Interview of Cornelia Tsakiridou, Ph.D.

Dr. Cornelia Tsakiridou was born in 1955 in Thessaloniki, Greece. During high school, she participated in the exchange program Youth for Understanding in the United States, studying and staying with a host family in California. Upon graduating, she spent a year in England deciding what she wanted to do before enrolling at the American College of Greece where she completed her undergraduate work in three years. Initially, Dr. Tsakiridou started her academic career as a psychology major but soon shifted her focus to philosophy and history. Dr. Tsakiridou moved to the United States where she intended on beginning work on her Masters at Villanova University before she transferred to Temple University. Dr. Tsakiridou was offered a full scholarship from Georgetown University to complete her Ph.D. where she wrote her dissertation on Hegel’s Aesthetics. She currently has two Masters degrees in philosophy and history from Temple University and her Ph.D. from Georgetown University. After completing her Ph.D. in 1990, Dr. Tsakiridou spent one year teaching at Bucknell University before moving to La Salle University. She currently holds the rank of Professor of Philosophy at La Salle University and the director of the Diplomat-In-Residence Program (DRP). Her specialized interests include aesthetics and iconography, the philosophy of art, film, and photography, and social and political philosophies concerning topics such as nationalism, modernity, and radical ideologies. She teaches philosophy courses ranging from the required introductory courses to more advanced subjects, including metaphysics. She is well-published, having contributed to chapters in larger works, as well as an array of her own journal articles. Her most recent publication, in 2013, is her book, Icons in Time, Persons in Eternity: Orthodox Theology and the Aesthetics of the Christian Image (Routledge, 2013), in which she features photographs of artworks taken by her personally. Dr. Tsakiridou here remarks on her academic career, starting as a high school student, evolving as a young scholar in a foreign land, and ultimately reflecting on a long and prosperous tenure as a professor as well as the lessons she has learned along her philosophical journey to today

Stand density, drought, and herbivory constrain ponderosa pine regeneration pulse

Trees in dry forests often regenerate in episodic pulses when wet periods coincide with ample seed production. Factors leading to success or failure of regeneration pulses are poorly understood. We investigated the impacts of stand thinning on survival and growth of the 2013 cohort of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Douglas ex P. Lawson & C. Lawson) seedlings in northern Arizona, United States. We measured seedling survival and growth over the first five growing seasons after germination in six stand basal areas (BAs; 0, 7, 14, 23, 34, and 66 (unthinned) m2·ha−1) produced by long-term experimental thinnings. Five-year survival averaged 2.5% and varied among BAs. Mean survival duration was longer in intermediate BAs (11 to 16 months) than in clearings and high BAs (5 months). The BAs of 7, 14, and 23 m2·ha−1 had >2600 5-year-old seedlings·ha−1. In contrast, regeneration was lower in the clearing (666 seedlings·ha−1) and failed completely in the 34 m2·ha−1 and unthinned treatments. Seedling survival was highest during wet years and lowest during drought years. Many surviving seedlings had no net height growth between years 4 and 5 because of stem browsing. Results indicate that natural regeneration of ponderosa pine is influenced by stand BA, drought, herbivory, and interactions between extreme climatic events.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author

Search for Scalar Diphoton Resonances in the Mass Range 65−60065-600 GeV with the ATLAS Detector in pppp Collision Data at s\sqrt{s} = 8 TeVTeV

A search for scalar particles decaying via narrow resonances into two photons in the mass range 65–600 GeV is performed using $20.3\text{}\text{}{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ of $\sqrt{s}=8\text{}\text{}\mathrm{TeV}$ $pp$ collision data collected with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The recently discovered Higgs boson is treated as a background. No significant evidence for an additional signal is observed. The results are presented as limits at the 95% confidence level on the production cross section of a scalar boson times branching ratio into two photons, in a fiducial volume where the reconstruction efficiency is approximately independent of the event topology. The upper limits set extend over a considerably wider mass range than previous searches

Search for Higgs and ZZ Boson Decays to J/ψγJ/\psi\gamma and Υ(nS)γ\Upsilon(nS)\gamma with the ATLAS Detector

A search for the decays of the Higgs and $Z$ bosons to $J/\psi\gamma$ and $\Upsilon(nS)\gamma$ ($n=1,2,3$) is performed with $pp$ collision data samples corresponding to integrated luminosities of up to $20.3\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ collected at $\sqrt{s}=8\mathrm{TeV}$ with the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. No significant excess of events is observed above expected backgrounds and 95% CL upper limits are placed on the branching fractions. In the $J/\psi\gamma$ final state the limits are $1.5\times10^{-3}$ and $2.6\times10^{-6}$ for the Higgs and $Z$ bosons, respectively, while in the $\Upsilon(1S,2S,3S)\,\gamma$ final states the limits are $(1.3,1.9,1.3)\times10^{-3}$ and $(3.4,6.5,5.4)\times10^{-6}$, respectively