Fearless: Mike Altman

After participating in the 2011 Heston Internship in Uganda working in a community on clean water projects, Mike gained a new interest in Global Health. His interest grew and a few months ago he started an internship with charity: water, an organization working to bring access to clean water throughout the world in a way that attempts to break the traditional donation model. At charity: water, Mike is part of a greater group that is working to more closely connect people to specific water projects through financial transparency and innovative fundraising campaigns. [excerpt

Noise Correlations in one-dimensional systems of ultra-cold fermions

Time of flight images reflect the momentum distribution of the atoms in the trap, but the spatial noise in the image holds information on more subtle correlations. Using Bosonization, we study such noise correlations in generic one dimensional systems of ultra cold fermions. Specifically, we show how pairing as well as spin and charge density wave correlations may be identified and extracted from the time of flight images. These incipient orders manifest themselves as power law singularities in the noise correlations, that depend on the Luttinger parameters, which suggests a general experimental technique to obtain them.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. Added discussion on the visibility of noise correlation features for realistic condition

Dynamic projection on Feshbach molecules: a probe of pairing and phase fluctuations

We describe and justify a simple model for the dynamics associated with rapid sweeps across a Feshbach resonance, from the atomic to the molecular side, in an ultra cold Fermi system. The model allows us to relate the observed molecule momentum distribution, including its dependence on the sweep rate, to equilibrium properties of the initial state. For initial state near resonance, we find that phase fluctuations sharply reduce the observed condensate fraction. Moreover, for very fast sweeps and low temperatures, we predict a surprising nonmonotonic dependence of the molecule condensate fraction on detuning, that is a direct signature of quantum phase fluctuations. The dependence of the total molecule number on sweep rate is found to be a sensitive probe of pairing in the initial state, whether condensed or not. Hence it can be utilized to establish the presence of a phase fluctuation induced `psuedogap' phase in these systems.Comment: Added reference

Fire extinguishant materials

Fire extinguishant composition comprising a mixture of a finely divided aluminum compound and alkali metal, stannous or plumbous halide is provided. Aluminum compound may be aluminum hydroxide, alumina or boehmite but preferably it is an alkali metal dawsonite. The metal halide may be an alkali metal, e.g. potassium iodide, bromide or chloride or stannous or plumbous iodide, bromide or chloride. Potassium iodide is preferred

Self-Optimizing Mechanisms for EMF Reduction in Heterogeneous Networks

This paper focuses on the exposure to Radio Frequency (RF) Electromagnetic Fields (EMF) and on optimization methods to reduce it. Within the FP7 LEXNET project, an Exposure Index (EI) has been defined that aggregates the essential components that impact exposure to EMF. The EI includes, among other, downlink (DL) exposure induced by the base stations (BSs) and access points, the uplink (UL) exposure induced by the devices in communication, and the corresponding exposure time. Motivated by the EI definition, this paper develops stochastic approximation based self-optimizing algorithm that dynamically adapts the network to reduce the EI in a heterogeneous network with macro- and small cells. It is argued that the increase of the small cells' coverage can, to a certain extent, reduce the EI, but above a certain limit, will deteriorate DL QoS. A load balancing algorithm is formulated that adapts the small cell' coverage based on UL loads and a DL QoS indicator. The proof of convergence of the algorithm is provided and its performance in terms of EI reduction is illustrated through extensive numerical simulations

Cost-effective Sulphur Emission Reduction under Uncertainty

The problem of reducing SO2 emissions in Europe is considered. The costs of reduction are assumed to be uncertain and are modeled by a set of possible scenarios. A mean-variance model of the problem is formulated and a specialized computational procedure developed. The approach is applied to the transboundary air pollution model with real-world data