Spontaneous Magnetization in Lorentz Invariant Theories

In a class of three-dimensional Abelian gauge theories with both light and heavy fermions, heavy chiral fermions can trigger dynamical generation of a magnetic field, leading to the spontaneous breaking of the Lorentz invaiance. Finite masses of light fermions tend to restore the Lorentz invariance.Comment: 11 pages, latex, no figure. Note added. To appear in Phys Lett

The Effects of Pre-teaching Vocabulary, Along with Peer Collaboration, on Student Comprehension of Social Studies Texts at St. Cloud Tech High School

This action research project looked at the impact that pre-teaching vocabulary, along with peer collaboration, had on student comprehension of 5-12 social studies texts. Sixty students in a 10th grade World History class received instruction that included pre-teaching of vocabulary terms that students would be exposed to in a reading of the week through use of direct instruction, elaboration, application, and transfer using the Frayer Model, and group interactions. Student discussions of the article of the week engaged peers in collaborating around the work. Data was collected on vocabulary assessments, comprehension assessments, discussion checklists, and field notes. The students received the intervention four times over four weeks. The findings suggest that pre-teaching vocabulary was effective in helping students learn social studies vocabulary; however, students overall struggled to comprehend readings. Throughout the intervention, some students made improvements in their comprehension discussions; however, almost half of the students did not improve their comprehension through discussing. Future work will investigate differentiated instruction and the team-based learning approach in order to help students of all backgrounds learn the course content. This is important as the data demonstrated that white students benefited most from the intervention

Session 2C: Analysis of Transposable Elements and Protein Divergence across Diatoms

Two genomes of unicellular photosynthetic algae known as diatoms have been sequenced and annotated prior to this investigation, but using new techniques, a third diatom genome, Psammoneis, has been sequenced. Analysis of aspects of the Psammoneis genome, including its protein divergence from its relatives as well as its transposable element diversity, could reveal trends about diatoms and heterokonts. Transposable elements (TEs) are portions of the genome which can excise themselves from one portion of the genome and reinsert themselves elsewhere. This investigation characterized the overall distribution of TEs and the distribution of diatom-specific CoDi TEs in the Psammoneis genome as compared to its relatives. Psammoneis had significantly more total transposable elements and CoDi elements. Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) were generated for each species and supplemented with the NCBI database, and searches using these HMMs revealed matches across species, potentially revealing new TEs in the Psammoneis genome. Protein divergence was analyzed using the reciprocal best BLAST hits between the three diatom species. Sequence pairs were aligned using MAFFT and measures of divergence between each pair of sequences were calculated. Using an incomplete Psammoneis genome assembly, there was little significant protein divergence between the species

Lessons from an internship at Waipā: District Council motivations and incentives

Creating change through policy interventions relies most often on changing individuals’ behaviour. To create effective change, it is important for policymakers to understand the attitudes and motivations of the people most affected. I learned how important this is while spending my summer interning at the Waipä District Council in Waikato as part of Victoria University’s Master of Public Policy graduate pathway programme