The abolition of the earnings rule for UK pensioners

The US has legislated to abolish its social security earnings test. A priori it is not possible to predict the effect this will have on work incentives. Using data from the Family Expenditure Survey we show that the abolition of the earnings rule in the UK increased the number of hours worked by men. The lack of any evidence of a reduction in hours may be a consequence of those who previously earned more than the earnings threshold deferring pension receipt at an actuarially favourable rate. This is consistent with there being little evidence of a significant change in the number of deferrals after the earnings rule was abolished

Review of the book CLIL activities : a resource for subject and language teachers (with CD-ROM)

CLIL Activities may be taken as a handbook focused on practice as more than half of its pages do offer wide-ranging activities. The authors state that the book is targeted at subject and language teachers probably with the intention of showing that both content and language are equally important and interrelated

An efficient BEM for numerical solution of the biharmonic boundary value problem

This paper presents an efficient BEM for solving biharmonic equations. All boundary values including geometries are approximated by the universal high order radial basis function networks (RBFNs) rather than the usual low order interpolations. Numerical results show that the proposed BEM is considerably superior to the linear/quadratic-BEM in terms of both accuracy and convergence rate

Solving high-order partial differential equations with indirect radial basis function networks

This paper reports a new numerical method based on radial basis function networks (RBFNs) for solving high-order partial differential equations (PDEs). The variables and their derivatives in the governing equations are represented by integrated RBFNs. The use of integration in constructing neural networks allows the straightforward implementation of multiple boundary conditions and the accurate approximation of high-order derivatives. The proposed RBFN method is verified successfully through the solution of thin-plate bending and viscous flow problems which are governed by biharmonic equations. For thermally driven cavity flows, the solutions are obtained up to a high Rayleigh number

Noise measurements taken at LAX during operational evaluation of two-segment approaches in a 727-200 aircraft

A series of seven noise measurements were made each day over a period of fifteen days. The first and last flights each day were made by a specially instrumented 727-200 aircraft being used to evaluate the operational effectiveness of two-segment noise abatement approaches in scheduled service. Noise measurements were made to determine the noise reduction benefits of the two-segment approaches

A High Contrast Imaging Survey of SIM Lite Planet Search Targets

With the development of extreme high contrast ground-based adaptive optics instruments and space missions aimed at detecting and characterizing Jupiter- and terrestrial-mass planets, it is critical that each target star be thoroughly vetted to determine whether it is a viable target given both the instrumental design and scientific goals of the program. With this in mind, we have conducted a high contrast imaging survey of mature AFGKM stars with the PALAO/PHARO instrument on the Palomar 200 inch telescope. The survey reached sensitivities sufficient to detect brown dwarf companions at separations of > 50 AU. The results of this survey will be utilized both by future direct imaging projects such as GPI, SPHERE and P1640 and indirect detection missions such as SIM Lite. Out of 84 targets, all but one have no close-in (0.45-1") companions and 64 (76%) have no stars at all within the 25" field-of-view. The sensitivity contrasts in the Ks passband ranged from 4.5 to 10 for this set of observations. These stars were selected as the best nearby targets for habitable planet searches owing to their long-lived habitable zones (> 1 billion years). We report two stars, GJ 454 and GJ 1020, with previously unpublished proper motion companions. In both cases, the companions are stellar in nature and are most likely M dwarfs based on their absolute magnitudes and colors. Based on our mass sensitivities and level of completeness, we can place an upper limit of ~17% on the presence of brown dwarf companions with masses >40 MJ at separations of 1 arcsecond. We also discuss the importance of including statistics on those stars with no detected companions in their field of view for the sake of future companion searches and an overall understanding of the population of low-mass objects around nearby stars.Comment: Accepted to PASP, Figure 7 available upon reques

Inter-sensory Judgments of Signal Duration

Intersensory discrimination of signal duration using visual and auditory signal

Off-diagonal hyperfine interaction between the 6p1/2 and 6p3/2 levels in 133Cs

The off-diagonal hyperfine interaction between the 6p1/2 and 6p3/2 states in 133Cs is evaluated in third-order MBPT giving 37.3 Hz and 48.3 Hz, respectively, for second-order energies of the 6p3/2 F=3 and F=4 levels. This result is a factor of 10 smaller than one obtained from an uncorrelated first-order Dirac-Hartree-Fock calculation and used in the analysis of a recent high-precision (< 2 kHz) measurement of the 6p3/2 hyperfine structure [Gerginov et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 72301 (2003)]. The factor of 10 difference has negligible effect on the conclusions of the recent experiment but will become important for experiments carried out at a precision of better than 1 kHz