Evaluating Thallium Leaching from Fly Ash in Aquatic Systems

To develop a fundamental understanding of how water chemistry and the physical and chemical properties of fly ash influence the release of thallium in natural and engineered aquatic systems I used leaching tests, graphite furnace atomic absorption spectroscopy, and the synchrotron generated x-rays of very high energy at Argonne National Laboratory. I evaluated and characterized the leaching of thallium as a function of pH, liquid to solids ratio (L:S), and ash origin. To complement the leaching data, specific molecular-level details describing thallium with speciation in fly ash acquired from various coal combustion power plants were collected via x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS). This work gives information on the intrinsic leaching behavior of different ashes. This has the potential to be used to project long term cumulative release of Tl from fly ashes under various management scenarios. The determination of the exact speciation of Tl in fly ash will help to explain and predict the leaching behavior of thallium in fly ash ponds and other aquatic systems in the built and natural environments. Results from leaching tests in which the effect of varying liquid to solid ratios on leaching behavior is examined indicate as the L:S increased, the amount of thallium leached logarithmically decreased. This suggests a more complex leaching mechanism than dilution is at play, as an isolated dilution process would result in a linearly decreasing variance. These results suggest the existence of multiple species of thallium, of varying accessibility and solubility, but literature examining this possibility in fly ash is scarce. XAS analysis showed multiple species of thallium present in each ash. This knowledge of the specific thallium speciation in fly ash within aquatic systems is extremely valuable. Specific information derived from XANES helps to evaluate whether Tl speciation and leaching is dependent on pH conditions, L:S ratio, and source coal.The Ohio Coal Development AuthorityNo embarg

Trauma-Informed Care: Victim\u27s Advocacy at the Individual Level

This brief reviews core elements of trauma-informed care, and how these are applied when supporting individual survivors through advocacy.https://commons.case.edu/mathercenter-briefs/1002/thumbnail.jp

School Leader Beliefs Regarding School-Wide Grading Practices: A Phenomenological Study

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand the beliefs regarding school-wide grading practices held by school leaders employed by Central Pennsylvania schools. The theory guiding this study was Bandura’s social cognitive theory (SCT) as it explains how behaviors (and subsequent beliefs) are shaped from past experiences, environment, and social interactions. This qualitative study utilized a transcendental phenomenological approach to understand common or shared beliefs held by school leaders regarding grading practices. Ten school leaders from Central Pennsylvania were selected for the study. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews and vignette responses. The data gathered from each of these sources was then compared to determine if there was consistency among the themes. The major themes emerging from this study were that school leaders believed that gradings should be meaningful, grading should not be used as a punitive measure, and that student work ethic is valued. Additionally, the participants shared some knowledge of non-traditional grading practices that promote accuracy and equity, the recognition that there are problems associated with traditional grading, and that their grading beliefs were developed during their teaching career and shaped by their administrative role. Finally, participants shared that grading reform is not a top priority and a reluctance to pursue such a reform if it was. Empirical and theoretical implications in relation to social cognitive theory are presented. Implications for policy and practice are also discussed

Lessons of Resilience from Our Founding Mothers: An Examination of Women from 1776 to 1830

The role of women in American society during its first 50 years (1776-1830) varied. Women, however, built and maintained the Republic but were not granted access to the Academy (Nash, 2005, Kerber, 1997). At the threshold of the Revolutionary War, women served not only their home, family, and husbands, they began to serve the broader country. In the first third of the 19th century, white women of wealth engaged in political acts of service and in acts of disruption (Kerber, 1997). The rest of this paper examines how women leaders of early America laid the foundation for women’s access to chartered institutions of higher education and the influences of this foundation. I assert that the women of 1776-1830, through their resilience and what I have coined the capacity- social capital-finance framework, paved a path for the women to come (e.g., Catherine Beecher, Mary Lyon, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells). Through historical research, I explore the philosophical underpinnings of 1776 through 1830 and explain women’s capacity, their social capital, and the eventual access to their own money. I also apply this framework to current day standards

Investigation of In-Service Teachers\u27 Use of Video during a Critical Friends Group

Critical Friends Groups (CFGs) were established in 1995 as a form of professional development for teachers. The current study employed the use of video as a medium for documenting the effects of CFG participation on teaching practices. This allowed links to be drawn between CFG participation and teaching practice, a critical gap in the literature. This qualitative case study drew upon Knowles’s Adult Learning Theory to help provide a framework for thinking about Critical Friends Groups and analyzing the findings. The 9 participants in this study included 1 third grade Early Intervention Program teacher and 8 CFG members from an urban elementary school. Multiple data sources were analyzed including classroom teaching practice videos, focal teacher\u27s and CFG members’ written reflections, CFG meeting verbatim transcriptions, focal teacher and CFG member interviews, and researcher memos. Data analysis was iterative and axial coding led to a code book depicting the final 6 key themes: change in teacher attitude toward the use of video, shared teaching practice, pedagogical-driven conversations, change in pupil engagement, captured classroom practice and promotion of teacher reflection. Barriers to the use of video in a CFG included logistics and teacher resistance. The researcher used data triangulation, member-checking and an audit trail to assure the trustworthiness of the study. Teachers reported that they learned from watching one another’s practices and from discussing each other’s ideas. The use of video in this study appeared to offer a viable innovation in an already prevalent model of professional development, CFGs. Video appeared to have much potential at the in-service level as it helped to cultivate knowledge, skills, and attitudes among teachers

Coal and Biomass Co-Gasification in a Circulating Fluidized Bed Reactor

Co-gasification tests of subbituminous coal with biomass were performed. A rape straw blended with coal was used in a mass ratios of coal/biomass of 25%, 50% and 75%. The gasification process was conducted in a circulating fluid bed reactor at atmospheric pressure with air and steam addition was applied to the reaction. The addition of biomass to coal resulted in a higher conversion to gas and increased the gas calorific value due to higher content of carbon oxid

Asynchronous Functional Reactive Programming for GUIs

Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) mediate many of our interactions with computers. Functional Reactive Programming (FRP) is a promising approach to GUI design, providing high-level, declarative, compositional abstractions to describe user interactions and time-dependent computations. We present Elm, a practical FRP language focused on easy creation of responsive GUIs. Elm has two major features: simple declarative support for Asynchronous FRP; and purely functional graphical layout. Asynchronous FRP allows the programmer to specify when the global ordering of event processing can be violated, and thus enables efficient concurrent execution of FRP programs; long-running computation can be executed asynchronously and not adversely affect the responsiveness of the user interface. Layout in Elm is achieved using a purely functional declarative framework that makes it simple to create and combine text, images, and video into rich multimedia displays. Together, Elm's two major features simplify the complicated task of creating responsive and usable GUIs.Engineering and Applied Science