Wichita State University

About: Wichita State University is a education organization based out in Wichita, Kansas, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 4988 authors who have published 9563 publications receiving 253824 citations. The organization is also known as: WSU & Fairmount College.

Isochrones for old (>5 Gyr) stars and stellar populations. I. Models for –2.4 ≤ [Fe/H] ≤+0.6, 0.25 ≤ Y ≤ 0.33, and –0.4 ≤ [α/Fe] ≤+0.4

Abstract: Canonical grids of stellar evolutionary sequences have been computed for the helium mass-fraction abundances Y = 0.25, 0.29, and 0.33, and for iron abundances that vary from –2.4 to +0.4 (in 0.2 dex increments) when [α/Fe] =+0.4, or for the ranges –2.0 ≤ [Fe/H] ≤+0.6, –1.8 ≤ [Fe/H] ≤+0.6 when [α/Fe] =0.0 and –0.4, respectively. The grids, which consist of tracks for masses from 0.12 M{sub ⊙} to 1.1-1.5 M{sub ⊙} (depending on the metallicity) are based on up-to-date physics, including the gravitational settling of helium (but not metals diffusion). Interpolation software is provided to generate isochrones for arbitrary ages between ≈5 and 15 Gyr and any values of Y, [α/Fe], and [Fe/H] within the aformentioned ranges. Comparisons of isochrones with published color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) for the open clusters M67 ([Fe/H] ≈0.0) and NGC 6791 ([Fe/H] ≈0.3) and for four of the metal-poor globular clusters (47 Tuc, M3, M5, and M92) indicate that the models for the observed metallicities do a reasonably good job of reproducing the locations and slopes of the cluster main sequences and giant branches. The same conclusion is reached from a consideration of plots of nearby subdwarfs that have accurate Hipparcos parallaxes and metallicities in themore » range –2.0 ≲ [Fe/H] ≲ –1.0 on various CMDs and on the (log T {sub eff}, M{sub V} ) diagram. A relatively hot temperature scale similar to that derived in recent calibrations of the infrared flux method is favored by both the isochrones and the adopted color transformations, which are based on the latest MARCS model atmospheres.« less

The Cost of Not Breastfeeding: A Commentary

Abstract: Breastfeeding, a valuable natural resource, promotes health, helps prevent infant and childhood disease, and saves health care costs. Additional annual national health care costs, incurred for treatment of four medical conditions in infant who were not breastfed were estimated. Infant diarrhea in nonbreastfed infants costs $291.3 million; respiratory syncytial virus, $225 million; insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, from $9.6 to $124.8 million; and otitis media, $660 million. Thus, these four medical diagnoses alone create just over $1 billion of extra health care costs each year. Breastfeeding may also enhance intellectual development of children according to at least one medical research study. The potential societal benefits of more intelligent children is incalculable even though it cannot be directly measured in terms of dollars. Finally, it was calculated that an additional $2,665,715 in federal funds is needed yearly in order for WIC to provide infant formula to nonbreastfeeding mothers. For the average family, the cost of purchasing formula is twice the cost of supplemental food for the breastfeeding mother. Breastfeeding education and support should be an integral part of health care, especially under managed care which rewards the prevention of health problems and reduced use of health services.

SoftWater: Software-defined networking for next-generation underwater communication systems

Abstract: Underwater communication systems have drawn the attention of the research community in the last 15 years. This growing interest can largely be attributed to new civil and military applications enabled by large-scale networks of underwater devices (e.g., underwater static sensors, unmanned autonomous vehicles (AUVs), and autonomous robots), which can retrieve information from the aquatic and marine environment, perform in-network processing on the extracted data, and transmit the collected information to remote locations. Currently underwater communication systems are inherently hardware-based and rely on closed and inflexible architectural design. This imposes significant challenges into adopting new underwater communication and networking technologies, prevent the provision of truly-differentiated services to highly diverse underwater applications, and induce great barriers to integrate heterogeneous underwater devices. Software-defined networking (SDN), recognized as the next-generation networking paradigm, relies on the highly flexible, programmable, and virtualizable network architecture to dramatically improve network resource utilization, simplify network management, reduce operating cost, and promote innovation and evolution. In this paper, a software-defined architecture, namely SoftWater, is first introduced to facilitate the development of the next-generation underwater communication systems. More specifically, by exploiting the network function virtualization (NFV) and network virtualization concepts, SoftWater architecture can easily incorporate new underwater communication solutions, accordingly maximize the network capacity, can achieve the network robustness and energy efficiency, as well as can provide truly differentiated and scalable networking services. Consequently, the SoftWater architecture can simultaneously support a variety of different underwater applications, and can enable the interoperability of underwater devices from different manufacturers that operate on different underwater communication technologies based on acoustic, optical, or radio waves. Moreover, the essential network management tools of SoftWater are discussed, including reconfigurable multi-controller placement, hybrid in-band and out-of-band control traffic balancing, and utility-optimal network virtualization. Furthermore, the major benefits of SoftWater architecture are demonstrated by introducing software-defined underwater networking solutions, including the throughput-optimal underwater routing, SDN-enhanced fault recovery, and software-defined underwater mobility management. The research challenges to realize the SoftWater are also discussed in detail.

The moderating effect of teamwork perceptions on the organizational politics--job satisfaction relationship.

Abstract: By using regression analyses on data from 355 full-time employees of a customer-service organization in the eastern United States, the authors tested the hypothesis that perceptions of organizational politics are more strongly related to job dissatisfaction among individuals who perceive low levels of teamwork importance than among those who perceive high levels of teamwork importance. Hierarchical moderated regression analysis of the data revealed that the moderating effect of teamwork importance was most relevant at average-to-high levels of perceived politics. That finding supports the assertion that one way to address the negative impact of organizational politics is to try to ensure that employees value teamwork.