Homeownership is Still Out of Reach for Millions of Households

Homeownership has long been the leading source of household wealth in the U.S. However, the most recent housing crash stripped many Americans of much of their wealth, as home values plummeted and millions of homes went into foreclosure. These losses were especially painful for homeowners of color, who lost a greater share of wealth in the crash and have rebuilt their wealth more slowly in the recovery. Now, as the housing market recovers and interest rates remain low, many Americans find themselves without the savings or access to credit necessary to be able to purchase a home. Although homeownership is not the best option for every household, many Americans who could greatly benefit from it are still excluded

Elko Field Theory and the Nature of Elko Darkness

We show that the Elko Lagrangian dark matter candidate is gauge-invariant under local gauge transformations and that non-abelian gauge invariance can be set up quite naturally. This leads naturally to Elko symmetry currents. These Elko symmetry currents can then be coupled with the symmetry currents of the Electroweak theory to form interaction Hamiltonian densities, thus providing a natural mechanism for Elko particles to interact directly with Standard Model matter in addition to the Higgs particle. This could have profound implications for the detection of Elko at the LHC. We also show that in a certain sense Elko fields are non-local even along the axis of locality. This may make direct detection of Elko difficult. We propose that Elko would therefore still seem dark to us, as far as direct detection efforts are concerned. We propose however, that the allowed gauge interactions between Elko and the electroweak sector of the Standard Model may result in the possibility of new experiments to be devised to look for Elko indirectly via studying the Standard Model particles that are involved in an Elko interaction. Such new experiments could complement existing ideas of developing experiments to detect the Elko particles based on their interaction with the Higgs particle

Hopf Solitons in the AFZ Model

The Aratyn-Ferreira-Zimerman (AFZ) model is a conformal field theory in three-dimensional space. It has solutions that are topological solitons classified by an integer-valued Hopf index. There exist infinitely many axial solutions which have been found analytically. Axial, knot and linked solitons are found numerically to be static solutions using a modified volume preserving flow for Hopf index one to eight, allowing for comparison with other Hopf soliton models. Solutions include a static trefoil knot at Hopf index five. A one-parameter family of conformal Skyrme-Faddeev (CSF) models, consisting of linear combinations of the Nicole and AFZ models, are also investigated numerically. The transition of solutions for Hopf index four is mapped across these models. A topological change between linked and axial solutions occurs, with fewer models permitting axial solitons than linked solitons at Hopf index four.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures and 2 table

Quantum fields, dark matter and non-standard Wigner classes

The Elko field of Ahluwalia and Grumiller is a quantum field for massive spin-1/2 particles. It has been suggested as a candidate for dark matter. We discuss our attempts to interpret the Elko field as a quantum field in the sense of Weinberg. Our work suggests that one should investigate quantum fields based on representations of the full Poincar\'e group which belong to one of the non-standard Wigner classes.Comment: 6 pages. Submitted to proceedings of Dark2009, Christchurch, New Zealand, January 200

Social Support and Gender Effects on Academic Confidence in Foster Youth

Finding the predictors for academic success is critical for foster youth to become productive citizens as adults. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of social support in the academic confidence of transitional foster youth. Because the literature suggests men and women benefit from social support differentially, I also examined gender as the moderating variable for social support and academic confidence. A sample of 82 foster youth (15-18 years old) from San Joaquin County\u27s Human Service Agency volunteered to participate. Participants were given the Student Perceived Availability of Social Support Questionnaire (SPASSQ) to assess their perceptions of the available social support from foster family, teachers, and peers. The Academic Efficacy Scale (AES) and the School Investment Inventory (SII) were used to assess academic confidence. Hierarchical and linear regression analyses and independent t-tests were conducted to examine the relationship between social support and academic confidence with gender as the moderating variable. Results were that overall social support positively predicted academic confidence, and this was particularly true for females when using AES. More specifically, the social support provided by foster parents was a strong predictor of academic confidence for girls. Teacher and peer support also had a positive impact on foster youths\u27 academic confidence. These data support the hypotheses that social support positively predicts academic confidence and that female foster youth benefit more from social support

Transport of positrons in the interstellar medium

This work investigates some aspects of the transport of low-energy positrons in the interstellar medium (ISM). We consider resonance interactions with magnetohydrodynamic waves above the resonance threshold. Below the threshold, collisions take over and deflect positrons in their motion parallel to magnetic-field lines. Using Monte-Carlo simulations, we model the propagation and energy losses of positrons in the different phases of the ISM until they annihilate. We suggest that positrons produced in the disk by an old population of stars, with initial kinetic energies below 1 MeV, and propagating in the spiral magnetic field of the disk, can probably not penetrate the Galactic bulge.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in the proceeding of the 6th INTEGRAL worksho

THE ECONOMICS OF INSTRUCTIONAL REVENUE SHARING

The process of planning and budgeting for public institutions has been a topic of recent interest as budgetary constraints have mandated reduced funding for state agencies and publicly funded educational institutions. The most recent budget outlook in Minnesota suggests that funding for the University of Minnesota will be reduced significantly in the next biennium. This outlook is renewing the call for increased efficiency and cost control for publicly funded educational institutions such as the University of Minnesota. The authors have been involved with a project in which cost functions and economic relationships were examined within the College of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences at the University of Minnesota. This paper is an extension of these efforts and attempts to address the questions relating to instructional revenue sharing.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,