Multicultural Considerations for Building Learning Communities

Educational policies call for inclusion and attention to cultural differences in our schools. Administrators, classroom educators, counselors, and other support staff attempt to attend to students through a cooperative effort of connecting with the community beyond the school building, as well as the families represented within it. As Christians, there is a higher calling to truly embrace those often underserved in our learning communities. This paper will address multicultural issues important for United States and United Kingdom school system staff to be mindful of when focusing on students and their families

Realizing Art in Multiple Media: How Different Art Forms Capitalize on Varying Elements of Artistic Communication

Art involves a very large and diverse collection of practices which humanity utilizes to express and communicate. Though these forms are highly similar in many ways, each holds a unique strength in relation to the others. This project was organized in an attempt to illustrate how several particular art forms excel in communicating in very diverse ways

Declining Unionization: Do Fringe Benefits Matter?

This study examines whether there is a relationship between benefits and private sector unionization in the US. In their regression analysis, the authors use FRINGE in their as an explanatory variable. The dependent variable is UNIZ, the fraction of the private, non-farm labor force that is unionized. The changing nature of compensation has affected union density. In the private sector, as fringe benefits have become a more prominent component of workers' pay, ceteris paribus, union density has declined nationwide. Over the fifty-year period 1948-1997, at least 12% of the drop in unionization can be attributed to the growing role of non-wage benefits. For the private sector in general and manufacturing in particular, the authors have established that unionization is related to the composition of pay. Yet the influence of non-wage benefits may vary across industries or even different subsectors of manufacturing. It remains to be seen whether there are similar findings for other sectors.

The blob complex

Given an n-manifold M and an n-category C, we define a chain complex (the "blob complex") B_*(M;C). The blob complex can be thought of as a derived category analogue of the Hilbert space of a TQFT, and as a generalization of Hochschild homology to n-categories and n-manifolds. It enjoys a number of nice formal properties, including a higher dimensional generalization of Deligne's conjecture about the action of the little disks operad on Hochschild cochains. Along the way, we give a definition of a weak n-category with strong duality which is particularly well suited for work with TQFTs.Comment: 106 pages. Version 3 contains many improvements following suggestions from the referee and others, and some additional materia

Junior Faculty Engagement at iSchools: Personal Experience during the First Several Years

This roundtable discussion will explore how junior faculty at iSchools have been able to embed their research, teaching, and service activities within their schools, the larger institutions, and broader communities. The session will also focus on the ways in which junior faculty have received guidance in their roles--from the job search through the first several years in a tenure-track position. Roundtable leaders represent a variety of institutions and experiences--as faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [WJM], the University of Maryland [SP], the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill [PME], and the University of Texas at Austin [MW], and with doctoral-level preparation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill [WJM, MW], the University of Toronto [SP], and the University of Washington [PME]. While the annual junior faculty mentoring event at the iConference specifically targets junior faculty as participants, this roundtable session offers a more inclusive environment for the discussion of this topic, specifically engaging doctoral students and senior faculty as well as their junior colleagues

Next-Generation QTL Mapping: Crowdsourcing SNPs, Without Pedigrees

For many molecular ecologists, the mantra and mission of the field of ecological genomics could be encapsulated by the phrase ‘to find the genes that matter’ (Mitchell-Olds 2001; Rockman 2012). This phrase of course refers to the early hope and current increasing success in the search for genes whose variation underlies phenotypic variation and fitness in natural populations. In the years since the modern incarnation of the field of ecological genomics, many would agree that the low-hanging fruit has, at least in principle, been plucked: we now have several elegant examples of genes whose variation influences key adaptive traits in natural populations, and these examples have revealed important insights into the architecture of adaptive variation (Hoekstra et al. 2006; Shapiro et al. 2009; Chan et al. 2010). But how well will these early examples, often involving single genes of large effect on discrete or near-discrete phenotypes, represent the dynamics of adaptive change for the totality of phenotypes in nature? Will traits exhibiting continuous rather than discrete variation in natural populations have as simple a genetic basis as these early examples suggest (Prasad et al. 2012; Rockman 2012)? Two papers in this issue (Robinson et al. 2013; Santure et al. 2013) not only suggest answers to these questions but also provide useful extensions of statistical approaches for ecological geneticists to study the genetics of continuous variation in nature. Together these papers, by the same research groups studying evolution in a natural population of Great Tits (Parus major), provide a glimpse of what we should expect as the field begins to dissect the genetic basis of what is arguably the most common type of variation in nature, and how genome-wide surveys of variation can be applied to natural populations without pedigrees.Organismic and Evolutionary Biolog

Response to Langmore and Spottiswoode: “Visual Trickery in Avian Brood Parasites”

Organismic and Evolutionary Biolog

A Framing and Tone Analysis of Donald Trump Comments on Immigration and Jobs in National Newspapers

The unique candidacy of Donald Trump provided an opportunity to study how he talked about issues, specifically the issues of immigration and jobs from a framing and tone persepctive. Such a perspective can provide insight as to how audiences perceive these issues. Specifically, this project examined the kind of framing Trump used in his comments on immigration and jobs:episodic or thematic, as well as the kinds of tone used in his comments:positive, negative, or neutral. A sample of 118 news articles from the Los Angeles Times, TheNew York Times, the Tampa Bay Times, and the Washington Post found that on immigration, Trump used episodic framing less often than non-episodic framing, and used thematic framing more often than non-thematic framing. His comments on immigration were more often negative than positive or neutral. There is no difference in his usage of episodic frames from non-episodic frames for jobs, but he did use thematic framing more often than non-thematic framing. His comments on jobs were more often negative than positive or neutral. This study concludes that Trump talked about immigration and jobs in grand and lofty terms short of details, and the negative tone dominates all his comments.His bleak view of the two most important issues in American politics might be the most extreme in history