ECONOMIC INSIGHTS INTO THE SITING PROBLEM: AN APPLICATION OF THE EXPECTED UTILITY MODEL

Despite the generally recognized need for facilities such as power plants, landfills, prisons, and medical laboratories, finding host sites has become extremely difficult. This study uses the expected utility (EU) model to explain individiuals' preferences in the hypothetical case of siting a municipal solid waste composting facility. The three principal factors which EU theory prescribes would affect the decision process- benefits of the proposed facility, losses from the facility, and the (perceived) probability of various scenarios occurring- embodied by the variables in a multinomial logit model explain a substantial amount of the variation in siting decisions.Public Economics,

Local light-ray rotation

We present a sheet structure that rotates the local ray direction through an arbitrary angle around the sheet normal. The sheet structure consists of two parallel Dove-prism sheets, each of which flips one component of the local direction of transmitted light rays. Together, the two sheets rotate transmitted light rays around the sheet normal. We show that the direction under which a point light source is seen is given by a Mobius transform. We illustrate some of the properties with movies calculated by ray-tracing software.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure

Edge energies and shapes of nanoprecipitates.

In this report we present a model to explain the size-dependent shapes of lead nano-precipitates in aluminum. Size-dependent shape transitions, frequently observed at nanolength scales, are commonly attributed to edge energy effects. This report resolves an ambiguity in the definition and calculation of edge energies and presents an atomistic calculation of edge energies for free clusters. We also present a theory for size-dependent shapes of Pb nanoprecipitates in Al, introducing the concept of ''magic-shapes'' defined as precipitate shapes having near zero elastic strains when inserted into similarly shaped voids in the Al matrix. An algorithm for constructing a complete set of magic-shapes is presented. The experimental observations are explained by elastic strain energies and interfacial energies; edge energies play a negligible role. We replicate the experimental observations by selecting precipitates having magic-shapes and interfacial energies less than a cutoff value

First principles determination of dislocation properties.

This report details the work accomplished on first principles determination of dislocation properties. It contains an introduction and three chapters detailing three major accomplishments. First, we have used first principle calculations to determine the shear strength of an aluminum twin boundary. We find it to be remarkably small ({approx}17 mJ/m{sup 2}). This unexpected result is explained and will likely pertain for many other grain boundaries. Second, we have proven that the conventional explanation for finite grain boundary facets is wrong for a particular aluminum grain boundary. Instead of finite facets being stabilized by grain boundary stress, we find them to originate from kinetic effects. Finally we report on a new application of the Frenkel-Kontorova model to understand reconstructions of (100) type surfaces. In addition to the commonly accepted formation of rectangular dislocation arrays, we find numerous other possible solutions to the model including hexagonal reconstructions and a clock-rotated structure

Rubber Souls: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination

This dissertation explores the interplay of popular music and racial thought in the 1960s, and asks how, when, and why rock and roll music "became white." By Jimi Hendrix's death in 1970 the idea of a black man playing electric lead guitar was considered literally remarkable in ways it had not been for Chuck Berry only ten years earlier: employing an interdisciplinary combination of archival research, musical analysis, and critical race theory, this project explains how this happened, and in doing so tells two stories simultaneously. The first is of audience and discourse, and the processes through which a music born of interracialism came to understand whiteness as its most basic stakes of authenticity. This is a story of the deeply ideological underpinnings of genre formation, and the ways that the visual imagination of race is strangely and powerfully elided with the audible imagination of sound. The second story is of music's own resistance to such elisions, and examines a transatlantic community of artists including Bob Dylan, Sam Cooke, the Beatles, Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and others to fashion an interracial counter-history of Sixties music, one that rejects hermetic ideals of racial authenticity while revealing the pernicious effects of these ideologies on musical discourse. Ultimately, this dissertation provides a new way into the topic of race and popular music--long dominated by essentialist claims of cultural ownership on one hand, and a romantic "colorblindness" on the other--by demonstrating that racial thought is both a producer and product of expressive culture. Rarely has this been truer than in the 1960s, when both popular music and racial ideology underwent explosive transformations that were never entirely separate from each other. Rock and roll music, I argue, did not become white as a result of the music that people made, but rather as a result of discursive forces that surrounded, celebrated, and too often drowned out the music that people heard

Aquatic insects of Lake Jocassee catchment in North and South Carolina, with descriptions of four new species of caddisflies (Trichoptera)

With the invitation and support of Duke Power Company, aquatic insects were collected in North and South Carolina streams above Lake Jocassee from April through October 1987. A variety of collecting equipment and techniques were used including all night light traps, 24-hour Malaise traps, qualitative examination of benthic materials, benthic nets, and aerial nets

A Working Paper*: Quality of Life of Rural Nebraskans: How are they Doing and What is in the Future?

TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.............................................................................. i INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................... 1 METHODOLOGY AND RESPONDENT PROFILE....................................... 2 FINDINGS ................................................................................................ 4 Global Well-Being (Figure 1)............................... 4 Change in the Modern World (Figure 2)...............................6 Personal Well-Being............................... 6 Availability of Services and Amenities (Figure 3)............................ 8 Dissatisfaction with Services and Amenities (Figure 4)........................... 9 Dissatisfaction with Services/Amenities by Region (Figure 5)...................... 10 Dissatisfaction with Services/Amenities by Community Size (Figure 6)............ 12 Dissatisfaction with Services/Amenities by Income Level (Figure 7)............... 13 CONCLUSIONS ................................................................ 1

The thalamic reuniens is associated with consolidation of non-spatial memory too

The nucleus reuniens (RE) is situated in the midline thalamus and provides a key link between the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. This anatomical relationship positions the Re as an ideal candidate to facilitate memory consolidation. However, there is no evidence that this role extends beyond spatial memory and contextual fear memory, which are both strongly associated with hippocampal function. We, therefore, trained intact male Long–Evans rats on an odor–trace–object paired-associate task where the explicit 10-s delay between paired items renders the task sensitive to hippocampal function. Neurons in the RE showed significantly increased activation of the immediate early gene (Zif268) when rats were re-tested for previous non-spatial memory 25 days after acquisition training, compared to a group tested at 5-days post-acquisition, as well as a control group tested 25 days after acquisition but with a new pair of non-spatial stimuli, and home cage controls. The remote recall group also showed relatively augmented IEG expression in the superficial layers of the medial PFC (anterior cingulate cortex and prelimbic cortex). These findings support the conclusion that the RE is preferentially engaged during remote recall in this non-spatial task and thus has a role beyond spatial memory and contextual fear memory