Now that you have successfully finished your first semester at UK, are you ready to get more involved on campus? Check out the Student Involvement Fair, this Wednesday from 11:00am-1:00pm at Barker Hall and the Buell Armory! Clubs from all across campus will have representatives and free things to give away! While you're at the fair, come stop by the Sigma Tau Delta table and swipe in with Ann Baillie for Wired credit! We hope to see you there!

Please mark your calendars and plan to attend our first Re-Wire event of the semester!!! This is our WELCOME BACK event, and will be held on Monday, January 25, in the CC2  4^th floor rotunda from 8:30 – 9:00 PM.  We will have fun activities and pizza – we hope to see you there!

 

Coupling constants are fundamental quantities determining the strength of a force. I will discuss $\alpha_s$, the coupling constant of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of strong interactions. In spite of their name, coupling constants evolve with the distance scale at which the interactions occur. While $\alpha_s$ is well understood at short distance, typically $10^{-16}$ meter, its behavior is less clear at larger distance. After discussing $\alpha_s$ at short distance, I will describe experimental and theoretical works investigating its behavior at large distance. One theoretical framework that will be discussed is Holographic QCD, or AdS/QCD, a semi-classical approximation of QCD. It leads to an excellent parameter-free description of both $\alpha_s$ at large distance and of the hadron mass spectrum. The determination of the hadron mass spectrum has been a long-sought goal of QCD. That this can be achieved with a well-justified parameter-free approximation of QCD is an exciting development.