The Real Costs and Financial Challenges of Library Networking: Part 1

Library networking has created a number of administrative and policy issues. Questions of governance, budgeting, cooperation, and reporting lines must be addressed. In some cases, these issues must be addressed by librarians; in others, by campus administrators. In any event, the importance of the research library must be recognized, and support for the library's priorities must be marshalled.published or submitted for publicatio

Religion, prejudice, and authoritarianism : Is RWA a boon or bane to the psychology of religion?

In research on religiosity and prejudice, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) has been studied alongside variables such as fundamentalism and orthodoxy. Four concerns regarding research on the relationship between RWA and religiosity are identified: (1) the overlap of religiosity and prejudice within the RWA scale; (2) the inflation of relationships by correlating part-whole measures; (3) covariation in the extremes of the construct hiding the possible independence of components within RWA; and (4) statistical artifacts arising in multiple regression from the combination of these factors. We elaborate these four issues and then demonstrate how they can lead to different interpretations of some previously published data. The article concludes with suggestions for the management and resolution of these issues that may allow RWA to continue to be used in religiosity and prejudice research and how it might evolve to become the boon to researchers that they seek.PostprintPeer reviewe

Stellar Polarimetry: Where Are We and Where Are We Going?

On the final day of the Stellar Polarimetry conference, participants split up into three "breakout sessions" to discuss the future of the field in the areas of instrumentation, upcoming opportunities, and community priorities. This contribution compiles the major recommendations arising from each breakout session. We hope that the polarimetric community will find these ideas useful as we consider how to maintain the vitality of polarimetry in the coming years.Comment: 7 pages, published in proceedings of "Stellar Polarimetry: From Birth to Death" (Madison, WI, June 2011

Asymptotic Opening Angles for Colliding-Wind Bow Shocks: the Characteristic-Angle Approximation

By considering the advection and interaction of the vector momentum flux in highly supersonic spherically diverging winds, we derive a simple analytic description of the asymptotic opening angle of a wind-collision shock cone, in the approximation that the shocked gas is contained in a cone streaming out along a single characteristic opening angle. Both highly radiative and highly adiabatic limits are treated, and their comparison is the novel result. Analytic closed-form expressions are obtained for the inferred wind momentum ratios as a function of the observed shock opening angle, allowing the conspicuous shape of the asymptotic bow shock to be used as a preliminary constraint on more detailed modeling of the colliding winds. In the process, we explore from a general perspective the limitations in applying to the global shock geometry the so-called Dyson approximation, which asserts a local balance in the perpendicular ram pressure across the shock.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figur

First International Conference on Laboratory Research for Planetary Atmospheres

Proceedings of the First International Conference on Laboratory Research for Planetary Atmospheres are presented. The covered areas of research include: photon spectroscopy, chemical kinetics, thermodynamics, and charged particle interactions. This report contains the 12 invited papers, 27 contributed poster papers, and 5 plenary review papers presented at the conference. A list of attendees and a reprint of the Report of the Subgroup on Strategies for Planetary Atmospheres Exploration (SPASE) are provided in two appendices

The Relationship of Leadership Quality to the Political Presence of Civic Associations

Member-based civic associations, or citizen groups, have two crucial roles in American democracy. They advocate for members' interests in the public arena, but also operate as Tocquevillian “schools of democracy” linking citizens to politics and equipping them with the skills of democratic citizenship. Yet scant research has examined the interrelationships of these two roles. Does the work that civic associations do in developing democratic participants enhance the work they do advocating for members' interests in the public arena? We bring together two previously disparate strands of research on civic associations by arguing that a key factor affecting the political presence of civic associations is leadership quality. We focus on the relationship of leadership quality to political presence, using data from a unique 2003 study of 226 local entities of the Sierra Club. We show that organizations with more skilled and committed leaders have higher levels of political presence. This contrasts with previous research that has focused primarily on community context and resources as explanatory factors. This study shows that political presence is related to the extent to which leaders develop their skills and demonstrate commitment to the organization

Autobiographically Significant Concepts: More Episodic than Semantic in Nature? An Electrophysiological Investigation of Overlapping Types of Memory

A common assertion is that semantic memory emerges from episodic memory, shedding the distinctive contexts associated with episodes over time and/or repeated instances. Some semantic concepts, however, may retain their episodic origins or acquire episodic information during life experiences. The current study examined this hypothesis by investigating the ERP correlates of autobiographically significant (AS) concepts, that is, semantic concepts that are associated with vivid episodic memories. We inferred the contribution of semantic and episodic memory to AS concepts using the amplitudes of the N400 and late positive component, respectively. We compared famous names that easily brought to mind episodic memories (high AS names) against equally famous names that did not bring such recollections to mind (low AS names) on a semantic task (fame judgment) and an episodic task (recognition memory). Compared with low AS names, high AS names were associated with increased amplitude of the late positive component in both tasks. Moreover, in the recognition task, this effect of AS was highly correlated with recognition confidence. In contrast, the N400 component did not differentiate the high versus low AS names but, instead, was related to the amount of general knowledge participants had regarding each name. These results suggest that semantic concepts high in AS, such as famous names, have an episodic component and are associated with similar brain processes to those that are engaged by episodic memory. Studying AS concepts may provide unique insights into how episodic and semantic memory interact

Zr and Hf microalloying in an Al-Y-Fe amorphous alloy. Relation between local structure and glass-forming ability

International audienceThe effects of the addition of small amounts of Zr and Hf (0.5 - 3 %) on the atomic structure of Al88Y7Fe5 metallic glass were examined from extended x-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) experiments to better understand the influence of these microadditions on the glass forming ability of this alloy. Measurements at the Zr K and Hf LIII absorption edges have allowed the local structures around Zr and Hf atoms to be determined. The same Al environment was found for the different concentrations, consisting of a small cluster extending up to 4.5 Å around the Zr atoms and up to 6 Å around the Hf ones. Although the clustering effect is smaller in the Zr neighbourhood, a drastic shortening of the nearest Zr-Al distance is shown, providing evidence for some covalent character to the bonding, in line with the increased glass-forming ability found in the alloys made with the Zr microaddition