Breaking the Mold: Thinking Beyond Deficits

In an attempt to understand widespread school failure among children of color and children from low-income backgrounds, dominant discourse points to pervasive deficit ideologies that blame a student’s family structure, cultural and linguistic background, and community (Dudley-Marling, 2007; Valencia, 2010; Weiner, 2006). By accepting such a simplistic explanation of blaming the child for a lack of success without examining systemic inequities, deficit thinkers ignore real and complex issues of structural inequity. We agree with Pearl (1997) who argues that deficit thinking ignores “external forces— [i.e.], the complex makeup of macro- and micro-level mechanisms that help structure schools as inequitable and exclusionary institutions” (p. 151). Systemic inequities in the U.S. have manifested themselves in a variety of ways— for example, in matters of racial profiling and restrictive housing contracts for people of color. In schools, practices such as academic tracking, disproportionate funding, and the overrepresentation of Black and Latino children in punitive school disciplinary procedures contribute to the maintenance of structural racial inequality and social reproduction (Gregory, Skiba, & Noguera, 2010; Kozol, 2005; Oakes, 2005). In reference to these and similar trends, researchers argue that children of color are not dropping out of school; rather, they are being pushed out through the presence of a school-to-prison pipeline that criminalizes Black males in particular—and prepares them for incarceration (Ferguson 2000; Wald & Losen, 2006). Viewing students as summarily deficient has long been deeply embedded in the culture of urban and low-income schools

Double Trace Interfaces

We introduce and study renormalization group interfaces between two holographic conformal theories which are related by deformation by a scalar double trace operator. At leading order in the 1/N expansion, we derive expressions for the two point correlation functions of the scalar, as well as the spectrum of operators living on the interface. We also compute the interface contribution to the sphere partition function, which in two dimensions gives the boundary g factor. Checks of our proposal include reproducing the g factor and some defect overlap coefficients of Gaiotto's RG interfaces at large N, and the two-point correlation function whenever conformal perturbation theory is valid.Comment: 59 pages, 2 figure

From ACT-ONE to Miranda, a Translation Experiment

It is now almost universally acknowledged that the data language ACT-ONE associated with the formal description technique LOTOS is inappropriate for the purpose of OSI formal description. In response to this the LOTOS restandardisation activity plans to replace ACT-ONE with a functional language. Thus, compatibility between ACT-ONE and the replacement data language becomes an issue. In response to this, we present an experimental investigation of backward compatibility between ACT-ONE and the new LOTOS data language. Specifically, we investigate translating ACT-ONE data types into the functional language Miranda. Miranda has been chosen as it is a widely used functional programming language and it is close in form to the anticipated new data language. This work serves as a ``verification of concept'' for translating ACT-ONE to the E-LOTOS data language. It identifies the bounds on embedding ACT-ONE in a functional data language. In particular, it indicates what can be translated and what cannot be translated. In addition, the paper reveals pertinent issues which can inform the E-LOTOS work. For example, which constructs are needed in E-LOTOS in order to support the class of data type specifications typically made in the LOTOS setting? We conclude with a number of specific recommendations for the E-LOTOS data language

Mirror symmetry, Tyurin degenerations and fibrations on Calabi-Yau manifolds

We investigate a potential relationship between mirror symmetry for Calabi-Yau manifolds and the mirror duality between quasi-Fano varieties and Landau-Ginzburg models. More precisely, we show that if a Calabi-Yau admits a so-called Tyurin degeneration to a union of two Fano varieties, then one should be able to construct a mirror to that Calabi-Yau by gluing together the Landau-Ginzburg models of those two Fano varieties. We provide evidence for this correspondence in a number of different settings, including Batyrev-Borisov mirror symmetry for K3 surfaces and Calabi-Yau threefolds, Dolgachev-Nikulin mirror symmetry for K3 surfaces, and an explicit family of threefolds that are not realized as complete intersections in toric varieties.Comment: v2: Section 5 has been completely rewritten to accommodate results removed from Section 5 of arxiv:1501.04019. v3: Final version, to appear in String-Math 2015, forthcoming volume in the Proceedings of Symposia in Pure Mathematics serie

MODEL SELECTION WITH TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL AGGREGATION: ALTERNATIVE MARKETING MARGIN MODELS

Marketing,

Instantons and Entanglement Entropy

We would like to put the area law -- believed to by obeyed by entanglement entropies in the ground state of a local field theory -- to scrutiny in the presence of non-perturbative effects. We study instanton corrections to entanglement entropy in various models whose instanton effects are well understood, including $U(1)$ gauge theory in 2+1 dimensions and false vacuum decay in $\phi^4$ theory, and we demonstrate that the area law is indeed obeyed in these models. We also perform numerical computations for toy wavefunctions mimicking the theta vacuum of the (1+1)-dimensional Schwinger model. Our results indicate that such superpositions exhibit no more violation of the area law than the logarithmic behavior of a single Fermi surface.Comment: 29 pages, 4 figures, typos corrected, substantially revised, published versio