A Value Focused Thinking Approach to Academic Course Scheduling

In 1997, the School of Engineering of the United States Air Force Institute of Technology began exploring ways of automating the academic course scheduling process. The administration desired an expedient approach for course scheduling which supports the institute\u27s mission of providing scientific and technological education to officers from all branches of military service, as well as international military forces. The scheduling approach needed to be flexible, efficient, and represent the institute\u27s values and principles. Decision Analysis (DA) and specifically, Value Focused Thinking (VFT), is used to decompose the complex problem of academic course scheduling and determine the factors that are important in a schedule. An MS Excel based Decision Support System generates a Mixed Integer Program (MIP). The MIP formulation combines the institute\u27s goals with facility constraints, faculty preferences, student preferences, and administration guidance to develop an academic course schedule representative of the institute\u27s values

Chiasmatic Narrative and Twisted Subjectivity in Kanai Mieko's Boshizô

The article provides a reading, from a psychoanalytic point of view, of Japanese writer Kanai Mieko's short tale Boshizô (Portrait of Mother and Child), published in 1992, as a "twisted" or "contorted" parable of the construction of female subjectivity. Establishing connections between the form and the content of the novel, the essay analyzes how Kanai's use of the rhetorical figure of the chiasmus structures the internal narrative of the novel at the same time that it reflects the process of formation of female subjectivity and desire. The novel becomes, thus, a staging of the female Oedipus complex which plays out its twists

Oral History Interview: Steve A. Knighton

This interview is one of a series conducted concerning the Kanawha County textbook controversy of 1974. This interview contains a subject index prepared by the interviewer. Steve Knighton was an educational administrator in Charleston, West Virginia. He discusses: his wife and family; his education (grade school, high school, and college); his employment history; historical information about 1974, which was the time of the Kanawha County textbook controversy; a brief section on his political views; Mary Alice Moore, a board member who objected to the textbooks; the textbooks themselves; the minority population and the desegregation of schools; sex education; some information about school policies that allow parents to remove children from classes they find offensive; motives behind the controversy; books parents found objectionable; the events of the controversy (including strikes, picket lines, and violence); a brief section on multiculturalism; the media reaction to the controversy; some information about the results of the controversy; school policies and Knighton\u27s relationship to the school administration at the time; an outline of school policies about religious holidays; a short section on similar controversies elsewhere and the textbooks publishers\u27 reactions; lessons he learned from the controversy; and other topics.https://mds.marshall.edu/oral_history/1601/thumbnail.jp

Panel. Gifting and Debt

Intruder in the Dust: Money, Gifting, and the Nobel Prize / Michael Wainwright, Royal Holloway. University of LondonBanking on his publisher’s continued interest in his work, and apparently speculating on the possible award of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the gifted William Faulkner, struggling with the atypical A Fable, and with a perilously low bank balance, temporarily but concertedly reinvested himself in Yoknapatawpha County. The first major result of this expenditure was Intruder in the Dust (1948), which helped to secure him the 1949 Nobel Prize, but as Faulkner’s novel suggests, this award draws on related yet contradictory economies: while the conferral of esteem belongs to the economy of the gift, the financial benefits belong to the economy of money. The theoretical considerations of Jacques Derrida in Counterfeit Money (1992) confirm this suggestion in helping to parse the account of gifting opened at the beginning of Intruder in the Dust and intentionally never closed.Racial Debts, Individual Slights, and Sleights of Hand in Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust / Mary A. Knighton, Aoyama Gakuin UniversityDespite a long career peddling his wares in the literary marketplace, Faulkner’s real path to financial security only came with his novel Intruder in the Dust (1948), published to the fanfare of its Hollywood movie contract. The Nobel Prize in the wake of Intruder as both novel and film cemented Faulkner’s financial and cultural success. In this talk, I explore how money circulates within and outside the novel’s story to encompass both the complex alchemy of debt between Chick Mallison and Lucas Beauchamp and also Faulkner’s change of fortunes in attaining global cultural capital. In particular, I draw attention to how Faulkner’s fictional families form a money nexus that Lucas Beauchamp disrupts. Even as Faulkner’s families are spun from the “dust” of history, they tell a larger resonant story about future manipulations of wealth by those in power, which shapes what families and history itself could look like.What’s Love Got To Do With It: The Price of Ice Cream in “Mississippi” / Zoran Kuzmanovich, Davidson College I examine Faulkner’s complex use of debt and recompense in “Mississippi”: as blueprint for humane (orderly and unracialized) exchange of goods and services linking “Mississippi” to the beginning and end of Intruder in the Dust, as ritualized language having to do with ultimate beginnings and ends (“the sermon owed to her”), as flooding (“Old Man said, ‘I do what I want to, when I want to. But I pay my way’”), and as ice cream. Seen in light of this comprehensive rhetorical strategy, Faulkner’s treatment of debt in this essay offers a more balanced portrait of Caroline Barr and of Faulkner, one in which there is as much room for a sense of nobility and solidarity as there is for a sense of “hyperracialized” ownership created for some readers by Faulkner’s paternalistic linking of Callie Barr’s service and (funeral service) to slavery and subordination

Visualization of Science Supported by NADP Measurements

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Avoidable 30‐day readmissions in patients undergoing vascular surgery

Background: Vascular surgery has one of the highest unplanned 30-day readmission rates of all surgical specialities. The degree to which these may be avoidable and the optimal strategies to reduce their occurrence is unknown. The aim of this study was to identify and classify avoidable 30-day readmissions in patients undergoing vascular surgery in order to plan targeted interventions to reduce their occurrence, improve outcomes and reduce cost. Methods: A retrospective analysis of discharges over a 12-month period from a single tertiary vascular unit was performed. A multidisciplinary panel conducted a manual case note review to identify and classify those 30-day unplanned emergency readmissions deemed avoidable. Results: An unplanned 30-day readmission occurred in 72/885 (8.1%) admissions. These unplanned readmissions were deemed avoidable in 50.0% (36/72) and were most frequently due to unresolved medical issues (19/36, 52.8%) and inappropriate admission with the potential for outpatient management (7/36, 19.4%). A smaller number were due to inadequate social care provision (4/36, 11.1%) and the occurrence of other avoidable adverse events (4/36, 11.1%). Conclusion: Half of all 30-day readmissions in vascular patients are potentially avoidable. Multidisciplinary coordination of inpatient care and the transition from hospital to community care following discharge need to be improved

Synthesis and luminescent properties of hetero-bimetallic and hetero-trimetallic Ru( ii )/Au( i ) or Ir( iii )/Au( i ) complexes

A series of Ru(ii) and Ir(iii) based photoluminescent complexes were synthesised that incorporate an ancillary 2,2′-bipyridine ligand adorned with either one or two pendant N-methyl imidazolium groups. These complexes have been fully characterised by an array of spectroscopic and analytical techniques. One Ir(iii) example was unequivocally structurally characterised in the solid state using single crystal X-ray diffraction confirming the proposed formulation and coordination sphere. These complexes were then transformed into their heterometallic, Au(i)-containing, analogues in two steps to yield either bi- or trimetallic complexes that integrate {Au(PPh3)}+ units. X-ray diffraction was used to corroborate the solid state structure of the hetero bimetallic complex, based upon a Ru(ii)–Au(i) species. The heterometallic complexes all displayed red photoluminescent features (λem = 616–629 nm) that were consistent with the parent Ru(ii) or Ir(iii) lumophores in each case. The modulation of the emission from the Ru(ii)–Au(i) complexes was much more strongly evident than for the Ir(iii)–Au(i) analogues, which is ascribed to the inherent differences in the specific triplet excited state character of the emitting states within each heterometallic species

Pump Pulse Bandwidth-Activated Nonlinear Phononic Coupling in CdWO4_4

To control structure-function relationships in solids with light, we must harness the shape of the potential energy surface, as expressed in anharmonic coupling coefficients. We use two-dimensional terahertz (THz) spectroscopy to identify trilinear coupling between sets of vibrational modes in CdWO$_4$. It is generally understood that efficient trilinear coupling occurs when the frequencies of two coupled modes add or subtract to the frequency of the third mode. Interestingly, we observe that this condition is not necessary: the THz driving-pulse itself can activate the coupling by contributing broad frequency content to the initial motion of the excited modes. Understanding that the bandwidth of the driving force can activate energy-flow pathways has broad implications for coherent control of collective modes using intense THz light pulses.Comment: 27 Pages, 15 Figure