7,458 research outputs found
Ranking Up by Moving Out: The Effect of the Texas Top 10% Plan on Property Values
Texas engaged in a large-scale policy experiment when it instituted the Top 10% Plan. This policy guarantees automatic admission to their state university of choice for all high school seniors who graduate in the top decile of their high school class. We find evidence that households reacted strategically to this policy by moving to neighborhoods with lower-performing schools, increasing both property values and the number of housing units in those areas. These effects are concentrated among schools that were very low-performing before the change in policy; property values and the number of housing units did not change discontinuously for previously high-performing school districts. We also find evidence that these strategic reactions were influenced by the number of local schooling options available: areas that had fewer school choices showed no reaction to the Top 10% Plan.property values, college choice, affirmative action, Top 10% Plan
Instanton-like Excitations in 2D Fermionic Field Theory
New non-perturbatives excitations in the massless Thirring and Schwinger
models are discussed.Comment: Revtex, 9pp, to be published in New Trends in Theoretical Physic
Learning Theoretical Concepts through Community Problem Solving: Service-Learning in Flight Safety Courses
Critics of higher education often criticize the chasm separating esoteric academic theory from the pragmatic knowledge required of students after graduation. Service-learning is presented as a catalyst for intrinsically motivating students to master course concepts. In service-learning, students collaborate with each other and with external stakeholders to fuse classroom theory with practical application in order to address real-world problems. Typological and historical overviews of service-learning are provided with special emphasis on how the systemic incorporation of service-learning throughout a degree program may increase student persistence by harmonizing academic processes with generational values. The use of service-learning in flight safety courses at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University has not only improved safety at the campus and in the surrounding aviation community, it has enhanced the learning of technical concepts in students while greatly improving their soft skills
Organizational Acculturation JetBlue Airways through Values-Framed Instructional Design
New initiatives across the entire spectrum of academic education are attempting to develop values-based curricula that teach ethical decision making. Can a similar process be used to inculcate organizational culture in a corporate workforce? Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is exploring the use of values-framed instructional design (VFID), where traditional course contents are structured around organizational core values in order to explicitly and implicitly acculturate corporate workers. The method is currently being used to train instructor pilots at JetBlue Airways as a means of scaling organizational culture in step with ongoing growth. In order to determine the potential role for VFID in future corporate education programs, methodologies must be developed to measure the effectiveness of values based instruction as an acculturation tool and to assess its concomitant impact on the financial performance of an organization
Transforming triangulations on non planar-surfaces
We consider whether any two triangulations of a polygon or a point set on a
non-planar surface with a given metric can be transformed into each other by a
sequence of edge flips. The answer is negative in general with some remarkable
exceptions, such as polygons on the cylinder, and on the flat torus, and
certain configurations of points on the cylinder.Comment: 19 pages, 17 figures. This version has been accepted in the SIAM
Journal on Discrete Mathematics. Keywords: Graph of triangulations,
triangulations on surfaces, triangulations of polygons, edge fli
Lagged and instantaneous dynamical influences related to brain structural connectivity
Contemporary neuroimaging methods can shed light on the basis of human neural
and cognitive specializations, with important implications for neuroscience and
medicine. Different MRI acquisitions provide different brain networks at the
macroscale; whilst diffusion-weighted MRI (dMRI) provides a structural
connectivity (SC) coincident with the bundles of parallel fibers between brain
areas, functional MRI (fMRI) accounts for the variations in the
blood-oxygenation-level-dependent T2* signal, providing functional connectivity
(FC).Understanding the precise relation between FC and SC, that is, between
brain dynamics and structure, is still a challenge for neuroscience. To
investigate this problem, we acquired data at rest and built the corresponding
SC (with matrix elements corresponding to the fiber number between brain areas)
to be compared with FC connectivity matrices obtained by 3 different methods:
directed dependencies by an exploratory version of structural equation modeling
(eSEM), linear correlations (C) and partial correlations (PC). We also
considered the possibility of using lagged correlations in time series; so, we
compared a lagged version of eSEM and Granger causality (GC). Our results were
two-fold: firstly, eSEM performance in correlating with SC was comparable to
those obtained from C and PC, but eSEM (not C nor PC) provides information
about directionality of the functional interactions. Second, interactions on a
time scale much smaller than the sampling time, captured by instantaneous
connectivity methods, are much more related to SC than slow directed influences
captured by the lagged analysis. Indeed the performance in correlating with SC
was much worse for GC and for the lagged version of eSEM. We expect these
results to supply further insights to the interplay between SC and functional
patterns, an important issue in the study of brain physiology and function.Comment: Accepted and published in Frontiers in Psychology in its current
form. 27 pages, 1 table, 5 figures, 2 suppl. figure
âDo U txt?â â Using âtxtingâ to learn maternal languages: a Portuguese case study
Analysing the influence of new technologies/media (e.g., mobile
phones, chats, instant messaging services) on the use and learning of maternal
languages basic rules is the goal of this investigation, involving teachers and
students (10th, 11th and 12th grade pupils, aged between 16 and 21) at the
Escola SecundĂĄria de Silves â ESS (Algarve/Portugal), and extended to include
at the Irish School of St. Tiernanâs Community (Dublin/Ireland). The use of
txting, commonly pointed out as being responsible for the destruction of
correct knowledge/mastery of maternal language rules in younger people is,
however, in our opinion, one more factor proving the constant
adaptability/transformation of languages, revealing the userâs high creativity,
ability to synthesise and to introduce â in txting itself â different language skill
levels. Exercises using txting were developed/applied at the ESS, proving to be
motivational (both for students and teachers) and efficient in transmitting
Portuguese language rules
Submillimetre dust polarisation and opacity in the HD163296 protoplanetary ring system
We present ALMA images of the sub-mm continuum polarisation and spectral
index of the protoplanetary ringed disk HD163296. The polarisation fraction at
870{\mu}m is measured to be ~0.9% in the central core and generally increases
with radius along the disk major axis. It peaks in the gaps between the dust
rings, and the largest value (~4%) is found between rings 1 and 2. The
polarisation vectors are aligned with the disk minor axis in the central core,
but become more azimuthal in the gaps, twisting by up to +/-9degrees in the gap
between rings 1 and 2. These general characteristics are consistent with a
model of self-scattered radiation in the ringed structure, without requiring an
additional dust alignment mechanism. The 870/1300{\mu}m dust spectral index
exhibits minima in the centre and the inner rings, suggesting these regions
have high optical depths. However, further refinement of the dust or the disk
model at higher resolution is needed to reproduce simultaneously the observed
degree of polarisation and the low spectral index.Comment: 5 pages +2 pages supplemental data. v2 - revised figures and final
values; conclusions unchange
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