Queering Social Justice Curricula within Higher Education

Within higher education, social justice education has gained significant ground. While issues of gender, race, and class are increasingly addressed and incorporated into classes there remains a lack in inclusive curricula and pedagogies within colleges and universities when it comes to issues of gender and sexual identity. The social construction of gender and sexualities remains overlooked on the majority of college and university campuses, as well as the discrimination faced by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual (LGBTQIA) students unaddressed within curricula. The representation of the LGBTQIA community can be attended to within classrooms, campuses, and curriculums in many various way and at multiple levels of engagement. This project aims to fill the gap in social justice centered education within college curricula. It will provide resources that bring LGBTQIA issues and their intersectionality with race, class, gender, sex, ability, and citizenship into classrooms and core curricula in order to educate and facilitate discussions with students, faculty, and the educational community as a whole. The main objective of this project is to assist teachers in talking about issues of gender identity and sexualities and to provide guidelines and best practices of how to incorporate LGBTQIA issues into class lessons and discussions

Vorticity Budget of Weak Thermal Convection in Keplerian disks

By employing the equations of mean-square vorticity (enstrophy) fluctuations in strong shear flows, we demonstrate that unlike energy production of turbulent vorticity in nonrotating shear flows, the turbulent vorticity of weak convection in Keplerian disks cannot gain energy from vortex stretching/tilting by background shear unless the asscoiated Reynolds stresses are negative. This is because the epicyclic motion is an energy sink of the radial component of mean-square turbulent vorticity in Keplerian disks when Reynolds stresses are positive. Consequently, weak convection cannot be self-sustained in Keplerian flows. This agrees with the results implied from the equations of mean-square velocity fluctuations in strong shear flows. Our analysis also sheds light on the explanation of the simulation result in which positive kinetic helicity is produced by the Balbus-Hawley instability in a vertically stratified Keplerian disk. We also comment on the possibility of outward angular momentum transport by strong convection based on azimuthal pressure perturbations and directions of energy cascade.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure, emulateapj.sty, revised version in response to referee's comments, accepted by Ap

Turbulent resistivity evaluation in MRI generated turbulence

(abriged) MRI turbulence is a leading mechanism for the generation of an efficient turbulent transport of angular momentum in an accretion disk through a turbulent viscosity effect. It is believed that the same process could also transport large-scale magnetic fields in disks, reshaping the magnetic structures in these objects. This process, known as turbulent resistivity, has been suggested and used in several accretion-ejection models and simulations to produce jets. Still, the efficiency of MRI-driven turbulence to transport large-scale magnetic fields is largely unknown. We investigate this problem both analytically and numerically. We introduce a linear calculation of the MRI in the presence of a spatially inhomogeneous mean magnetic field. We show that, in this configuration, MRI modes lead to an efficient magnetic field transport, on the order of the angular momentum transport. We next use fully non linear simulations of MRI turbulence to compute the turbulent resistivity in several magnetic configurations. We find that the turbulent resistivity is on the order of the turbulent viscosity in all our simulations, although somewhat lower. The turbulent resistivity tensor is found to be highly anisotropic with a diffusion coefficient 3 times greater in the radial direction than in the vertical direction. These results support the possibility of driving jets from turbulent disks; the resulting jets may not be steady.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

UML Consistency Rules:a Case Study with Open-Source UML Models

UML models are standard artifacts used by software engineers for designing software. As software is designed, different UML diagram types (e.g., class diagrams and sequence diagrams) are produced by software designers. Since the various UML diagram types describe different aspects of a software system, they are not independent but strongly depend on each other, hence they must be consistent. Inconsistencies cause faults in the final software systems. It is, therefore, paramount that they get detected, analyzed, and fixed. Consistency rules are a useful tool proposed in the literature to detect inconsistencies. They categorize constraints that help in identifying inconsistencies when violated. This case study aims at collecting and analyzing UML models with OCL consistency rules proposed in the literature and at promoting the development of a reference benchmark that can be reused by the (FM-)research community. We collected 33 UML consistency rules and 206 different UML diagrams contained in 34 open-source UML models presented in the literature. We propose an FM-based encoding of the consistency rules in OCL. This encoding allows analyzing whether the consistency rules are satisfied or violated within the 34 UML models. To assess the proposed benchmark, we analyzed how the UML models, consistency rules, diagram types contained in the benchmark help in assessing the consistency of UML models, and the consistency of diagrams across the different software development phases. Our results show that the considered UML models and consistency rules allowed identifying 2731 inconsistencies and that those inconsistencies refer to different software development phases. We concluded that the considered UML models and consistency rules could be considered as an initial benchmark that can be further extended by the research community

Spectrum and Variability of Mrk501 as observed by the CAT Imaging Telescope

The CAT Imaging Telescope has observed the BL Lac object Markarian 501 between March and August 1997. We report here on the variability over this time including several large flares. We present also preliminary spectra for all these data, for the low emission state, and for the largest flare.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, Late

Increasing task behavior in a language arts program by providing reinforcement

The work of retarded readers using a programmed language arts curriculum was observed under various conditions of reinforcement in a controlled classroom. Task behavior was followed by conditions of no consequence, teacher praise, a work-break consequence, a monetary consequence and feedback on amount of work (relative to previous work). Extinction of task behavior tended to occur under conditions of no consequence and of teacher praise. Conditions of monetary consequence and of feedback on progress resulted in high, sustained rates of work behavior.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/32918/1/0000299.pd

Least - change bidirectional model transformation With QVT- R and ATL

QVT Relations (QVT-R) is the standard language proposed by the OMG to specify bidirectional model transformations. Unfortunately, in part due to ambiguities and omissions in the original semantics, acceptance and development of effective tool support has been slow. Recently, the checking semantics of QVTR has been clarified and formalized. In this article we propose a QVT-R tool that complies to such semantics. Unlike any other existing tool, it also supports metamodels enriched with OCL constraints (thus avoiding returning ill-formed models), and proposes an alternative enforcement semantics that works according to the simple and predictable “principle of least change”. The implementation is based on an embedding of both QVT-R transformations and UML class diagrams (annotated with OCL) in Alloy, a lightweight formal specification language with support for automatic model finding via SAT solving. We also show how this technique can be applied to bidirectionalize ATL, a popular (but unidirectional) model transformation language.This work is funded by ERDF-European Regional Development Fund through the COMPETE Programme (operational programme for competitiveness) and by national funds through the FCT-Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within project FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-020532. The first author is also sponsored by FCT grant SFRH/BD/69585/2010. The authors would also like to thank all anonymous reviewers for the valuable comments and suggestions

Observation of the Crab Nebula Gamma-Ray Emission Above 220 Gev by the Cat Cherenkov Imaging Telescope

The CAT imaging telescope, recently built on the site of the former solar plant Themis (French Pyrenees), observed gamma-rays from the Crab nebula from October 1996 to March 1997. This steady source, often considered as the standard candle of very-high-energy gamma-ray astronomy, is used as a test-beam to probe the performances of the new telescope, particularly its energy threshold (220 GeV at 20 degrees zenith angle) and the stability of its response. Due to the fine-grain camera, an accurate analysis of the longitudinal profiles of shower images is performed, yielding the source position in two dimensions for each individual shower.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, Tex, contribution to 25th ICRC Durba