Type III Einstein-Yang-Mills solutions

We construct two distinct classes of exact type III solutions of the D=4 Einstein-Yang-Mills system. The solutions are embeddings of the non-abelian plane waves in spacetimes in Kundt's class. Reduction of the solutions to type N leads to generalized $pp$ and Kundt waves. The geodesic equations are briefly discussed.Comment: revtex, 4 pages, minor changes, some factors and references corrected, footnote adde

WISER: Women in Science and Engineering Roundtable

This brief provides an overview of Case Western Reserve University\u27s Women in Science and Engineering Roundtable, including student evaluation and national metrics about women in STEMhttps://commons.case.edu/mathercenter-briefs/1000/thumbnail.jp

Task demands dissociate the effects of muscarinic M-1 receptor blockade and protein kinase C inhibition on attentional performance in rats

The cholinergic system is known to be necessary for normal attentional processing. However, the receptors and mechanisms mediating the effects of acetylcholine on attention remain unclear. Previous work in our laboratory suggested that cholinergic muscarinic receptors are critical for maintaining performance in an attention-demanding task in rats. We examined the role of the muscarinic M-1 receptor and protein kinase C (PKC), which is activated by the M-1 receptor, in attention task performance. Rats were trained in an attention-demanding task requiring discrimination of brief (500, 100, 25 ms) visual signals from trials with no signal presentation. The effects of muscarinic M-1 receptor blockade were assessed by administering dicyclomine (0-5.0 mg/kg). The effects of PKC inhibition were assessed by administering chelerythrine chloride (0-2.0 mg/kg). Dicyclomine decreased the accuracy of detecting longer signals in this attention task, including when attentional demands were increased by flashing a houselight throughout the session. Chelerythrine chloride decreased the accuracy of signal detection in the standard version of the task but not when the houselight was flashed throughout the session. The present findings indicate that muscarinic M-1 receptors are critical for maintaining performance when attentional demands are increased, and that PKC activity may contribute to some aspects of attentional performance

Creative Approaches to Building Community Research Partnerships: Resources and Collaborations

Moderator: Robin A. Robinson, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Session Description The purpose of this interdisciplinary breakout session is to present several different approaches to the perception, creation, and implementation of community engaged research partnerships, and the range of funding sources that support them. Panelists will present brief descriptions of their projects and funding, followed by the UMass Dartmouth Research Development Manager’s insights and suggestions concerning the funding of successful matches of academic researchers and community research partners. Session Presenters, Titles and Descriptions Caitlin M. Stover, PhD, RN, PHCNS-BC, CNE, College of Nursing, Department of Community Nursing Community Based Participatory Research with Community Health Workers of the Southcoast Region My community partner and I had several ideas and projects that we wanted to work on together. To help organize our thoughts and deliverables, we applied for a spot in the first cohort of the Community Based Participatory Research Academy, a grant funded week-long course presented by the University Of Michigan School Of Public Health and the Detroit Urban Research Center. Spending a week with community engaged researchers and community leaders focused the academic-community partnership of UMass Dartmouth College of Nursing Assistant Professor Caitlin Stover and Community Leader Kathleen Murphy to promote the health of Southcoast region by mobilizing and building the capacity of Community Health Workers in the region. Monthly guided video conferences/workshops/virtual communications conducted by our assigned mentors (one community based mentor and one academic mentor) and the core of community engaged researchers assisted us in receiving a non-competitive Community Partnership Building Grant, creating and accomplishing short and long term goals, all while providing expert mentorship in applying the CBPR tenets to our work. Andrea Klimt, PhD, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Sociology & Anthropology Pride of Place: The Potential of Collaborative Photography The Fall River Portraits project brought together university sociology and anthropology students, local high school students, and senior citizens to photographically document the complex social realities of a small economically-struggling Massachusetts city. Project photographers documented the impact of decades of economic decline on the social fabric and built environment of this urban space as well as evidence of cultural vibrancy and resilience in the city’s various neighborhoods. The resulting visual narratives fostered a pride of place and hopeful sense of self-recognition amongst local residents and encouraged the thoughtful engagement with local realities of participating college students. This project was funded by the UMass President\u27s Office, Creative Economy Award. Christina Cipriano, PhD, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Psychology Class Interrupted: Improving Under-studied Classroom Environments Funded by the William T. Grant Foundation and recently, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, the RELATE Project has been conducting systematic investigations of self-contained classrooms over the past four years across the Northeast. Towards the end of improving outcomes for students and educators in self-contained special education classrooms, we are advancing the science of classroom observation and improving the quality of educational experiences, one classroom at a time. To date, our work has resulted in a new psychometrically validated tool for evaluating effective interactions in these classrooms and an ecologically valid team-based professional development approach for teacher-paraeducator teams. Robin A. Robinson, PhD, PsyD, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Sociology & Anthropology Psychological Foundations of Power and Relational Abuse Amongst Rural and Small-Town Teens Initially funded by a pilot grant from the UMass Medical School CTSA-CER Pilot Program, and in community partnership with the Cape Cod Justice for Youth Collaborative and other member agencies of the Barnstable County Council for Children, Youth, and Families, this multi-stage project addressed the question: What are the conscious and unconscious psychological processes and power dynamics that explain behaviors associated with “teen dating violence”? The strong collaborative, and integrated, relationship that already existed between the PI and community partners contributed to the success of this pilot study, and facilitated new alliances amongst ancillary agencies. Collaborations has included regional organization of focus groups across Barnstable County (Cape Cod) to produce a data pool of first-person perspectives of teen relationships and violence in contexts of community challenges and supports. The work has considered diverse social and economic contexts as variable forces that affect psychological processes, to explore the psychology of teen relational abuse. Mary Hensel, Research Development Manager, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Research Development Strategies for Community Engaged Research Partnership

Vigorous star formation hidden by dust in a galaxy at z=1.4z=1.4

Near-infrared surveys have revealed a substantial population of enigmatic faint galaxies with extremely red optical-to-near-infrared colours and with a sky surface density comparable to that of faint quasars. There are two scenarios for these extreme colours: (i) these distant galaxies have formed virtually all their stars at very high redshifts and, due to the absence of recently formed stars, the colours are extremely red and (ii) these distant galaxies contain large amounts of dust, severely reddening the rest-frame UV--optical spectrum. HR10 ($z = 1.44$) is considered the archetype of the extremely red galaxies. Here we report the detection of the continuum emission from HR10 at 850$\mu$m and at 1250$\mu$m, demonstrating that HR10 is a very dusty galaxy undergoing a major episode of star formation. Our result provides a clear example of a high-redshift galaxy where the star formation rate inferred from the ultraviolet luminosity would be underestimated by a factor up to 1000, and shows that great caution should be used to infer the global star formation history of the Universe from optical observations only.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure, Nature, in press (30 April 1998

On the nature of the transition disk around LkCa 15

We present CARMA 1.3 mm continuum observations of the T Tauri star LkCa 15,which resolve the circumstellar dust continuum emission on angular scales between 0.2-3 arcsec, corresponding to 28-420 AU at the distance of the star. The observations resolve the inner gap in the dust emission and reveal an asymmetric dust distribution in the outer disk. (Abridge) We calculate that 90% of the dust emission arises from an azimuthally symmetric ring that contains about 5x10^{-4} M_sun of dust. A low surface-brightness tail that extends to the northwest out to a radius of about 300 AU contains the remaining 10% of the observed continuum emission. The ring is modeled with a rather flat surface density profile between 40 and 120 AU, while the inner cavity is consistent with either a sharp drop of the 1.3 mm dust optical depth at about 42 AU or a smooth inward decrease between 3 and 85 AU. (Abridge). Within 40 AU, the observations constrain the amount of dust between 10^{-6} and 7 Earth masses, where the minimum and maximum limits are set by the near-IR SED modeling and by the mm-wave observations of the dust emission respectively. In addition, we confirm the discrepancy in the outer disk radius inferred from the dust and gas, which corresponds to 150 AU and 900 AU respectively. We cannot reconcile this difference by adopting an exponentially tapered surface density profile as suggested for other systems, but we instead suggest that the gas surface density in the outer disk decreases less steeply than that predicted by model fits to the dust continuum emission. The lack of continuum emission at radii lager than 120 AU suggests a drop of at least a factor of 5 in the dust-to-gas ratio, or in the dust opacity. We show that a sharp dust opacity drop of this magnitude is consistent with a radial variation of the grain size distribution as predicted by existing grain growth models.Comment: Accepted for publication on ApJ, 13 pages, 11 figure

Evaluating the accuracy of hake abundance index predictions using different smoothing techniques

Alternative projection approaches based on linear and quadratic smoothing are applied retrospectively to abundance indices for hake to ascertain whether they can provide more accurate predictions of resource status one and two years ahead, in line with ideal needs for the empirical OMP used to set hake TACs. The results suggest that there is probably little if anything to be gained from attempting more complex formulations than three-year averages of abundance indices for input to a target-based empirical OMP for SA hake

Radiation Pressure Acceleration by Ultraintense Laser Pulses

The future applications of the short-duration, multi-MeV ion beams produced in the interaction of high-intensity laser pulses with solid targets will require improvements in the conversion efficiency, peak ion energy, beam monochromaticity, and collimation. Regimes based on Radiation Pressure Acceleration (RPA) might be the dominant ones at ultrahigh intensities and be most suitable for specific applications. This regime may be reached already with present-day intensities using circularly polarized (CP) pulses thanks to the suppression of fast electron generation, so that RPA dominates over sheath acceleration at any intensity. We present a brief review of previous work on RPA with CP pulses and a few recent results. Parametric studies in one dimension were performed to identify the optimal thickness of foil targets for RPA and to study the effect of a short-scalelength preplasma. Three-dimensional simulations showed the importance of ``flat-top'' radial intensity profiles to minimise the rarefaction of thin targets and to address the issue of angular momentum conservation and absorption.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication to the special issue "EPS 2008" of PPC