Online fundraising in the human services

This paper examines emerging possibilities for use of the Internet in human service fundraising. Human service managers must compete for limited funds with their counterparts in educational, religious, health, and other nonprofit organizations. There is enormous potential for raising funds over the Internet; yet, this approach to resource development may not be appropriate or effective in some instances for certain human service agencies. The selection of fundraising approach must be consistent with the organizational context in which it is used. This paper provides examples of cases where use of the Internet may prove to be an effective method for human service fundraising. It also examines cases where use of the Internet may not be a good match for the organizational context, whether in terms of ethics or dollars raise

Polarization quadrature measurement of subwavelength diffracting structures

The amplitude and the phase of the diffracted far field depends on polarization when the diffracting structure is comparable to or less than the wavelength. When the far-field amplitude and the phase of one polarization with respect to the orthogonal polarization is measured, small changes in the structure can be measured. To make the far-field polarization measurements, we design a detector that measures the relative polarization amplitude and the phase in quadrature. We predict numerically and verify experimentally the polarization amplitude and the phase for an optical disc and a set of gratings with varying depth. Our results show that this measurement technique is sensitive to small variations in the diffracting structure and that it can be useful in applications such as critical dimension and overlay metrology in microelectronics fabrication

Stabilization of Ab Initio Molecular Dynamics Simulations at Large Time Steps

The Verlet method is still widely used to integrate the equations of motion in ab initio molecular dynamics simulations. We show that the stability limit of the Verlet method may be significantly increased by setting an upper limit on the kinetic energy of each atom with only a small loss in accuracy. The validity of this approach is demonstrated for molten lithium fluoride.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

University-State Child Welfare Training Partnerships: The Challenge of Matching Dollar Contributions

Universities are uniquely positioned to provide the very best training opportunities to public child welfare workers. However, university–child welfare agency training partnerships require a significant commitment of time and resources by university personnel at a time of extensive state cuts to public higher education. This national survey of university partnership administrators found significant differences among university respondents involving length of the contractual relationship, matching dollar requirements, and overall satisfaction with the training partnership

Optical diffraction of focused spots and subwavelength structures

We have developed a numerical diffraction tool for cases in which the incident field is a focused spot and the diffracting structure is a single structure or an aperiodic surface. Our approach uses the integral formulation to solve Maxwell’s equations and is different from previously published methods in its choice of basis function. We compared numerical results with experimental measurements of the far-field intensity for a focused spot incident on an aluminum grating, and the comparison was favorable. Finally, we predict the diffraction behavior of the proposed digital video disk format for the next generation of optical disk. Our analysis shows that the reflected signal for this format has a strong dependence on the polarization of the incident light

Ideal, Defective, and Gold--Promoted Rutile TiO2(110) Surfaces: Structures, Energies, Dynamics, and Thermodynamics from PBE+U

Extensive first principles calculations are carried out to investigate gold-promoted TiO2(110) surfaces in terms of structure optimizations, electronic structure analyses, ab initio thermodynamics calculations of surface phase diagrams, and ab initio molecular dynamics simulations. All computations rely on density functional theory in the generalized gradient approximation (PBE) and account for on-site Coulomb interactions via inclusion of a Hubbard correction, PBE+U, where U is computed from linear response theory. This approach is validated by investigating the interaction between TiO2(110) surfaces and typical probe species (H, H2O, CO). Relaxed structures and binding energies are compared to both data from the literature and plain PBE results. The main focus of the study is on the properties of gold-promoted titania surfaces and their interactions with CO. Both PBE+U and PBE optimized structures of Au adatoms adsorbed on stoichiometric and reduced TiO2 surfaces are computed, along with their electronic structure. The charge rearrangement induced by the adsorbates at the metal/oxide contact are also analyzed and discussed. By performing PBE+U ab initio molecular dynamics simulations, it is demonstrated that the diffusion of Au adatoms on the stoichiometric surface is highly anisotropic. The metal atoms migrate either along the top of the bridging oxygen rows, or around the area between these rows, from one bridging position to the next along the [001] direction. Approximate ab initio thermodynamics predicts that under O-rich conditions, structures obtained by substituting a Ti5c atom with an Au atom are thermodynamically stable over a wide range of temperatures and pressures.Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Quantum Fluctuations Driven Orientational Disordering: A Finite-Size Scaling Study

The orientational ordering transition is investigated in the quantum generalization of the anisotropic-planar-rotor model in the low temperature regime. The phase diagram of the model is first analyzed within the mean-field approximation. This predicts at $T=0$ a phase transition from the ordered to the disordered state when the strength of quantum fluctuations, characterized by the rotational constant $\Theta$, exceeds a critical value $\Theta_{\rm c}^{MF}$. As a function of temperature, mean-field theory predicts a range of values of $\Theta$ where the system develops long-range order upon cooling, but enters again into a disordered state at sufficiently low temperatures (reentrance). The model is further studied by means of path integral Monte Carlo simulations in combination with finite-size scaling techniques, concentrating on the region of parameter space where reentrance is predicted to occur. The phase diagram determined from the simulations does not seem to exhibit reentrant behavior; at intermediate temperatures a pronounced increase of short-range order is observed rather than a genuine long-range order.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figures, RevTe