Understanding the impact of volunteering on pro-environmental behavioural change

This article examines whether there is an association between engaging in environmental volunteering activities and pro-environmental behavioural change. Utilising self-reported surveys, the article explores the potential impact that environmental volunteering has on people's pro-environmental behaviours over time, using The Conservation Volunteers' two volunteering programmes – Green Gyms® and Action Teams – as a comparative case study. The findings show a positive association between environmental volunteering activities and a person's self-reported pro-environmental behaviours over time. Further, volunteers presented improved impact across almost all of the eight pro-environmental behaviours measured, with differences observed between the two volunteering programmes as well as sociodemographic groupings

Blunting the Spike: the CV Minimum Period

The standard picture of CV secular evolution predicts a spike in the CV distribution near the observed short-period cutoff P_0 ~ 78 min, which is not observed. We show that an intrinsic spread in minimum (`bounce') periods P_b resulting from a genuine difference in some parameter controlling the evolution can remove the spike without smearing the sharpness of the cutoff. The most probable second parameter is different admixtures of magnetic stellar wind braking (at up to 5 times the GR rate) in a small tail of systems, perhaps implying that the donor magnetic field strength at formation is a second parameter specifying CV evolution. We suggest that magnetic braking resumes below the gap with a wide range, being well below the GR rate in most CVs, but significantly above it in a small tail.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures; accepted for publication in MNRA

Local Climatological Data : Urbana, 1889-1970

Urbana has a temperate continental climate with characteristics reflecting its geographical position in Illinois. Urbana's climate is representative of the conditions found in East Central Illinois, which is primarily an area of climatic transition between the northern and southern sectors of the state.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewedOpenOpe

Black Widow Pulsars: the Price of Promiscuity

The incidence of evaporating 'black widow' pulsars (BWPs) among all millisecond pulsars (MSPs) is far higher in globular clusters than in the field. This implies a special formation mechanism for them in clusters. Cluster MSPs in wide binaries with WD companions exchange them for turnoff-mass stars. These new companions eventually overflow their Roche lobes because of encounters and tides. The millisecond pulsars eject the overflowing gas from the binary, giving mass loss on the binary evolution timescale. The systems are only observable as BWPs at epochs where this evolution is slow, making the mass loss transparent and the lifetime long. This explains why observed BWPs have low-mass companions. We suggest that at least some field BWPs were ejected from globular clusters or entered the field population when the cluster itself was disrupted.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, MNRAS in pres

Community-based participatory irrigation management at local government level in Ghana

Ghana has attempted to decentralise the management of irrigation schemes to communities at local government level. This study examines the existing local participatory management structures and the principles of the Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM) strategy designed to promote sustainable management of irrigation schemes in Ghana. Two community-based irrigation projects, Bontanga and Golinga in the Northern Region of Ghana were selected for the research. The study demonstrated that farmers’ participation was minimal and limited to the discussion of irrigation service charges at the expense of other issues related to the sustainability of the projects/schemes. The study also established that there was less participation of women, and more than half of all the crop farmers on the two irrigation projects were reluctant to assume additional responsibilities without remuneration. The study therefore concluded that the sustainability of the PIM strategy depends on the adoption of an integrated management approach involving all stakeholders including local government, with appropriate incentives

Discovery Prospects for NMSSM Higgs Bosons at the High-Energy Large Hadron Collider

We investigate the discovery prospects for NMSSM Higgs bosons during the 13~TeV run of the LHC. While one of the neutral Higgs bosons is demanded to have a mass around 125~GeV and Standard Model (SM)-like properties, there can be substantially lighter, nearby or heavier Higgs bosons, that have not been excluded yet by LEP, Tevatron or the 8~TeV run of the LHC. The challenge consists in discovering the whole NMSSM Higgs mass spectrum. We present the rates for production and subsequent decay of the neutral NMSSM Higgs bosons in the most promising final states and discuss their possible discovery. The prospects for pinning down the Higgs sector of the Natural NMSSM will be analysed taking into account alternative search channels. We give a series of benchmark scenarios compatible with the experimental constraints, that feature Higgs-to-Higgs decays and entail (exotic) signatures with multi-fermion and/or multi-photon final states. These decay chains furthermore give access to the trilinear Higgs self-couplings. We briefly discuss the possibility of exploiting coupling sum rules in case not all the NMSSM Higgs bosons are discovered

Dielectric molding apparatus Patent

Dielectric apparatus for heating, fusing, and hardening of organic matrix to form plastic material into shaped produc

A Firm Upper Limit to the Radius of the Neutron Star in SAX J1808.4-3658

We show that observations of X-ray pulsing from SAX J1808.4-3658 place a firm upper limit of 13.8 m^{1/3} km on the radius of the neutron star, where m is its mass in solar units. The limit is independent of distance or assumptions about the magnetospheric geometry, and could be significantly tightened by observations of the pulsations in the near future. We discuss the implications for the equation of state and the possible neutron star mass.Comment: (7 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in ApJ Letters

Accurate Internal Proper Motions of Globular Clusters

We have undertaken a long term program to measure high precision proper motions of nearby Galactic globular cluster (GC) stars using multi-epoch observations with the WFPC2 and the ACS cameras on-board the Hubble Space Telescope. The proper motions are used to study the internal cluster kinematics, and to obtain accurate cluster distances. In this paper, we also show how the proper motions of the field stars projected in the direction of the studied clusters can be used to set constraints on the Galaxy kinematics.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, A.S.P. Conf. Ser., in press in Vol. 296, 200