Uncomfortable Convenience: The Future of the Dollar in the International Monetary System

This research paper focuses on the future of the United States dollar as the world’s main reserve currency. Since the end of World War II, the international monetary system has undoubtedly been a dollar-based system, this despite the closing of the gold window in 1971 and rising U.S. debt since then. This paper aims to answer the questions of how reserve currency status gives a state power, why the dollar has remained the anchor of the world’s monetary system, the threat to the dollar’s status posed by rising U.S. debt, and possible alternatives to the dollar. A case study of the British pound is conducted in order to more closely examine the privilege given to a reserve currency issuer and how lessons from the rise and fall of the pound’s global status can be applied to the U.S.’s situation. Special drawing rights, the euro, and the Chinese renminbi are explored as possible future reserve currencies, with emphasis on the renminbi as the most serious challenger to the dollar. Finally, this paper looks at how greater diversification of global currency reserves may affect U.S. policymaking, and a 5-point prescription is offered in conclusion

HELL IN THE SNOW: THE U.S. ARMY IN THE COLMAR POCKET, JANUARY 22 - FEBRUARY 9, 1945

In December of 1944 and January of 1945, as Allied forces fought to slowly regain their footing in the Battle of the Bulge, another fierce engagement raged to the south in Alsace and became known as the Battle of the Colmar Pocket. Although overshadowed by the more famous fight to the north, the Colmar Pocket nevertheless played a pivotal role in the war in Europe. Yet the engagement which made Audie Murphy famous remains at the periphery of our understanding of the intense fighting in the winter of 1944-45. This thesis is about the overlooked story in the Allied struggle against Germany which provides an important window into wartime strategy and diplomacy. This thesis also addresses the struggle the average soldier went through is and how they dealt with their own personal struggles. The research gathered included oral histories, as well as manuscripts, books, after action reports, etc., which give the reader a full understanding of what took place in the Colmar Pocket as the U.S. Army attempted to push the German Army across the Rhine River

Optical waveguide arrays: quantum effects and PT symmetry breaking

Over the last two decades, advances in fabrication have led to significant progress in creating patterned heterostructures that support either carriers, such as electrons or holes, with specific band structure or electromagnetic waves with a given mode structure and dispersion. In this article, we review the properties of light in coupled optical waveguides that support specific energy spectra, with or without the effects of disorder, that are well-described by a Hermitian tight-binding model. We show that with a judicious choice of the initial wave packet, this system displays the characteristics of a quantum particle, including transverse photonic transport and localization, and that of a classical particle. We extend the analysis to non-Hermitian, parity and time-reversal ($\mathcal{PT}$) symmetric Hamiltonians which physically represent waveguide arrays with spatially separated, balanced absorption or amplification. We show that coupled waveguides are an ideal candidate to simulate $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric Hamiltonians and the transition from a purely real energy spectrum to a spectrum with complex conjugate eigenvalues that occurs in them.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures, Invited Review for European Physics Journal - Applied Physic

Tunable waveguide lattices with non-uniform parity-symmetric tunneling

We investigate the single-particle time evolution and two-particle quantum correlations in a one-dimensional $N$-site lattice with a site-dependent nearest neighbor tunneling function $t_\alpha(k)=t_0[k(N-k)]^{\alpha/2}$. Since the bandwidth and the energy levels spacings for such a lattice both depend upon $\alpha$, we show that the observable properties of a wavepacket, such as its spread and the relative phases of its constitutents, vary dramatically as $\alpha$ is varied from positive to negative values. We also find that the quantum correlations are exquisitely sensitive to the form of the tunneling function. Our results suggest that arrays of waveguides with position-dependent evanascent couplings will show rich dynamics with no counterpart in present-day, traditional systems.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Alice of Old Vincennes: I Love You

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/1167/thumbnail.jp

The Only Heart Broken Was Mine

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/5202/thumbnail.jp

Prison(er) auto/biography, 'true crime', and teaching, learning, and research in criminology

The main aim of this essay is to explore prisoner life writing within the specific, richly and multiply dependent context of teaching and learning undergraduate criminology at an English university, from the authorial viewpoint of a teacher and her students as budding criminologists and co-authors. This article seeks to redress a continuing resistance to life history approaches in the teaching of criminology, despite the discipline being formally devoted to the understanding of the meaning and experience of imprisonment in all its forms and consequences. What follows is a trucated narrative of what students had to say on the fascinating subjects of prisoner auto/biography and its place in popular and expert discourses on crime, criminality, and punishment, contextualised within the academic discipline of criminology