CHARTER SCHOOL TEACHER SATISFACTION AND THE FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO AND PREDICT SATISFACTION

The purpose of this study was to identify the overall job satisfaction level and the most robust predictors of overall satisfaction of K-12 charter school teachers. Understanding the overall satisfaction level of charter school teachers and what makes up their overall satisfaction may assist charter school leaders in being more informed to address teacher attrition, mobility, and retention in charter schools. This quantitative study utilized a survey research method to address five research questions. Teachers in K-12 charter schools located in the state of Florida were invited to complete a survey on teacher satisfaction which included the 20 items of the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire—Short Form. The 114 K-12 charter school teachers surveyed were found to be significantly satisfied with their jobs. “The chance to do things for other people” and “work independence” were found to be the most statistically significant job factors of which participants felt most satisfied. Additionally, “working conditions” and “supervisory/workplace” were found to be the most robust predictors of overall charter school teacher satisfaction at a statistically significant level. Implications of the study include strategies for recruiting, growing, and retaining high quality teachers working in charter schools

Powering a Biosensor Using Wearable Thermoelectric Technology

Wearable medical devices such as insulin pumps, glucose monitors, hearing aids, and electrocardiograms provide necessary medical aid and monitoring to millions of users worldwide. These battery powered devices require battery replacement and frequent charging that reduces the freedom and peace of mind of users. Additionally, the significant portion of the world without access to electricity is unable to use these medical devices as they have no means to power them constantly. Wearable thermoelectric power generation aims to charge these medical device batteries without a need for grid power. Our team has developing a wristband prototype that uses body heat, ambient air, and heat sinks to create a temperature difference across thermoelectric modules thus generating ultra-low voltage electrical power. A boost converter is implemented to boost this voltage to the level required by medical device batteries. Our goal was to use this generated power to charge medical device batteries off-the-grid, increasing medical device user freedom and allowing medical device access to those without electricity. We successfully constructed a wearable prototype that generates the voltage required by an electrocardiogram battery; however, further thermoelectric module and heat dissipation optimization is necessary to generate sufficient current to charge the battery

El Papel De Ecoturismo en La Comunidad Nativa De Shintuya, Alto Madre De Dios, Peru: Las Percepciones De la Misma Comunidad

Este informe examina el rol de ecoturismo en la comunidad nativa Shintuya, Madre de Dios, Perú. Para hacer eso, uso las percepciones de los mismos comuneros sobre el ecoturismo y el futuro de su comunidad. La comunidad y la región alrededor tiene muchas atracciones turísticas, y por eso hay un gran potencial de turismo para la comunidad. También hay una presencia de una empresa de petróleo, con que los comuneros están trabajando. En estas páginas siguientes, voy a argumentar que esta situación no es tan blanca y negra como parece. No hay un lado a favor y un lado en contra la petrolera, sino una comunidad fragmentada, que tiene varias cuestiones que están contribuyendo a la situación de hoy día. Primero, resumo mis objetivos, la literatura anterior, y el contexto histórico sobre el ecoturismo y la comunidad de Shintuya. Después, discuto los tres temas más prevalentes que he encontrado en mi tiempo en Shintuya: la organización comunitaria, la potencial futura de turismo, y la educación. Con el análisis de estos datos, puedo pintar una imagen de la situación de Shintuya, según los comuneros, y concluir con unas propuestas para adelantar el desarrollo futuro y la actividad de turismo en la comunidad

COMMUTE: Cubesat Swarm Orbital Maneuvers for a Mission to Study Uranus’ aTmospheric Environment

Following recommendations from the 2023-2032 Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey, new mission concepts are being developed with the focus of launching Uranus’ exploration missions in the early 2030s. To minimize both fuel consumption and cruise time on our way to Uranus, we propose a Jupiter-Uranus gravity assist trajectory using a Falcon Heavy Expendable Launcher to deliver a 3000 kg spacecraft to Uranus orbit in under seven years. The spacecraft will be composed of a mothership of 2000 kg wet mass and a swarm of CubeSats with a combined wet mass of 1000 kg. Using the ephemerides data of Earth, Jupiter and Uranus, and numerical solutions to the Lambert’s problem for a Jupiter flyby, we found that, with an initial launch window around April 15th, 2032, we reach Jupiter’s sphere of influence and perform a gravitational slingshot maneuver on December 31st, 2034, allowing the spacecraft to reach Uranus on December 31st, 2038. This proposed mission trajectory reaches Uranus with a relatively short cruise period of seven years, compared to the 13-year transfer period of the mission plan detailed in the decadal survey. This shorter transfer time could allow for significant extensions of the scientific mission nominal operations period and, potentially, reduce the cost of the overall mission. The swarm of 16 CubeSats of approximately 62 kg each will be divided into 4 groups of 4 identical spacecraft. Each group will be equipped with specialized instrumentation, exploring Uranus more extensively and performing planned plunges into its atmosphere while using the mothership as a communications relay with the Earth. This research demonstrates that a CubeSat swarm mission to Uranus can be not only viable, but also a fuel and cruise time optimization opportunity, delivering 16 exploration spacecraft to Uranus in under seven years

Rethinking Polyp Segmentation from an Out-of-Distribution Perspective

Unlike existing fully-supervised approaches, we rethink colorectal polyp segmentation from an out-of-distribution perspective with a simple but effective self-supervised learning approach. We leverage the ability of masked autoencoders -- self-supervised vision transformers trained on a reconstruction task -- to learn in-distribution representations; here, the distribution of healthy colon images. We then perform out-of-distribution reconstruction and inference, with feature space standardisation to align the latent distribution of the diverse abnormal samples with the statistics of the healthy samples. We generate per-pixel anomaly scores for each image by calculating the difference between the input and reconstructed images and use this signal for out-of-distribution (ie, polyp) segmentation. Experimental results on six benchmarks show that our model has excellent segmentation performance and generalises across datasets. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/GewelsJI/Polyp-OOD.Comment: Technical repor

A census of cool core galaxy clusters in IllustrisTNG

The thermodynamic structure of hot gas in galaxy clusters is sensitive to astrophysical processes and typically difficult to model with galaxy formation simulations. We explore the fraction of cool-core (CC) clusters in a large sample of $370$ clusters from IllustrisTNG, examining six common CC definitions. IllustrisTNG produces continuous CC criteria distributions, the extremes of which are classified as CC and non-cool-core (NCC), and the criteria are increasingly correlated for more massive clusters. At $z=0$, the CC fractions for $2$ criteria are in reasonable agreement with the observed fractions but the other $4$ CC fractions are lower than observed. This result is partly driven by systematic differences between the simulated and observed gas fraction profiles. The simulated CC fractions with redshift show tentative agreement with the observed fractions, but linear fits demonstrate that the simulated evolution is steeper than observed. The conversion of CCs to NCCs appears to begin later and act more rapidly in the simulations. Examining the fraction of CCs and NCCs defined as relaxed we find no evidence that CCs are more relaxed, suggesting that mergers are not solely responsible for disrupting CCs. A comparison of the median thermodynamic profiles defined by different CC criteria shows that the extent to which they evolve in the cluster core is dependent on the CC criteria. We conclude that the thermodynamic structure of galaxy clusters in IllustrisTNG shares many similarities with observations, but achieving better agreement most likely requires modifications of the underlying galaxy formation model.Comment: 24 pages, 17 figures, MNRAS published version. The IllustrisTNG project website can be found at http://www.tng-project.org

HLA-DQB1*0301 in Bullous Pemphigoid and Pemphigus Vulgaris: A Meta-Analysis

Background: The linkage of HLA-DQB1*0301 to autoimmune disorders is becoming more common in literature. Despite bullous pemphigoid (BP) and pemphigus vulgaris (PV) both having similar symptoms, such as blistering skin conditions, research has shown different relationships with HLAs. Methods: In this systematic review, HLA-DQB1*0301 and the odds of developing BP and PV were explored. Google Scholar and Pubmed were consulted, and articles were included if living subjects were used, odds ratio was available or could be ascertained from the study, and if it was not a meta-analysis of other researcher’s works. MetaXL software was used to generate data for analysis and a forest plot was generated for each. Nine studies conducted between 1996 and 2021 met study selection criteria for the BP HLA-DQB1*0301 meta-analysis (1,340 patients and 6,673 controls) and five studies (247 patients and 2,435 controls) for PV. Results: HLA-DQB1*0301 increased the odds of developing BP (OR= 1.64, 95% CI [1.44, 1.87], I2= 0%) yet decreased odds of PV (OR= 0.60, 95% CI [0.40, 0.89], I2= 34%). Conclusion: Results suggest HLA-DQB1*0301 may serve opposite roles in BP and PV despite similarity in symptoms, finding higher odds for developing BP versus lower odds for developing PV. Understanding this HLA’s function in each requires further exploration. Limitations of the analysis included minor asymmetry in the PV Doi plot, suggesting publication bias. No funding was used; study protocol was not registered

The Effects of Close Companions (and Rotation) on the Magnetic Activity of M Dwarfs

We present a study of close white dwarf and M dwarf (WD+dM) binary systems and examine the effect that a close companion has on the magnetic field generation in M dwarfs. We use a base sample of 1602 white dwarf -- main sequence binaries from Rebassa et al. to develop a set of color cuts in GALEX, SDSS, UKIDSS, and 2MASS color space to construct a sample of 1756 WD+dM high-quality pairs from the SDSS DR8 spectroscopic database. We separate the individual WD and dM from each spectrum using an iterative technique that compares the WD and dM components to best-fit templates. Using the absolute height above the Galactic plane as a proxy for age, and the H{\alpha} emission line as an indicator for magnetic activity, we investigate the age-activity relation for our sample for spectral types \leqM7. Our results show that early-type M dwarfs (\leqM4) in close binary systems are more likely to be active and have longer activity lifetimes compared to their field counterparts. However, at a spectral type of M5 (just past the onset of full convection in M dwarfs), the activity fraction and lifetimes of WD+dM binary systems becomes more comparable to that of the field M dwarfs. One of the implications of having a close binary companion is presumed to be increased stellar rotation through disk-disruption, tidal effects, or angular momentum exchange. Thus, we interpret the similarity in activity behavior between late-type dMs in WD+dM pairs and late-type field dMs to be due to a decrease in sensitivity in close binary companions (or stellar rotation), which has implications for the nature of magnetic activity in fully-convective stars. (Abridged)Comment: 21 pages, 19 figures, emulateapj style, accepted to Astronomical Journal June 28, 201

Enhancing AGN efficiency and cool-core formation with anisotropic thermal conduction

Understanding how baryonic processes shape the intracluster medium (ICM) is of critical importance to the next generation of galaxy cluster surveys. However, most models of structure formation neglect potentially important physical processes, like anisotropic thermal conduction (ATC). In this letter, we explore the impact of ATC on the prevalence of cool-cores (CCs) using 12 pairs of magnetohydrodynamical galaxy cluster simulations, simulated using the IllustrisTNG model with and without ATC. Although the impact of ATC varies from cluster to cluster and with CC criterion, its inclusion produces a systematic shift to larger CC fractions at z = 0 for all CC criteria considered. Additionally, the inclusion of ATC yields a flatter CC fraction redshift evolution, easing the tension with the observed evolution. With ATC included, the energy required for the central black hole to achieve self-regulation is reduced and the gas fraction in the cluster core increases, resulting in larger CC fractions. ATC makes the ICM unstable to perturbations and the increased efficiency of AGN feedback suggests that its inclusion results in a greater level of mixing in the ICM. Therefore, ATC is potentially an important physical process in reproducing the thermal structure of the ICM.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, submitted to MNRAS, comments welcom