PLATYPUS: a code for fusion and breakup in reactions induced by weakly-bound nuclei within a classical trajectory model with stochastic breakup

A self-contained Fortran-90 program based on a classical trajectory model with stochastic breakup is presented, which should be a powerful tool for quantifying complete and incomplete fusion, and breakup in reactions induced by weakly-bound two-body projectiles near the Coulomb barrier. The code calculates complete and incomplete fusion cross sections and their angular momentum distribution, as well as breakup observables (angle, kinetic energy and relative energy distributions).Comment: Accepted in Computer Physics Communications (2011

“Contemporary Latinx Media” Digital Humanities Research Project

As part of the “Contemporary Latinx Media” Digital Humanities Research Project, students explore and analyze different aspects related to the representation of Latino/as in contemporary digital media. Using the digital platform Scalar, the students produced a digital research essay as the final project of the course

Understanding Entry-Level Health Care Employment in Chicago

Restructuring within the health care industry over the past ten years has sought to improve the quality and delivery of health care services while reducing employers' costs. However, coupled with the tight local and regional labor market, these organizational changes have introduced new challenges for employers trying to find workers who are adequately prepared to deliver quality health care services.Earlier this year, the Chicago Jobs Council received funding from the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and BP Amoco to conduct research in the health care industry. This report summarizes the most recent industry and occupational data on Chicago's health care industry and provides a snapshot of the entry-level recruitment and retention needs of Chicago's health care employers, job training programs, and low-income job seekers. Based on our findings, the report also makes recommendations to employers, training providers, public agencies and workforce boards

Novel charges in CFT's

In this paper we construct two infinite sets of self-adjoint commuting charges for a quite general CFT. They come out naturally by considering an infinite embedding chain of Lie algebras, an underlying structure that share all theories with gauge groups U(N), SO(N) and Sp(N). The generality of the construction allows us to carry all gauge groups at the same time in a unified framework, and so to understand the similarities among them. The eigenstates of these charges are restricted Schur polynomials and their eigenvalues encode the value of the correlators of two restricted Schurs. The existence of these charges singles out restricted Schur polynomials among the number of bases of orthogonal gauge invariant operators that are available in the literature.Comment: 58 page

Executive Order 13492: Legal Borderlands

On January 22, 2009, newly inaugurated President Barack Obama implemented Executive Order 13492. The order refers to the legal disposition of detainees at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base and the termination of the detention center. The Executive Order lists five possible options to close Guantánamo Bay and to otherwise try and place current prisoners elsewhere: prosecution under military law, prosecution under federal law, permanent detainment, deportation and release. Still, Guantánamo Bay remains open. Guantánamo detainees exist in a legal limbo without formal charges and trial. Executive Order 13492 was created to place them elsewhere and close the detention center

The status of the Excited Baryon Analysis Center

The Excited Baryon Analysis Center (EBAC), which is associated with the Theory Group at Jefferson Laboratory, was initiated in 2006. Its main goal is to extract and interpret properties of nucleon resonances (N*) from the world data of meson production reactions induced by pions, photons and electrons. We review the main accomplishments of the center since then and sketch its near future perspectives.Comment: Invited plenary talk, to appear in the Proceedings of XIII International Conference on Hadron Spectroscopy, November 29 - December 4, 2009, Florida State University. (v2, references added, fig6 slightly modified

Coupled-channels density-matrix approach to low-energy nuclear reaction dynamics

Atomic nuclei are complex, quantum many-body systems whose structure manifests itself through intrinsic quantum states associated with different excitation modes or degrees of freedom. Collective modes (vibration and/or rotation) dominate at low energy (near the ground-state). The associated states are usually employed, within a truncated model space, as a basis in (coherent) coupled channels approaches to low-energy reaction dynamics. However, excluded states can be essential, and their effects on the open (nuclear) system dynamics are usually treated through complex potentials. Is this a complete description of open system dynamics? Does it include effects of quantum decoherence? Can decoherence be manifested in reaction observables? In this contribution, I discuss these issues and the main ideas of a coupled-channels density-matrix approach that makes it possible to quantify the role and importance of quantum decoherence in low-energy nuclear reaction dynamics. Topical applications, which refer to understanding the astrophysically important collision $^{12}$C + $^{12}$C and achieving a unified quantum dynamical description of relevant reaction processes of weakly-bound nuclei, are highlighted.Comment: Invited Talk at FINUSTAR3, August 23-27, 2010, Rhodes, Greece. To be published in AIP Conference Proceeding

Conference report: 18th conference on computer-assisted qualitative data analysis (CAQD) 2016: MAXQDA user conference

During the first week of March 2016, 120 researchers from 12 different countries, including Syria, Japan, the USA and Turkey, met in Berlin (Germany) to learn more about their computer-assisted qualitative data analysis skills. The 18th Conference on Computer-Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis (CAQD) offered several workshops, a research methods poster session, and the opportunity to share and discuss best practice between attendees, trainers and speakers (informally and through the user forum). The conference also hosted three seminal keynote speakers in two presentations: John CRESWELL, and Udo KUCKARTZ and Stefan RÄDIKER, who shared, respectively, the state of the art of mixed methods and the ways that software can support these approaches

From Caution to College: The Effects on Veterans with Self- Reported Trauma Symptoms Sharing their Experiences with the Campus Community

Over 900,000 veterans are using benefits for higher education today; the vast majority of them served in the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). Over 25% of GWOT service members that have been treated by the Veterans Affairs (VA) are reported to have symptoms of posttraumatic stress or posttraumatic stress disorder (PTS/PTSD). PTS/PTSD negatively impacts student veterans’ abilities to navigate stressful environments such as college and university settings. The Veterans Embracing Transition (VET) Connect Program at San José State University (SJSU) is designed to connect veterans with non-veterans as peer educators. Five of the 13 VET Connect peer educators (38.5%) who were interviewed reported having symptoms of PTSD. Through their service as peer educators on and off campus, these participants demonstrated signs of healthy coping effects through sharing experiences and educating non-veterans of the struggles related to military culture, service, combat, and loss. This study was conducted in collaboration with Sophia Alcala. We worked on independent research questions and observations using data derived from the same larger study simultaneously under the supervision of Dr. Klaw