This paper employs syndemics theory to explain high rates of sexually transmitted disease among inner city African American and Puerto Rican heterosexual young adults in Hartford, CT, USA. Syndemic theory helps to elucidate the tendency for multiple co-terminus and interacting epidemics to develop under conditions of health and social disparity. Based on enhanced focus group and in-depth interview data, the paper argues that respondents employed a cultural logic of risk assessment which put them at high risk for STD infection. This cultural logic was shaped by their experiences of growing up in the inner city which included: coming of age in an impoverished family, living in a broken home, experiencing domestic violence, limited expectations of the future, limited exposure to positive role models, lack of expectation of the dependency of others, and fear of intimacy.
A new technique of dual-frequency Doppler-lidar measurement is investigated. This technique is based on the use of a coherently locked, tunable, dual-frequency laser source and is shown to accurately measure velocities as small as 26 mum/s. It is generated by exploiting the nonlinear dynamics of a semiconductor laser through a proper combination of optical injection and operating conditions.
The coronagraph instrument on the WFIRST-AFTA mission study has two coronagraphic architectures, shaped pupil and hybrid Lyot, which may be interchanged for use in different observing scenarios. Each architecture relies on newly-developed mask components to function in the presence of the AFTA aperture, and so both must be matured to a high technology readiness level (TRL) in advance of the mission. A series of milestones were set to track the development of the technologies required for the instrument; in this paper, we report on completion of WFIRST-AFTA Coronagraph Milestone 2-a narrowband 10 −8 contrast test with static aberrations for the shaped pupil-and the plans for the upcoming broadband Coronagraph Milestone 5.
With a proper perturbation, even a single-mode semiconductor laser can exhibit highly complex dynamical characteristics ranging from stable, narrow-linewidth oscillation to broadband chaos. In recent years, three approaches to invoke complex nonlinear dynamical states in a single-mode semiconductor laser have been thoroughly studied: optical injection, optical feedback, and optoelectronic feedback. In each case, the nonlinear dynamics of the semiconductor laser depends on five intrinsic laser parameters and three operational parameters. The dynamical state of a given laser can be precisely controlled by properly adjusting the three operational parameters. This ability to control the dynamical behavior of a laser, combined with the understanding of its characteristics, opens up the opportunity for a wide range of novel applications. This paper illustrates the utilization of the rich nonlinear dynamics of single-mode semiconductor lasers by focusing on the period-one oscillation for its applications in tunable photonic microwave generation, AM-to-FM conversion, and dual-frequency precision Doppler lidar.
Phase shifters are a key component of nulling interferometry, one of the potential routes to enabling the measurement of faint exoplanet spectra. Here, three different achromatic phase shifters are evaluated experimentally in the mid-infrared, where such nulling interferometers may someday operate. The methods evaluated include the use of dispersive glasses, a through-focus field inversion, and field reversals on reflection from antisymmetric flat-mirror periscopes. All three approaches yielded deep, broadband, mid-infrared nulls, but the deepest broadband nulls were obtained with the periscope architecture. In the periscope system, average null depths of 4x10(-5) were obtained with a 25% bandwidth, and 2x10(-5) with a 20% bandwidth, at a central wavelength of 9.5 mum. The best short term nulls at 20% bandwidth were approximately 9x10(-6), in line with error budget predictions and the limits of the current generation of hardware.
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