The Suppression of Diversity

Is it a systematic strategy or a mutation of millennial ferver that drives the escalating challenges to the civil rights of this nation\u27s racial, linguistic, and national origin minorities? Increasing juridical, legislative, and popular assaults on affirmative action policies coupled with the sometimes less heralded emergence of a de facto U.S. language policy are sweeping through the states. These activities draw on a consistent repertoire of approaches from the invocation of the very language and concepts of the civil rights movement to the isolationist buzz-words of early twentieth century advocates of Americanization. In an effort to legitimize their efforts this new breed of assailants has lifted the terms equality of opportunity, color blind, and merit directly from the lips of civil rights heroes of the past, retrofitting concepts that resonate from the very core of the civil rights movement into an arsenal of weapons that threaten the extinction of that movement. In that same vein opponents of bilingual education have reached further back into our history dredging up de-contextualized quotations from icons of American history to evoke nostalgia and patriotism and to resuscitate the fear of the dissolution of national unity in the wake of the infusion of diverse languages and cultures. The introductory portion of this article treats the failure of anti-civil rights movements to acknowledge either the rich cultural legacy of people of color or the deeply engrained cultural and political limitations that this nation has imposed on their civil rights. We discuss the re-packaged language of equality and equity used by these movements and their success and attempts at success in reversing the progress of civil rights at the polls and in legislatures across the nation. We next examine the anti-affirmative action and anti-bilingual movements sweeping the U.S. today, analyzing qualitative and quantitative data from multiple sources including data from the the 2000 U.S. Census to track current anti-affirmative action and anti-bilingual/English only developments among the states to demonstrate the coexistence of these developments in those areas where people of color are concentrated

The Trouble with the MDGs: Confronting Expectations of Aid and Development Success

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are unlikely to be met by 2015, even if huge increases in development assistance materialize. The MDGs are a set of quantitative, time-bound targets for indicators such as poverty, education and mortality in developing countries adopted unanimously by the UN in 2000. However, the rates of progress required by many of the goals are at the edges of or beyond historical precedent. At the same time, there appear to be limits to the degree to which aid can contribute to development outcomes. Estimates of the ‘cost’ of reaching the MDGs are nevertheless frequently misinterpreted to mean that a certain quantity of aid—such as the oft-cited $50 billion—could cause the Goals to be met. Despite many benefits of the MDGs, there has been little discussion so far of potential costs of the specific form taken by these goals, especially the creation of unreasonable expectations about what is achievable in a short time frame and about the role of aid in the development process. Many countries making extraordinarily rapid progress on MDG indicators, due in large part to aid, will nonetheless not reach the MDGs. Unrealistic targets thus may turn successes into perceptions of failure, serving to undermine future constituencies for aid (in donors) and reform (in recipients). This would be unfortunate given the vital role of aid and reform in the development process and the need for long-term, sustained aid commitments. Though goal-setting can be useful, these particular goals might be better viewed not as practical targets but instead as valuable reminders of the stark contrast between the world we have and the world we want, and as a call to redouble our search for interventions to close the gap more rapidly.Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), development assistance

Non-Zhang-Rice singlet character of the first ionization state of T-CuO

We argue that tetragonal CuO (T-CuO) has the potential to finally settle long-standing modelling issues for cuprate physics. We compare the one-hole quasiparticle (qp) dispersion of T-CuO to that of cuprates, in the framework of the strongly-correlated ($U_{dd}\rightarrow \infty$) limit of the three-band Emery model. Unlike in CuO$_2$, magnetic frustration in T-CuO breaks the $C_4$ rotational symmetry and leads to strong deviations from the Zhang-Rice singlet picture in parts of the reciprocal space. Our results are consistent with angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy data but in sharp contradiction to those of a one-band model previously suggested for them. These differences identify T-CuO as an ideal material to test a variety of scenarios proposed for explaining cuprate phenomenology.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Optical bandgap engineering in nonlinear silicon nitride waveguides

Silicon nitride is awell-established material for photonic devices and integrated circuits. It displays a broad transparency window spanning from the visible to the mid-IR and waveguides can be manufactured with low losses. An absence of nonlinear multi-photon absorption in the erbium lightwave communications band has enabled various nonlinear optic applications in the past decade. Silicon nitride is a dielectric material whose optical and mechanical properties strongly depend on the deposition conditions. In particular, the optical bandgap can be modified with the gas flow ratio during low-pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD). Here we show that this parameter can be controlled in a highly reproducible manner, providing an approach to synthesize the nonlinear Kerr coefficient of the material. This holistic empirical study provides relevant guidelines to optimize the properties of LPCVD silicon nitride waveguides for nonlinear optics applications that rely on the Kerr effect

Clinical vignette: Tension pneumothorax complicating septic pulmonary emboli

Case Presentation: A 40 year old female was referred from the local jail with a tension pneumothorax. She had a long history of intravenous (IV) heroin and cocaine use followed by a 2-year history of sobriety. She had resumed intravenous heroin use 3 weeks before admission and soon thereafter developed fever and chills. She was incarcerated 7 days before admission. Five days before admission she developed progressive dyspnea and left-sided pleuritic chest pain. On arrival in the emergency department, she was found to be febrile (39.0 deg C), tachycardic (121 beats/min), tachypneic (34 breaths/min), and hypoxemic. Leukocyte count was 12,100 cells/mcL. A chest x-ray showed a large left tension pneumothorax with mediastinal shift and a moderate left sided pleural effusion. After placement of a left-sided chest tube, computerized tomography revealed multifocal peripheral cavitary nodules suggestive of septic emboli. Per the radiology report, the etiology of the pneumothorax was compatible with bronchopleural fistula, suspected to be due to a peripheral cavitary nodule in the anteromedial left lower lobe. A transthoracic echocardiogram revealed a large tricuspid valve vegetation measuring 0.95 x 1.47cm. Blood cultures grew methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus. She was treated with nafcillin. Her initial hospital course included respiratory failure requiring mechanical ventilation and development of a right-sided pneumothorax requiring placement of an additional chest tube. Serial chest x-rays showed improvement of the cavitary lesions and resolution of the bilateral pneumothoraces. She was eventually transferred to a skilled nursing facility to complete a six week course of nafcillin. At the time of discharge, she was without leukocytosis and no longer required supplemental oxygen. Discussion: Pnemothorax is an uncommon complication of pneumonia; it may be seen with Pneumocystis jiroveci, tuberculosis, or necrotizing bacterial pneumonia. Pneumothorax associated with septic pulmonary emboli is a very rare complication of Staphyloccus aureus bacteremia. The pathophysiology is presumed to be erosion of a embolic bacterial cavitary lesion into a bronchus with creation of a bronchopulmonary fistula. Conclusions: Septic pulmonary embolus is a severe complication of staphylococcal bacteremia and right-sided endocarditis that may be seen in IV drug users. On rare occasion, it may be associated with pneumothorax. This infection is often associated with prolonged morbidity and increased mortalit

Editorial

No Abstract.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/71375/1/20931_ftp.pd

A new young stellar cluster embedded in a molecular cloud in the far outer Galaxy

We report the discovery of a new young stellar cluster and molecular cloud located in the far outer Galaxy, seen towards IRAS 06361-0142, and we characterise their properties. Near-infrared images were obtained with VLT/ISAAC through JHKs filters, millimetre line observations of CO(1-0) were obtained with SEST, and VLA 6 cm continuum maps obtained from archive data. The cloud and cluster are located at a distance of 7 kpc and a Galactocentric distance of 15 kpc, well in the far outer Galaxy. Morphologically, IRAS 06361-0142 appears as a cluster of several tens of stars surrounded by a nearly spherical nebular cavity centred at the position of the IRAS source. The cluster appears composed of low and intermediate-mass, young reddened stars with a large fraction having cleared the inner regions of their circumstellar discs responsible for (H - Ks) colour excess. The observations are compatible with a 4 Myr cluster with variable spatial extinction between Av = 6 and Av = 13.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure

Enhanced Spontaneous Emission Into The Mode Of A Cavity QED System

We study the light generated by spontaneous emission into a mode of a cavity QED system under weak excitation of the orthogonally polarized mode. Operating in the intermediate regime of cavity QED with comparable coherent and decoherent coupling constants, we find an enhancement of the emission into the undriven cavity mode by more than a factor of 18.5 over that expected by the solid angle subtended by the mode. A model that incorporates three atomic levels and two polarization modes quantitatively explains the observations.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, to appear in May 2007 Optics Letter