantum systems by optimally shaped laser pulses have often been difficult to understand in detail. A method is presented for quantifying the importance of specific sequences of quantum transitions involved in the control process. The method is based on a ``beable'' formulation of quantum mechanics due to John Bell that rigorously maps the quantum evolution onto an ensemble of stochastic trajectories over a classical state space. Detailed mechanism identification is illustrated with a model 7-level system. A general procedure is presented to extract mechanism information directly from closed-loop control experiments. Application to simulated experimental data for the model system proves robust with up to 25% noise.Comment: Latex, 20 pages, 13 figure

Multifragmentation of charge asymmetric nuclear systems

The multifragmentation of excited spherical nuclear sources with various N/Z ratios and fixed mass number is studied within dynamical and statistical models. The dynamical model treats the multifragmentation process as a final stage of the growth of density fluctuations in unstable expanding nuclear matter. The statistical model makes a choice of the final multifragment configuration according to its statistical weight at a global thermal equilibrium. Similarities and differences in the predictions of the two models on the isotopic composition of the produced fragments are presented and the most sensitive observable characteristics are discussed.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figure