Total reality of conormal bundles of hypersurfaces in almost complex manifolds

A generalization to the almost complex setting of a well-known result by S. Webster is given. Namely, we prove that if $\Gamma$ is a strongly pseudoconvex hypersurface in an almost complex manifold $(M, J)$, then the conormal bundle of $\Gamma$ is a totally real submanifold of (T^*M, \J), where \J is the lifted almost complex structure on $T^*M$ defined by Ishihara and Yano.Comment: 8 page

DOMESTIC AND TRADE POLICY FOR CENTRAL AND EAST EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE

International Relations/Trade,

Networks of Gratitude: Structures of Thanks and User Expectations in Workplace Appreciation Systems

Appreciation systems--platforms for users to exchange thanks and praise--are becoming common in the workplace, where employees share appreciation, managers are notified, and aggregate scores are sometimes made visible. Who do people thank on these systems, and what do they expect from each other and their managers? After introducing the design affordances of 13 appreciation systems, we discuss a system we call Gratia, in use at a large multinational company for over four years. Using logs of 422,000 appreciation messages and user surveys, we explore the social dynamics of use and ask if use of the system addresses the recognition problem. We find that while thanks is mostly exchanged among employees at the same level and different parts of the company, addressing the recognition problem, managers do not always act on that recognition in ways that employees expect.Comment: in Tenth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 201

Searching for Community Online: How Virtual Spaces Affect Student Notions of Community

Social networking sites and virtual spaces have flourished in the past few years. The author explores the impact of such social networking services on the local community at a small liberal arts college. The author investigates modern trends in community theory. Defining community has become more difficult in modern society, where community is no longer easily distinguished by geographical boundaries. From the background of modern community theory the author explores the designation of virtual spaces as “virtual communities.” Literature and research about virtual spaces indicates that they can provide many of the values thought be to inherent to community membership. The strong localized community on campus makes students hesitant in calling Facebook a “virtual community,” despite its strong integration with the face-to-face community itself. Facebook is seen as simply a tool. This thesis incorporates research on one specific case study: through mathematical and ethnographic research of Facebook.com, the author evaluates the opinions of students in considering virtual spaces as communities

On pseudo-hyperk\"ahler prepotentials

An explicit surjection from a set of (locally defined) unconstrained holomorphic functions on a certain submanifold of (Sp_1(C) \times C^{4n}) onto the set HK_{p,q} of local isometry classes of real analytic pseudo-hyperk\"ahler metrics of signature (4p,4q) in dimension 4n is constructed. The holomorphic functions, called prepotentials, are analogues of K\"ahler potentials for K\"ahler metrics and provide a complete parameterisation of HK_{p,q}. In particular, there exists a bijection between HK_{p,q} and the set of equivalence classes of prepotentials. This affords the explicit construction of pseudo-hyperk\"ahler metrics from specified prepotentials. The construction generalises one due to Galperin, Ivanov, Ogievetsky and Sokatchev. Their work is given a coordinate-free formulation and complete, self-contained proofs are provided. An appendix provides a vital tool for this construction: a reformulation of real analytic G-structures in terms of holomorphic frame fields on complex manifolds.Comment: 53 pages; v2: minor amendments to Def.4.1 and Theorem 4.5; a paragraph inserted in the proof of the latter; V3: minor changes; V4: minor changes/ typos corrected for journal versio

Poet-academics and academic-poets: writing identities, practices and experiences within the academy

This paper reports on a pilot project which investigates the writing identity construction, writing practices and experiences of 17 authors from varied subject disciplines in Higher Education, whose publications include poetry and academic writing. We have defined the writers as poet-academics or academic-poets according to their perceptions of place of comfort, default position or natural 'go-to' place as a writer. We consider the writing practices and experiences of both groups: poet-academics who see their primary writing as poetry (but who also write academic research and other prose forms) and academic-poets who view their primary writing as academic research (but who also write and publish poetry). Given that these two groups have different writing priorities and write from different generic starting points, we question how such authors construct their identities as writers within the Academy and consider if and how they experience these different writing selves as a separation. We explore the contrasting writing challenges, pressures and pleasures apparent in these two domains, reflect on synergies in practice and point to potential implications for research accountability, writing, mentoring and professional development within institutions

Misleading assertions, unjustified assumptions, and additional limitations of a study by Patone et al., described in the article "Risk of Myocarditis After Sequential Doses of COVID-19 Vaccine and SARS-CoV-2 Infection by Age and Sex"

We describe several shortcomings of a study by Patone et al, whose findings were recently published in the American Heart Association Journal Circulation, including the following: * The study's principal conclusion, as initially stated, begins "Overall, the risk of myocarditis is greater after SARS-CoV-2 infection than after COVID-19 vaccination ...." However, Patone et al never attempt to assess the incidence of myocarditis in their study population following SARS-CoV-2 infection. Rather, they make an untenable assumption that all infections occurring in their study population are associated with (reported) positive COVID-19 tests. Using publicly available data from the UK's ONS and NHS, we show that Patone et al's estimates, for the unvaccinated, of myocarditis incidence associated with infection are likely overestimated by a factor of at least 1.58. * The method Patone et al use to compute the incidence of myocarditis among the unvaccinated after a positive COVID test may overestimate risk. The authors assume, without justification, that unvaccinated persons hospitalized during the study period with positive-test-associated myocarditis would later choose to vaccinate with the same probability as unvaccinated persons who have had a positive COVID test. We present a plausibility argument that suggests a possible further exaggeration of myocarditis risk post infection by a factor of 1.5. * Patone et al fail to discuss important limitations of their study with respect to guiding public health recommendations. For instance, at most 0.18% of SARS-CoV-2 cases that contributed to the study's finding were Omicron-variant cases. Thus, the study's estimates of myocarditis risk following infection do not speak to the risk following Omicron infection, which is recognized to be milder than that of previous variants.Comment: New section added (Section 4), conclusion updated (Section 6), 12 pages, 8 figure

Neutrino oscillations in low density medium

For the case of small matter effects: $V \ll \Delta m^2/2E$, where $V$ is the matter potential, we develop the perturbation theory using $\epsilon \equiv 2VE/\Delta m^2$ as the expansion parameter. We derive simple and physically transparent formulas for the oscillation probabilities in the lowest order in $\epsilon$ which are valid for arbitrary density profile. The formulas can be applied for propagation of the solar and supernova neutrinos in matter of the Earth, substantially simplifying numerical calculations. Using these formulas we study sensitivity of the oscillation effects to structures of the density profile situated at different distances from the detector $d$. We show that for the mass-to-flavor state transitions, {\it e.g.}, $\nu_2 \to \nu_e$, the sensitivity is suppressed for remote structures: $d > l_{\nu} E/\Delta E$, where $l_{\nu}$ is the oscillation length and $\Delta E/E$ is the energy resolution of detector.Comment: discussion simplified, clarifications adde