Polarization and Extent of Maser Emission from Late-Type Stars: Support for a Plasma Turbulence Model of Maser Production

The integrated spectrum of OH emission from late-type stars is often circularly polarized, by as much as 50% in some cases. While the spectra are partially polarized, the individual maser components revealed by VLBI are much more so. Using VLBI observations of late-type stars from the literature, we show that the difference in circular polarization between main lines correlates with a difference in angular extent for a given object. This is a natural result if turbulent magnetic fields are causing the masers to be polarized via the Cook mechanism, and might serve as a good diagnostic for determining which objects should be investigated in the search for magnetic fields around evolved stars.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figs ApJL, accepte

Letter to the Next

Postcard from Alyxandra Chapman, during the Linfield College Semester Abroad Program at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuado

Sense of agency and the role of entertainment in Infinite Jest’s “Living Dead”

This paper attempts to betoken the relevance of emotions in the representation of the body and in the 'reviving' of the self in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. The novel discerns a world where the oversaturation of choices in entertainment has revered a tradition of ennui and addiction as part of the hedonistic search for pleasure. This is of a particular importance to the understanding of the destruction of the self which is consequently framed in the paradoxically position of the 'abject', as one who rejects the self over unreachable pleasure. On the basis of this new definition of entertainment, characters are annularly entrapped in non-agent actions to escape this deadly and stultifying entertainment (through sports, media and/or drugs). Moreover, entertainment invalidates its original meaning as it evokes no true stimuli in the characters in the novel. This significantly shows how individuals are unable to feel any emotion or attachment to the external world. As a consequence, their mind is prosthesized and has lost control over the body which thus suggestively explains why bodies in the novel are described as malleable, machine-like and deformed. This can be enlightened from a neuropsychologist perspective with the claim that emotions play a key role in representing the body. If one feels a detachment from the body and no 'sense of agency', one may state to feel non-existent or dead as no external stimuli evokes emotions in them. Cotard syndrome helps to reveal how the lack of emotions disables a correct representation of the body giving way to the belief that one may be dead, non-existent or deformed. The discussion will lay on how Infinite Jest is a novel, among other things, about the struggle to regain feeling and the lost self from a body perspective and its validating connection to the mind.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Transformative Leadership and the Unapologetic Leader

My poem, I Want an Unapologetic Leader, indicates a few of the qualities that I associate with transformative leaders–namely, open-mindedness, emotional intelligence, and integrity. Perhaps a transformative leader doesn’t need to like art, but some enthusiasm for confusion is necessary. In this age of increasing complexity and uncertainty, a leader must be flexible, ask questions, seek diverse viewpoints, and take risks to respond creatively in changeable circumstances (Montuori, 2010; Giulioni and Hendel-Giller, 2018). The ending of the poem explains the title, but it also speaks to an exceptional quality found in transformative leaders–the courage to change one’s mind

Quaternion quadratic equations in characteristic 2

In this paper we present a solution for any standard quaternion quadratic equation, i.e. an equation of the form $z^2+\mu z+\nu=0$ where $\mu$ and $\nu$ belong to some quaternion division algebra $Q$ over some field $F$, assuming the characteristic of $F$ is $2$.Comment: 9 pages, 0 figure

Chain Equivalences for Symplectic Bases, Quadratic Forms and Tensor Products of Quaternion Algebras

We present a set of generators for the symplectic group which is different from the well-known set of transvections, from which the chain equivalence for quadratic forms in characteristic 2 is an immediate result. Based on the chain equivalences for quadratic forms, both in characteristic 2 and not 2, we provide chain equivalences for tensor products of quaternion algebras over fields with no nontrivial 3-fold Pfister forms. The chain equivalence for biquaternion algebras in characteristic 2 is also obtained in this process, without any assumption on the base-field.Comment: 10 page