Centrality and pseudorapidity dependence of the transverse energy flow in pPb collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 5.02 TeV

The almost hermetic coverage of CMS is used to measure the distribution of transverse energy as a function of pseudo-rapidity for pPb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 5.02$ TeV. For minimum bias collisions $(1/N)~dE_T/d\eta$ reaches 23 GeV which implies an $E_T$ per participant pair comparable to that of peripheral PbPb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 2.76$ TeV. The centrality dependence of transverse energy production has been studied using centrality measures defined in three different angular regions. There is a strong auto-correlation between $(1/N)~dE_T/d\eta$ and the $\eta$ range used to define centrality %both for data and the EPOS-LHC and HIJING event generators. The centrality dependence of the data is much stronger for $\eta$ values on the lead side than the proton side and shows significant differences from that predicted by either event generator.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, proceedings of the Quark Matter 2015 Conferenc

Hand in the Cookie Jar: An Experimental Investigation of Equity-based Compensation and Managerial Fraud

The use of equity-based compensation is an increasingly popular means by which to align the incentives of top management with that of the shareholders. However, recent theoretical and empirical research suggests that the use of equity-based compensation has the unintended consequence of creating the incentive to commit managerial fraud of the type being reported in the press. This paper reports experimental evidence showing that the amount of fraud committed by subjects is positively correlated with the level of equity, as is the level of effort. As well, the amount of fraud that is committed is negatively correlated with the probability of detection and subjects’ risk aversion. The experimental design permits the identification of causal relations in the directions just noted. Key Words:

The Rhetorical Phronimos: Political Wisdom in Postmodernity

To formulate a contemporary conception of political wisdom, this essay combines recent philosophical attacks on the rational subject with Aristotle’s notion of phronesis, or “practical” wisdom. Aristotle maintained that the phronimos is one who, through virtuous character, negotiates the uncertain political realm through the wise use of the rhetorical arts. Modern and postmodern theories, however, have profoundly complicated notions of meaning, identity and rationality, hence conceptions of knowledge and virtuous character. After a review of some of these theories, the essay concludes with a brief re-articulation of phronesis as political wisdom

Agential Fantasy: A Copenhagen Approach to the Tabletop Role-Playing Game

In 1974, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson published the world’s first commercial role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons. The tabletop roleplaying game provoked a new form of textual engagement: it entangled the fantastic tales of early 20th Century pulp fiction with the practice of play. The tabletop role-playing game initiated new perspectives on how classic texts could not only be read but also played. Our contemporary world is becoming increasingly gamified: digital media applications (from mobile phones to the personal home computer) have embedded game elements, structures, processes, and lexicons in our modern lives. Tabletop role-playing was a herald for, and catalyst, of this contemporary phenomenon. Espen Aarseth notes that tabletop role-playing games can be considered as an early from of the “cybertext,” a text that requires “non-trivial” effort for its engagement, and is “the oral predecessor to computerized, written, adventure games.”The project of this dissertation offers an approach of examining and understanding the practice of tabletop role-playing through Karen Barad’s concept of agential realism. Agential realism is based on concepts of Niels Bohr’s “Copenhagen Interpretation” of quantum phenomenon and its premise that nothing can be observed without changing what is observed. Agential realism requires us to accept and acknowledge our complicity in the creation, physical and sociocultural, of the realities which surround, bound, and interpellate us. This dissertation complicates the notion of singular authorship of isolated texts and realities by examining all the relationships necessary to produce a tabletop roleplaying game text. The first chapter of this dissertation introduces the concepts of agential realism while the second offers the historical context for the emergence of tabletop role-playing games. The third chapter analyzes the affective and aesthetic inspirations for Dungeons & Dragons to consider the conditions for the emergence of the first commercial tabletop role-playing game and how it would reconfigure the pulp and classic mythologies that inspired it. In the fourth chapter, I examine the rules for Traveller, an early science fiction tabletop role-playing game directly inspired by the practice of Dungeons & Dragons play, to consider how the procedural mechanics of games impact their authorship. The fifth chapter analyzes another mode of authorship for the role-playing game by analyzing its actual play; in this chapter, I examine specific game sessions from a campaign of the tabletop role-playing game, Call of Cthulhu. Throughout these chapters, we understand how the tabletop role-playing game text, like our physical and sociocultural realities, exist within states of radical possibility. Each mode of authorship, through a text’s inspiration, mechanical construction, and subjective interpretation are observations that fix the tabletop role-playing text into a specific manifestation – thought it may exist within any a priori of an observation. This dissertation advocates for an approach to consider realities, within and beyond the games we play, not as isolated moments of objective experience, but as the inevitable consequences of entanglements with all the authors (and players) that share them

Live design as living process

Live events and performance are fundamental aspects of our culture. They are the spaces where communities form and where productive dialogues occur between strangers. As the United States of America faces social isolation due to the novel coronavirus along with increasingly divisive politics, live performance is sorely needed to heal our communities. However, due to the pandemic, live performance defined as an event with performer and audience co-located in a shared time and space is no longer a safe avenue for creating art. The current pandemic is by no means the only force shaping our current reality; climate change, political unrest, digital technology, and global capitalism are all looming ecological forces we are facing. All of these forces need collective action to be effectively addressed. Live experiences are a critical component of manifesting the necessary social cohesion to redefine our relationships with the Earth. The current state of the world leaves ecologically minded artists with a fundamental question, what are the vital ingredients of a live experience? This thesis is an exploration of live experience and how we can look to the properties of living systems as lens for guiding successful design decisions. My goal is to reveal the elements that index a performance as live from an audience's perspective and re-imagine my design methodology as a living process. Through the design and implementation of an interactive installation titled, Elemental Media, I experiment with novel modes of audience interaction and involvement that respond to our current moment. Creating a hybrid event that takes place both virtually and physically offers a lens for considering how differing mediums and modes of spectatorship are involved in generating experiences of liveness. Assessing the success of this process and performance involves gathering audience responses, documenting and reflecting upon personal experiences, engaging with the writing of other researchers, and synthesizing these findings into principles for live design as a living process.Theatre and Danc

Direct measurement of Coulomb-laser coupling

The Coulomb interaction between a photoelectron and its parent ion plays an important role in a large range of light-matter interactions. In this paper we obtain a direct insight into the Coulomb interaction and resolve, for the first time, the phase accumulated by the laser-driven electron as it interacts with the Coulomb potential. Applying extreme-ultraviolet interferometry enables us to resolve this phase with attosecond precision over a large energy range. Our findings identify a strong laser-Coulomb coupling, going beyond the standard recollision picture within the strong-field framework. Transformation of the results to the time domain reveals Coulomb-induced delays of the electrons along their trajectories, which vary by tens of attoseconds with the laser field intensity

Calculus-enhanced energy-first curriculum for introductory physics improves student performance locally and in downstream courses

Here we demonstrate the benefits of a new curriculum for introductory calculus-based physics that motivates classical mechanics using a modified version of Hamiltonian mechanics. This curriculum shifts the initial focus of instruction away from forces and the associated vector mathematics, which are known to be problematic for students, to the scalar quantity energy, which is more closely aligned with their previously established intuition, and associated differential and integral calculus. We show that implementation of this calculus-enhanced “energy-first” curriculum resulted in higher normalized gains on the Force Concept Inventory exam for all students and improved performance in downstream engineering courses for students with lower ACT math scores. In other words, the downstream benefits were largest for students with lower math abilities who also pose a larger retention risk. This new curriculum thus has the potential to improve student retention by specifically helping the students who need help the most, including traditionally underserved populations who often have weaker mathematics preparation. We propose future work to investigate whether this new curriculum has lowered the math transference barrier to learning in introductory physics, resulting concomitantly in improvements in student learning of classical mechanics and in student fluency with applied mathematics.Northrop Grumman Foundatio

60 kD Ro and nRNP A Frequently Initiate Human Lupus Autoimmunity

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a clinically heterogeneous, humoral autoimmune disorder. The unifying feature among SLE patients is the production of large quantities of autoantibodies. Serum samples from 129 patients collected before the onset of SLE and while in the United States military were evaluated for early pre-clinical serologic events. The first available positive serum sample frequently already contained multiple autoantibody specificities (65%). However, in 34 SLE patients the earliest pre-clinical serum sample positive for any detectable common autoantibody bound only a single autoantigen, most commonly 60 kD Ro (29%), nRNP A (24%), anti-phospholipids (18%) or rheumatoid factor (15%). We identified several recurrent patterns of autoantibody onset using these pre-diagnostic samples. In the serum samples available, anti-nRNP A appeared before or simultaneously with anti-nRNP 70 K in 96% of the patients who had both autoantibodies at diagnosis. Anti-60 kD Ro antibodies appeared before or simultaneously with anti-La (98%) or anti-52 kD Ro (95%). The autoantibody response in SLE patients begins simply, often binding a single specific autoantigen years before disease onset, followed by epitope spreading to additional autoantigenic specificities that are accrued in recurring patterns