Publications

    Ben Kotzee. 2013. Education and the growth of knowledge: perspectives from social and virtue epistemology. Malden, Massachusetts: John Wiley & Sons Inc.Abstract
    Education and the Growth of Knowledge is a collection of original contributions from a group of eminent philosophers and philosophers of education, who sketch the implications of advances in contemporary epistemology for education. New papers on education and social and virtue epistemology contributed by a range of eminent philosophers and philosophers of education Reconceives epistemology in the light of notions from social and virtue epistemologyDemonstrates that a reconsideration of epistemology in the light of ideas from social and virtue epistemolog
    Michael Tomz and Jessica Weeks. 2013. “Public Opinion and the Democratic Peace.” American Political Science Review, 107, 4, Pp. 849-865.Abstract

    One of the most striking findings in political science is the democratic peace: the absence of war between democracies. Some authors attempt to explain this phenomenon by highlighting the role of public opinion. They observe that democratic leaders are beholden to voters and argue that voters oppose war because of its human and financial costs. This logic predicts that democracies should behave peacefully in general, but history shows that democracies avoid war primarily in their relations with other democracies. In this article we investigate not whether democratic publics are averse to war in general, but whether they are especially reluctant to fight other democracies. We embedded experiments in public opinion polls in the United States and the United Kingdom and found that individuals are substantially less supportive of military strikes against democracies than against otherwise identical autocracies. Moreover, our experiments suggest that shared democracy pacifies the public primarily by changing perceptions of threat and morality, not by raising expectations of costs or failure. These findings shed light on a debate of enduring importance to scholars and policy makers.

    A. Hu, G. Deng, S. Denis Courvoisier, O. Reshef, C. C. Evans, E. Mazur, and Y. Norman. Zhou. 2013. “Femtosecond laser induced surface melting and nanojoining for plasmonic circuits”. Publisher's VersionAbstract
    Femtosecond laser induced nonthermal processing is an emerging nanofabrication technique for delicate plasmonic devices. In this work we present a detailed investigation on the interaction between ultra-short pulses and silver nanomaterials, both experimentally and theoretically. We systematically study the laser-silver interaction at a laser fluent from 1 J/m2 to 1 MJ/m2. The optimal processing window for welding of silver nanowires occurs at fluences of 200-450 J/m2. The femtosecond laser-induced surface melting allows precise welding of silver nanowires for "T” and “X” shape circuits. These welded plasmonic circuits are successfully applied for routining light propagation.
    J. Watkins and E. Mazur. 2013. “Retaining students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors.” J. Coll. Sci. Teach., 42, Pp. 36–41. Publisher's VersionAbstract
    In this paper we present results relating undergraduate student retention in STEM majors to the use of Peer Instruction in an introductory physics course at a highly- selective research institution. We compare the percentages of students who switch out of a STEM major after taking a physics course taught using traditional lectures only or one using Peer Instruction, finding that nearly twice the percentage of students switch after the lecture-based course. By examining these results in light of the literature on STEM retention, we propose that providing opportunities for students to think, respond, and interact in class may have a substantial impact on the retention of students in STEM disciplines.
    Logan Dancey and Geoffrey Sheagley. 2013. “Heuristics Behaving Badly: Party Cues and Voter Knowledge.” American Journal of Political Science, 57, 2, Pp. 312-325.Abstract
    Party cues provide citizens with low-cost information about their representatives’ policy positions. But what happens whenelected officials deviate from the party line? Relying on the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), weexamine citizens’ knowledge of their senators’ positions on seven high-profile roll-call votes. We find that although politicallyinterested citizens are the group most likely to know their senator’s position when she votes with the party, they are alsothe group most likely to incorrectly identify their senator’s position when she votes against her party. The results indicatethat when heuristics “go bad,” it is the norm for the most attentive segment of the public to become the most misinformed,revealing an important drawback to heuristic use.
    Sahand Hormoz and Michael P. Brenner. 2013. “Non-Universal and Non-Singular Asymptotics of Interacting Vortex Filaments.” In IUTAM SYMPOSIUM ON TOPOLOGICAL FLUID DYNAMICS: THEORY AND APPLICATIONS, edited by HK Moffatt, K Bajer, and Y Kimura, 7: Pp. 97–106. SARA BURGERHARTSTRAAT 25, PO BOX 211, 1000 AE AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS: IUTAM.Abstract
    We present a method for calculating the asymptotic shape of interacting vortex filaments in incompressible Euler flows using delay differential equations. Neglecting the filaments' core-size, the asymptotic shape of the filaments is self-similar up to logarithmic corrections, albeit non-universal. We demonstrate explicitly that the asymptotic geometry of the collapse of two interacting filaments depends on the pre-factor of the scaling law of their separation distance, the angle between the tangent vectors at their approaching tips, and the ratio of their circulations. We then explore the validity of the filament approximation in the limit of approaching the singularity. We show that a sufficiently fast stretching-rate to maintain this approximation is inconsistent with all collapse geometries. This suggests that a singular solution to the Euler equations based on stretching of vortex filaments is unlikely to exist for any initial conditions. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, University of Cambridge
    M. B. Prigozhin and M. Gruebele. 2013. “Microsecond folding experiments and simulations: a match is made.” Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 15, 10, Pp. 3372-3388. Publisher's VersionAbstract
    prigozhin_physchemchemphys_2013.pdf
    For the past two decades, protein folding experiments have been speeding up from the second or millisecond time scale to the microsecond time scale, and full-atom simulations have been extended from the nanosecond to the microsecond and even millisecond time scale. Where the two meet, it is now possible to compare results directly, allowing force fields to be validated and refined, and allowing experimental data to be interpreted in atomistic detail. In this perspective we compare recent experiments and simulations on the microsecond time scale, pointing out the progress that has been made in determining native structures from physics-based simulations, refining experiments and simulations to provide more quantitative underlying mechanisms, and tackling the problems of multiple reaction coordinates, downhill folding, and complex underlying structure of unfolded or misfolded states.
    W. R. F. Dent, W. F. Thi, I. Kamp, J. P. Williams, F. Menard, S. Andrews, D. Ardila, G. Aresu, J.-C. Augereau, D. Barrado y Navascues, S. Brittain, A. Carmona, D. Ciardi, W. Danchi, J. Donaldson, G. Duchene, C. Eiroa, D. Fedele, C. Grady, I. de Gregorio-Molsalvo, C. Howard, N. Huélamo, A. Krivov, J. Lebreton, R. Liseau, C. Martin-Zaidi, G. Mathews, G. Meeus, I. endigut\'ıa, B. Montesinos, M. Morales-Calderon, A. Mora, H. Nomura, E. Pantin, I. Pascucci, N. Phillips, C. Pinte, L. Podio, S. K. Ramsay, B. Riaz, P. Riviere-Marichalar, A. Roberge, G. Sand ell, E. Solano, I. Tilling, J. M. Torrelles, B. Vandenbusche, S. Vicente, G. J. White, and P. Woitke. 2013. “GASPS—A Herschel Survey of Gas and Dust in Protoplanetary Disks: Summary and Initial Statistics.” \pasp, 125, 927, Pp. 477-505.

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