New Invariants for surfaces

We take the fundamental group of the complement of the branch curve of a generic projection induced from canonical embedding of a surface. This group is stable on connected components of moduli spaces of surfaces. Since for many classes of surfaces it is expected that the fundamental group has a polycyclic structure, we define a new invariant that comes from this structure. We compute this invariant for a few examples. Braid monodromy factorizations related to curves is a first step in computing the fundamental group of the complement of the curve, and thus we also indicate the possibility of using braid monodromy factorizations of branch curves as an invariant of a surface.Comment: 15 pages. To appear in Con. Math, AMS-TE

Meta-analysis of the origin of bimaturism in orangutan males

Unlike any other primate species, orangutans exhibit extraordinary sexual differences in their facial morphology. Two different strategies are available for males that reach sexual maturity: either become fully “flanged” and develop secondary sexual characteristics, which is knownto be only developed by the dominant male, or remain “unflanged” and not develop secondary sexual characteristics. The mechanism for how this bimaturism evolved and how occurs is poorly understood, but both flanged and unflanged males are reproductively successful. This project explores the physiological mechanism behind bimaturismin orangutan males; namely, are there genetic differences between flanged and unflanged males such that the strategy is inherited, is bimaturism a result of hormonal differences, and how do the two strategies influence reproductive success in male orangutans? Previous studies have shown that males that develop these “flanges” or cheek pads are more likely to have a high reproductive success than the ones who do not develop them. Results suggest that males with flanges emit a loud vocalization calls, also known as long calls, that give them higher opportunity for mates.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/uresposters/1257/thumbnail.jp

Meson Spectroscopy in Photo-production at CLAS

Photo-production of excited mesons in the 1-2 GeV mass range decaying via multi-pion or multi-kaon emission has been investigated at the TJNAF\thanks{This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and The U.S. National Science Foundation.} experiment E01-017 (g6c) in the $4.8-5.4$ GeV photon beam energy range. The main objective of the experiment is to extract resonance parameters of the produced states by way of a Partial Wave Analysis (PWA) technique. In this paper, we will focus on the general characteristics of the data distributions in both the neutral and charged 3-pion final states, i.e. $\pi^{+}\pi^{-}\pi^{0}$ and $\pi^{+}\pi^{+}\pi^{-}$.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, CIPANP 2003 proceedings contributio