Forcing of Climate Variations by Mev-gev Particles

Changes in ionization production in the lower stratosphere by a few percent during Forbush decreases have been shown to correlate well with changes in winter tropospheric dynamics by a similar relatively small amount. Changes in ionization production by tens of percent on the decadal time scale have been shown to be correlated with changes in winter storm frequencies by tens of percent in the western North Atlantic. Changes in total solar irradiance or solar UV do not have time variations to match the tropospheric variations on the day to day time scales discussed here. Forcing related to magnetic activity is not supported. Thus solar wind/MeV-GeV particle changes appear to be the only viable forcing function for these day to day variations. If solar wind/particle forcing of a few percent amplitude can produce short term weather responses, then observed changes by tens of percent on the decadal and centennial time scale could produce climate changes on these longer time scales. The changes in circulation involved would produce regional climate changes, as observed. At present the relations between stratospheric ionization, electric fields and chemistry and aerosol and cloud microphysics are as poorly known as the relations between the latter and storm feedback processes. However, the capability for investigating these relationships now exists and has recently been most successfully used for elucidating the stratospheric chemistry and cloud microphysics associated with the Antarctic ozone hole. The economic benefits of being able to predict winter severity on an interannual basis, and the extent to which climate change related to solar variability will add to or substract from the greenhouse effect, should be more than adequate to justify support for research in this area

The Life and Impact of Daniel Alexander Payne

On Washington Street, across from McKnight Hall and adjacent to the Intercultural Resource Center, a sign stands in commemoration of the life and accomplishments of an African American who studied at the seminary from 1835 to 1837. The plaque reads: Daniel Alexander Payne (1811-1893). Born a free African American. He taught the colored people at this college, 1837, while a student at the Lutheran Seminary. A historian, he was elected bishop of the AME Church, 1852, and was president of Wilberforce University, 1863-76. What Payne was able to achieve in his life is matched by few of his contemporaries considering the fact that he was a black who grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. Believing that he was ordained by God, he became an educator and an ordained minister. Later in his life, Payne became the first African American president of a college when the African Methodist Church bought Wilberforce University in 1863. Daniel Payne, with his intellectual ideas, influenced the policy of the AME Church for years to come. The Gettysburg College Intercultural Resource Center claims that Pennsylvania College’s acceptance of Daniel Payne was “the first step at addressing cultural diversity at Gettysburg College.” Payne’s personal ambition and his influence in both the abolition movement and the education of black Americans present an example of a model citizen. Course Information: Course Title: HIST 300: Historical Method Academic Term: Spring 2006 Course Instructor: Dr. Michael J. Birkner \u2772 Hidden in Plain Sight is a collection of student papers on objects that are hidden in plain sight around the Gettysburg College campus. Topics range from the Glatfelter Hall gargoyles to the statue of Eisenhower and from historical markers to athletic accomplishments. You can download the paper in pdf format and click View Photo to see the image in greater detail.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/hiddenpapers/1035/thumbnail.jp

Derivatives of the identity and generalizations of Milnor's invariants

We synthesize work of U. Koschorke on link maps and work of B. Johnson on the derivatives of the identity functor in homotopy theory. The result can be viewed in two ways: (1) As a generalization of Koschorke's "higher Hopf invariants", which themselves can be viewed as a generalization of Milnor's invariants of link maps in Euclidean space; and (2) As a stable range description, in terms of bordism, of the cross effects of the identity functor in homotopy theory evaluated at spheres. We also show how our generalized Milnor invariants fit into the framework of a multivariable manifold calculus of functors, as developed by the author and Voli\'{c}, which is itself a generalization of the single variable version due to Weiss and Goodwillie.Comment: 25 pages, accepted for publication by the Journal of Topolog

Organizing Schools to Improve Student Achievement: Start Times, Grade Configurations, and Teacher Assignments

Education reform proposals are often based on high-profile or dramatic policy changes, many of which are expensive, politically controversial, or both. In this paper, we argue that the debates over these "flashy" policies have obscured a potentially important direction for raising student performance -- namely, reforms to the management or organization of schools. By making sure the "trains run on time" and focusing on the day-to-day decisions involved in managing the instructional process, school and district administrators may be able to substantially increase student learning at modest cost.In this paper, we describe three organizational reforms that recent evidence suggests have the potential to increase K -- 12 student performance at modest costs: (1) Starting school later in the day for middle and high school students; (2) Shifting from a system with separate elementary and middle schools to one with schools that serve students in kindergarten through grade eight; (3) Managing teacher assignments with an eye toward maximizing student achievement (e.g. allowing teachers to gain experience by teaching the same grade level for multiple years or having teachers specializing in the subject where they appear most effective). We conservatively estimate that the ratio of benefits to costs is 9 to 1 for later school start times and 40 to 1 for middle school reform. A precise benefit-cost calculation is not feasible for the set of teacher assignment reforms we describe, but we argue that the cost of such proposals is likely to be quite small relative to the benefits for students. While we recognize that these specific reforms may not be appropriate or feasible for every district, we encourage school, district, and state education leaders to make the management, organization, and operation of schools a more prominent part of the conversation on how to raise student achievement

Embeddings in the 3/4 range

We give a complete obstruction to turning an immersion of an m-dimensional manifold M in Euclidean n-space into an embedding when 3n>4m+4. It is a secondary obstruction, and exists only when the primary obstruction, due to Haefliger, vanishes. The obstruction lives in a twisted cobordism group, and its vanishing implies the existence of an embedding in the regular homotopy class of the given immersion in the range indicated. We use Goodwillie's calculus of functors, following Weiss, to help organize and prove the result.Comment: 33 pages, extensively rewritten due to incorporation of comments by the refere