Remembering the Taste of Senegal

2012 essay contest winner Arielle Ramberg\u27s Remembering the Taste of Senegal Ramberg traveled abroad in 2010 but participated in the 2012 essay contest

Culture Counts: Culture, Language & Mathematics in the U.S.

This study explores the interaction between culture, language, and mathematics through the experiences of multicultural individuals in the United States as they learn mathematics in English as a second language. Mathematics is generally regarded as a fundamental a-cultural truth, denying the role that humans have played in math’s construction and leaving the variations in understandings of mathematics around the world unacknowledged. This study critically examines this perspective through the contradicting experiences of multicultural individuals shared in qualitative interviews. I focus on the power relations implicit in not only the standard English of the classroom, but also the standard forms of mathematics that students must learn to succeed, and the effects that this power has on student comprehension and on students as subjects. The multicultural students I interviewed experienced struggles in their transition between math in different languages, due to linguistic and contextual challenges. As subjects, the students were forced to assimilate, describing their mathematics experiences largely in the form of struggles that extended into conflicts with their own identities. They spoke of feeling belittled and had a sense of being the “other,” which resulted in confronting their differences and conforming to the dominant form of mathematics that they learned at school in standard English. It is critical that the effects of the standardization of math in the classroom are acknowledged when educating students so that students like those in this study do not continue to be devalued and to struggle without knowing why

To be or not to be an auctioneer: Some thoughts on the legal nature of online eBay auctions and the protection of consumers

This paper discusses the legal classification of online “eBay” auctions. The discussion has key implications on the scope of consumer protection law as sale by auctions are, for example, excluded from the scope of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000. The paper uncovers that online “eBay” auctions cannot always be considered as traditional auctions and that eBay, as an intermediary, is not to be considered as an auctioneer. This creates difficulties associated with a distributive application of consumer protection laws such as the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000. Another set of difficulties is associated with a lenient legal regime applicable to the liability of eBay under the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 . The paper concludes that there is an urgent need to clarify the legal classification of online auctions and to rethink the liability of online auction sites to better protect consumers

SELEX RICH Performance and Physics Results

SELEX took data in the 1996/7 Fixed Target Run at Fermilab. The excellent performance parameters of the SELEX RICH Detector had direct influence on the quality of the obtained physics results.Comment: Contributed talk at the Fourth Workshop on RICH Detectors, June 5-10, 2002, Pylos, Greece. Accepted for publication in NIM

Scanning Electron Microscopy Analysis of Polyethylene Oxide Hydrogels for Blood Contact

Hydrogels are a class of synthetic material, composed of a polymer-water matrix and have been proposed as tissue substitutes and drug delivery vehicles. Polyethylene oxide (PEO) hydrogels were synthesized and used to produce coated wires and conduits for baboon blood compatibility studies. Blood-material interactions were studied both by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and 111In labeled platelet deposition. SEM processing modifications were first evaluated in order to reduce shrinkage and surface distortion incurred during sample preparation of these high water content materials. Pretreatment with 1% tannic acid reduced bulk shrinkage associated with critical point drying by 10-20%. This effect is small, nevertheless, it prevented major sample disruption. Coated guidewires were exposed to baboon blood for one hour in the inferior vena cava and conduits were placed for either 30 or 60 minutes in an ex vivo femoral arteriovenous shunt. Reference materials included Gore-tex®, polyethylene and silica-free polydimethyl siloxane (PDMS). In the guidewire studies, 111In labeled platelet levels were highest on Gore-tex® (6568.97 platelets/ 1000 μm2) and large thrombotic deposits were well visualized by SEM. Formulations containing PEO had low levels of platelet deposition and little evidence of platelet activation was noted by SEM. Shunt studies demonstrated that materials of high PEO content and molecular weight had the lowest levels of platelet deposition. After 60 minutes of blood flow, mean platelet deposition on PDMS and Gore-tex® was 50 and 1000 fold higher than on a network composed of 65% PEO 20,000 (p \u3c 0.05). SEM confirmed these findings

Final State Interactions and CP Violation in KL→π+π−e+e−K_L \to \pi^+ \pi^- e^+ e^-

Using chiral perturbation theory we calculate the imaginary parts of the $K_L \rightarrow \pi^+ \pi^- e^+ e^-$ form factors that arise from $\pi \pi \rightarrow \pi^+ \pi^-$ and $\pi \pi \rightarrow \pi^+ \pi^- \gamma^*$ rescattering. We discuss their influence on CP violating variables in $K_L \rightarrow \pi^+ \pi^- e^+ e^-$.Comment: ; 12 pages, 2 figures, TeX format; uses epsf.tex, tables.tex, and phyzzx.te