Measurements and Mitigation of Scattered Light Noise in LIGO

The Advanced LIGO (aLIGO) detectors use 1064 nm lasers to measure the tiny fluctuations in spacetime that occur when gravitational waves pass through the earth. LIGO makes use of advanced coating methods and materials to limit the amount of light that scatters from the main beam, but some amount of light does scatter. This stray light can interact with surfaces inside the interferometer that are not seismically isolated and then recombine with the main beam, introducing excess noise into the gravitational wave channel. This thesis reviews the methods for modeling scattered light with ray tracing software and analytical models, for measuring scattered light with driven measurements of the vacuum enclosure, and for mitigating scattered light with baffles and changes to interferometer controls. It also details the process for finding correlations with auxiliary sensors in order to locate the sources of scattered light noise. The results of this work are improved sensitivity of the LIGO detectors in the frequency band from 20 Hz up to 200 Hz

Whatever floats your vote: understanding voter support for public port infrastructure investments

Ports are a cornerstone of the local, state, and national economy, especially for coastal cities. However, ports face growing economic challenges that require infrastructure financing, and a relevant avenue of securing funds is through government assistance via bond issues. We examine voter support for the public financing of port infrastructure investments using a 2016 referendum in Rhode Island. Through our multiple regression voting model, we find strong evidence that public spending on ports in Rhode Island was more of a bipartisan issue compared to other public financing efforts on the ballot. Additionally, neighborhoods with a larger minority presence and those with higher median per capita income were more likely to support port development. In contrast, areas with a higher homeowner population and those communities farther from ports were less likely to support port spending. As a key novelty to our paper, we use our voting model results to forecast how a hypothetical port infrastructure bond might fare in other states, and find that regardless of socioeconomic and political differences, all coastal states in the US would be expected to pass a port referendum

Banner News

https://openspace.dmacc.edu/banner_news/1070/thumbnail.jp

Banner News

https://openspace.dmacc.edu/banner_news/1069/thumbnail.jp

Personalized rTMS for Depression: A Review

Personalized treatments are gaining momentum across all fields of medicine. Precision medicine can be applied to neuromodulatory techniques, where focused brain stimulation treatments such as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) are used to modulate brain circuits and alleviate clinical symptoms. rTMS is well-tolerated and clinically effective for treatment-resistant depression (TRD) and other neuropsychiatric disorders. However, despite its wide stimulation parameter space (location, angle, pattern, frequency, and intensity can be adjusted), rTMS is currently applied in a one-size-fits-all manner, potentially contributing to its suboptimal clinical response (~50%). In this review, we examine components of rTMS that can be optimized to account for inter-individual variability in neural function and anatomy. We discuss current treatment options for TRD, the neural mechanisms thought to underlie treatment, differences in FDA-cleared devices, targeting strategies, stimulation parameter selection, and adaptive closed-loop rTMS to improve treatment outcomes. We suggest that better understanding of the wide and modifiable parameter space of rTMS will greatly improve clinical outcome

Eleven Show Card

Show card for Eleven. May 6 - August 20, 2006.https://digitalcommons.udallas.edu/eleven_05-06/1000/thumbnail.jp

Concert recording 2014-03-06

[Track 01]. Canzon septimi toni no. 2 / Giovanni Gabrieli -- [Track 02]. Consort for ten winds. Jeux ; [Track 03]. Aubade ; [Track 04]. Sautereau / Robert Spittal -- [Track 05]. Serenade in D minor. Moderato ; [Track 06]. Andante con moto ; [Track 07]. Finale. Allegro molto / Antonin Dvorak