Counting the Electoral Votes

Speech of Hon. Benj. T. Eames, of Rhode Island in the House of Representatives, January 25, 1877. A speech by Rhode Island Congressman Benjamin Eames given on the floor of the House of Representatives discussing the constitutionality of which branch of government has the authority to count electoral votes in national elections.https://digitalcommons.providence.edu/ri_history/1002/thumbnail.jp

The Microbiota and Health Promoting Characteristics of the Fermented Beverage Kefir

peer-reviewedKefir is a complex fermented dairy product created through the symbiotic fermentation of milk by lactic acid bacteria and yeasts contained within an exopolysaccharide and protein complex called a kefir grain. As with other fermented dairy products, kefir has been associated with a range of health benefits such as cholesterol metabolism and angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibition, antimicrobial activity, tumor suppression, increased speed of wound healing, and modulation of the immune system including the alleviation of allergy and asthma. These reports have led to increased interest in kefir as a focus of research and as a potential probiotic-containing product. Here, we review those studies with a particular emphasis on the microbial composition and the health benefits of the product, as well as discussing the further development of kefir as an important probiotic product.The authors are funded through the Teagasc Walsh Fellowship Scheme(2014025)and internal Teagasc funding(RMIS6486). BW is supported by the Canada Research Chairs Program and research in the Cotter laboratory is funded by SFI through the PI award “Obesibiotics”(11/PI/1137)and in the form of a center grant (APC Microbiome Institute Grant Number SFI/12/RC/2273)

Aspects of Track-Assisted Mass

Track-assisted mass is a proxy for jet mass that only uses direction information from charged particles, allowing it to be measured at the Large Hadron Collider with very fine angular resolution. In this paper, we introduce a generalization of track-assisted mass and analyze its performance in both parton shower generators and resummed calculations. For the original track-assisted mass, the track-only mass is rescaled by the charged energy fraction of the jet. In our generalization, the rescaling factor includes both per-jet and ensemble-averaged information, facilitating a closer correspondence to ordinary jet mass. Using the track function formalism in electron-positron collisions, we calculate the spectrum of generalized track-assisted mass to next-to-leading-logarithmic order with leading-order matching. These resummed calculations provide theoretical insight into the close correspondence between track-assisted mass and ordinary jet mass. With the growing importance of jet grooming algorithms, we also calculate track-assisted mass on soft-drop groomed jets.Comment: 35+17 pages, 22 figures; v3: improvements to calculation and presentation to appear in JHE

The case of muddled units in temporal discounting

While parameters are crucial components of cognitive models, relatively little importance has been given to their units. We show that this has lead to some parameters to be contaminated, introducing an artifactual correlation between them. We also show that this has led to the illegal comparison of parameters with different units of measurement – this may invalidate parameter comparisons across participants, conditions, groups, or studies. We demonstrate that this problem affects two related models: Stevens' power law and Rachlin's delay discounting model. We show that it may even affect models which superficially avoid the incompatible units problem, such as hyperbolic discounting. We present simulation results to demonstrate the extent of the issues caused by the muddled units problem. We offer solutions in order to avoid the problem in the future or to aid in re-interpreting existing datasets

Unspeakable Suffering; Eloquent Explanations: National Civil War Medicine Museum’s 26th Annual Conference

On Friday, October 12th, 2018, the National Civil War Medicine Museum kicked off its 26th annual conference and began its three-day event with a series of lectures on topics ranging from Confederate medical practice to cultural understandings of cowardice. A series of unique lectures given by a professionally diverse cast of presenters illuminated the often-peripheral field of Civil War Medicine. [excerpt

Supersymmetry and the AdS Higgs Phenomenon

We examine the AdS Higgs phenomenon for spin-1 fields, and demonstrate that graviphotons pick up a dynamically generated mass in AdS_4, once matter boundary conditions are relaxed. We perform an explicit one-loop calculation of the graviphoton mass, and compare this result with the mass generated for the graviton in AdS. In this manner, we obtain a condition for unbroken supersymmetry. With this condition, we examine both N=2 and N=4 gauged supergravities coupled to matter multiplets, and find that for both cases the ratio between dynamically generated graviton and graviphoton masses is consistent with unbroken supersymmetry.Comment: 12 pages, JHEP forma

Model-Independent Stellar and Planetary Masses from Multi-Transiting Exoplanetary Systems

Precise exoplanet characterization requires precise classification of exoplanet host stars. The masses of host stars are commonly estimated by comparing their spectra to those predicted by stellar evolution models. However, spectroscopically determined properties are difficult to measure accurately for stars that are substantially different from the Sun, such as M-dwarfs and evolved stars. Here, we propose a new method to dynamically measure the masses of transiting planets near mean-motion resonances and their host stars by combining observations of transit timing variations with radial velocity measurements. We derive expressions to analytically determine the mass of each member of the system and demonstrate the technique on the Kepler-18 system. We compare these analytic results to numerical simulations and find the two are consistent. We identify eight systems for which our technique could be applied if follow-up radial velocity measurements are collected. We conclude this analysis would be optimal for systems discovered by next generation missions similar to TESS or PLATO, which will target bright stars that are amenable to efficient RV follow-up.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure, submitted to Ap

Detection of H-alpha emission from the Magellanic Stream: evidence for an extended gaseous Galactic halo

We have detected faint, diffuse H$\alpha emission from several points along the Magellanic Stream, using the Rutgers Fabry--Perot Interferometer at the CTIO 1.5-m telescope. At points on the leading edges of the H I clouds MS II, MS III, and MS IV, we detect H$\alpha emission of surface brightness $0.37 \pm 0.02$ Rayleighs, $0.21 \pm 0.04$ R, and $0.20 \pm 0.02$ R respectively, corresponding to emission measures of 1.0 to 0.5 \cmsixpc. We have observed several positions near the MS IV concentration, and find that the strongest emission is on the sharp leading-edge density gradient. There is less emission at points away from the gradient, and halfway between MS III and MS IV the H$\alpha surface brightness is$< 0.04$R. We attribute the H$\alpha emission at cloud leading edges to heating of the Stream clouds by ram pressure from ionized gas in the halo of the Galaxy. These observations suggest that ram pressure from halo gas plays a large role in stripping the Stream out of the Magellanic Clouds. They also suggest the presence of a relatively large density of gas, $n_{\rm H} \sim 10^{-4} cm^{-3}$, in the Galactic halo at $\sim 50$ kpc radius, and far above the Galactic plane, $b \sim -80\deg$. This implies that the Galaxy has a very large baryonic, gaseous extent, and supports models of Lyman-$\alpha and metal-line QSO absorption lines in which the absorption systems reside in extended galactic halos.Comment: 15 pages, aaspp latex, + 1 table & 3 figures. Accepted in A.J. Also available from http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~bweiner/astro/papers