Creative Computing Challenge: A Teacher Professional Development to Enhance Non-Computing Career and Technical Education Curriculum with Engaging Computational Practices for All Students (Poster Abstract)

The Creative Computing Challenge (CCC) project (2014-2018) is funded by the National Science Foundation and is designed to broaden participation in computing by providing professional development (PD) for high school teachers at Career & Technical Education (CTE) programs throughout the state of New Hampshire. Teachers receive a stipend and tablets for their classrooms; they attend several in-person PD sessions through the year, where master teachers and PD facilitators introduce modeling of inquiry and equity-based practices, as well as teach the App Inventor tool and how to inculcate computational thinking in students. Project evaluation has included teacher interviews, classroom and PD observations, as well as student and teacher surveys. External evaluation of this project has been an integral part of the project from the beginning and, along with the project team’s observations and input, has significantly reshaped the project activities. It became clear after the first year that a central challenge of this project would be working with a mix of teachers across multiple domains -- from teachers who had little experience even using computers to teachers who had computer science degrees; from teachers who came to teaching from professional backgrounds to those who had education degrees; and from beginning teachers to those who had been teaching the same courses for twenty years. Through evaluation data and really listening to teacher feedback, we not only tailored the PD content and structure, but also refined the data collection instruments and evaluation design to bridge the gap between different teacher experiences and levels of preparation. As a result, we have been able to bring computing into non-technical content areas such as Hospitality and nonprogramming classes such as Photography, as well as support computing educations in New Hampshire CTE programs. In Year 4, we now better understand the range of benefits and challenges involved in working with CTE programs and inserting CCC-inspired curricular modules in non-computing courses

Evidence of road salt in New Hampshire’s snowpack hundreds of meters from roadways

Salinization of surface and groundwater has been directly linked to the area of road surfaces in a watershed and the subsequent wintertime maintenance used to keep roads free of snow and ice. Most studies that explore road salt in snow along roadways limit the study to within 100 m from a roadway and conclude that there is negligible deposition of de-icing salt at distances greater than 100 m. In this study, we analyze the ion content of the southern New Hampshire snowpack and use Mg2+ as a conservative sea-salt tracer to calculate sea salt and non-sea salt fractions of Cl−. There is a minimum of 60% non-sea salt Cl−, which we attribute to road salt, in the snowpack at our study sites 115 to 350 m from the nearest maintained roadways. This suggests that larger areas need to be considered when investigating the negative impact of Cl− loading due to winter-time maintenance

The Future of Dams Project: Governance Statement

This governance statement sets out shared principles to guide our work and our relationships with each other on the New England Sustainability Consortium’s Future of Dams project. This is a living document, meant to evolve as our partnership evolves. Rather than offering an exhaustive catalog, this governance statement is meant to serve as a touchstone to prompt important conversations about conduct, conflict resolution, authorship, expectations, data sharing, and assessment

Trophic upgrading and mobilization of wax esters in microzooplankton

Heterotrophic protists play pivotal roles in aquatic ecosystems by transferring matter and energy, including lipids, from primary producers to higher trophic predators. Using Oxyrrhis marina as a model organism, changes to the non-saponifiable protist lipids were investigated under satiation and starvation conditions. During active feeding on the alga Cryptomonas sp., the O. marina hexane soluble non-saponifiable fraction lipid profile reflected its food source with the observed presence of long chain mono-unsaturated fatty alcohols up to C25:1. Evidence of trophic upgrading in O. marina was observed with long chain mono-unsaturated fatty alcohol accumulation of up to C35:1. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first evidence that heterotrophic dinoflagellates are capable of producing ester derived alcohols and that dinoflagellates like O. marina are capable of synthesizing fatty alcohols up to C 35 . Additionally, we show evidence of trophic upgrading of lipids. During a 20-day resource deprivation, the lipid profile remained constant. During starvation, the mobilization of wax esters as energy stores was observed with long chain fatty alcohols mobilized first. Changes in lipid class profile and utilization of wax esters in O. marina provides insight into the types of lipids available for energy demand, the transfer of lipids through the base of marine food webs, and the catabolic response induced by resource deprivation

Forests in Flux: The Effects of Demographic Change on Forest Cover in New England and New York

This brief contributes to a better understanding of the linkages between demographic and forest cover change so as to inform policy efforts aimed at maintaining existing forested areas in and around sprawling urban centers. Authors Mark Ducey, Kenneth Johnson, Ethan Belair, and Miranda Mockrin report that forest cover has declined throughout New England and New York over the last decade. In rural areas, forest loss is primarily due to commercial timber harvesting and represents a temporary change. Conversely, forest cover decline in urban areas is usually the result of development and is likely to be permanent. Forest cover change is strongly linked to demographic variables throughout this region. Forest cover loss is most pronounced along the urban fringe, where population growth is greatest. Amenity-rich rural areas are also experiencing high rates of population growth and regionally-high rates of forest cover loss. However, the causes of forest cover change in these areas are less certain. Forest cover change has the potential to impact ecosystem services important to both local residents and the larger region

Tunable plasmonic resonances in highly porous nano-bamboo Si-Au superlattice-type thin films

We report on fabrication of spatially-coherent columnar plasmonic nanostructure superlattice-type thin films with high porosity and strong optical anisotropy using glancing angle deposition. Subsequent and repeated depositions of silicon and gold lead to nanometer-dimension subcolumns with controlled lengths. The superlattice-type columns resemble bamboo structures where smaller column sections of gold form junctions sandwiched between larger silicon column sections ("nano-bamboo"). We perform generalized spectroscopic ellipsometry measurements and finite element method computations to elucidate the strongly anisotropic optical properties of the highly-porous nano-bamboo structures. The occurrence of a strongly localized plasmonic mode with displacement pattern reminiscent of a dark quadrupole mode is observed in the vicinity of the gold subcolumns. We demonstrate tuning of this quadrupole-like mode frequency within the near-infrared spectral range by varying the geometry of the nano-bamboo structure. In addition, coupled-plasmon-like and inter-band transition-like modes occur in the visible and ultra-violet spectral regions, respectively. We elucidate an example for the potential use of the nano-bamboo structures as a highly porous plasmonic sensor with optical read out sensitivity to few parts-per-million solvent levels in water