Choosing Prevention Products: Questions to Ask When Considering Sexual and Relationship Violence and Stalking Prevention Products

The purpose of this white paper is to provide guidance to university and college leaders on how to choose products that address concerns of sexual and relationship violence and stalking from the perspective of prevention

Solving the Hierarchy Problem with Noncompact Extra Dimensions

We show that gravitational effects of global cosmic 3-branes can be responsible for compactification from six to four space-time dimensions, naturally producing the observed hierarchy between electroweak and gravitational forces. The finite radius of the transverse dimensions follows from Einstein's equation, and is exponentially large compared with the scales associated with the 3-brane. The space-time ends on a mild naked singularity at the boundary of the transverse dimensions; nevertheless unitary boundary conditions render the singularity harmless.Comment: 11 pages. Several references adde

A Contour Integral Representation for the Dual Five-Point Function and a Symmetry of the Genus Four Surface in R6

The invention of the "dual resonance model" N-point functions BN motivated the development of current string theory. The simplest of these models, the four-point function B4, is the classical Euler Beta function. Many standard methods of complex analysis in a single variable have been applied to elucidate the properties of the Euler Beta function, leading, for example, to analytic continuation formulas such as the contour-integral representation obtained by Pochhammer in 1890. Here we explore the geometry underlying the dual five-point function B5, the simplest generalization of the Euler Beta function. Analyzing the B5 integrand leads to a polyhedral structure for the five-crosscap surface, embedded in RP5, that has 12 pentagonal faces and a symmetry group of order 120 in PGL(6). We find a Pochhammer-like representation for B5 that is a contour integral along a surface of genus five. The symmetric embedding of the five-crosscap surface in RP5 is doubly covered by a symmetric embedding of the surface of genus four in R6 that has a polyhedral structure with 24 pentagonal faces and a symmetry group of order 240 in O(6). The methods appear generalizable to all N, and the resulting structures seem to be related to associahedra in arbitrary dimensions.Comment: 43 pages and 44 figure

S-STEM Becoming Engaged Engineering Scholars (BEES): Insights From Year 1

The Becoming Engaged Engineering Scholars (BEES) is an NSF S-STEM project that responds to the challenges in recruiting and retaining academically talented, low-income students from diverse backgrounds into undergraduate engineering programs. The new, ABET-accredited engineering programs at Western Washington University (WWU) have faced unique challenges in recruitment and retention, particularly in the first two years for pre-engineering students. Building on the success of prior S-STEM awards in other disciplines at WWU, the proposed program provides a systematic sequence of academic, social, and career support services specifically designed to enhance the success of engineering students during these first two years of undergraduate study. The primary program goal is to ensure the engineering programs offer an equitable pathway into engineering careers, particularly for low-income, academically talented students. In addition to providing financial support for participants, the BEES program adapts existing institutional support structures to offer a one-week bridge program prior to the start of their first year, implements a multi-level mentoring system that includes internal and external mentors, engages students in multiple curricular and co-curricular activities including an engaged engineering project experience, and offers a first-year seminar focused on engineering and society. The project devotes significant resources to studying the impact of the proposed activities. Specifically, the research seeks to answer how and to what extent the program activities support retention through the end of the 2nd year of engineering study, as well as how and to what extent the program activities impact students\u27 self-efficacy, identity, and sense of belonging. In this paper, the proposed program and its various support structures are described in detail, and some insights and results from the first year of the project are reviewed and discussed

Glaciological studies in the central Andes using AIRSAR/TOPSAR

The interaction of climate and topography in mountainous regions is dramatically expressed in the spatial distribution of glaciers and snowcover. Monitoring existing alpine glaciers and snow extent provides insight into the present mountain climate system and how it is changing, while mapping the positions of former glaciers as recorded in landforms such as cirques and moraines provide a record of the large past climate change associated with the last glacial maximum. The Andes are an ideal mountain range in which to study the response of snow and ice to past and present climate change. Their expansive latitudinal extent offers the opportunity to study glaciers in diverse climate settings from the tropical glaciers of Peru and Bolivia to the ice caps and tide-water glaciers of sub-polar Patagonia. SAR has advantages over traditional passive remote sensing instruments for monitoring present snow and ice and differentiating moraine relative ages. The cloud penetrating ability of SAR is indispensable for perennially cloud covered mountains. Snow and ice facies can be distinguished from SAR's response to surface roughness, liquid water content and grain size distribution. The combination of SAR with a coregestered high-resolution DEM (TOPSAR) provides a promising tool for measuring glacier change in three dimensions, thus allowing ice volume change to be measured directly. The change in moraine surface roughness over time enables SAR to differentiate older from younger moraines. Polarimetric SAR data have been used to distinguish snow and ice facies and relatively date moraines. However, both algorithms are still experimental and require ground truth verification. We plan to extend the SAR classification of snow and ice facies and moraine age beyond the ground truth sites to throughout the Cordillera Real to provide a regional view of past and present snow and ice. The high resolution DEM will enhance the SAR moraine dating technique by discriminating relative ages based on moraine slope degradation