ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF COPPER-NICKEL DEVELOPMENT IN NORTHEAST MINNESOTA

Computer simulations of industry gross output, employment and earnings changes associated with alternative copper-nickel development scenarios are presented in this report. The direct and indirect economic effects of seven development scenarios are projected for a mining impact Study Area in St. Louis County, Minnesota.Community/Rural/Urban Development, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

USERS' GUIDE TO THE MINNESOTA REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT SIMULATION LABORATORY

This manual is a users' guide to the Minnesota Regional Development Simulation Laboratory, called SIMLAB.Community/Rural/Urban Development,

ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF MINNESOTA PEATLAND DEVELOPMENT

Existing peatland development and future uses for peat are described and evaluated in this report. Scenarios for future development of the study area peat industry are described in terms of employment, earnings, capital investment, and value of production. Forecasts of the potential impacts of peatland development on regional industry production, employment, earnings, and population are presented. These impacts are determined by using SIMLAB, an acronym for a regional socio-economic computer model developed at the University of Minnesota for quantitative analysis of the direct, indirect and induced socio-economic effects of events like peatland development.Land Economics/Use,

Bayesian ancestral reconstruction for bat echolocation

Ancestral reconstruction can be understood as an interpolation between measured characteristics of existing populations to those of their common ancestors. Doing so provides an insight into the characteristics of organisms that lived millions of years ago. Such reconstructions are inherently uncertain, making this an ideal application area for Bayesian statistics. As such, Gaussian processes serve as a basis for many probabilistic models for trait evolution, which assume that measured characteristics, or some transformation of those characteristics, are jointly Gaussian distributed. While these models do provide a theoretical basis for uncertainty quantification in ancestral reconstruction, practical approaches to their implementation have proven challenging. In this thesis, novel Bayesian methods for ancestral reconstruction are developed and applied to bat echolocation calls. This work proposes the first fully Bayesian approach to inference within the Phylogenetic Gaussian Process Regression framework for Function-Valued Traits, producing an ancestral reconstruction for which any uncertainty in this model may be quantified. The framework is then generalised to collections of discrete and continuous traits, and an efficient approximate Bayesian inference scheme proposed, representing the first application of Variational inference techniques to the problem of ancestral reconstruction. This efficient approach is then applied to the reconstruction of bat echolocation calls, providing new insights into the developmental pathways of this remarkable characteristic. It is the complexity of bat echolocation that motivates the proposed approach to evolutionary inference, however, the resulting statistical methods are broadly applicable within the field of Evolutionary Biology

Observation of High-Energy Astrophysical Neutrinos in Three Years of IceCube Data

A search for high-energy neutrinos interacting within the IceCube detector between 2010 and 2012 provided the first evidence for a high-energy neutrino flux of extraterrestrial origin. Results from an analysis using the same methods with a third year (2012-2013) of data from the complete IceCube detector are consistent with the previously reported astrophysical flux in the 100 TeV - PeV range at the level of $10^{-8}\, \mathrm{GeV}\, \mathrm{cm}^{-2}\, \mathrm{s}^{-1}\, \mathrm{sr}^{-1}$ per flavor and reject a purely atmospheric explanation for the combined 3-year data at $5.7 \sigma$. The data are consistent with expectations for equal fluxes of all three neutrino flavors and with isotropic arrival directions, suggesting either numerous or spatially extended sources. The three-year dataset, with a livetime of 988 days, contains a total of 37 neutrino candidate events with deposited energies ranging from 30 to 2000 TeV. The 2000 TeV event is the highest-energy neutrino interaction ever observed.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by PRL. The event catalog, event displays, and other data tables are included after the final page of the article. Changed from the initial submission to reflect referee comments, expanding the section on atmospheric backgrounds, and fixes offsets of up to 0.9 seconds in reported event times. Address correspondence to: J. Feintzeig, C. Kopper, N. Whitehor

Search for a diffuse flux of astrophysical muon neutrinos with the IceCube 59-string configuration

A search for high-energy neutrinos was performed using data collected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory from May 2009 to May 2010, when the array was running in its 59-string configuration. The data sample was optimized to contain muon neutrino induced events with a background contamination of atmospheric muons of less than 1%. These data, which are dominated by atmospheric neutrinos, are analyzed with a global likelihood fit to search for possible contributions of prompt atmospheric and astrophysical neutrinos, neither of which have yet been identified. Such signals are expected to follow a harder energy spectrum than conventional atmospheric neutrinos. In addition, the zenith angle distribution differs for astrophysical and atmospheric signals. A global fit of the reconstructed energies and directions of observed events is performed, including possible neutrino flux contributions for an astrophysical signal and atmospheric backgrounds as well as systematic uncertainties of the experiment and theoretical predictions. The best fit yields an astrophysical signal flux for nu(mu) + (nu) over bar (mu) of E-2. Phi(E) = 0.25 x 10(-8) GeV cm(-2) s(-1) sr(-1), and a zero prompt component. Although the sensitivity of this analysis for astrophysical neutrinos surpasses the Waxman and Bahcall upper bound, the experimental limit at 90% confidence level is a factor of 1.5 above at a flux of E-2 . Phi(E) = 1.44 x 10(-8) GeV cm(-2) s(-1) sr(-1)

Damage Control Thoracotomy: A Systematic Review of Techniques and Outcomes

Background : Damage control surgery is the practice of delaying definitive management of traumatic injuries by controlling hemorrhage in the operating room and restoring normal physiology in the intensive care unit prior to definitive therapy. Presently, damage control or “abbreviated” laparotomy is used extensively for abdominal trauma in an unstable patient. The application of a damage control approach in thoracic trauma is less established and there is a paucity of literature supporting or refuting this practice. We aimed to systematically review the current data on damage control thoracotomy (DCT), to identify gaps in the literature and techniques in temporary closure. Methods : An electronic literature search of Pubmed, MEDLINE, and the Cochrane Database of Collected Reviews from 1972-2018 was performed using the keywords “thoracic,” “damage control,” and “thoracotomy.” Studies were included if they reported the use of DCT following thoracic trauma and included survival as an outcome. Results : Of 723 studies, seven met inclusion criteria for a total of a 130 DCT operations. Gauze packing with temporary closure of the skin with suture was the most frequently reported form of closure. The overall survival rate for the seven studies was 67%. Survival rates ranged from 42-77%. Average injury severity score was 30, and 64% of injuries were penetrating in nature. The most common complications included infections (57%; pneumonia, empyema, wound infection, bacteremia), respiratory failure (21%), ARDS (8%), and renal failure (18%). Conclusion : DCT may be associated with improved survival in the critically injured patient population. Delaying definitive operation by temporarily closing the thorax in order to allow time to restore normal physiology may be considered as a strategy in the unstable thoracic trauma patient population. The impact an open chest has on respiratory physiology remains inconclusive as well as best mechanisms of temporary closure. Multi-center studies are required to elucidate these important questions

DECENTRALIZATION IN UGANDA

The theory of fiscal federalism provides several reasons to expect better public service delivery if government is decentralized. Demand for public services is expected to vary across jurisdictions, and local government officials are expected to match supply of public services with demand more effectively than if public services were centrally provided. Households are expected to have higher participation rates in elections and to vote for better reasons (the candidates' experience, agenda or political affiliation, rather than bribery or the candidates' race, religion etc.) at the local level, and to have better access to information about local affairs than about national politics. Finally, mobility across jurisdictions is expected to induce local governments to be more efficient. We review the decentralization process in Uganda and provide evidence on all these mechanisms. There turns out to be little support for the relevance of these hypotheses to Uganda

IceCube sensitivity for low-energy neutrinos from nearby supernovae

This paper describes the response of the IceCube neutrino telescope located at the geographic south pole to outbursts of MeV neutrinos from the core collapse of nearby massive stars. IceCube was completed in December 2010 forming a lattice of 5160 photomultiplier tubes that monitor a volume of ∼1 km3 in the deep Antarctic ice for particle induced photons. The telescope was designed to detect neutrinos with energies greater than 100 GeV. Owing to subfreezing ice temperatures, the photomultiplier dark noise rates are particularly low. Hence IceCube can also detect large numbers of MeV neutrinos by observing a collective rise in all photomultiplier rates on top of the dark noise. With 2 ms timing resolution, IceCube can detect subtle features in the temporal development of the supernova neutrino burst. For a supernova at the galactic center, its sensitivity matches that of a background-free megaton-scale supernova search experiment. The sensitivity decreases to 20 standard deviations at the galactic edge (30 kpc) and 6 standard deviations at the Large Magellanic Cloud (50 kpc). IceCube is sending triggers from potential supernovae to the Supernova Early Warning System. The sensitivity to neutrino properties such as the neutrino hierarchy is discussed, as well as the possibility to detect the neutronization burst, a short outbreak of νe ’s released by electron capture on protons soon after collapse. Tantalizing signatures, such as the formation of a quark star or a black hole as well as the characteristics of shock waves, are investigated to illustrate IceCube’s capability for supernova detection

Hepatitis B virus haplotype number at baseline is a predictive marker of functional cure during antiviral therapy for patients with genotypes A and D HBeAg-positive chronic hepatitis B

Backgrounds and Aims: We investigated associations between hepatitis B virus (HBV) genome-length haplotype number (HN) at baseline in subjects with HBeAg-positive chronic hepatitis B (CHB), and the likelihood of achieving functional cure during direct-acting antiviral therapy. Method: We analysed 86 HBeAg-positive baseline samples from patients with HBV genotypes A and D who were enrolled in a Phase II trial of tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) to determine if HN was a biomarker of HBsAg loss during therapy. Findings were validated using baseline samples from 181 patients with HBV genotypes A and D from an independent clinical trial utilising TDF or tenofovir alafenamide therapy in HBeAg-positive CHB. Results: In the HBeAg-positive test cohort, patients with genotypes A or D and ≤2 haplotypes had a minimum of 21-fold higher likelihood of achieving HBsAg loss on TDF. Baseline HN (p &lt; 0.0001) was a stronger predictor of HBsAg loss on therapy than HBsAg titre (p = 0.03), HBeAg titre (p = 0.0002), or the presence of HBV basal core promoter (A1762T, p = 0.0379 and G1764A, p = 0.0176) or G1896A precore mutations (p = 0.0218). This finding was validated in the independent validation cohort. HN was statistically higher in patients with HBV genotypes B or C infection compared to genotypes A and D. Conclusion: Baseline HN ≤2 predicts which patients with HBV genotypes A or D will more likely progress to functional cure on current direct-acting antiviral therapy, with greater accuracy than current biomarkers including baseline HBsAg and HBeAg titre.</p