MD-SOAR Maryland Shared Open Access Repository
Not a member yet
34521 research outputs found
Sort by
Informed Design of a Gravity Science Experiment for the Future Geophysical Investigation of the Uranian Moons
No full textThe outer solar system beyond Saturn remains unexplored by dedicated orbital missions. With a launch window opening in 2029, the Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP) mission has been prioritized as a NASA Flagship mission for the next decade (2023–2032) to comprehensively study Uranus and its major moons—Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon. We define and apply novel mission design principles centered on scientific objectives to UOP's gravity science (GS) experiment. Using a combination of Bayesian and Precise Orbit Determination inversions, it is possible to determine mission requirements ensuring the achievement of scientific goals. Our methodology involves building measurement-to-interior parameter maps via extensive Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulations, linking geodetic measurements' precisions to uncertainties in key interior parameters of the Uranian moons. We show how this mapping approach allows for the rapid evaluation of the ability of a GS experiment design to constrain interior parameters. We conduct a covariance analysis of two orbital tours, multiple measurement strategies, and inversion settings. The tested cases enable the satisfactory determination of Ariel's ice shell thickness (to about 16%), as well as its rock-to-ice mass ratio (≈28%). None of the solutions were able to constrain its ocean thickness. This reverse approach allows for the rapid and scientifically informed adjustment of mission design, thereby demonstrating its potential applicability to other planetary science experiments.V.F. was financially supported by the French Community of Belgium within the framework of the financing of an FRIA grant. V.F. extends its gratitude to Alfonso Caldiero for the fruitful discussions. R.-M.B. was financially supported by the Belgian PRODEX program managed by the European Space Agency in collaboration with the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office. The work by G.C. was supported by NASA under award No. 80GSFC21M0002.https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/ada7ef/met
Probing an auxiliary laser to tune the repetition rate of a soliton microcomb
No full textWe demonstrate that it is possible to linearly tune the repetition rate of a bright soliton comb that is generated using an Si3N4 microring resonator by linearly varying the frequency of an auxiliary heater laser. Hence, the auxiliary laser can be utilized as a linear active feedback element for stabilizing the repetition rate. We investigated the potential of the auxiliary laser as an actuator of the soliton repetition rate by varying the auxiliary laser frequency at different modulation rates. Within the modulation bandwidth of the laser, we find that the variation ratio, defined as the ratio of the change in the repetition rate to the change in the laser frequency, remains unchanged. This variation ratio also quantifies the correlation between the frequency drift of the auxiliary laser and the repetition rate phase noise and makes it possible to examine the impact of frequency drift on the attainable phase noise performance of the soliton microcomb. For our setup, we find that the repetition rate phase noise of the microcomb below a 1-kHz offset from the carrier is dominated by the frequency drift of the auxiliary laser, which emphasizes the importance of deploying an inherently low-phase-noise laser when auxiliary laser heating technique is utilized.U.S. Department of Defense (HQ0034-20-2-0007). Work at UMBC was supported by collaborative agreements 2022138-142232 and 2023200-142386 with the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences as a sub-award from US DoD cooperative agreement HQ0034-20-2-0007.https://opg.optica.org/optcon/abstract.cfm?uri=optcon-4-2-36
Competition policy in North America in the context of the USMCA: an overview and some skepticism with regard to any prospects for harmonization
No full textCompetition policy within the three countries of the USMCA ? Canada, Mexico, and the United States has remained largely apart from the general economic integration that is the theme of the USMCA (and of NAFTA before it). Indeed, this separation is consistent with the absence of competition policy in the wider economic integration efforts of the WTO (and of GATT before it). At first glance, this separation might appear to be anomalous, and there should be a link between competition policy and trade in the context of international trade agreements. After all, reduced barriers to international trade generally increase competition in domestic markets, and the latter is what competition policy is supposed to encourage. However, this chapter argues that this pattern of non-harmonized competition policy is not accidental or somehow an oversight. Instead, this pattern reflects some fundamental differences between competition policy and the policies that guide the export/import trade flows that are at the core of such free trade agreements. The body of this chapter expands on this argument.https://www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap/book/9781035326570/chapter14.xm
Everyday Uncertainty: How Blind People Use GenAI Tools for Information Access
No full textCHI 2025: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Yokohama Japan, 26 April 2025- 1 May 2025Generative AI (GenAI) tools promise to advance non-visual information access but introduce new challenges due to output errors, hallucinations, biases, and constantly changing capabilities. Through interviews with 20 blind screen reader users who use various GenAI applications for diverse tasks, we show how they approached information access with everyday uncertainty, or a mindset of skepticism and criticality towards both AI- and human-mediated assistance as well as information itself. Instead of expecting information to be ‘correct’ and ‘complete’, participants extracted cues from error-prone information sources; treated all information as tentative; acknowledged and explored information subjectivity; and constantly adjusted their expectations and strategies considering the politics around access. The concept of everyday uncertainty situates GenAI tools among the interconnected assistive applications, humans, and sociomaterial conditions that both enable and hinder the ongoing production of access. We discuss the implications of everyday uncertainty for future design and research.We thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback We also acknowledge the Accessibility Research Collective for their insights throughout various stages of this research and extend our thanks to Sanika Bhamare for her assistance during the initial exploration of this work This work was supported by NSF Award 2326023https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.371343
SEALM: Semantically Enriched Attributes with Language Models for Linkage Recommendation
No full textInternational Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2025). Porto, Portugal, April 4-6, 2025Matching attributes from different repositories is an important step in the process of schema integration to consolidate heterogeneous data silos. In order to recommend linkages between relevant attributes, a contextually rich representation of each attribute is quite essential, particularly when more than two database schemas are to be integrated. This paper introduces the SEALM approach to generate a data catalog of semantically rich attribute descriptions using Generative Language Models based on a new technique that employs six variations of available metadata information. Instead of using raw attribute metadata, we generate SEALM descriptions, which are used to recommend linkages with an unsupervised matching pipeline that involves a novel multi-source Blocking algorithm. Experiments on multiple schemas yield a 5% to 20% recall improvement in recommending linkages with SEALM-based attribute descriptions generated by the tiniest Llama3.1:8B model compared to existing techniques. With SEALM, we only need to process the small fraction of attributes to be integrated rather than exhaustively inspecting all combinations of potential linkages.Leonard Traeger was partially supported by a Technology Catalyst Fund TCF24KAR11131049602 by UMBC and a grant project PLan CV (reference number 03FHP109) by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and Joint Science Conference (GWK)
How Partisanship & Political Ideology Influences Empathy and Tolerance
No full textDecades of previous research suggest that liberals tend to be more empathetic and tolerant than conservatives, with scholars attributing these measurable gaps to the differing core values of each ideology. More recent studies challenge these notions, finding that liberals and conservatives have similar levels of tolerance and empathy when exposed to ideological outgroups. This study sought to find if empathy was a predictor for tolerance by replicating the ideological-conflict hypothesis, which is that both liberals and conservatives share a tendency to be intolerant towards groups they perceive as ideologically opposed. In this study, 177 participants that were 18 years or older from the U.S. responded to items from the Empathy Assessment Index (EAI) to assess participants’ empathy levels. Then, participants were asked to rank from a sample of 10 groups from most-liked to least-liked. Afterward, they were asked how willing they are to allow their least-liked group the right to political participation and other items measuring political tolerance. This study hypothesized that self-identified liberal participants would respond more positively to the empathy related questions than self-identified conservatives and that members from both ideologies will have similar levels of intolerance toward ideological outgroups. Although liberals and conservatives selected least-liked groups that were ideologically dissimilar, the results of this study contrast from previous research in tolerance and empathy. Correlational analyses revealed no partisan difference in responses to the Empathy Assessment Index and liberals were found to be less tolerant than conservatives. Further research is needed in these areas for a more complete understanding of how to capture empathy and tolerance levels as the current political climate may compromise the reliability of these measures
Direct Detection and Quantification of Aqueous Proteins via a Fluorescent Probe Through the Use of Fluorophore-Induced Plasmonic Current
No full textWe report on the recent advancements in the sensing of proteins, both directly and with the use of a fluorescent probe, through the use of Fluorophore-Induced Plasmonic Current (FIPC). FIPC are a phenomenon where a fluorophore or excited state species is in close proximity to a plasmonically active metal nanoparticle film (MNF), and the excited state is able to couple to the particle, ultimately leading to enhanced spectroscopic properties. This phenomenon is similar to the well-reported metal-enhanced fluorescence (MEF) phenomenon, wherein the coupled complex produces an enhanced fluorescence emission and a shorter lifetime. However, if the particles themselves are sufficiently spaced and oriented, an induced current can transfer from each discreet particle to the next, creating a detectable current across the film. This detectable current has a magnitude that is proportional to the fluorescent properties of the species that produced it, and can be affected by the polarization of the excitation source; the spacing and size of the particles on the film; the overlap between the spectral properties of the film and the species; as well as externally applied voltages and currents. In this study, we examined whether it is possible to detect protein species, directly due to both their intrinsic fluorescent and absorptive properties, and how that compares to commercially available protein detection probes, in a similar manner to prior work by our group addressing analyte detection via turn-on fluorescent probes. This FIPC-based detection technique is a novel method that has not been used for the detection of proteins, and the use of this method could expand the dynamic sensing range of first-pass testing, while overcoming some of the physical limitations on the upper limit of detection of both absorption spectroscopy and fluorescence emission spectroscopy. Our experiments sought to highlight the selectivity of FIPC-based detection relative to both fluorescence and absorption spectroscopy, as well as its sensitivity when working with protein analytes. We examined the effects of protein concentration, intrinsic fluorescent properties, and turn-on probes, as well as how these techniques compare to traditional analytical techniques used today.The authors acknowledge salary support for C. D. Geddes from UMBC and support to Daniel R. Pierce from the Chemistry-Biology Interface program (CBI) (grant #5T32GM066706).https://www.mdpi.com/2079-6374/15/3/15
The CLASS Quasar Catalog: Coronal Line Activity in Type 1 SDSS Quasars
No full textWe conduct the first systematic survey of a total of eleven optical coronal lines in the spectra of a large sample of low redshift (z 100eV) being even rarer. The [Ne V] λ3426 line, which constitutes the majority of detections, is strongly correlated with the bolometric luminosity. These findings suggest that the optical coronal lines are significantly suppressed in the majority of local AGNs, possibly as a result of the presence of dust in the emitting regions. We find that the incidence of ionized outflows is significantly higher in coronal line emitters compared with non-coronal line emitters, possibly suggesting that dust destruction in outflows enhances coronal line emission in AGNs. Many coronal lines show line profiles that are broader than those of narrow lines, and are blue-shifted relative the lower ionization potential lines, suggesting outflows in the highly ionized gas. Given the limited number of detections, we do not find any statistically significant trends of detection statistics, or line ratios with black hole mass, Eddington ratio, or AGN bolometric luminosity. The catalog is publicly available and can provide a useful database of the coronal line properties of low redshift quasars that can be compared to the growing number of high-z AGNs discovered by JWST.Funding for SDSS-III has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. The SDSS-III web site is http://www.sdss3.org/.http://arxiv.org/abs/2501.1706
Co-Located Supportive Services to Reduce Recidivism in Batterer Intervention
No full textBatterer Intervention Programming (BIP) is a widely used strategy to reduce Intimate Partner Violence. There is an estimate of over 2000 BIPs operating in the U.S., serving a predominantly court-mandated population through psychoeducational services to promote personal accountability and support behavioral change (Cannon et al., 2016; Murphy & Richards, 2022). Research summaries have found mixed evidence of program effectiveness, with most identifying only a small positive benefit in reducing re-offense (Babcock et al., 2024). Thus, there is a great need to develop and study promising new approaches to reduce reoffending among BIP participants in order to enhance the safety of victims and others affected by IPV. Our project investigated a currently under-utilized and under-studied strategy to reduce recidivism among IPV offenders by assessing and addressing common psychosocial problems associated with increased risk for program noncompliance and criminal re-offense.https://www.crimrxiv.com/pub/crtbk0tr/release/
Opportunities Beyond the Cliff: Exploring the Lived Experiences of Caregivers of Children With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) Who Seek Business Creation as a Pathway to Meaningful Employment
No full textCaregivers of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) hold a powerful influence over their children’s pursuit of meaningful employment, yet many experience a lack of support and struggle to find options that prioritize job fit, social opportunities, and independence. This void has motivated caregivers to pursue alternatives for their children, such as entrepreneurship, yet few studies have explored business creation in the context of lifelong caregiving. Using an interpretative phenomenological analysis approach, this study examined the lived experiences of caregivers who have developed business opportunities for and with their children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). The four theories that framed this study were ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 2001), resilience theory (Windle, 2010), and self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000, 2017). The central question guiding this inquiry was: What is the experience of caregivers who seek business creation as a pathway to meaningful employment for their child with IDD? Particularly of interest was the role that support, motivation, and psychological capacity played in their experience. Through questionnaires, a focus group, and in-depth interviews with 11 caregivers conducted via Zoom, this study comprehensively captured and analyzed the multifaceted experiences involved. Data analysis produced a thematic analysis including five primary themes: complexity of disability, caregiver motivation and resilience, support system and relationships, advocacy and social responsibility, and emotional and existential experiences. Caregivers were primarily motivated by their altruistic desire to help others and to fulfill a need for meaningful employment. The growth of their children’s skills and the expansion of their businesses were considered successes. Findings suggest that the primary difficulty is in accessing, finding, and retaining support for their dual roles as caregivers and entrepreneurs. To address this challenge, recommendations include educator, employer, service provider, and caregiver training, as well as inclusive hiring and accommodation guidance and mental health support that specifically acknowledges the reality of the caregiver’s dual roles. To improve the current state of caregiver support, it’s essential to see their unique abilities and contributions in the same spirit in which they appreciate, value, and respect people with IDD