An Elementary Schoolwide Discipline Model

Current schoolwide discipline models were studied in conjunction with a review of literature relating to discipline, and a schoolwide discipline model was subsequently developed for Thompson Elementary in the Bethel School District in the State of Washington. The schoolwide discipline model was developed to reflect the research and focused upon developing individual responsibility, reflection, and the use of literature to help students understand the values of work in everyday life

Incorporation of Functionalized Polyhedral Oligomeric Silsesquioxane Nanomaterials as Reinforcing Agents for Impact Ice Mitigating Coatings

In-flight, aircraft are exposed to a wide range of environments. One commonly exposed environment are clouds containing super-cooled water droplets. These water drop- lets exist in a metastable state below the freezing point of water, in the range of 0 to -20C. As the vehicle impacts the droplets, latent heat is released and within milliseconds the droplets convert to ice. This process is referred to as impact icing or in-flight icing.1 Impact icing is a major concern for aircraft since it can lead to degraded aerodynamic performance and, if left un- treated, can lead to loss of the vehicle. Active approaches (i.e., pneumatic boots, heated air ducts) typically utilized in mitigating in-flight ice accretion significantly increases vehicle weight and cannot be applied to all aircraft.1-3 A passive approach based on coatings is desired, but durability issues are a concern, especially on the wing leading edge.3 Nanomaterials have been shown to afford significant improvement in coating and composite physical properties at low loading levels.4 In this study, Polyhedral Oligomeric Silsesquioxane (POSS) nanomaterials have been shown to increase coating durability. Also, with wide variety of functionalities present on the arm structure, POSS nanomaterials have been shown to readily alter coating surface chemistry to mitigate impact ice adhesion from -16 to -8C in a simulated in-flight icing environment

Instability of pulses in gradient reaction-diffusion systems: A symplectic approach

In a scalar reaction-diffusion equation, it is known that the stability of a steady state can be determined from the Maslov index, a topological invariant that counts the state's critical points. In particular, this implies that pulse solutions are unstable. We extend this picture to pulses in reaction-diffusion systems with gradient nonlinearity. In particular, we associate a Maslov index to any asymptotically constant state, generalizing existing definitions of the Maslov index for homoclinic orbits. It is shown that this index equals the number of unstable eigenvalues for the linearized evolution equation. Finally, we use a symmetry argument to show that any pulse solution must have nonzero Maslov index, and hence be unstable.Comment: 19 pages, 1 figure. To appear in Philos. Trans. Roy. Soc.

Destabilization of α-helical structure in solution improves bactericidal activity of antimicrobial peptides: Opposing effects on bacterial and viral targets

We have previously examined the mechanism of antimicrobial peptides on the outer membrane of vaccinia virus. Here we show that the formulation of peptides LL37 and magainin-2B amide in polysorbate 20 (Tween-20™) results in greater reductions in virus titre than formulation without detergent, and the effect is replicated by substitution of polysorbate 20 with high ionic strength buffer. In contrast, formulation with polysorbate 20 or high ionic strength buffer has the opposite effect on bactericidal activity of both peptides, resulting in lesser reductions in titre for both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. Circular dichroism spectroscopy shows that the differential action of polysorbate 20 and salt on the virucidal and bactericidal activities correlates with the α-helical content of peptide secondary structure in solution, suggesting that the virucidal and bactericidal activities are mediated through distinct mechanisms. The correlation of a defined structural feature with differential activity against a host-derived viral membrane and the membranes of both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria suggests that overall helical content in solution under physiological conditions is an important feature for consideration in the design and development of candidate peptide-based antimicrobial compounds

Single-machine scheduling with tool changes: a constraint-based approach

The paper addresses the scheduling of a single machine with tool changes in order to minimize total completion time. A constraint-based model is proposed that makes use of global constraints and also incorporates various dominance rules. With these techniques, our constraint-based approach outperforms previous exact solution methods