Simultaneous zeros of a Cubic and Quadratic form

We verify a conjecture of Emil Artin, for the case of a Cubic and Quadratic form over any $p$-adic field, provided the cardinality of the residue class field exceeds 293. That is any Cubic and Quadratic form with at least 14 variables has a non-trivial $p$-adic zero, with the aforementioned condition on the residue class field. A crucial step in the proof, involves generalizing a $p$-adic minimization procedure due to W. M. Schmidt to hold for systems of forms of arbitrary degrees.Comment: 19 page

The Elusive Agenda: Mainstreaming Women in Development

A report in 1975 by the International Labour Organisation(ILO) caught world attention by pointing out that while ‘women and girls constitute one-half of the world’s population and one third of the official labour force’ and ‘perform nearly two-thirds of work hours’, they ‘receive only one-tenth of the world’s income and less than one-hundredth of the world’s property.’ Nearly twenty years later, a report by the United Nations-UNDP’s Human Development Report 1994–found that, despite advances in labour-force participation, education and health, women still constitute about two-thirds of the world’s illiterates, hold fewer than half of the jobs on the market and are paid half as much as men for work of equal value. Women make up only about 10 percent of the world’s parliamentarians and less than 4 percent of cabinet members. The report concludes that ‘in no society are women secure or treated equally’. The unmistakable achievements in areas like education and health show that progress is possible, but the continued disparities in others such as income and decision-making indicate that there is still a long way to go. However, the statistical evidence about continued disparities should not detract us from recognising the major achievements of the last two decades. There has been a sea-change in knowledge and awareness. Affirmative action policies have been introduced. Special measures have been designed to remove barriers to women’s participation. Women’s voices are stronger than ever. And women are increasingly learning to take control of their own lives and bring their perspective to bear on decisions affecting their communities, nations, and the planet. These changes in awareness, expertise, policies, laws and women’s voice were brought about by the efforts of many different actors-women’s movements as well as national governments and international donor organisations.

Effect of a 14-Day Mindfulness Intervention on Daily Desire Experiences and Desire Regulation

A growing body of research suggests that mindfulness, a receptive attentiveness to one’s present moment experiences, has the potential to adaptively regulate habitual behaviors. No prior study has tested the effect of mindfulness interventions on people’s daily desire experiences to inform the potential for adaptive desire regulation. The present exploratory randomized controlled trial examined the effect of a 14-day smartphone-based mindfulness intervention (versus a coping control intervention) on the frequency, intensity, duration, and enactment of everyday desires in 19 participants. The desire domains included basic need-based desires (i.e., for food, drink, sleep) and secondary desires (e.g., for sex, media, social interactions, work), assessed for 7 days pre- and post-intervention through ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Emotion data collected alongside, also through EMA, permitted examining the role of the mindfulness intervention in altering a potential link between experienced emotion (positive and negative) and desire. Results showed that intervention condition significantly predicted post-intervention desire frequency; those in the mindfulness condition experienced a higher frequency of desires post-training, and specifically, increased secondary desire frequency, but not basic desire frequency. Intervention condition did not predict the other desire outcomes (enactment, strength, or duration). Results also revealed that intervention significant moderated the association between positive emotion and overall desire frequency; those in the mindfulness condition experienced fewer desires when experiencing increased positive emotion, whereas there was no association between positive emotion and desire after coping training. Intervention condition did not moderate associations between positive emotions and other desire variables, or negative emotions and any desire variables

Vacuum Energy of a Non-relativistic String with Nontrivial Boundary Condition

We derive the partition function of a non-relativistic quantum string which its ends are allowed to freely slide on the two angled straight solid rods. We first derive the classical solution of the model and then use it to derive the partition function utilizing the path integral method. We show that the vacuum energy is sum of the Luscher potential plus a term which depends on the relative angle between rods.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures. Updated version of published article. Some typos correcte