Reflections on Thirty Years of Teaching for Utah State University Distance Education

Abstract: In this brief essay, author John D. Barton, Principal Lecturer, History, Utah State University Uintah Basin Regional Campus muses on teaching excellence and student engagement. His sources are largely his personal reflections of thirty years teaching and storied examples and quotes from former students. He defends the use of lecture and discussion as primary pedagogical tools, insists that concern and love for students is paramount, and gives five specific guidelines to become a master teacher and mentor of students

Better Religion: A Primer for Interreligious Peacebuilding

Provides a conceptual framework for understanding global religiosity and explores avenues for interreligious collaborations across differenceshttps://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/facultybooks/1071/thumbnail.jp

First-Year Vitality of Reforestation Plantings in Response to Herbivore Exclusion on Reclaimed Appalachian Surface-Mined Land

Conventional Appalachian surface-mine reclamation techniques repress natural forest regeneration, and tree plantings are often necessary for reforestation. Reclaimed Appalachian surface mines harbor a suite of mammal herbivores that forage on recently planted seedlings. Anecdotal reports across Appalachia have implicated herbivory in the hindrance and failure of reforestation efforts, yet empirical evaluation of herbivory impacts on planted seedling vitality in this region remains relatively uninitiated. First growing-season survival, height growth, and mammal herbivory damage of black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia L.), shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata Mill.), and white oak (Quercus alba L.) are presented in response to varying intensities of herbivore exclusion. Seedling survival was generally high, and height growth was positive for all species. The highest herbivory incidence of all tree species was observed in treatments offering no herbivore exclusion. While seedling protectors lowered herbivory incidence compared with no exclusion, full exclusion treatments resulted in the greatest reduction of herbivore damage. Although herbivory from rabbits, small mammals, and domestic animals was observed, cervids (deer and elk) were responsible for 95.8% of all damaged seedlings. This study indicates that cervids forage heavily on planted seedlings during the first growing-season, but exclusion is effective at reducing herbivory

Subtype diversity and reassortment potential for co‐circulating avian influenza viruses at a diversity hot spot

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106946/1/jane12167.pd

Prevalence of iron deficiency in 62,685 women of seven race/ethnicity groups: The HEIRS Study.

BackgroundFew cross-sectional studies report iron deficiency (ID) prevalence in women of different race/ethnicity and ages in US or Canada.Materials and methodsWe evaluated screening observations on women who participated between 2001-2003 in a cross-sectional, primary care-based sample of adults ages ≥25 y whose observations were complete: race/ethnicity; age; transferrin saturation; serum ferritin; and HFE p.C282Y and p.H63D alleles. We defined ID using a stringent criterion: combined transferrin saturation <10% and serum ferritin <33.7 pmol/L (<15 μg/L). We compared ID prevalence in women of different race/ethnicity subgrouped by age and determined associations of p.C282Y and p.H63D to ID overall, and to ID in women ages 25-44 y with or without self-reported pregnancy.ResultsThese 62,685 women included 27,079 whites, 17,272 blacks, 8,566 Hispanics, 7,615 Asians, 449 Pacific Islanders, 441 Native Americans, and 1,263 participants of other race/ethnicity. Proportions of women with ID were higher in Hispanics and blacks than whites and Asians. Prevalence of ID was significantly greater in women ages 25-54 y of all race/ethnicity groups than women ages ≥55 y of corresponding race/ethnicity. In women ages ≥55 y, ID prevalence did not differ significantly across race/ethnicity. p.C282Y and p.H63D prevalence did not differ significantly in women with or without ID, regardless of race/ethnicity, age subgroup, or pregnancy.ConclusionsID prevalence was greater in Hispanic and black than white and Asian women ages 25-54 y. p.C282Y and p.H63D prevalence did not differ significantly in women with or without ID, regardless of race/ethnicity, age subgroup, or pregnancy

Nonadiabatic decoherence control of qubits strongly coupled to continuum edge

We propose a method for controlling the decoherence of a driven qubit that is strongly coupled to a reservoir, when the qubit resonance frequency is close to a continuum edge of the reservoir spectum. This strong-coupling regime is outside the scope of existing methods of decoherence control. We demonstate that an appropriate sequence of nearly abrupt changes of the resonance frequency can protect the qubit state from decay and decoherence more effectively than the intuitively obvious alternative, which is to fix the resonance well within a forbidden bandgap of the reservoir spectrum, as far as possible from the continuum edge. The "counterintuitive" nonadiabatic method outlined here can outperform its adiabatic counterparts in maintaining a high fidelity of quantum logic operations. The remarkable effectiveness of the proposed method, which requires much lower rates of frequency changes than previously proposed control methods, is due to the ability of appropriately alternating detunings from the continuum edge to augment the interference of the emitted and back-scattered quanta, thereby helping to stabilize the qubit state against decay. Applications to the control of decoherence near the edge of radiative, vibrational an photoionization continua are discussed.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

The SISO CSPI PDG standard for commercial off-the-shelf simulation package interoperability reference models

For many years discrete-event simulation has been used to analyze production and logistics problems in manufactur-ing and defense. Commercial-off-the-shelf Simulation Packages (CSPs), visual interactive modelling environ-ments such as Arena, Anylogic, Flexsim, Simul8, Witness, etc., support the development, experimentation and visua-lization of simulation models. There have been various attempts to create distributed simulations with these CSPs and their tools, some with the High Level Architecture (HLA). These are complex and it is quite difficult to assess how a set of models/CSP are actually interoperating. As the first in a series of standards aimed at standardizing how the HLA is used to support CSP distributed simula-tions, the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organiza-tion’s (SISO) CSP Interoperability Product Development Group (CSPI PDG) has developed and standardized a set of Interoperability Reference Models (IRM) that are in-tended to clearly identify the interoperability capabilities of CSP distributed simulations