Exploring Leadership Skill Development: Adolescents

The future of America is entrusted to today’s youth. A promising future is only possible if our young people “learn to be leaders.” Youth need to become engaged in civic affairs and community, state, and national issues. But how are our youth preparing for leadership roles in the future? And how are we helping them prepare? Cynicism and voter apathy among the 18 to 25-year-old demographic group are indicators that adults need to give more attention to the development of leadership in young people. Many people who study leadership believe that leaders are made, not born, indicating that parents and educators have an important role to play in helping youth learn and develop leadership skills

Note on SLE and logarithmic CFT

It is discussed how stochastic evolutions may be linked to logarithmic conformal field theory. This introduces an extension of the stochastic Loewner evolutions. Based on the existence of a logarithmic null vector in an indecomposable highest-weight module of the Virasoro algebra, the representation theory of the logarithmic conformal field theory is related to entities conserved in mean under the stochastic process.Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX, v2: version to be publishe

Mixed-Age Groups in After-School and Out-Of-School Time Programs

Formal education may have come full circle. Schools have evolved from multi-aged one-room school houses to single-age classrooms, and now some schools are returning to multi-aged classrooms. Educators are revisiting the concept and promise of mixed-age groupings to encourage individual learning and development in a diverse environment

Adult Attitudes About Youth Participation in Community Organizations

Many youth development professionals advocate for youth participation in civic and community organizations, but how do the leaders of these organizations feel about inviting youth to become partners in the decision-making process? A small-scale survey indicated that one-fourth of the responding organizations in South Dakota currently had some level of youth participation. More than half of the leaders of the remaining organizations indicated that youth should be consulted and invited to participate as members of their organizations. Youth development professionals should be encouraged by these results to explore potential youth and adult partnerships within their communities

3D simulations of self-propelled, reconstructed jellyfish using vortex methods

We present simulations of the vortex dynamics associated with the self-propelled motion of jellyfish. The geometry is obtained from image segmentation of video recordings from live jellyfish. The numerical simulations are performed using three-dimensional viscous, vortex particle methods with Brinkman penalization to impose the kinematics of the jellyfish motion. We study two types of strokes recorded in the experiment1. The first type (stroke A) produces two vortex rings during the stroke: one outside the bell during the power stroke and one inside the bell during the recovery stroke. The second type (stroke B) produces three vortex rings: one ring during the power stroke and two vortex rings during the recovery stroke. Both strokes propel the jellyfish, with stroke B producing the highest velocity. The speed of the jellyfish scales with the square root of the Reynolds number. The simulations are visualized in a fluid dynamics video.Comment: 1 page, 1 figur

Minor parties and independents in times of change: Scottish local elections 1974 to 2007

This article explores the electoral performance of minor party and Independent candidates in Scottish local elections from 1974 to 2007. This is a period which began with a major restructuring of local government and ended with a change in the electoral system from first-past-the-post to the single transferable vote. It encompasses a second restructuring in the 1990s, the consolidation of the Scottish National Party as an electoral force, and the creation of the Scottish Parliament. Throughout the period, while there have been ebbs and flows, Independents and minor parties have remained significant players in local electoral politics in Scotland

Models for energy and charge transport and storage in biomolecules

Two models for energy and charge transport and storage in biomolecules are considered. A model based on the discrete nonlinear Schrodinger equation with long-range dispersive interactions (LRI's) between base pairs of DNA is offered for the description of nonlinear dynamics of the DNA molecule. We show that LRI's are responsible for the existence of an interval of bistability where two stable stationary states, a narrow, pinned state and a broad, mobile state, coexist at each value of the total energy. The possibility of controlled switching between pinned and mobile states is demonstrated. The mechanism could be important for controlling energy storage and transport in DNA molecules. Another model is offered for the description of nonlinear excitations in proteins and other anharmonic biomolecules. We show that in the highly anharmonic systems a bound state of Davydov and Boussinesq solitons can exist.Comment: 12 pages (latex), 12 figures (ps