Open inflation and the singulary boundary

The singularity in the Hawking-Turok model of open inflation has some appealing properties, such as the fact that its action is integrable. Also, if one thinks of the singularity as the boundary of spacetime, then the Gibbons-Hawking term is nonvanishing and finite. Here, we consider a model where the gravitational and scalar fields are coupled to a dynamical membrane. The singular instanton can then be obtained as the limit of a family of no-boundary solutions where both the geometry and the scalar field are regular. Using this procedure, the contribution of the singularity to the Euclidean action is just 1/3 of the Gibbons-Hawking term. Unrelated to this issue, we also point out that the singularity acts as a reflecting boundary for scalar perturbations and gravity waves. Therefore, the quantization of cosmological perturbations seems to be well posed in this background.

House File 811 Legislative Report, December 14, 2009

The department of Human Services provides child protective and child welfare services to eligible families in the state of Iowa. Children ages 0-17 may receive services that include child protective assessments, child in need of assistance, safety plan services, family safety, risk and permanency services, foster care and case management. A confirmed child abuse assessment may lead to involvement with juvenile court via an adjudication hearing. The court provides oversight and support to the family to increase safety for the children. Al child abuse assessments, regardless of disposition, are sent to juvenile court for review and information.

Memorial exercises in honor of William Boyd Allison : in Hall of House of Representatives, State Capitol, Des Moines, Iowa, Tuesday, September 8, 1908

Program of the memorial in honor of William Boyd Allison, senior Senator of the State of Iowa, who died at his home in Dubuque, Iowa, August 4, 1908. It includes full text of remarks presented at the memorial by dignitaries in attendance.

Traumatic recurrent anterior dislocation of the shoulder: two- to four-year follow-up of an anatomic open procedure.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the results of an anatomic open stabilization procedure. Twenty-three consecutive patients with traumatic, recurrent, anterior glenohumeral instability were managed with a modified open procedure. All had a Bankart lesion. A standardized, true anatomic capsulolabral reconstruction was performed with suture anchors. Two patients were lost to follow-up, and twenty-one were evaluated after 36 months [range, 24-49 months] by an independent observer. Shoulder stability and function were the principal outcome measures. None of the patients had subsequent dislocations. All returned to full working capacity, and 19 reached their previous level of sport activities. The mean loss in active abduction and flexion was 1 degrees, in internal rotation, one vertebral level, and in external rotation, 7 degrees (arm at 90 degrees of abduction). Two patients had a positive anterior apprehension test. No sign of shoulder osteoarthritis was observed. The open anatomic capsulolabral reconstruction provides excellent results and allows the restoration of stability with good function.

First day of an oil spill on the open sea: early mass transfers of hydrocarbons to air and water.

During the first hours after release of petroleum at sea, crude oil hydrocarbons partition rapidly into air and water. However, limited information is available about very early evaporation and dissolution processes. We report on the composition of the oil slick during the first day after a permitted, unrestrained 4.3 m(3) oil release conducted on the North Sea. Rapid mass transfers of volatile and soluble hydrocarbons were observed, with >50% of ≤C17 hydrocarbons disappearing within 25 h from this oil slick of <10 km(2) area and <10 μm thickness. For oil sheen, >50% losses of ≤C16 hydrocarbons were observed after 1 h. We developed a mass transfer model to describe the evolution of oil slick chemical composition and water column hydrocarbon concentrations. The model was parametrized based on environmental conditions and hydrocarbon partitioning properties estimated from comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography (GC×GC) retention data. The model correctly predicted the observed fractionation of petroleum hydrocarbons in the oil slick resulting from evaporation and dissolution. This is the first report on the broad-spectrum compositional changes in oil during the first day of a spill at the sea surface. Expected outcomes under other environmental conditions are discussed, as well as comparisons to other models.

Evaporation and coarsening dynamics with open boundaries

We present a study of the evaporation dynamics of a substance undergoing a coarsening process. The system is modeled by the Cahn-Hilliard equation with absorbing boundaries. We have found that the dynamics, although of a diffusive nature, is much slower than the usual one without coarsening. Analytical and simulation results are in reasonable agreement.

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) for HLA typing: bases for setting up an open international collaboration when PGD is not available.

In severe forms of Diamond-Blackfan anemia, preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) of histocompatibility leukocyte antigen-compatible embryos for enabling the next sibling in the family to be a stem-cell transplantation donor constitutes the sole lasting cure capable of terminating the enduring need for iterative transfusions. We report here an open collaboration between two renowned institutions to provide a family desiring this treatment even though they resided where the preimplantation genetic diagnosis procedure is banned.

Effects of blocking farm minkś feed access with open water

Selostus: Tarhatun minkin syömään pääsyn estäminen vesialtaalla

Open licensing's impact on higher education resources colombian and catalan approaches

A new initiative has sprung on the path created by the Open Access (OA) movement: Open Education (OE). The initiative's aim is to open up all educational resources at all learning levels. In order to achieve this goal, several international institutions, like UNESCO and the OECD, have published reports, surveys and documents to help educational institutions in this endeavor. This global initiative needs a legal framework; as a result, efforts thus far have usually resorted to Open Licensing (OL), especially Creative Commons (CC) licensing. In fact, as a response to this new movement, Creative Commons launched a new program, ccLearn , which recognizes open licensing's impact on education and directly supports the idea of open educational resources (OER). However, there still remain a good amount of open questions: What is happening locally with OL in higher education? How are educational institutions receiving the initiative? How is it that the OL initiative relates to educational resources? Are there local examples of open educational resources (OER)? How do these local instances incorporate CC into their educational frameworks?. To this effect, this analysis aims to focus on the legal approach and specifically on the way the educational sector is using open licenses outside the English speaking world. It will do so by looking at the current situation in two specific scenarios, the Colombian and the Catalan experiences with open educational projects at the higher education level.

Copyright issues related to the implementation of Open Access policies

The presentation provides an overview of the copyright issues related to the implementation of Open Access policies. It focuses on the need to obtain permission to reproduce and disseminate a copy of any published paper taking into account any copyright transfer signed by authors. This permission is needed to implement Green Open Access policies through repositories. Moreover it explores the use of open content licenses in repositories and journals to move to the Gold Open Access model that offers not only free access to full text but full reuse of contributions.

Explaining Open Courseware Europe

Since two years ago, five European universities are working together with Creative Commons and the Open Courseware Consortium in an EU funded project aimed at supporting student virtual mobility on the basis of OCW. During those two years, there have been several workshops dedicated to different topics and some documents have been produced, among them about the use of CC licenses. The final goal of the project is to establish an European branch of the OCW Consortium as the existing ones in other regions. More information about the project: http://opencourseware.eu/

La situació de l'Open Access a la Universitat de Barcelona

Comunicació presentada a: II Setmana Internacional de l'Accés Obert a la Universitat de Barcelona. Universitat de Barcelona, del 18 al 22 d'octubre de 2010

Spatial relational learning and memory abilities do not differ between men and women in a real-world, open-field environment

This study assesses gender differences in spatial and non-spatial relational learning and memory in adult humans behaving freely in a real-world, open-field environment. In Experiment 1, we tested the use of proximal landmarks as conditional cues allowing subjects to predict the location of rewards hidden in one of two sets of three distinct locations. Subjects were tested in two different conditions: (1) when local visual cues marked the potentially-rewarded locations, and (2) when no local visual cues marked the potentially-rewarded locations. We found that only 17 of 20 adults (8 males, 9 females) used the proximal landmarks to predict the locations of the rewards. Although females exhibited higher exploratory behavior at the beginning of testing, males and females discriminated the potentially-rewarded locations similarly when local visual cues were present. Interestingly, when the spatial and local information conflicted in predicting the reward locations, males considered both spatial and local information, whereas females ignored the spatial information. However, in the absence of local visual cues females discriminated the potentially-rewarded locations as well as males. In Experiment 2, subjects (9 males, 9 females) were tested with three asymmetrically-arranged rewarded locations, which were marked by local cues on alternate trials. Again, females discriminated the rewarded locations as well as males in the presence or absence of local cues. In sum, although particular aspects of task performance might differ between genders, we found no evidence that women have poorer allocentric spatial relational learning and memory abilities than men in a real-world, open-field environment.

Open archives: caminho alternativo para a comunicação científica

A comunicação científica ampliou seus horizontes de troca de dados, informações e conhecimentos com o aparecimento dos open archives, arquivos que congregam e-prints das diversas áreas do saber e que são abertos à consulta pública, bem como à publicação automatizada dos trabalhos por parte dos pesquisadores. A experiência americana em áreas da física, matemática e ciência da computação, entre outras, demonstra a viabilidade e utilidade dos arquivos abertos como ponto de convergência para comunidades de pesquisadores que se vêem sem fronteiras geográficas ou institucionais para o intercâmbio de seus resultados de pesquisas.