Prudence and Executive Control: An Analysis of the Decision-Making Processes of the Christian and the Modern Man

Scientific research and Christian philosophy often appear to be at odds. These different perspectives sometimes offer different answers to the same question. In the light of these perspectives, however, we can gain a greater understanding of the human experience. Executive control, or how a person decides to do something, is unable to account for the greater question of why. St. Thomas Aquinas¹ explanation of prudence provides reasonable evidence in favor of this perspective. In order to understand the Christian intellectual virtue of prudence, a mastery of the classical, Thomistic account is required. Despite the gaps between science and religious thought, the modern narrative does contain some parallels to St. Thomas\u27 reasoning. It is in the differences, and these similarities, that we find the truth behind why humans make decisions

Pathways to College Preparatory Advanced Academic Offerings in the Anchorage School District

There are many ways a child in the Anchorage School District (ASD) can access advanced course offerings. To a parent these pathways may seem complex. ASD offers options for gifted and highly gifted students at the elementary and middle school level, and accelerated, and enriched learning opportunities such as honors and advanced placement courses at the secondary level. These opportunities, though linked, are not the same, nor do they necessarily follow from one to another in a straight path. Moreover, pathways to and through these opportunities can be quite different. Offerings are different at the elementary, middle and high school levels, with differing qualifications and eligibility. And, some of the programs are only offered in a few particular schools. This variety provides lots of flexibility. It also creates a complex path of choices and decisions. In all of these pathways and choices, active advocacy by a parent is necessary to ensure that their child receive the best and most appropriate opportunities. In this report we describe the many advanced and accelerated learning opportunities available in Anchorage elementary, middle and high schools, and the ways students can access these opportunities. We provide visuals including figures, tables and text to highlight the pathways to and through advanced offerings from Kindergarten to 12th grade. This document is based upon publicly available information. We have combined information from the ASD gifted program website the ASD High School Handbook, the ASD High School Program of Studies guide, and minutes of the ASD Board meetings. We also spoke with staff in the gifted program at ASD. Individual school-level issues that are outside of ASD policy and procedures have not been included. This report focused on the services, programs and schools within the Anchorage School District that service as pathways to college preparation and advance academic course offerings. As we describe in more detail in this report, there are very different offerings and paths at the elementary, middle and high school. In general, there are gifted and highly gifted programs at the elementary and middle school level, and a highly gifted program at the high school level. At all school levels, the highly gifted programs are offered at a limited number of schools. In high school, all students (including those in the highly gifted program) have the opportunity to take honors and advanced placement classes. Math is not included in the middle and high school gifted program. Math instead is a curriculum progression. Advanced math opportunities usually start in 6th grade, when students can choose placement into math courses that are a higher than the usual level. Opting for advanced math in 6th grade puts a student on track to reach Algebra I in 8th grade and calculus in 12th. At the elementary school level ASD operates gifted programs in all schools and a highly gifted program in one. There are also alternative and optional schools, which offer accelerated and enriched learning environments. If a student is in the highly gifted or gifted program in elementary school, he or she usually transitions to gifted and highly gifted middle school programs. In middle school these programs 3 include gifted language arts and science classes. Students who were not a part of the gifted program in elementary school can access the middle school gifted program, by testing in. Many optional and alternative programs provide enriched and accelerated classes to all students in them. For high school students there is a greater variety of advanced offerings. Starting in 9th grade there are honors and Advanced Placement (AP) courses, Credit-by-Choice options, and optional programs within the high schools and alternative schools. Students in the middle school gifted and highly gifted program have the opportunity to transition into the high school Highly Gifted Program. The following table provides a look at advanced offerings at different school levels. Each of these offerings is discussed in the report.Introduction / Glossary of Terms / Elementary Level / Middle School Level / High School Level / Highlights / Future Research Question

Implications of Autosegmental Analysis in the Exploration of Prosodic Phonology in Mandarin Chinese

Autosegmental Phonology (Goldsmith, 1979) is a theoretical framework for understanding the phonological effects of suprasegmentals such as tone, stress, etc. Using data taken from an experiment in which Mandarin Chinese tone sandhi (the acknowledged rules governing specific tone shifts across segments) is explored, a number of phonologists, specifically Kenstowicz (2003), have shown that the relationship between the segment and the tone is autonomous. In the experiment, non-sense words with a potential tone sandhi rule are presented to the Mandarin speakers. The speakers automatically apply the tone sandhi rule which is then analyzed using an autosegmental framework. The speakers consciously separate the tones from the non-sense words and apply tone sandhi rules; the application of the tone sandhi rule is independent of semantic meaning. This research is expanded to include the exploration of loanword phonology (the phonological changes that occur when a tonal language borrows non-tonal language words) to further understand the autonomous relationship between tones and segments. As can be seen in the following example, the English word Disney: di2-si1-ni2 (numbers account for the differing tones), certain tones are distributed to loanwords

Transforming Accra towards a Sustainable Future: Comprehensive Land Use Planning and the Greater Accra Urban Simulation System (GAUSS)

The urbanization of Sub-Saharan Africa is occurring more rapidly than in any other region in the world, at a historically unprecedented absolute rate of increase, within an institutional framework desperately lacking in resources. In step with its Sub-Saharan location, Ghana is experiencing unprecedented urbanization with currently 50% of its 23 million people living in urban areas; that share is expected to become 65% by 2030. The lion’s share of this growth is taking place in the administrative and commercial center, Accra, which has a population of more than three million people. It is exhibiting a growth rate in excess of 4% per year and is expected to double its population within 16 years

Characterization of Murine Breast Cancer Cell Lines for Anti-Cancer Vaccine

Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women and the second leading cause of cancer death among women in the United States (1). While treatments involving radiation and chemotherapy currently exist, disease must be detected early in order for the treatments to be somewhat effective, and there is no effective treatment after metastasis occurs (2). Additionally, current therapies do not mitigate tumor immunosuppression. Decreasing the tumor-associated immunosuppressive conditions while activating antitumor immunity could prevent recurrence and metastasis, possibly leading to an effective treatment for cancer (3). Tumor cell vaccines could possibly address this issue and have become a recent topic of research. They have the potential to generate tumor regression and antitumor immune responses, but they have had low clinical response rates and poor immunogenicity so far (3, 4). We suspect the failure of cancer vaccines to be due to the immunosuppression and heterogeneity of breast cancers. Thus, to determine how and why different breast cancers induce different levels of immunosuppression, we studied different cancer cell lines of varying levels of immunogenicity. The study included five murine breast cancer cell lines, 4T1, 4T07, 66cl4, 168FARN, and 67NR. These are sister cell lines that were isolated from a Balb/cfC3H mouse and that differ in aggressiveness and metastatic capability. The production of immunosuppressive cytokines GM-CSF, G-CSF, M-CSF, IL-6, MCP-1, TGF-β, and VEGF was quantified for each of these cell lines. We also studied the effect these cytokines have on the expansion of myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs), which are known to suppress the immune response, and found that high levels of G-CSF are correlated with high numbers of MDSCs. A correlation between G-CSF levels and MDSC accumulation in these breast cancer cell lines could lead to future studies in which the effects of G-CSF are blocked in order to develop effective autologous breast cancer vaccines

Can Science Methods Really be Taught On-Line?

In this paper, the process in which both project-based curriculum strategies and Blackboard web-based technology were utilized to develop on-line methods courses to prepare science teachers is described. A discussion of the curriculum design process includes a rationale for using project-based instruction in methods courses, along with a rationale for using Blackboard, a web-based technology, as the environment for the course. The course‘s potential for creating highly qualified science teachers as defined by the No Child Left Behind legislation of 2001 and the National Science Teacher Association‘s Standards for Science Teacher Preparation will be explored [1]

Experiences met in establishing a school camping program in the city of Medford.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit

A US PERSPECTIVE ON APPROACHES TO MARKET ACCESS

International Relations/Trade,

Indirect Inference for Locally Stationary Models

We propose the use of indirect inference estimation to conduct inference in complex locally stationary models. We develop a local indirect inference algorithm and establish the asymptotic properties of the proposed estimator. Due to the nonparametric nature of locally stationary models, the resulting indirect inference estimator exhibits nonparametric rates of convergence. We validate our methodology with simulation studies in the confines of a locally stationary moving average model and a new locally stationary multiplicative stochastic volatility model. Using this indirect inference methodology and the new locally stationary volatility model, we obtain evidence of non-linear, time-varying volatility trends for monthly returns on several Fama-French portfolios