Avoiding Cultural Calamities: Exploring The Influence Of Culture In Intercultural PLCs At An International School

This qualitative instrumental case study explored the influence of national culture within the context of professional learning communities (PLCs) at an international school. This study utilized Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory as the theoretical framework and drew from DuFour and Eaker’s characteristics of effective PLCs. This instrumental case study focused on one international school located in the European Union. The purpose was to engage international teachers who take part in weekly PLC meetings through a demographic questionnaire, one-on-one interviews and direct observation, in order to develop a better understanding of the influence of culture within those meetings. The study addressed two research questions: (1) what characteristics of professional learning communities, as defined by DuFour and Eaker (1998), are influenced by international teachers’ cultural values identified in Hofstede’s (2001) cultural dimensions theory? And (2) what strategies can K-12 teachers employ to better facilitate the functionality and effectiveness of an intercultural PLC at an international school? Participants of this study included ten teachers who represented four different cultures: (1) American (2) Canadian (3) French (4) Polish. Data was collected using a demographic questionnaire, one-on-one interviews, and direct observations. Holistic coding and values coding adapted a thematic analysis method and produced four themes and four subthemes, which were merged to present the findings. The themes presented in the findings were: an unclear mission, no direction, and a lack of buy-in, the change process and elicited emotions, leadership structure, and collaboration, communication, and trust. Recommendations from the findings and conclusions of this study include building on existing knowledge and structures, developing long- and short-term goals, clarifying leadership structure, and creating processes for monitoring

Effects of Secondary Air Injection Upon the Fluidization Characteristics of the Lower Stage in a Two-Stage, Variable-Area Fluidized Bed Riser

A transparent scale model of a two-stage fluidized bed coal dryer with a small diameter lower stage and a large diameter upper stage, separated by a conical transition zone with secondary air injection ports, has been constructed to study the effects of secondary air injection upon the fluidization characteristics of the lower riser stage. The superficial velocity of the lower stage of the riser was held constant within the turbulent fluidization regime while the superficial gas velocity in the upper riser stage was varied by changing the volumetric flow rates of air introduced between the upper and lower riser stages. Through examination of time series pressure data via standard deviation, autocorrelation, spectral density plots and visual observation of dense bed height, it becomes apparent that secondary air injection has a dominant effect upon the fluidization characteristics below the injection location, leading to a transition from a dense to a dilute bed

Learning Styles of Farmers and Others Involved with the Maine Potato Industry

The article reports on the learning preferences of Maine Potato Industry representatives. Using the Gregorc Mind Styles™ approach to examine learning styles, we categorized potato farmers, university/government employees, allied industry personnel, and others involved in the potato industry into four learning styles: Concrete Sequential, Concrete Random, Abstract Sequential, and Abstract Random. The plurality of potato farmers were Concrete Sequential, while the plurality of university/government employees and allied industry personnel were Abstract Random. The difference in learning styles of the deliverers and the recipients of the information can result in poor communication and a less than optimum learning environment

Personal Utility Cart

This final design report will detail the entire engineering design process from conceptualization through manufacturing and testing. After introducing the topic and scope of the project this document presents all of the benchmarking and research performed in order to obtain as much information about similar current products and possible solutions. Next the objectives of the project are presented where the needs are transformed into engineering specifications that will guide the design of the product. Design developed is then presented with ideation, idea evaluation and selection, analysis, manufacturing considerations, and final design selection. The final design is then presented with each of its three subsystems, including supporting analysis, manufacturing and testing plans, bill of materials and cost as well as material selection, safety considerations, and maintenance plans. Following that is the management plan where team roles are outlines and project deadlines are presented. Product realization is next, which includes the manufacturing process that was taken for all components as well as description of changes between the planned and built design and recommendations for future manufacturing changes. Design verification follows with testing procedures and results and a final budget for the manufactured design. Next are conclusions that summarize what was done during the project and recommendations which outline what could have been done differently from a design or project standpoint to provide insight for future designs. References for all researched information are included in order cited throughout the document. Finally all appendices are included at the end of the document that were referenced throughout the report as well as other important information

Novel method for the fabrication of spatially variant structures

Spatially varying grating structures formed at the subwave-length scale behave as a layer with an artificial effective refractive index that is dependent on the local fill fraction. We describe a novel technique to pattern gratings with a spatially varying fill fraction using a simple two-step exposure process. The first exposure forms a partial latent image of a grating in the photoresist. The resist is then saturated by overlaying an exposure with an analog spatially varying intensity, generated by using a phase-only masking technique. The cumulative exposure dose from the two steps was designed so that the point of minimum intensity will still develop the photoresist through, in all the spaces in the grating. By varying the exposure window around the saturation dose, the fill fraction of the patterned gratings was modulated; thus, the size of the space cleared at any location in the grating is a scalable function of the local cumulative dose delivered. Constant feature height is achieved across the patterned area by keeping the second exposure dose below the resist threshold exposure value. The exposure process was modeled numerically to predict the relationship between the local dose and patterned fill fraction. This technique enables rapid, low-cost fabrication of apodized grating structures for applications in diffractive optics technology

A Search for Exozodiacal Clouds with Kepler

Planets embedded within dust disks may drive the formation of large scale clumpy dust structures by trapping dust into resonant orbits. Detection and subsequent modeling of the dust structures would help constrain the mass and orbit of the planet and the disk architecture, give clues to the history of the planetary system, and provide a statistical estimate of disk asymmetry for future exoEarth-imaging missions. Here we present the first search for these resonant structures in the inner regions of planetary systems by analyzing the light curves of hot Jupiter planetary candidates identified by the Kepler mission. We detect only one candidate disk structure associated with KOI 838.01 at the 3-sigma confidence level, but subsequent radial velocity measurements reveal that KOI 838.01 is a grazing eclipsing binary and the candidate disk structure is a false positive. Using our null result, we place an upper limit on the frequency of dense exozodi structures created by hot Jupiters. We find that at the 90% confidence level, less than 21% of Kepler hot Jupiters create resonant dust clumps that lead and trail the planet by ~90 degrees with optical depths >~5*10^-6, which corresponds to the resonant structure expected for a lone hot Jupiter perturbing a dynamically cold dust disk 50 times as dense as the zodiacal cloud.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figures, Accepted for publication in Ap

Nitrogen availability and forest productivity along a climosequence on Whiteface Mountain, New York

We studied broadleaf and needle-leaf forests along an elevation gradient (600–1200 m) at Whiteface Mountain, New York, to determine relationships among temperature, mineral N availability, and aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) and controls on the latter two variables. We measured net N mineralization during the growing season, annual litterfall quantity and quality, aboveground woody biomass accumulation, and soil organic matter quality. Inorganic N deposition from cloudwater markedly increases mineral N availability above 1000 m in this region. Consequently, mineral N availability across the climosequence remains relatively constant because N mineralization decreases with increasing elevation. Across this climosequence, air temperature (as growing season degree-days) exerted the most control on ANPP. Nitrogen mineralization was most strongly related to soil growing season degree-days and less so to lignin to N ratios in litter. ANPP was correlated with N mineralization but not with mineral N availability. Combining our data with those from similar studies in other boreal and cool temperate forests shows that N mineralization and ANPP are correlated at local, regional, and interbiome scales. Regarding the persistent question concerning cause and effect in the N mineralization – forest productivity relationship, our data provide evidence that at least in this case, forest productivity is a control on N mineralization