Trials & Tribulations Encountered During the Development & Teaching of a Dual-Delivery Format Research Methods Course

This paper focuses on developmental and pedagogical/sociological issues related to a doctoral level research methodology course. This course is delivered in two formats, resident (face-to-face) and distance (web-based on Blackboard). Pedagogical, sociological, course development, course delivery, issues and challenges for both formats are discussed. An annotated bibliography is also included

Multipurpose microcontroller design for PUGAS 2

This paper will report on the past year's work on the development of the microcontroller design for the second Purdue University small self-contained payload. A first report on this effort was given at last year's conference by Ritter (1985). At that time, the project was still at the conceptual stage. Now a specific design has been set, prototyping has begun, and layout of the two-sided circuit board using CAD-techniques is nearing completion. A redesign of the overall concept of the circuit board was done to take advantage of the facilities available to students. An additional controller has been added to take large quantities of data concerning the shuttle environment during takeoff. The importance of setting a design time-line is discussed along with the electrical design considerations given to the controllers

"Surviving Globalization": Experiment and the World-Historical Imagination in Rana Dasgupta’s Solo

This essay investigates Rana Dasgupta’s Solo as an exemplar of world-mapping fiction which takes the system of global capitalism as its horizon.  I argue that Solo invites “world-literary” criticism informed by world-systems and world-ecology perspectives because its operative totality is world-history rather than the nation and its aesthetics self-consciously take up the formal problem of representation of global scales. The essay considers experimental writing in the context of structural narrative innovation, demonstrating how Solo’s diptych structure renovates the forms of the historical novel and the Zeitroman in order to represent successive revolutions in the world-ecology. I contend that the text’s answer to Dasgupta’s question of how to “survive globalization” is to manifest a counter-history of capitalist modernity that restores history to the neoliberal present, from the perspective of countries in the former Soviet and Ottoman empires. I conclude by exploring how the generic divide between the realist and oneiric halves of the novel negotiates the problem of futurity, attempting to conjure a totalizing retrospect by “dreaming” the future

Method for producing parts by selective sintering

A method and apparatus for selectively sintering a layer of powder to produce a part as a plurality of sintered layers. The apparatus includes a computer controlling a laser to direct the laser energy onto the powder to produce a sintered mass. The computer either determines or is programmed with the boundaries of the desired cross-sectional regions of the part. For each cross-section, the aim of the laser beam is scanned over a layer of powder and the beam is switched on to sinter only the powder within the boundaries of the cross-section. Powder is applied and successive layers sintered until a completed part is formed. Preferably, the powder dispensing mechanism includes a drum which is moved horizontally across the target area and counter-rotated to smooth and distribute the powder in an even layer across the target area. A downdraft system provides controlled temperature air flow through the target area to moderate powder temperature during sintering.Board of Regents, University of Texas Syste

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: The Temporal Stability of Crime Hot Spots and the Criminology of Place

It is widely recognized that the distribution of crime in urban areas is not randomly distributed, but is highly concentrated in small pockets of space known as crime “hot spots”. While the empirical evidence supporting the law of crime concentration is strong, most studies that have examined the stability of crime hot spots over time have aggregated crime across years. This dissertation seeks to expand our understanding of the temporal stability of micro-geographic crime hot spots by addressing three research questions: (1) How are high-crime micro-places distributed at the monthly level? How much variation exists in the distribution of crime across micro-places when crimes are aggregated on a monthly rather than an annual basis?; (2) Do structural characteristics associated with micro-geographic crime hot spots differ compared to low-crime and crime-free places?; and (3) Are structural characteristics of micro-geographic hot spots associated with hot spot periodicity? Can the likelihood that a place will experience multiple high-crime months be determined by its structural characteristics? To address these questions, the dissertation examines data from the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department (SLMPD), the American Communities Survey (ACS), the decennial Census of the United States, and the St. Louis Open Data Portal. In response to the first question, this dissertation explores monthly crime concentrations at the micro-geographic level using street segments in St. Louis, Missouri. Logistic and negative binomial regression models are estimated to address the second research question regarding the structural attributes of violent and property crime hot spots. Finally, the structural characteristics of temporary and violent crime hot spots are compared using a Cox regression model commonly used in survival analyses. Results from these analyses produced several substantively interesting findings, including: (1) there is significant within-year variation in the distribution of crime hot spots, including differences in the temporal stability of high-crime street segments depending on the type of crime studied; (2) violent and property crime hot spots can be distinguished based on their specific sets of structural attributes, with some characteristics of place exhibit inverse relationships between crime types; and (3) the attributes of micro-geographic places may influence the temporal stability of crime hot spots. Implications of these findings for criminal justice policy and directions for future research are discussed

Method and apparatus for producing parts by selective sintering

A method and apparatus for selectively sintering a layer of powder to produce a part comprising a plurality of sintered layers. The apparatus includes a computer controlling a laser to direct the laser energy onto the powder to produce a sintered mass. The computer either determines or is programmed with the boundaries of the desired cross-sectional regions of the part. For each cross-section, the aim of the laser beam is scanned over a layer of powder and the beam is switched on to sinter only the powder within the boundaries of the cross-section. Powder is applied and successive layers sintered until a completed part is formed. Preferably, the powder dispensing mechanism includes a drum which is moved horizontally across the target area and counter-rotated to smooth and distribute the powder in an even layer across the target area. A downdraft system provides controlled temperature air flow through the target area to moderate powder temperature during sintering.Board of Regents, University of Texas Syste

Brain Similarity as a Protective Factor in the Longitudinal Pathway Linking Household Chaos, Parenting, and Substance Use

BACKGROUND: Socioecological factors such as family environment and parenting behaviors contribute to the development of substance use. While biobehavioral synchrony has been suggested as the foundation for resilience that can modulate environmental effects on development, the role of brain similarity that attenuates deleterious effects of environmental contexts has not been clearly understood. We tested whether parent–adolescent neural similarity—the level of pattern similarity between parent–adolescent functional brain connectivity representing the level of attunement within each dyad—moderates the longitudinal pathways in which household chaos (a stressor) predicts adolescent substance use directly and indirectly via parental monitoring. METHODS: In a sample of 70 parent–adolescent dyads, similarity in resting-state brain activity was identified using multipattern connectivity similarity estimation. Adolescents and parents reported on household chaos and parental monitoring, and adolescent substance use was assessed at a 1-year follow-up. RESULTS: The moderated mediation model indicated that for adolescents with low neural similarity, but not high neural similarity, greater household chaos predicted higher substance use over time directly and indirectly via lower parental monitoring. Our data also indicated differential susceptibility in the overall association between household chaos and substance use: Adolescents with low neural similarity exhibited high substance use under high household chaos but low substance use under low household chaos. CONCLUSIONS: Neural similarity acts as a protective factor such that the detrimental effects of suboptimal family environment and parenting behaviors on the development of adolescent health risk behaviors may be attenuated by neural similarity within parent–adolescent bonds

New Faculty Guide to Competing for Research Funding

Guide for Morehead State University faculty on finding and writing research grants printed in October of 2016

Philosophical Enquiries into the Science of Sensibility

This chapter places Burke's Philosophical Enquiry in its broader context of a culture of sensibility. The three sections of this introductory essay broadly correspond to the three sections of this book. The first part, 'Science and sensibility', provides a background to the writing of Burke's Philosophical Enquiry and how it fits into the medical and scientific study of sensibility. The writing of this text in its particular eighteenth-century culture reflects both a reaction to overly mechanistic world-views, on the one hand, and secondly, the necessity of verifying all theories in experience. Burke's contribution to the scientific core of the culture of sensibility consisted in an emphasis on nerves and feelings as well as physiological causes that could be recognised in the common person's experience. The second part, 'Sensibility, morals and manners', considers the moral implications of this physiological and psychological experience. On the one hand, by examining literary examples of Jane Austen and Samuel Richardson, it is shown that the experience of reading was considered an emotional and character-building enterprise. The result of reading novels could be called 'sentimental education'. Earlier eighteenth-century writers such as the Third Earl of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson attempted to bring together beauty and the good by defending a theory of 'moral sensibility', which would later be elaborated by Hume and Smith. Burke differs from this perspective by defending a distinction between virtue and beauty. On the other hand, Burke's physiological theory is closely tied to his view of morality. It is the sublime, through its tensions and labours, that more likely leads to virtue, in contrast to the indolence and relaxation of beauty. In the third part, 'Sensibility and aesthetics', it is further shown how the notion of taste and the arts developed in the eighteenth century. Behind this development were the ability to arouse emotions by means of words as well as rhetorical gestures and devices. Does everyone universally react in the same way to the same stimuli? The answer to this question is both scientific and aesthetic, requiring experimental methods to prove the probability of how art, music but also food, for instance, affect the human beings' sensible nature. The introductory essay ends with an analysis of the context in which the discussion about universality versus diversity arises vis à vis the 'standard of taste', in particular in the work of Burke and Hume