Conflicts over Dobruja during the Great War

A sensitive topic for decades (for ideological reasons), Dobruja is still a challenge for many Romanian and Bulgarian historians. A peripheral and hardly populated region, this territory lying between the Danube and the Black Sea became the major source of dispute between Bucharest and Sofia at the dawn of the last century. After 1878, legal history and statistics were the pillars of the new identity of this former Ottoman territory divided between Romania and Bulgaria, as a result of a decision made by the Great Powers. In order to meet the specific requirements of young national states, Dobruja underwent a colonisation process (whose intensity differed in the two parts of the region). Ethnic diversity caused much concern, particularly in the critical moments that endangered the relations between the two neighbouring countries. The Balkan Wars represented the moment when the Dobruja question officially emerged. Romania’s decision to annex Southern Dobruja would traumatise Bulgarian society, which would look forward to retaliating. This moment occurred earlier than many Romanian politicians expected. The spirit of revenge explains why the fighting on the Dobrujan front was so intense in the autumn of 1916. Dobruja was the first province of the Romanian Kingdom that fell under the Central Powers’ occupation. The documents stored in Romanian archives are too few to make it possible to accurately reconstruct the history of this province during its military occupation by the Central Powers. This is not an easy challenge: Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, Serbia, Germany, Turkey and Austro-Hungary were in some way involved in the events in Dobruja in the autumn of 1916

Distribution of Trace Metals in Fine-grained Bed Sediments and Benthic Insects in the Clark Fork River, Montana

The downstream distribution of Cu, Cd, and Pb in fine-grained sediments and benthic insect larvae of the Clark Fork River, Montana is characterized. This river has been heavily con laminated as a result of past mining and smelling operations near its headwaters. Concentrations of all metals in bed sediments displayed a simple exponential downstream decrease through the upper 181 km of the river. The trend suggested metal contamination originated from source(s) in the headwaters, with physical dilution occurring downstream. Additional data suggested floodplain sediments also were contaminated by the original source(s). Secondary inputs from cutbanks in the floodplains may have extended the downstream influence of the contamination. The exponential model predicted that sediment contamination should extend at least 550 km downstream, a result that was verified with data from a separate, independent study. Metal contamination, as observed in all taxa of insect larvae collected from the upper Clark Fork. Concentrations in the insect larvae were highest in the upper 100 km of the river, but downstream trends were more complex than those of the sediments. Some differences in trends occurred among taxa and metals. Areas in the river of enhanced or reduced metal contamination also were apparent. Metal contamination, however, was still evident at 381 km, the most downstream station sampled. Metal concentrations in sediments and insects decreased at the confluences of uncontaminated tributaries, but the influence of tributaries on metal contamination in the Clark Fork River was localized, extending for only 1-2 kin below the confluences

Using Comprehension Strategies with Authentic Text in a College Chemistry Course

College science students learn important topics by reading textbooks, which contain dense technical prose. Comprehension strategies are known to increase learning from reading. One class of comprehension strategies, called elaboration strategies, is intended to link new information with prior knowledge. Elaboration strategies have an appeal in science courses where new information frequently depends on previously learned information. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of an elaboration strategy in an authentic college environment. General chemistry students read text about Lewis structures, figures drawn by chemists to depict molecules, while assigned to use either an elaboration strategy, namely elaborative interrogation, or another strategy, rereading, which served as a placebo control. Two texts of equal length were employed in this pretest-posttest experimental design. One was composed by the researcher. The other was an excerpt from a college textbook and contained a procedure for constructing Lewis structures. Students (N = 252) attending a large community college were randomly assigned to one of the two texts and assigned one of the two strategies. The elaborative interrogation strategy was implemented with instructions to answer why-questions posed throughout the reading. Answering why-questions has been hypothesized to activate prior knowledge of a topic, and thus to aid in cognitively connecting new material with prior knowledge. The rereading strategy was implemented with instructions to read text twice. The use of authentic text was one of only a few instances of applying elaborative interrogation with a textbook. In addition, previous studies have generally focused on the learning of facts contained in prose. The application of elaborative interrogation to procedural text has not been previously reported. Results indicated that the more effective strategy was undetermined when reading authentic text in this setting. However, prior knowledge level was identified as a statistically significant factor for learning from authentic text. That is, students with high prior knowledge learned more, regardless of assigned strategy. Another descriptive study was conducted with a separate student sample (N = 34). Previously reported Lewis structure research was replicated. The trend of difficulty for 50 structures in the earlier work was supported

Detection of Rotational Spectral Variation on the M-type asteroid (16) Psyche

The asteroid (16) Psyche is of scientific interest because it contains ~ 1% of the total mass of the asteroid belt and is thought to be the remnant metallic core of a protoplanet. Radar observations have indicated the significant presence of metal on the surface with a small percentage of silicates. Prior ground-based observations showed rotational variations in the near-infrared (NIR) spectra and radar albedo of this asteroid. However, no comprehensive study that combines multi-wavelength data has been conducted so far. Here we present rotationally resolved NIR spectra (0.7-2.5 microns) of (16) Psyche obtained with the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility. These data have been combined with shape models of the asteroid for each rotation phase. Spectral band parameters extracted from the NIR spectra show that the pyroxene band center varies from ~ 0.92 to 0.94 microns. Band center values were used to calculate the pyroxene chemistry of the asteroid, whose average value was found to be Fs30En65Wo5. Variations in the band depth were also observed, with values ranging from 1.0 to 1.5%. Using a new laboratory spectral calibration we estimated an average orthopyroxene content of 6+/-1%. The mass-deficit region of Psyche, which exhibits the highest radar albedo, also shows the highest value for spectral slope and the minimum band depth. The spectral characteristics of Psyche suggest that its parent body did not have the typical structure expected for a differentiated body or that the sequence of events that led to its current state was more complex than previously thought.Comment: 21 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables, published in The Astronomical Journa

The QAOA gets stuck starting from a good classical string

The Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) is designed to maximize a cost function over bit strings. While the initial state is traditionally a superposition over all strings, it is natural to try expediting the QAOA: first use a classical algorithm to produce some good string, and then run the ordinary QAOA starting in the computational basis state associated with that string. Here we report numerical experiments that this method of initializing the QAOA fails dramatically, exhibiting little to no improvement of the cost function. We investigate criteria for the rare instances in which there is any improvement at all, and we provide a statistical argument for the more typical case of no improvement. The statistical argument holds for any string that locally mimics the thermal ensemble at the appropriate temperature. Our numerical experiments indicate this property holds for typical good strings. We emphasize that our negative results only apply to our simple incarnation of the warm-start QAOA and may not apply to other approaches in the literature. We hope that our theoretical analysis will inform future algorithm design.Comment: 26 pages, 1 figure, 6 table

Histidine-rich protein II nanoparticle delivery of heme iron load drives endothelial inflammation in cerebral malaria

Histidine-rich protein II (HRPII) is secreted b

Inquiry as Practice: The Pathway to Redesigning an Educational Leadership Doctoral Research Seminar Series

As faculty of an educational leadership doctoral program (EdD) aligned with the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) principles, we acknowledge the importance of inquiry to develop scholarly practitioners. Applying the tenet of Inquiry as Practice, our EdD faculty critically examined the doctoral curriculum to explore ways to effectively prepare our doctoral students to learn and apply research methodology meaningfully. This essay details how the review of our research curriculum led to a pedagogical and curriculum redesign of our research seminar series. This revised research seminar series culminates in a course offered every fall/spring semester in the final two years of the program and intentionally has different faculty members teaching each course. We have utilized a backward design to create the themes/content of these seminar courses to better prepare students for their dissertation research