How to Figure Out College (When You\u27re Family Can\u27t Help You)

In this presentation, I will talk about my own experiences as a first generation high school graduate and college student. Specifically, I will address the lack of support in high school, difficulty of applying for and finding financial aid, and the problem of time during undergraduate preparation. I will offer some advice for first generation students and faculty; however, I will also offer a strong critique of the structure of the United States’ university system, which must be changed to offer equal and equitable support for all people who want to attend a university or college

Murine Warriors or Worriers: The Saga of Comt1, B2 SINE Elements, and the Future of Translational Genetics

Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) is an extremely well characterized enzyme that degrades catecholamines. A common coding polymorphism (rs4680; Val158Met) in the human COMT gene has been associated with a diverse array of phenotypes including personality, cognition, pain sensitivity, and risk for psychiatric disorders (Tunbridg

Evidence for (and Against) Progenitor Bias in the Size Growth of Compact Red Galaxies

Most massive passive galaxies are compact at high redshifts, but similarly compact massive galaxies are rare in the local universe. The most common interpretation of this phenomenon is that massive galaxies have grown in size by a factor of about five since redshift z=2. An alternative explanation is that recently quenched massive galaxies are larger (a "progenitor bias"). In this paper we explore the importance of progenitor bias by looking for systematic differences in the stellar populations of compact early-type galaxies in the DEEP2 survey as a function of size. Our analysis is based on applying the statistical technique of bootstrap resampling to constrain differences in the median ages of our samples and to begin to characterize the distribution of stellar populations in our co-added spectra. The light-weighted ages of compact early-type galaxies at redshifts 0.5 < z < 1.4 are compared to those of a control sample of larger galaxies at similar redshifts. We find that massive compact early-type galaxies selected on the basis of red color and high bulge-to-total ratio are younger than similarly selected larger galaxies, suggesting that size growth in these objects is not driven mainly by progenitor bias, and that individual galaxies grow as their stellar populations age. However, compact early-type galaxies selected on the basis of image smoothness and high bulge-to-total ratio are older than a control sample of larger galaxies. Progenitor bias will play a significant role in defining the apparent size changes of early-type galaxies if they are selected on the basis of the smoothness of their light distributions.Comment: 39 pages, 10 figures. Astrophysical Journal (in press

A Teacher\u27s Inquiry into Bringing in Biliteracy in a Fifth-Grade English-Only Classroom

This teacher inquiry project explored how I, a non-Spanish speaking teacher at the time, implemented critical, bilingual pedagogies to foster biliteracy development among my fifth-grade students. One, the project showed that students could further their biliteracy by incorporating their funds of knowledge through a family stories writing project. Two, many students were anxious about reading in Spanish, and dual poetry alleviated this due to its compactness and linguistic scaffolding. Finally, the project showed the continual issues of unequal power relations concerning bilingualism and biliteracy in US classrooms by showing how I failed to include languages other than Spanish in this project and how I succumbed to school pressures of high-stakes testing, often abandoning a critical, bilingual pedagogy in the process

Further investigations of the deep double donor magnesium in silicon

The deep double donor levels of substitutional chalcogen impurities in silicon have unique optical properties which may enable a spin/photonic quantum technology. The interstitial magnesium impurity (Mg$_i$) in silicon is also a deep double donor but has not yet been studied in the same detail as have the chalcogens. In this study we look at the neutral and singly ionized Mg$_i$ absorption spectra in natural silicon and isotopically enriched 28-silicon in more detail. The 1s(A$_1$) to 1s(T$_2$) transitions, which are very strong for the chalcogens and are central to the proposed spin/photonic quantum technology, could not be detected. We observe the presence of another double donor (Mg$_{i*}$) that may result from Mg$_i$ in a reduced symmetry configuration, most likely due to complexing with another impurity. The neutral species of Mg$_{i*}$ reveal unusual low lying ground state levels detected through temperature dependence studies. We also observe a shallow donor which we identify as a magnesium-boron pair

A Mg-pair isoelectronic bound exciton identified by its isotopic fingerprint in 28^{28}Si

We use the greatly improved optical linewidths provided by highly enriched $^{28}$Si to study a photoluminescence line near 1017 meV previously observed in the luminescence spectrum of natural Si diffused with Mg, and suggested to result from the recombination of an isoelectronic bound exciton localized at a Mg-pair center. In $^{28}$Si this no-phonon line is found to be comprised of five components whose relative intensities closely match the relative abundances of Mg-pairs formed by random combinations of the three stable isotopes of Mg, thus confirming the Mg-pair hypothesis. We further present the results of temperature dependence studies of this center that reveal unusual and as yet unexplained behaviour.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure