“A fundamental concern for others in our individual and community lives would go a long way in making the world the better place we so passionately dreamt of.”

~Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)

The state of Kentucky is a leader in the global focus on local foods and the sustainable agricultural movement. This lecture is the first of an ongoing conversation about the human piece of sustaining community.  Join us in a conversation with chef/entrepreneur/community leader Ouita Michel in discussing how to take Mandela’s ideas of remaking the world around you to reflect the humanity of others and apply them to the business of building good community in Lexington.  

Thursday, March 27 from 6-8pm in the Hardymon Theater (Marksbury Building)

The Conference on Political and Economic Inequality 

Featuring Ellen Goodman, Dean Baker, & Kathy Stein

Free and open to the public.  

Schedule of events: 

Questions? contact Ron Formisano, History, University of Kentucky  rform2@email.uky.edu

As part of the AAAS Social Science Speaker Series, Karyn Lacy will present a talk titled,  “Growing Up Around Blacks:  Identity Construction in Middle-Class Suburbia”

Sponsored by:  African American and Africana Studies and Sociology

Karyn Lacy is Associate professor of Sociology and African American Studies at the University of Michigan. She is a Ford Fellow, and was a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation. Her book Blue-Chip Black: Race, Class, and Status in the New Black Middle Class (University of California Press) received the Oliver Cromwell Cox Book Award from the American Sociological Association’s Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities. Lacy’s current work explores the construction and reproduction of racial and class-based identities among members of an elite social organization. 

Description of Dr. Lacy's upcoming talk:  While white ethnics and immigrants of color have been studied in terms of their attempts to assimilate into the American mainstream, sociologists assume that ongoing racial discrimination obviates the need for an extensive examination of the actual assimilation trajectories of middle-class blacks.  Many middle-class blacks travel from the black to the white world rather than existing exclusively in one racially distinct environment. Yet, we do not fully understand how middle-class blacks conceptualize their own integration into American society. Drawing on data collected through in-depth interviews with middle-class blacks and ethnographic research in a white and a black suburb, I establish the link between an affinity for black spaces and the alternative assimilation trajectories of middle-class blacks. I find that middle-class blacks engage in a variant of segmented assimilation, privileging the black world as a site for socializing even if they live in a white suburb.  This selective pattern of assimilation, what I term strategic assimilation, suggests that this population of middle-class blacks does not perceive itself as permanently constrained to the bottom rung of a racial hierarchy.

Title:  Sub-Exponential Decay Estimates on Trace Norms of Localized Functions of Schrodinger Operators

Abstract:  In 1973, Combes and Thomas discovered a general technique for showing exponential decay of eigenfunctions. The technique involved proving the exponential decay of the resolvent of the Schrodinger operator localized between two distant regions. Since then, the technique has been applied to several types of Schrodinger operators. Recent work has also shown the Combes–Thomas method works well with trace class and Hilbert–Schmidt type operators. In this talk, we build on those results by applying the Combes–Thomas method in the trace, Hilbert–Schmidt, and other trace-type norms to prove sub-exponential decay estimates on functions of Schrodinger operators localized between two distant regions.

Gender & Women's Studies is having our Breckinridge Bash, which includes course listings for the Fall 2014 semester.  

Title:  Compressible Navier-Stokes equations with temperature dependent dissipation

Abstract:  From its physical origin, the viscosity and heat conductivity coe!cients in compressible fluids depend on absolute temperature through power laws. The mathematical theory on the well-posedness and regularity on this setting is widely open. I will report some recent progress on this direction, with emphasis on the lower bound of temperature, and global existence of solutions in one or multiple dimensions. The relation between thermodynamics laws and Naiver-Stokes equations will also be discussed. This talk is based on joint works with Weizhe Zhang.