Finding pseudo families in women's prisons: fact and fantasy

The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file.Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on October 26, 2007)Vita.Includes bibliographical references.Thesis (M.A.) University of Missouri-Columbia 2007.Dissertations, Academic -- University of Missouri--Columbia -- Sociology.This paper examines prison literature concerning women's facilities, focusing on the years 1960-1979. Sixteen specific pieces of literature are examined focusing on three claims in respect to sexuality among the incarcerated women: 1. If the sixteen works include an operationalized definition of homosexuality; 2. What terminology the authors use interchangeably with homosexuality; 3. What evidentiary support do the authors use to support their claims concerning the incidence of homosexuality. The goals of the paper are to collect women's prison literature from the aforementioned time span and cast a critical light on this existing literature. I suggest that this literature should be examined from a new lens; possibly a feminist or queer theory lens to fully address the previous assertions of homosexuality

Terahertz photoresponse of a quantum Hall edge-channel diode

The Teraherz (THz) photoresponse of a two-dimensional electron gas in the quantum Hall regime is investigated. We use a sample structure which is topologically equivalent to a Corbino geometry combined with a cross-gate technique. This quasi-Corbino geometry allows us to directly investigate the THz-induced transport between adjacent edge-states, thus avoiding bulk effects. We find a pronounced photo voltage at zero applied bias, which rapidly decreases when an external current bias is applied. The photo voltage and its dependence on the bias current can be described using the model of an illuminated photodiode, resulting from the reconstruction of the Landau bands at the sample edge. Using the sample as a detector in a Fourier transform spectrometer setup, we find a resonant response from which we extract a reduced effective cyclotron mass. The findings support a non-bolometric mechanism of the induced photo voltage and the proposed edge-channel diode model.Comment: 5 pages, 5 eps-figures, accepted for Phys. Rev.

Control of many electron states in semiconductor quantum dots by non-Abelian vector potentials

Adiabatic time evolution of degenerate eigenstates of a quantum system provides a means for controlling electronic states since mixing between degenerate levels generates a matrix Berry phase. In the presence of spin-orbit coupling in n-type semiconductor quantum dots the electron Hamiltonian is invariant under time reversal operation and the many body groundstate may be doubly degenerate. This double degeneracy can generate non-Abelian vector potentials when odd number of electrons are present. We find that the antisymmetry of many electron wavefunction has no effect on the matrix Berry phase. We have derived equations that allow one to investigate the effect of electron correlations by expressing the non-Abelian vector potentials for many electron system in terms of single electron non-Abelian vector potentials.Comment: minor changes included, accepted in Phys. Rev.

Nonparametric Dark Energy Reconstruction from Supernova Data

Understanding the origin of the accelerated expansion of the Universe poses one of the greatest challenges in physics today. Lacking a compelling fundamental theory to test, observational efforts are targeted at a better characterization of the underlying cause. If a new form of mass-energy, dark energy, is driving the acceleration, the redshift evolution of the equation of state parameter w(z) will hold essential clues as to its origin. To best exploit data from observations it is necessary to develop a robust and accurate reconstruction approach, with controlled errors, for w(z). We introduce a new, nonparametric method for solving the associated statistical inverse problem based on Gaussian Process modeling and Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling. Applying this method to recent supernova measurements, we reconstruct the continuous history of w out to redshift z=1.5.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter

Quantized Dispersion of Two-Dimensional Magnetoplasmons Detected by Photoconductivity Spectroscopy

We find that the long-wavelength magnetoplasmon, resistively detected by photoconductivity spectroscopy in high-mobility two-dimensional electron systems, deviates from its well-known semiclassical nature as uncovered in conventional absorption experiments. A clear filling-factor dependent plateau-type dispersion is observed that reveals a so far unknown relation between the magnetoplasmon and the quantum Hall effect.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Physical activity, obesity and mortality: does pattern of physical activity have stronger epidemiological associations?

Background Most studies of physical activity (PA) epidemiology use behaviour measured at a single time-point. We examined whether ‘PA patterns’ (consistently low, consistently high or inconsistent PA levels over time) showed different epidemiological relationships for anthropometric and mortality outcomes, compared to single time-point measure of PA. Methods Data were the Danish MONICA (MONItoring Trends and Determinants in CArdiovascular Disease) study over three waves 1982–3 (time 1), 1987–8 (time 2) and 1993–4 (time 3). Associations between leisure time single time-point PA levels at time 1 and time 3, and sport and active travel at times 1 and 2 with BMI, waist, hip circumference and mortality (death from coronary heart disease (CHD) and cardiovascular disease (CVD)) were compared to ‘PA patterns’ spanning multiple time points. PA pattern classified participants’ PA as either 1) inactive or low PA at both time points; 2) moderate level PA at time 1 and high activity at time 3; or 3) a ‘mixed PA pattern’ indicating a varying levels of activity over time. Similarly, sport and active travel were also classified as indicating stable low, stable high and mixed patterns. Results The moderately and highly active groups for PA at times 1 and 3 had up to 1.7 cm lower increase in waist circumference compared with the inactive/low active group. Across ‘PA patterns’, ‘active maintainers’ had a 2.0 cm lower waist circumference than ‘inactive/low maintainers’. Waist circumference was inversely related to sport but not active travel. CHD risk did not vary by activity levels at time 1, but was reduced significantly by 43% for high PA at time 3 (vs ‘inactive’ group) and among ‘active maintainers’ (vs ‘inactive/low maintainers’) by 62%. ‘Sport pattern’ showed stronger reductions in mortality for cardiovascular disease and CHD deaths among sport maintainers, than the single time point measures. Conclusions PA patterns demonstrated a stronger association with a number of anthropometric and mortality outcomes than the single time-point measures. Operationalising PA as a sustained behavioural pattern may address some of the known under-estimation of risk for poor health in PA self-report measurements and better reflect exposure for epidemiological analysis of risk of health outcomes

An inclusion result for dagger closure in certain section rings of abelian varieties

We prove an inclusion result for graded dagger closure for primary ideals in symmetric section rings of abelian varieties over an algebraically closed field of arbitrary characteristic.Comment: 11 pages, v2: updated one reference, fixed 2 typos; final versio

Nonparametric Reconstruction of the Dark Energy Equation of State from Diverse Data Sets

The cause of the accelerated expansion of the Universe poses one of the most fundamental questions in physics today. In the absence of a compelling theory to explain the observations, a first task is to develop a robust phenomenology. If the acceleration is driven by some form of dark energy, then, the phenomenology is determined by the dark energy equation of state w. A major aim of ongoing and upcoming cosmological surveys is to measure w and its time dependence at high accuracy. Since w(z) is not directly accessible to measurement, powerful reconstruction methods are needed to extract it reliably from observations. We have recently introduced a new reconstruction method for w(z) based on Gaussian process modeling. This method can capture nontrivial time-dependences in w(z) and, most importantly, it yields controlled and unbaised error estimates. In this paper we extend the method to include a diverse set of measurements: baryon acoustic oscillations, cosmic microwave background measurements, and supernova data. We analyze currently available data sets and present the resulting constraints on w(z), finding that current observations are in very good agreement with a cosmological constant. In addition we explore how well our method captures nontrivial behavior of w(z) by analyzing simulated data assuming high-quality observations from future surveys. We find that the baryon acoustic oscillation measurements by themselves already lead to remarkably good reconstruction results and that the combination of different high-quality probes allows us to reconstruct w(z) very reliably with small error bounds.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, 3 table