A quantum Bose-Hubbard model with evolving graph as toy model for emergent spacetime

   "This toy model is also a condensed matter system in which the pattern of interaction itself is a quantum degree of freedom instead of being a fixed graph. It can be regarded as a Hubbard model where the strength of the hopping emerges as the mean field value for other quantum degrees of freedom. We show a numerical simulation of the quantum system and results on the asymptotic behavior of the classical system. The numerical simulation is mainly concerned with the entanglement dynamics of the system and the issue of its thermalization as a closed system. A closed system can thermalize in the sense that the partial system shows some typicality, or some relevant observables reach a steady or almost steady value for long times. The issue of thermalization for closed quantum system and the foundations of quantum statistical mechanics gained recently novel interest with the understanding that the role of entanglement plays in it [32]. The behavior of out of equilibrium quantum system under sudden quench, and the approach to equilibrium has been recently the object of study to gain insight in novel and exotic quantum phases like topologically ordered states."

Taken from:

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/0911.5075

Roberto Bolaño's Infrarealism Manifesto

O.K.

DÉJENLO TODO, NUEVAMENTE

LÁNCENSE A LOS CAMINOS

Roberto Bolaño, México, 1976

O.K.

LEAVE EVERYTHING,

TAKE ON THE ROADS AGAIN

Roberto Bolaño, México, 1976

Taken from:

Página Oficial del Movimiento Infrarrealista

This is wrong and unacceptable. Paul Krugman NYT

At this rate my children are going to be unemployed.

No more. Let us do something.

Read Krugman's piece here.

"The Federal Reserve, for example, expects unemployment, currently 10.2 percent, to stay above 8 percent — a number that would have been considered disastrous not long ago — until sometime in 2012."

That year again.

Horava-Lifshitz and Dark Energy

I belong to the LAGO collaboration. We want to measure Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) with photomultipliers (PMTs) inside water in plastic bags on top of mountains; the Mexican section in Sierra Negra. GRBs come from above directly towards the water; Cherenkov light is produced when charges are produced in the atmosphere and water. This light and charged particles,  go directly to the PMTs at the bottom of the bag. The bags are designed to stop other light from leaking in. The whole thing is inside huge metal cylindrical containers. I just saw one yesterday. Seven meters wide and almost three meters tall, with tons of water in.

Given that we are on the surface of the Earth, albeit at a high altitude, we can put tons of water there. This is someting Fermi LAT cannot do.

As the energy of the GRBs increases, lucky for us, the number of them decreases, otherwise we wouldn't be here. Therefore a tiny surface in space, with little matter, won't collect the highest energy rays. We expect to get above 100 GeV GRBs.

The question now is: What does theory predict?. I believe that given the huge energies, and likely big distances from the sources, that we have a way to study the vacuum.

A new proposal for Quantum Gravity, may help our searches. Horava-Lifshitz Gravity does have implications for Dark Energy.

We are studying this.

Lucha Libre!

I am not a fan of this sport. I played soccer when I was a kid in Mexico City, I never went to a single Lucha Libre fight, even though, the place was somehow near my home. However, I am a fan of Superbarrio.

Heather Levi says about him:

"There was no way to co-opt him because he didn't exist. He was incorruptible because he both existed but at the same time didn't exist."

He got a lot done for poor Mexicans after the devastating 1985 Mexico City earthquake.

Roberto Bolaño

This Latin American writer became famous when he died. I want to read 2666. I've already read, The Savage Detectives.

Life is mysterious.

The First Street of Solitude

The depressed

Los deprimidos

Caminan despacio con las manos

metidas en los bolsillos

agachan la cabeza y parece que

meditan pero no lo hacen

ellos solo buscan encontrar esos ojos

que les devuelva la ilusión por la vida.

Los deprimidos suelen pensar en suicidios

de otros, y parecen motivarse por ello

y muchas veces escriben poemas

en sus noches de insomnio.

Los deprimidos son hombres solos

siempre solos, y su soledad

los aísla del mundo; la soledad

y el estrés, son dos enfermedades

del mundo moderno;

los hombres, cuando están solos

buscan en foros de Internet

alguna mujer que imaginan hermosa

para sentir compañía;

las mujeres solas, describen su pena y

dolor y también buscan amantes

o de menos algún amigo querido;

al caminar la ciudad, ambos

los hombres solos y mujeres solas

son las almas en pena

de la vida moderna.

Taken from:

Edgar Altamirano

Translation:

The depressed


Walk slowly with their hands

inside their pockets

bow their heads down and it seems that

they meditate but they do not

they are only looking to find those eyes

that give them back hope for life.

The depressed use to think in suicides

of others, and they seem to get motivated by it

and many times they write poems

in their nights of insomnia.

The depressed are lonely men

always lonely, and their solitude

isolate them from the world; solitude

and stress, are two diseases

of the modern world;

men, when they are alone

search in Internet sites

some woman they imagine beautiful

to feel company;

lonely women, describe their sorrow and

pain and also search lovers

or at least some dear friend;

walking the city, both

lonely men and lonely women

are haunted souls

of modern life.

Hořava - Lifshitz (H-L)

Hořava - Lifshitz gravity is a possible realization of the most sought after improvement on Einstein's theory.

In this Note I write what I understand so far about it.

We have a change in the Idea of change, from Newton, to Einstein, to Hořava. With the last one similar to the first. Time and space separate, spacetime related, to time and space separate again. Newton ->Einstein->Hořava.

I don't know about you, but time mystifies me.

I am succinct here, Newton had to invent a metaphor. Time flows like a river, independently of everything, it is then absolute. All clocks are synchronized, maybe by a prime force at the moment of creation. All clocks, somehow know about all clocks, as if connecting with infinite velocity information signals.

Einstein thought that 299 792 458 m/s was a better number for this velocity. Now our current Natural Philosopher in residence at UC Berkeley has reasons to believe that in the beginning time was more like Newton thought.

Theoretical Physics is a mathematical game, whatever gives you the results of other games, you believe will appear more like the real thing. Here we are talking about a computer game. Ambjørn, Jurkiewicz and Loll invented Causal Dynamical Triangulation. They play it in a computer.

If they don't separate space and time, they get into a mess, so they do. For his own reasons the Berkeley Professor, Hořava. Had done the same trick, but he was more thorough. He fill in more details. When the computer model gave something close to what Hořava-Lifshitz got previously, he felt vindicated, and believes the computer discovered the same tricks independently.

I believe the new Idea of change is based on these elements. The problem of time, critical phenomena, and acceleration of the Universe. Somehow one must get rid of time at the beginning, otherwise the math gets non-sense. What is done in the H-L theory is to vanish it slowly, one goes from four dimensions, to a kind of two dimensional primeval soup. The heat must do something to time, in this sense is not at all like Newton's river that won't evaporate. It becomes fractal. He calculates a fractal dimension for time-space and gets the beautiful formula:

d_s = 1 + D/z

When z = 3 and D = 3, d_{s = 2. When z= 1 we are back in our immediate neighborhood, the Earth, with} d_s =4.

Obama on Science

Today, we are launching the "Educate to Innovate" campaign, a nationwide effort to help reach the goal this administration has set:  moving to the top in science and math education in the next decade.  We've got leaders from private companies and universities, foundations and non-profits, and organizations representing millions of scientists, engineers, and teachers from across America.  The initial commitment of the private sector to this campaign is more than $260 million –- and we only expect the campaign to grow.


"We’re going to show young people how cool science can be."


Taken from:


White House

Critique to Memes as Monads

According to Leibniz, a monad is one, no windows, nothing inside. Monadology would then be, the Theory of One.or TOO. Talking about the Theory of Everything, or TOE, we have the opposite. TOO is the logical negation of TOE. In my mind, though, they seem related, remember the saying: extremes meet.

How could a one, be a meme? Meme could be anything, so it could be all, or infinity, or it could be one. What I mean by monad as meme, is that any monad is a member of a meme. Using Category Theory, one can see that the one and the infinite, are categorically related. There will be contradictions in my way of conceptualizing meme and monad, but already  Bertrand Russell, many years ago, found them in Set Theory.

Memes and Monads

Gottfried Leibniz was an intellectual giant. His row with Newton produced one of the most undeserved media onslaughts in history. Germany, his country, has had a raw deal for centuries, maybe deservedly so, I won't defend authoritarians. He was just, plain and simply, a genius.

I am starting to study his Monadology, and I sense similarities with Memetics.

A meme is a cultural construct that remains, in the fight in Memespace.

It is hard to visualize an idea fighting for attention, but that is what I am talking about. This blog, Relevant Science is a meme, and I am doing poorly competing  with all those great blogs out there.

Now what is a monad?

This idea was invented in the seventeenth century. I believe that Leibniz, didn't visualize Memespace, as I do. Maybe he thought his memes were material, like atoms, or something. I believe that memes can be ideas that stay. A good tune, or song  is a meme. This Note you are reading, is a meme. Will any of the readers remember it?, If one does, it will start populating that person thinking space, some actual blood and nutrients will go to maintain the idea in her brain.

If my analogy, metaphor, or whatever you want to call it, remains; memes as monads will be part of culture. In that case Leibniz will be appreciated as the visionary that he was.

New Marshall Plan

Naomi Klein mentioned to Amy Goodman from Democracy Now!, the possibility of putting together two big problems: environmental degradation and human poverty.

I believe something like that is happening. Here in Guerrero, the Rector of the University said Saturday in his yearly State of the University Report, that more money came here from the Federal Government than never before. I believe it is still not enough, but I agree with his assessment. Ours, one of the poorest universities in Mexico has been "discovered" by the powers that be.

We do need a Marshall Plan, the time is Now.

From the Rolling Stone Magazine

"If we are to curb emissions in the next decade, we need a massive mobilization larger than any in history," Navarro declared at the end of her talk. "We need a Marshall Plan for the Earth. This plan must mobilize financing and technology transfer on scales never seen before. It must get technology onto the ground in every country to ensure we reduce emissions while raising people's quality of life. We have only a decade."

Prof. Strang Doesn't Have a Full House

I am enjoying the MIT gift to the world:

18.06 Linear Algebra

Is there anything wrong with MIT?

I'd expect a full house for such a great course. But, no. There are empty seats. Good that the material is online now, for the whole world to appreciate.

He gave Lecture 5 to Nobody in the first rows!

History of Math

"The central role of numbers in our world testifies to the brain’s uncanny ability to recognize and understand them—and Cantlon is among the researchers trying to find out exactly how that skill works. Traditionally, scientists have thought that we learn to use numbers the same way we learn how to drive a car or to text with two thumbs. In this view, numbers are a kind of technology, a man-made invention to which our all-purpose brains can adapt. History provides some support. The oldest evidence of people using numbers dates back about 30,000 years: bones and antlers scored with notches that are considered by archaeologists to be tallying marks. More sophisticated uses of numbers arose only much later, coincident with the rise of other simple technologies. The Mesopotamians developed basic arithmetic about 5,000 years ago. Zero made its debut in A.D. 876. Arab scholars laid the foundations of algebra in the ninth century; calculus did not emerge in full flower until the late 1600s.

...

One sign that this skill truly is innate: Children enter the world with a head for numbers. Veronique Izard, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard University, demonstrated this in a recent study of newborns. She and her colleagues played cooing sounds to babies, with varying numbers of sounds in each trial. The babies were then shown a set of shapes on a computer screen, and the scientists measured how long the babies gazed at it. (The length of time a baby spends looking at an object reflects its interest.) Newborns consistently looked longer at the screen when the number of shapes matched the number of sounds they had just heard. For example, a baby who heard “tuuu, tuuu, tuuu, tuuu” would look the longest at four shapes, less at eight, and still less at twelve. Izard’s study suggests that newborns already have a basic understanding of numbers. Moreover, their concept of numbers is abstract; they can transfer it across the senses from sounds to pictures.
...


Other primates, lacking our symbolic brains, take thousands of trials to learn a new rule."
Taken from:


Discover Magazine

Paul Leduc

Mexican artist.

I just saw ¿Cómo ves? again.

This time around, twenty three years later, I feel differently. Then Mexico could've gone in other direction, now the movie is prophetic. The scene with kids staring at the microphone and not knowing what to say is poignant.

Today the streets of any mid size Mexican city is full of graffiti. They still don't know what to say. Ugly stunted towns. Cultural desserts all over the place, rivers dying, politicians lying.

After one hundred years of revolution and two of independence, there is not much to show on the future of those children vacantly looking at a world there is no way they will understand high on glue.

Sad.

Is the UC System Too Big to Fail?

Please Mr. Obama don´t let the California System of higher education to fail. It is suicide.

The Certainty of Ideology

When I was in my early twenties I was clear in what was wrong and what was right. Now I am not so sure. I read Fidel Castro clearly acusing Colombia of helping the US to put military personnel there; lying about Chávez intentions.

"Such words can only serve to justify the aggressive plans of the United States and the blatant treachery of the Venezuelan oligarchy and counterrevolution to their homeland."


Maybe Fidel is right, but that certainty in an 83 year old man, makes me wonder.


Fidel is a giant ideologue, he will die like that. I guess I was never that much into certainty.

Activism

“We are planning to stay as long as possible,” Andi Walden, a 21-year-old senior in the building, said by cellphone. “It appears the police are getting ready to break down the doors and drag us out. We had to take direct action. The regents won’t respond to anything else.”


Taken from the NYT .


I agree.

Innovation

Google officially challenged Microsoft today. A new paradigm, if established, will change the winner from Windows to Google OS. I saw this coming since at least 1995, but then there was no rich kid in the block that could threatened the company at Redmond.

I feel more like an American than like a Chinese. Even though, at that level, one could also envisioned a shift. I feel more individualistic than a clog in a machine for the common good. I do not believe that the Chinese are better, or the Americans. Each people has its own history and culture. There is no apex of progress towards which all of us move.

If I am going to leave my mark on this earth, it will have to be as an individual, like Nikola Tesla, Steve Jobs, or Sergey Brin.

How does one do that?

Scenes from Proposition 13

I was there in the seventies when all this was being brewed. I didn`t know then. I just left, and went back to Mexico.

How will it look in 2020?

Disaster at UCLA

I Saw This Coming

AOL to Cut Its Work Force by One-Third

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By TIM ARANGO

Published: November 19, 2009

In recent years, amid the fallout from its audacious merger withTime Warner, AOL Inc. has steadily become smaller through subscriber desertions and rounds and rounds of layoffs.

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Times Topics: AOL LLC

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It is becoming smaller still.
On Thursday, AOL announced it would cut its work force by one-third by eliminating close to 2,500 workers. The move comes as the company prepares to be spun off from its parent company, Time Warner, into an independent, publicly traded company.
AOL said in a regulatory filing that the job cuts were meant to save about $300 million a year. It will take a $200 million restructuring charge to account for the severance costs. The company said it would ask for volunteers first, and then resort to layoffs if it didn’t get roughly 2,500 people to accept a buyout package.
Tim Armstrong, who became AOL’s chairman and chief executive in March after a successful and lucrative stint at Google, told employees in an e-mail message that he would not accept a bonus this year. In the message, he wrote, “as a member of our team and the person who takes accountability for the results of the company, I am making the decision to forgo my 2009 bonus. That decision is a personal one and is not a sign for the future payout of the overall bonus plan for employees.”
Mr. Armstrong, 38, was guaranteed a bonus of at least $1.5 million this year, according to a regulatory filing. His minimum base salary, according to his employment contract, is $1 million.
At its biggest, AOL had more than 20,000 employees in 2004. It currently has about 6,900 and after the latest round of layoffs will be left with about 4,400 workers, making it roughly a fifth of the size it once was.
In terms of what was once its core business — selling dial-up Internet access — AOL had the most subscribers in the third quarter of 2002, when it counted 26.7 million of them. At the end of the most recent quarter, it had 5.4 million. Through the first nine months of 2009, AOL lost 1.9 million subscribers, or more than 200,000 a month.
This business is still profitable for AOL, although it is declining rapidly. Mr. Armstrong, in the face of continuing declines in the access business, has singled out several areas for growth, including premium content, online mapping and local services, communications like instant messaging, and online advertising.
In an interview with The New York Times in July, Mr. Armstrong said of the company’s challenges: “AOL has a choice to make. We either lose slowly or win quickly. We are choosing to win quickly.”
Time Warner, whose merger with AOL in 2000 was disastrous for both companies, decided earlier this year to spin off its struggling Internet unit. The spinoff is scheduled to be completed by Dec. 9.
In the most recent quarter, AOL’s revenue was down 23 percent, or $235 million, to $777 million. Of this decline, $138 million was ascribed to a decline in subscriptions, while $92 million resulted from a drop in advertising.
AOL became a force on the Internet in the 1990s by offering its ubiquitous dial-up service, but fell behind as high-speed service became widespread and the access business became commoditized.
It used its high-flying status and its stratospheric stock price to essentially buy Time Warner in a deal announced in January 2000. The balance of power shifted in the ensuing years, and Time Warner dropped “AOL” from its name.
Its formal spinoff in the coming weeks will be the closing chapter of the ill-fated deal.

Ama et fac quod vis

Saint Augustin said da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo , Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.

The title of this note means:

Love and do as you please.

Near Chilpancingo there is an Augustinian seminary, in the City of Chilapa. I assume that the original Saint, explains the ideology of this Catholic Order. They are freer than the Franciscans, and others with poverty vows.

"Along with being a prominent figure in the religious spectrum, Augustine was also very influential in the history of education. He introduced the theory of three different categories of students, and instructed teachers to adapt their teaching styles to each student's individual learning style. The three different kinds of students are: the student who has been well-educated by knowledgeable teachers; the student who has had no education; and the student who has had a poor education, but believes himself to be well-educated."

From the Wikipedia article linked above.

Otomí Mathematics

"3. Weaving and embroidery.
 
        The Otomies have traditionally been highly regarded for their skills at textile arts, and I would like to examine the mathematics of Otomi weaving and embroidery. Some general observations about weaving and embroidery will motivate the mathematical considerations. I will focus on the Otomies, though many of my statements hold for traditional textile artists in general. Also, I will tend to refer to Otomi textile artists as female because most are women, though there are male weavers and embroiderers."

Taken from:

The Journal of Mathematics and Culture
October 2009, V4(1)
ISSN - 1558-5336

These present day Mexicans very likely belong to the oldest culture still living in Central Mexico.

My History of Mathematics Course

"La matemática se basó en hacer todos sus conteos con lo referente a la naturaleza por la necesidad de contar lo que tenían; así mismo en un principio, las nociones primitivas de número, magnitud y forma pueden haber estado relacionadas más bien con diferencias y contrastes que con semejanzas, tales como son la diferencia entre un lobo y muchos, la desigualdad en tamaño entre un pececillo y una ballena, el contraste entre la redondez de la luna y la derechura de un pino."

Translation: 

Mathematics was based on counting nature around them; thus in the beginning primitive notions of number, magnitude and shape could have been related rather with differences and contrasts than with similarities, as the differences in number between one wolf and many, in size between a little fish and a whale, the contrast between the roundness of the moon and the straightness of a pine tree.

This is the answer to the following question:

Describe the type of evidence on which an account of prehistoric mathematics is based, citing some specific instances.

I am pleased with this student's answer.

Antígona Segura

This Mexican Astrobiologist is a source for the search of life outside our Solar System.

You can visit her page here.

Exoplanet Characterization and the Search for Life

" Introduction

A few times in human history, astronomers have made discoveries that changed people’s view of the universe and of themselves. The most renowned of these was Copernicus’ suggestion, and Galileo’s subsequent proof, that the Earth orbited the Sun, rather than vice versa. This list should also include the discovery that stars are other Suns, that some nebulae are galaxies like our own, and that the universe began with a Big Bang some 13 billion years ago. We now stand at the brink of answering two other paradigm-changing questions: Do other planets like Earth exist, and do any of them harbor life? The tools for answering these questions either exist already or can be developed within the next 10-20 years.

The stellar energy flux incident on a planet drives its atmospheric chemistry to a disequilibrium state. But the degree of disequilibrium can be profoundly increased by the presence of life on a planet’s surface. As a prime example, the simultaneous presence of O₂ and reduced gases such as CH₄ or N₂O in a planet’s atmosphere is considered the best available remote evidence for Earth-like life.⁹

Marine plants and algae do this as well, although the effect is muted by overlying water. This red edge is easy to pick out if one looks directly at a leaf, or down from space at a patch of densely vegetated land.¹⁴

Nearly all of Earth’s O₂ comes from photosynthesis, which is carried out by plants, algae, and cyanobacteria. Predicted atmospheric O₂ concentrations prior to the origin of photosynthesis are too low to detect spectroscopically.¹⁵


References:
9. Lovelock JE. 1965. Nature 207: 568-70.
14. Sagan C, et al.,1993. Nature 365: 715-21.
15. Segura A, et al. 2007.Astrobiology 7: 494-5.


Taken from:
ArXive

Fire in Chilpancingo

Today we can read in a Chilpancingo newspaper that a drunkard burned the poor fruit stands of street vendors downtown at night.

It seems that in this town drunkards are really antisocial, I remember reading last month that a drunkard disappeared in a Government building after the authorities blamed students of attacking a Seven Eleven kind of joint outside campus. Later that night I saw a drunk man buying alcohol there, as I was going home.

I find these drunk people  in the news odd. Maybe politicians here drink a lot and their drinking buddies volunteer for the dirty work. Who knows, I don't drink.

Michael Scott

Tuesday, November 17, 2009 | Adjust font size: A A A Schools Programs Calendar News About CPS Contact CPS Enroll in a school Find a school Preschools Elementary schools High schools Academic and enrichment Before and after school Wellness and transportation Pathways to success Community District initiatives Key events Student days off Announcements Press releases At-a-glance CPS and the City of Chicago The Chicago Board of Education Departments Financial information Policies and guidelines Career opportunities Special initiatives Provide feedback Ask a question Share a story Share your ideas Frequently called numbers Home > About CPS > The Chicago Board of Education > Board Bios > Michael W. Scott Michael W. Scott President Michael W. Scott, who is also President of Michael Scott & Associates, LLC, has been appointed to the Chicago Board of Education on three separate occasions. His service to the Board is part of a larger body of service to the City of Chicago that spans three decades and four different mayoral administrations. Mr. Scott is a product of the Lawndale community and the Chicago Public Schools system. He graduated from Fordham University with a bachelor’s degree in urban planning and launched his career with Pyramidwest Development Corp., where he was Vice President. At Pyramidwest, he was instrumental in many North Lawndale developments, such as the rehabilitation of 1,500 housing units and construction of a 250-unit senior citizen center and a nursing home. He also helped to establish the Community Bank of Lawndale. Mr. Scott went on to become the Director of Community Development for the Lawndale People’s Planning and Action Council, from 1978 to 1982. It was during that time that Mr. Scott was appointed by Mayor Jane Byrne to his inaugural term on the Chicago Board of Education, from 1980 to 1981. As a board member, he was most recognized for marshalling support for a student desegregation plan and chairing the Committee on Real Estate. He went on to serve under the late Mayor Harold Washington, who appointed Mr. Scott as the Director of the Chicago Department of Special Events and Special Assistant to the Mayor in charge of Communications. Under the late Mayor Eugene Sawyer, he again served as Director of the Mayor’s Office of Special Events. As Mr. Scott moved on into the corporate sector, his influence and involvement in the cable industry grew. He served as the General Manager for Prime Cable, the Vice President of Local Government Affairs for AT&T Broadband, and Vice President of Regulatory Affairs for the Comcast Corporation. In 2001, he formed and became President of Michael Scott & Associates, LLC., a real estate development and investment firm Some of Mr. Scott’s most notable contributions to the city stem from heading both the Chicago Park District Board and the Chicago Board of Education. He was appointed President of the Chicago Park District Board in 1996, overseeing the Park District’s Citywide Capital Improvement Program. Among his accomplishments, Mr. Scott was the catalyst for the restoration of the Garfield Park Conservatory. He also increased the Park District’s non-tax revenue from $20 million to $110 million, sparing taxpayers from a tax increase by addressing the district’s financial needs through a system of privatization. Mr. Scott served his second term on the Chicago Board of Education from 2001 until 2006, appointed by Mayor Richard M. Daley as President. During this time, Chicago Public Schools achieved all-time high scores on academic tests and organized aggressive back-to-school campaigns that resulted in some of the highest first-day attendance rates in the district’s history. These high attendance rates translated into huge educational benefits for students, as well as more than $100 million in additional state funds to support the system. Known for his staunch support of parents and their inclusion in the educational development of their children, Mr. Scott conceptualized and launched a two-day parent involvement conference, titled Power of Parents, which draws thousands of parents each year. Additionally, in 2005, Mr. Scott launched a new program called “Having a Ball,’’ a ballroom dancing-based curriculum for 5th graders, which includes the study of the history, culture, geography and music surrounding a variety of international dances. The program began as a pilot in a few schools and is still spreading throughout the district. The program’s lessons include character building and physical education, culminating with a dance competition for students each year. In 2006, Mr. Scott was appointed to the National Board of Directors of YMCA of the USA. The national office provides support and leadership to the country’s 2,617 local YMCAs. In 2007, he was appointed to the Board of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, where he served for one year and then was appointed by Mayor Daley to sit on the Board of Directors for the Regional Transportation Authority, where he still serves. Mr. Scott was recently appointed by Mayor Daley to the Chicago 2016 Olympic Committee and continues to serve on the boards of the Chicago Urban League, After School Matters, the Better Boys Foundation, and the National Board for buildOn, as well as many other non-profit and civic organizations. In February, 2009, Mr. Scott was appointed by Mayor Daley to his third term on the Board of Education, again as President. I want to... Enroll in a school Find a school Get involved View 2009-2010 calendars Check my child's grades View 2010-2011 directories I want to... Enroll in a school Find a school Get involved Get help with homework Check my grades I want to... Get involved Donate Find a school Access press releases Get a copy of my transcripts I want to... Become a partner Donate Find a school Access press releases I want to... Access staff information See New Teacher Summer Info Resources for: Parents Students Community Partners Staff Related links Note archives Provide feedback

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