Technology: Servant or Master of the Online Teacher?

published or submitted for publicatio

Household Savings in Russia during the Transition

We exploit panel data from the second phase of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) to investigate the household characteristics that explain saving during a period of extreme dislocation. Among our more noteworthy findings, we find evidence of short-term consumption smoothing behavior as households respond to temporary income shocks. Conditional on income level, we find that savings rates are higher in households benefiting from non-standard (likely transitory) sources of support such as private transfers and sales of home produced food; savings rates are lower, moreover, in households suffering from unemployment or payment arrears. We also confirm the robustness of an atypical U-shaped age-savings relationship to multivariate specifications. And finally, we turn up strong support for an inverse relationship between the household’s stock of durables and its saving rate.

Of Flyers and Free Speech: How Student Activism Defined the Contours of One University’s 21st-Century Hate and Bias Policy

Since 1999, The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) operated under a Student Policy on Race Relations when handling hate and bias incidents. In February 2017, an anti-Muslim flyer was posted near campus, prompting UT administration to hold a town hall for UT student activ-ists to vocalize their concerns. Through Kezar’s (2010) description of modern student protests and Barnhardt’s (2014) framework for modern student protests, this study analyzes the marginal-ized UT Austin student voices of that town hall meeting, demonstrating how modern student activism influenced presidential rhetoric and a new Hate and Bias Incidents Policy, the first in nearly two decades at UT Austin.Educatio

Flexstab on the IBM 360

FLEXSTAB, an array of computer programs developed on CDC equipment, has been converted to operate on the IBM 360 computation system. Instructions for installing, validating, and operating FLEXSTAB on the IBM 360 are included. Hardware requirements are itemized and supplemental materials describe JCL sequences, the CDC to IBM conversion, the input output subprograms, and the interprogram data flow

Chemical and climatic drivers of radiative forcing due to changes in stratospheric and tropospheric ozone over the 21st century

The ozone radiative forcings (RFs) resulting from projected changes in climate, ozone-depleting substances (ODSs), non-methane ozone precursor emissions and methane between the years 2000 and 2100 are calculated using simulations from the UM-UKCA chemistry–climate model (UK Met Office's Unified Model containing the United Kingdom Chemistry and Aerosols sub-model). Projected measures to improve air-quality through reductions in non-methane tropospheric ozone precursor emissions present a co-benefit for climate, with a net global mean ozone RF of −0.09 W m‾². This is opposed by a positive ozone RF of 0.05 W m‾² due to future decreases in ODSs, which is driven by an increase in tropospheric ozone through stratosphere-to-troposphere transport of air containing higher ozone amounts. An increase in methane abundance by more than a factor of 2 (as projected by the RCP8.5 scenario) is found to drive an ozone RF of 0.18 W m‾², which would greatly outweigh the climate benefits of non-methane tropospheric ozone precursor reductions. A small fraction (∼ 15 %) of the ozone RF due to the projected increase in methane results from increases in stratospheric ozone. The sign of the ozone RF due to future changes in climate (including the radiative effects of greenhouse gases, sea surface temperatures and sea ice changes) is shown to be dependent on the greenhouse gas emissions pathway, with a positive RF (0.05 W m‾²) for RCP4.5 and a negative RF (−0.07 W m‾²) for the RCP8.5 scenario. This dependence arises mainly from differences in the contribution to RF from stratospheric ozone changes. Considering the increases in tropopause height under climate change causes only small differences (≤ |0.02| W m‾²) for the stratospheric, tropospheric and whole-atmosphere RFs

Environmental indicators for the sustainable management of freshwater

The Ministry for the Environment is developing a core set of nationally standardised environmental indicators that will help to assess the state of the environment and help to monitor the effectiveness and suitability of regional and national environmental policy and legislation. The purpose of this report is to suggest an approach to and some examples of indicators for the sustainable management of freshwater. In this report, the emphasis is on indicators of life supporting capacity/ecosystem health because the indicators of human uses and values are relatively well established. It is recognised that indicators of ecosystem health will overlap with other groups of indicators to be developed later as part of the Ministry for the Environment's indicator programme. Management objectives of the agencies responsible for monitoring may vary with the site to be monitored and the region. Therefore the indicators selected for monitoring will be influenced by particular waterbody and the objectives for management

Protons associated with centers of solar activity and their propagation in interplanetary magnetic field regions co-rotating with the sun

Protons associated with centers of solar activity and propagation in interplanetary magnetic field regions co-rotating with su

Increasing β-catenin/Wnt3A activity levels drive mechanical strain-induced cell cycle progression through mitosis.

Mechanical force and Wnt signaling activate β-catenin-mediated transcription to promote proliferation and tissue expansion. However, it is unknown whether mechanical force and Wnt signaling act independently or synergize to activate β-catenin signaling and cell division. We show that mechanical strain induced Src-dependent phosphorylation of Y654 β-catenin and increased β-catenin-mediated transcription in mammalian MDCK epithelial cells. Under these conditions, cells accumulated in S/G2 (independent of DNA damage) but did not divide. Activating β-catenin through Casein Kinase I inhibition or Wnt3A addition increased β-catenin-mediated transcription and strain-induced accumulation of cells in S/G2. Significantly, only the combination of mechanical strain and Wnt/β-catenin activation triggered cells in S/G2 to divide. These results indicate that strain-induced Src phosphorylation of β-catenin and Wnt-dependent β-catenin stabilization synergize to increase β-catenin-mediated transcription to levels required for mitosis. Thus, local Wnt signaling may fine-tune the effects of global mechanical strain to restrict cell divisions during tissue development and homeostasis