Angular reduction in multiparticle matrix elements

A general method for the reduction of coupled spherical harmonic products is presented. When the total angular coupling is zero, the reduction leads to an explicitly real expression in the scalar products within the unit vector arguments of the spherical harmonics. For non-scalar couplings, the reduction gives Cartesian tensor forms for the spherical harmonic products, with tensors built from the physical vectors in the original expression. The reduction for arbitrary couplings is given in closed form, making it amenable to symbolic manipulation on a computer. The final expressions do not depend on a special choice of coordinate axes, nor do they contain azimuthal quantum number summations, nor do they have complex tensor terms for couplings to a scalar. Consequently, they are easily interpretable from the properties of the physical vectors they contain.Comment: This version contains added comments and typographical corrections to the original article. Now 27 pages, 0 figure

Surveying the Scope of the SU(2)_L Scalar Septet Sector

Extending the Standard Model by adding a scalar field transforming as a septet under $SU(2)_L$ preserves the $\rho$ parameter at tree level and can satisfy experimental constraints on the electroweak parameters $S$ and $T$. This work presents the first fully general phenomenological study of such an extension. We examine constraints on the septet model couplings based on electroweak and Higgs observables, and use LHC searches for new physics to bound the mass of the septet to be above $\sim 400$ GeV at a $95\%$ CL.Comment: pdfLateX, 17 pages, 6 figures, reference added. Version published in JHE

The Use of Smoking and Breaktaking to Reduce Job-related Stress Among Registered Nurses

M.N. University of Kansas, Nursing 1985Hospital nursing can produce stress. How nurses cope with that stress can affect patient care and personal health. This study was conducted to describe the coping methods, particularly breaktaking and smoking, used to reduce job-related stress. Research questions were: (1) what are the coping methods used by medical-surgical nurses to reduce job-related stress during work; (2) is breaktaking used as a coping method, (3) is smoking used as a coping method; (4) under what circumstances are breaks taken; (5) how are breaks described; (6) is breaktaking perceived to be helpful in reducing job related stress; (7) is there an association between smoking and breaktaking, and (8) do smokers perceive breaktaking to be more helpful in reducing job-related stress than do nonsmokers. A convenience sample of 101 registered nurses working adult medical-surgical units from three hospitals completed a questionnaire designed by the investigator. Data analyses included frequency distributions, percentages, means, and t-tests. The coping method used most frequently (52%) was ''Keep working, but talk to co-workers." When feeling stress, 21% usually take a break other than lunch/supper and 35% usually take lunch/supper. Smokers use breaks significantly more often when feeling stress than do nonsmokers (p = .007). When feeling stress, 27% of the smokers usually take a break and smoke and 19% keep working and smoke. The circumstance that most frequently determined taking a break other than lunch/supper was having to arrange own time (75%); for lunch/supper it was having a light workload (79%). The most frequent activity on a break other than lunch/supper was being interrupted (78%). On lunch/supper it was eating (89%). Breaks other than lunch/supper are usually in the nursing lounge (63%) and lunch/supper is usually off the unit (58%). A break other than lunch/supper is perceived by 53% to somewhat decrease stress and lunch/ supper somewhat decreases stress for 59%. Smokers usually have a cigarette when on break other than lunch/supper (84%) and also with lunch/supper (88%). Smokers take breaks other than lunch/supper significantly more often than nonsmokers (p < .001), experience more positive effects (p = .0222), and perceive break other than lunch/ supper to be significantly more helpful in reducing stress (p = .0107)

A Case Study of Christian School Parents Who Work in Public Schools

This case study investigated factors parents consider when choosing Christian schools for their children and how they made sense of their decision. Participants were northern Indiana public school employees who enrolled at least one child in an evangelical Christian School. In individual interviews participants were asked to reflect on their process of school choice decision making. The researcher used in-vivo and values coding to determine that the primary factors pushing participants away from public schooling are, (a) lack of individual attention, (b) low confidence in staff, (c) low academic rigor, (d) lack of Christian values, and (e) feeling unsafe. Primary pull factors drawing parents to Christian schooling include (a) alignment with values, (b) caring teachers who give individual attention, (c) Indiana Choice Scholarship (voucher) program, (d) preservation of religious identity, (e) sense of community, and (f) high academic expectations. Second cycle coding revealed that the primary commonality of all push/pull factors is self-interest. The researcher also asked participants to reflect on the moral and ethical dilemmas they face as public-school employees who chose Christian schooling for their children. Participants do not see a moral/ethical conflict between their public-school role and their Christian schooling choice. The researcher suggests that no conflict exists for some participants because their identity as evangelical Christians trumps their identity as public school employees. The results of this study suggest that this set of self-described evangelical parents are dissatisfied with the lack of Christian values in the public-school system and that Christian schools may be better positioned to serve the interests of some evangelical families. The researcher also suggests that rational choice models are inadequate to explain parent decision-making concerning school choice and that Weick’s (1995) sensemaking and Klein’s (2015) naturalistic decision making (NDM) models provide valuable insight in understanding school choice decisions. Further research is needed to investigate the decision-making process of evangelical public-school employees who choose to keep their children in public schools

Evidence Inference 2.0: More Data, Better Models

How do we most effectively treat a disease or condition? Ideally, we could consult a database of evidence gleaned from clinical trials to answer such questions. Unfortunately, no such database exists; clinical trial results are instead disseminated primarily via lengthy natural language articles. Perusing all such articles would be prohibitively time-consuming for healthcare practitioners; they instead tend to depend on manually compiled systematic reviews of medical literature to inform care. NLP may speed this process up, and eventually facilitate immediate consult of published evidence. The Evidence Inference dataset was recently released to facilitate research toward this end. This task entails inferring the comparative performance of two treatments, with respect to a given outcome, from a particular article (describing a clinical trial) and identifying supporting evidence. For instance: Does this article report that chemotherapy performed better than surgery for five-year survival rates of operable cancers? In this paper, we collect additional annotations to expand the Evidence Inference dataset by 25\%, provide stronger baseline models, systematically inspect the errors that these make, and probe dataset quality. We also release an abstract only (as opposed to full-texts) version of the task for rapid model prototyping. The updated corpus, documentation, and code for new baselines and evaluations are available at http://evidence-inference.ebm-nlp.com/.Comment: Accepted as workshop paper into BioNLP Updated results from SciBERT to Biomed RoBERT

RT_BUILD: An expert programmer for implementing and simulating Ada real-time control software

The RT BUILD is an expert control system programmer that creates real-time Ada code from block-diagram descriptions of control systems. Since RT BUILD embodies substantial knowledge about the implementation of real-time control systems, it can perform many, if not most of the functions normally performed by human real-time programmers. Though much basic research was done in automatic programming, RT BUILD appears to be the first application of this research to an important problem in flight control system development. In particular, RT BUILD was designed to directly increase productivity and reliability for control implementations of large complex systems

Abundances of Disk Planetary Nebulae in M31 and the Radial Oxygen Gradient

We have obtained spectra of 16 planetary nebulae in the disk of M31 and determined the abundances of He, N, O, Ne, S and Ar. Here we present the median abundances and compare them with previous M31 PN disk measurements and with PNe in the Milky Way. We also derive the radial oxygen gradient in M31, which is shallower than that in the Milky Way, even accounting for M31's larger disk scale length.Comment: 2 pages, 1 figure, 1 table, to appear in the proceedings of IAU Symposium No. 283, Planetary Nebulae: An Eye to the Futur

Abundances of PNe in the Outer Disk of M31

We present spectroscopic observations and chemical abundances of 16 planetary nebulae (PNe) in the outer disk of M31. The [O III] 4363 line is detected in all objects, allowing a direct measurement of the nebular temperature essential for accurate abundance determinations. Our results show that the abundances in these M31 PNe display the same correlations and general behaviors as Type II PNe in the Milky Way Galaxy. We also calculate photoionization models to derive estimates of central star properties. From these we infer that our sample PNe, all near the peak of the Planetary Nebula Luminosity Function, originated from stars near 2 M_sun. Finally, under the assumption that these PNe are located in M31's disk, we plot the oxygen abundance gradient, which appears shallower than the gradient in the Milky Way.Comment: 48 pages, including 12 figures and 8 tables, accepted by Astrophysical Journa