Operating-system support for distributed multimedia

Multimedia applications place new demands upon processors, networks and operating systems. While some network designers, through ATM for example, have considered revolutionary approaches to supporting multimedia, the same cannot be said for operating systems designers. Most work is evolutionary in nature, attempting to identify additional features that can be added to existing systems to support multimedia. Here we describe the Pegasus project's attempt to build an integrated hardware and operating system environment from\ud the ground up specifically targeted towards multimedia

Tell Me, Tell Me, Tell Me- Please!

This article is a personal essay by me, Derek L. Leslie, about the frustrations that occur in teaching. I am an educator in Economics at an urban high school in Omaha, Nebraska, and I have noticed after seven years of teaching that one thing is missing in the arena of public education and that is incentives. When you study economics you realize the market place has a lot of built in incentives to do well at your job and then you are able to be quite successful and are rewarded for this success. My essay will explain how incentives that are in the market place are missing in education and how that holds education back from accomplishing its goal of educating our children in the most productive and satisfactory approach

Control of cracking in concrete by steel reinforcement : an examination of some of the mechanisms involved

The techniques tried up till now to model the problem of cracking in reinforced concrete have been largely empirical. Many relationships have been identified between certain parameters and the occurrence and size of cracks. This thesis reviews these, reports on the current state of knowledge, and discusses some of the theories proposed. Because of the great variation and complexity of the materials and stress interactions involved, the problem has to date defied completely objective theoretical modelling. The finite element method provides a powerful new modelling tool for theoretical simulation of complex real problems. Recent developments on constitutive models for concrete make this method extremely attractive for use in this case. This thesis attempts to make use of these tools by carrying out some analyses of the cracking of reinforced concrete prisms stressed in tension. The method is found to be a viable way of examining mechanisms and effects which are not ordinarily visible in laboratory experiments. These mechanisms are discussed in the light of the experimental findings recorded in the literature

Six Districts Begin the Principal Pipeline Initiative

This first report of an ongoing evaluation of The Wallace Foundation's Principal Pipeline Initiative describes the six participating school districts' plans and activities during the first year of their grants. The evaluation, conducted by Policy Studies Associates and the RAND Corporation, isintended to inform policy makers and practitioners about the process of carrying out new policies and practices for school leadership and about the results of investments in the Principal Pipeline Initiative. This report is based on collection and analysis of qualitative data, including the districts' proposals, work plans, and progress reports and semi-structured interviews in spring 2012 with 91 administrators employed by districts and their partner institutions. Leaders in all districts report wanting to enlarge their pools of strong applicants for principal positions and to identify and cultivate leadership talent as early as possible in educators' careers.Districts are actively working on allrequired pipeline components: (1) with stakeholder participation, they have developed standards and identified competencies for principals, which they plan to use to guide principal training, hiring, evaluation, and support; (2) they are initiating or strengthening partnerships with university training programs; (3) for hiring, they have standard performance tasks and are developing systems to capture data on candidates' experience; (4) they have diagnostic evaluation tools and are working to build the capacity of principals' supervisors and mentors to support principals' skill development. In addition, all are also bolstering district-run training programs for graduates of university training programs who aspire to become principals

Better qualified but a lower acceptance rate: does higher education discriminate against women?

Using a sample of around 2.3 million observations on applications to UK Higher Education institutions from 1996-2001, the paper explores whether the selection process into Higher Education is discriminatory. The answer is no discrimination, even though women are better qualified and less likely to be offered an HE place. The lower tier Higher National Diploma sector is a key issue because women (excluding nursing) are less likely to undertake these courses, which are 'male orientated'. The policy conclusion is that to encourage less well-qualified females to undertake Higher Education, more appropriate provision is necessary that recognizes the reality of subject gender segregation