‘Welcome to London’: Spectral Spaces in Sherlock Holmes’s Metropolis

This article examines the burgeoning tourist trade for locations featured in fictional narratives in popular culture. Symptomatic of a postmodern, hyperlinked culture referencing a vast reservoir of texts, such tourism produces a convergence of effects which render places ambivalent. Through a case study of Sherlock Holmes tourism in London, I argue that the city is constructed as seething with the spectral in which there is tension and slippage between paratexts, past and present, history and fiction, the observable and imperceptible. The tourist seeks out embodied experiences of their own secret London(s) which reside somewhere in-between the multiplicitous topographies

Two Generational Strategies to Improve Immigrant Family and Child Outcomes

Both the Two-Generational Strategies to Improve Immigrant Family and Child Outcomes roundtable and this brief explore policy and practice reforms that can improve opportunities for parents and children in immigrant families. To generate rich thinking about the possibilities, the roundtable brought together experts in the fields of early childhood education, workforce, two-generational policies, and immigrant rights. Participants included federal and state policymakers, community-based practitioners, researchers, advocates, and foundation leaders from all of these fields and from 10 states who came together for two days of discussion about opportunities, challenges, and action steps to better serve immigrant families. Several participants highlighted the extraordinary nature of this opportunity to connect across the different worlds, given how few opportunities they typically have to collaborate and be more intentional in meeting the needs of both parents and children in immigrant families. The goal of the discussion was to share information and perspectives from different areas of expertise across policy and practice and to generate a rich and practical set of action ideas, not necessarily to create consensus among participants

Intrinsic flat stability of the positive mass theorem for graphical hypersurfaces of Euclidean space

The rigidity of the Positive Mass Theorem states that the only complete asymptotically flat manifold of nonnegative scalar curvature and zero mass is Euclidean space. We study the stability of this statement for spaces that can be realized as graphical hypersurfaces in Euclidean space. We prove (under certain technical hypotheses) that if a sequence of complete asymptotically flat graphs of nonnegative scalar curvature has mass approaching zero, then the sequence must converge to Euclidean space in the pointed intrinsic flat sense. The appendix includes a new Gromov-Hausdorff and intrinsic flat compactness theorem for sequences of metric spaces with uniform Lipschitz bounds on their metrics.Comment: 31 pages, 2 figures, v2: to appear in Crelle's Journal, many minor changes, one new exampl

Joint Bayesian Estimation of Quasar Continua and the Lyman-Alpha Forest Flux Probability Distribution Function

We present a new Bayesian algorithm making use of Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling that allows us to simultaneously estimate the unknown continuum level of each quasar in an ensemble of high-resolution spectra, as well as their common probability distribution function (PDF) for the transmitted Ly$\alpha$ forest flux. This fully automated PDF regulated continuum fitting method models the unknown quasar continuum with a linear Principal Component Analysis (PCA) basis, with the PCA coefficients treated as nuisance parameters. The method allows one to estimate parameters governing the thermal state of the intergalactic medium (IGM), such as the slope of the temperature-density relation $\gamma-1$, while marginalizing out continuum uncertainties in a fully Bayesian way. Using realistic mock quasar spectra created from a simplified semi-numerical model of the IGM, we show that this method recovers the underlying quasar continua to a precision of $\simeq7\%$ and $\simeq10\%$ at $z=3$ and $z=5$, respectively. Given the number of principal component spectra, this is comparable to the underlying accuracy of the PCA model itself. Most importantly, we show that we can achieve a nearly unbiased estimate of the slope $\gamma-1$ of the IGM temperature-density relation with a precision of $\pm8.6\%$ at $z=3$, $\pm6.1\%$ at $z=5$, for an ensemble of ten mock high-resolution quasar spectra. Applying this method to real quasar spectra and comparing to a more realistic IGM model from hydrodynamical simulations would enable precise measurements of the thermal and cosmological parameters governing the IGM, albeit with somewhat larger uncertainties given the increased flexibility of the model.Comment: 21 pages (+ Appendix), accepted at Ap

Going Nowhere? The Politics of Remembering (and Forgetting) Molly Ringwald

This article focuses on the actor Molly Ringwald, forever famous for her roles in a series of 1980s teen films directed by John Hughes, to explore notions of generational remembering and forgetting