Strategy in the practice of statecraft? The interrelationship of foreign and military policies in Putin’s Russia, 2014-2021

This dissertation empirically examines press releases and documents issued by the Russian government to measure their relative frequency and intended message over the years 2014-2021. It then quantifies how the quantities of diplomatic meetings and military exercises over time shift the relative quality of Russia’s relations with other countries of the world as well as the degree of military threat expressed toward each country by the geographical and tactical distribution of the military exercises acknowledged by the state. Finally, it assesses this shifting distribution using mixed methodologies: a quantitative methodology to determine if and how the changing foreign policy quality and military threat are correlated and a qualitative methodology to examine the patterns by which different leading Russian politicians and bureaucratic organs discuss their competing outlooks on and objectives of policy. It concludes by assessing that despite efforts to better harmonise policymaking across the Russian government, relatively little evidence exists to suggest that a coherent strategy is determining the everyday coordination of Russian foreign and military policies

Effect of Lunar Dust Simulant on Human Epithelial Cell Lines

The purpose of this project is to assess the potential toxicity of lunar dust to cause the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines by human lung cells. Some of this dust is on the scale of 1-2 micrometers and could enter the lungs when astronauts track dust into the habitat and inhale it. This could be a serious problem as NASA plans on going back to the moon for an extended period of time. Literature shows that quartz, which has a known cytoxicity, can cause acute cases of silicosis within 6 months, and in most cases cause silicosis after 3 years. The activation of lunar dust through impacts creates surface based radicals which, upon contact with water create hydroxl radicals and peroxyl radicals which are very reactive and potentially might even be as cytotoxic as quartz. These radicals could then react with lung cells to produce pro-inflammatory mediators such as interleukin-6 and interleukin-8, and TNF-alpha

Revealing hidden states in visual working memory using electroencephalography

It is often assumed that information in visual working memory (vWM) is maintained via persistent activity. However, recent evidence indicates that information in vWM could be maintained in an effectively "activity-silent" neural state. Silent vWM is consistent with recent cognitive and neural models, but poses an important experimental problem: how can we study these silent states using conventional measures of brain activity? We propose a novel approach that is analogous to echolocation: using a high-contrast visual stimulus, it may be possible to drive brain activity during vWM maintenance and measure the vWM-dependent impulse response. We recorded electroencephalography (EEG) while participants performed a vWM task in which a randomly oriented grating was remembered. Crucially, a high-contrast, task-irrelevant stimulus was shown in the maintenance period in half of the trials. The electrophysiological response from posterior channels was used to decode the orientations of the gratings. While orientations could be decoded during and shortly after stimulus presentation, decoding accuracy dropped back close to baseline in the delay. However, the visual evoked response from the task-irrelevant stimulus resulted in a clear re-emergence in decodability. This result provides important proof-of-concept for a promising and relatively simple approach to decode "activity-silent" vWM content using non-invasive EEG

Robust Machine Learning Applied to Astronomical Datasets I: Star-Galaxy Classification of the SDSS DR3 Using Decision Trees

We provide classifications for all 143 million non-repeat photometric objects in the Third Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) using decision trees trained on 477,068 objects with SDSS spectroscopic data. We demonstrate that these star/galaxy classifications are expected to be reliable for approximately 22 million objects with r < ~20. The general machine learning environment Data-to-Knowledge and supercomputing resources enabled extensive investigation of the decision tree parameter space. This work presents the first public release of objects classified in this way for an entire SDSS data release. The objects are classified as either galaxy, star or nsng (neither star nor galaxy), with an associated probability for each class. To demonstrate how to effectively make use of these classifications, we perform several important tests. First, we detail selection criteria within the probability space defined by the three classes to extract samples of stars and galaxies to a given completeness and efficiency. Second, we investigate the efficacy of the classifications and the effect of extrapolating from the spectroscopic regime by performing blind tests on objects in the SDSS, 2dF Galaxy Redshift and 2dF QSO Redshift (2QZ) surveys. Given the photometric limits of our spectroscopic training data, we effectively begin to extrapolate past our star-galaxy training set at r ~ 18. By comparing the number counts of our training sample with the classified sources, however, we find that our efficiencies appear to remain robust to r ~ 20. As a result, we expect our classifications to be accurate for 900,000 galaxies and 6.7 million stars, and remain robust via extrapolation for a total of 8.0 million galaxies and 13.9 million stars. [Abridged]Comment: 27 pages, 12 figures, to be published in ApJ, uses emulateapj.cl

The prospectively-reported implementation update and score (PRIUS): a new method for capturing implementation-related developments over time

BACKGROUND: Implementation of new programs within healthcare systems can be extraordinarily complex. Individuals within the same healthcare organization often have different perspectives on how implementation of a new program unfolds over time, and it is not always clear in the midst of implementation what issues are most important or how to address them. An implementation support team within the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) sought to develop an efficient method for eliciting an ongoing, detailed and nuanced account of implementation progress from multiple viewpoints that could support and inform active implementation of two new VHA programs. METHODS: The new Prospectively-Reported Implementation Update and Score ("PRIUS") provided a quick, structured, prospective and open-ended method for individuals to report on implementation progress. PRIUS updates were submitted approximately twice a month. Responding to the prompt "What are some things that happened over the past two weeks that seem relevant from your perspective to the implementation of this project?", individuals scored each update with a number ranging from + 3 to - 3. RESULTS: In 2016-17, individuals submitted over 600 PRIUS updates across the two QI projects. PRIUS-based findings included that staff from different services reported fundamentally different perspectives on program implementation. Rapid analysis and reporting of the PRIUS data led directly to changes in implementation. CONCLUSIONS: The PRIUS provided an efficient, structured method for developing a granular and context-sensitive account of implementation progress. The approach appears to be highly adaptable to a wide range of settings and interventions

The Initial Configuration of Young Stellar Clusters: A K-band Number Counts Analysis of the Surface Density of Stars

We present an analysis of K-band stellar distributions for the young stellar clusters GGD 12-15, IRAS 20050+2720, and NGC 7129. We find that the two deeply embedded clusters, GGD 12-15 and IRAS 20050+2720, are not azimuthally symmetric and show a high degree of structure which traces filamentary structure observed in 850 micron emission maps. In contrast, the NGC 7129 cluster is circularly symmetric, less dense, and anti-correlated to 850 micron emission, suggesting recent gas expulsion and dynamical expansion have occured. We estimate stellar volume densities from nearest neighbor distances, and discuss the impact of these densities on the evolution of circumstellar disks and protostellar envelopes in these regions.Comment: 44 pages, 26 figures, Accepted to ApJ. Changes include extinction mapping, Monte Carlo field star modeling, and Nyquist sampled azimuthal stellar distributions. A version with full resolution figures is available at http://astro.pas.rochester.edu/~rguter/preprints/gutermuth_sd.tar.g