7,380 research outputs found
Too little too late : welfare impacts of rainfall shocks in rural Indonesia
The authors use regression analysis to assess the potential welfare impact of rainfall shocks in rural Indonesia. In particular, they consider two shocks: (i) a delay in the onset of monsoon and (ii) a significant shortfall in the amount of rain in the 90 day post-onset period. Focusing on households with family farm businesses, the analysis finds that a delay in the monsoon onset does not have a significant impact on the welfare of rice farmers. However, rice farm households located in areas exposed to low rainfall following the monsoon are negatively affected. Rice farm households appear to be able to protect their food expenditure in the face of weather shocks at the expense of lower nonfood expenditures per capita. The authors use propensity score matching to identify community programs that might moderate the welfare impact of this type of shock. Access to credit and public works projects in communities were among the programs with the strongest moderating effects. This is an important consideration for the design and implementation of adaptation strategies.Science of Climate Change,Climate Change Mitigation and Green House Gases,Housing&Human Habitats,Rural Poverty Reduction,Regional Economic Development
Changes in mouse gastrointestinal microbial ecology with ingestion of kale
Kale, a cultivar of Brassica oleracea, has attracted a great deal of attention because of its health-promoting effects, which are thought to be exerted through modulation of the intestinal microbiota. The present study was performed to investigate the effects of kale ingestion on the gastrointestinal microbial ecology of mice. 21 male C57BL/6J mice were divided into three groups and housed in a specific pathogen-free facility. The animals were fed either a control diet or experimental diets supplemented with different commercial kale products for 12 weeks. Contents of the caecum and colon of the mice were processed for the determination of active bacterial populations by a bacterial rRNA-based quantification method and short-chain fatty acids by HPLC. rRNAs of Bacteroides-Prevotella, the Clostridium coccoides-Eubacterium rectale group, and Clostridium leptum subgroup constituted the major fraction of microbiota regardless of the composition of the diet. The ratio of Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes was higher in the colon samples of one of the kale diet groups than in the control. The colonic butyrate level was also higher with the kale-supplemented diet. Overall, the ingestion of kale tended to either increase or decrease the activity of specific bacterial groups in the mouse gastrointestinal tract, however, the effect might vary depending on the nutritional composition.ArticleBENEFICIAL MICROBES. 5(3):345-349 (2014)journal articl
Collective Modes in a Symmetry-Broken Phase: Antiferromagnetically Correlated Quantum Wells
We investigate the intersubband spin-density-excitation spectrum of a double
quantum well in a low-density symmetry-broken phase with interwell
antiferromagnetic correlations. This spectrum is related to the intensity
measured in depolarized inelastic light scattering (ILS) experiments and
therefore provides a means of empirically identifying the antiferromagnetic
phase. Our computations reveal the existence of two collective modes, a damped
Nambu-Goldstone (NG) mode arising from the broken spin symmetry and an undamped
optical mode. Since the NG mode contains most of the spectral weight, ILS
experiments will need to examine the low-frequency response for signatures of
the antiferromagnetic phase.Comment: 4 pages, REVTEX with psfig macro, 4 figure
Metastable liquid-liquid coexistence and density anomalies in a core-softened fluid
Linearly-sloped or `ramp' potentials belong to a class of core-softened
models which possess a liquid-liquid critical point (LLCP) in addition to the
usual liquid-gas critical point. Furthermore they exhibit thermodynamic
anomalies in the density and compressibility, the nature of which may be akin
to those occurring in water. Previous simulation studies of ramp potentials
have focused on just one functional form, for which the LLCP is
thermodynamically stable. In this work we construct a series of ramp
potentials, which interpolate between this previously studied form and a
ramp-based approximation to the Lennard-Jones (LJ) potential. By means of Monte
Carlo simulation, we locate the LLCP, the first order high density liquid
(HDL)-low density liquid (LDL) coexistence line, and the line of density maxima
for a selection of potentials in the series. We observe that as the LJ limit is
approached, the LLCP becomes metastable with respect to freezing into a
hexagonal close packed crystalline solid. The qualitative nature of the phase
behaviour in this regime shows a remarkable resemblance to that seen in
simulation studies of accurate water models. Specifically, the density of the
liquid phase exceeds that of the solid; the gradient of the metastable LDL-HDL
line is negative in the pressure (p)-temperature (T) plane; while the line of
density maxima in the p-T plane has a shape similar to that seen in water and
extends well into the {\em stable} liquid region of the phase diagram. As such,
our results lend weight to the `second critical point' hypothesis as an
explanation for the anomalous behaviour of water.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figure
High stability design for new centrifugal compressor
It is essential that high-performance centrifugal compressors be free of subsynchronous vibrations. A new high-performance centrifugal compressor has been developed by applying the latest rotordynamics knowledge and design techniques: (1) To improve the system damping, a specially designed oil film seal was developed. This seal attained a damping ratio three times that of the conventional design. The oil film seal contains a special damper ring in the seal cartridge. (2) To reduce the destabilizing effect of the labyrinth seal, a special swirl canceler (anti-swirl nozzle) was applied to the balance piston seal. (3) To confirm the system damping margin, the dynamic simulation rotor model test and the full load test applied the vibration exciting test in actual load conditions
Asymptotic pointwise behavior for systems of semilinear wave equations in three space dimensions
In connection with the weak null condition, Alinhac introduced a sufficient
condition for global existence of small amplitude solutions to systems of
semilinear wave equations in three space dimensions. We introduce a slightly
weaker sufficient condition for the small data global existence, and we
investigate the asymptotic pointwise behavior of global solutions for systems
satisfying this condition. As an application, the asymptotic behavior of global
solutions under the Alinhac condition is also derived.Comment: 56 pages, the final versio
Hysteresis in the quantum Hall regimes in electron double quantum well structures
We present in this paper experimental results on the transport hysteresis in
electron double quantum well structures. Exploring the measurement technique of
fixing the magnetic field and sweeping a front gate voltage (Vg), we are able
to study the hysteresis by varying the top layer Landau level fillings while
maintaining a relatively constant filling factor in the bottom layer, allowing
us to tackle the question of the sign of Rxx(up)-Rxx(down), where Rxx(up) is
the magnetoresistance when Vg is swept up and Rxx(down) when Vg swept down.
Furthermore, we observe that hysteresis is generally stronger in the even
integer quantum Hall effect (IQHE) regime than in the odd-IQHE regime. This, we
argue, is due to a larger energy gap for an even-IQHE state, determined by the
Landau level separation, than that for an odd-IQHE state, determined by the
Zeeman splitting
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Early time dynamics of laser-ablated silicon using ultrafast grazing incidence X-ray scattering
Controlling the morphology of laser-derived nanomaterials is dependent on developing a better understanding of the particle nucleation dynamics in the ablation plume. Here, we utilize the femtosecond-length pulses from an x-ray free electron laser to perform time-resolved grazing incidence x-ray scattering measurements on a laser-produced silicon plasma plume. At 20 ps we observe a dramatic increase in the scattering amplitude at small scattering vectors, which we attribute to incipient formation of liquid silicon droplets. These results demonstrate the utility of XFELs as a tool for characterizing the formation dynamics of nanomaterials in laser-produced plasma plumes on ultrafast timescales
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