Global Music Perspectives: Music Outside the Western Canon in Local Schools

As a class, we are designing a research project for investigating how music teachers from counties in South-Central Pennsylvania use music from outside the Western canon (i.e. world music ). We are performing a qualitative study by interviewing k-12 music teachers from school districts in South-Central Pennsylvania. Teachers may choose to participate in a focus group interview with other teachers or in one-on-one interviews. The focus group interview will not exceed two hours and the one-on-one interviews will not exceed an hour. The interviews will be guided using a questionnaire (see attached), but the conversation may deviate from these questions at the discretion of the interviewer(s). We will transcribe these interviews to extract common thematic materials and relevant information. We will also compile a literature review of relevant peer-reviewed articles and use the data from said articles to expand upon our gathered information

Exact Superpotentials for Theories with Flavors via a Matrix Integral

We extend and test the method of Dijkgraaf and Vafa for computing the superpotential of N=1 theories to include flavors in the fundamental representation of the gauge group. This amounts to computing the contribution to the superpotential from surfaces with one boundary in the matrix integral. We compute exactly the effective superpotential for the case of gauge group U(N_c), N_f massive flavor chiral multiplets in the fundamental and one massive chiral multiplet in the adjoint, together with a Yukawa coupling. We compare up to sixth-order with the result obtained by standard field theory techniques in the already non trivial case of N_c=2 and N_f=1. The agreement is perfect.Comment: 7 pages, v2: typos involving signs fixed; v3: version to appear in Phys.Rev.

Taxation of sugar-sweetened beverages for reducing their consumption and preventing obesity or other adverse health outcomes:protocol

This is a protocol for a Cochrane Review (Intervention). The objectives are as follows: To assess the effects of taxation of sugar‐sweetened beverages (SSBs) on SSB consumption, energy intake, overweight, obesity, and other adverse health outcomes in the general population

UV and X-Ray Monitoring of AG Draconis During the 1994/1995 Outbursts

The recent 1994-1995 active phase of AG Draconis has given us for the first time the opportunity to follow the full X-ray behaviour of a symbiotic star during two successive outbursts and to compare with its quiescence X-ray emission. With \ros observations we have discovered a remarkable decrease of the X-ray flux during both optical maxima, followed by a gradual recovering to the pre-outburst flux. In the UV the events were characterized by a large increase of the emission line and continuum fluxes, comparable to the behaviour of AG Dra during the 1980-81 active phase. The anticorrelation of X-ray/UV flux and optical brightness evolution is shown to very likely be due to a temperature decrease of the hot component. Such a temperature decrease could be produced by an increased mass transfer to the burning compact object, causing it to slowly expand to about twice its original size.Comment: 12 pages postscript incl. figures, Proc. of Workshop on Supersoft X-Ray Sources, to appear in Lecture Notes in Physics vol. 472 (1996

A note on fermions in holographic QCD

We study the fermionic sector of a probe D8-brane in the supergravity background made of D4-branes compactified on a circle with supersymmetry broken explicitly by the boundary conditions. At low energies the dual field theory is effectively four-dimensional and has proved surprisingly successful in recovering qualitative and quantitative properties of QCD. We investigate fluctuations of the fermionic fields on the probe D8-brane and interpret these as mesinos (fermionic superpartners of mesons). We demonstrate that the masses of these modes are comparable to meson masses and show that their interactions with ordinary mesons are not suppressed.Comment: 21+1 pp, 1 figure; v2: typos corrected, refs. adde

Clouds, shadows, or twilight? Mayfly nymphs recognise the difference

1. We examined the relative changes in light intensity that initiate night-time locomotor activity changes in nymphs of the mayfly, Stenonema modestum (Heptageniidae). Tests were carried out in a laboratory stream to examine the hypothesis that nymphs increase their locomotion in response to the large and sustained reductions in relative light intensity that take place during twilight but not to short-term daytime light fluctuations or a minimum light intensity threshold. Ambient light intensity was reduced over a range of values representative of evening twilight. Light was reduced over the same range of intensities either continuously or in discrete intervals while at the same time nymph activity on unglazed tile substrata was video recorded. 2. Nymphs increased their locomotor activity during darkness in response to large, sustained relative light decreases, but not in response to short-term, interrupted periods of light decrease. Nymphs did not recognise darkness unless an adequate light stimulus, such as large and sustained relative decrease in light intensity, had taken place. 3. We show that nymphs perceive light change over time and respond only after a lengthy period of accumulation of light stimulus. The response is much lengthier than reported for other aquatic organisms and is highly adaptive to heterogeneous stream environments

Taxation of unprocessed sugar or sugar-added foods for reducing their consumption and preventing obesity or other adverse health outcomes

No abstract available

A Catalog of Transient X-ray Sources in M31

From October 1999 to August 2002, 45 transient X-ray sources were detected in M31 by Chandra and XMM-Newton. We have performed spectral analysis of all XMM-Newton and Chandra ACIS detections of these sources, as well as flux measurements of Chandra HRC detections. The result is absorption-corrected X-ray lightcurves for these sources covering this 2.8 year period, along with spectral parameters for several epochs of the outbursts of most of the transient sources. We supply a catalog of the locations, outburst dates, peak observed luminosities, decay time estimates, and spectral properties of the transient sources, and we discuss similarities with Galactic X-ray novae. Duty cycle estimates are possible for 8 of the transients and range from 40% to 2%; upper limits to the duty cycles are estimated for an additional 15 transients and cover a similar range. We find 5 transients which have rapid decay times and may be ultra-compact X-ray binaries. Spectra of three of the transients suggest they may be faint Galactic foreground sources. If even one is a foreground source, this suggests a surface density of faint transient X-ray sources of >~1 deg$^{-2}$.Comment: 63 pages, 22 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publication in Ap