When You Love Physics, But Physics Doesn\u27t Love You

I am a physics major. Or at least, I was. My class year was an average-sized group of majors; mostly cis men, mostly people I do not feel comfortable around. Jokes straight out of a Big Bang script were constantly being cracked; and though I tried to join in on the fun, I never seemed welcome in the conversation. I could act exactly like my male classmates, but something about my voice, my body, the way I carried myself, was not enough for them to accept me into the boys’ club. If I tried to be my authentic self rather than change myself to fit in, I was stared at or straight up ignored. Eventually I learned I should just be quiet. Having to spend five days a week with these classmates was not a great experience, but I had always been passionate enough about physics that I powered through. It was draining. Yet, up until last fall, I felt that I had to keep fighting through these difficulties and get a physics degree. [excerpt

Black Mayors in Non-Majority Black (Medium Sized) Cities: Universalizing the Interests of Blacks

The nature of political representation of Black constituents\u27 interests from their elected Black representatives is changing in the twentyfirst century. Increasingly, African Americans are being elected to political offices where the majority of their constituents are not African American. Previous research on this question tended to characterize Black politicians\u27 efforts to represent their Black constituents\u27 interests in two frames: deracialized or racialized (McCormick and Jones 1993; Cruse 1990). However, the advent of the twenty-first century has exhausted the utility ofthat polarization. Black politicians no longer find explicit racial appeals appropriate for their electoral goals, given the changing demographic environment, and greater acceptance of African American politicians in highprofile positions of power. Black politicians also increasingly find that a lack of attention to racial disparities facing constituents within their political boundaries does not effectively address why certain groups like Blacks are disproportionately and negatively affected than others, across a range of issues. Rather than continue to make efforts to represent Black interests within those two frames, Black politicians have begun to universalize the interests of Blacks

Black Lives Matter: Imagining and Realizing an Equitable Black Future

The idea for this special Ethnic Studies Review edition, Black Lives Matter: Imagining and Realizing an Equitable Black Future, germinated prior to the election of the 45th president of the United States. However, what this series of articles and commentaries contribute to the movement for Black lives is even more critically important

Auctions for Split-Award Contracts

The buyer of a homogeneous input employs split-award contracting to divide his input requirements into two contracts that are awarded to different suppliers. The buyer uses a sequential second-price auction to award a larger primary contract and a smaller secondary contract. With a fixed number of suppliers participating in the auctions, we find that the buyer pays a higher expected price than with a sole-source auction. The premium paid to the winner of the secondary contract must also be paid to the winner of the primary contract as an opportunity cost of not winning the secondary contract. With fixed costs of participating in the auction, we identify the conditions under which a secondary contract can increase the number of suppliers and lower the expected price paid by the buyer. An optimal secondary contract can internalize the cost reductions from the new industry capacity and extract the rents of the suppliers. An optimal secondary contract can be particularly beneficial when the number of suppliers is limited by high fixed costs.

Self-Organizing Maps and Parton Distributions Functions

We present a new method to extract parton distribution functions from high energy experimental data based on a specific type of neural networks, the Self-Organizing Maps. We illustrate the features of our new procedure that are particularly useful for an anaysis directed at extracting generalized parton distributions from data. We show quantitative results of our initial analysis of the parton distribution functions from inclusive deep inelastic scattering.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, to appear in the proceedings of "Workshop on Exclusive Reactions at High Momentum Transfer (IV)", Jefferson Lab, May 18th -21st, 201

Low-angle normal faulting and isostatic response in the Gulf of Suez: Evidence from seismic interpretation and geometric reconstruction

Tectonic extension within continental crust creates a variety of major features best classed as extensional orogens. These features have come under increasing attention in recent years, with the welding of field observation and theoretical concepts. Most recent advances have come from the Basin and Range Province of the southwestern United States and from the North Sea. Application of these geometric and isostatic concepts, in combination with seismic interpretation, to the southern Gulf of Suez, an active extensional orogen, allows generation of detailed structural maps and geometrically balanced sections which suggest a regional structural model. Geometric models which should prove to be a valuable adjunct to numerical and thermal models for the rifting process are discussed

Preferred Suppliers in Auction Markets

In a procurement setting, this paper examines agreements between a buyer and one of the suppliers which would increase their joint surplus. The provisions of such agreements depend on the buyer's ability to design the rules of the final procurement auction. When the buyer has no such ability, their joint surplus can be increased by an agreement which grants to the preferred supplier a right-of-first-refusal on the lowest price offer from the other suppliers. When the buyer does have this ability, one agreement which maximizes their joint surplus includes a revelation game for the cost of the preferred supplier and a reserve price in the procurement auction based on that cost.procurement auctions, bilateral agreements

Orbital Properties of Sr3Ru2O7 and Related Ruthenates Probed by 17O-NMR

We report a site-separated $^{17}$O-NMR study of the layered perovskite ruthenate Sr$_3$Ru$_2$O$_7$, which exhibits nearly two-dimensional transport properties and itinerant metamagnetism at low temperatures. The local hole occupancies and the spin densities in the oxygen $2p$ orbitals are obtained by means of tight-binding analyses of electric field gradients and anisotropic Knight shifts. These quantities are compared with two other layered perovskite ruthenates: the two-dimensional paramagnet Sr$_2$RuO$_4$ and the three-dimensional ferromagnet SrRuO$_3$. The hole occupancies at the oxygen sites are very large, about one hole per ruthenium atom. This is due to the strong covalent character of the Ru-O bonding in this compound. The magnitude of the hole occupancy might be related to the rotation or tilt of the RuO$_6$ octahedra. The spin densities at the oxygen sites are also large, 20-40% of the bulk susceptibilities, but in contrast to the hole occupancies, the spin densities strongly depend on the dimensionality. This result suggests that the density-of-states at the oxygen sites plays an essential role for the understanding of the complex magnetism found in the layered perovskite ruthenates.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.