5,712 research outputs found
Do Not Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor! Determinants of Legislator Voting on Immigration Issues
This paper examines the determinants of the U.S. House of Representatives 1996 vote on the "The Immigration in the National Interest Act." Public choice theory suggests that the voting behavior of legislators is affected by the interests of their constituencies, special interest politics, and by their ideology. The paper uses probit analysis to test the significance of the above factors. The results suggest that Representatives responded to the socioeconomic interests of their constituents as expected. However, in a surprising finding, pro-business legislators appear to have voted to restrict immigration.Immigration; Politics; Representatives; Votes; Voting
Under the same sky with Amanar
Due to its technological, scientific and cultural dimensions, astronomy is a
unique discipline to help achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development
Goals. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR),
there are currently nearly 30 million refugees in the world. While there are
many (and very necessary) programmes supporting their basic needs, different
indicators suggest that the resolution to refugee and internal displacement
situations require not only humanitarian interventions, but also
development-led actions. One of these initiatives is Amanar: Under the Same
Sky, a project designed to support the Sahrawi refugee community by using
astronomy to enhance their resilience and engagement in the community, through
skill development and self-empowerment activities.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures. Comment published on Nature Astronom
Appraising vibro-settlement prediction methods using the finite element method
ABSTRACT. Numerous approaches exist for the prediction of the settlement improvement offered by the vibro-replacement technique in weak or marginal soil deposits. The majority of the settlement prediction methods are based on the unit cell assumption, with a small number based on plane strain or homogenization techniques. In this paper, a comprehensive review and assessment of the more popular settlement prediction methods is carried out with a view to establishing which method(s) are in best agreement with finite element predictions from a series of PLAXIS 2D axisymmetric analyses on an end-bearing column. The Hardening Soil Model in PLAXIS 2D has been used to model the behaviour of both the granular column material and the treated soft clay soil. This study has shown that purely elastic settlement prediction methods overestimate the settlement improvement for large modular ratios while the methods based on elastic-plastic theory are in better agreement with finite element predictions at higher modular ratios (in some cases owing to the assumption of a significant bulging mechanism which is more prevalent in soft soils and in other cases due to the variability of soil stiffness with stress level which is considered in the FE calculations but not in the analytical solutions). In addition, a parameter sensitivity study has been carried out to establish the influence of a range of different design parameters on predictions obtained using a selection of elastic-plastic methods
Effects of Gamma Ray Bursts in Earth Biosphere
We continue former work on the modeling of potential effects of Gamma Ray
Bursts on Phanerozoic Earth. We focus on global biospheric effects of ozone
depletion and show a first modeling of the spectral reduction of light by NO2
formed in the stratosphere. We also illustrate the current complexities
involved in the prediction of how terrestrial ecosystems would respond to this
kind of burst. We conclude that more biological field and laboratory data are
needed to reach even moderate accuracy in this modelingComment: Accepted for publication in Astrophysics & Space Scienc
Overcoming triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) resistance to oncolytic virotherapy by histone deacetylase inhibitor, trichostatin A
"Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a tumor classification that lack receptors for the hormones estrogen, progesterone and HER2 protein. These malignancies are characterized to be of poor prognosis, refractoriness to conventional therapy and high rates of recurrence. Virotherapy with oncolytic adenovirus (OAd) consists of cancer selective viruses that replicate, spread, and kill cancer cells by oncolysis, without affecting the normal cells."--Introduction
Generation of highly ionized cadmium plasma columns for a discharge-pumped Nickel-like Cd laser
Includes bibliographical references (page 574).We report the observation of strong line emission from Ni-like Cd ions in a capillary discharge plasma. Spectroscopically pure Cd vapor was produced in a room temperature environment utilizing a capacitive discharge. The metal vapor was injected into a capillary channel where it was subsequently excited with fast current pulses of up to 200 kA These results open the possibility of observing laser amplification in the 3d94d-394p line of Ni-like Cd at 13.2 nm and in laser lines of other Nickel-like ions in a discharge-created plasma
Phenomenology of symmetry breaking from extra dimensions
Motivated by the electroweak hierarchy problem, we consider theories with two
extra dimensions in which the four-dimensional scalar fields are components of
gauge boson in full space. We explore the Nielsen-Olesen instability for SU(N)
on a torus, in the presence of a magnetic background. A field theory approach
is developed, computing explicitly the minimum of the complete effective
potential, including tri-linear and quartic couplings and determining the
symmetries of the stable vacua. We also develop appropriate gauge-fixing terms
when both Kaluza-Klein and Landau levels are present and interacting,
discussing the interplay between the possible six and four dimensional choices.
The equivalence between coordinate dependent and constant Scherk-Schwarz
boundary conditions -associated to either continuous or discrete Wilson lines-
is analyzed.Comment: 39 pages and 8 eps figures. Few changes in section
Chemical Abundances in the Secondary Star in the Black Hole Binary A0620-00
Using a high resolution spectrum of the secondary star in the black hole
binary A0620-00, we have derived the stellar parameters and veiling caused by
the accretion disk in a consistent way. We have used a chi^2 minimization
procedure to explore a grid of 800 000 LTE synthetic spectra computed for a
plausible range of both stellar and veiling parameters. Adopting the best model
parameters found, we have determined atmospheric abundances of Fe, Ca, Ti, Ni
and Al. The Fe abundance of the star is [Fe/H]=0.14 +- 0.20. Except for Ca, we
found the other elements moderately over-abundant as compared with stars in the
solar neighborhood of similar iron content. Taking into account the small
orbital separation, the mass transfer rate and the mass of the convection zone
of the secondary star, a comparison with element yields in supernova explosion
models suggests a possible explosive event with a mass cut comparable to the
current mass of the compact object. We have also analyzed the Li abundance,
which is unusually high for a star of this spectral type and relatively low
mass.Comment: 32 pages, 5 tables and 11 figures, uses rotate.st
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