A Moral Debate at the Invisible Rainbow: Thoughts about Best Practices in Servicing LGBTQ Students in Special Education

Instead of occupying a marginal space within teacher preparation programs, special education courses and training should promote diversity in servicing marginalized groups such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) students. Within these programs, issues related to LGBTQ students should occupy a meaningful and formative space in the training of future teachers in special education. Often, special education teachers are at a loss about how to educate LGBTQ students with disabilities. Rethinking the role of special education and LGBTQ students with special needs within teacher education programs enables pre-service teachers to cultivate new values and attitudes that can enrich the student/teacher relationship within public schools. As such, this article proposes to explore best practices for servicing LGTBQ students in special education by promoting better ways to train future teachers

Contraction analysis of switched Filippov systems via regularization

We study incremental stability and convergence of switched (bimodal) Filippov systems via contraction analysis. In particular, by using results on regularization of switched dynamical systems, we derive sufficient conditions for convergence of any two trajectories of the Filippov system between each other within some region of interest. We then apply these conditions to the study of different classes of Filippov systems including piecewise smooth (PWS) systems, piecewise affine (PWA) systems and relay feedback systems. We show that contrary to previous approaches, our conditions allow the system to be studied in metrics other than the Euclidean norm. The theoretical results are illustrated by numerical simulations on a set of representative examples that confirm their effectiveness and ease of application.Comment: Preprint submitted to Automatic

Superconvergent interpolatory HDG methods for reaction diffusion equations I: An HDGk_{k} method

In our earlier work [8], we approximated solutions of a general class of scalar parabolic semilinear PDEs by an interpolatory hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin (Interpolatory HDG) method. This method reduces the computational cost compared to standard HDG since the HDG matrices are assembled once before the time integration. Interpolatory HDG also achieves optimal convergence rates; however, we did not observe superconvergence after an element-by-element postprocessing. In this work, we revisit the Interpolatory HDG method for reaction diffusion problems, and use the postprocessed approximate solution to evaluate the nonlinear term. We prove this simple change restores the superconvergence and keeps the computational advantages of the Interpolatory HDG method. We present numerical results to illustrate the convergence theory and the performance of the method

A Budgeting Model for Analysis of Subsidized Programs

John J. Bernardo is an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky Alan Reinstein is an Associate Professor of Accounting at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan

Interpolatory HDG Method for Parabolic Semilinear PDEs

We propose the interpolatory hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin (Interpolatory HDG) method for a class of scalar parabolic semilinear PDEs. The Interpolatory HDG method uses an interpolation procedure to efficiently and accurately approximate the nonlinear term. This procedure avoids the numerical quadrature typically required for the assembly of the global matrix at each iteration in each time step, which is a computationally costly component of the standard HDG method for nonlinear PDEs. Furthermore, the Interpolatory HDG interpolation procedure yields simple explicit expressions for the nonlinear term and Jacobian matrix, which leads to a simple unified implementation for a variety of nonlinear PDEs. For a globally-Lipschitz nonlinearity, we prove that the Interpolatory HDG method does not result in a reduction of the order of convergence. We display 2D and 3D numerical experiments to demonstrate the performance of the method

Desarrollo de un sistema de seguridad para un juez de maratones de programación tipo ACM-ICPC, que soporte un conjunto de ataques previamente delimitados

Las maratones de programación son eventos que en los últimos años han tenido gran impacto dentro del campo de las ciencias de la computación, tomando cada vez mas importancia entre estudiantes y profesionales debido a que son competencias que desarrollan habilidades como el análisis de algoritmos, la resolución de problemas y el trabajo en equipo. En este trabajo se propone el desarrollo de un sistema de seguridad para un juez de maratones de programación, es así como a lo largo del documento se expone la importancia de la realización de dicho trabajo, de la identificación de los tipos de ataques además del análisis de mecanismos que puedan neutralizarlos. Entre otros puntos importantes se documenta el diseño y la realización de las pruebas con el fin de determinar y probar si el sistema de seguridad soportaba los diferentes tipos de ataques, además de documentar el proceso de desplegar la aplicación desarrollada en un servidor en producción para llevar a cabo la primera maratón de programación de la UTP abierta a nivel mundial (The First Open UTP Programming Contest). Finalmente se analizan los resultados obtenidos al momento de probar el sistema de seguridad después de la realización de una serie de ataques, mostrando excelentes resultados en la neutralización de dichos ataques. Se plantean las conclusiones generales de todo el proyecto y se establecen los proyectos futuros que se pueden derivar sobre la temática desarrollada

Quantification of carbonic anhydrase gene expression in ventricle of hypertrophic and failing human heart

Background: Carbonic anhydrase enzymes (CA) catalyze the reversible hydration of carbon dioxide to bicarbonate in mammalian cells. Trans-membrane transport of CA-produced bicarbonate contributes significantly to cellular pH regulation. A body of evidence implicates pH-regulatory processes in the hypertrophic growth pathway characteristic of hearts as they fail. In particular, Na+ /H+ exchange (NHE) activation is pro-hypertrophic and CA activity activates NHE. Recently Cardrase (6-ethoxyzolamide), a CA inhibitor, was found to prevent and revert agonist-stimulated cardiac hypertrophy (CH) in cultured cardiomyocytes. Our goal thus was to determine whether hypertrophied human hearts have altered expression of CA isoforms. Methods: We measured CA expression in hypertrophied human hearts to begin to examine the role of carbonic anhydrase in progression of human heart failure. Ventricular biopsies were obtained from patients undergoing cardiac surgery (CS, n = 14), or heart transplantation (HT, n = 13). CS patients presented mild/moderate concentric left ventricular hypertrophy and normal right ventricles, with preserved ventricular function; ejection fractions were ~60%. Conversely, HT patients with failing hearts presented CH or ventricular dilation accompanied by ventricular dysfunction and EF values of 20%. Non-hypertrophic, non-dilated ventricular samples served as controls. Results: Expression of atrial and brain natriuretic peptide (ANP and BNP) were markers of CH. Hypertrophic ventricles presented increased expression of CAII, CAIV, ANP, and BNP, mRNA levels, which increased in failing hearts, measured by quantitative real-time PCR. CAII, CAIV, and ANP protein expression also increased approximately two-fold in hypertrophic/dilated ventricles. Conclusions: These results, combined with in vitro data that CA inhibition prevents and reverts CH, suggest that increased carbonic anhydrase expression is a prognostic molecular marker of cardiac hypertrophy.Fil: Alvarez, Bernardo. Universidad Nacional de la Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Médicas; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas. Centro Cientifico Tecnológico La Plata. Centro de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares "Dr. Horacio Eugenio Cingolani"; ArgentinaFil: Quon, Anita L.. University Of Alberta. Faculty Of Medicine And Oral Health Sciences; CanadáFil: Mullen, John. University of Alberta; CanadáFil: Casey, Joseph R.. University Of Alberta. Faculty Of Medicine And Oral Health Sciences; Canad