Landau Levels in the noncommutative AdS2AdS_2

We formulate the Landau problem in the context of the noncommutative analog of a surface of constant negative curvature, that is $AdS_2$ surface, and obtain the spectrum and contrast the same with the Landau levels one finds in the case of the commutative $AdS_2$ space.Comment: 19 pages, Latex, references and clarifications added including 2 figure

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

Emotional Substrates of Whites' Racial Attitudes.

My dissertation considers the role of emotions in Whites’ racial attitudes. I posit that Whites’ contemporary racial prejudice is linked primarily to anger while old-fashioned bigotry is driven primarily by disgust. This considers whether, as Sears, Kinder and their colleagues suggest, racial prejudice has been transformed from old-fashioned bigotry based on social distance and ideas about biological differences between the races into a new and subtle form driven by perceived violations by Blacks of basic American values. This happens, at least for recent generations, because the public debate on race is filled with attributions of blame, certainty and control. Simply experiencing anger (even unrelated to race or politics) should bring racial attitudes closer to the surface in memory. Utilizing a local sample in the Midwest and a nationally representative sample collected through an Internet survey (Polimetrix), I explore whether priming negative emotions boost the impact of various forms of racial and non-racial attitudes: old-fashioned racism, symbolic racism, group conflict and others as well. Understanding the emotional underpinnings of racial attitudes reveals an important insight. The emotional context matters in determining which belief system (racial attitudes or non-racial political ideology) will be applied to Whites’ racial policy opinions and candidate evaluations.Ph.D.Political ScienceUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/63663/1/adbanks_1.pd

Emotional rescue: How affect helps partisans overcome collective action problems

Why does party identification motivate citizens to participate in politics? From a theoretical standpoint, it is in a partisan\u27s self-interest to free ride on the efforts of others. Yet, mere identification with a party is enough to motivate many people to overcome this structural hurdle. We theorize that, by virtue of aligning one\u27s self with a party, individuals become more likely to react to their political environment with anger and enthusiasm rather than fear. Anger and enthusiasm are associated with approach and continuation of current behavior, while fear triggers behavior reconsideration. In short, party identification stimulates participation via anger and enthusiasm. On the other hand, fear produces thought but not much action. We find support for our model using data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) and an original laboratory experiment. © 2013 International Society of Political Psychology

Power spectral estimates using two-dimensional Morlet-fan wavelets with emphasis on the long wavelengths: jackknife errors, bandwidth resolution and orthogonality properties

We present a method for estimating the errors on local and global wavelet power spectra using the jackknife approach to error estimation, and compare results with jackknifed multitaper (MT) spectrum estimates. We test the methods on both synthetic and real data, the latter being free air gravity over the Congo basin. To satisfy the independence requirement of the jackknife we investigate the orthogonality properties of the two-dimensional Morlet wavelet. Although Morlet wavelets are non-orthogonal, we show that careful selection of parameters can yield approximate orthogonality in space and azimuth. We also find that, when computed via the Fourier transform, the continuous wavelet transform (CWT) contains errors at very long wavelengths due to the discretisation of large-scale wavelets in the Fourier domain. We hence recommend the use of convolution in the space-domain at these scales, even though this is computationally more expensive. Finally, in providing an investigation into the bandwidth resolution of CWT and MT spectra and errors at long wavelengths, we show that the Morlet wavelet is superior in this regard to Slepian tapers. Wavelets with higher bandwidth-resolution deliver smaller spectral error estimates, in contrast to the MT method, where tapers with higher bandwidth-resolution deliver larger errors. This results in the fan-WT having better spectral estimation properties at long wavelengths than Slepian multitapers