217 research outputs found
Evaluating student attitudes and learning at remote collegiate soil judging events
As with many aspects of teaching, the COVID-19 pandemic forced soil judging teams to attempt new strategies towards achieving student learning outcomes. Soil judging Regions IV and V hosted remote regional contests in October 2020 in place of traditional, in-person contests typically held each fall. We conducted pre- and post-contest surveys to assess student learning outcomes, attitudes, and reflections on the remote contest experience compared to past, in-person contest experiences. We received 108 total responses from students who participated in the Region IV and Region V remote soil judging contests (>80% response rate). In self-reported learning outcomes, there were no significant gains post-contest and there were minimal differences between students in Regions IV and V. Female students, students with more soil judging experience, and students who had taken more soil science courses agreed more strongly that soil science is important, that they planned to pursue careers in soil science, and that they gained important skills from soil judging. Finally, students who previously participated in contests reported that they gained more knowledge and enjoyed in-person contests more than the remote contests held in Fall 2020. Thus, while it is possible to replicate some aspects of the soil judging experience in a remote contest, other aspects that are critical to student engagement are lost when teams are unable to gather at the contest location and examine soils in the field.This article is published as Owen, Rachel K., Amber Anderson, Ammar Bhandari, Kerry Clark, Morgan Davis, Ashlee Dere, Nic Jelinski et al. "Evaluating student attitudes and learning at remote collegiate soil judging events." Natural Sciences Education 50, no. 2 (2021): e20065. doi:10.1002/nse2.20065. Posted with permission.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made
Star formation in the nearby universe: the ultraviolet and infrared points of view
This work presents the main ultraviolet (UV) and far-infrared (FIR)
properties of two samples of nearby galaxies selected from the GALEX (\AA, hereafter NUV) and IRAS (m) surveys respectively.
They are built in order to get detection at both wavelengths for most of the
galaxies. Star formation rate (SFR) estimators based on the UV and FIR
emissions are compared. Systematic differences are found between the SFR
estimators for individual galaxies based on the NUV fluxes corrected for dust
attenuation and on the total IR luminosity. A combined estimator based on NUV
and IR luminosities seems to be the best proxy over the whole range of values
of SFR. Although both samples present similar average values of the birthrate
parameter b, their star-formation-related properties are substantially
different: NUV-selected galaxies tend to show larger values of for lower
masses, SFRs and dust attenuations, supporting previous scenarios for the star
formation history (SFH). Conversely, about 20% of the FIR-selected galaxies
show high values of , SFR and NUV attenuation. These galaxies, most of them
being LIRGs and ULIRGs, break down the downsizing picture for the SFH, however
their relative contribution per unit volume is small in the local Universe.
Finally, the cosmic SFR density of the local Universe is estimated in a
consistent way from the NUV and IR luminosities.Comment: 43 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in Astrophysical
Journal Supplement Serie
Cosmological vacuum selection and metastable susy breaking
We study gauge mediation in a wide class of O'Raifeartaigh type models where
supersymmetry breaking metastable vacuum is created by gravity and/or quantum
corrections. We examine their thermal evolution in the early universe and the
conditions under which the susy breaking vacuum can be selected. It is
demonstrated that thermalization typically makes the metastable supersymmetry
breaking cosmologically disfavoured but this is not always the case. Initial
conditions with the spurion displaced from the symmetric thermal minimum and a
small coupling to the messenger sector can result in the realization of the
susy breaking vacuum even if the reheating temperature is high. We show that
this can be achieved without jeopardizing the low energy phenomenology. In
addition, we have found that deforming the models by a supersymmetric mass term
for messengers in such a way that the susy breaking minimum and the susy
preserving minima are all far away from the origin does not change the
conclusions. The basic observations are expected to hold also in the case of
models with an anomalous U(1) group.Comment: 28 pages, 4 figures, plain Latex, journal versio
Physics at a 100 TeV pp collider: Higgs and EW symmetry breaking studies
This report summarises the physics opportunities for the study of Higgs
bosons and the dynamics of electroweak symmetry breaking at the 100 TeV pp
collider.Comment: 187 pages, 94 figures. Chapter 2 of the "Physics at the FCC-hh"
Repor
Physics at a 100 TeV pp collider: beyond the Standard Model phenomena
This report summarises the physics opportunities in the search and study of
physics beyond the Standard Model at a 100 TeV pp collider.Comment: 196 pages, 114 figures. Chapter 3 of the "Physics at the FCC-hh"
Repor
Mixed Mediation of Supersymmetry Breaking with Anomalous U(1) Gauge Symmetry
Models with anomalous U(1) gauge symmetry contain various superfields which
can have nonzero supersymmetry breaking auxiliary components providing the
origin of soft terms in the visible sector, e.g. the U(1) vector superfield,
the modulus or dilaton superfield implementing the Green-Schwarz anomaly
cancellation mechanism, U(1)-charged but standard model singlet matter
superfield required to cancel the Fayet-Iliopoulos term, and finally the
supergravity multiplet. We examine the relative strength between these
supersymmetry breaking components in a simple class of models, and find that
various different mixed mediations of supersymmetry breaking, involving the
modulus, gauge, anomaly and D-term mediations, can be realized depending upon
the characteristics of D-flat directions and how those D-flat directions are
stabilized with a vanishing cosmological constant. We identify two parameters
which represent such properties and thus characterize how the various
mediations are mixed. We also discuss the moduli stabilization and soft terms
in a variant of KKLT scenario, in which the visible sector K\"ahler modulus is
stabilized by the D-term potential of anomalous U(1) gauge symmetry.Comment: 30 pages, 5 figure
Superfund, Hedonics, and the Scales of Environmental Justice
Environmental justice (EJ) is prominent in environmental policy, yet EJ research is plagued by debates over methodological procedures. A well-established economic approach, the hedonic price method, can offer guidance on one contentious aspect of EJ research: the choice of the spatial unit of analysis. Environmental managers charged with preventing or remedying inequities grapple with these framing problems. This article reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on unit choice in EJ, as well as research employing hedonic pricing to assess the spatial extent of hazardous waste site impacts. The insights from hedonics are demonstrated in a series of EJ analyses for a national inventory of Superfund sites. First, as evidence of injustice exhibits substantial sensitivity to the choice of spatial unit, hedonics suggests some units conform better to Superfund impacts than others. Second, hedonic estimates for a particular site can inform the design of appropriate tests of environmental inequity for that site. Implications for policymakers and practitioners of EJ analyses are discussed
Migraine and psychiatric comorbidity: a review of clinical findings
Migraine is an extremely common disorder. The underlying mechanisms of this chronic illness interspersed with acute symptoms appear to be increasingly complex. An important aspect of migraine heterogeneity is comorbidity with other neurological diseases, cardiovascular disorders, and psychiatric illnesses. Depressive disorders are among the leading causes of disability worldwide according to WHO estimation. In this review, we have mainly considered the findings from general population studies and studies on clinical samples, in adults and children, focusing on the association between migraine and psychiatric disorders (axis I of the DSM), carried over after the first classification of IHS (1988). Though not easily comparable due to differences in methodology to reach diagnosis, general population studies generally indicate an increased risk of affective and anxiety disorders in patients with migraine, compared to non-migrainous subjects. There would also be a trend towards an association of migraine with bipolar disorder, but not with substance abuse/dependence. With respect to migraine subtypes, comorbidity mainly involves migraine with aura. Patients suffering from migraine, however, show a decreased risk of developing affective and anxiety disorders compared to patients with daily chronic headache. It would also appear that psychiatric disorders prevail in patients with chronic headache and substance use than in patients with simple migraine. The mechanisms underlying migraine psychiatric comorbidity are presently poorly understood, but this topic remains a priority for future research. Psychiatric comorbidity indeed affects migraine evolution, may lead to chronic substance use, and may change treatment strategies, eventually modifying the outcome of this important disorder
- …