Is the Internet a Viable Threat to Representative Democracy?

The Internet, despite its relatively recent advent, is critical to millions of Americans’ way of life. Although the Internet arguably opens new opportunities for citizens to become more directly involved in their government, some scholars fear this direct involvement poses a risk to one of the Constitution’s most precious ideals: representative democracy. This iBrief explores whether the constitutional notion of representation is vulnerable to the Internet’s capacity to open new vistas for a more direct democracy by analyzing statistics and theories about why voters in the United States do or do not vote and by examining the inherent qualities of the Internet itself. This iBrief concludes that the Constitution will adapt to the Internet and the Internet to the Constitution, such that even if there are advances in direct democracy, representative democracy will not be unduly threatened

AdS Solutions of 2D Type 0A

We present a two-parameter family of AdS solutions to the two-dimensional type 0A effective action.Comment: 9 page

Space Detectors for Gamma Rays (100 MeV - 100 GeV): from EGRET to Fermi LAT

The design of spaceborne high-energy (E>100 MeV) gamma-ray detectors depends on two principal factors: (1) the basic physics of detecting and measuring the properties of the gamma rays; and (2) the constraints of operating such a detector in space for an extended period. Improvements in technology have enabled major advances in detector performance, as illustrated by two successful instruments, EGRET on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory and LAT on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Comptes Rendus Physiqu

Gamma ray pulsars: Models and observations

The two known gamma ray pulsars, the Crab and Vela, were used as guides for the development of models of high-energy radiation from spinning neutron stars. Two general classes of models were developed: those with the gamma radiation originating in the pulsar magnetosphere far from the neutron star surface (outer gap models) and those with the gamma radiation coming from above the polar cap (polar cap models). The goal is to indicate how EGRET can contribute to understanding gamma-ray pulsars, and especially how it can help distinguish between models for emission

Keck Deep Fields. I. Observations, Reductions, and the Selection of Faint Star-Forming Galaxies at Redshifts z~4, 3, and 2

We introduce a very deep, R_lim~27, multicolor imaging survey of very faint star-forming galaxies at z~4, z~3, z~2.2, and z~1.7. This survey, carried out on the Keck I telescope, uses the very same UGRI filter system that is employed by the Steidel team to select galaxies at these redshifts, and thus allows us to construct identically-selected, but much fainter, samples. However, our survey reaches ~1.5 mag deeper than the work of Steidel and his group, letting us probe substantially below the characteristic luminosity L* and thus study the properties and redshift evolution of the faint component of the high-z galaxy population. The survey covers 169 square arcminutes in three spatially independent patches on the sky and -- to R<~27 -- contains 427 GRI-selected z~4 LBGs, 1481 UGR-selected z~3 LBGs, 2417 UGR-selected z~2.2 star-forming galaxies, and 2043 UGR-selected z~1.7 star-forming galaxies. In this paper, the first in a series, we introduce the survey, describe our observing and data reduction strategies, and outline the selection of our z~4, z~3, z~2.2, and z~1.7 samples.Comment: To appear in Ap

Analysis of flow and aerodynamic noise behaviour of a simplified high-speed train bogie inside the bogie cavity

Aerodynamic noise becomes significant for high-speed trains but its prediction in an industrial context is difficult. The flow and aerodynamic noise behaviour of a simplified high-speed train bogie at scale 1:10 are studied here through numerical simulations. The bogie is situated in the bogie cavity and cases without and with a fairing are considered, allowing the shielding effect of the bogie fairing on sound generation and radiation to be investigated. A two-stage hybrid method combining computational fluid dynamics and acoustic analogy is applied. The near-field unsteady flow is obtained by solving the unsteady three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations numerically using delayed detached-eddy simulation and the data are utilized to predict far-field noise signals based on the Ffowcs Williams-Hawkings acoustic analogy. Results show that when the bogie is located inside the bogie cavity, the shear layer developed from the cavity leading edge interacts strongly with the flow separated from the bogie upstream components and the cavity wall. Therefore, a highly turbulent flow is generated within the bogie cavity due to flow impingement and recirculation within the cavity. It is found that, for noise calculated from the bogie surface sources of both cases, the directivity exhibits a lateral dipole pattern with dominant radiation in the axial direction. Compared with the no fairing case, the noise level is about 1 dB higher in the bogie symmetry plane along the axle mid-span for the fairing case where a stronger flow interaction is produced around the bogie central region. Moreover, the noise radiated to the trackside is predicted based on a permeable integration surface close to the bogie and parallel to the carbody side wall. The results show that the bogie fairing is effective in reducing the noise levels in most of the frequency range due to its shielding effect and a noise reduction around 3 dB is achieved for the current model case by mounting a fairing in the bogie area