The American press, public, and the reaction to the outbreak of the First World War

The American popular reaction to the outbreak of the First World War in Europe can be overlooked in the historical discussion with its rush to study more elite opinion. What is usually assumed is that in general the American population was shocked and horrified in 1914, and from this initial reaction it moved to embrace neutrality. It is interesting that this historical discussion usually ignores the modern political science debate on the same subject which argues that the American reaction to war in conflict is not usually negative, especially at the beginning. Using a detailed examination of American newspapers and magazines from twelve of the United States’ largest cities this article examines the reaction of the press and public from the moment shooting started in august 1914 through the fascinating Congressional elections that November. The picture that emerges is twofold. The immediate reaction to the war was one of economic satisfaction. There was a strong consensus in the press that the war was, first and foremost, a golden trading opportunity that would not only require Europeans to purchase large amounts of American goods, it would allow American companies to supplant European companies around the world, particularly in Latin America. Also, there was considerable discussion about American entry into the war, with significant sector believing such intervention was not only possible, it might be necessary. Finally, in the 1914 election, whilst the Democrats tried to nationalize the campaign by turning the vote into an endorsement of Wilson’s War policy, the American population reacted with indifference. There was little sign that the war made any material difference in how the American people voted and afterwards the press, no matter what its partisan affiliation, endorsed this view

Using Swift observations of prompt and afterglow emission to classify GRBs

We present an analysis of early BAT and XRT data for 107 gamma--ray bursts (GRBs) observed by the Swift satellite. We use these data to examine the behaviour of the X-ray light curve and propose a classification scheme for GRBs based on this behaviour. As found for previous smaller samples, the earliest X-ray light curve can be well described by an exponential which relaxes into a power law, often with flares superimposed. The later emission is well fit using a similar functional form and we find that these two functions provide a good description of the entire X-ray light curve. For the prompt emission, the transition time between the exponential and the power law gives a well-defined timescale, T_p, for the burst duration. We use T_p, the spectral index of the prompt emission, beta_p, and the prompt power law decay index, alpha_p to define four classes of burst: short, slow, fast and soft. Bursts with slowly declining emission have spectral and temporal properties similar to the short bursts despite having longer durations. Some of these GRBs may therefore arise from similar progenitors including several types of binary system. Short bursts tend to decline more gradually than longer duration bursts and hence emit a significant fraction of their total energy at times greater than T_p. This may be due to differences in the environment or the progenitor for long, fast bursts.Comment: 10 pages. 8 figures. Proceedings of the Royal Society Discussion meeting on Gamma-ray Bursts, September 18-20, 2006. To appear in Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc.

Nanocrystalline semiconductors: synthesis, properties, and perspectives

The preparation of hollow particles of ZnO by calcination of hydrozincite coated poly(styrene) beads is reported. Synthetic studies have been performed on such polymer/inorganic composite precursors in order to establish the optimum conditions for the preparation of the ZnO particles. The morphological properties of the powders were characterised by optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. The micrometric ZnO particles show morphological characteristics related to the template used in their preparation

New model for vortex-induced vibration of catenary riser

This paper presents a new theoretical model capable of predicting the vortex-induced vibration response of a steel catenary riser subject to a steady uniform current. The equations governing riser in-plane/out-ofplane (cross-flow/in-line) motion are based on a pinned beam-cable model accounting for overall effects of bending, extensibility, sag, inclination and structural nonlinearities. The empirically hydrodynamic model is based on nonlinear wake oscillators describing the fluctuating lift/drag forces. Depending on the potentially vortex-induced modes and system parameters, a reduced-order fluid-structure interaction model is derived which entails a significantly reduced computational time effort. Parametric results reveal maximum response amplitudes of risers, along with the occurrence of uni-modal lock-in phenomenon

Florida's West Coast inlets: shoreline effects and recommended action

This report responds to the 1986 Beaches Bill which, in recognition of the potential deleterious impact on Florida's beaches of inlets modified for navigation, mandated a study of those inlets with identification of recommended action to reduce the impacts. This report addresses west Coast inlets; East Coast inlets are the subject of a companion report. There are 37 inlets along that portion of Florida's West Coast commencing from Pensacola Bay Entrance to Caxambas Pass at the south end of Marco Island. Compared to those on the East Coast, most West Coast inlets have not had the deleterious effects on the adjacent beaches, yet all modified inlets without proper management have the potential of impacting unfavorably on the adjacent shorelines. Moreover, at present there is interest in opening three West Coast entrances which either have been open in the past (Midnight Pass) or which have opened occasionally (Navarre Pass and Entrance to Phillips Lake). A review of inlets in their natural condition demonstrates the presence of a shallow broad outer bar across which the longshore transport Occurs. These shallow and shifting bar features were unsuitable for navigation which in many cases has led to the deepening of the channels and fixing with one or two jetty structures. Inlets in this modified state along with inappropriate maintenance practices have the potential of placing great ero$ional stress along the adjacent beaches. Moreover. channel dredging can reduce wave sheltering of the shoreline by ebb tidal shoals and alter the equilibrium of the affected shoreline segments. The ultimate in poor sand management practice is the placement of good quality beach sand in water depths too great for the sand to reenter the longshore system under natural forces; depths of 12 ft. or less are considered appropriate for Florida in order to maintain the sand in the system. With the interference of the nearshore sediment transport processes by inlets modified for navigation, if the adjacent beaches are to be stabilized there must be an active monitoring program with commitment to placement of dredged material of beach quality on shoreline segments of documented need. Several East Coast inlets have such transfer facilities; however. the quantities of sand transferred should be increased. Although an evolution and improvement in the technical capability to manage sand resources in the vicinity of inlets is expected, an adequate capability exists today and a concerted program should be made to commence a scheduled implementation of this capability at those entrances causing greatest erosional stress on the adjacent shorelines. A brief summary review for each of the 37 West Coast inlets is presented including: a scaled aerial photograph, brief historical information, several items related to sediment losses at each inlet and special characteristics relevant to State responsibilities. For each inlet, where appropriate, the above infor~tion is utilized to develop a recommenced action. (PDF has 101 pages.

Locally Estimating Core Numbers

Graphs are a powerful way to model interactions and relationships in data from a wide variety of application domains. In this setting, entities represented by vertices at the "center" of the graph are often more important than those associated with vertices on the "fringes". For example, central nodes tend to be more critical in the spread of information or disease and play an important role in clustering/community formation. Identifying such "core" vertices has recently received additional attention in the context of {\em network experiments}, which analyze the response when a random subset of vertices are exposed to a treatment (e.g. inoculation, free product samples, etc). Specifically, the likelihood of having many central vertices in any exposure subset can have a significant impact on the experiment. We focus on using $k$-cores and core numbers to measure the extent to which a vertex is central in a graph. Existing algorithms for computing the core number of a vertex require the entire graph as input, an unrealistic scenario in many real world applications. Moreover, in the context of network experiments, the subgraph induced by the treated vertices is only known in a probabilistic sense. We introduce a new method for estimating the core number based only on the properties of the graph within a region of radius $\delta$ around the vertex, and prove an asymptotic error bound of our estimator on random graphs. Further, we empirically validate the accuracy of our estimator for small values of $\delta$ on a representative corpus of real data sets. Finally, we evaluate the impact of improved local estimation on an open problem in network experimentation posed by Ugander et al.Comment: Main paper body is identical to previous version (ICDM version). Appendix with additional data sets and enlarged figures has been added to the en