Impacts of sociopolitical conditions

Space development scenarios and the choice of technologies to carry them out depend upon the future social, economic, and political factors. A brief discussion concerning the impact of sociopolitical conditions on space exploration is presented. Some of the topics mentioned include: space weapons/warfare, international cooperation, NASA's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Program, and superpower rivelry

Training Guidelines for New Staff in a Community Integrated Living Arrangement (CILA) Program

Adequate staff training prior to working with developmentally disabled individuals in a Community Integrated Living Arrangement program is a state requirement. This study gives some background information and suggestions for such training requirements in concise blocks of time. A training period before new staff begin working with clients is important because it enables staff to understand various facets of their job. It is important that all new staff understand the types of individuals with whom they will be working and what is expected of them in regard to working with the agency\u27s clientele. To ensure that staff comprehend the rationale of training and perform the skills properly, role-playing and video taping can be utilized in the training plans. Simulations can be set up in which staff role-play actual situations with a resident and demonstrate the skills they have learned. Individual reading of selected materials is another way staff can learn more about and be prepared for working with individuals who are developmentally disabled. This affords new staff with adequate time to ask questions before actually beginning work with clients. While basic skills are fairly generic when beginning a training program for new staff, unique needs do arise in each residence. The training system should address the ongoing needs of staff in the particular program. Staff training should be applicable to the day-to-day realities of the job and should teach concrete skills to help staff work more effectively with clients. Without training, members rendering services to individuals who have developmental disabilities will be ill- prepared to do their jobs. Consequently, the individuals for whom services are to be rendered will suffer by not receiving the quality of services to which they are entitled. Furthermore, failure to abide by the Illinois Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Community Integrated Living Arrangement guidelines could result in loss of licensure and in turn, loss of funding for agencies providing such programs. In order to rectify this problem, a training curricula which satisfies state requirements has been developed. Hopefully, the fulfillment of these requirements will enhance the performance of staff members in their delivery of services. By the same token, the individual\u27s lives to whom staff render services will be improved as well

It\u27s All Dark But He\u27s Not Afraid: Translations of Stories by Ingvar Ambjornsen

This thesis consists of English translations of two short stories by the Norwegian novelist, essayist and short-story writer Ingvar Ambjornsen, with an introduction in which special problems and challenges associated with the individual stories, and with the two languages in general, are discussed. The two stories translated are Into the Mountain (original title: Bergtatt ) and The Cherry Tree (original title: Kirsebaertreet ). Both are taken from Ambjornsen\u27s 2005 collection Delvis til stede

Training Guidelines for New Staff in a Community Integrated Living Arrangement (CILA) Program

Adequate staff training prior to working with developmentally disabled individuals in a Community Integrated Living Arrangement program is a state requirement. This study gives some background information and suggestions for such training requirements in concise blocks of time. A training period before new staff begin working with clients is important because it enables staff to understand various facets of their job. It is important that all new staff understand the types of individuals with whom they will be working and what is expected of them in regard to working with the agency\u27s clientele. To ensure that staff comprehend the rationale of training and perform the skills properly, role-playing and video taping can be utilized in the training plans. Simulations can be set up in which staff role-play actual situations with a resident and demonstrate the skills they have learned. Individual reading of selected materials is another way staff can learn more about and be prepared for working with individuals who are developmentally disabled. This affords new staff with adequate time to ask questions before actually beginning work with clients. While basic skills are fairly generic when beginning a training program for new staff, unique needs do arise in each residence. The training system should address the ongoing needs of staff in the particular program. Staff training should be applicable to the day-to-day realities of the job and should teach concrete skills to help staff work more effectively with clients. Without training, members rendering services to individuals who have developmental disabilities will be ill- prepared to do their jobs. Consequently, the individuals for whom services are to be rendered will suffer by not receiving the quality of services to which they are entitled. Furthermore, failure to abide by the Illinois Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Community Integrated Living Arrangement guidelines could result in loss of licensure and in turn, loss of funding for agencies providing such programs. In order to rectify this problem, a training curricula which satisfies state requirements has been developed. Hopefully, the fulfillment of these requirements will enhance the performance of staff members in their delivery of services. By the same token, the individual\u27s lives to whom staff render services will be improved as well

Effectiveness Of Relationship Marketing Tactics In A University Setting

We test the correlation between student perception of three university relationship-building tactics - commercial friendships, preferential treatment, and tangible rewards - with university student satisfaction. We also test whether two student characteristics - enduring involvement with education and sense of entitlement - have a moderating effect on the aforementioned relationship between university relationship-building behaviors and student satisfaction. Results revealed positive correlations between perceived relationship tactics and overall satisfaction. Correlations between the relationship-building behaviors and satisfaction were also greater among high-involvement students than among their lesser-involved cohorts. Students who felt a sense of entitlement were more likely to believe that they were recipients of relationship-building behaviors, but they didn’t always appreciate them more than students who felt less entitled

Properties of aqueous electrolyte solutions at carbon electrodes: effects of concentration and surface charge on solution structure, ion clustering and thermodynamics in the electric double layer

Surfaces are able to control physical-chemical processes in multi-component solution systems and, as such, find application in a wide range of technological devices. Understanding the structure, dynamics and thermodynamics of non-ideal solutions at surfaces, however, is particularly challenging. Here, we use Constant Chemical Potential Molecular Dynamics simulations to gather insight into aqueous NaCl solutions in contact with graphite surfaces at high concentrations and under the effect of applied surface charges: conditions where mean-field theories describing interfaces cannot be (typically) reliably applied. We discover an asymmetric effect of surface charge on the double layer structure and resulting thermodynamic properties, which can be explained by considering the affinity of the surface for cations and anions and the cooperative adsorption of ions that occurs at higher concentrations. We characterise how the sign of the surface charge affects ion densities and water structure in the double layer and how the capacitance of the interface - a function of the electric potential drop across the double layer - is largely insensitive to the bulk solution concentration. Notably, we find that negatively charged graphite surfaces induce an increase in the size and concentration of extended liquid-like ion clusters confined to the double layer. Finally, we discuss how concentration and surface charge affect the activity coefficients of ions and water in the double layer, demonstrating how electric fields in this region should be explicitly considered when characterising the thermodynamics of both solute and solvent at the solid/liquid interface

Multiple pathways in NaCl homogeneous crystal nucleation

NaCl crystal nucleation from metastable solutions has long been considered to occur according to a single-step mechanism where the growth in the size and crystalline order of the emerging nuclei is simultaneous. Recent experimental observations suggest that significant ion-ion correlations occur in solution and that NaCl crystals can emerge from disordered intermediates which is seemingly at odds with this established view. Here, we performed biased and unbiased molecular dynamics simulations to analyse and characterise the pathways to crystalline phases from solutions far into the metastable region. We find that large liquid-like NaCl clusters emerge as the solution concentration is increased and a wide distribution of crystallisation pathways are observed with two-step nucleation pathways-where crystalline order emerges in dense liquid NaCl regions-being more dominant than one-step pathways to phase separation far into the metastable region. Analyses of cluster size populations and the ion pair association constant show that these clusters are transient, unlike the thermodynamically stable prenucleation cluster solute species that were suggested in other mineralising systems. A Markov state model was developed to analyse the mechanisms and timescales for nucleation from unbiased molecular dynamics trajectories in a reaction coordinate space characterising the dense regions in clusters and crystalline order. This allowed calculation of the committor probabilities for the system to relax to the solution or crystal states and to estimate the rate of nucleation, which shows excellent agreement with literature values. From a fundamental nucleation perspective, our work highlights the need to extend the attribute 'critical' to an ensemble of clusters which can display a broad range of structures and include sizeable disordered domains depending upon the reaction conditions. Moreover, our recent simulation studies demonstrated that carbon surfaces catalyse the formation of liquid-like NaCl networks which, combined with the observations here, suggests that alternative pathways beyond the single-step mechanism can be exploited to control the crystallisation of NaCl

Molecular simulation approaches to study crystal nucleation from solutions: Theoretical considerations and computational challenges

Various factors, such as environmental conditions, composition, and external fields, can influence its outcomes and rates. Indeed, controlling this rate-determining step toward phase separation is critical, as it can significantly impact the resulting material's structure and properties. Atomistic simulations can be exploited to gain insight into nucleation mechanisms—an aspect difficult to ascertain in experiments—and estimate nucleation rates. However, the microscopic nature of simulations can influence the phase behavior of nucleating solutions when compared to macroscale counterparts. An additional challenge arises from the inadequate timescales accessible to standard molecular simulations to simulate nucleation directly; this is due to the inherent rareness of nucleation events, which may be apparent in silico at even high supersaturations. In recent decades, molecular simulation methods have emerged to circumvent length- and timescale limitations. However, it is not always clear which simulation method is most suitable to study crystal nucleation from solution. This review surveys recent advances in this field, shedding light on typical nucleation mechanisms and the appropriateness of various simulation techniques for their study. Our goal is to provide a deeper understanding of the complexities associated with modeling crystal nucleation from solution and identify areas for further research. This review targets researchers across various scientific domains, including materials science, chemistry, physics and engineering, and aims to foster collaborative efforts to develop new strategies to understand and control nucleation

Properties of aqueous electrolyte solutions at carbon electrodes: effects of concentration and surface charge on solution structure, ion clustering and thermodynamics in the electric double layer

Surfaces are able to control physical-chemical processes in multi-component solution systems and, as such, find application in a wide range of technological devices. Understanding the structure, dynamics and thermodynamics of non-ideal solutions at surfaces, however, is particularly challenging. Here, we use Constant Chemical Potential Molecular Dynamics (CμMD) simulations to gain insight into aqueous NaCl solutions in contact with graphite surfaces at high concentrations and under the effect of applied surface charges: conditions where mean-field theories describing interfaces cannot (typically) be reliably applied. We discover an asymmetric effect of surface charge on the electric double layer structure and resulting thermodynamic properties, which can be explained by considering the affinity of the surface for cations and anions and the cooperative adsorption of ions that occurs at higher concentrations. We characterise how the sign of the surface charge affects ion densities and water structure in the double layer and how the capacitance of the interface-a function of the electric potential drop across the double layer-is largely insensitive to the bulk solution concentration. Notably, we find that negatively charged graphite surfaces induce an increase in the size and concentration of extended liquid-like ion clusters confined to the double layer. Finally, we discuss how concentration and surface charge affect the activity coefficients of ions and water at the interface, demonstrating how electric fields in this region should be explicitly considered when characterising the thermodynamics of both solute and solvent at the solid/liquid interface