Inhomogeneous gas model for electron mobility in high density neon gas

Experimental studies of electron mobilities in Neon as a function of the gas density have persistently shown mobilities up to an order of magnitude smaller than expected and predicted. A previously ignored mechanism (gas in--homogeneity which is negligible in the thermal mobilities for He and other gases) is found to reproduce the observed Neon mobilities accurately and simply at five temperatures with just one variable parameter. Recognizing that a gas is not a homogeneous medium, a variation in local density combined with the quantum multi--scattering theory, shifts the energy and cross section -- which in turn changes the collision probability and finally the mobilities. A lower density where a momentum transfer interaction occurs moves the mobility strongly in the same direction as the anomalous experiments. By going backwards from the observed mobilities, the collision frequency at each temperature and density is made to reproduce the experimental data by looking for the local (as opposed to average) density at which the (rare) momentum transfer interactions occur. These density deviations give a picture of the size and behavior of the wave packets for electron motion which looks very much like the often discussed wave function collapse.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure

Migration and Conflict

The United Nations is ill-equipped to prevent, much less end, intrastate conflicts. Today’s conflicts and an explosive mix of other interrelated causes—including violence, famine, extreme poverty, climate-related disasters and political oppression—have led to a global migration and population-displacement crisis. This article examines the intersection of conflict and migration. It presents the data on migrants, refugees, and internally displaced persons (IDPs) and exposes the rise of extreme nationalist tendencies in the West—in particular, Europe, where several measures to stem the flow of refugees have been imposed. The article concludes with a warning about global poverty and marginalization—a prescription for violent conflict and terrorism. Military power alone will not “defeat” terrorism, what is needed is developmental power but that calls for a reordering of the West’s thinking and priorities

Editor’s Note

The lessons of Katrina are the subject of this special issue. The eighteen articles were assembled and overseen by Michael Cowan, the guest editor. Michael founded Common Good, a civil society action network, after Hurricane Katrina. He is Senior Fellow in the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict and Research Affiliate in the Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion, both in the University of Oxford. He is also a Visiting Research Associate in the Irish School of Ecumenics in Trinity College Dublin

Remarks on the Arab Spring Symposium, Fall 2012 - Prof. Patrick O’Malley

Professor Patrick O\u27Malley discusses his time in Egypt, and on-the-ground relations between the U.S. and Egypt

Editor\u27s Note

Such is the unpredictability of Trump’s streaming executive orders that much of what I write may be irrelevant by the time this issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy goes to press. But the articles in this issue will not lose their pertinence, no matter what the administration does. Indeed, given its predilection for “alternative facts,” they assume a greater relevance and consequential significance. This issue of the journal has three parts. The first part had its origins in a conference on extremism held at the Center for Study of Intractable Conflicts (CRIC), Harris Manchester College Oxford in October 2015; the second comprises four articles on conflicts referred to as “intractable”—Colombia, Syria, and Israel/Palestine—and a reflection on the Holocaust; the third is a stand-alone, one article that addresses the leadership attributes necessary to crack the iron walls of intractability

Editor’s Note

The articles in this issue have their origins in presentations at the “Freedom and Fragmentation” conference at the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict conference at Harris Manchester College Oxford in September 2018

Exploiting anaerobic consortia as new tools for biomass breakdown and sustainable chemistry

Anaerobic microbes work together in complex communities that decompose and recycle carbon biomass throughout the Earth. Compared to microbes that thrive in the presence of oxygen, anaerobic consortia remain understudied and recalcitrant to culture. However, they are a vast, untapped resource for novel enzymes and strains that degrade woody biomass into sugars for value-added chemical production. Here, we performed several enrichment experiments to isolate biomass-degrading consortia from goat feces, and identify microbes that drive the activity and stability of these cultures. Fecal samples were challenged by four types of biomass (alfalfa, bagasse, xylan, and reed canary grass) and two types of antibiotic treatments (chloramphenicol, penicillin-streptomycin) during cultivation to identify important cross-domain partnerships; 10 billion metagenomic reads spread across 402 enrichment samples tracked biological diversity as the cultures converged to a minimal set of ~20 microorganisms that were stable after more than ten culture generations. Nearly 200,000 carbohydrate active enzymes (CAZyme) domains were identified from the fecal samples alone, constituting nearly 25% of the known CAZymes in existence. 724 genomes were assembled for previously uncultured novel microbes within the herbivore rumen. Surprisingly, consortia dominated by anaerobic fungi generated more than twice the amount of methane compared to prokaryotic consortia, suggesting that fungi play a key role in methane release in ruminant herbivores. The most active microbial consortia comprise cross-domain partnerships between anaerobic fungi from the genus Neocallimastix and Piromyces, methanogenic archaea from the genus Methanobrevibacter, and bacteria from the phylum Firmicutes, some of which were enriched nearly 20-fold from the fecal microbiome, produce high yields of methane off-gas, and are capable of cryopreservation and revival. New routes for metabolic cooperation between enriched consortia were also identified, suggesting that an array of bacteria support biomass-degrading microbes by providing essential amino acids while consuming deleterious byproducts. Overall, our analysis points to natural compartmentalization between anaerobes as a means to degrade crude biomass, which can be exploited to harness nature’s microbes for sustainable chemical production