Neutron Resonance Data Exclude Random Matrix Theory

Almost since the time it was formulated, the overwhelming consensus has been that random matrix theory (RMT) is in excellent agreement with neutron resonance data. However, over the past few years, we have obtained new neutron-width data at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos National Laboratories that are in stark disagreement with this theory. We also have reanalyzed neutron widths in the most famous data set, the nuclear data ensemble (NDE), and found that it is seriously flawed, and, when analyzed carefully, excludes RMT with high confidence. More recently, we carefully examined energy spacings for these same resonances in the NDE using the $\Delta_{3}$ statistic. We conclude that the data can be found to either confirm or refute the theory depending on which nuclides and whether known or suspected p-wave resonances are included in the analysis, in essence confirming results of our neutron-width analysis of the NDE. We also have examined radiation widths resulting from our Oak Ridge and Los Alamos measurements, and find that in some cases they do not agree with RMT. Although these disagreements presently are not understood, they could have broad impact on basic and applied nuclear physics, from nuclear astrophysics to nuclear criticality safety.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, submitted to special issue of Fortschritte Der Physik, Quantum Physics with Non-Hermitian Operator

Wilson Loops and Black Holes in 2+1 Dimensions

In 2+1 dimensional Chern-Simons gravity, Wilson loops in the three dimensional Anti de Sitter group, $SO(2,2)$, reproduce the spinning black hole of Ba\~nados, Teitelboim and Zanelli (BTZ) by naturally duplicating the necessary identification of points of a four dimensional globally $SO(2,2)$ invariant space in which the hole appears as an embedding.Comment: PHYZZX, 10 pages, UATP-930

Comment: Expert Elicitation for Reliable System Design

Comment: Expert Elicitation for Reliable System Design [arXiv:0708.0279]Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/088342306000000538 in the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

[Review of] Virginia Huffer, The Sweetness of the Fig: Aboriginal Women in Transition

During 1970 and 1973, University of Maryland professor of psychiatry Virginia Huffer spent some time with the women of the Lardil and Kaiadilt tribes who live on Mornington Island in northern Australia\u27s Gulf of Carpenteria [Carpentaria]. Forced to accommodate increasingly to Western ways, these women struggle to maintain traditional linkages while they undergo modern change. This conflict between the past and the future, as well as the everyday realities of their existence, are presented through Huffer\u27s psychobiographical lens, primarily through the intervention and words of her chief informant, Elsie Roughsey, a cooperative, friendly, generous, and intelligent Lardil woman who is, in aboriginal terms, a good yarner. Elsie\u27s tribal name-Labbarnor- sweetness of the fig -gives the book its title. The work is essentially Elsie\u27s statements mixed with descriptive and analytical observations by the author and short treatments of interviews with nine older Lardil women, seven younger (teens through twenties) Lardil women, and seven Kaiadilt women

[Review of] Donald B. Smith. Long Lance: The True Story of an Impostor

In the 1920s, Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance, reputedly a Blood (or Blackfoot) Indian, was the talk of New York City. A graduate of Carlisle Indian School, a cadet at West Point, a war hero, and a sparring mate for Jack Dempsey, Long Lance was the American Indian made good. He was a journalist of some renown, an eloquent speaker, and a self ordained spokesman for the Indians of America. Before the decade was finished he had written a highly popular autobiography of his life on the Canadian Plains, actually chased off wolves and speared a moose for his role as an Ojibwa warrior in a silent movie, and attended New York social functions regularly, sometimes in buckskin, sometimes in full dress tuxedo. He was the authentic Indian hero come to the metropolis. Or was he? As the Great Depression hit full force, various investigations revealed that Long Lance was living a lie. Instead of being a chief of the Blood, he was, in fact, Sylvester Long, originally of Winston, North Carolina. Rumors that he was half-black circulated, with the inevitable result that friends spurned him and he plunged into near-obscurity. Despondent, abusive, drunken, suicidal, and broke, Long Lance finally blew his brains out at his patroness\u27 home in 1 932. He was only forty-two years of age

[Review of] Charles A. Ward, Philip Shashko, and Donald E. Pienkos, eds., Studies in Ethnicity: The East European Experience in America

Studies in Ethnicity is a collection of papers read at the conference Aspects of the East European Experience in Europe and America held at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, May 4-5, 1979. The editors have arranged the papers under three headings : Ethnicity and Language Maintenance in America, Ethnic Social Organization: Secular and Religious Dimensions, and Ethnic Writers in America