On evaluating parallel computer systems

A workshop was held in an attempt to program real problems on the MIT Static Data Flow Machine. Most of the architecture of the machine was specified but some parts were incomplete. The main purpose for the workshop was to explore principles for the evaluation of computer systems employing new architectures. Principles explored were: (1) evaluation must be an integral, ongoing part of a project to develop a computer of radically new architecture; (2) the evaluation should seek to measure the usability of the system as well as its performance; (3) users from the application domains must be an integral part of the evaluation process; and (4) evaluation results should be fed back into the design process. It is concluded that the general organizational principles are achievable in practice from this workshop

Impact of the Young Athletes Program on Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders in Quincy Public Schools

The Center for Social Development and Education (CSDE) and the College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) are supporting the implementation of the Young Athletes (YA) program for preschool children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in Quincy Public Schools. 50-73% of children with ASD have significant motor delays compared to normative peers. Concerns include: Delays in overall gross motor skills, including manual dexterity, balance, gait, motor coordination, and ball handling skills.Motor development appears to slow for two- and three-year-old children with ASD. Young Athletes is a theoretically-based program designed to improve the motor development of children with disabilities (ages 3-7) through various motor activities. Clinical trials conducted by CSDE (Favazza et al., 2013) indicated that the Young Athletes program significantly improved the motor skills of young children with disabilities

Anti-Evasion Doctrines in Constitutional Law

Recent constitutional scholarship has focused on how courts - the Supreme Court in particular - implement constitutional meaning through the use of doctrinal constructs that enable judges to decide cases. Judges first fix constitutional meaning, what Mitchell Berman terms the constitutional operative proposition, but must then design decision rules that render the operative proposition suitable to use in the third step, the resolution of the case before the court. These decision rules produce the familiar apparatus of constitutional decision-making - strict scrutiny, rational basis review, and the like. For the most part, writers have adopted a binary view of doctrine. Doctrinal tests can defer or not to other actors; implementing doctrines can be fashioned as rules or standards; doctrines can over-enforce or under-enforce constitutional commands. In this Article, though, we unsettle this dialectical view of doctrinal design by identifying and describing anti-evasion doctrines (AEDs) in constitutional law: doctrines developed by courts - usually designed as standards, as opposed to rules - that supplement other doctrines (designed as rules) to implement particular constitutional principles. AEDs touch all areas of constitutional law. In addition to being ubiquitous, AEDs have a long pedigree. Early examples appear in famous Marshall Court opinions; thus, they are not some modern innovation. In addition to naming AEDs, describing the forms they take, and discussing the characteristics the forms share, this Article also seeks to describe the benefits and costs to constitutional law resulting from AEDs, as well as their implications for doctrinal formation more generally. We back our claim about the omnipresence and pedigree of AEDs in Part II with examples from a broad swath of constitutional law. AEDs supplement rule-like decision rules with decision rules that tend to resemble standards. In Part III we discuss the benefits of AEDs and the tradeoffs for doctrine in their widespread use. AEDs are designed to help optimize enforcement of constitutional principles - by addressing problems with rules, for example. This gap-filling function comes at a cost, however. Not only does the addition of AEDs tend to increase doctrinal complexity, but that complexity can also increase decision costs for courts and dilute the benefits of using rules in the first place. The tradeoffs are almost mirror images of the benefits. We discuss the implications of AEDs for constitutional doctrine generally in Part IV. That they seem to be everywhere in constitutional law suggests that doctrinal complexity should be seen as a feature of our system, not a bug, because it attempts to ensure form will not trump constitutional substance. If a certain amount of complexity is inevitable, then that suggests one should be skeptical about claims that constitutional law could be rationalized by abandoning the \u27formulaic Constitution in favor of simple, predictable, and easy-to-apply rules. Further, the presence of AEDs furnishes strong evidence for Frederick Schauer\u27s convergence hypothesis, which holds that [w]hen authorised to act in accordance with rules, rule-subjects will tend to convert rules into standards by employing a battery of rule-avoiding devices that serve to soften the hard edges of rules, and vice-versa. Finally, highlighting the role AEDs play in constitutional doctrine, for good or ill, is another reason to take doctrine, its formation, and application by courts, seriously

White paper: A plan for cooperation between NASA and DARPA to establish a center for advanced architectures

Large, complex computer systems require many years of development. It is recognized that large scale systems are unlikely to be delivered in useful condition unless users are intimately involved throughout the design process. A mechanism is described that will involve users in the design of advanced computing systems and will accelerate the insertion of new systems into scientific research. This mechanism is embodied in a facility called the Center for Advanced Architectures (CAA). CAA would be a division of RIACS (Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science) and would receive its technical direction from a Scientific Advisory Board established by RIACS. The CAA described here is a possible implementation of a center envisaged in a proposed cooperation between NASA and DARPA

Anti-Evasion Doctrines in Constitutional Law

Recent constitutional scholarship has focused on how courts - the Supreme Court in particular - implement constitutional meaning through the use of doctrinal constructs that enable judges to decide cases. Judges first fix constitutional meaning, what Mitchell Berman terms the constitutional operative proposition, but must then design decision rules that render the operative proposition suitable to use in the third step, the resolution of the case before the court. These decision rules produce the familiar apparatus of constitutional decision-making - strict scrutiny, rational basis review, and the like. For the most part, writers have adopted a binary view of doctrine. Doctrinal tests can defer or not to other actors; implementing doctrines can be fashioned as rules or standards; doctrines can over-enforce or under-enforce constitutional commands. In this Article, though, we unsettle this dialectical view of doctrinal design by identifying and describing anti-evasion doctrines (AEDs) in constitutional law: doctrines developed by courts - usually designed as standards, as opposed to rules - that supplement other doctrines (designed as rules) to implement particular constitutional principles. AEDs touch all areas of constitutional law. In addition to being ubiquitous, AEDs have a long pedigree. Early examples appear in famous Marshall Court opinions; thus, they are not some modern innovation. In addition to naming AEDs, describing the forms they take, and discussing the characteristics the forms share, this Article also seeks to describe the benefits and costs to constitutional law resulting from AEDs, as well as their implications for doctrinal formation more generally. We back our claim about the omnipresence and pedigree of AEDs in Part II with examples from a broad swath of constitutional law. AEDs supplement rule-like decision rules with decision rules that tend to resemble standards. In Part III we discuss the benefits of AEDs and the tradeoffs for doctrine in their widespread use. AEDs are designed to help optimize enforcement of constitutional principles - by addressing problems with rules, for example. This gap-filling function comes at a cost, however. Not only does the addition of AEDs tend to increase doctrinal complexity, but that complexity can also increase decision costs for courts and dilute the benefits of using rules in the first place. The tradeoffs are almost mirror images of the benefits. We discuss the implications of AEDs for constitutional doctrine generally in Part IV. That they seem to be everywhere in constitutional law suggests that doctrinal complexity should be seen as a feature of our system, not a bug, because it attempts to ensure form will not trump constitutional substance. If a certain amount of complexity is inevitable, then that suggests one should be skeptical about claims that constitutional law could be rationalized by abandoning the \u27formulaic Constitution in favor of simple, predictable, and easy-to-apply rules. Further, the presence of AEDs furnishes strong evidence for Frederick Schauer\u27s convergence hypothesis, which holds that [w]hen authorised to act in accordance with rules, rule-subjects will tend to convert rules into standards by employing a battery of rule-avoiding devices that serve to soften the hard edges of rules, and vice-versa. Finally, highlighting the role AEDs play in constitutional doctrine, for good or ill, is another reason to take doctrine, its formation, and application by courts, seriously

Judicial Doctrine as Risk Regulation

Much of the literature on risk regulation concerns first-order risks--e.g., those addressed by environmental law or workplace safety rules. But scholars recently have suggested that risk regulation can provide a helpful framework for thinking about second-order, or political, risks arising from allocations of power and institutional design. Although a few commentators have utilized this perspective to suggest connections between risk regulation and particular areas of constitutional law, in this essay we take a broader view. Building on the existing literature, we argue that the selection of constitutional decision rules is a judicial effort to regulate the political risk that government officials will violate constitutional principles. After making the case that it is helpful to view judicial doctrinal formation as a species of political risk regulation, we discuss some implications of this risk regulation model and pose some questions for future research. We conclude that the risk regulation model reinforces the notion that the formation of doctrine is a temporally extended process, rather than a one-time event, and it provides a metric by which that doctrine can be evaluated. Additionally, the risk regulation model helps explain some of the more commonly critiqued features of constitutional law. Finally, the risk regulation model raises important questions that merit further investigation: (1) Should we trust judicial perceptions of and responses to political risk? (2) What influences risk assessment among judges, and are those influences (and resulting assessments) normatively defensible? (3) What connection, if any, exists between judicial risk assessment and the myriad doctrinal formulae employed by the Supreme Court

Reimagining Student Engagement in the Remote Classroom Environment

As higher education institutions struggled with switching to remote teaching due to the COVID19 pandemic, perhaps one of the most important lessons learned is that instructors need additional support to successfully engage students in remote classrooms. Moving courses from the classroom to online delivery radically alters all aspects of teaching and learning, making it easy for interactions to be lost in the transition. It is, therefore, imperative that instructors use elements of effective online teaching and synchronous classroom pedagogy to maintain student engagement. This paper uses the constructivist learning theory as a framework, especially as this theory is applied in a remote learning environment. It also looks at best practices from three points of view - that of the instructor, the student, and the instructional designer, with a focus on student engagement with the course content, the instructor, and other students