Arts at a Disadvantage Most of what the brain learns—such as fine and gross motor coordination, emotional intelligence, complex knowledge, stress mediation, and relationship skills—requires maturation and refinement. If schools value a narrow range of specific test scores—and if those tests measure only math, problem-solving, and verbal skills—arts are at a clear disadvantage. And if we only va...

As a result of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001, many school districts have reduced instructional time for the arts in order to focus on reading and mathematics. Accordingly, fine arts programs across the nation have become subject to budget cuts or elimination in order to meet federal accountability measures. Hit especially hard are small, rural school districts. The purpose of this...

The MFA approach for simulations with dynamical fermions in lattice gauge theories allows in principle to explore the parameters space of the theory (e.g. the β,m plane for the study of chiral condensate in QED) without the need of computing the fermionic determinant at each point. We exploit this possibility for extracting both the renormalization group trajectories (”constant physics lines”) ...

The huge amount of data provided by genome-scale technologies makes discernible biological meanings difficult to access. Here, we report a powerful integrative method to combine genome-wide scale data sets and biological knowledge. Multiple Factor Analysis (MFA) is used to investigate jointly large observation data sets from different ’omic’ areas enriched with biological annotations. This mult...

Mean-field approximations (MFAs) are frequently used in physics. When a process (such as an epidemic or a synchronization) on a network is approximated by MFA, a major hurdle is the determination of those graphs for which MFA is reasonably accurate. Here, we present an accuracy criterion for Markovian susceptible-infected-susceptible (SIS) epidemics on any network, based on the spectrum of the ...

To achieve an insightful clustering of multivariate data, we propose subspace K-means. Its central idea is to model the centroids and cluster residuals in reduced spaces, which allows for dealing with a wide range of cluster types and yields rich interpretations of the clusters. We review the existing related clustering methods, including deterministic, stochastic, and unsupervised learning app...

This paper analyzes China’s experience under U.S. apparel and textile quotas. It makes use of a new database that tracks U.S. trading partners’ performance under the quota regimes established by the global Multifiber Arrangement (1974 to 1995) and subsequent Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (1995 to 2005). We find that China was relatively more constrained under these regimes than other count...

Opportunistic observations of behavioral responses by delphinids to incidental mid-frequency active (MFA) sonar were recorded in the Southern California Bight from 2004 through 2008 using visual focal follows, static hydrophones, and autonomous recorders. Sound pressure levels were calculated between 2 and 8 kHz. Surface behavioral responses were observed in 26 groups from at least three specie...