The Postdisciplinarity of Lore: Professional and Pedagogical Development in a Graduate Student Community of Practice

Recuperating Composition’s lore in postdisciplinarity in order to illustrate the polyvalent, multidirectional positionality of our practices, this study argues that Composition’s lore, as it functions in a community of practice, helps locate and address various challenges with the cultural displacement that burgeoning scholars experience as they critically negotiate their practices within the expectations of the academy. Bridging the communities of writing teachers in classrooms and writing centers in a demonstration of institutional polyvalence, this ethnographic study’s participants suggest the reflexive influence of postdisciplinary lore in the cultivation of authority and practitioner identity. As one point of access to this cultural negotiation, the transmission and application of myth contextualizes lore as cultural phenomena affecting both professional and pedagogical development in graduate student teachers and tutors. This study concludes that the reflexivity offered in postdisciplinary sites of cultural engagement encourages a negotiated, recursive power relation between the institution and the practitioner, thus creating multiple, malleable sites of authority and agency within disciplinary culture

Convex Dynamics and Applications

This paper proves a theorem about bounding orbits of a time dependent dynamical system. The maps that are involved are examples in convex dynamics, by which we mean the dynamics of piecewise isometries where the pieces are convex. The theorem came to the attention of the authors in connection with the problem of digital halftoning. \textit{Digital halftoning} is a family of printing technologies for getting full color images from only a few different colors deposited at dots all of the same size. The simplest version consist in obtaining grey scale images from only black and white dots. A corollary of the theorem is that for \textit{error diffusion}, one of the methods of digital halftoning, averages of colors of the printed dots converge to averages of the colors taken from the same dots of the actual images. Digital printing is a special case of a much wider class of scheduling problems to which the theorem applies. Convex dynamics has roots in classical areas of mathematics such as symbolic dynamics, Diophantine approximation, and the theory of uniform distributions.Comment: LaTex with 9 PostScript figure

Testosterone Therapy and Cardiovascular Risk

Endogenous testosterone levels are inversely associated with cardiovascular risk in older men and men with cardiovascular disease. Current data on cardiovascular outcomes of testosterone therapy include only observational studies and adverse event monitoring in short-term trials that were not designed to measure cardiovascular outcomes. These studies have yielded conflicting results, and some have raised concerns that testosterone therapy may increase cardiovascular risk. A well-designed, adequately powered, prospective trial will ultimately be required to clarify whether testosterone therapy impacts cardiovascular outcomes. This review describes the findings and limitations of recent studies of cardiovascular risk in older men on testosterone therapy and discusses some of the mechanisms through which testosterone may modify cardiovascular risk

Phase behavior and application studies of cellulose nano-crystals synthesized by acetic acid

Cellulose is the most abundant source of biomass in the world. Nano-cellulose possesses the extraordinary mechanical properties of high Young\u27s modulus and great tensile strength found in natural cellulose fiber. However, during drying, abundant hydrogen bonding can agglomerate the nano-cellulose, hindering its mechanical properties. Thus it is important to ensure that the nano-cellulose is utterly deagglomerated in order to improve its applicability. We used various sonication and centrifugation techniques to successfully deagglomerate the cellulose. To better understand the phase behavior of the cellulose nanocrystals, various concentrations of CNC-AA were left to sit in glass vials, while the phase behavior was optically observed over time. After several weeks, there was no discernable phase separation, yet liquid crystalline behavior was noticed in certain concentrations utilizing polarized light microscopy. In order to then use the stable CNC-AA suspensions as films (for eventual application in MEMS devices) a spin-coating procedure onto silicon wafers was optimized. Using AFM and interferometry, the structure and thickness of the CNC-AA films were observed

The Cooler Koozie, optimizing thermal insulation for beverage consumption

Our work aims to develop a new koozie with insulating properties that improve upon the current available commercial options. The hot climate of South Carolina, especially during football season, can heat a consumer\u27s beverage to an unenjoyable temperature in a very short period of time. To recreate these hot conditions in a lab setting, our team designed a hot air circulation box with a temperature controller. Our baseline for improvement was established by testing plain cola cans without koozies, cans with basic foam koozies, and cans with more expensive, name brand koozies. Based on these results, we set out to design a new koozie that would outperform those on the current market. Our design focuses on separating the can from the environment by maximizing captured air space between the two. Air is exploited in our design due to its low thermal conductivity, or ability to reduce heat transfer. The material of construction for our koozie is thin wall, flexible PVC tubing wound around in a spiral manner, and then glued together. We are also investigating different diameter tubing to determine the effect differing amounts air space. These results show that our new design has improved insulating properties compared to commercially available koozies while also being aesthetically pleasing

Assessment of Forest Products Undergraduate Education in the United States

Traditional Forest Products/Wood Science programs have been curtailed and/or merged into other programs at many universities during the last 10 yr. Current economic challenges throughout the nation are continuing this trend. This trend is somewhat alarming when one considers the implications for education and development of the next generation of scientists in this very critically important field. If proper training programs and adequate professionals are not available, the conservative, wise, and perpetual utilization of renewable natural resources could be compromised for future generations

Reconstruction of eye movements during blinks

In eye movement research in reading, the amount of data plays a crucial role for the validation of results. A methodological problem for the analysis of the eye movement in reading are blinks, when readers close their eyes. Blinking rate increases with increasing reading time, resulting in high data losses, especially for older adults or reading impaired subjects. We present a method, based on the symbolic sequence dynamics of the eye movements, that reconstructs the horizontal position of the eyes while the reader blinks. The method makes use of an observed fact that the movements of the eyes before closing or after opening contain information about the eyes movements during blinks. Test results indicate that our reconstruction method is superior to methods that use simpler interpolation approaches. In addition, analyses of the reconstructed data show no significant deviation from the usual behavior observed in readers

Stimuli-responsive drug delivery systems using gold nanoparticles and phospholipid vesicles

In the near future, new pharmaceutical therapeutics will evolve to contain complicated protein molecules, gene therapies, SI-RNA etc., which must be transported in extremely specific environments such as a specific pH level or sodium concentration. The problem is that throughout the body there are many different environments that a drug could pass through. For example, gastric acid can have pH levels as low as 1 where blood is around 7.4. This is a problem because as the drugs pass through these harsh environments they may become rendered useless. Furthermore, these new therapeutics are not compatible with conventional drug delivery mechanisms and new strategies for drug delivery are required. To solve these problem DPPC/DPPG phospholipid vesicles are being used with Au nanoparticles to transport these drugs. The DPPC/DPPG vesicles encapsulate the drug of choice and protect it from the harsh environments of the body. The Au nanoparticles can be designed to either embedded in the lipid bilayer of the vesicles or decorate the vesicle exterior. When radiation is applied, the nanoparticles are excited and cause a disruption in the vesicle structure, leading to the release of the drug into the body. Our research is centered around how the stability of the lipid vesicles changes based on the size, surface chemistry, and distribution of the nanoparticles

A Simple Targeting Procedure for Lunar Trans-Earth Injection

A simple targeting algorithm for trans-Earth injection is developed. The techniques presented in this paper build on techniques developed for the Apollo program and other lunar and interplanetary missions. Presently, more sophisticated algorithms exist for solving this problem, but the simplicity of this particular algorithm makes it well-suited for on-board use during contingency and abort operations. In order to support a return from any lunar orbit with available fuel on the spacecraft the algorithm chooses between one-, two-, or three-burn return scenarios. The one- and two-burn cases are based on existing theory. For the three-burn case however, the existing theory is modified in order to provide a simple solution. Rather than attempting to create fuel-optimal trajectories, the algorithm presented in this paper focuses on computing a trajectory from low lunar orbit to direct atmospheric Earth entry that does not violate a fuel constraint. The algorithm attempts to use a minimal number of impulses to execute trans-earth injection. The algorithm can also be used to quickly generate good initial guesses for other more sophisticated targeting algorithms that can be used to find minimal fuel trajectories or optimize other parameters. This algorithm has three principle phases. First, an estimate of the hyperbolic excess velocity at the Lunar sphere of influence is generated. Second, a maneuver is computed that will transfer the craft from a lunar circular orbit to the hyperbolic escape asymptote. Finally, the effects of perturbations are eliminated by using linear state transition matrix targeting

Uniform generation in trace monoids

We consider the problem of random uniform generation of traces (the elements of a free partially commutative monoid) in light of the uniform measure on the boundary at infinity of the associated monoid. We obtain a product decomposition of the uniform measure at infinity if the trace monoid has several irreducible components-a case where other notions such as Parry measures, are not defined. Random generation algorithms are then examined.Comment: Full version of the paper in MFCS 2015 with the same titl