Quantum tomography for collider physics: Illustrations with lepton pair production

Quantum tomography is a method to experimentally extract all that is observable about a quantum mechanical system. We introduce quantum tomography to collider physics with the illustration of the angular distribution of lepton pairs. The tomographic method bypasses much of the field-theoretic formalism to concentrate on what can be observed with experimental data, and how to characterize the data. We provide a practical, experimentally-driven guide to model-independent analysis using density matrices at every step. Comparison with traditional methods of analyzing angular correlations of inclusive reactions finds many advantages in the tomographic method, which include manifest Lorentz covariance, direct incorporation of positivity constraints, exhaustively complete polarization information, and new invariants free from frame conventions. For example, experimental data can determine the $entanglement$ $entropy$ of the production process, which is a model-independent invariant that measures the degree of coherence of the subprocess. We give reproducible numerical examples and provide a supplemental standalone computer code that implements the procedure. We also highlight a property of $complex$ $positivity$ that guarantees in a least-squares type fit that a local minimum of a $\chi^{2}$ statistic will be a global minimum: There are no isolated local minima. This property with an automated implementation of positivity promises to mitigate issues relating to multiple minima and convention-dependence that have been problematic in previous work on angular distributions.Comment: 25 pages, 3 figure

Elementary School Students and their Knowledge about ‘Variable’

This mixed methods research design investigated the knowledge held by elementary school students in Grades 1-5 about variables. To explore this issue, 1,745 students completed paper pencil assessments and 73 students participated in think aloud interviews. This presentation will describe the results, including the misconceptions students exhibited and suggestions for remediation

Climate Action Planning and Urban Greenways: Weaving Together Sustainability, Health and Resilience

Envisioning and planning citywide greenways and supporting urban greening (green infrastructure) linked to climate action planning are surprisingly not well integrated in sustainable planning initiatives and in fact represent two separate landscape action approaches and two different scales and disciplines of focus. By not being strategically integrated, cities are missing out on many significant environmental and social co-benefits that are especially needed at this time. Consider, the planning focus for greenways (especially in the US context) over the last forty-years has generally emerged from a landscape design and park planning tradition and thus we see various inter-city/regional or suburban “pleasure way” or neo-“garden city” features typically centered on landscaped Class I bicycle and walking pathway as part of reclaiming or reinvesting in post-industrial urban spaces along waterways and railroad tracks.1 Meanwhile, on a very independent trajectory over the last two decades, green infrastructure planning – usually conceived as place-specific features to recapture storm-water or provide needed vegetative greening or other energy savings has been getting increasing attention as a retrofit method for improving urban ecological health (Beatley, 2014). Greenways are more than just one conceptual thing such as a linear parks but a connecting fabric or more appropriately the urban green infrastructure that can and should be woven in to retrofit the city and provide support where it is most needed and make the city more livable by introducing bands and groves of tree canopy, fresh air, access to nature, connection to unique ecological features, open-up view corridors, provide places for outdoor exercise; support local urban agriculture, offer flood protection; provide pedestrian-scale networks for socializing and non-motorized cross-city access; and, least appreciated of all, become places of cultural expression

Aerodynamic characteristics of forebody and nose strakes based on F-16 wind tunnel test experience. Volume 1: Summary and analysis

The YF-16 and F-16 developmental wind tunnel test program was reviewed. Geometrical descriptions, general comments, representative data, and the initial efforts toward the development of design guides for the application of strakes to future aircraft are presented

Inverse scattering at fixed energy for layered media

AbstractIn this article we show that exponentially decreasing perturbations of the sound speed in a layered medium can be recovered from the scattering amplitude at fixed energy. We consider the unperturbed equation utt = c02(xn)δu in ℝ×ℝ, where n ≥ 3. The unperturbed sound speed, c0(xn), is assumed to be bounded, strictly positive, and constant outside a bounded interval on the real axis. The perturbed sound speed, c(x), satisfies ¦c.(x) - co(xn)¦ < C exp(−δ¦x¦) for some δ > 0. Our work is related to the recent results of H. Isozaki (J. Diff. Eq. 138) on the case where c0 takes the constant values c+ and c− on the positive and negative half-lines, and R. Weder on the case c0 = c+ for xn > h, c0 = ch, for 0 < xn, < h, and c0 = c− for xn < 0 (IIMAS-UNAM Preprint 70, November, 1997)

The human fear-circuitry and fear-induced fainting in healthy individuals The paleolithic-threat hypothesis

The Paleolithic-Threat hypothesis reviewed here posits that habitual efferent fainting can be traced back to fear-induced allelic polymorphisms that were selected into some genomes of anatomically, mitochondrially, and neurally modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) in the Mid-Paleolithic because of the survival advantage they conferred during periods of inescapable threat. We posit that during Mid-Paleolithic warfare an encounter with “a stranger holding a sharp object” was consistently associated with threat to life. A heritable hard- wired or firm-wired (prepotentiated) predisposition to abruptly increase vagal tone and collapse flaccidly rather than freeze or attempt to flee or fight in response to an approaching sharp object, a minor injury, or the sight of blood, polymorphism for the hemodynamically “paradoxical” flaccid- immobility in response to these stimuli may have increased some non-combatants’ chances of survival. This is consistent with the unusual age and sex pattern of fear-induced fainting. The Paleolithic-Threat hypothesis also predicts a link to various hypo-androgenic states (e.g. low dehydroxyepiandrosterone-sulfate. We offer five predictions testable via epidemiological, clinical, and ethological/primatological methods. The Paleolithic-Threat hypothesis has implications for research in the aftermath of man-made disasters, such as terrorism against civilians, a traumatic event in which this hypothesis predicts epidemics of fear-induced faintin

CONSUMER FOOD SAFETY BEHAVIOR: A CASE STUDY IN HAMBURGER COOKING AND ORDERING

More Americans are eating hamburgers more well-done than in the past, according to national surveys. This change reduced the risk of E. coli O157:H7 infection by an estimated 4.6 percent and reduced associated medical costs and productivity losses by an estimated $7.4 million annually. In a 1996 survey, respondents who were more concerned about the risk of foodborne illness cooked and ordered hamburgers more well-done than those who were less concerned. However, respondents who strongly preferred hamburgers less well-done cooked and ordered them that way, even after accounting for their concern about the risk of illness.hamburger doneness, ground beef, food safety, food safety education, E. coli O157:H7, consumer behavior, survey, risk, foodborne illness, risk perceptions, palatability, information, microbial pathogens, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,