Recent Trends in Funding for the Academic Humanities and Their Implications

[Excerpt] Never abundant, financial support for the “academic humanities” is now scarce. How scarce it is, both in absolute and relative terms, and whether the humanities now confront particularly hard times, are the pressing questions. To piece together an answer, we ask first how much the government, foundations, and private donors provide for the humanities now compared to estimates John D’Arms made in 1995, when he completed his important review of “funding trends.” Then we probe expenditures universities and colleges make on the humanities. Is there evidence, for example, in institutional budget allocations that the humanities are holding their own, or have rising costs of other academic activities, such as scientific research, been accompanied by reduced support for the humanities? And last, because public universities are so large and numerous, and because many operate on conspicuously tight budgets, we ask how well the humanities in this class of institutions have fared in comparison with their counterparts at private universities. The answers to such questions are not mere matters of financial accounting. Although much can be achieved in the humanities with quite small investments, the pursuit of excellence in scholarship and teaching in these fields is not cost-free. For relevant evidence, we draw on the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’s useful Humanities Indicators Prototype, as well as a variety of other available (but often imperfect) data sources

The Graduate Education Initiative: Description and Preliminary Findings

[Excerpt] In1991 the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation launched the Graduate Education Initiative (hereafter GEI) to improve the structure and organization of PhD programs in the humanities and social sciences. Such changes were seen as necessary to combat high rates of student attrition and long times-to-degree in these programs. While attrition and time-to-degree were deemed to be important in and of themselves, and of great significance to degree seekers, they were also seen more broadly as indicators of the effectiveness of graduate programs. Several characteristics of doctoral programs were earmarked as contributing to high attrition and long degree time, including: unclear expectations, a proliferation of courses, elaborate and sometimes conflicting requirements, intermittent supervision, epistemological disagreements on fundamentals and not least, inadequate funding. Projections that faculty shortages would occur in the late 1990s in the humanities made the goals of reducing student attrition and time-to-degree particularly timely if an adequate number of PhDs were to be available. This was far from the first such effort to reduce times-to degree-and rates of attrition. Earlier programs, which provided grants in aid to individual students or to graduate schools to distribute as they saw fit, had failed conspicuously. Based on data which showed that there were marked differences among departments and on a great deal of experience on the ground, the architects of the GEI determined that to improve graduate education would require departments to make changes in their PhD programs. As such, the Foundation shifted much of its support for doctoral education, which had previously gone directly to students, to block grants that would be awarded to departments within major universities

Quantization of the massive gravitino on FRW spacetimes

In this article we study the quantization and causal properties of a massive spin 3/2 Rarita-Schwinger field on spatially flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) spacetimes. We construct Zuckerman's universal conserved current and prove that it leads to a positive definite inner product on solutions of the field equation. Based on this inner product, we quantize the Rarita-Schwinger field in terms of a CAR-algebra. The transversal and longitudinal parts constituting the independent on-shell degrees of freedom decouple. We find a Dirac-type equation for the transversal polarizations, ensuring a causal propagation. The equation of motion for the longitudinal part is also of Dirac-type, but with respect to an `effective metric'. We obtain that for all four-dimensional FRW solutions with a matter equation of state p = w rho and w in (-1,1] the light cones of the effective metric are more narrow than the standard cones, which are recovered for the de Sitter case w=-1. In particular, this shows that the propagation of the longitudinal part, although non-standard for w different from -1, is completely causal in cosmological constant, dust and radiation dominated universes.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure; published in PR

Sensation Seeking and Perceived Need for Structure Moderate Soldiers’ Well-Being Before and After Operational Deployment

This study examined associations between sensation seeking and perceived need for structure, and changes in reported well-being among deployed soldiers. Participants (n = 167) were assessed before and after a six-month deployment to south Afghanistan. Results indicated that although well-being declined in the soldier sample as a whole following deployment, the degree of decrease was significantly different among soldiers with different personality profiles. Differences were moderated by soldiers’ level of sensation seeking and perceived need for structure. Results are discussed in terms of a person-environment fit theory in the context of preparation and rehabilitation of deployed military personnel

Detailed compositional analysis of the heavily polluted DBZ white dwarf SDSS J073842.56+183509.06: A window on planet formation?

We present a new model atmosphere analysis of the most metal contaminated white dwarf known, the DBZ SDSS J073842.56+183509.06. Using new high resolution spectroscopic observations taken with Keck and Magellan, we determine precise atmospheric parameters and measure abundances of 14 elements heavier than helium. We also report new Spitzer mid-infrared photometric data that are used to better constrain the properties of the debris disk orbiting this star. Our detailed analysis, which combines data taken from 7 different observational facilities (GALEX, Gemini, Keck, Magellan, MMT, SDSS and Spitzer) clearly demonstrate that J0738+1835 is accreting large amounts of rocky terrestrial-like material that has been tidally disrupted into a debris disk. We estimate that the body responsible for the photospheric metal contamination was at least as large Ceres, but was much drier, with less than 1% of the mass contained in the form of water ice, indicating that it formed interior to the snow line around its parent star. We also find a correlation between the abundances (relative to Mg and bulk Earth) and the condensation temperature; refractory species are clearly depleted while the more volatile elements are possibly enhanced. This could be the signature of a body that formed in a lower temperature environment than where Earth formed. Alternatively, we could be witnessing the remains of a differentiated body that lost a large part of its outer layers.Comment: 16 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa

An accurate distance to 2M1207Ab

In April 2004 the first image was obtained of a planetary mass companion (now known as 2M1207 b) in orbit around a self-luminous object different from our own Sun (the young brown dwarf 2MASSW J1207334-393254, hereafter 2M1207 A). 2M1207 b probably formed via fragmentation and gravitational collapse, offering proof that such a mechanism can form bodies in the planetary mass regime. However, the predicted mass, luminosity, and radius of 2M1207 b depend on its age, distance, and other observables such as effective temperature. To refine our knowledge of the physical properties of 2M1207 b and its nature, we obtained an accurate determination of the distance to the 2M1207 A and b system by measurements of its trigonometric parallax at the milliarcsec level. With the ESO NTT/SUSI2 telescope, in 2006 we began a campaign of photometric and astrometric observations to measure the trigonometric parallax of 2M1207 A. An accurate distance ($52.4\pm 1.1$ pc) to 2M1207A was measured. From distance and proper motions we derived spatial velocities fully compatible with TWA membership. With this new distance estimate, we discuss three scenarios regarding the nature of 2M1207 b: (1) a cool ($1150\pm150$ K) companion of mass $4\pm1$ M$_{\rm{Jup}}$, (2) a warmer ($1600\pm100$ K) and heavier ($8\pm2$ M$_{\rm{Jup}}$) companion occulted by an edge-on circum-secondary disk or (3) a hot protoplanet collision afterglow.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication as letter in A&A, 6/11/200

Decay rate and other properties of the positronium negative ion

A new method for detecting the positronium minus ion is described, and the possibility of a long positronium mean free path in a solid is discussed

Covariant Symplectic Structure and Conserved Charges of New Massive Gravity

We show that the symplectic current obtained from the boundary term, which arises in the first variation of a local diffeomorphism invariant action, is covariantly conserved for any gravity theory described by that action. Therefore, a Poincare invariant 2-form can be constructed on the phase space, which is shown to be closed without reference to a specific theory. Finally, we show that one can obtain a charge expression for gravity theories in various dimensions, which plays the role of the Abbott-Deser-Tekin (ADT) charge for spacetimes with non-constant curvature backgrounds, by using the diffeomorphism invariance of the symplectic 2-form. As an example, we calculate the conserved charges of some solutions of New Massive Gravity (NMG) and compare the results with the previous works.Comment: 18 pages, No figures, RevTEX4.1; ver 2: minor corrections, version accepted for publication in Physical Review

Quadratic s-Form Field Actions with Semi-bounded Energy

We give in this paper a partial classification of the consistent quadratic gauge actions that can be written in terms of s-form fields. This provides a starting point to study the uniqueness of the Yang-Mills action as a deformation of Maxwell-like theories. We also show that it is impossible to write kinetic 1-form terms that can be consistently added to other 1-form actions such as tetrad gravity in four space-time dimensions even in the presence of a Minkowskian metric background.Comment: 1+35 papes in (DIN A4 format

The 1.2 Millimeter Image of the beta Pictoris Disk

We present millimeter imaging observations in the 1200 micron continuum of the disk around beta Pictoris. With the 25 arcsec beam, the beta Pic disk is unresolved perpendicularly to the disk plane (< 10 arcsec), but slightly resolved in the northeast-southwest direction (26 arcsec). Peak emission is observed at the stellar position. A secondary maximum is found 1000 AU along the disk plane in the southwest, which does not positionally coincide with a similar feature reported earlier at 850 micron. Arguments are presented which could be seen in support of the reality of these features. The observed submm/mm emission is consistent with thermal emission from dust grains, which are significantly larger than those generally found in the interstellar medium, including mm-size particles, and thus more reminiscent of the dust observed in protostellar disks. Modelling the observed scattered light in the visible and the emission in the submm/mm provides evidence for the particles dominating the scattering in the visible/NIR and those primarily responsible for the thermal emission at longer wavelengths belonging to different populations.Comment: 6 pages, 3 postscript figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic