Peer Mentors and Writing Center Tutors: What our collaborations taught us about serving the SJSU Freshmen Students

The Library Outpost, a satellite office of the campus’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library, seeks ways to reach out to First Year students who are new to writing research papers. One of our goals is to meet the First Year students on their own turf. Since the Peer Mentors and Writing Center tutors have peer relationships with the First year students, we want to learn how we can collaborate with them to provide services to the First year students. We surveyed the Peer Mentors and Writing Center Tutors to assess their perceptions of their own research skills, and their students’ research needs to guide the services and workshops offered by the Library Outpost

A combined Majumdar-Papapetrou-Bonnor field as extreme limit of the double-Reissner-Nordstrom solution

The general extreme limit of the double-Reissner-Nordstrom solution is worked out in explicit analytical form involving prolate spheroidal coordinates. We name it the combined Majumdar-Papapetrou-Bonnor field to underline the fact that it contains as particular cases the two-body specialization of the well-known Majumdar-Papapetrou solution and Bonnor's three-parameter electrostatic field. To the latter we give a precise physical interpretation as describing a pair of non-rotating extremal black holes with unequal masses and unequal opposite charges kept apart by a strut, the absolute values of charges exceeding the respective (positive) values of masses.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, title changed, the result extended, matching the published versio

Optimal Crop-Insurance Strategies under Climate Variability: Contrasting Insurer and Farmer Interests

This study analyzes the potential synergies and conflicts of interest between farmers and insurers in the selection of an optimal crop insurance contract. Special attention is given to how climate information influences this decision-making process. To do so, we consider a representative 40 hectares, rainfed, cotton-peanut farm located in Jackson County in Florida. Our results show that year-to-year ENSO-based climate variability affects farmers income and insurers gains according to crop insurance contracts. Additionally, introduction of ENSO-based climate forecasts presents a significant impact on the selection of a particular contract. We conclude that insurers and farmers can bridge their divergent interests by improving their understanding of the effect of climate conditions on the development of sustainable business plans.Environmental Economics and Policy, Risk and Uncertainty,

USDA's Livestock Gross Margin Insurance for Dairy: What Is It and How Can It Be Used for Risk Management

Dairy farmers are faced with tremendous and increasing volatility, both in terms of milk prices, and the costs of purchased feed. There is a new weapon in the risk management arsenal of U.S. dairy producers: the Livestock Gross Margin for Dairy (LGM-Dairy) insurance program controls for lower gross revenue, defined as the value of milk produced minus feed costs. This program is administered by USDA's Risk Management Agency, and made available via authorized crop insurance agents to dairy farm operators in the lower 48 states.

A two band model for Superconductivity: Probing interband pair formation

We propose a two band model for superconductivity. It turns out that the simplest nontrivial case considers solely interband scattering, and both bands can be modeled as symmetric (around the Fermi level) and flat, thus each band is completely characterized by its half-band width $W_{n}$ (n=1,2). A useful dimensionless parameter is $\delta$, proportional to $W_{2}-W_{1}$. The case $\delta =0$ retrieves the conventional BCS model. We probe the specific heat, the ratio gap over critical temperature, the thermodynamic critical field and tunneling conductance as functions of $\delta$ and temperature (from zero to $T_{c}$). We compare our results with experimental results for $MgB_{2}$ and good quantitative agreement is obtained, indicating the relevance of interband coupling. Work in progress also considers the inclusion of band hybridization and general interband as well as intra-band scattering mechanisms.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures (in postscript format). PACS numbers: 74.20.-z, 74.20.Fg, 74.70.A

Livestock Gross Margin Insurance for Dairy Cattle: An Analysis of Program Performance and Cost under Alternative Policy Configurations

Livestock Gross Margin insurance for dairy cattle (LGM-Dairy) is a risk management tool that can be used to insure a lower bound on a dairy producer’s gross margin. In this paper we (1) review the basic structure of LGM-Dairy (2) examine the sensitivity of Gross Margin Guarantee (GMG) and premium to changes in feeding regimes and (3) quantify impacts of changes in deductible level on important program characteristics.Dairy Price Risk, Uncertainty, Livestock Insurance., Agribusiness, Farm Management, Financial Economics, Livestock Production/Industries, Production Economics, Risk and Uncertainty,

Magnetoresistance and transistor-like behavior of double quantum dots connected to ferromagnetic and superconductor leads

The electric current and the magnetoresistance effect are studied in a double quantum-dot system, where one of the dots QDa is coupled to two ferromagnetic electrodes (F1,F2), while the second QDb is connected to a superconductor S. For energy scales within the superconductor gap, electric conduction is allowed by Andreev reflection processes. Due to the presence of two ferromagnetic leads, non-local crossed Andreev reflections are possible. We found that the magnetoresistance sign can be changed by tuning the external potential applied to the ferromagnets. In addition, it is possible to control the current of the first ferromagnet (F1) through the potential applied to the second one (F2). We have also included intradot interaction and gate voltages at each quantum dot and analyzed their influence through a mean field approximation. The interaction reduces the current amplitudes with respect to the non-interacting case, but the switching effect still remains as a manifestation of quantum coherence, in scales of the order of the superconductor coherence length.Comment: Revised versio