3,089 research outputs found
Using Communities of Practice to Support At-Home Gospel Learning from a Release Time Seminary Classroom
This mixed-methods action research study examines the effect of communities of practice on the development of home-centered gospel learning activities from the perspective of twelve release-time Seminary teachers for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from October—December 2021. Beginning in 2019, leaders of Seminaries and Institutes began to implement a Churchwide initiative to encourage home-centered, Church-supported gospel learning. Although Seminary leaders have made several systemwide adjustments, teachers have commonly made minimal adjustments to support this approach. Throughout the mixed-methods study, participants learned about the importance of this home-centered gospel learning approach, in addition to principles of design thinking and successful communities of practice. In both their communities of practice and monthly faculty inservice meetings, study participants discussed what they had done to encourage a home-centered, Seminary-supported gospel-learning approach and how effective they felt those efforts were. It appears that the process of design thinking and communities of practice greatly enhanced the teachers’ ability to positively reinforce home-centered gospel learning experiences within the lives of their students
Remote sensing for hurricane Andrew impact assessment
Stennis Space Center personnel flew a Learjet equipped with instrumentation designed to acquire imagery in many spectral bands into areas most damaged by Hurricane Andrew. The calibrated airborne multispectral scanner (CAMS), a NASA-developed sensor, and a Zeiss camera acquired images of these areas. The information derived from the imagery was used to assist Florida officials in assessing the devastation caused by the hurricane. The imagery provided the relief teams with an assessment of the debris covering roads and highways so cleanup plans could be prioritized. The imagery also mapped the level of damage in residential and commercial areas of southern Florida and provided maps of beaches and land cover for determination of beach loss and vegetation damage, particularly the mangrove population. Stennis Space Center personnel demonstrated the ability to respond quickly and the value of such response in an emergency situation. The digital imagery from the CAMS can be processed, analyzed, and developed into products for field crews faster than conventional photography. The resulting information is versatile and allows for rapid updating and editing. Stennis Space Center and state officials worked diligently to compile information to complete analyses of the hurricane's impact
The MASSIVE Survey - III. Molecular gas and a broken Tully-Fisher relation in the most massive early-type galaxies
In this work we present CO(1-0) and CO(2-1) observations of a pilot sample of
15 early-type galaxies (ETGs) drawn from the MASSIVE galaxy survey, a
volume-limited integral-field spectroscopic study of the most massive ETGs
() within 108 Mpc. These objects were selected because
they showed signs of an interstellar medium and/or star formation. A large
amount of gas (210 M) is present in 10 out of 15
objects, and these galaxies have gas fractions higher than expected based on
extrapolation from lower mass samples. We tentatively interpret this as
evidence that stellar mass loss and hot halo cooling may be starting to play a
role in fuelling the most massive galaxies. These MASSIVE ETGs seem to have
lower star-formation efficiencies (SFE=SFR/M) than spiral galaxies,
but the SFEs derived are consistent with being drawn from the same distribution
found in other lower mass ETG samples. This suggests that the SFE is not simply
a function of stellar mass, but that local, internal processes are more
important for regulating star formation. Finally we used the CO line profiles
to investigate the high-mass end of the Tully-Fisher relation (TFR). We find
that there is a break in the slope of the TFR for ETGs at high masses
(consistent with previous studies). The strength of this break correlates with
the stellar velocity dispersion of the host galaxies, suggesting it is caused
by additional baryonic mass being present in the centre of massive ETGs. We
speculate on the root cause of this change and its implications for galaxy
formation theories.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, accepted by MNRA
Two loop stress-energy tensor for inflationary scalar electrodynamics
We calculate the expectation value of the coincident product of two field
strength tensors at two loop order in scalar electrodynamics on de Sitter
background. The result agrees with the stochastic formulation which we have
developed in a companion paper [2] for the nonperturbative resummation of
leading logarithms of the scale factor. When combined with a previous
computation of scalar bilinears [1], our current result also gives the two loop
stress-energy tensor for inflationary scalar electrodynamics. This shows a
secular decrease in the vacuum energy which derives from the vacuum
polarization induced by the inflationary production of charged scalars.Comment: 62 pages, 1 eps figur
Endolysosomes Are the Principal Intracellular Sites of Acid Hydrolase Activity.
The endocytic delivery of macromolecules from the mammalian cell surface for degradation by lysosomal acid hydrolases requires traffic through early endosomes to late endosomes followed by transient (kissing) or complete fusions between late endosomes and lysosomes. Transient or complete fusion results in the formation of endolysosomes, which are hybrid organelles from which lysosomes are re-formed. We have used synthetic membrane-permeable cathepsin substrates, which liberate fluorescent reporters upon proteolytic cleavage, as well as acid phosphatase cytochemistry to identify which endocytic compartments are acid hydrolase active. We found that endolysosomes are the principal organelles in which acid hydrolase substrates are cleaved. Endolysosomes also accumulated acidotropic probes and could be distinguished from terminal storage lysosomes, which were acid hydrolase inactive and did not accumulate acidotropic probes. Using live-cell microscopy, we have demonstrated that fusion events, which form endolysosomes, precede the onset of acid hydrolase activity. By means of sucrose and invertase uptake experiments, we have also shown that acid-hydrolase-active endolysosomes and acid-hydrolase-inactive, terminal storage lysosomes exist in dynamic equilibrium. We conclude that the terminal endocytic compartment is composed of acid-hydrolase-active, acidic endolysosomes and acid hydrolase-inactive, non-acidic, terminal storage lysosomes, which are linked and function in a lysosome regeneration cycle.This work was supported by MRC research grant MR/M010007/1. The CIMR is supported
by Wellcome Trust Strategic Award 100140. The Cellomics ArrayScanâ„¢ VTi High Content
Screening Microscope, Zeiss LSM710 confocal microscope and FEI Tecnai G2 Spirit
BioTWIN transmission EM were purchased with Wellcome Trust grants 079919 and 093026.
LJD is supported by a BBSRC industrial CASE studentship with GSK Research and
Development Ltd. We thank Sally Gray for preparing and sequencing pLXIN constructs and
Matthew Gratian for help with light microscopy and analytical software.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Elsevier via https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.cub.2016.06.04
High Energy Electron Confinement in a Magnetic Cusp Configuration
We report experimental results validating the concept that plasma confinement
is enhanced in a magnetic cusp configuration when beta (plasma
pressure/magnetic field pressure) is order of unity. This enhancement is
required for a fusion power reactor based on cusp confinement to be feasible.
The magnetic cusp configuration possesses a critical advantage: the plasma is
stable to large scale perturbations. However, early work indicated that plasma
loss rates in a reactor based on a cusp configuration were too large for net
power production. Grad and others theorized that at high beta a sharp boundary
would form between the plasma and the magnetic field, leading to substantially
smaller loss rates. The current experiment validates this theoretical
conjecture for the first time and represents critical progress toward the
Polywell fusion concept which combines a high beta cusp configuration with an
electrostatic fusion for a compact, economical, power-producing nuclear fusion
reactor.Comment: 12 pages, figures included. 5 movies in Ancillary file
On the Origin of [OII] Emission in Red Sequence and Post-starburst Galaxies
We investigate the emission-line properties of galaxies with red rest-frame
colors using spectra from SDSS DR4. Emission lines are detected in more than
half of the red galaxies. We focus on the relationship between two emission
lines commonly used as star formation rate indicators: Ha 6563 and [OII] 3727.
There is a strong bimodality in [OII]/Ha ratio in the full SDSS sample which
closely corresponds to the bimodality in rest-frame color. Nearly all of the
line-emitting red galaxies have line ratios typical of various types of AGN --
most commonly LINERs, a small fraction of transition objects and, more rarely,
Seyferts. Only ~6% of red galaxies display star-forming line ratios. A straight
line in the [OII]-Ha equivalent width plane separates LINER-like galaxies from
other categories. Quiescent galaxies with no detectable emission lines and
LINER-like galaxies combine to form a single, tight red sequence in
color-magnitude-concentration space. [OII] EWs in LINER- and AGN-like galaxies
can be as large as in star-forming galaxies. Thus, unless objects with
AGN/LINER-like line ratios are excluded, [OII] emission cannot be used directly
as a proxy for star formation rate. Lack of [OII] emission is generally used to
indicate lack of star formation when post-starburst galaxies are selected at
high redshift. Our results imply, however, that these samples have been cut on
AGN properties as well as star formation, and therefore may provide seriously
incomplete sets of post-starburst galaxies. Furthermore, post-starburst
galaxies identifed in SDSS by requiring minimal Ha EW generally exhibit weak
but nonzero line emission with ratios typical of AGNs; few of them show
residual star formation. This suggests that most post-starbursts may harbor
AGNs/LINERs.Comment: 21 pages, 15 figures. v2: Added 4 new figures and updated many;
extended text. No conclusions change. v3: minor modifications and figure
updates to match version accepted by Ap
Effect of in-plane magnetic field on the photoluminescence spectrum of modulation-doped quantum wells and heterojunctions
The photoluminescence (PL) spectrum of modulation-doped GaAs/AlGaAs quantum
wells (MDQW) and heterojunctions (HJ) is studied under a magnetic field
() applied parallel to the two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) layer.
The effect of strongly depends on the electron-hole separation
(), and we revealed remarkable -induced modifications of the PL
spectra in both types of heterostructures. A model considering the direct
optical transitions between the conduction and valence subband that are shifted
in k-space under , accounts qualitatively for the observed spectral
modifications. In the HJs, the PL intensity of the bulk excitons is strongly
reduced relatively to that of the 2DEG with increasing . This means
that the distance between the photoholes and the 2DEG decreases with increased
, and that free holes are responsible for the hole-2DEG PL.Comment: 6pages, 5figure
Assessment of knowledge of malaria and its control practices in mining and sugarcane growing regions of Western Kenya highlands
Background: Despite upscaled control efforts, deaths and hospitalization due to malaria remained high in counties of western Kenya highlands.
Objectives: This study assessed the knowledge of malaria in two rural communities, the control strategies they use, and their capacity to integrate the available control programs.
Methods: A cross-sectional survey was carried out in two rural villages in November – December 2018. Focus group discussions and a questionnaire survey were carried out in 736 households. Frequencies and proportions were used for descriptive analysis while the Chi-square test was used to determine factors that were associated with knowledge of malaria at p ≤ 0.05
Results: Ninety-seven percent of the respondents had knowledge of malaria and this was associated with the level of education attained (χ2 = 30.108; p > 0.0001). Bed net ownership was at 86% and 92% correctly identified its use. Draining stagnant water (53.9%) was the most cited environmental management practice.
Conclusion: There was awareness of the risk factors of malaria transmission in the study sites. The local communities must be mobilized and empowered through EIC for the control practises to bear fruit against malaria transmission. However, more sensitization needs to be done to optimize the use of malaria control practices.Keywords: Malaria; control practices; Kenya highlands; Mining
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