Reggae to Rachmaninoff: How and Why People Participate in Arts and Culture

Provides the results of a telephone survey conducted to help inform those whose aim is to broaden and diversify cultural participation, and promote the role of arts and culture in strengthening American communities

Preparing Laboratory and Real-World EEG Data for Large-Scale Analysis: A Containerized Approach.

Large-scale analysis of EEG and other physiological measures promises new insights into brain processes and more accurate and robust brain-computer interface models. However, the absence of standardized vocabularies for annotating events in a machine understandable manner, the welter of collection-specific data organizations, the difficulty in moving data across processing platforms, and the unavailability of agreed-upon standards for preprocessing have prevented large-scale analyses of EEG. Here we describe a "containerized" approach and freely available tools we have developed to facilitate the process of annotating, packaging, and preprocessing EEG data collections to enable data sharing, archiving, large-scale machine learning/data mining and (meta-)analysis. The EEG Study Schema (ESS) comprises three data "Levels," each with its own XML-document schema and file/folder convention, plus a standardized (PREP) pipeline to move raw (Data Level 1) data to a basic preprocessed state (Data Level 2) suitable for application of a large class of EEG analysis methods. Researchers can ship a study as a single unit and operate on its data using a standardized interface. ESS does not require a central database and provides all the metadata data necessary to execute a wide variety of EEG processing pipelines. The primary focus of ESS is automated in-depth analysis and meta-analysis EEG studies. However, ESS can also encapsulate meta-information for the other modalities such as eye tracking, that are increasingly used in both laboratory and real-world neuroimaging. ESS schema and tools are freely available at www.eegstudy.org and a central catalog of over 850 GB of existing data in ESS format is available at studycatalog.org. These tools and resources are part of a larger effort to enable data sharing at sufficient scale for researchers to engage in truly large-scale EEG analysis and data mining (BigEEG.org)

Simulated X-ray Cluster Temperature Maps

Temperature maps are presented of the 9 largest clusters in the mock catalogues of Muanwong et al. for both the Preheating and Radiative models. The maps show that clusters are not smooth, featureless systems, but contain a variety of substructure which should be observable. The surface brightness contours are generally elliptical and features that are seen include cold clumps, hot spiral features, and cold fronts. Profiles of emission-weighted temperature, surface brightness and emission-weighted pressure across the surface brightness discontinuities seen in one of the bimodal clusters are consistent with the cold front in Abell 2142 observed by Markevitch et al.Comment: Submitted to Monthly Notices Royal Astronomical Societ

The baseline intracluster entropy profile from gravitational structure formation

The radial entropy profile of the hot gas in clusters of galaxies tends to follow a power law in radius outside of the cluster core. Here we present a simple formula giving both the normalization and slope for the power-law entropy profiles of clusters that form in the absence of non-gravitational processes such as radiative cooling and subsequent feedback. It is based on seventy-one clusters drawn from four separate cosmological simulations, two using smoothed-particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and two using adaptive-mesh refinement (AMR), and can be used as a baseline for assessing the impact of non-gravitational processes on the intracluster medium outside of cluster cores. All the simulations produce clusters with self-similar structure in which the normalization of the entropy profile scales linearly with cluster temperature, and these profiles are in excellent agreement outside of 0.2 r_200. Because the observed entropy profiles of clusters do not scale linearly with temperature, our models confirm that non-gravitational processes are necessary to break the self-similarity seen in the simulations. However, the core entropy levels found by the two codes used here significantly differ, with the AMR code producing nearly twice as much entropy at the centre of a cluster.Comment: Accepted to MNRAS, 8 pages, 9 figure

Modelling the properties of galaxies and clusters

This thesis examines various properties of galaxies and clusters within hierarchical models of structure formation. A simple model based on analytical scaling relations is applied to X-ray observations of clusters at low and high redshift, in an attempt to constrain cosmological parameters from their evolutionary properties. It is found that the density parameter, Ωo cannot be constrained using the data alone. Two independent constraints on the slope of the linear power spectrum, infer values of Ωo < 0.7 at 95 per cent confidence. The remainder of this thesis concentrates on the method of cosmological simulation, a self- consistent approach to the modelling of structure in the Universe. A parameter-space study is performed for the simplest model of galaxy formation: the radiative cooling of baryons within the cores of dark matter haloes. It is found that the properties of the galaxies in the simulations are insensitive to the range of parameters studied, with the exception of those that affect the cooling rate of the gas. For modest resolution and reasonable choices of physical parameters, the amount of baryons in galaxy material is around a factor of 2 too high. An investigation is then performed for including the effects of star formation and energy from supemovae (feedback) within cosmological simulations, to reduce the amount of gas that cools. The star formation rate is driven by the minimum density for which the stars formation occurs and, for high star formation efficiencies, is limited by the cooling rate of the gas. A successful model for feedback is found to require the prevention of reheated gas from cooling for a short period of time, as an attempt to mimick the properties of a multiphase medium. Finally, preliminary results are presented for simulations of a galaxy cluster, including the effects of radiative cooling, star formation and feedback. The properties of the cluster are found to vary significantly between models with and without feedback, due to the feedback reducing the star formation rate by reheating gas that cools

Water conservation behaviors in Georgia the effects of place

This piece is an examination of water conservation responses to the 2007 Georgia drought. The research questions for the study are: (1) Are those living in close proximity to the harshest drought conditions more likely to engage in water conservation behaviors than those not in close proximity to the conditions? (2) Are those living in close proximity to the harshest drought conditions more likely to report a greater likelihood of engaging in water conservation behaviors in the future? In other words, it is a question of actual versus intended behaviors. The data for the study come from the 2007 Peach State Poll, a telephone survey of 800 adult Georgia residents, administered from November 19 to December 2, 2007. The respondents were asked if they were very likely, somewhat likely, not at all likely, or already are engaging in one of seven water conservation behaviors. To analyze the data, I used negative binomial regression and ordinary least squares or OLS regression. I found that those who reside in the exceptional, extreme, or severe drought area were engaging in significantly more water conservation behaviors than those not residing in those areas. I also found that there is no effect of place on intended engagement in water conservation behaviors, suggesting that context and crisis has much to do with response. Furthermore, I found that certain demographic factors mediate the effects of place. Specifically, people who are older, female, white, have a modest income, and have a substantial income are likely to engage in water conservation behaviors