Beats, Rhymes, Life & resilience : hip hop therapy with youth of color : a project based upon an investigation at Beats, Rhymes and Life Inc

This study seeks to understand if participation in Therapeutic Activity Groups (TAGS) at Beats Rhymes & Life helps young people to develop greater resilience. In this paper, resilience is defined in two parts: the ability for participants to engage their inner strengths and characteristics to overcome adversity and the capacity to identify and utilize community and interpersonal resources. This study consists of a quantitative analysis to create a revision of the program’s existing pre/post treatment survey and examine resilience as reported by ten youth participants. The findings revealed that participation in TAGs had a statistically significant impact on participant’s ability to recognize and utilize their community and interpersonal resources. This suggests that the BRL program is successful at helping youth feel part of a community, which helps them feel less isolated and therefore more able to seek support when needed. The findings also revealed that participation in TAGs might impact participant capacity to use inner strengths to overcome adversity. However, further investigation is needed, possibly due to small sample size. Overall, this study highlights the importance of assessing and revising measurement tools used in community mental health and highlights the importance of youth development programs supporting youth in engaging with their communities in order to develop resilience

Nucleotide Frequencies in Human Genome and Fibonacci Numbers

This work presents a mathematical model that establishes an interesting connection between nucleotide frequencies in human single-stranded DNA and the famous Fibonacci's numbers. The model relies on two assumptions. First, Chargaff's second parity rule should be valid, and, second, the nucleotide frequencies should approach limit values when the number of bases is sufficiently large. Under these two hypotheses, it is possible to predict the human nucleotide frequencies with accuracy. It is noteworthy, that the predicted values are solutions of an optimization problem, which is commonplace in many nature's phenomena.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure

Strong Coupling vs. 4-D Locality in Induced Gravity

We re-examine the problem of strong coupling in a regularized version of DGP (or ``brane-induced'') gravity. We find that the regularization of ref. hep-th/0304148 differs from DGP in that it does not exhibit strong coupling or ghosts up to cubic order in the interactions. We suggest that the nonlocal nature of the theory, when written in terms of the 4-D metric, is a plausible reason for this phenomenon. Finally, we briefly discuss the possible behavior of the model at higher-order in perturbation theory.Comment: 19 pages, accepted for publication in PR

The Van der Waals interaction of the hydrogen molecule - an exact local energy density functional

We verify that the van der Waals interaction and hence all dispersion interactions for the hydrogen molecule given by: W"= -{A/R^6}-{B/R^8}-{C/R^10}- ..., in which R is the internuclear separation, are exactly soluble. The constants A=6.4990267..., B=124.3990835 ... and C=1135.2140398... (in Hartree units) first obtained approximately by Pauling and Beach (PB) [1] using a linear variational method, can be shown to be obtainable to any desired accuracy via our exact solution. In addition we shall show that a local energy density functional can be obtained, whose variational solution rederives the exact solution for this problem. This demonstrates explicitly that a static local density functional theory exists for this system. We conclude with remarks about generalising the method to other hydrogenic systems and also to helium.Comment: 11 pages, 13 figures and 28 reference

Nonlinear Properties of Vielbein Massive Gravity

We propose a non-linear extension of the Fierz-Pauli mass for the graviton through a functional of the vielbein and an external Minkowski background. The functional generalizes the notion of the measure, since it reduces to a cosmological constant if the external background is formally sent to zero. Such a term and the explicit external background, emerge dynamically from a bi--gravity theory, having both a massless and a massive graviton in its spectrum, in a specific limit in which the massless mode decouples, while the massive one couples universally to matter. We investigate the massive theory using the Stueckelberg method and providing a 't Hooft-Feynman gauge fixing in which the tensor, vector and scalar Stueckelberg fields decouple. We show that this model has the softest possible ultraviolet behavior which can be expected from any generic (Lorentz invariant) theory of massive gravity, namely that it becomes strong only at the scale Lambda_3 = (m_g^2 M_P)^{1/3}.Comment: 23+1 pages LaTeX, 3 figures, few typos correcte

Hamiltonian BFV-BRST theory of closed quantum cosmological models

We introduce and study a new discrete basis of gravity constraints by making use of harmonic expansion for closed cosmological models. The full set of constraints is splitted into area-preserving spatial diffeomorphisms, forming closed subalgebra, and Virasoro-like generators. Operatorial Hamiltonian BFV-BRST quantization is performed in the framework of perturbative expansion in the dimensionless parameter which is a positive power of the ratio of Planckian volume to the volume of the Universe. For the (N+1) - dimensional generalization of stationary closed Bianchi-I cosmology the nilpotency condition for the BRST operator is examined in the first quantum approximation. It turns out, that certain relationship between dimensionality of the space and the spectrum of matter fields emerges from the requirement of quantum consistency of the model.Comment: 28 pages, LaTe

The Frequency Dependent Conductivity of Electron Glasses

Results of DC and frequency dependent conductivity in the quantum limit, i.e. hw > kT, for a broad range of dopant concentrations in nominally uncompensated, crystalline phosphorous doped silicon and amorphous niobium-silicon alloys are reported. These materials fall under the general category of disordered insulating systems, which are referred to as electron glasses. Using microwave resonant cavities and quasi-optical millimeter wave spectroscopy we are able to study the frequency dependent response on the insulating side of the metal-insulator transition. We identify a quantum critical regime, a Fermi glass regime and a Coulomb glass regime. Our phenomenological results lead to a phase diagram description, or taxonomy, of the electrodynamic response of electron glass systems

Quasi-long-range order in the random anisotropy Heisenberg model: functional renormalization group in 4-\epsilon dimensions

The large distance behaviors of the random field and random anisotropy O(N) models are studied with the functional renormalization group in 4-\epsilon dimensions. The random anisotropy Heisenberg (N=3) model is found to have a phase with the infinite correlation radius at low temperatures and weak disorder. The correlation function of the magnetization obeys a power law < m(x) m(y) >\sim |x-y|^{-0.62\epsilon}. The magnetic susceptibility diverges at low fields as \chi \sim H^{-1+0.15\epsilon}. In the random field O(N) model the correlation radius is found to be finite at the arbitrarily weak disorder for any N>3. The random field case is studied with a new simple method, based on a rigorous inequality. This approach allows one to avoid the integration of the functional renormalization group equations.Comment: 12 pages, RevTeX; a minor change in the list of reference

Chiral symmetry breaking, color superconductivity and color neutral quark matter: a variational approach

We investigate the vacuum realignment for chiral symmetry breaking and color superconductivity at finite density in Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model in a variational method. The treatment allows us to investigate simultaneous formation of condensates in quark antiquark as well as in diquark channels. The methodology involves an explicit construction of a variational ground state and minimisation of the thermodynamic potential. Color and electric charge neutrality conditions are imposed through introduction of appropriate chemical potentials. Color and flavor dependent condensate functions are determined through minimisation of the thermodynamic potential. The equation of state is calculated. Simultaneous existence of a mass gap and superconducting gap is seen in a small window of quark chemical potential within the model when charge neutrality conditions are not imposed. Enforcing color and electric charge neutrality conditions gives rise to existence of gapless superconducting modes depending upon the magnitude of the gap and the difference of the chemical potentials of the condensing quarks.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures,to appear in Phys. Rev.

Choosing how to choose : Institutional pressures affecting the adoption of personnel selection procedures

The gap between science and practice in personnel selection is an ongoing concern of human resource management. This paper takes Oliver´s framework of organizations´ strategic responses to institutional pressures as a basis for outlining the diverse economic and social demands that facilitate or inhibit the application of scientifically recommended selection procedures. Faced with a complex network of multiple requirements, practitioners make more diverse choices in response to any of these pressures than has previously been acknowledged in the scientific literature. Implications for the science-practitioner gap are discussed