Making Sense, Making Do: Local District Implementation of a New State Induction Policy

Connecticut’s Teacher Education and Mentoring (TEAM) program is in its early stages of implementation. This study examined how local school districts implemented TEAM and identified factors that affected implementation. It was based on interviews with twenty-two participants at the state, district, and local school levels. The intentions of the program designers at the state level were compared to district and school level understanding of the program’s intentions and how those understandings influenced implementation. Additionally, factors affecting local understanding and implementation of the new program were described. The findings of this study suggest that there was close alignment of understanding between the state and local implementers on the key provisions of the program related to its role as a professional development tool. The data reveal tacit rather than explicit understanding at the local level of the program’s intention to improve student achievement. Variations in understanding can be attributed to other factors including contextual, structural, cognitive, and affective elements

Leadership and the ANC: The Thabo Mbeki Era in South Africa

South Africa has been considered a bastion of democracy on the continent of Africa since its first fully democratic election in 1994. Yet, under its second president since apartheid, Thabo Mbeki, the consolidation of South Africa’s democratic gains tended to slow or even stagnate. This thesis develops a theoretical backdrop by explaining competing theories of leadership and development in Africa. With Thabo Mbeki’s promotion of the African Renaissance he should be considered to of promoted a good governance model of growth and leadership within South Africa. To determine whether Mbeki actively followed through in implementing good governance practices as leader of South Africa and the ANC this thesis analyzes three aspects of the African National Congress (ANC): centralization, corruption and the 2007 leadership succession. Through this analysis of these three aspects of the ANC under Mbeki the thesis moves to determine whether the former president should be considered to have cultivated a good governance regime while in office or whether his leadership of South Africa embraced more neopatrimonial logic. This study finds that under Mbeki neopatrimonialism expanded significantly, particularly within the ruling ANC, and can to a certain extent be used to explained Mbeki’s actions while president of South Africa. Despite actively promoting a good governance agenda this thesis argues that Mbeki contributed to the stagnation of democratic gains in South Africa. This legacy will continue to effect future South African leaders including Mbeki’s arch-rival Jacob Zuma

Radiation and snowmelt dynamics in mountain forests

Utilising extensive field observations and physically-based simulations of forest-snow processes, the impacts of needleleaf forest-cover on radiation and snowmelt dynamics were investigated in an eastern Rocky Mountain headwater catchment. At low-elevation pine forest sites, the sparse canopy-cover allowed for substantial shortwave transmittance to snow, giving topography-influenced snow radiation balances and snowmelt timing. By comparison, the denser high-elevation spruce cover minimised shortwave radiation to snow, resulting in snowmelt dominated by longwave radiation gains, and close synchronisation in melt timing across opposing mountain slopes. Field observations were used to direct and evaluate physically-based simulation models describing radiation-snow exchanges in needleleaf forests. This included the estimation of shortwave irradiance transfer through sparse needleleaf canopies with explicit account for differing shortwave transmittance properties of trunks, crowns, and gaps within highly structured mountain pine stands. Improved representation of sub-canopy longwave irradiance to mountain snow was also made through the determination of added longwave emissions from shortwave heated canopies. From model simulations, forest-cover effects on radiation to snow were found to vary substantially with both topography and seasonal meteorological conditions. In general, forest-cover increased radiation during the mid-winter by reducing longwave losses from snow. However, with greater shortwave irradiance into the spring, forest-cover effects on radiation to snow became increasing influenced by topography, with greater radiation under more open canopies on south-facing slopes and under more closed canopies on north-facing slopes. Drawing upon past field investigations and modelling exercises, a physically-based simulation model was constructed to represent snow accumulation and melt processes in needleleaf forest environments. By means of an objective evaluation, the model well represented differences in snow accumulation and melt in paired forest and clearing sites of varying location and climate. The model was subsequently applied to examine forest-cover impacts on mountain snowmelt, revealing that forest-cover removal substantially increased total snowmelt and sizeably expanded the spring melt period through a de-synchronisation of melt contributions from south-facing and north-facing landscapes. These results demonstrate the potential for altering the magnitude and timing of mountain snowmelt through topographic-specific changes in mountain forest-cover

Test and Evaluation Metrics of Crew Decision-Making And Aircraft Attitude and Energy State Awareness

NASA has established a technical challenge, under the Aviation Safety Program, Vehicle Systems Safety Technologies project, to improve crew decision-making and response in complex situations. The specific objective of this challenge is to develop data and technologies which may increase a pilot's (crew's) ability to avoid, detect, and recover from adverse events that could otherwise result in accidents/incidents. Within this technical challenge, a cooperative industry-government research program has been established to develop innovative flight deck-based counter-measures that can improve the crew's ability to avoid, detect, mitigate, and recover from unsafe loss-of-aircraft state awareness - specifically, the loss of attitude awareness (i.e., Spatial Disorientation, SD) or the loss-of-energy state awareness (LESA). A critical component of this research is to develop specific and quantifiable metrics which identify decision-making and the decision-making influences during simulation and flight testing. This paper reviews existing metrics and methods for SD testing and criteria for establishing visual dominance. The development of Crew State Monitoring technologies - eye tracking and other psychophysiological - are also discussed as well as emerging new metrics for identifying channelized attention and excessive pilot workload, both of which have been shown to contribute to SD/LESA accidents or incidents

Sensitivity of Snowmelt Hydrology on Mountain Slopes to Forest Cover Disturbance

Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, IP3 Network, NSERC Discovery Grants and Research Tool Instrument Grants and the University of Calgary Biogeoscience Institute.Non-Peer ReviewedMarmot Creek Research Basin was the subject of intense studies of snowmelt, water balance and streamflow generation in order to generate a five year database of precipitation inputs, snowpack dynamics and streamflow that could be used in hydrological model testing. A physically based hydrological model of the basin was constructed using the Cold Regions Hydrological Model and tested over four years of simulation. The model was found to accurately simulate snowpacks in forested and cleared landscapes and the timing and quantity of streamflow over the basin. The model was manipulated to simulate the impacts of forest disturbance on basin snow dynamics, snowmelt, streamflow and groundwater recharge. A total of 40 forest disturbance scenarios were compared to the current land use over the four simulation years. Disturbance scenarios ranged from the impact of pine beetle kill of lodgepole pine to clearing of north or south facing slopes, forest fire and salvage logging impacts. Pine beetle impacts were small in all cases with increases in snowmelt of less than 10% and of streamflow and groundwater recharge of less than 2%. This is due to only 15% of the basin area being covered with lodgepole pine and this pine being at lower elevations which received much lower snowfall and rainfall than did higher elevations and so generated much less streamflow and groundwater recharge. Forest disturbance due to fire and clearing affected much large areas of the basin and higher elevations and were generally more than twice as effective in increasing snowmelt or streamflow. For complete forest cover removal with salvage logging a 45% increase in snowmelt was simulated, however this only translated into a 5% increase in spring and summer streamflow and a 7% increase in groundwater recharge. Forest fire with retention of standing burned trunks was the most effect forest cover treatment for increasing streamflow (up to 8%) due to minimizing both sublimation of winter snow and summer evaporation rates. Peak daily streamflow discharges responded more strongly to forest cover decrease than did seasonal streamflow with increases of over 20% in peak streamflow with removal of forest cover. It is suggested that the dysynchronization of snowmelt timing with forest cover removal resulted in an ineffective translation of changes in snowmelt quantity to streamflow. This resulted in a complementary increase in groundwater recharge as well as streamflow as forest cover was reduced. Presumably, a basin with differing soil characteristics, groundwater regime or topographic orientation would provide a differing hydrological response to forest cover change and the sensitivity of these changes to basin characterisation needs further examination

Psychophysiological Sensing and State Classification for Attention Management in Commercial Aviation

Attention-related human performance limiting states (AHPLS) can cause pilots to lose airplane state awareness (ASA), and their detection is important to improving commercial aviation safety. The Commercial Aviation Safety Team found that the majority of recent international commercial aviation accidents attributable to loss of control inflight involved flight crew loss of airplane state awareness, and that distraction of various forms was involved in all of them. Research on AHPLS, including channelized attention, diverted attention, startle / surprise, and confirmation bias, has been recommended in a Safety Enhancement (SE) entitled "Training for Attention Management." To accomplish the detection of such cognitive and psychophysiological states, a broad suite of sensors has been implemented to simultaneously measure their physiological markers during high fidelity flight simulation human subject studies. Pilot participants were asked to perform benchmark tasks and experimental flight scenarios designed to induce AHPLS. Pattern classification was employed to distinguish the AHPLS induced by the benchmark tasks. Unimodal classification using pre-processed electroencephalography (EEG) signals as input features to extreme gradient boosting, random forest and deep neural network multiclass classifiers was implemented. Multi-modal classification using galvanic skin response (GSR) in addition to the same EEG signals and using the same types of classifiers produced increased accuracy with respect to the unimodal case (90 percent vs. 86 percent), although only via the deep neural network classifier. These initial results are a first step toward the goal of demonstrating simultaneous real time classification of multiple states using multiple sensing modalities in high-fidelity flight simulators. This detection is intended to support and inform training methods under development to mitigate the loss of ASA and thus reduce accidents and incidents