The State of State Science Standards 2012

American science performance is lagging as the economy becomes increasingly high tech, but our current science standards are doing little to solve the problem. Reviewers evaluated science standards for every state for this report and their findings were deeply troubling: The majority of states earned Ds or Fs for their standards in this crucial subject, with only six jurisdictions receiving As. Explore all the state report cards and see how your state performed

Constituent Quark Model Calculation for a possible J^P=0^-,T=0 Dibaryon

There exists experimental evidence that a dibaryon resonance d' with quantum numbers J^P=0^-,T=0 and mass 2065 MeV could be the origin of the narrow peak in the (\pi^+ ,\pi^- ) double charge exchange cross--sections on nuclei. We investigate the six--quark system with these quantum--numbers within the constituent quark model, with linear confinement, effective one--gluon exchange at short range and chiral interactions between quarks (\pi and \sigma exchange). We classify all possible six quark states with J^P=0^-,T=0, and with N=1 and N=3 harmonic oscillator excitations, using different reduction chains. The six--quark Hamiltonian is diagonalized in the basis including the unique N=1 state and the 10 most important states from the N=3 shell. We find, that with most of the possible sets of parameters, the mass of such a "dibaryon" lies above the N(939)+N^\ast(1535) threshold. The only possibility to describe the supposed d'(2065) in the present context is to reduce the confinement strength to very small values, however at the expense of describing the negative parity resonances N^\ast. We also analyze the J^P=0^-,T=2,N=1 six--quark state.Comment: 42 pages, Latex, submitted to Nucl.Phys.

Theorizing Moral Cognition: Culture in Action, Situations, and Relationships

Dual-process theories of morality are approaches to moral cognition that stress the varying significance of emotion and deliberation in shaping judgments of action. Sociological research that builds on these ideas considers how cross-cultural variation alters judgments, with important consequences for what is and is not considered moral behavior. Yet lacking from these approaches is the notion that, depending on the situation and relationship, the same behavior by the same person can be considered more or less moral. The author reviews recent trends in sociological theorizing about morality and calls attention to the neglect of situational variations and social perceptions as mediating influences on judgment. She then analyzes the moral machine experiment to demonstrate how situations and relationships inform moral cognition. Finally, the author suggests that we can extend contemporary trends in the sociology of morality by connecting culture in thinking about action to culture in thinking about people

How To Classify 3-Body Forces -- And Why

For systems with only short-range forces and shallow 2-body bound states, the typical strength of any 3-body force in all partial-waves, including external currents, is systematically estimated by renormalisation-group arguments in the Effective Field Theory of Point-Like Interactions. The underlying principle and some consequences in particular in Nuclear Physics are discussed.Comment: 7 pages LaTeX2e using FBSart-class (provided); 2 figures in 3 .eps files included using graphicx; to appear in Few-Body System

Twenty-Five Years of Progress in the Three-Nucleon Problem

Twenty-five years ago the International Few-Body Conference was held in Quebec City. It became very clear at that meeting that the theoretical situation concerning the He3 and H3 ground states was confused. A lack of computational power prevented converged brute-force solutions of the Faddeev or Schroedinger equations, both for bound and continuum states of the three-nucleon systems. Pushed by experimental programs at Bates and elsewhere and facilitated by the rapid growth of computational power, converged solutions were finally achieved about a decade later. Twenty-five years ago the first three-nucleon force based on chiral-symmetry considerations was produced. Since then this symmetry has been our guiding principle in constructing three-nucleon forces and, more recently, nucleon-nucleon forces. We are finally nearing an understanding of the common ingredients used in constructing both types of forces. I will discuss these and other issues involving the few-nucleon systems and attempt to define the current state-of-the-art.Comment: Invited talk at Bates25 Symposium, MIT, November 3-5, 1999 - 13 pages, latex, 8 figures - To appear in AIP Conference Proceedings - epsfig.sty and aipproc.sty require

Induction, complexity, and economic methodology

This paper focuses on induction, because the supposed weaknesses of that process are the main reason for favouring falsificationism, which plays an important part in scientific methodology generally; the paper is part of a wider study of economic methodology. The standard objections to, and paradoxes of, induction are reviewed, and this leads to the conclusion that the supposed ‘problem’ or ‘riddle’ of induction is a false one. It is an artefact of two assumptions: that the classic two-valued logic (CL) is appropriate for the contexts in which induction is relevant; and that it is the touchstone of rational thought. The status accorded to CL is the result of historical and cultural factors. The material we need to reason about falls into four distinct domains; these are explored in turn, while progressively relaxing the restrictions that are essential to the valid application of CL. The restrictions include the requirement for a pre-existing, independently-guaranteed classification, into which we can fit all new cases with certainty; and non-ambiguous relationships between antecedents and consequents. Natural kinds, determined by the existence of complex entities whose characteristics cannot be unbundled and altered in a piecemeal, arbitrary fashion, play an important part in the review; so also does fuzzy logic (FL). These are used to resolve two famous paradoxes about induction (the grue and raven paradoxes); and the case for believing that conventional logic is a subset of fuzzy logic is outlined. The latter disposes of all questions of justifying induction deductively. The concept of problem structure is used as the basis for a structured concept of rationality that is appropriate to all four of the domains mentioned above. The rehabilitation of induction supports an alternative definition of science: that it is the business of developing networks of contrastive, constitutive explanations of reproducible, inter-subjective (‘objective’) data. Social and psychological obstacles ensure the progress of science is slow and convoluted; however, the relativist arguments against such a project are rejected.induction; economics; methodology; complexity