Writing in your own voice: An intervention that reduces plagiarism and common writing problems in students' scientific writing.

In many of our courses, particularly laboratory courses, students are expected to engage in scientific writing. Despite various efforts by other courses and library resources, as instructors we are often faced with the frustration of student plagiarism and related writing problems. Here, we describe a simple Writing in Your Own Voice intervention designed to help students become more aware of different types of plagiarism and writing problems, avoid those problems, and practice writing in their own voice. In this article, we will introduce the types of plagiarism and writing problems commonly encountered in our molecular biology laboratory course, the intervention, and the results of our study. From the evaluation of 365 student reports, we found the intervention resulted in nearly 50% fewer instances of plagiarism and common writing problems. We also observed significantly fewer instances of severe plagiarism (e.g. several sentences copied from an external source). In addition, we find that the effects last for several weeks after the students complete the intervention assignment. This assignment is particularly easy to implement and can be a very useful tool for teaching students how to write in their own voices. © 2019 International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 47(5):589-598, 2019

Imprints of a Primordial Preferred Direction on the Microwave Background

Rotational invariance is a well-established feature of low-energy physics. Violations of this symmetry must be extremely small today, but could have been larger in earlier epochs. In this paper we examine the consequences of a small breaking of rotational invariance during the inflationary era when the primordial density fluctuations were generated. Assuming that a fixed-norm vector picked out a preferred direction during the inflationary era, we explore the imprint it would leave on the cosmic microwave background anisotropy, and provide explicit formulas for the expected amplitudes $$ of the spherical-harmonic coefficients. We suggest that it is natural to expect that the imprint on the primordial power spectrum of a preferred spatial direction is approximately scale-invariant, and examine a simple model in which this is true.Comment: 7 pages, no figures; v5: Corrections, as well as use of more standard convention, in section I

Solution of the dispersionless Hirota equations

The dispersionless differential Fay identity is shown to be equivalent to a kernel expansion providing a universal algebraic characterization and solution of the dispersionless Hirota equations. Some calculations based on D-bar data of the action are also indicated.Comment: Late

AdS/CFT Energy Loss in Time-Dependent String Configurations

We analyze spacetime momentum currents on a classical string worldsheet, study their generic connection via AdS/CFT correspondence to the instantaneous energy loss of the dual field theory degrees of freedom and suggest a general formula for computing energy loss in a time-dependent string configuration. Applying this formula to the case of falling strings, generally dual to light quarks, reveals that the energy loss does not display a well-pronounced Bragg peak at late times, as previously believed. Finally, we comment on the possible implications of this result to the jet quenching phenomena in heavy ion collisions.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure. Issues with sign conventions resolved and other minor corrections. Discussion and references added. Published versio

Spin-other-orbit matrix elements for f sup 4 configurations

Data for spin orbit matrix elements for f to 4th power configuratio

Configuration interaction matrix elements for d sup n configurations

Configuration interaction matrix elements for weak interaction

Matrix elements of the spin-spin interactions for f sup 4 configurations

Matrix elements of spin-spin interactions for F4 electron configuration