The Evolution, Cost, and Operation of the Private Food Assistance Network

Delivery of assistance to the poor has changed drastically in the past 20 years. While the availability of cash assistance has decreased, the availability of food assistance has widened. The most substantial change in assistance available to the poor may have been the emergence of food pantries as a source of free food to prepare at home. Large numbers of Americans rely on food pantries, but many policymakers, academics, and participants in the private food assistance network have limited understanding of the network. This paper aims to fill that gap by examining how the network evolved, how much it costs, and how it operates. We provide a detailed review of domestic food policy since the 1930s, show how agricultural and welfare policies contributed to developing a supply of free food available to the needy, and explain how private efforts, such as the creation of Second Harvest, resulted in a rise in food pantries. Our research also highlights policy changes in the Food Stamp program that may have contributed to the tremendous demand for free food in the 1980s. Using secondary data, we estimate that the private food assistance network costs about $2.3 billion annually, making it about one-twelfth the size of the Food Stamp program. We show that the benefits available to the needy from the network differ among geographic areas. We highlight the heterogeneity of organizations in the network by examining two food banks, the Connecticut Food Bank and the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank. We conclude that the private food assistance network provides the needy with valuable resources and offer recommendations for making the public food safety net more effective.

X-ray Spectroscopy of QSOs with Broad Ultraviolet Absorption Lines

For the population of QSOs with broad ultraviolet absorption lines, we are just beginning to accumulate X-ray observations with enough counts for spectral analysis at CCD resolution. From a sample of eight QSOs [including four Broad Absorption Line (BAL) QSOs and three mini-BAL QSOs] with ASCA or Chandra spectra with more than 200 counts, general patterns are emerging. Their power-law X-ray continua are typical of normal QSOs with Gamma~2.0, and the signatures of a significant column density [N_H~(0.1-4)x10^{23} cm^{-2}] of intrinsic, absorbing gas are clear. Correcting the X-ray spectra for intrinsic absorption recovers a normal ultraviolet-to-X-ray flux ratio, indicating that the spectral energy distributions of this population are not inherently anomalous. In addition, a large fraction of our sample shows significant evidence for complexity in the absorption. The subset of BAL QSOs with broad MgII absorption apparently suffers from Compton-thick absorption completely obscuring the direct continuum in the 2-10 keV X-ray band, complicating any measurement of their intrinsic X-ray spectral shapes.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, uses AASTeX. Accepted to the Astrophysical Journa

Follow-Up Chandra Observations of Three Candidate Tidal Disruption Events

Large-amplitude, high-luminosity soft X-ray flares were detected by the ROSAT All-Sky Survey in several galaxies with no evidence of Seyfert activity in their ground-based optical spectra. These flares had the properties predicted for a tidal disruption of a star by a central supermassive black hole. We report Chandra observations of three of these galaxies taken a decade after their flares that reveal weak nuclear X-ray sources that are from 240 to 6000 times fainter than their luminosities at peak, supporting the theory that these were special events and not ongoing active galactic nucleus (AGN) variability. The decline of RX J1624.9+7554 by a factor of 6000 is consistent with the (t-t_D)^(-5/3) decay predicted for the fall-back phase of a tidal disruption event, but only if ROSAT was lucky enough to catch the event exactly at its peak in 1990 October. RX J1242.6-1119A has declined by a factor of 240, also consistent with (t-t_D)^(-5/3). In the H II galaxy NGC 5905 we find only resolved, soft X-ray emission that is undoubtedly associated with starburst activity. When accounting for the starburst component, the ROSAT observations of NGC 5905, as well as the Chandra upper limit on its nuclear flux, are consistent with a (t-t_D)^(-5/3) decay by at least a factor of 1000. Although we found weak Seyfert~2 emission lines in Hubble Space Telescope spectra of NGC 5905, indicating that a low-luminosity AGN was present prior to the X-ray flare, we favor a tidal disruption explanation for the flare itself.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, to appear in ApJ April 1 200

ASSESSING THE IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON THE HYDROLOGY OF THE INDRAWATI RIVER BASIN, NEPAL

Abstract. This study details climate change assessment of the hydrological regime of Indrawati basin of Nepal. The study uses Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model to delineate, discretize and parameterize the Indrawati basin to compute model's input parameters. The model was then run for 1990–2014 to simulate the discharge at the outlet (Dholalghat). The coefficient of determination R2 and Nash-Sutcliffe (ENS) were used to evaluate model calibration and validation. The results found were satisfactory for the gauging station R2 = 0.951 and ENS = 0.901 for calibration and R2 = 0.937 and. ENS = 0.906 for validation. The calibrated hydrological model was run for the future climate change scenario using the RegCM4-LMDZ4 data and the relative changes with the baseline scenarios were analyzed. The comparison suggests that the historical trend of flow is decreasing at the rate of 0.55 m3/s per year. According to RegCM4-LMDZ4 simulations, the trend is going to continue but at a flatter rate. The decreasing trend is observed to be very less. The characteristic peak flow month in the historical scenario is August but the RegCM4-LMDZ4 led simulated flows suggest a shift in monthly peak to October suggesting decrease in monsoon flows and a subsequent significant increase in flows from October to January

RX J0911+05: A Massive Cluster Lens at z=0.769

We report the detection of a massive high-redshift cluster of galaxies near the quadruple quasar RX J0911+05, using the LRIS instrument on the Keck-II telescope. The cluster is found to have a mean redshift of =0.7689+/-0.002 and a velocity dispersion of sigma=836{+180-200} km/s, based on redshift measurements for 24 member galaxies. This massive high-redshift cluster is the origin of the unusually large external shear required by lensing models of the quadruple quasar system. We predict the expected time delay depending on the exact contribution of the cluster. A measurement of the time delay and further deep lensing and X-ray observations will unravel useful properties of this serendipitously discovered high-redshift cluster, and may put interesting cosmological constraints on H0.Comment: Submitted to ApJL, 7 pages, 5 figure

ANOMALY DETECTION OF EVENTS IN CROWDED ENVIRONMENT AND STUDY OF VARIOUS BACKGROUND SUBTRACTION METHODS

Anomalous behavior detection and localization in videos of the crowded area that is specific from a dominant pattern are obtained. Appearance and motion information are taken into account to robustly identify different kinds of an anomaly considering a wide range of scenes. Our concept based on a histogram of oriented gradients and Markov random field easily captures varying dynamic of the crowded environment.Histogram of oriented gradients along with well-known Markov random field will effectively recognize and characterizes each frame of each scene. Anomaly detection using artificial neural network consist both appearance and motion features which extract within spatio temporal domain of moving pixels that ensures robustness to local noise and thus increases accuracy in detection of a local anomaly with low computational cost.To extract a region of interest we have to subtract background. Background subtraction is done by various methods like Weighted moving mean, Gaussian mixture model, Kernel density estimation.