Desegregation and Multiculturalism in the Portland Public Schools

Helen Marie Casey’s booklet Portland’s Compromise: the Colored School, 1867–1872 recounts the story of William Brown, an African-American resident of Portland, Oregon, and his role in the first and only case of official segregation of African-American children in Portland Public Schools (PPS) in 1867. After unsuccessfully trying to enroll his children in one of Portland’s only two public elementary schools, Brown appealed to the school board, including directors Josiah Failing, W.S. Ladd, and E.D. Shattuck. Again, his children were denied access. The board of directors explained their resistance to integrated schools by saying: “If we admit them [African-American children], then next year we will have no money to run the schools.” According to Casey, the directors were “afraid to provoke the taxpayers and rouse their ire.”1 Rather than attempting such a politically “risky” effort, the school board eventually allocated $800 —$765 more than it had offered prior to Brown’s threat of a lawsuit — for a segregated school at the corner Southwest Fourth and Columbia. Twenty-six African-American students, twenty-one boys and five girls — many of whom had previously attempted to attend another public, or “free,” school in Portland but had been denied — enrolled in the school. The continued existence of the “Colored School” was constantly in question at annual school meetings. Funding for the school was abolished in 1872, and the next year, thirty African-American children were admitted to the newly integrated PPS

SB95_21-22_Resolution Amending ASUM Governing Documents to Improve Efficiency of Resolution Processes

SB95_21-22_Resolution Amending ASUM Governing Documents to Improve Efficiency of Resolution Processes. This resolution passed 17Y-2N-1A during the April 13, 2022 meeting of the Associated Students of the University of Montana (ASUM)

SB95-21/22-Resolution Amending ASUM Governing Documents to Improve Efficiency of Resolution Processes

SB95-21/22-Resolution Amending ASUM Governing Documents to Improve Efficiency of Resolution Processes. This resolution passed unanimously during the April 13, 2022 meeting of the Associated Students of the University of Montana (ASUM)

Call and response in learning, voices for change in teaching: a narrative analysis

This research is prompted by the call from two reflective accounts written by Ethan Williams; Old People on Screens and Musical Chairs, as stimuli for a number of his fellow degree students to respond to (acknowledged above). Adopting student-voice for both the call and response moves the pedagogical inquiry firmly towards that of Research Informed Teaching, when students become active partners in the research process. When students reflect this deeply on their educational experiences and transform their thinking in to new, rich learning-narratives, it will inevitably cause the teacher who instigated it to reflect on their teaching (and learning) as well. This research, building on previous educational narratives, helps to reveal a cycle of active pedagogical change. This being actioned through meaningful writing about learning, shared in a community who will soon become the teachers and leaders of tomorrow

Changes in South Africa’s global agricultural trade regime, 1996–2013

This paper presents an examination of the major trends in South African international trade in agricultural products between the years 1996 and 2013. The analysis covers three broad areas: (1) the changing weight of key trading partners in South Africa’s overall agricultural trade regime; (2) changes in the major products being traded with the rest of the world; and (3) changes in the products being traded with each of its key trading partners. The paper begins by analysing the changes in the total export and total import values to and from the trading partners identified above, and the changing shares of total value held by each partner. The next section focuses on the major products traded in terms of value – both how the composition of the product profile has transformed, and the main sources of the trade in these products. Finally, each trading partner is given individual focus. The EU remained the dominant source of imports and the dominant destination for exports throughout the period. The import market shifted dramatically away from the US and Africa toward Brazil and China. In the export market, the presence of the USA, Japan and MERCUSOR receded whilst Africa and China underwent strong growth. The top two export destinations, the EU and Africa, dominated the market by a significant margin, accounting for well over half of total export value throughout. Rice and wheat were the dominant products within the import market throughout the period, whilst the position of poultry meat strengthened and sunflower-seed oil receded. In poultry meat imports, the USA saw sharp decline, whilst South America and the EU underwent a very strong rise. The major shifts in the export market were away from sugar and titanium oxide, and towards fresh fruit and wine

Convergence without the Public Justification Principle?: An Externalist Account of Convergence Public Reason Liberalism

Gerald Gaus argued in his 1996 book Justificatory Liberalism that proponents of public reason liberalism should attempt to ground their position in a specific epistemology. Surprisingly, few public reason liberals have taken up Gaus on his challenge. This paper will interact with the epistemological position undergirding the public justification principle, access internalism, arguing that it fails. In its place, I put forward and defend proper functionalism as the better grounding epistemology, and then defend the new theory from possible objections. The result will be an externalist version of convergence public reason liberalism

Design of an Assistive Technology Adaptive Switch using an Inertial Measurement Unit

A new assistive technology switch for people with disabilities was developed utilizing an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) as the sensor technology. The hardware can be customized through firmware to provide custom switch activations on a person by person basis. The firmware is customized to recognize specific data features in the IMU data which identify the desired switch activation movement performed by the user. In this way, the switch can be adapted to activate based on the movements of the user. During this research, the generic hardware platform, including the IMU sensor technology and Bluetooth communications, was designed and tested. An Android application was developed to communicate with the Bluetooth enabled switch to acquire the IMU sensory data for analysis. A case study was performed to recognize thumb and pinky movements as individual switch activations. This experiment tested the feasibility of using the designed switch with an InvoTek client. A training session was performed to acquire movement data of the thumb and pinky. The acquired data was analyzed in MATLAB and a unique data feature was identified. The switch firmware was updated with the necessary algorithm to recognize and differentiate the thumb and pinky movements. Lastly, the switch was tested with 100 repetitive access movements in which the switch accurately characterized and differentiated 100% of the movements

Simulation and optimization of the ion optics for a reflectron-type cosmic dust composition analyzer

Cosmic dust particle analysis offers insight into the history and behavior of our solar system. In order to perform in situ compositional analysis of particles, a cosmic dust spectrometer requires an effective area large enough, \u3e 500 cm2, to capture dust with low flux and a mass resolution high enough, m/∆m \u3e 200, to detect the relative abundances of ions with similar masses. In this study, a large area time-of-flight cosmic dust reflectron-type mass spectrometer, HyperDust, is optimized using the ion optics software SIMION along with newly developed Monte Carlo routines and fine- tuning optimization algorithms. The results are a spectrometer design with a mass resolution of 385 and a reproducible method for optimizing similar instruments. The instrument is being built at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), and has been proposed to missions for the study of asteroids and interstellar phenomena

Implementation of Natural Switching Surface Control for a Flyback Converter

The flyback converter is an extremely common topology used for DC/DC power conversion. Widely used methods to control the flyback converter include voltage mode and current mode controllers. More recently, sliding mode control has been developed for the flyback converter. While these control methods may be considered adequate, the Natural Switching Surface (NSS) sliding mode control method detailed in this thesis presents a more robust controller. NSS control eliminates the effects presented from variations in components and design as well as minimizes the effects from external disturbances. This thesis steps through the complete design and implementation process of a NSS controller for a 100W flyback converter. The fundamental operational principals of the flyback converter will be described first. A detailed derivation of the NSS control for a flyback converter will follow. Simulations of the derived controller will be evaluated in MATLAB/Simulink©. The component level selection and design is detailed. Finally, the completed flyback with the NSS controller is fully tested in a laboratory setting and experimental results are analyzed

The Schistosoma mansoni Cytochrome P450 (CYP3050A1) Is Essential for Worm Survival and Egg Development.

Schistosomiasis affects millions of people in developing countries and is responsible for more than 200,000 deaths annually. Because of toxicity and limited spectrum of activity of alternatives, there is effectively only one drug, praziquantel, available for its treatment. Recent data suggest that drug resistance could soon be a problem. There is therefore the need to identify new drug targets and develop drugs for the treatment of schistosomiasis. Analysis of the Schistosoma mansoni genome sequence for proteins involved in detoxification processes found that it encodes a single cytochrome P450 (CYP450) gene. Here we report that the 1452 bp open reading frame has a characteristic heme-binding region in its catalytic domain with a conserved heme ligating cysteine, a hydrophobic leader sequence present as the membrane interacting region, and overall structural conservation. The highest sequence identity to human CYP450s is 22%. Double stranded RNA (dsRNA) silencing of S. mansoni (Sm)CYP450 in schistosomula results in worm death. Treating larval or adult worms with antifungal azole CYP450 inhibitors results in worm death at low micromolar concentrations. In addition, combinations of SmCYP450-specific dsRNA and miconazole show additive schistosomicidal effects supporting the hypothesis that SmCYP450 is the target of miconazole. Treatment of developing S. mansoni eggs with miconazole results in a dose dependent arrest in embryonic development. Our results indicate that SmCYP450 is essential for worm survival and egg development and validates it as a novel drug target. Preliminary structure-activity relationship suggests that the 1-(2,4-dichlorophenyl)-2-(1H-imidazol-1-yl)ethan-1-ol moiety of miconazole is necessary for activity and that miconazole activity and selectivity could be improved by rational drug design