The Penn Science Teacher Institute: A Proven Model

The University of Pennsylvania’s Master of Chemistry Education (MCE) program graduated five cohorts of approximately twenty teachers between 2002 and 2006. One year after the teachers in the last cohort earned their degrees, the Penn Science Teacher Institute (Penn STI) initiated a follow-up study to ascertain if the goals of the MCE program had been sustained. For example, were the teachers incorporating updated content knowledge into their lessons and were their students learning more chemistry? A total of seventy-four of the eighty-two graduates participated in some aspect of this study. Because baseline data were not available for the MCE teachers and their students, baseline data from a comparable group of chemistry teachers enrolled in the first cohort of the Penn STI program and their students were used in some analyses. Among other findings, the data indicate that MCE met its goals: 1) to improve the chemistry content knowledge of its teacher participants; 2) to increase the use of research-based instruction in their classrooms; and, 3) to improve student achievement in chemistry (students of MCE graduates scored significantly higher than the comparison group)

A Separation of Powers Defense of Federal Rulemaking Power

Judicial rulemaking—the methods by which federal courts create federal procedural rules—represents a paradigmatic clash between the functionalist and formalist theories of the separation of powers. There exist compelling practical reasons to invest such power in the judiciary, yet the Constitution’s text does not explicitly confer such power on any branch. This Article comprehensively examines the separation of powers issues raised by the current federal rulemaking process under the formalist theory of the separation of powers in light of modern precedent. Part I details the current procedure for creating the federal rules, summarizes the relevant scholarship, and examines the few Supreme Court decisions on the constitutionality of portions of the process. Part II clarifies the process of creating the federal rules of procedure, concluding that, despite the substantive role played by rulemaking committees and Congress’s influence over the process, the Supreme Court creates the rules. Part III describes the statutory and constitutional sources of power that federal courts have referenced in creating the rules and the viable constitutional bases for these sources. It draws conclusions about both the limits on Congress’s regulation of federal court procedure and limits on a federal court’s constitutional power to create procedure. Part IV examines why the Constitution permits Congress’s delegation of such power despite potential conflicts with the non-delegation doctrine, the Case or Controversy Clause, and the Judicial Power Clause. Part V discusses potential constitutional challenges to Congress’s “legislative veto” over rules promulgated by the Supreme Court and to the supersession clause of the Rules Enabling Act

The Rise of Plain Language Laws

When lawmakers enacted 776 plain language laws across the United States, no one noticed. Apart from a handful, these laws went untracked and unstudied. Without study, large questions remain about these laws’ effects and utility, and about how they inform the adoption or rejection of plain language. This Article creates a conceptual framework for plain language laws to set the stage for future empirical research and normative discussions on the value of plain language. It unveils the first nationwide empirical survey of plain language laws to reveal their locations, coverages, and standards. In doing so, the Article creates a systematic method to find these laws. Then it coins a taxonomy of categories and terminology to describe their coverage and standards, thus creating a timely launchpad for future scholarship on domestic and international plain language laws. Along the way, the Article exposes the previously unknown scope of these laws—from election ballots and insurance contracts, to veterans housing and consumer contracts, to regulatory drafting and governor reports. That scope underscores the pervasive influence of plain language across public and private sectors, and over lawyers and non-lawyers alike. Moreover, the survey reveals significant intrastate and interstate variations and trends in coverages and standards. With this knowledge, for the first-time, empirical research can more precisely measure the benefits and costs of plain language laws while controlling for variables. Plus, the Article sets the stage for a forthcoming series of normative assessments on the role and design of plain language laws. Ultimately, the Article reignites a lively discourse on plain language amongst lawmakers, practitioners, and academics

Design of DSP Guitar Effects with FPGA Implementation

The face of music has been drastically evolving over the past century starting with the advent of the electric guitar. The emergence of digital signal processing in guitar audio applications has constantly been driven by the ability to diversify tonalities from experimenting with instrument materials, pick-ups, amplifiers, and effects. This paper demonstrates an alternative approach to guitar effects by using FPGA implementation, in lieu of DSP cores or analog components, to perform digital signal processing intended for alteration of guitar audio signals. The audio processing of the multiple effects were developed on a Zedboard incorporated with a Xilinx Zynq®-7000 SOC which utilizes programmable logic fabric as well as dual ARM-A9 processors. The different guitar effects were derived from custom IP blocks written in a mixtures of Verilog and VHDL in the programmable logic (PL) are controlled with rotary potentiometers and switches on custom guitar effect pedals that connect to the processor system (PS) via an I2C bus. The overall design serves to offer an alternative solution to traditional guitar pedals which perform the signal processing with lower latency while eliminating numerous patch cables, power cables, and overall costly pedals

Completion of an Undulator-Based X-ray Scattering Facility for Materials Research on Complex Fluids

A synchrotron radiation-based X-ray scattering facility for materials research on complex fluids has been completed on Sector 09 at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory. It consists of a beamline on an undulator magnet source with doubly focusing X-ray optics and endstation spectrometers for both small angle X-ray scattering and liquid surface X-ray scattering

De Novo Design of a Single Chain Diphenylporphyrin Metalloprotein

We describe the computational design of a single-chain four-helix bundle that noncovalently self-assembles with fully synthetic non-natural porphyrin cofactors. With this strategy, both the electronic structure of the cofactor as well as its protein environment may be varied to explore and modulate the functional and photophysical properties of the assembly. Solution characterization (NMR, UV-vis) of the protein showed that it bound with high specificity to the desired cofactors, suggesting that a uniquely structured protein and well-defined site had indeed been created. This provides a genetically expressed single-chain protein scaffold that will allow highly facile, flexible, and asymmetric variations to enable selective incorporation of different cofactors, surface-immobilization, and introduction of spectroscopic probes

Computational De Novo Design and Characterization of a Protein That Selectively Binds a Highly Hyperpolarizable Abiological Chromophore

This work reports the first example of a single-chain protein computationally designed to contain four α-helical segments and fold to form a four-helix bundle encapsulating a supramolecular abiological chromophore that possesses exceptional nonlinear optical properties. The 109-residue protein, designated SCRPZ-1, binds and disperses an insoluble hyperpolarizable chromophore, ruthenium(II) [5-(4\u27-ethynyl-(2,2\u27;6\u27,2″-terpyridinyl))-10,20-bis(phenyl)porphinato]zinc(II)-(2,2\u27;6\u27,2″-terpyridine)(2+) (RuPZn) in aqueous buffer solution at a 1:1 stoichiometry. A 1:1 binding stoichiometry of the holoprotein is supported by electronic absorption and circular dichroism spectra, as well as equilibrium analytical ultracentrifugation and size exclusion chromatography. SCRPZ-1 readily dimerizes at micromolar concentrations, and an empirical redesign of the protein exterior produced a stable monomeric protein, SCRPZ-2, that also displayed a 1:1 protein:cofactor stoichiometry. For both proteins in aqueous buffer, the encapsulated cofactor displays photophysical properties resembling those exhibited by the dilute RuPZn cofactor in organic solvent: femtosecond, nanosecond, and microsecond time scale pump-probe transient absorption spectroscopic data evince intensely absorbing holoprotein excited states having large spectral bandwidth that penetrate deep in the near-infrared energy regime; the holoprotein electronically excited triplet state exhibits a microsecond time scale lifetime characteristic of the RuPZn chromophore. Hyper-Rayleigh light scattering measurements carried out at an incident irradiation wavelength of 1340 nm for these holoproteins demonstrate an exceptional dynamic hyperpolarizabilty (β1340 = 3100 × 10(-30) esu). X-ray reflectivity measurements establish that this de novo-designed hyperpolarizable protein can be covalently attached with high surface density to a silicon surface without loss of the cofactor, indicating that these assemblies provide a new approach to bioinspired materials that have unique electro-optic functionality

An X-ray diffraction study on a single rod outer segment from frog retina

X-ray diffraction was recorded from retinal rod outer segments of frog using a microbeam