Unifying Power of Sport Fandom

Through previous research, it was known that sport has many physical and non-physical benefits to participants and is a powerful tool used to bring people together in light of social and political differences. However, little was known about the impact of sport fandom on feelings of social connectedness. The purpose of this study was to further the understanding of feelings of social connectedness in sport fandom within the context of the current polarized political environment in the United States. Survey methodology was used to capture demographics and other variables including political identity and behaviors, sport fandom identity and behaviors, and feelings of social connectedness. The survey was distributed on Twitter through the use of relevant hashtags and also sent to students, faculty, and staff at St. John Fisher College. Results found that there was a significant relationship between ratings of sport fandom identity and behaviors and reported feelings of social connectedness. There was also found to be a significant predictive relationship between the grand means of sport and politics to the grand mean of social connectedness. The results of this research study added support for the use sport and sport fandom as tools for bringing people together within a polarized society as these findings suggested that sport fandom was a strong unifying tool that transcended the divided sociopolitical culture of the US today

Cotangent models for integrable systems

We associate cotangent models to a neighbourhood of a Liouville torus in symplectic and Poisson manifolds focusing on a special class called $b$-Poisson/$b$-symplectic manifolds. The semilocal equivalence with such models uses the corresponding action-angle coordinate theorems in these settings: the theorem of Liouville-Mineur-Arnold [A74] for symplectic manifolds and an action-angle theorem for regular Liouville tori in Poisson manifolds [LMV11]. Our models comprise regular Liouville tori of Poisson manifolds but also consider the Liouville tori on the singular locus of a $b$-Poisson manifold. For this latter class of Poisson structures we define a twisted cotangent model. The equivalence with this twisted cotangent model is given by an action-angle theorem recently proved in [KMS16]. This viewpoint of cotangent models provides a new machinery to construct examples of integrable systems, which are especially valuable in the $b$-symplectic case where not many sources of examples are known. At the end of the paper we introduce non-degenerate singularities as lifted cotangent models on $b$-symplectic manifolds and discuss some generalizations of these models to general Poisson manifolds.Comment: 25 pages; final version to appear at Communications in Mathematical Physic

Research Report - October 2009. Elaboration of the Module: Definition of the Programme

Alternative innovative didactic methodology is needed to reduce premature school drop out,particularly of young people at risk of exclusion, such as migrants, ethnic groups and children/teenagers from difficult socio-economic background). The key point is to modify the way to deliver learning. Cultural enrichment through young interestas such as music and art, use of technologies, social competencies, problem-solving skills incomputer science, autonomy and sense of purpose may help childhood and adolescence to achieve an improved engagement in school and a sense of educational accomplishmen

Examples of integrable and non-integrable systems on singular symplectic manifolds

We present a collection of examples borrowed from celestial mechanics and projective dynamics. In these examples symplectic structures with singularities arise naturally from regularization transformations, Appell's transformation or classical changes like McGehee coordinates, which end up blowing up the symplectic structure or lowering its rank at certain points. The resulting geometrical structures that model these examples are no longer symplectic but symplectic with singularities which are mainly of two types: $b^m$-symplectic and $m$-folded symplectic structures. These examples comprise the three body problem as non-integrable exponent and some integrable reincarnations such as the two fixed-center problem. Given that the geometrical and dynamical properties of $b^m$-symplectic manifolds and folded symplectic manifolds are well-understood [GMP, GMP2, GMPS, KMS, Ma, CGP, GL,GLPR, MO, S, GMW], we envisage that this new point of view in this collection of examples can shed some light on classical long-standing problems concerning the study of dynamical properties of these systems seen from the Poisson viewpoint.Comment: 14 page

Characteristics of 5-year-olds who catch-up with MMR: findings from the UK Millennium Cohort Study

Objectives To examine predictors of partial and full measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination catch-up between 3 and 5 years. Design Secondary data analysis of the nationally representative Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). Setting Children born in the UK, 2000–2002. Participants 751 MCS children who were unimmunised against MMR at age 3, with immunisation information at age 5. Main outcome measures Catch-up status: unimmunised (received no MMR), partial catch-up (received one MMR) or full catch-up (received two MMRs). Results At age 5, 60.3% (n=440) children remained unvaccinated, 16.1% (n=127) had partially and 23.6% (n=184) had fully caught-up. Children from families who did not speak English at home were five times as likely to partially catch-up than children living in homes where only English was spoken (risk ratio 4.68 (95% CI 3.63 to 6.03)). Full catch-up was also significantly more likely in those did not speak English at home (adjusted risk ratio 1.90 (1.08 to 3.32)). In addition, those from Pakistan/Bangladesh (2.40 (1.38 to 4.18)) or ‘other’ ethnicities (such as Chinese) (1.88 (1.08 to 3.29)) were more likely to fully catch-up than White British. Those living in socially rented (1.86 (1.34 to 2.56)) or ‘Other’ (2.52 (1.23 to 5.18)) accommodations were more likely to fully catch-up than home owners, and families were more likely to catch-up if they lived outside London (1.95 (1.32 to 2.89)). Full catch-up was less likely if parents reported medical reasons (0.43 (0.25 to 0.74)), a conscious decision (0.33 (0.23 to 0.48)), or ‘other’ reasons (0.46 (0.29 to 0.73)) for not immunising at age 3 (compared with ‘practical’ reasons). Conclusions Parents who partially or fully catch-up with MMR experience practical barriers and tend to come from disadvantaged or ethnic minority groups. Families who continue to reject MMR tend to have more advantaged backgrounds and make a conscious decision to not immunise early on. Health professionals should consider these findings in light of the characteristics of their local populations

Memory Task: Gender Differences in Verbal and Spatial Memory Ability

Memory can be broken down into two components: verbal and spatial memories. Verbal memory involves reading, writing, vocabulary and comprehension of texts. Spatial memory, on the other hand, involves the ability to read maps, rotate geometric figures in space, and understand diagrams. Women are thought to have better verbal memories than men, whereas men seem to have better spatial abilities than women. We recruited 28 participants from the Human Subject Pool in order to test this hypothesis. We found that this is not true when we gave the participants memory tasks; there are more differences within a certain gender than differences between the two genders. On the other hand, when participants filled out the questionnaires regarding their memories men did prefer spatial tasks, whereas women leaned towards the verbal tasks

Developing and evaluating a lay health worker delivered implementation intervention to decrease engagement disparities in behavioural parent training: a mixed methods study protocol.

IntroductionBehavioural parent training (BPT) programmes are effective in preventing and treating early-onset conduct problems and child maltreatment. Unfortunately, pervasive mental health service disparities continue to limit access to and engagement in these interventions. Furthermore, challenges with parental engagement can impede the successful implementation of evidence-based practices (EBPs) in community settings that serve low-income, ethnic minority families. Lay health workers (LHWs)-individuals without formal mental health training-represent an important workforce to increase engagement, as they are members of the communities they serve. However, the mobilisation of LHWs has not been well studied as an implementation strategy to extend the reach or effectiveness of EBPs in the USA. LHW-delivered implementation interventions that specifically support the engagement of Latinx parents in evidence-based BPT programmes have the potential to improve clinical and implementation outcomes.Methods and analysisA community-partnered approach will use the Quality Implementation Framework (QIF) to tailor and implement an LHW-delivered implementation intervention that aims to promote Latinx parent engagement in BPT programmes. Steps from the QIF will guide study activities to (1) conduct a mixed methods needs assessment to fit the implementation intervention to the local context, (2) adapt LHW-delivered implementation strategies to promote parent access to and engagement in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy and (3) conduct a hybrid effectiveness-implementation pilot trial to examine the feasibility, acceptability and preliminary effectiveness of the LHW implementation intervention at increasing engagement.Ethics and disseminationStudy procedures have been approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Results will be shared with the community-advisory group, at community-based meetings for other stakeholders involved in the pilot project, and submitted for publication in peer-reviewed journals

Cotangent models for integrable systems on bb-symplectic manifolds

Preprin

Cotangent models for group actions on bb-Poisson manifolds

In this article we give a normal form of a $b$-symplectic form in the neighborhood of a compact orbit of a Lie group action on a $b$-symplectic manifold. We establish cotangent models for Poisson actions on $b$-Poisson manifolds and a $b$-symplectic slice theorem. We examine interesting particular instances of group actions on $b$-symplectic manifolds preserving the Poisson structure. Also, we revise the notion of cotangent lift and twisted $b$-cotangent lift introduced in [KM] and provide a generalization of the twisted $b$-cotangent lift. We introduce the notion of $b$-Lie group and the associated $b$-symplectic structures in its $b$-cotangent bundle together with their reduction theory.Comment: 19 pages, 1 figur

Cloud Chamber: A Performance with Real Time Two-Way Interaction between Subatomic Particles and Violinist

‘Cloud Chamber’ - a composition by Alexis Kirke, Antonino Chiaramonte, and Anna Troisi - is a live performance in which the invisible quantum world becomes visible as a violinist and subatomic particle tracks interact together. An electronic instrument was developed which can be “played” live by radioactive atomic particles. Electronic circuitry was developed enabling a violin to create a physical force field that directly affects the ions generated by cosmic radiation particles. This enabled the violinist and the ions to influence each other musically in real time. A glass cloud chamber was used onstage to make radioactivity visible in bright white tracks moving within, with the tracks projected onto a large screen