Poverty, Opportunity, and Well-Being in the United States

Economic opportunity varies dramatically across the United States. In this study the Opportunity to Flourish Index (OFI) is created to determine the level of opportunity United States cities afford those at the bottom of the income distribution. Indicators within the index measure disposable income, access to financial services, diet, educational attainment, unemployment, physical well-being, and family structure. The OFI’s relationship with standard measures of economic growth and economic mobility is also evaluated. The OFI is not correlated with measures of income and population growth, suggesting, that in the short-run growth and opportunity are not necessarily complementary. The OFI is strongly correlated with intergenerational economic mobility. Individuals that live in cities which have higher levels of opportunity are more likely to have children that move up the income distribution. The OFI provides stakeholders in poverty alleviation a means to evaluate and promote equality of opportunity in United States cities

Of One Mind and Of One Government: The Rise and Fall of the Creek Nation in the Early Republic

In his first book, Of One Mind and Of One Government: The Rise and Fall of the Creek Nation in the Early Republic, historian Kevin Kokomoor examines the development of a Creek “nation” between the outset of the American Revolution and the War of 1812. His central argument is that the crisis of U.S. expansion spawned a Creek “nation-state” (19). The administrative unit of this polity was the National Council, which oversaw Creek domestic affairs with “coercive legal authority” (19). In his view, the Creek nation-state represented a departure from long-established “cultural and political traditions,” such as community leadership, local decision-making, and the custom of clan retaliation (19). These traditions had favored clan and town autonomy and were “supposed to bind communities together as a people” (20)

You can\u27t just take a piece of land from the university and build a garden on it : A case study of the Indigenous food and medicine garden at Western University

Indigenization efforts at Canadian Universities are growing, yet the meanings and tensions associated with these spaces have not been well documented. This thesis draws from a case study of the Indigenous Food and Medicine Garden at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada to investigate its origins, uses and meanings. This thesis utilized an Indigenous-Guided research methodology to conduct in-depth interviews (n=17) of key stakeholders, including Garden founders and users. Interview data were transcribed verbatim and categorized using thematic analysis. Results indicated that a web of relations between all interviewees best represents the creation story of the Garden. Further, assertion of Indigenous control was the primary use of the space. However, broader institutional problems were indicated to inhibit the potential of this project. Overall, the findings of thesis indicate that Indigenization efforts must be balanced with institutional ally-ship to produce meaningful spaces for reconciliation

Ultracold collisions in tight harmonic traps: Quantum defect model and application to metastable helium atoms

We analyze a system of two colliding ultracold atoms under strong harmonic confinement from the viewpoint of quantum defect theory and formulate a generalized self-consistent method for determining the allowed energies. We also present two highly efficient computational methods for determining the bound state energies and eigenfunctions of such systems. The perturbed harmonic oscillator problem is characterized by a long asymptotic region beyond the effective range of the interatomic potential. The first method, which is based on quantum defect theory and is an adaptation of a technique developed by one of the authors (GP) for highly excited states in a modified Coulomb potential, is very efficient for integrating through this outer region. The second method is a direct numerical solution of the radial Schr\"{o}dinger equation using a discrete variable representation of the kinetic energy operator and a scaled radial coordinate grid. The methods are applied to the case of trapped spin-polarized metastable helium atoms. The calculated eigenvalues agree very closely for the two methods, and with those computed self-consistently using the generalized self-consistent method.Comment: 11 pages,REVTEX, text substantially revised, title modifie

An FFAG Transport Line for the PAMELA Project

The PAMELA project to design an accelerator for hadron therapy using non-scaling Fixed Field Alternating Gradient (NS-FFAG) magnets requires a transport line and gantry to take the beam to the patient. The NS-FFAG principle offers the possibility of a gantry much smaller, lighter and cheaper than conventional designs, with the added ability to accept a wide range of fast changing energies. This paper will build on previous work to investigate a transport line which could be used for the PAMELA project. The design is presented along with a study and optimisation of its acceptance