School Climate: Parents\u2019, Students\u2019 And Teachers\u2019 Perceptions

Because of the importance of individual perceptions, schools often assess how students or teachers or parents feel about their school, and school climate has often been associated with improved school achievement, but rarely they take into account all these \u201cactors\u201d at the same time. The main aim of this work is to compare the results obtained in a population study on school climate that involves students, parents, teachers and non-teaching staff. In this paper, we will present the results of parents\u2019, students\u2019, teachers\u2019 and no-teacher personnel's perception. We have administered 13,500 structured questionnaires addressed to students, parents, teachers, educational assistance personnel, involved in the four orders of schools (Pre-school, Elementary, Middle, High) of the province of Bolzano. Parental permission was obtained for young people. The present study has been conducted in the province of Bolzano, northern Italy, between January and April 2012. A School Climate Perception Questionnaire (SCPQ), that can be completed in 10 minutes, has been developed to assess environments and climate of all Italian language schools. In order to determine the interrelationships among the questionnaire items, a Principal-Axis Factor Analysis was performed. The final scale was used for Confirmatory Factor Analysis that was done to assess its construct validity. We will present the results regarding the school climate perceptions of teachers, parents and students and their comparison

Selecting Projects for a Capstone Spacecraft Design Course from Real World Solicitations

The first decision that goes into setting the tone for a senior capstone spacecraft design course is the choice of the projects. There are several sources of ideas for design projects, including design competitions and topics set by various technical committees. A new source of design ideas comes from real world design projects. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration\u27s Office of Space Science originally released an Announcement of Opportunity in spring 2002 to solicit designs for a complete Mars mission. The Senior Capstone Spacecraft Design course in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University paralleled this proposal process for the spacecraft design projects for the 2002-2003 academic year. While the original announcement called for proposers to determine what kind of a flight mission they would conduct, eight specific, realistic flight missions were chosen and assigned to the eight teams in the class. Many of the important aspects of the original project were duplicated; however, a significant amount of material was deleted. This paper discusses the outcome of the year-long course, compares some of the designs developed by the students to the designs chosen in the actual NASA mission design, and draws conclusions about the advantages and disadvantages of selecting a project based from a real solicitation

Data validation and uncertainty evaluation of the ESTER outdoor facility for testing of PV modules

In the paper the uncertainty analysis of the FTA Lab ESTER facility instrumentation is presented together with the procedure used to validate data outputs through measurements on a reference polycrystalline module provided by ISAAC-SUPSI. The reference module has been tested for several months and a procedure has been identified to sort the IV curves for translation at STC conditions. Blaesser method has been implemented and comparison between STC data from indoor measurements by ISAAC and translated outdoor curves produced quite satisfactory results

Constraints on Heavy Decaying Dark Matter from 570 Days of LHAASO Observations

The kilometer square array (KM2A) of the large high altitude air shower observatory (LHAASO) aims at surveying the northern γ-ray sky at energies above 10 TeV with unprecedented sensitivity. γ-ray observations have long been one of the most powerful tools for dark matter searches, as, e.g., high-energy γ rays could be produced by the decays of heavy dark matter particles. In this Letter, we present the first dark matter analysis with LHAASO-KM2A, using the first 340 days of data from 1/2-KM2A and 230 days of data from 3/4-KM2A. Several regions of interest are used to search for a signal and account for the residual cosmic-ray background after γ/hadron separation. We find no excess of dark matter signals, and thus place some of the strongest γ-ray constraints on the lifetime of heavy dark matter particles with mass between 105 and 109 GeV. Our results with LHAASO are robust, and have important implications for dark matter interpretations of the diffuse astrophysical high-energy neutrino emission

Could nearby star-forming galaxies light up the point-like neutrino sky?

Star-forming and starburst galaxies, which are well-known cosmic-rays reservoirs, are expected to emit gamma-rays and neutrinos predominantly via hadronic collisions. In this Letter, we analyze the 10-year Fermi-LAT spectral energy distributions of 13 nearby galaxies by means of a physical model which accounts for high-energy proton transport in starburst nuclei and includes the contribution of primary and secondary electrons. In particular, we test the hypothesis that the observed gamma-ray fluxes are mostly due to star-forming activity, in agreement with the available star formation rates coming from IR and UV observations. Through this observation-based approach, we determine the most-likely neutrino counterpart from star-forming and starburst galaxies and quantitatively assess the ability of current and upcoming neutrino telescopes to detect them as point-like sources. Remarkably, we find that the cores of the Small Magellanic Cloud and the Circinus galaxy are potentially observable by KM3NeT/ARCA with 6 years of observation. Moreover, most of the nearby galaxies are likely to be just a factor of a few below the KM3NeT and IceCube-Gen2 point-like sensitivities. After investigating the prospects for detection of gamma-rays above TeV energies from these sources, we conclude that the joint observations of high-energy neutrinos and gamma-rays with upcoming telescopes will be an objective test for our emission model and may provide compelling evidence of star-forming activity as a tracer of neutrino production.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

Casein genetic variants in ovine Merino breed

The genetic polymorphism on Merina ewe milk was investigated, using polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis at pH 8.6 and ultra thin-layer isoelectric focusing techniques, according to Krause et al. (1988), and Chianese et al. (1992). The casein fractions identified were: - Seven as1-casein phenotypes: CC, BB, BC, AB, AC, BD and CD (Chianese et al.,1996). - Three as2-casein phenotypes, provisionally nominated F, S, and I. - Three b-casein phenotypes, also provisionally nominated K, L and M, because their genetic segregation is not well known yet. The phenotypical distribution of the observed casein fractions and their adjustment to a normal distribution is presented.El polimorfismo genético de la leche de oveja Merina fue investigado mediante electroforesis en gel de poliacrilamida a pH 8,6 (PAGE) e isoelectroenfoque en gel ultrafino (UTLIEF), siguiendo las técnicas descritas por Krause et al. (1988) y Chianese et al. (1992). Dentro de las fracciones caseínicas se identificaron siete fenotipos de as1-caseína (CC, BB, BC, AB, AC, BD y CD), según la nomenclatura establecida por Chianese et al. (1996). Mientras que, a nivel de as2- y b-caseína se han observado tres perfiles electroforéticos, denominados provisionalmente F, S e I; K, L y M respectivamente, ya que no se conoce su segregación genética. Se presenta la distribución fenotípica de las fracciones caseínicas estudiadas, así como su ajuste a la distribución normal

Starburst galaxies strike back: a multi-messenger analysis with Fermi-LAT and IceCube data

Starburst galaxies, which are known as "reservoirs" of high-energy cosmic-rays, can represent an important high-energy neutrino "factory" contributing to the diffuse neutrino flux observed by IceCube. In this paper, we revisit the constraints affecting the neutrino and gamma-ray hadronuclear emissions from this class of astrophysical objects. In particular, we go beyond the standard prototype-based approach leading to a simple power-law neutrino flux, and investigate a more realistic model based on a data-driven blending of spectral indexes, thereby capturing the observed changes in the properties of individual emitters. We then perform a multi-messenger analysis considering the extragalactic gamma-ray background (EGB) measured by Fermi-LAT and different IceCube data samples: the 7.5-year High-Energy Starting Events (HESE) and the 6-year high-energy cascade data. Along with starburst galaxies, we take into account the contributions from blazars and radio galaxies as well as the secondary gamma-rays from electromagnetic cascades. Remarkably, we find that, differently from the highly-constrained prototype scenario, the spectral index blending allows starburst galaxies to account for up to $40\%$ of the HESE events at $95.4\%$ CL, while satisfying the limit on the non-blazar EGB component. Moreover, values of $\mathcal{O}(100~\mathrm{PeV})$ for the maximal energy of accelerated cosmic-rays by supernovae remnants inside the starburst are disfavoured in our scenario. In broad terms, our analysis points out that a better modeling of astrophysical sources could alleviate the tension between neutrino and gamma-ray data interpretation.Comment: 20 pages, 15 figures. v2: updated to published versio