Do Trustees and Administrators Matter? Diversifying the Faculty Across Gender Lines

Our paper focuses on the role that the gender composition of the leaders of American colleges and universities – trustees, presidents/chancellors, and provosts/academic vice presidents – plays in influencing the rate at which academic institutions diversify their faculty across gender lines. Our analyses make use of institutional level panel data that we have collected for a large sample of American academic institutions. We find, other factors held constant including our estimate of the “expected” share of new hires that should be female, that institutions with female presidents/chancellors and female provosts/academic vice presidents, as well as those with a greater share of female trustees, increase their shares of female faculty at a more rapid rate. The magnitudes of the effects of these leaders are larger at smaller institutions, where central administrators may play a larger role in faculty hiring decisions. A critical share of female trustees must be reached before the gender composition of the board matters

The measurement of lubricant-film thickness using ultrasound

Ultrasound is reflected from a liquid layer between two solid bodies. This reflection depends on the ultrasonic frequency, the acoustic properties of the liquid and solid, and the layer thickness. If the wavelength is much greater than the liquid-layer thickness, then the response is governed by the stiffness of the layer. If the wavelength and layer thickness are similar, then the interaction of ultrasound with the layer is controlled by its resonant behaviour. This stiffness governed response and resonant response can be used to determine the thickness of the liquid layer, if the other parameters are known. In this paper, ultrasound has been developed as a method to determine the thickness of lubricating films in bearing systems. An ultrasonic transducer is positioned on the outside of a bearing shell such that the wave is focused on the lubricant-film layer. The transducer is used to both emit and receive wide-band ultrasonic pulses. For a particular lubricant film, the reflected pulse is processed to give a reflection-coefficient spectrum. The lubricant-film thickness is then obtained from either the layer stiffness or the resonant frequency. The method has been validated using fluid wedges at ambient pressure between flat and curved surfaces. Experiments on the elastohydrodynamic film formed between a sliding ball and a flat surface were performed. Film-thickness values in the range 50-500 nm were recorded, which agreed well with theoretical film-formation predictions. Similar measurements have been made on the oil film between the balls and outer raceway of a deep-groove ball bearing

The asymptotic quasi-stationary states of the two-dimensional magnetically confined plasma and of the planetary atmosphere

We derive the differential equation governing the asymptotic quasi-stationary states of the two dimensional plasma immersed in a strong confining magnetic field and of the planetary atmosphere. These two systems are related by the property that there is an intrinsic constant length: the Larmor radius and respectively the Rossby radius and a condensate of the vorticity field in the unperturbed state related to the cyclotronic gyration and respectively to the Coriolis frequency. Although the closest physical model is the Charney-Hasegawa-Mima (CHM) equation, our model is more general and is related to the system consisting of a discrete set of point-like vortices interacting in plane by a short range potential. A field-theoretical formalism is developed for describing the continuous version of this system. The action functional can be written in the Bogomolnyi form (emphasizing the role of Self-Duality of the asymptotic states) but the minimum energy is no more topological and the asymptotic structures appear to be non-stationary, which is a major difference with respect to traditional topological vortex solutions. Versions of this field theory are discussed and we find arguments in favor of a particular form of the equation. We comment upon the significant difference between the CHM fluid/plasma and the Euler fluid and respectively the Abelian-Higgs vortex models.Comment: Latex 126 pages, 7 eps figures included. Discussion on various forms of the equatio

Spanning tree generating functions and Mahler measures

We define the notion of a spanning tree generating function (STGF) $\sum a_n z^n$, which gives the spanning tree constant when evaluated at $z=1,$ and gives the lattice Green function (LGF) when differentiated. By making use of known results for logarithmic Mahler measures of certain Laurent polynomials, and proving new results, we express the STGFs as hypergeometric functions for all regular two and three dimensional lattices (and one higher-dimensional lattice). This gives closed form expressions for the spanning tree constants for all such lattices, which were previously largely unknown in all but one three-dimensional case. We show for all lattices that these can also be represented as Dirichlet $L$-series. Making the connection between spanning tree generating functions and lattice Green functions produces integral identities and hypergeometric connections, some of which appear to be new.Comment: 26 pages. Dedicated to F Y Wu on the occasion of his 80th birthday. This version has additional references, additional calculations, and minor correction

Multicultural needs assessment of extension educators

"Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service.""Cambio Center at the University of Missouri."Oklahoma State University's College of Human Sciences and the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service (OCES) have developed a multicultural and community engagement program to determine intercultural training needs. The program conducted a study to determine the needs for intercultural training by Extension personnel across the state of Oklahoma. The results of this study showed that OCES personnel are interested in attending intercultural training and developing their own intercultural competence to reach multicultural groups. This study helped OCES design its first intercultural competency training plan. This plan includes assessing intercultural competence and designing trainings materials using a variety of modalities such as face-to-face workshops, lectures, and online activities via Adobe Connect or Desire 2 Learn (D2L) platforms

Summertime cooling of the shallow continental shelf

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2011. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 116 (2011): C07015, doi:10.1029/2010JC006744.In summer on the shallow New England continental shelf, near the coast the water temperature is much cooler than the observed surface heat flux suggests. Using depth-integrated heat budgets in 12 and 27 m water depth calculated from observed surface heat flux, water temperature, and velocity, we demonstrate that on time scales of weeks to months the water is persistently cooled due to a mean upwelling circulation. Because the mean wind is weak, that mean circulation is likely not wind driven; it is partly a tidal residual circulation. A feedback exists between the cross-shelf and surface heat fluxes: the two fluxes remain nearly in balance for months, so the water temperature is nearly constant in spite of strong surface heating (the heat budget is two-dimensional). A conceptual model explains the feedback mechanism: the short flushing time of the shallow shelf produces a near steady state heat balance, regardless of the exact form of the circulation, and the feedback is via the influence of surface heating on temperature stratification. Along-shelf heat flux divergence is apparently small compared to the surface and cross-shelf heat flux divergences on time scales of weeks to months. Heat transport due to Stokes drift from surface gravity waves is substantial, warms the shallow shelf in summer, and was previously ignored. In winter, the surface heat flux dominates and the observed water temperature is close to the temperature predicted from surface cooling (the heat budget is one-dimensional); weak winter stratification makes the cross-shelf heat flux small even during strong cross-shelf circulation.This research was funded by National Aeronautics and Space Administration Headquarters grant NNG04GL03G and Earth System Science Fellowship Grant NNG04GQ14H; Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution through Academic Programs Fellowship Funds and MVCO; National Science Foundation grants OCE‐0241292, OCE‐0548961, and OCE‐0337892; the Jewett/ EDUC/Harrison Foundation; and Office of Naval Research contracts N00014‐01‐1‐0029 and N00014‐05‐10090 for the Low‐Wind Component of the Coupled Boundary Layers Air‐Sea Transfer Experiment

On the mean-field spherical model

Exact solutions are obtained for the mean-field spherical model, with or without an external magnetic field, for any finite or infinite number N of degrees of freedom, both in the microcanonical and in the canonical ensemble. The canonical result allows for an exact discussion of the loci of the Fisher zeros of the canonical partition function. The microcanonical entropy is found to be nonanalytic for arbitrary finite N. The mean-field spherical model of finite size N is shown to be equivalent to a mixed isovector/isotensor sigma-model on a lattice of two sites. Partial equivalence of statistical ensembles is observed for the mean-field spherical model in the thermodynamic limit. A discussion of the topology of certain state space submanifolds yields insights into the relation of these topological quantities to the thermodynamic behavior of the system in the presence of ensemble nonequivalence.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figure

Packing and Hausdorff measures of stable trees

In this paper we discuss Hausdorff and packing measures of random continuous trees called stable trees. Stable trees form a specific class of L\'evy trees (introduced by Le Gall and Le Jan in 1998) that contains Aldous's continuum random tree (1991) which corresponds to the Brownian case. We provide results for the whole stable trees and for their level sets that are the sets of points situated at a given distance from the root. We first show that there is no exact packing measure for levels sets. We also prove that non-Brownian stable trees and their level sets have no exact Hausdorff measure with regularly varying gauge function, which continues previous results from a joint work with J-F Le Gall (2006).Comment: 40 page

Evolution of InAs branches in InAs/GaAs nanowire heterostructures

Branched nanowireheterostructures of InAs∕GaAs were observed during Au-assisted growth of InAs on GaAsnanowires. The evolution of these branches has been determined through detailed electron microscopy characterization with the following sequence: (1) in the initial stage of InAsgrowth, the Au droplet is observed to slide down the side of the GaAsnanowire, (2) the downward movement of Aunanoparticle later terminates when the nanoparticle encounters InAsgrowing radially on the GaAsnanowire sidewalls, and (3) with further supply of In and As vapor reactants, the Aunanoparticles assist the formation of InAs branches with a well-defined orientation relationship with GaAs∕InAs core/shell stems. We anticipate that these observations advance the understanding of the kink formation in axial nanowireheterostructures.The Australian Research Council is acknowledged for the financial support of this project. One of the authors M.P. acknowledges the support of an International Postgraduate Research Scholarship

Statistics of nested spiral self-avoiding loops: exact results on the square and triangular lattices

The statistics of nested spiral self-avoiding loops, which is closely related to the partition of integers into decreasing parts, is studied on the square and triangular lattices.Comment: Old paper, for archiving. 7 pages, 2 figures, epsf, IOP macr