Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Curricular Integration at a Women’s College, or Discussions in (and of) the Dating Parlor

Proposal for a presentation on integrating LGB studies into a women’s college in the southern United State

Poster Session: Improving Student Success Through Curriculum Design with OER.

This poster details the effects of integrating OER into curriculum design at the College of Lake County. It offers insight into how design and open course materials can improve student performance

The use of ‘PICO for synthesis’ and methods for synthesis without meta-analysis: protocol for a survey of current practice in systematic reviews of health interventions

INTRODUCTION: Systematic reviews involve synthesis of research to inform decision making by clinicians, consumers, policy makers and researchers. While guidance for synthesis often focuses on meta-analysis, synthesis begins with specifying the ’PICO for each synthesis’ (i.e. the criteria for deciding which populations, interventions, comparators and outcomes are eligible for each analysis). Synthesis may also involve the use of statistical methods other than meta-analysis (e.g. vote counting based on the direction of effect, presenting the range of effects, combining P values) augmented by visual display, tables and text-based summaries. This study examines these two aspects of synthesis. OBJECTIVES: To identify and describe current practice in systematic reviews of health interventions in relation to: (i) approaches to grouping and definition of PICO characteristics for synthesis; and (ii) methods of summary and synthesis when meta-analysis is not used. METHODS: We will randomly sample 100 systematic reviews of the quantitative effects of public health and health systems interventions published in 2018 and indexed in the Health Evidence and Health Systems Evidence databases. Two authors will independently screen citations for eligibility. Two authors will confirm eligibility based on full text, then extract data for 20% of reviews on the specification and use of PICO for synthesis, and the presentation and synthesis methods used (e.g. statistical synthesis methods, tabulation, visual displays, structured summary). The remaining reviews will be confirmed as eligible and data extracted by a single author. We will use descriptive statistics to summarise the specification of methods and their use in practice. We will compare how clearly the PICO for synthesis is specified in reviews that primarily use meta-analysis and those that do not. CONCLUSION: This study will provide an understanding of current practice in two important aspects of the synthesis process, enabling future research to test the feasibility and impact of different approaches

Coating-Free Mirrors for Ultra-Sensitive Interferometry

Thermodynamical fluctuations impose random noise on the position of optical components. It is predicted that this thermal noise will limit the sensitivity of interferometric gravitational-wave detectors in their most sensitive frequency band. Thermal noise originating from optical coatings was first considered in the context of interferometric gravitational wave detectors. Its true significance was, however, only revealed after Y. Levin introduced a new method in 1998 to calculate the resulting phase noise of a laser beam reading out the position of a coated mirror. A result of this analysis is that the reflective optical coatings introduce a particularly large portion of thermal noise. ¶ As a consequence, coating thermal noise is expected to prevent the detection of the standard quantum limit; a limitation to the sensitivity of an interferometric measurement caused by quantum fluctuations in the optical field. Elimination of the coating thermal noise will increase the likelihood of the successful observation of the standard quantum limit, thus enabling the investigation of quantum noise in the regime of optical squeezing. This project investigated a means to eliminate the effects of coating thermal noise, with the design and characterisation of a highly reflective coating-free mirror. This mirror utilised the phenomenon of total internal reflection and the Brewster angle to reflect light without the use of coatings. The dimensions of the mirror were governed by its expected implementation in an experiment to measure the standard quantum limit. ¶ The design of the coating-free mirror undertaken as the initial part of this project is presented in detail. Once a CFM had been created according to this design, its spatial dimensions were measured. The weight of the mirror is 0.43 ± 0.01 g, well within the design goal of 0.5 g. ¶ In order to analyse the reflectivity of the coating-free mirror it was incorporated, together with a high quality conventional mirror, into a triangular ring cavity. This cavity was stabilised to the laser frequency by the Pound-Drever-Hall technique. This enabled the interrogation of the stable cavity properties by an AM-sideband transfer scheme. The reflectivity of the mirror was analysed for optimum rotational alignment and as a function of its rotational alignment angle. The maximum reflectivity deviated from the expected value calculated from the mirror design. Most of the excess loss was attributed to scattering due to surface roughness at the points of total internal reflection and a necessary deviation from the Brewster angle due to the geometry of the cavity combined with the flat front face of the coating free mirror. ¶ For optimum alignment a cavity finesse of about 4000 was measured, corresponding to a reflectivity of the coating free mirror of 99.89%. Thus, the objective of creating a highly reflective lightweight coating-free optic was achieved. The obtained reflectivity can be further increased by using a substrate that is super polished at the faces of total internal reflection

Calculation of single-beam two-photon absorption transition rate of rare-earth ions using effective operator and diagrammatic representation

Effective operators needed in single-beam two-photon transition calculations have been represented with modified Goldstone diagrams similar to the type suggested by Duan and co-workers [J. Chem. Phys. 121, 5071 (2004) ]. The rules to evaluate these diagrams are different from those for effective Hamiltonian and one-photon transition operators. It is verified that the perturbation terms considered contain only connected diagrams and the evaluation rules are simplified and given explicitly.Comment: 10 preprint pages, to appear in Journal of Alloys and Compound

Two-photon or higher-order absorbing optical materials for generation of reactive species

Disclosed are highly efficient multiphoton absorbing compounds and methods of their use. The compounds generally include a bridge of pi-conjugated bonds connecting electron donating groups or electron accepting groups. The bridge may be substituted with a variety of substituents as well. Solubility, lipophilicity, absorption maxima and other characteristics of the compounds may be tailored by changing the electron donating groups or electron accepting groups, the substituents attached to or the length of the pi-conjugated bridge. Numerous photophysical and photochemical methods are enabled by converting these compounds to electronically excited states upon simultaneous absorption of at least two photons of radiation. The compounds have large two-photon or higher-order absorptivities such that upon absorption, one or more Lewis acidic species, Lewis basic species, radical species or ionic species are formed

Multi-Unit Auctions: A Survey of Theoretical Literature

This article aims to provide a comprehensive survey of the theoretical research on multi-unit auctions to help identify the gap in this literature. Multi-unit auctions have been extensively used in practise and account for significant amount of transactions in some real-world markets. However, the theoretical research on these auctions has attract less attention compared to single unit auctions. The focus of this article is on those research that study multi-unit auctions for the sale of multiple units of homogeneous objects to potential buyers with more than one unit demand. The articles are categorized based on the assumptions of their models regarding bidders' values and the type of auction. Further the gap in this literature is identified with those areas that require further theoretical research