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Cette étude vise à évaluer les potentiels effets positifs de l’haptonomie vis-à-vis des symptômes anxieux et dépressifs maternels en prénatal. Au total, 375 femmes enceintes, âgées de 18 à 45 ans et vivant en France, ont participé à cette étude. Elles ont répondu à un autoquestionnaire en ligne répertoriant leurs données sociodémographiques et à deux autoquestionnaires sur leur symptomatologie dépressive et anxieuse au cours de la grossesse. Les résultats montrent des niveaux plus faibles de symptômes dépressifs et anxieux chez les femmes suivant des séances d’haptonomie par rapport à celles suivant un accompagnement à la naissance classique. L’haptonomie apparaît comme un facteur protecteur face à cette symptomatologie, indépendamment de la parité et du nombre de séances suivies. Enfin, le choix de l’haptonomie semble être motivé par l’inclusion du père dans la relation et dans la communication au sein de la triade et par la volonté de vivre une grossesse plus sereine.

Objectif : Peu d’études françaises en psychologie se sont intéressées aux femmes ayant des complications durant la grossesse, telles que la menace d’accouchement prématuré et le diabète gestationnel. Dans cette étude, nous nous sommes intéressés à l’impact potentiel de ces complications sur les représentations maternelles de l’enfant et de la femme en tant que future mère, ainsi que sur l’attachement prénatal. Méthode : Quatre cent soixante-douze femmes enceintes ayant ou non des complications de la grossesse ont répondu à un questionnaire sociodémographique couplé à deux échelles de l’entretien R (Stern et al., 1989) pour évaluer les représentations du rôle de future mère et celles du bébé et au Prenatal Attachment Inventory (Muller et Mercer, 1993) pour mesurer l’attachement prénatal de la mère à l’enfant. Résultats : Les femmes ayant des complications ont des représentations plus négatives de leur futur enfant que les femmes ayant une grossesse sans complication. Toutefois, pour l’ensemble de l’échantillon, les représentations du futur enfant sont plus positives que celles de la future mère. Quant à l’attachement prénatal, il est plus élevé chez les femmes enceintes ayant des complications que celles n’en ayant pas. Conclusion : Ces résultats soulignent l’intérêt de la prise en compte des complications de la grossesse, car elles peuvent impacter le vécu des femmes enceintes, leurs représentations maternelles et leur attachement prénatal. Un accompagnement attentionné des femmes enceintes ayant des complications peut améliorer leur vécu de la grossesse, tout en abordant le lien à l’enfant.

Cette étude avait pour objectif d’évaluer l’impact des styles d’attachement de l’adulte sur le développement de l’anxiété spécifique à la grossesse (ASG) et de l’attachement prénatal au fœtus. Soixante-dix-neuf femmes enceintes ont répondu au PAI, au PRAQ-R2 et au RSQ. Les styles d’attachement craintif et préoccupé prédisent des scores élevés d’ASG significatifs. Aucun résultat significatif n’est trouvé pour l’attachement prénatal. Mieux connaître le rôle de l’attachement dans le développement de l’ASG permettrait d’améliorer les interventions thérapeutiques et préventives chez la femme enceinte.

Cette étude a pour objectif d’explorer l’impact de l’image du corps et du vécu corporel de jeunes mères sur leur bonding, le lien émotionnel unissant un parent à son nourrisson dans les premiers temps après la naissance. Un échantillon de 565 femmes, âgées de 18 à 45 ans, ont répondu en ligne à un questionnaire portant sur leurs données sociodémographiques et obstétricales, un questionnaire sur l’image du corps et un questionnaire sur le bonding. Les résultats mettent en évidence l’impact négatif d’une satisfaction corporelle moindre, d’une perception du corps comme peu féminin et d’un état de tension corporelle sur le lien précoce de la mère à son nourrisson.

Objectifs : Les bouleversements que le deuil périnatal impose ne sont pas sans conséquences sur les parents, mais également sur les équipes qui y sont confrontées. Les sages-femmes doivent faire face aux différents enjeux et difficultés que suppose l’interruption médicale de grossesse (IMG). Cette recherche vise à investiguer les liens entre le niveau d’anxiété, le nombre d’années d’exercice professionnel et le vécu des sages-femmes associé à la prise en charge de l’IMG. Méthode : Dans le premier volet, 238 sages-femmes ont rempli un autoquestionnaire de 20 questions concernant la formation reçue, leur pratique professionnelle et leur besoin de soutien. Dans le second volet, dix sages-femmes ont pris part à un entretien téléphonique investiguant leur vécu au cours de ces prises en charge. L’ensemble des professionnelles ont rempli l’inventaire d’anxiété situationnelle (IASTAY, Gauthier & Bouchard, 1993). Résultats : La majorité des sages-femmes présentent un score d’anxiété supérieur à la moyenne de la population générale à l’idée de prendre en charge une IMG. Ce score est négativement corrélé à leur nombre d’années d’expérience. Les professionnelles mentionnent également des difficultés lors de la pratique de l’IMG aussi bien au niveau professionnel que personnel, bien qu’elles témoignent d’un soutien jugé fort et précieux entre collègues. Enfin, elles évoquent le besoin d’être mieux formées et accompagnées dans cette pratique. Conclusion : Cette étude souligne l’importance que les sages-femmes soient mieux soutenues et formées à la prise en charge de l’IMG, ce qui pourrait les aider à aborder un tel acte de façon plus sereine à un niveau personnel et à soutenir au mieux le couple endeuillé.

The order, frequency and variety of names given the personified city in Lamentations 1-2 enhances a sense of readerly empathy that the personification of the city imbues. In the first stanza of Lamentations 1, the names for the personified figure are ordered such that the most specific name appears in the description of the most personal violence. In Lamentations 2, the personified city is named with a similar frequency to the violent and angry language used to describe the deity. Combined with an increased use of endearment terms, this violence requires readers to hold together both the violence and the deep relationship between the city and her God.

Emerging treatment strategies for retinal degeneration involve replacing lost photoreceptors using supportive scaffolds to ensure cells survive the implantation process. While many design aspects of these scaffolds, including material chemistry and microstructural cues, have been studied in depth, a full set of design constraints has yet to be established. For example, while known to be important in other tissues and systems, the influence of mechanical properties on surgical handling has not been quantified. In this study, photocrosslinked poly(ethylene glycol) dimethacrylate (PEGDMA) was used as a model polymer to study the effects of scaffold modulus (stiffness) on surgical handling, independent of material chemistry. This was achieved by modulating the molecular weight and concentrations of the PEGDMA in various prepolymer solutions. Scaffold modulus of each formulation was measured using photo-rheology, which enabled the collection of real-time polymerization data. In addition to measuring scaffold mechanical properties, this approach gave insight on polymerization kinetics, which were used to determine the polymerization time required for each sample. Scaffold handling characteristics were qualitatively evaluated using both in vitro and ex vivo trials that mimicked the surgical procedure. In these trials, scaffolds with shear moduli above 35 kPa performed satisfactorily, while those below this limit performed poorly. In other words, scaffolds below this modulus were too fragile for reliable transplantation. To better compare these results with literature values, the compressive modulus was measured for select samples, with the lower shear modulus limit corresponding to roughly 115 kPa compressive modulus. While an upper mechanical property limit was not readily apparent from these results, there was increased variability in surgical handling performance in samples with shear moduli above 800 kPa. Overall, the knowledge presented here provides important groundwork for future studies designed to examine additional retinal scaffold considerations, including the effect of scaffold mechanical properties on retinal progenitor cell fate.

A search has been performed for neutrinos from two sources, the $hep$ reaction in the solar $pp$ fusion chain and the $��_e$ component of the diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB), using the full dataset of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory with a total exposure of 2.47 kton-years after fiducialization. The $hep$ search is performed using both a single-bin counting analysis and a likelihood fit. We find a best-fit flux that is compatible with solar model predictions while remaining consistent with zero flux, and set a one-sided upper limit of $��_{hep} < 30\times10^{3}~\mathrm{cm}^{-2}~\mathrm{s}^{-1}$ [90% credible interval (CI)]. No events are observed in the DSNB search region, and we set an improved upper bound on the $��_e$ component of the DSNB flux of $��^\mathrm{DSNB}_{��_e} < 19~\textrm{cm}^{-2}~\textrm{s}^{-1}$ (90% CI) in the energy range $22.9 < E_��< 36.9$~MeV., 11 pages, 6 figures

A woman's negative perception of her subjective childbirth experience can have consequences on the mother's psychological state and on early mother-baby relationships. To date, there is no validated tool in France allowing to evaluate childbirth experience in a multidimensional way. The aim of this study is to validate the Questionnaire Assessing the Childbirth Experience (QEVA) in a French sample of mothers. This tool was developed in a previous study where the authors combined 25 items into 6 dimensions: representations and expectations, sensory perceptions, feeling of control, perceived social support (medical staff and partner), emotions (positive and negative) and first moments with the baby.The sample included 256 women recruited in a maternity ward. Sociodemographic and obstetric characteristics of our sample were compared to those of the French national perinatal survey. The structure of the QEVA with 17 items was explored by an exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM). An analysis of the internal consistency was conducted on the sub-scores of the identified factors, and the concurrent validity was assessed with the Peri-traumatic Distress Inventory (PDI) through a correlation and its associated t-test.The characteristics of our sample and those of the national perinatal survey do not differ on age, marital status, parity, cannabis use, infertility treatment, epidural and baby weight, in favour of the good representativeness of our sample. The study of the QEVA structure revealed a 4-dimensional structure. Analysis of the psychometric qualities showed a good internal consistency, with an observed alpha value ranging from 0.69 to 0.86. The QEVA also shows a good concurrent validity with the peri-traumatic distress scores (r=0.51).To date, the QEVA is the first standardized tool allowing a multidimensional evaluation of the subjective experience of childbirth. It has been validated on a French population using an exploratory structural equation modeling. This tool, which is simple to use and well accepted by mothers, enables health professionals not only to screen mothers experiencing difficult childbirth and in need of support, but also to adapt health care according to the dimensions of the birth experience and its associated difficulties (emotions during the birth, interactions with health professionals, first moments with the baby, or post-partum emotions).

Suite a un deces prenatal, l’enfant suivant peut etre concu dans un delai plus ou moins long. Nous avons explore l’impact d’un delai de conception superieur ou inferieur a un an apres le deces sur l’attachement a l’enfant suivant, l’estime de soi maternelle et les symptomes depressifs maternels aupres d’un echantillon de 26 meres ayant vecu une interruption medicale de grossesse (IMG). Le delai de conception plus court apres l’IMG a une influence negative sur l’attachement de la mere au bebe suivant. De plus, ce delai inferieur a 12 mois peut diminuer l’estime de soi maternelle et augmenter le risque de depression.

Economic and social transition periods can have strong negative effects for the environment and for wildlife. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 provides a striking example of social turmoil and transition to a new society. It is unclear, however, how humans affected the environment in the course of the collapse, and if institutions designed to safeguard the environment continued to fulfill their intended role. Our goal was to assess the impact of the collapse of the Soviet Union on forest canopy removal rates in protected areas, and how these rates varied by protected area status and over time. We monitored forest canopy removal within and outside of protected areas using a 1985–2010 time series of Landsat satellite images from the Western Caucasus. On average, we found surprisingly low annual forest canopy removal rates of only 0.03%. The highest canopy removal inside of protected areas of all types occurred after 2000. Among the protected areas, we found the highest canopy removal rates within Sochi National Park, attributable to construction for the Olympic Games and in spite of the Park’s protected status. Overall, it is encouraging that forest canopy removal rates in protected areas in the Western Caucasus are far lower than in other Russian regions. Because many local endemic plant and animal species are found in the Caucasus region, clear cuts are prohibited, and this regulation appears to be effective. However, forest canopy removal within protected areas caused by major social and political events such as the Olympic Games is of concern.

Summary This essay introduces five papers investigating land tenure issues related to conserving tropical forests via incentive-based strategies (e.g., PES, REDD+). After briefly reviewing key terms and concepts, we point to important contributions from the papers regarding (a) a deeper theoretical and empirical understanding of the relationship between land tenure and forest outcomes, and (b) policy lessons from early efforts to address tenure in sites targeted for forest carbon projects.

Environmental health problems such as malaria respiratory infections diarrhoea and malnutrition pose very high burdens on the poor rural people in much of the tropics. Recent research on key interventions-the adoption and use of relatively cheap and effective environmental health technologies-has focused primarily on the influence of demand-side household-level drivers. Relatively few studies of the promotion and use of these technologies have considered the role of contextual factors such as governance the enabling environment and national policies because of the challenges of cross-country comparisons. We exploit a natural experimental setting by comparing household adoption across the Benin-Togo national border that splits the Tamberma Valley in West Africa. Households across the border share the same culture ethnicity weather physiographic features livelihoods and infrastructure; however they are located in countries at virtually opposite ends of the institutional spectrum of democratic elections voice and accountability effective governance and corruption. Binary choice models and rigorous non-parametric matching estimators confirm that households in Benin are more likely than households in Togo to plant soybeans build improved cookstoves and purchase mosquito nets ceteris paribus. Although we cannot identify the exact mechanism for the large and significant national-level differences in technology adoption our findings suggest that contextual institutional factors can be more important than household characteristics for technology adoption. Published by Oxford University Press in association with The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (c) The Author 2014; all rights reserved.

International mountain conservation paradigms have shifted in the past 30 years from establishment of centrally governed protected areas that exclude communities, to collaborative and community-based conservation stewardship with communities that depend on resources for their livelihoods. The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (Ramsar Convention) embodies this collaborative paradigm by suggesting that people and local governments can be collective stewards for the “wise use” of wetlands on which they depend for water resources and livelihoods. Although collaborative approaches are increasingly recommended to govern large and complex mountain waterscapes across multiple jurisdictions, recent international case study comparisons highlight the site-specific nature of institutional design and the effect that changing social relations and overlapping or conflicting rights and boundaries have on promised collaborative outcomes. This article illustrates the usefulness of a recently devel...

Land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) is the main cause of the global biodiversity crisis and protected areas are critical to prevent habitat loss. Rapid changes in institutional and socio-economic conditions, such as the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991, often trigger widespread LULCC. Yet, it is unclear how effective protected areas are in safeguarding habitat within them during such periods of rapid LULCC. Our goal here was to map changes in forest cover and agricultural lands from 1984 to 2010 in order to assess the effectiveness of two strictly protected areas, Oksky and Mordovsky State Nature Reserves, in temperate European Russia. We analyzed dense time series of Landsat images for three Landsat footprints and applied a support vector machine classification and trajectory-based change detection to map forest disturbance. We then used matching statistics to quantify the effectiveness of the protected areas. Our analyses highlighted considerable post-Soviet LULCC in European Russia. The LULCC maps revealed disturbances on 5.02% of the total forest area, with strongly declining disturbance rates in post-Soviet times. We also found that 39.89% of the agricultural land used in 1988 was abandoned after 1991, leading to widespread forest regrowth. Oksky and Mordovsky State Nature Reserves had a significantly lower probability of forest disturbance (− 0.1 to − 3.5% lower) in comparison to their surrounding areas. This suggests that protected areas were relatively effective in limiting human-induced forest disturbance in European Russia, despite lower levels of control and an eroding infrastructure for nature protection. Moreover, we found drastic land-cover changes, particularly forest regrowth, in the surroundings of these protected areas, highlighting conservation opportunities. Protected areas can play a key role in biodiversity conservation during periods of rapid LULCC, and remote sensing coupled with matching statistics provide important tools for monitoring the success and failure of conservation efforts.

“Good” governance is often promoted for economic growth, but its impact on natural resource use in developing and transitional economies is not well understood. For example, many scholars promote improved governance as a means to slow resource use, whereas others have found that better governance increases extractive resource activities. In this paper we use within-country variation in Russia to test the impact of governance on timber harvesting. Using a reduced form fixed-effects model and satellite-based estimates of forest cover we find a statistically significant and non-linear effect of governance on the area of timber harvested: for a marginal improvement in governance timber harvesting increases, but this effect decreases at high levels of governance. These results are robust to alternative specifications and when instrumenting for economic growth. Governance could impact timber harvesting in Russia through ownership risk (i.e., tenure security), through the costs of doing business (i.e., bribes), or both. Nonparametric regressions and qualitative evidence suggest that both factors are at play in Russia. This analysis provides additional evidence that improving governance may increase natural resource extraction. This has important implications for policy prescriptions that suggest “good” governance will slow resource use in developing and transitional economies.

Since November 25th, 2004, the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory has been taking production data in its third and final phase. For this phase a 'Neutral-Current Detection (NCD) Array', consisting of 36 strings of 3He proportional counters and 4 strings of 4He proportional counters, was deployed in SNO's D 2O volume. It supplements the Cherenkov detector, consisting of 9456 photomultiplier tubes, present in the previous two phases by offering an independent measurement of the solar neutral current rate. The 3He counters detect neutrons from neutrino-deuteron neutral current interactions in the D 2O. We describe the calibration of this array. © 2011.

The political breakdown of the Soviet Union in 1991 provides a rare case of drastic changes in social and economic conditions, and as such a great opportunity to investigate the impacts of socioeconomic changes on the rates and patterns of forest harvest and regrowth. Our goal was to characterize forest-cover changes in the temperate zone of European Russia between 1985 and 2010 in 5-year increments using a stratified random sample of 12 Landsat footprints. We used Support Vector Machines and post-classification comparison to monitor forest area, disturbance and reforestation. Where image availability was sub-optimal, we tested whether winter images help to improve classification accuracy. Our approach yielded accurate mono-temporal maps (on average > 95% overall accuracy), and change maps (on average 93.5%). The additional use of winter imagery improved classification accuracy by about 2%. Our results suggest that Russia's temperate forests underwent substantial changes during the observed period. Overall, forested areas increased by 4.5%, but the changes in forested area varied over time: a decline in forest area between 1990 and 1995 (− 1%) was followed by an increase in overall forest area in recent years (+1.4%, 2005–2010), possibly caused in part by forest regrowth on abandoned farmlands. Disturbances varied greatly among administrative regions, suggesting that differences in socioeconomic conditions strongly influence disturbance rates. While portions of Russia's temperate forests experienced high disturbance rates, overall forest area is expanding. Our use of a stratified random sample of Landsat footprints, and of summer and winter images, allowed us to characterize forest dynamics across a large region over a long time period, emphasizing the value of winter imagery in the free Landsat archives, especially for study areas where data availability is limited.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the forestry sector in Russia underwent substantial changes: the state forestry sector was decentralized, the timber industry was privatized, and timber use rights were allocated through short- and long-term leases. To date, there has been no quantitative assessment of the drivers of timber harvesting in European Russia following these changes. In this paper we estimate an econometric model of timber harvesting using remote sensing estimations of forest disturbance from 1990–2000 to 2000–2005 as our dependent variable. We aggregate forest disturbance to administrative districts – equivalent to counties in the United States – and test the impact of several biophysical and economic factors on timber harvesting. Additionally, we examine the impact that regions – equivalent to states in the United States and the main level of decentralized governance in Russia – have on timber harvesting by estimating the influence of regional-level effects on forest disturbance in our econometric model. Russian regions diverged considerably in political and economic conditions after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the question is if these variations impacted timber harvesting after controlling for district-level biophysical and economic drivers. We find that the most important drivers of timber harvesting at the district level are road density, the percent of evergreen forest, and the total area of forest. The influence of these variables on timber harvesting changed over time and there was more harvesting closer to urban areas in 2000–2005. Even though district-level variables explain more than 70 percent of the variation in forest disturbance in our econometric model, we find that regional-level effects remain statistically significant. While we cannot identify the exact mechanism through which regional-level effects impact timber harvesting, our results suggest that sub-national differences can have a large and statistically significant impact on land-use outcomes and should be considered in policy design and evaluation.

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are generating a lot of attention among conservationists because they have the potential to create new funding opportunities for biodiversity protection and other ecosystem services that contribute to human well-being. A number of recent publications have suggested ways to target and implement PES projects in order to maximize their cost-effectiveness and efficiency, and the Heredia Declaration (this issue) sets forth a list of agreed-upon principles concerning the use of PES schemes. One of those principles concerns the “bundling” of joint products of intact ecosystems in PES schemes in order to maximize the benefits to society. There have been several recent studies focusing on the degree of overlap between biodiversity and other ecosystem services and therefore the opportunities and constraints to bundling these services. Building on this idea, the bulk of this paper focuses on developing a method for selecting sites for PES where the main interest is to bundle biodiversity with other ecosystem services. We focus our analysis on Madagascar, a country with globally important biodiversity that is also beginning to explore the utility of PES as a conservation mechanism. Specifically, we assess the opportunities for bundling biodiversity conservation with carbon and water services at the national scale and identify where using PES to protect these areas of multiple benefits would be most cost-effective and efficient. This analysis identifies almost 30,000 km 2 — out of 134,301 km 2 — of natural habitat that could potentially meet biodiversity conservation goals and protect additional ecosystem services through a PES scheme. One of the places identified by our methodology corresponds to an ongoing conservation project that has already begun using payments from carbon emission reductions to protect standing forests and restore important biodiversity corridors — the Ankeniheny-Mantadia-Zahamena Biodiversity Conservation and Restoration Project. This project site was selected for its high biodiversity and carbon values, lending credibility to our spatial targeting methodology and providing a case study to draw insights on how multiple-benefit PES schemes can be implemented in biodiversity “hotspots”. In the discussion section of this paper we draw on experiences from this project to consider how many of the principles outlined in the Heredia Declaration affect implementation of PES schemes in Madagascar, providing lessons for similar countries experimenting with PES for biodiversity conservation.

Sustainable and equitable access to safe water and adequate sanitation are widely acknowledged as vital, yet neglected, development goals. Water supply and sanitation (WSS) policies are justified because of the usual efficiency criteria, but also major equity concerns. Yet, to date there are few scientific impact evaluations showing that WSS policies are effective in delivering social welfare outcomes. This lack of an evaluation culture is partly because WSS policies are characterized by diverse mechanisms, broad goals and the increasing importance of decentralized delivery, and partly because programme administrators are unaware of appropriate methods. We describe a protocol for a quasi-experimental evaluation of a community-demand-driven programme for water and sanitation in rural India, which addresses several evaluation challenges. After briefly reviewing policy and implementation issues in the sector, we describe key features of our protocol, including control group identification, pre-post measurement, programme theory, sample sufficiency and robust indicators. At its core, our protocol proposes to combine propensity score matching and difference-in-difference estimation. We conclude by briefly summarizing how quasi-experimental impact evaluations can address key issues in WSS policy design and when such evaluations are needed.

To combat high rates of malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa, the UN Millennium Project has called for increased emphasis on technologies that explicitly link agricultural and nutritional components. While there is a large literature on the factors that influence household decisions to adopt new agricultural technologies with economic or environmental benefits, less is known about the factors that determine the uptake and continued use of agricultural technologies promoted exclusively for their health benefits. Using data from a 2004 survey in the Tamberma region of Togo and Benin, we identify factors that influence the adoption and disadoption of soybeans — a crop being promoted throughout West Africa for its high protein content. Similar to the literature on adoption of other sustainable agriculture technologies, we find that household preferences, resource endowments, and risk and uncertainty affect household decisions about soybeans. However, by analyzing decisions about initial uptake and continued cultivation separately, we uncover the importance of intrahousehold dynamics and experience with the soybean crop. To successfully address malnutrition through new agricultural technologies, researchers and rural extension agents should take a disaggregated view of technology adoption, seeking to identify and tailor their outreach to the different factors important at different stages of the dissemination process.

Part of the puzzle surrounding biodiversity loss lies in an incomplete understanding of how humans value the functions and services that flow from biodiversity conservation projects. This paper takes a closer look at the links between the conservation of biodiversity and the livelihoods of rural people who live on the fringes of the parks and protected areas. We revisit some of the key aspects of ecosystem valuation—purpose, methodology, and policy design and implementation—because the links between biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services, and human welfare are obscured by considerable smoke and mirrors. Using a biodiversity conservation project (Ruteng Park) on Flores Island in Indonesia as a case study, we build a concrete empirical example of ecosystem valuation. This conservation project has resulted in spatially patchy watershed protection that allows us to identify and estimate the impacts of watershed services on human health (diarrhea prevalence) in the buffer zone of the park. We conclude by offering a plan of research to improve the design of conservation interventions for protecting biodiversity and providing ecosystem services. These recommendations include developing more conceptual knowledge on the linkages between biodiversity and ecosystem services; scaling up valuation efforts of underappreciated services such as health; shifting focus from valuing services individually to valuing multiple benefits from the same area; and conducting conservation policy experiments to identify causal outcomes (including defensible estimates of ecosystem values).

We report the results of an investigation of the laser-material interaction processes involved in laser drilling of alumina, through the use of an enhanced peak power (2.5 kW) CO/sub 2/ laser and novel temporal pulse formats. Peak power was varied from 30 W to 2 kW for pulses of constant energy to observe the effect produced on scribe depth. High-speed videography of hole formation has been combined with microscopic analysis to investigate the key processes involved in laser processing of alumina. Plasma screening was observed for short, high peak power laser pulses, and optimal scribing was achieved in the weakly plasma absorbing regime. A new processing technique for scribing alumina has been developed, which exploits the fast response of the laser to produce novel temporal pulse shapes, which can be modified to generate cleaner holes. Scribe speeds of up to 280 mm/spl middot/s/sup -1/ were obtained for scribe holes >200 /spl mu/m deep and 150 /spl mu/m apart, with no material plugging the hole, in 0.635-mm-thick 96% alumina.

Hard exclusive electroproduction of π + π − pairs off hydrogen and deuterium targets has been studied by the HERMES experiment at DESY. Legendre moments 〈 P 1 〉 and 〈 P 3 〉 of the angular distributions of π + mesons in the center-of-mass frame of the pair have been measured for the first time. Their dependence on the π + π − invariant mass can be understood as being due to the interference between relative P -wave (isovector) and S -, D -wave (isoscalar) states of the two pions. The increase in magnitude of 〈 P 1 〉 as Bjorken x increases is interpreted in the framework of generalized parton distributions as an enhancement of flavour non-singlet q q ¯ exchange for larger values of x , which leads to a sizable admixture of isoscalar and isovector pion pairs. In addition, the interference between P -wave and D -wave states separately for transverse and longitudinal pion pairs has been studied. The data indicate that in the f 2 ( 1270 ) region at 〈 Q 2 〉 = 3 GeV 2 higher-twist effects can be as large as the leading-twist longitudinal component.

We present a measurement of the longitudinal spin asymmetry A|| in photoproduction of pairs of hadrons with high transverse momentum pT. Data were accumulated by the HERMES experiment using a 27.5 GeV polarized positron beam and a polarized hydrogen target internal to the HERA storage ring. For h^+h^- pairs with _(pT)^(h1)>1.5GeV/c and _(pT)^(h2)>1.0GeV/c, the measured asymmetry is A_(||) = -0.28±0.12(stat)±0.02(syst). This negative value is in contrast to the positive asymmetries typically measured in deep inelastic scattering from protons, and is interpreted to arise from a positive gluon polarization.

Cross section ratios for deep-inelastic scattering from 14N and 3He with respect to 2H have been measured by the HERMES experiment at DESY using a 27.5 GeV positron beam. The data cover a range in the Bjorken scaling variable x between 0.013 and 0.65, while the negative squared four-momentum transfer Q^2 varies from 0.5 to 15 GeV^2. The data are compared to measurements performed by NMC, E665, and SLAC on 4He and 12C, and are found to be different for x < 0.06 and Q^2 < 1.5 GeV^2. The observed difference is attributed to an A-dependence of the ratio R = sigma_L / sigma_T of longitudinal to transverse deep-inelastic scattering cross sections at low x and low Q^2.

We report the cw operation of a sealed-off dc discharge excited carbon dioxide laser with a novel variation to the conventional grating-tuned resonator arrangement, which permits the achievement of useful laser power output levels in the wavelength range of 11.1–12.1 μm, using the 14 C 16 O 2 isotope in the laser gas mixture.

We describe the first observation of single-line operation of cw atomic xenon lasers at Watt-level output powers. Single frequency output powers of 3.5 W on the 2.03 μm line and 780 mW on the 3.51 μm line have been observed. The single line performance of the laser is compared with observations made during multi-line operation. An explanation for the observed behaviour is proposed involving the suppression of line competition and the selective quenching and pumping of relevant transitions.

We report results from a combined analysis of solar neutrino data from all phases of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. By exploiting particle identification information obtained from the proportional counters installed during the third phase, this analysis improved background rejection in that phase of the experiment. The combined analysis resulted in a total flux of active neutrino flavors from 8B decays in the Sun of (5.25 \pm 0.16(stat.)+0.11-0.13(syst.))\times10^6 cm^{-2}s^{-1}. A two-flavor neutrino oscillation analysis yielded \Deltam^2_{21} = (5.6^{+1.9}_{-1.4})\times10^{-5} eV^2 and tan^2{\theta}_{12}= 0.427^{+0.033}_{-0.029}. A three-flavor neutrino oscillation analysis combining this result with results of all other solar neutrino experiments and the KamLAND experiment yielded \Deltam^2_{21} = (7.41^{+0.21}_{-0.19})\times10^{-5} eV^2, tan^2{\theta}_{12} = 0.446^{+0.030}_{-0.029}, and sin^2{\theta}_{13} = (2.5^{+1.8}_{-1.5})\times10^{-2}. This implied an upper bound of sin^2{\theta}_{13} < 0.053 at the 95% confidence level (C.L.).

Commercially-available QCW diode laser stacks with bar pitch below 0.5mm can now deliver source power densities exceeding 10kW/cm2. An increasing number of applications for these sources also specify high brightness, with collimation requirements ranging from equalization of fast and slow axis divergence to achieving fast-axis divergence within a small multiple of the diffraction limit. While collimation can be achieved by mounting an array of rod lenses in a frame with a suitable v-groove array, the resulting optical assembly has a large number of elements and associated adhesive bonds, and the size of the mounting frame limits the density at which stacks can be packed together. We present results exploiting an alternative approach using monolithic fast-axis collimator arrays. This approach greatly reduces the component count and minimizes the number of adhesive bonds required, providing a compact and rugged assembly well-suited to demanding applications. The monolithic collimator array also simplifies package design, and maximizes the achievable device stack packing density. Lens array properties may be tailored to generate applicationspecific divergence profiles or to match the geometry of individual stacks in order to achieve low divergence. Directwrite fabrication of these components allows mass-customization, offering a scalable, low-cost route to high volume collimation for fusion applications.

This paper details the solar neutrino analysis of the 385.17-day phase-III data set acquired by the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO). An array of He-3 proportional counters was installed in the heavy-water target to measure precisely the rate of neutrino-deuteron neutral-current interactions. This technique to determine the total active B-8 solar neutrino flux was largely independent of the methods employed in previous phases. The total flux of active neutrinos was measured to be 5.54(-0.31)(+0.33)(stat.)(-0.34)(+0.36)(syst.) x 10(6) cm(-2) s(-1), consistent with previous measurements and standard solar models. A global analysis of solar and reactor neutrino mixing parameters yielded the best-fit values of Delta m(2) = 7.59(-0.21)(+0.19) x 10(-5) eV(2) and theta = 34.4(-1.2)(+1.3) degrees. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevC.87.015502

The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) has confirmed the standard solar model and neutrino oscillations through the observation of neutrinos from the solar core. In this paper we present a search for neutrinos associated with sources other than the solar core, such as gamma-ray bursts and solar flares. We present a new method for looking for temporal coincidences between neutrino events and astrophysical bursts of widely varying intensity. No correlations were found between neutrinos detected in SNO and such astrophysical sources., United States. Dept. of Energy, National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (U.S.), Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

We describe the successful use of wavefront compensator phaseplates to extend the locking range of VHG-stabilized diode laser bars by correcting the effects of imperfect source collimation. We first show that smile values of greater than 1μm peak to valley typically limit the achievable wavelength locking range, and that using wavefront compensation to reduce the effective smile to below 0.5μm allows all emitters to be simultaneously locked, even for bars with standard facet coatings, operating under conditions where the bar's natural lasing wavelength is over 9nm from the VHG locking wavelength. We then show that, even under conditions of low smile, wavefront errors can limit the locking range and locking efficiency, and that these limits can again be overcome by wavefront compensation. This allows wavelength lock to be maintained over an increased range of diode temperature and drive current, without incurring the efficiency loss that would be incurred by increasing grating strength. By integrating wavefront compensation into the slow-axis collimator, we can achieve this high-brightness VHG-optimized beam in a compact optical system.

The T2K experiment is designed to study neutrino oscillation properties by directing a high intensity neutrino beam produced at J-PARC in Tokai, Japan, towards the large Super-Kamiokande detector located 295 km away, in Kamioka, Japan. The experiment includes a sophisticated near detector complex, 280 m downstream of the neutrino production target in order to measure the properties of the neutrino beam and to better understand neutrino interactions at the energy scale below a few GeV. A key element of the near detectors is the ND280 tracker, consisting of two active scintillator–bar target systems surrounded by three large time projection chambers (TPCs) for charged particle tracking. The data collected with the tracker are used to study charged current neutrino interaction rates and kinematics prior to oscillation, in order to reduce uncertainties in the oscillation measurements by the far detector. The tracker is surrounded by the former UA1/NOMAD dipole magnet and the TPCs measure the charges, momenta, and particle types of charged particles passing through them. Novel features of the TPC design include its rectangular box layout constructed from composite panels, the use of bulk micromegas detectors for gas amplification, electronics readout based on a new ASIC, and a photoelectron calibration system. This paper describes the design and construction of the TPCs, the micromegas modules, the readout electronics, the gas handling system, and shows the performance of the TPCs as deduced from measurements with particle beams, cosmic rays, and the calibration system.

The T2K experiment is a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment. Its main goal is to measure the last unknown lepton sector mixing angle {\theta}_{13} by observing {\nu}_e appearance in a {\nu}_{\mu} beam. It also aims to make a precision measurement of the known oscillation parameters, {\Delta}m^{2}_{23} and sin^{2} 2{\theta}_{23}, via {\nu}_{\mu} disappearance studies. Other goals of the experiment include various neutrino cross section measurements and sterile neutrino searches. The experiment uses an intense proton beam generated by the J-PARC accelerator in Tokai, Japan, and is composed of a neutrino beamline, a near detector complex (ND280), and a far detector (Super-Kamiokande) located 295 km away from J-PARC. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the instrumentation aspect of the T2K experiment and a summary of the vital information for each subsystem., Comment: 33 pages, 32 figures, Submitted and accepted by NIM A. Editor: Prof. Chang Kee Jung, Department of Physics and Astronomy, SUNY Stony Brook, chang.jung@sunysb.edu, 631-632-8108 Submit Edited to remove line numbers

We present our work on a single optical component that combines fast-axis smile and lens error correction with slowaxis collimation, produced with a laser-cut phase-plate technique. Customized focal length of slow-axis lenses allows optimization of fill-factor of diode laser bars. In this paper we report on excellent beam properties obtained for a 49- single mode emitter array, 975 nm bar providing 30W cw output, with RMS pointing error of 3% and 6% of far-field divergence in fast- and slow-axis, respectively. We observed a pitch mismatch of 0.03% between the slow-axis lens array, with emitter pointing clearly affected by chip thermal expansion.