How to Look Like a Lesbian Without Even Trying

“Ugh. I hate those pictures. I look like such a lesbian in them,” my cousin explained to me while her family and I sat around their kitchen table. After she said this, her younger brother laughed into his chicken noodle soup and she hit him over the head. “Shut up. I’m telling you. They’re so bad,” she said. As the conversation went on, I learn that she was referring to pictures that had been taken at one of her lacrosse practices. The important part is that she was displeased with the photos. And it’s certainly not because someone had caught her in a tryst with a woman and taken pictures of the incident. [excerpt

You Can\u27t Always Get What You Want

My parents used to tell me that I wasn’t entitled to anything—that I should be happy with what I have and not assume that I deserved something unless I had worked for it. Either way, entitlement is something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. So what do I think I’m entitled to? I’m not really sure. Maybe I’m entitled to making my own choices about what I’m going to do after graduation or having friends that treat me well. Maybe not. [excerpt

Gay After Graduation

I first went public with my sexual orientation over Surge last spring–my last semester at Gettysburg before graduation. I was scared, but ultimately lucky to be met with support from my friends and family. People generally accepted my sexuality and then moved on. Actually, life went on so quickly that it took me some time to catch up. [excerpt

Mobile Activism: What Your Profile Picture Says About You

I know you’ve all been seeing this image all of your Facebook news feeds. All of the sudden a few weeks ago it became everyone’s profile picture. People were sharing it, along with other images, explaining why Prop. 8 and the Defense Of Marriage Act should be repealed, and were generally expressing their support of marriage equality. [excerpt

Validity of the lifetime drinking history: A comparison of retrospective and prospective quantity-frequency measures

OBJECTIVE: The Lifetime Drinking History (LDH) has been used to examine alcohol use throughout the life span. Given its retrospective nature, it is important to examine the validity of the assessment. METHOD: Building on previous work establishing the reliability and validity of the LDH, the current study examined a sample of 1,295 men in the Vietnam Era Twin Registry. The men were assessed retrospectively with the LDH in 2000, at an average age of 51. The drinking patterns of these same men were also assessed prospectively in four prior studies, taking place in 1987, 1990, 1992, and 1995. RESULTS: Validity of the LDH was examined by comparing the correspondence between the prospective and retrospective quantity-frequency measures and reported age at first regular drinking. Correlations between the retrospective and prospective assessments were high for age at first regular drinking (.42-.58) and quantity-frequency measures (.47-.69), although some mean differences in the amount of consumption existed. CONCLUSIONS: Results support the use of the LDH in reporting phases of drinking across the life span

Toward a Unification of Star Formation Rate Determinations in the Milky Way and Other Galaxies

The star formation rate (SFR) of the Milky Way remains poorly known, with often-quoted values ranging from 1 to 10 solar masses per year. This situation persists despite the potential for the Milky Way to serve as the ultimate SFR calibrator for external galaxies. We show that various estimates for the Galactic SFR are consistent with one another once they have been normalized to the same initial mass function (IMF) and massive star models, converging to 1.9 +/- 0.4 M_sun/yr. However, standard SFR diagnostics are vulnerable to systematics founded in the use of indirect observational tracers sensitive only to high-mass stars. We find that absolute SFRs measured using resolved low/intermediate-mass stellar populations in Galactic H II regions are systematically higher by factors of ~2-3 as compared with calibrations for SFRs measured from mid-IR and radio emission. We discuss some potential explanations for this discrepancy and conclude that it could be allayed if (1) the power-law slope of the IMF for intermediate-mass (1.5 M_sun < m < 5 M_sun) stars were steeper than the Salpeter slope, or (2) a correction factor was applied to the extragalactic 24 micron SFR calibrations to account for the duration of star formation in individual mid-IR-bright H II regions relative to the lifetimes of O stars. Finally, we present some approaches for testing if a Galactic SFR of ~2 M_sun/yr is consistent with what we would measure if we could view the Milky Way as external observers. Using luminous radio supernova remnants and X-ray point sources, we find that the Milky Way deviates from expectations at the 1-3 sigma level, hinting that perhaps the Galactic SFR is overestimated or extragalactic SFRs need to be revised upwards.Comment: Accepted for publication in A

Study of exclusive one-pion and one-eta production using hadron and dielectron channels in pp reactions at kinetic beam energies of 1.25 GeV and 2.2 GeV with HADES

We present measurements of exclusive ensuremathπ+,0 and η production in pp reactions at 1.25GeV and 2.2GeV beam kinetic energy in hadron and dielectron channels. In the case of π+ and π0 , high-statistics invariant-mass and angular distributions are obtained within the HADES acceptance as well as acceptance-corrected distributions, which are compared to a resonance model. The sensitivity of the data to the yield and production angular distribution of Δ (1232) and higher-lying baryon resonances is shown, and an improved parameterization is proposed. The extracted cross-sections are of special interest in the case of pp → pp η , since controversial data exist at 2.0GeV; we find \ensuremathσ=0.142±0.022 mb. Using the dielectron channels, the π0 and η Dalitz decay signals are reconstructed with yields fully consistent with the hadronic channels. The electron invariant masses and acceptance-corrected helicity angle distributions are found in good agreement with model predictions