Picture This: Using photo-research exhibits as science outreach

Is a picture worth a thousand words? This paper discusses a unique science outreach initiative–provocative photo-research exhibits on sexism in science. Gender imbalance in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) is not only a concern from a social justice perspective, but also has negative consequences for scientific innovation and the economy, given that lack of workplace gender diversity is associated with lower revenue and returns. Science outreach (i.e., public outreach by scientists) could be particularly impactful in Waterloo, Ontario – a region known as ‘Canada’s Silicon Valley’ that contributes over $30-billion annually to the global economy. Portraying complex social issues using a visual medium has the potential to be accessible to a diverse audience. Images from two photo-research exhibits #DistractinglySexist (2015) and #DistractinglyHonest (2016) were based on social-psychological literature and findings from research by two of the authors (Hennessey and Foster) on the social costs of confronting sexism in science. Feedback indicates that these exhibits are effective outreach tools, and appear to facilitate discussions on sexism in science, and expand the social network of women in science by connecting those in the series and people who engage with exhibit materials

Exploring the S-Matrix of Massless Particles

We use the recently proposed generalised on-shell representation for scattering amplitudes and a consistency test to explore the space of tree-level consistent couplings in four-dimensional Minkowski spacetime. The extension of the constructible notion implied by the generalised on-shell representation, i.e. the possibility to reconstruct at tree level all the scattering amplitudes from the three-particle ones, together with the imposition of the consistency conditions at four-particle level, allow to rediscover all the known theories and their algebra structure, if any. Interestingly, this analysis seems to leave room for high-spin couplings, provided that at least the requirement of locality is weakened. We do not claim to have found tree-level consistent high-spin theories, but rather that our methods show signatures of them and very likely, with a suitable modification, they can be a good framework to perform a systematic search.Comment: 44 pages, 1 figur

Negotiation in strategy making teams : group support systems and the process of cognitive change

This paper reports on the use of a Group Support System (GSS) to explore at a micro level some of the processes manifested when a group is negotiating strategy-processes of social and psychological negotiation. It is based on data from a series of interventions with senior management teams of three operating companies comprising a multi-national organization, and with a joint meeting subsequently involving all of the previous participants. The meetings were concerned with negotiating a new strategy for the global organization. The research involved the analysis of detailed time series data logs that exist as a result of using a GSS that is a reflection of cognitive theory

Spin constraints on Regge predictions and perturbative evolution in high energy collisions

Two key issues in the application of perturbative QCD and Regge predictions to high energy processes are whether the hard and soft pomerons should be considered as two separate distinct exchanges and whether the Regge intercepts are Q^2 independent or not. Models involving a distinct hard pomeron exchange predict much larger values for the LHC total cross-section. Here we argue that there is a polarized analogue of this issue in the isovector part of the spin structure function g_1 and that the spin data appear to favour a distinct hard exchange.Comment: 8 page

Effect of Noise on Patterns Formed by Growing Sandpiles

We consider patterns generated by adding large number of sand grains at a single site in an abelian sandpile model with a periodic initial configuration, and relaxing. The patterns show proportionate growth. We study the robustness of these patterns against different types of noise, \textit{viz.}, randomness in the point of addition, disorder in the initial periodic configuration, and disorder in the connectivity of the underlying lattice. We find that the patterns show a varying degree of robustness to addition of a small amount of noise in each case. However, introducing stochasticity in the toppling rules seems to destroy the asymptotic patterns completely, even for a weak noise. We also discuss a variational formulation of the pattern selection problem in growing abelian sandpiles.Comment: 15 pages,16 figure

Multi-Wavelength Study of Sgr A*: The Short Time Scale Variability

To understand the correlation and the radiation mechanism of flare emission in different wavelength bands, we have coordinated a number of telescopes to observe SgrA* simultaneously. We focus only on one aspect of the preliminary results of our multi-wavelength observing campaigns, namely, the short time scale variability of emission from SgrA* in near-IR, X-ray and radio wavelengths. The structure function analysis indicate most of the power spectral density is detected on hourly time scales in all wavelength bands. We also report minute time scale variability at 7 and 13mm placing a strong constraint on the nature of the variable emission. The hourly time scale variability can be explained in the context of a model in which the peak frequency of emission shifts toward lower frequencies as a self-absorbed synchrotron source expands adiabatically near the acceleration site. The short time scale variability, on the other hand, places a strong constraint on the size of the emitting region. Assuming that rapid minute time scale fluctuations of the emission is optically thick in radio wavelength, light travel arguments requires relativistic particle energy, thus suggesting the presence of outflow from SgrA*.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, The Galactic Center: A Window on the Nuclear Environment of Disk Galaxies ASP Conference Series, 2010 eds: M. Morris, D. Q. Wang and F. Yua

Integrating modes of policy analysis and strategic management practice : requisite elements and dilemmas

There is a need to bring methods to bear on public problems that are inclusive, analytic, and quick. This paper describes the efforts of three pairs of academics working from three different though complementary theoretical foundations and intervention backgrounds (i.e., ways of working) who set out together to meet this challenge. Each of the three pairs had conducted dozens of interventions that had been regarded as successful or very successful by the client groups in dealing with complex policy and strategic problems. One approach focused on leadership issues and stakeholders, another on negotiating competitive strategic intent with attention to stakeholder responses, and the third on analysis of feedback ramifications in developing policies. This paper describes the 10 year longitudinal research project designed to address the above challenge. The important outcomes are reported: the requisite elements of a general integrated approach and the enduring puzzles and tensions that arose from seeking to design a wide-ranging multi-method approach

On the Singularities of the Magnon S-matrix

We investigate the analytic structure of the magnon S-matrix in the spin-chain description of planar ${\cal N}=4$ SUSY Yang-Mills/$AdS_{5}\times S^{5}$ strings. Semiclassical analysis suggests that the exact S-matrix must have a large family of poles near the real axis in momentum space. In this article we show that these are double poles corresponding to the exchange of pairs of BPS magnons. Their locations in the complex plane are uniquely fixed by the known dispersion relation for the BPS particles. The locations precisely agree with the recent conjecture for the $S$ matrix by Beisert, Hernandez, Lopez, Eden and Staudacher (hep-th/0609044 and hep-th/0610251). These poles do not signal the presence of new bound states. In fact, a certain non-BPS localized classical solution, which was thought to give rise to new bound states, can actually decay into a pair of BPS magnons.Comment: 40 pages, 14 figures; typos corrected, references adde

The Arboricity Captures the Complexity of Sampling Edges

In this paper, we revisit the problem of sampling edges in an unknown graph $G = (V, E)$ from a distribution that is (pointwise) almost uniform over $E$. We consider the case where there is some a priori upper bound on the arboriciy of $G$. Given query access to a graph $G$ over $n$ vertices and of average degree $d$ and arboricity at most $\alpha$, we design an algorithm that performs $O\!\left(\frac{\alpha}{d} \cdot \frac{\log^3 n}{\varepsilon}\right)$ queries in expectation and returns an edge in the graph such that every edge $e \in E$ is sampled with probability $(1 \pm \varepsilon)/m$. The algorithm performs two types of queries: degree queries and neighbor queries. We show that the upper bound is tight (up to poly-logarithmic factors and the dependence in $\varepsilon$), as $\Omega\!\left(\frac{\alpha}{d} \right)$ queries are necessary for the easier task of sampling edges from any distribution over $E$ that is close to uniform in total variational distance. We also prove that even if $G$ is a tree (i.e., $\alpha = 1$ so that $\frac{\alpha}{d}=\Theta(1)$), $\Omega\left(\frac{\log n}{\log\log n}\right)$ queries are necessary to sample an edge from any distribution that is pointwise close to uniform, thus establishing that a $\mathrm{poly}(\log n)$ factor is necessary for constant $\alpha$. Finally we show how our algorithm can be applied to obtain a new result on approximately counting subgraphs, based on the recent work of Assadi, Kapralov, and Khanna (ITCS, 2019)