A comparison of scores of kindergarten children and nonkindergarten children in specific background abilities at first grade entrance

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Frequency Response of Graphene Electrolyte-Gated Field-Effect Transistors

This work develops the first frequency-dependent small-signal model for graphene electrolyte-gated field-effect transistors (EGFETs). Graphene EGFETs are microfabricated to measure intrinsic voltage gain, frequency response, and to develop a frequency-dependent small-signal model. The transfer function of the graphene EGFET small-signal model is found to contain a unique pole due to a resistive element, which stems from electrolyte gating. Intrinsic voltage gain, cutoff frequency, and transition frequency for the microfabricated graphene EGFETs are approximately 3.1 V/V, 1.9 kHz, and 6.9 kHz, respectively. This work marks a critical step in the development of high-speed chemical and biological sensors using graphene EGFETs.United States. Office of Naval Research (Grant N00014-12-1-0959)United States. Office of Naval Research (Grant N0014-16-1-2230)United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Award NNX14AH11A)United States. Army Research Office (Contract W911NF-13-D-0001

Scientific questions for the exploration of the terrestrial planets and Jupiter - Advanced planetary missions technology program Progress report

Scientific questions and experimental design for planetary exploration of Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, and Venu

Dante Praedicator: Sermons and Preaching Culture in the Commedia

Starting from the premise that Dante takes influence from the sermons and preaching culture of his time in his construction of a voice of authority, this dissertation tracks the poet's use of sermonic material and rhetoric, as well as more explicit discussions on preaching through his entire corpus. Chapter One, "Dante Praedicator? Introduction to an Understudied Rhetorical Mode in the Commedia," elaborates on the argument that Dante the poet oftentimes acts as a preacher, and shows how this claim opens up new lines of inquiry into the poet's textuality. The first part of this chapter shows how the Commedia's early reception practically takes for granted that the poem is a sort of sermon, and supporting evidence shows in detail how the poem and preaching share much of the same subject matter, and demonstrates how the poem and sermons answer generic and stylistic questions in much the same way. The second section of this chapter surveys the last hundred years of Dante studies, to trace the roots of the recent critical prejudice against non-poetic influences on the poet's work - ranging from liturgy, Christian doctrine and preaching - and hypothesizes its source in Benedetto Croce's seminal 1921 essay, "La poesia di Dante," which rejects the idea of a didactic and hortatory Dante in order to focus instead on the poet qua poet. This vision of a secularized and emphatically "poetic" Dante became the status quo in Dante scholarship (although not without a few dissenters). Finally, the chapter summarizes some of the more recent work discovering the predicatory in Dante, and hypothesizes new questions about this textual mode in the Commedia, which the following chapters of this dissertation will discuss. Chapter Two, "Prohibition and Permission (with a Consideration of the Bolgia of Hypocrisy and Fra Dolcino)," explores the preaching of Dante's time. This chapter explains the social and historical circumstances around the 1214 legislation of Lateran IV, which ordered the ordainment of new preachers, and then recounts the thirteenth century renaissance of preaching as a means to propagate orthodoxy at a time when heresy threatened the Church's unity and stability. Because of this threat that heretical preaching had caused, the Church attempted to regulate preaching through prohibitions and permissions. The chapter then explores Dante's response to these legislative issues in the Commedia - specifically in his treatment of the hypocrites in Inferno 23, and of the schismatics and sowers of discord in Inferno 28. The chapter concludes by arguing that Dante responds to the mandates of church legislation with a considerable degree of indifference. On the one hand he highlights the failure of officials within the Church hierarchy who ought to preach, and on the other refuses to criticize the preaching of zealots that the Church censures as heretics on the other. After the previous chapter's exploration of Dante's relationship to preaching legislation, Chapter Three, "Predicante Iustitiam: Dante the Self-Authorizing Poet," explores more deeply what the poet means when he talks about preaching. The first part of this tripartite chapter proceeds philologically, examining first how Dante's poem consistently refuses to associate anyone identified as a "cherco," "prete," "pastor" or "sacerdote" with preaching, choosing instead to generally highlight the misdeeds of such figures. In this way the poet clears the pulpit of competition, aiming to situate himself, eventually, in that same role. The second part follows philologically as well, to examining variations on the word "predicare" as it occurs in the literature of Dante's milieu and in his own writing, and revealing its unique power as a word used to declare objective truths, though not without unique rhetorical overtones. Finally, the third section shows how Dante's careful use of "predicare" in his letters establishes himself as a preaching figure par excellence, who draws from the apostolic precedents established in the New Testament, as well as the prophetic and apocalyptic Noahic precedent as theorized in II Peter 2:5-7. Chapter Four, "Dicitur predicatio quandoque prophetia," continues where the previous chapter left off, with the suggestion that preaching and prophecy are in many cases one and the same thing. Taking a step away from the common contemporary belief in Dante studies that prophecy is generally something oriented towards forecasting events, this chapter uses Scripture, Aquinas's theology and the artes praedicandi in circulation in Dante's time to show how prophecy and preaching were understood to go hand in hand, well into the Middle Ages. Once this theoretical framework is established, the chapter proceeds to re-evaluate some of Dante's discussions on prophets in Paradiso, namely Nathan of the Old Testament and the twelfth century prophet Joachim of Fiore, to show that what Dante values as "prophetic" in these figures is also closely linked to their status as interpreters and preachers of divine truth, rather than any particular skills at forecasting (i.e. prophecy in the strict sense, according to contemporary standards). Chapters Five and Six mark a transition to a more focused analysis of preaching in the Commedia, to investigate Dante's sustained, but more subtle, use of the rhetorical techniques of preaching. Chapter Five, "The Art of Preaching in the Sphere of the Sun," examines the sequence of canti in Paradiso 10-13, to show the influence of the artes praedicandi on the rhetoric of these canti, and particularly on the speech of Thomas Aquinas, as Dante represents him here. An in-depth discussion of a form of preaching gaining influence in the duecento, sermo modernus, explains what it is, its component parts, and the way that it was used in Dante's world, and how it propagates a certain logical modes of thinking. Finally, Aquinas's speech in Paradiso 10-13 is examined for traces of sermo modernus, demonstrating that the poet intended to inflect Aquinas's language with predicatory valences, in the pursuit of a moral and ethical message that can be considered "authoritative." Chapter Six, "Beyond Sermo Modernus: Street Preaching in the Primum Mobile," turns to Beatrice's discourse in Paradiso 29, which combines complex theological discussion with a scabrous criticism of vainglorious street preaching. With language oscillating wildly between high and low registers, Beatrice rails against both the pseudoscience and philosophical ornament bogging down contemporary sermons, as well as the jests and buffooneries that less erudite street preachers employ to amuse their audience and extract favors and monetary compensation from them. It will be shown that here too the poet freely employs the language of the street, in echo of popular preachers of the time, and his willingness to embrace the physical and grotesque proves that his predicatory language is ultimately grounded in things, in the real. I will turn to examples from the life of St. Francis of Assisi to illustrate here his that his emphasis on things is represented not only in the preacher's words but also in his body, his acts, his example

Precise measurement of the top quark mass in the dilepton channel at D0

We measure the top quark mass (mt) in ppbar collisions at a center of mass energy of 1.96 TeV using dilepton ttbar->W+bW-bbar->l+nubl-nubarbbar events, where l denotes an electron, a muon, or a tau that decays leptonically. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 5.4 fb-1 collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. We obtain mt = 174.0 +- 1.8(stat) +- 2.4(syst) GeV, which is in agreement with the current world average mt = 173.3 +- 1.1 GeV. This is currently the most precise measurement of mt in the dilepton channel.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Search for a Narrow ttbar Resonance in ppbar Collisions at sqrt{s}=1.96 TeV

We report a search for a narrow ttbar resonance that decays into a lepton+jets final state based on an integrated luminosity of 5.3/fb of proton-antiproton collisions at sqrt{s}=1.96 TeV collected by the D0 Collaboration at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. We set upper limits on the production cross section of such a resonance multiplied by its branching fraction to ttbar which we compare to predictions for a leptophobic topcolor Z' boson. We exclude such a resonance at the 95% confidence level for masses below 835 GeV.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Physical Review Letter

Measurement of the lifetime of the B_c meson in the semileptonic decay channel

Using approximately 1.3 fb-1 of data collected by the D0 detector between 2002 and 2006, we measure the lifetime of the B_c meson in the B_c -> J/psi mu nu X final state. A simultaneous unbinned likelihood fit to the J/\psi+mu invariant mass and lifetime distributions yields a signal of 881 +/- 80 (stat) candidates and a lifetime measurement of \tau(B_c) = 0.448 +0.038 -0.036 (stat) +/- 0.032 (syst) ps.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Measurement of the W boson mass

We present a measurement of the W boson mass in W -> ev decays using 1 fb^-1 of data collected with the D0 detector during Run II of the Fermilab Tevatron collider. With a sample of 499830 W -> ev candidate events, we measure M_W = 80.401 +- 0.043 GeV. This is the most precise measurement from a single experiment.Comment: As published in PR

Search for new fermions ("quirks") at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider

We report results of a search for particles with anomalously high ionization in events with a high transverse energy jet and large missing transverse energy in $2.4$ fb$^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity collected by the D0 experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron $p\bar{p}$ collider. Production of such particles (quirks) is expected in scenarios with extra QCD-like {\it SU(N)} sectors, and this study is the first dedicated search for such signatures. We find no evidence of a signal and set a lower mass limit of 107 ~GeV for the mass of a charged quirk with strong dynamics scale $\Lambda$ in the range from 10 keV to 1 MeV.Comment: submitted to Phys. Rev. Letter