5,470 research outputs found
27 months of solitude: a Peace Corps story
In 2014, I was sent to Colombia’s Caribbean coast to serve as an English teacher through the Peace Corps. I spent two years teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) at both the elementary and secondary levels in Colombian public school settings, which included time in both urban and rural areas. Despite many hardships and setbacks, my experience in the Peace Corps was overwhelmingly positive. By teaching the alphabet at the elementary level, and focusing on vocabulary, test-taking strategies, and reading comprehension strategies at the secondary level, I was able to make a positive impact in public schools which had previously never hosted a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV).
This project tells the story of my experiences during the Master’s International Program beginning with my time at Humboldt State University, followed by my Pre-Service Training in Colombia. As a PCV in Colombia, I describe the four months I spent living, working, and observing English classes in a rural town, before moving to my final site placement. I then describe the remainder of my first year of service co-teaching at the primary-school level, as well as my second year of service co-teaching at the secondary-school level. I also include a description of my community English class, and my after-school English club. More specifically, this M.A. project describes the activities that worked in the classroom as a result of my TEFL training, as well as the activities that did not work in the classroom, often due to the cultural context of teaching on the Colombian coast. Additionally, this M.A. project discusses what I now believe I would do differently after having had some time for reflection.
The final portion of my M.A. project describes my experience with different secondary projects including a photography camp, music lessons, and a skateboarding group. My aim is that readers will be inspired by my journey to join the Peace Corps, and that future Peace Corps Volunteers will learn about the rewards that come with finishing one’s service
Spontaneous Isotropy Breaking: A Mechanism for CMB Multipole Alignments
We introduce a class of models in which statistical isotropy is broken
spontaneously in the CMB by a non-linear response to long-wavelength
fluctuations in a mediating field. These fluctuations appear as a gradient
locally and pick out a single preferred direction. The non-linear response
imprints this direction in a range of multipole moments. We consider two
manifestations of isotropy breaking: additive contributions and multiplicative
modulation of the intrinsic anisotropy. Since WMAP exhibits an alignment of
power deficits, an additive contribution is less likely to produce the observed
alignments than the usual isotropic fluctuations, a fact which we illustrate
with an explicit cosmological model of long-wavelength quintessence
fluctuations. This problem applies to other models involving foregrounds or
background anisotropy that seek to restore power to the CMB. Additive models
that account directly for the observed power exacerbate the low power of the
intrinsic fluctuations. Multiplicative models can overcome these difficulties.
We construct a proof of principle model that significantly improves the
likelihood and generates stronger alignments than WMAP in 30-45% of
realizations.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figure
Money and happiness : rank of income, not income, affects life satisfaction
Does money buy happiness, or does happiness come indirectly from the higher rank in society that money brings? Here we test a rank hypothesis, according to which people gain utility from the ranked position of their income within a comparison group. The rank hypothesis contrasts with traditional reference income hypotheses, which suggest utility from income depends on comparison to a social group reference norm. We find that the ranked position of an individual’s income predicts general life satisfaction, while absolute income and reference income have no effect. Furthermore, individuals weight upward comparisons more than downward comparisons. According to the rank hypothesis, income and utility are not directly linked: Increasing an individual’s income will only increase their utility if ranked position also increases and will necessarily reduce the utility of others who will lose rank
The peculiar velocity field: constraining the tilt of the Universe
A large bulk flow, which is in tension with the Lambda Cold Dark Matter
(CDM) cosmological model, has been observed. In this paper, we provide
a physically plausible explanation of this bulk flow, based on the assumption
that some fraction of the observed dipole in the cosmic microwave background is
due to an intrinsic fluctuation, so that the subtraction of the observed dipole
leads to a mismatch between the cosmic microwave background (CMB) defined rest
frame and the matter rest frame. We investigate a model that takes into account
the relative velocity (hereafter the tilted velocity) between the two frames,
and develop a Bayesian statistic to explore the likelihood of this tilted
velocity.
By studying various independent peculiar velocity catalogs, we find that: (1)
the magnitude of the tilted velocity is around 400 km/s, and its direction
is close to what is found from previous bulk flow analyses; for most catalogs
analysed, u=0 is excluded at about the level;(2) constraints on
the magnitude of the tilted velocity can result in constraints on the duration
of inflation, due to the fact that inflation can neither be too long (no dipole
effect) nor too short (very large dipole effect); (3) Under the assumption of a
super-horizon isocurvature fluctuation, the constraints on the tilted velocity
require that inflation lasts at least 6 e-folds longer (at the 95% confidence
interval) than that required to solve the horizon problem. This opens a new
window for testing inflation and models of the early Universe from observations
of large scale structure.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, match the published version in Phys.Rev.
Large Scale Structure Forecast Constraints on Particle Production During Inflation
Bursts of particle production during inflation provide a well-motivated
mechanism for creating bump like features in the primordial power spectrum.
Current data constrains these features to be less than about 5% the size of the
featureless primordial power spectrum at wavenumbers of about 0.1 h Mpc^{-1}.
We forecast that the Planck cosmic microwave background experiment will be able
to strengthen this constraint to the 0.5% level. We also predict that adding
data from a square kilometer array (SKA) galaxy redshift survey would improve
the constraint to about the 0.1% level. For features at larger wave-numbers,
Planck will be limited by Silk damping and foregrounds. While, SKA will be
limited by non-linear effects. We forecast for a Cosmic Inflation Probe (CIP)
galaxy redshift survey, similar constraints can be achieved up to about a
wavenumber of 1 h Mpc^{-1}.Comment: 10 pages. Matches PRD accepted versio
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