The prior training and experience of the supervising elementary school principal in Massachusetts and Rhode Island

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Acceptability of the process of obtaining a driver's license by young people with and without disabilities

Context and objective. Although there are more than 600 driving schools in Quebec (Canada), only one offers fully adapted services to young people with disabilities. To ensure that these services correspond to best practices in the field, they must be aligned with scientific knowledge and the opinions of experts and users regarding driver’s education. This literature review fills a gap concerning the opinions and expectations of young people with and without disabilities and their parents.Methodology. A search of publications in CINAHL, PubMED, ERIC, Social Sciences Full Text, Ergonomics Abstracts, Academic Search Premier, Web of Science, PsychInfo and Current Contents Connect was done on November 2, 2017, with 118 keywords, and another search was conducted on November 8, 2017, in Sociological Abstracts with 68 keywords. After selection, 25 articles were analyzed.Results. Most youths report that the process of obtaining a driver’s license is stressful, anxiety-provoking and sometimes too expensive to initiate at the minimum legal age (16 years in Quebec). Youths with disabilities say that they do not have adequate information on how the process works. They appear to feel less self-efficacy than their peers without disabilities and to have more difficulties with theoretical and practical learning. Nevertheless, obtaining a license conforms with most young people’s values, whether or not they have a disability.Conclusions. Adapted driving schools, and particularly their instructors, need more knowledge of users’ expectations. The results justify the importance of improving and developing more adapted driver’s education for young people with disabilities, ultimately promoting equitable access to the process of obtaining a license.Peer Reviewe

Effective and Asymptotic Critical Exponents of Weakly Diluted Quenched Ising Model: 3d Approach Versus ϵ1/2\epsilon^{1/2}-Expansion

We present a field-theoretical treatment of the critical behavior of three-dimensional weakly diluted quenched Ising model. To this end we analyse in a replica limit n=0 5-loop renormalization group functions of the $\phi^4$-theory with O(n)-symmetric and cubic interactions (H.Kleinert and V.Schulte-Frohlinde, Phys.Lett. B342, 284 (1995)). The minimal subtraction scheme allows to develop either the $\epsilon^{1/2}$-expansion series or to proceed in the 3d approach, performing expansions in terms of renormalized couplings. Doing so, we compare both perturbation approaches and discuss their convergence and possible Borel summability. To study the crossover effect we calculate the effective critical exponents providing a local measure for the degree of singularity of different physical quantities in the critical region. We report resummed numerical values for the effective and asymptotic critical exponents. Obtained within the 3d approach results agree pretty well with recent Monte Carlo simulations. $\epsilon^{1/2}$-expansion does not allow reliable estimates for d=3.Comment: 35 pages, Latex, 9 eps-figures included. The reference list is refreshed and typos are corrected in the 2nd versio

Measurement of the W+W-gamma Cross Section and Direct Limits on Anomalous Quartic Gauge Boson Couplings at LEP

The process e+e- -> W+W-gamma is analysed using the data collected with the L3 detector at LEP at a centre-of-mass energy of 188.6GeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 176.8pb^-1. Based on a sample of 42 selected W+W- candidates containing an isolated hard photon, the W+W-gamma cross section, defined within phase-space cuts, is measured to be: sigma_WWgamma = 290 +/- 80 +/- 16 fb, consistent with the Standard Model expectation. Including the process e+e- -> nu nu gamma gamma, limits are derived on anomalous contributions to the Standard Model quartic vertices W+W- gamma gamma and W+W-Z gamma at 95% CL: -0.043 GeV^-2 < a_0/Lambda^2 < 0.043 GeV^-2 0.08 GeV^-2 < a_c/Lambda^2 < 0.13 GeV^-2 0.41 GeV^-2 < a_n/Lambda^2 < 0.37 GeV^-2

WZWZ Production at Hadron Colliders: Effects of Non-Standard WWZWWZ Couplings and QCD Corrections

The process p\,\pbar \rightarrow W^{\pm}Z + X \rightarrow \ell^\pm_1 \nu_1 \ell_2^+ \ell_2^- + X is calculated to ${\cal O}(\alpha_s)$ for general $C$ and $P$ conserving $WWZ$ couplings. At the Tevatron center of mass energy, the QCD corrections to $WZ$ production are modest. At Large Hadron Collider (LHC) energies, the inclusive QCD corrections are large, but can be reduced significantly if a jet veto is imposed. Sensitivity limits for the anomalous $WWZ$ couplings are derived from the next-to-leading order $Z$ boson transverse momentum distribution for Tevatron and LHC energies. Unless a jet veto is imposed, next-to-leading order QCD corrections decrease the sensitivity to anomalous $WWZ$ couplings considerably at LHC energies, but have little influence at the Tevatron. We also study, at next-to-leading order, rapidity correlations between the $W$ and $Z$ decay products, and the $ZZ/WZ$ and $WZ/W\gamma$ cross section ratios. These quantities are found to be useful tools in searching for the approximate zero present in the Standard Model $WZ$ helicity amplitudes. The prospects for observing the approximate amplitude zero at the Tevatron and the LHC are critically assessed.Comment: REVTEX3 file, 51 pages, 21 figures (postscript files) can be obtained via anonymous ftp://ucdhep.ucdavis.edu/anonymous/ohnemus/ucd-94-2