Architectural design principles for extra-terrestrial habitats

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Carbon Free Boston: Transportation Technical Report

Part of a series of reports that includes: Carbon Free Boston: Summary Report; Carbon Free Boston: Social Equity Report; Carbon Free Boston: Technical Summary; Carbon Free Boston: Buildings Technical Report; Carbon Free Boston: Waste Technical Report; Carbon Free Boston: Energy Technical Report; Carbon Free Boston: Offsets Technical ReportOVERVIEW: Transportation connects Boston’s workers, residents and tourists to their livelihoods, health care, education, recreation, culture, and other aspects of life quality. In cities, transit access is a critical factor determining upward mobility. Yet many urban transportation systems, including Boston’s, underserve some populations along one or more of those dimensions. Boston has the opportunity and means to expand mobility access to all residents, and at the same time reduce GHG emissions from transportation. This requires the transformation of the automobile-centric system that is fueled predominantly by gasoline and diesel fuel. The near elimination of fossil fuels—combined with more transit, walking, and biking—will curtail air pollution and crashes, and dramatically reduce the public health impact of transportation. The City embarks on this transition from a position of strength. Boston is consistently ranked as one of the most walkable and bikeable cities in the nation, and one in three commuters already take public transportation. There are three general strategies to reaching a carbon-neutral transportation system: • Shift trips out of automobiles to transit, biking, and walking;1 • Reduce automobile trips via land use planning that encourages denser development and affordable housing in transit-rich neighborhoods; • Shift most automobiles, trucks, buses, and trains to zero-GHG electricity. Even with Boston’s strong transit foundation, a carbon-neutral transportation system requires a wholesale change in Boston’s transportation culture. Success depends on the intelligent adoption of new technologies, influencing behavior with strong, equitable, and clearly articulated planning and investment, and effective collaboration with state and regional partners.Published versio

Robust Detection of Dynamic Community Structure in Networks

We describe techniques for the robust detection of community structure in some classes of time-dependent networks. Specifically, we consider the use of statistical null models for facilitating the principled identification of structural modules in semi-decomposable systems. Null models play an important role both in the optimization of quality functions such as modularity and in the subsequent assessment of the statistical validity of identified community structure. We examine the sensitivity of such methods to model parameters and show how comparisons to null models can help identify system scales. By considering a large number of optimizations, we quantify the variance of network diagnostics over optimizations (`optimization variance') and over randomizations of network structure (`randomization variance'). Because the modularity quality function typically has a large number of nearly-degenerate local optima for networks constructed using real data, we develop a method to construct representative partitions that uses a null model to correct for statistical noise in sets of partitions. To illustrate our results, we employ ensembles of time-dependent networks extracted from both nonlinear oscillators and empirical neuroscience data.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figure

Multimode bolometer development for the PIXIE instrument

The Primordial Inflation Explorer (PIXIE) is an Explorer-class mission concept designed to measure the polarization and absolute intensity of the cosmic microwave background. In the following, we report on the design, fabrication, and performance of the multimode polarization-sensitive bolometers for PIXIE, which are based on silicon thermistors. In particular we focus on several recent advances in the detector design, including the implementation of a scheme to greatly raise the frequencies of the internal vibrational modes of the large-area, low-mass optical absorber structure consisting of a grid of micromachined, ion-implanted silicon wires. With $\sim30$ times the absorbing area of the spider-web bolometers used by Planck, the tensioning scheme enables the PIXIE bolometers to be robust in the vibrational and acoustic environment at launch of the space mission. More generally, it could be used to reduce microphonic sensitivity in other types of low temperature detectors. We also report on the performance of the PIXIE bolometers in a dark cryogenic environment.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Layer-Resolved Ultrafast XUV Measurement of Hole Transport in a Ni-TiO2-Si Photoanode

Metal-oxide-semiconductor junctions are central to most electronic and optoelectronic devices. Here, the element-specificity of broadband extreme ultraviolet (XUV) ultrafast pulses is used to measure the charge transport and recombination kinetics in each layer of a Ni-TiO2-Si junction. After photoexcitation of silicon, holes are inferred to transport from Si to Ni ballistically in ~100 fs, resulting in spectral shifts in the Ni M2,3 XUV edge that are characteristic of holes and the absence of holes initially in TiO2. Meanwhile, the electrons are observed to remain on Si. After picoseconds, the transient hole population on Ni is observed to back-diffuse through the TiO2, shifting the Ti spectrum to higher oxidation state, followed by electron-hole recombination at the Si-TiO2 interface and in the Si bulk. Electrical properties, such as the hole diffusion constant in TiO2 and the initial hole mobility in Si, are fit from these transient spectra and match well with values reported previously

Music therapy for end-of-life care: An updated systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Music therapy during palliative and end-of-life care is well established and positive benefits for patients have been reported. AIM: Assess the effectiveness of music therapy versus standard care alone or standard care in combination with other therapies for improving psychological, physiological and social outcomes among adult patients in any palliative care setting. DATA SOURCES: In order to update an existing Cochrane systematic review, we searched MEDLINE, CINAHL, EMBASE, PsycINFO, CENTRAL, ClinicalTrials.gov register and Current Controlled Trials register to identify randomised or quasi-randomised controlled trials published between 2009 and April 2015. Nine electronic music therapy journals were searched from 2009 until April 2015, along with reference lists and contact was made with key experts in music therapy. Only studies published in English were eligible for inclusion. Two reviewers independently screened titles, abstracts, assessed relevant studies for eligibility, extracted data and judged risk of bias for included studies. Disagreements were resolved through discussion with a third reviewer. Data were synthesised in Revman using the random effects model. Heterogeneity was assessed using I(2). RESULTS: Three studies were included in the review. Findings suggest that music therapy may be effective for helping to reduce pain in palliative care patients (standard mean deviation = -0.42, 95% confidence interval = -0.68 to -0.17, p = 0.001). CONCLUSION: Available evidence did not support the use of music therapy to improve overall quality of life in palliative care. While this review suggests that music therapy may be effective for reducing pain, this is based on studies with a high risk of bias. Further high-quality research is required

Searching for keV Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter with X-ray Microcalorimeter Sounding Rockets

High-resolution X-ray spectrometers onboard suborbital sounding rockets can search for dark matter candidates that produce X-ray lines, such as decaying keV-scale sterile neutrinos. Even with exposure times and effective areas far smaller than XMM-Newton and Chandra observations, high-resolution, wide field-of-view observations with sounding rockets have competitive sensitivity to decaying sterile neutrinos. We analyze a subset of the 2011 observation by the X-ray Quantum Calorimeter instrument centered on Galactic coordinates l = 165, b = -5 with an effective exposure of 106 seconds, obtaining a limit on the sterile neutrino mixing angle of sin^2(2 theta) < 7.2e-10 at 95% CL for a 7 keV neutrino. Better sensitivity at the level of sin^2(2 theta) ~ 2.1e-11 at 95\% CL for a 7 keV neutrino is achievable with future 300-second observations of the galactic center by the Micro-X instrument, providing a definitive test of the sterile neutrino interpretation of the reported 3.56 keV excess from galaxy clusters.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures, submitted to Ap