Fission modes of 256Fm and 258Fm in a microscopic approach

A static microscopic study of potential-energy surfaces within the Skyrme-Hartree-Fock-plus-BCS model is carried out for the 256Fm and 258Fm isotopes with the goal of deducing some properties of spontaneous fission. The calculated fission modes are found to be in agreement with the experimentaly observed asymmetric-to-symmetric transition in the fragment-mass distributions and with the high- and low-total-kinetic-energy modes experimentally observed in 258Fm. Most of the results are similar to those obtained in macroscopic-microscopic models as well as in recent Hartree-Fock-Bogolyubov calculations with the Gogny interaction, with a few differences in their interpretations. In particular an alternative explanation is proposed for the low-energy fission mode of 258Fm.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures, 3 tables, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Alien Registration- Bonneau, Armand M. (Lewiston, Androscoggin County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/30599/thumbnail.jp

Over-age middle school students : a study of and interventions related to school factors contributing to their being at-risk.

In a study by a high school guidance counselor in the Burr School District, one factor identified as having a positive correlation with students leaving school before graduation is being over-age for grade as a result of being retained or participating in a pre-one program. This research on over-age middle school students in a rural community in Northwest Rhode Island: (1) identifies the 36% of the student population who are over-age for grade, (2) reports the reasons for not being grade appropriate in terms of being retained or having participated in a transitional program, (3) through school records, identifies which members of this population are not attending school regularly or succeeding academically and behaviorally, and (4) through responses from a questionnaire and interviews, gained insights from students as to their attitudes toward school and their perceptions of the relationship of school to success in later life. The information gained through this research assisted the District\u27s Administrative Council and Middle School staff in identifying, developing, and implementing interventions. An evaluation of student academic and behavioral success indicates that some change is taking place. Additional strategies are being developed to increase the extent to which all students feel cared about and have the desire and ability to succeed

GOTCHA Password Hackers!

We introduce GOTCHAs (Generating panOptic Turing Tests to Tell Computers and Humans Apart) as a way of preventing automated offline dictionary attacks against user selected passwords. A GOTCHA is a randomized puzzle generation protocol, which involves interaction between a computer and a human. Informally, a GOTCHA should satisfy two key properties: (1) The puzzles are easy for the human to solve. (2) The puzzles are hard for a computer to solve even if it has the random bits used by the computer to generate the final puzzle --- unlike a CAPTCHA. Our main theorem demonstrates that GOTCHAs can be used to mitigate the threat of offline dictionary attacks against passwords by ensuring that a password cracker must receive constant feedback from a human being while mounting an attack. Finally, we provide a candidate construction of GOTCHAs based on Inkblot images. Our construction relies on the usability assumption that users can recognize the phrases that they originally used to describe each Inkblot image --- a much weaker usability assumption than previous password systems based on Inkblots which required users to recall their phrase exactly. We conduct a user study to evaluate the usability of our GOTCHA construction. We also generate a GOTCHA challenge where we encourage artificial intelligence and security researchers to try to crack several passwords protected with our scheme.Comment: 2013 ACM Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Security (AISec

Nonpartisan election formats do not affect voting behaviors

Nonpartisan elections—in which candidates are not endorsed by a political party and their party affiliation does not appear on the ballot—have been criticized as depriving crucial information to voters, making it difficult for them to vote for candidates that represent their beliefs. Chris W. Bonneau and Damon M. Cann tested the impact of nonpartisan election conditions using both a laboratory experiment and data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Survey. They find that there is no significant difference between voting behaviors in partisan and nonpartisan election formats

Vacuum Polarization Effects in the Lorentz and PCT Violating Electrodynamics

In this work we report new results concerning the question of dynamical mass generation in the Lorentz and PCT violating quantum electrodynamics. A one loop calculation for the vacuum polarization tensor is presented. The electron propagator, "dressed" by a Lorentz breaking extra term in the fermion Lagrangian density, is approximated by its first order: this scheme is shown to break gauge invariance. Then we rather consider a full calculation to second order in the Lorentz breaking parameter: we recover gauge invariance and use the Schwinger-Dyson equation to discuss the full photon propagator. This allows a discussion on a possible photon mass shift as well as measurable, observable physical consequences, such as the Lamb-shift.Comment: Latex file, 19 pages, no figures, includes PACS number