Different Countries, Same Homophobia and Transphobia: A Cross-Cultural Survey of So-Called Conversion Therapy Practices and the Move Toward Legislative Protections for the United States LGBTQ+ Community

So-called “conversion therapy” consists of dangerous practices that inflict detrimental, long-lasting effects on its victims. As a form of sexual orientation or gender identity or gender expression change efforts, conversion therapy is fostered by global homophobia and transphobia. Despite formal public rejection and scientific discreditation, conversion therapy providers across the world continue to target LGBTQ+ individuals, predominately under the guise of offering health care services or obeying religious practices. The following piece compares conversion therapy in three countries with recently introduced LGBTQ+ legislation––(1) Ghana; (2) Canada; and (3) the United States (U.S.)–––in order to identify factors furthering conversion therapy and analyze how these factors contribute to, or hinder, national conversion therapy bans. This Note argues that conversion therapy is a pervasive global problem that must be banned through national law, and the proposed U.S. federal legislation banning conversion therapy must be amended to include all forms of conversion therapy practices and exclude religious exemptions

Ghost Condensation and a Consistent Infrared Modification of Gravity

We propose a theoretically consistent modification of gravity in the infrared, which is compatible with all current experimental observations. This is an analog of Higgs mechanism in general relativity, and can be thought of as arising from ghost condensation--a background where a scalar field \phi has a constant velocity, = M^2. The ghost condensate is a new kind of fluid that can fill the universe, which has the same equation of state, \rho = -p, as a cosmological constant, and can hence drive de Sitter expansion of the universe. However, unlike a cosmological constant, it is a physical fluid with a physical scalar excitation, which can be described by a systematic effective field theory at low energies. The excitation has an unusual low-energy dispersion relation \omega^2 \sim k^4 / M^2. If coupled to matter directly, it gives rise to small Lorentz-violating effects and a new long-range 1/r^2 spin dependent force. In the ghost condensate, the energy that gravitates is not the same as the particle physics energy, leading to the possibility of both sources that can gravitate and antigravitate. The Newtonian potential is modified with an oscillatory behavior starting at the distance scale M_{Pl}/M^2 and the time scale M_{Pl}^2/M^3. This theory opens up a number of new avenues for attacking cosmological problems, including inflation, dark matter and dark energy.Comment: 42 pages, LaTeX 2

AS-773-13 Resolution of Commendation for Margaret Camuso

Commends Margaret Camuso for her service to the Academic Senate

RELICS: Strong Lens Models for Five Galaxy Clusters From the Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey

Strong gravitational lensing by galaxy clusters magnifies background galaxies, enhancing our ability to discover statistically significant samples of galaxies at z>6, in order to constrain the high-redshift galaxy luminosity functions. Here, we present the first five lens models out of the Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey (RELICS) Hubble Treasury Program, based on new HST WFC3/IR and ACS imaging of the clusters RXC J0142.9+4438, Abell 2537, Abell 2163, RXC J2211.7-0349, and ACT-CLJ0102-49151. The derived lensing magnification is essential for estimating the intrinsic properties of high-redshift galaxy candidates, and properly accounting for the survey volume. We report on new spectroscopic redshifts of multiply imaged lensed galaxies behind these clusters, which are used as constraints, and detail our strategy to reduce systematic uncertainties due to lack of spectroscopic information. In addition, we quantify the uncertainty on the lensing magnification due to statistical and systematic errors related to the lens modeling process, and find that in all but one cluster, the magnification is constrained to better than 20% in at least 80% of the field of view, including statistical and systematic uncertainties. The five clusters presented in this paper span the range of masses and redshifts of the clusters in the RELICS program. We find that they exhibit similar strong lensing efficiencies to the clusters targeted by the Hubble Frontier Fields within the WFC3/IR field of view. Outputs of the lens models are made available to the community through the Mikulski Archive for Space TelescopesComment: Accepted to Ap

RELICS: High-Resolution Constraints on the Inner Mass Distribution of the z=0.83 Merging Cluster RXJ0152.7-1357 from strong lensing

Strong gravitational lensing (SL) is a powerful means to map the distribution of dark matter. In this work, we perform a SL analysis of the prominent X-ray cluster RXJ0152.7-1357 (z=0.83, also known as CL 0152.7-1357) in \textit{Hubble Space Telescope} images, taken in the framework of the Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey (RELICS). On top of a previously known $z=3.93$ galaxy multiply imaged by RXJ0152.7-1357, for which we identify an additional multiple image, guided by a light-traces-mass approach we identify seven new sets of multiply imaged background sources lensed by this cluster, spanning the redshift range [1.79-3.93]. A total of 25 multiple images are seen over a small area of ~0.4 $arcmin^2$, allowing us to put relatively high-resolution constraints on the inner matter distribution. Although modestly massive, the high degree of substructure together with its very elongated shape make RXJ0152.7-1357 a very efficient lens for its size. This cluster also comprises the third-largest sample of z~6-7 candidates in the RELICS survey. Finally, we present a comparison of our resulting mass distribution and magnification estimates with those from a Lenstool model. These models are made publicly available through the MAST archive.Comment: 15 Pages, 7 Figures, 4 Tables Accepted for publication in Ap

Stylized (Arte) Facts on Sectoral Inflation

Research on disaggregate price indices has found that sectoral shocks generate the bulk of sectoral inflation variance, but no persistence. Aggregate shocks, by contrast, are the root of sectoral inflation persistence, but have negligible relative variance. We argue that these findings are largely an artefact of using overly simple factor models to characterize inflation. Sectoral inflation series are subject to particular features such as sales and item substitutions. In factor models, these blow up the variance of sectoral shocks, while reducing their persistence. Controlling for such effects, we find that inflation variance is driven by both aggregate and sectoral shocks. Sectoral shocks, too, generate substantial inflation persistence. Both findings contrast sharply with earlier evidence from factor models. However, these results align well with recent micro evidence. This has implications for the foundations of price stickiness, and provide quantitative inputs for calibrating models with sectoral heterogeneity

RELICS: A Very Large (θE∼40"\theta_{E}\sim40") Cluster Lens -- RXC J0032.1+1808

Extensive surveys with the \textit{Hubble Space Telescope} (HST) over the past decade, targeting some of the most massive clusters in the sky, have uncovered dozens of galaxy-cluster strong lenses. The massive cluster strong-lens scale is typically \theta_{E}\sim10\arcsec to \sim30-35\arcsec, with only a handful of clusters known with Einstein radii \theta_{E}\sim40\arcsec or above (for $z_{source}=2$, nominally). Here we report another very large cluster lens, RXC J0032.1+1808 ($z=0.3956$), the second richest cluster in the redMapper cluster catalog and the 85th most massive cluster in the Planck Sunyaev-Zel'dovich catalog. With our Light-Traces-Mass and fully parametric (dPIEeNFW) approaches, we construct strong lensing models based on 18 multiple images of 5 background galaxies newly identified in the \textit{Hubble} data mainly from the \textit{Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey} (RELICS), in addition to a known sextuply imaged system in this cluster. Furthermore, we compare these models to Lenstool and GLAFIC models that were produced independently as part of the RELICS program. All models reveal a large effective Einstein radius of \theta_{E}\simeq40\arcsec ($z_{source}=2$), owing to the obvious concentration of substructures near the cluster center. Although RXC J0032.1+1808 has a very large critical area and high lensing strength, only three magnified high-redshift candidates are found within the field targeted by RELICS. Nevertheless, we expect many more high-redshift candidates will be seen in wider and deeper observations with \textit{Hubble} or \emph{JWST}. Finally, the comparison between several algorithms demonstrates that the total error budget is largely dominated by systematic uncertainties.Comment: 23 pages, accepted for publication in Ap

RELICS: A Strong Lens Model for SPT-CLJ0615-5746, a z=0.972 Cluster

We present a lens model for the cluster SPT-CLJ0615$-$5746, which is the highest redshift ($z=0.972$) system in the Reionization of Lensing Clusters Survey (RELICS), making it the highest redshift cluster for which a full strong lens model is published. We identify three systems of multiply-imaged lensed galaxies, two of which we spectroscopically confirm at $z=1.358$ and $z=4.013$, which we use as constraints for the model. We find a foreground structure at $z\sim0.4$, which we include as a second cluster-sized halo in one of our models; however two different statistical tests find the best-fit model consists of one cluster-sized halo combined with three individually optimized galaxy-sized halos, as well as contributions from the cluster galaxies themselves. We find the total projected mass density within $r=26.7"$ (the region where the strong lensing constraints exist) to be $M=2.51^{+0.15}_{-0.09}\times 10^{14}$~M$_{\odot}$. If we extrapolate out to $r_{500}$, our projected mass density is consistent with the mass inferred from weak lensing and from the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect ($M\sim10^{15}$~M$_{\odot}$). This cluster is lensing a previously reported $z\sim10$ galaxy, which, if spectroscopically confirmed, will be the highest-redshift strongly lensed galaxy known.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures 4 tables. ApJ Accepte