Food Insecurity in the Community College, a Phenomenological Inquiry: The Lived Experience of Students Using a Campus Food Pantry

The purpose of this study was to understand the lived experience of students to discern the impact of their interaction with the food pantry. This knowledge may, in turn, influence future food pantry methods and wider policy, both at PNW College and more broadly. Not only does student hunger have the potential to impact negatively student persistence and completion, but it represents an important equity issue on our higher ed campuses. By using phenomenological inquiry to explore the impact on student users of the campus food pantry, the following is the research question that was addressed: What are the lived experiences, perceptions, and educational impacts for community college students who use the food pantry at PNW College? This study was grounded in an interpretivist philosophical approach, which fits especially well with a phenomenological inquiry that asks students about their lived experiences with a food pantry on a community college campus. Ten interviews were analyzed using “in vivo” coding, and themes were determined using the students’ own words. Themes that emerged from the study included challenges (food pantry barriers, educational obstacles, and stigma), survival attributes (strategy, resource, and findings), personal characteristics (resilience, caring, feelings, worry/apprehension, and self-sufficiency), and food pantry impacts (education/increased focus, validation, improved health). The results affirm the notion that non-academic barriers represent a significant concern among community college students. Additionally, findings indicate that the food pantry plays an important role on campus in supporting student health and focus on studies. Participants were found to be resilient and self-sufficient, and exhibited altruism toward other students. Contrary to popular thought, stigma emerged as almost a non-challenge; despite the prevailing idea that students using campus supports will feel ashamed, participants universally expressed a lack of concern with stigma. This study, which put students at the center of their own stories, offered several implications for future practice, policy, and research. The practical significance of this study is potentially large. The study filled gaps in the literature where community colleges are not generally a focus, where qualitative research is rare, and where the voices of students themselves have been unheard. The role of the food pantry on college campuses in supporting student success is now widely recognized. This study is important, since it is vital for educators, administrators, and policy makers to understand student perceptions of food pantry use and its role as a support in their educational success. Particularly as we in higher education witness a push towards completion rather than mere enrollment, we must consider what populations are at risk. Optimistically, a focus on completion will mean a new push to remove non-academic barriers to student achievement that have long gone unaddressed. Food insecurity on higher ed campuses is a critical problem that undermines student success, but it is an issue that is within our collective power to overcome

Tobacco use induces anti-apoptotic, proliferative patterns of gene expression in circulating leukocytes of Caucasian males

Abstract Background Strong epidemiologic evidence correlates tobacco use with a variety of serious adverse health effects, but the biological mechanisms that produce these effects remain elusive. Results We analyzed gene transcription data to identify expression spectra related to tobacco use in circulating leukocytes of 67 Caucasian male subjects. Levels of cotinine, a nicotine metabolite, were used as a surrogate marker for tobacco exposure. Significance Analysis of Microarray and Gene Set Analysis identified 109 genes in 16 gene sets whose transcription levels were differentially regulated by nicotine exposure. We subsequently analyzed this gene set by hyperclustering, a technique that allows the data to be clustered by both expression ratio and gene annotation (e.g. Gene Ontologies). Conclusion Our results demonstrate that tobacco use affects transcription of groups of genes that are involved in proliferation and apoptosis in circulating leukocytes. These transcriptional effects include a repertoire of transcriptional changes likely to increase the incidence of neoplasia through an altered expression of genes associated with transcription and signaling, interferon responses and repression of apoptotic pathways

Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy of the cuprate superconductors

This paper reviews the most recent ARPES results on the cuprate superconductors and their insulating parent and sister compounds, with the purpose of providing an updated summary of the extensive literature in this field. The low energy excitations are discussed with emphasis on some of the most relevant issues, such as the Fermi surface and remnant Fermi surface, the superconducting gap, the pseudogap and d-wave-like dispersion, evidence of electronic inhomogeneity and nano-scale phase separation, the emergence of coherent quasiparticles through the superconducting transition, and many-body effects in the one-particle spectral function due to the interaction of the charge with magnetic and/or lattice degrees of freedom. The first part of the paper introduces photoemission spectroscopy in the context of strongly interacting systems, along with an update on the state-of-the-art instrumentation. The second part provides a brief overview of the scientific issues relevant to the investigation of the low energy electronic structure by ARPES. The rest of the paper is devoted to the review of experimental results from the cuprates and the discussion is organized along conceptual lines: normal-state electronic structure, interlayer interaction, superconducting gap, coherent superconducting peak, pseudogap, electron self energy and collective modes. Within each topic, ARPES data from the various copper oxides are presented.Comment: Reviews of Modern Physics, in press. A HIGH-QUALITY pdf file is available at http://www.physics.ubc.ca/~damascel/RMP_ARPES.pd

Search for massive, long-lived particles using multitrack displaced vertices or displaced lepton pairs in pp collisions at √s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Many extensions of the Standard Model posit the existence of heavy particles with long lifetimes. This article presents the results of a search for events containing at least one long-lived particle that decays at a significant distance from its production point into two leptons or into five or more charged particles. This analysis uses a data sample of proton-proton collisions at √s=8  TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.3  fb−1 collected in 2012 by the ATLAS detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. No events are observed in any of the signal regions, and limits are set on model parameters within supersymmetric scenarios involving R-parity violation, split supersymmetry, and gauge mediation. In some of the search channels, the trigger and search strategy are based only on the decay products of individual long-lived particles, irrespective of the rest of the event. In these cases, the provided limits can easily be reinterpreted in different scenarios

Measurement of the correlation between the polar angles of leptons from top quark decays in the helicity basis at √s = 7 TeV using the ATLAS detector

A measurement of the correlations between the polar angles of leptons from the decay of pair-produced t and t̄ quarks in the helicity basis is reported, using proton-proton collision data collected by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The dataset corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 4.6  fb−¹ at a center-of-mass energy of √s = 7  TeV collected during 2011. Candidate events are selected in the dilepton topology with large missing transverse momentum and at least two jets. The angles θ1 and θ2 between the charged leptons and the direction of motion of the parent quarks in the tt̄ rest frame are sensitive to the spin information, and the distribution of cosθ1 ⋅ cosθ2 is sensitive to the spin correlation between the t and t̄ quarks. The distribution is unfolded to parton level and compared to the next-to-leading order prediction. A good agreement is observed

Measurement of the CP-violating phase ϕs and the Bs0 meson decay width difference with Bs0 → J/ψϕ decays in ATLAS

A measurement of the Bs0 decay parameters in the Bs0 → J/ψϕ channel using an integrated luminosity of 14.3 fb−1 collected by the ATLAS detector from 8 TeV pp collisions at the LHC is presented. The measured parameters include the CP -violating phase ϕs, the decay width Γs and the width difference between the mass eigenstates ΔΓs. The values measured for the physical parameters are statistically combined with those from 4.9 fb−1 of 7 TeV data, leading to the following: ϕ s =−0.090±0.078(stat.)±0.041(syst.)rad ΔΓ s =0.085±0.011(stat.)±0.007(syst.)ps −1 Γ s =0.675±0.003(stat.)±0.003(syst.)ps −1 In the analysis the parameter ΔΓs is constrained to be positive. Results for ϕs and ΔΓs are also presented as 68% and 95% likelihood contours in the ϕs-ΔΓs plane. Also measured in this decay channel are the transversity amplitudes and corresponding strong phases. All measurements are in agreement with the Standard Model predictions

Measurement of the differential cross-section of highly boosted top quarks as a function of their transverse momentum in s =8 TeV proton-proton collisions using the ATLAS detector

The differential cross-section for pair production of top quarks with high transverse momentum is measured in 20.3  fb−1 of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. The measurement is performed for tt¯ events in the lepton+jets channel. The cross-section is reported as a function of the hadronically decaying top quark transverse momentum for values above 300 GeV. The hadronically decaying top quark is reconstructed as an anti-kt jet with radius parameter R=1.0 and identified with jet substructure techniques. The observed yield is corrected for detector effects to obtain a cross-section at particle level in a fiducial region close to the event selection. A parton-level cross-section extrapolated to the full phase space is also reported for top quarks with transverse momentum above 300 GeV. The predictions of a majority of next-to-leading-order and leading-order matrix-element Monte Carlo generators are found to agree with the measured cross-sections.- We thank CERN for the very successful operation of the LHC, as well as the support staff from our institutions without whom ATLAS could not be operated efficiently. We acknowledge the support of ANPCyT, Argentina; YerPhI, Armenia; ARC, Australia; BMWFW and FWF, Austria; ANAS, Azerbaijan; SSTC, Belarus; CNPq and FAPESP, Brazil; NSERC, NRC and CFI, Canada; CERN; CONICYT, Chile; CAS, MOST and NSFC, China; COLCIENCIAS, Colombia; MSMT CR, MPO CR and VSC CR, Czech Republic; DNRF, DNSRC and Lundbeck Foundation, Denmark; IN2P3-CNRS, CEA-DSM/IRFU, France; GNSF, Georgia; BMBF, HGF, and MPG, Germany; GSRT, Greece; RGC, Hong Kong SAR, China; ISF, I-CORE and Benoziyo Center, Israel; INFN, Italy; MEXT and JSPS, Japan; CNRST, Morocco; FOM and NWO, Netherlands; RCN, Norway; MNiSW and NCN, Poland; FCT, Portugal; MNE/IFA, Romania; MES of Russia and NRC KI, Russian Federation; JINR; MESTD, Serbia; MSSR, Slovakia; ARRS and MIZS, Slovenia; DST/NRF, South Africa; MINECO, Spain; SRC and Wallenberg Foundation, Sweden; SERI, SNSF and Cantons of Bern and Geneva, Switzerland; MOST, Taiwan; TAEK, Turkey; STFC, United Kingdom; DOE and NSF, United States of America. In addition, individual groups and members have received support from BCKDF, the Canada Council, CANARIE, CRC, Compute Canada, FQRNT, and the Ontario Innovation Trust, Canada; EPLANET, ERC, FP7, Horizon 2020 and Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions, European Union; Investissements d'Avenir Labex and Idex, ANR, Region Auvergne and Fondation Partager le Savoir, France; DFG and AvH Foundation, Germany; Herakleitos, Thales and Aristeia programmes co-financed by EU-ESF and the Greek NSRF; BSF, GIF and Minerva, Israel; BRF, Norway; the Royal Society and Leverhulme Trust, United Kingdom. The crucial computing support from all WLCG partners is acknowledged gratefully, in particular from CERN and the ATLAS Tier-1 facilities at TRIUMF (Canada), NDGF (Denmark, Norway, Sweden), CC-IN2P3 (France), KIT/GridKA (Germany), INFN-CNAF (Italy), NL-T1 (Netherlands), PIC (Spain), ASGC (Taiwan), RAL (UK) an

Measurements of the Higgs boson production and decay rates and coupling strengths using pp collision data at √S=7 and 8 TeV in the ATLAS experiment

Combined analyses of the Higgs boson production and decay rates as well as its coupling strengths to vector bosons and fermions are presented. The combinations include the results of the analyses of the H -> gamma gamma, ZZ*, WW*, Z gamma, b (b) over bar, tau tau and mu mu decay modes, and the constraints on the associated production with a pair of top quarks and on the off-shell coupling strengths of the Higgs boson. The results are based on the LHC proton-proton collision datasets, with integrated luminosities of up to 4.7 fb(-1) at root s = 7 TeV and 20.3 fb(-1) at root s = 8 TeV, recorded by the ATLAS detector in 2011 and 2012. Combining all production modes and decay channels, the measured signal yield, normalised to the Standard Model expectation, is 1.18(-0.14)(+0.15). The observed Higgs boson production and decay rates are interpreted in a leading-order coupling framework, exploring a wide range of benchmark coupling models both with and without assumptions on the Higgs boson width and on the Standard Model particle content in loop processes. The data are found to be compatible with the Standard Model expectations for a Higgs boson at a mass of 125.36 GeV for all models considered

Measurement of the production cross-section of a single top quark in association with a W boson at 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment

The cross-section for the production of a single top quark in association with a W boson in proton-proton collisions at s√=8TeV is measured. The dataset corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb−1, collected by the ATLAS detector in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Events containing two leptons and one central b-jet are selected. The W t signal is separated from the backgrounds using boosted decision trees, each of which combines a number of discriminating variables into one classifier. Production of W t events is observed with a significance of 7.7σ. The cross-section is extracted in a profile likelihood fit to the classifier output distributions. The W t cross-section, inclusive of decay modes, is measured to be 23.0 ± 1.3(stat.)− 3.5+ 3.2(syst.)±1.1(lumi.) pb. The measured cross-section is used to extract a value for the CKM matrix element |Vtb| of 1.01 ± 0.10 and a lower limit of 0.80 at the 95% confidence level. The cross-section for the production of a top quark and a W boson is also measured in a fiducial acceptance requiring two leptons with pT> 25 GeV and |η| 20 GeV and |η|  20 GeV, including both W t and top-quark pair events as signal. The measured value of the fiducial cross-section is 0.85 ± 0.01(stat.)− 0.07+ 0.07(syst.)±0.03(lumi.) pb