Innovative Opportunities for Elementary and Middle School Teachers to Maintain Currency in Mathematics and Science: A Community College-School System Partnership

Since 1992 the Manassas Campus of Northern Virginia Community College – in response to requests from local school systems – has developed four innovative methods of assisting elementary, secondary and middle school teachers to enhance their content knowledge in science and mathematics, as well as integrate curriculum units for classroom presentation. These methods are based on the assumptions that: - While teachers at this level have fundamental understanding of math and science, if they wish to incorporate new concepts or technologies from these fields, graduate level content courses are generally beyond their background level. - Community College faculty can often provide a bridge that connects advanced content in science and mathematics with the applications that can be adapted to elementary/middle school curriculum. - Presenting content to a mixed audience of teachers from K-8 allows teachers to see how content can be adapted to grade levels above and below. - Content delivery methods must be interactive and must be responsive to the multiple demands on these teachers’ time. This requires flexibility in scheduling and course requirements

MOSFIRE Absorption Line Spectroscopy of z > 2 Quiescent Galaxies: Probing a Period of Rapid Size Growth

Using the MOSFIRE near-infrared multi-slit spectrograph on the Keck 1 Telescope, we have secured high signal-to-noise ratio absorption line spectra for six massive galaxies with redshift 2 < z < 2.5. Five of these galaxies lie on the red sequence and show signatures of passive stellar populations in their rest-frame optical spectra. By fitting broadened spectral templates we have determined stellar velocity dispersions and, with broad-band HST and Spitzer photometry and imaging, stellar masses and effective radii. Using this enlarged sample of galaxies we confirm earlier suggestions that quiescent galaxies at z > 2 have small sizes and large velocity dispersions compared to local galaxies of similar stellar mass. The dynamical masses are in very good agreement with stellar masses (log Mstar/Mdyn = -0.02 +/- 0.03), although the average stellar-to-dynamical mass ratio is larger than that found at lower redshift (-0.23 +/- 0.05). By assuming evolution at fixed velocity dispersion, not only do we confirm a surprisingly rapid rate of size growth but we also consider the necessary evolutionary track on the mass-size plane and find a slope alpha = dlogR / dlogM > ~2 inconsistent with most numerical simulations of minor mergers. Both results suggest an additional mechanism may be required to explain the size growth of early galaxies.Comment: Updated to match the published versio

Rice marketing in Indonesia: Methodology, results and implications of a research study

There is a continuing trend in developing countries, as elsewhere, to devolve activities which have hitherto been performed by the public sector to the private sector, and to less regulated markets. The marketing of staple foods is no exception to this trend, but it raises important issues about national food security, price stability, and the protection of poor people from price rises which could mean malnutrition or starvation. Rice Marketing in Indonesia describes a research project which explores these issues in depth for a staple food commodity in a large developing country. The research focuses on seasonal rice price formation, on storage and sales decisions by farmers and traders, and on competition and efficiency in marketing channels. The research approach, which involves tracing marketing chains from sample farmers, is likely to be of interest to all those concerned with studying the liberalization of food markets in developing countries

Image restoration and superresolution as probes of small scale far-IR structure in star forming regions

Far-infrared continuum studies from the Kuiper Airborne Observatory are described that are designed to fully exploit the small-scale spatial information that this facility can provide. This work gives the clearest picture to data on the structure of galactic and extragalactic star forming regions in the far infrared. Work is presently being done with slit scans taken simultaneously at 50 and 100 microns, yielding one-dimensional data. Scans of sources in different directions have been used to get certain information on two dimensional structure. Planned work with linear arrays will allow us to generalize our techniques to two dimensional image restoration. For faint sources, spatial information at the diffraction limit of the telescope is obtained, while for brighter sources, nonlinear deconvolution techniques have allowed us to improve over the diffraction limit by as much as a factor of four. Information on the details of the color temperature distribution is derived as well. This is made possible by the accuracy with which the instrumental point-source profile (PSP) is determined at both wavelengths. While these two PSPs are different, data at different wavelengths can be compared by proper spatial filtering. Considerable effort has been devoted to implementing deconvolution algorithms. Nonlinear deconvolution methods offer the potential of superresolution -- that is, inference of power at spatial frequencies that exceed D lambda. This potential is made possible by the implicit assumption by the algorithm of positivity of the deconvolved data, a universally justifiable constraint for photon processes. We have tested two nonlinear deconvolution algorithms on our data; the Richardson-Lucy (R-L) method and the Maximum Entropy Method (MEM). The limits of image deconvolution techniques for achieving spatial resolution are addressed

Stability of attitude control systems acted upon by random perturbations

Mathematical models on stability of attitude control systems acted upon by random perturbation processe

A Simple Correlation-Based Model of Intelligibility for Nonlinear Speech Enhancement and Separation

Applying a binary mask to a pure noise signal can result in speech that is highly intelligible, despite the absence of any of the target speech signal. Therefore, to estimate the intelligibility benefit of highly nonlinear speech enhancement techniques, we contend that SNR is not useful; instead we propose a measure based on the similarity between the time-varying spectral envelopes of target speech and system output, as measured by correlation. As with previous correlation-based intelligibility measures, our system can broadly match subjective intelligibility for a range of enhanced signals. Our system, however, is notably simpler and we explain the practical motivation behind each stage. This measure, freely available as a small Matlab implementation, can provide a more meaningful evaluation measure for nonlinear speech enhancement systems, as well as providing a transparent objective function for the optimization of such systems

High Scale Physics Connection to LHC Data

The existing data appears to provide hints of an underlying high scale theory. These arise from the gauge coupling unification, from the smallness of the neutrino masses, and via a non-vanishing muon anomaly. An overview of high scale models is given with a view to possible tests at the Large Hadron Collider. Specifically we discuss here some generic approaches to deciphering their signatures. We also consider an out of the box possibility of a four generation model where the fourth generation is a mirror generation rather than a sequential generation. Such a scenario can lead to some remarkably distinct signatures at the LHC.Comment: 23 pages, no figures. Based on invited lectures at the 46th Course at the International School of Subnuclear Physics- Erice -Sicily: 29 August -7 September, 200

A Gauge-invariant Analysis of Magnetic Fields in General Relativistic Cosmology

We provide a fully general-relativistic treatment of cosmological perturbations in a universe permeated by a large-scale primordial magnetic field, using the Ellis-Bruni gauge-invariant formalism. The exact non-linear equations for general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic evolution are derived. A number of applications are made: the behaviour of small perturbations to Friedmann universes are studied; a comparison is made with earlier Newtonian treatments of cosmological perturbations and some effects of inflationary expansion are examined.Comment: 31 pages, Latex, Submitted to Classical and Quantum Gravit

Resonant CP Violation in Higgs Radiation at e^+e^- Linear Collider

We study resonant CP violation in the Higgsstrahlung process e^+e^- -> H_{1,2,3} (Z -> e^+e^-, \mu^+\mu^-) and subsequent decays H_{1,2,3} -> b \bar{b}, \tau^-\tau^+, in the MSSM with Higgs-sector CP violation induced by radiative corrections. At a high-energy e^+e^- linear collider, the recoil-mass method enables one to determine the invariant mass of a fermion pair produced by Higgs decays with a precision as good as 1 GeV. Assuming an integrated luminosity of 100/fb, we show that the production lineshape of a coupled system of neutral Higgs bosons decaying into b\bar{b} quarks is sensitive to the CP-violating parameters. When the Higgs bosons decay into \tau^-\tau^+, two CP asymmetries can be defined using the longitudinal and transverse polarizations of the tau leptons. Taking into account the constraints from electric dipole moments, we find that these CP asymmetries can be as large as 80 %, in a tri-mixing scenario where all three neutral Higgs states of the MSSM are nearly degenerate and mix significantly.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.