Seeing the elephant : development of a science communication engagement response scale

Scientists are being called to communicate with the public beyond simple interactions and knowledge transfer. Public engagement with science is now the main outreach method used to increase positive beliefs, favorable attitudes, and behaviors with science. Extant research has outlined key contributors of scientists’ willingness to engage with the public, but less is known about the quality of those engagement activities. Relevant theory is outlined in this dissertation through multiple research areas that complete the picture of science communication engagement response. This audience focused variable is then operationalized through scale development procedures that involve item creation, expert interviews, survey distribution, and item factorization. A one factor scale with 12 presents a wholistic engagement measure that demonstrates reliability, content validity, and construct validity. Discussion of intended uses for practitioners and future research follows.Advertisin

FRILL: A Non-Semantic Speech Embedding for Mobile Devices

Learned speech representations can drastically improve performance on tasks with limited labeled data. However, due to their size and complexity, learned representations have limited utility in mobile settings where run-time performance can be a significant bottleneck. In this work, we propose a class of lightweight non-semantic speech embedding models that run efficiently on mobile devices based on the recently proposed TRILL speech embedding. We combine novel architectural modifications with existing speed-up techniques to create embedding models that are fast enough to run in real-time on a mobile device and exhibit minimal performance degradation on a benchmark of non-semantic speech tasks. One such model (FRILL) is 32x faster on a Pixel 1 smartphone and 40% the size of TRILL, with an average decrease in accuracy of only 2%. To our knowledge, FRILL is the highest-quality non-semantic embedding designed for use on mobile devices. Furthermore, we demonstrate that these representations are useful for mobile health tasks such as non-speech human sounds detection and face-masked speech detection. Our models and code are publicly available.Comment: Accepted to Interspeech 202

Nanohybrid Membrane Synthesis with Phosphorene Nanoparticles: A Study of the Addition, Stability and Toxicity

Phosphorene is a promising candidate as a membrane material additive because of its inherent photocatalytic properties and electrical conductance which can help reduce fouling and improve membrane properties. The main objective of this study was to characterize structural and morphologic changes arising from the addition of phosphorene to polymeric membranes. Here, phosphorene was physically incorporated into a blend of polysulfone (PSf) and sulfonated poly ether ether ketone (SPEEK) doping solution. Protein and dye rejection studies were carried out to determine the permeability and selectivity of the membranes. Since loss of material additives during filtration processes is a challenge, the stability of phosphorene nanoparticles in different environments was also examined. Furthermore, given that phosphorene is a new material, toxicity studies with a model nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans, were carried out to provide insight into the biocompatibility and safety of phosphorene. Results showed that membranes modified with phosphorene displayed a higher protein rejection, but lower flux values. Phosphorene also led to a 70% reduction in dye fouling after filtration. Additionally, data showed that phosphorene loss was negligible within the membrane matrix irrespective of the pH environment. Phosphorene caused toxicity to nematodes in a free form, while no toxicity was observed for membrane permeates

Concert recording 2017-11-28

[Track 1]. Bill Bailey / Hughie Cannon arranged by James Garrett -- [Track 2]. Second suite. I. March [Track 3]. II. Song without words, I\u27ll love my love / Gustav Holst arranged by Cody Hutchison -- [Track 4]. Deutschland uber alles / Franz Joseph Haydn arranged by Eugene Anderson -- [Track 5]. Geleit from Three pieces / Johannes Brahms translated by William R. Lee -- [Track 6]. Belle of Chicago march / John Philip Sousa arranged by Skip Gray -- [Track 7]. Three preludes from op. 34. No. 14 [Track 8]. No. 7 [Track 9]. No. 16 / Dmitri Shostakovich arranged by Rauch -- [Track 10]. Tuba Sunday / traditional arranged by Gerald Sloan -- [Track 11]. Quartet for tubas / Sy Brandon -- [Track 12.] Cherokee / John Schooley -- [Track 13]. Moondance / John Stevens -- [Track 14]. Amazing grace / traditional arranged by David Uber

The Dark Side of Transfer Pricing: Its Role in Tax Avoidance and Wealth Retentiveness

In conventional accounting literature, ?transfer pricing? is portrayed as a technique for optimal allocation of costs and revenues amongst divisions, subsidiaries and joint ventures within a group of related entities. Such representations of transfer pricing simultaneously acknowledge and occlude how it is deeply implicated in processes of wealth retentiveness that enable companies to avoid taxes and facilitate the flight of capital. A purely technical conception of transfer pricing calculations abstracts them from the politico-economic contexts of their development and use. The context is the modern corporation in an era of globalized trade and its relationship to state tax authorities, shareholders and other possible stakeholders. Transfer pricing practices are responsive to opportunities for determining values in ways that are consequential for enhancing private gains, and thereby contributing to relative social impoverishment, by avoiding the payment of public taxes. Evidence is provided by examining some of the transfer prices practices used by corporations to avoid taxes in developing and developed economies

Devotions for Lent 2023 Hymns of Lent

This Lent, we will continue reflecting on hymns of faith, namely, some of our most beloved Lenten hymns. 10 such hymns have been chosen to fill the 40(+) days of Lent. Therefore, this devotional, different from previous editions, does not proceed on a weekly basis, but merely flows from one hymn to the next. Also different from previous editions, the devotional reflections are specifically based on the stanzas of the selected hymns. Therefore, each day’s reflection features the text of the hymn stanza, a devotion based on that stanza, a prayer, and then a Scripture passage or passages for further meditation. I pray these reflections may be of edification for you during this Lenten season.https://scholar.csl.edu/osp/1022/thumbnail.jp

Color-to-Grayscale: Does the Method Matter in Image Recognition?

In image recognition it is often assumed the method used to convert color images to grayscale has little impact on recognition performance. We compare thirteen different grayscale algorithms with four types of image descriptors and demonstrate that this assumption is wrong: not all color-to-grayscale algorithms work equally well, even when using descriptors that are robust to changes in illumination. These methods are tested using a modern descriptor-based image recognition framework, on face, object, and texture datasets, with relatively few training instances. We identify a simple method that generally works best for face and object recognition, and two that work well for recognizing textures

Стилистический эффект разговорной речи и его составляющие

В обучении русскому языку как иностранному на современном этапе большое внимание уделяется особенностям русской разговорной речи. Это обусловлено целым рядом причин, среди которых, на наш взгляд, можно выделить следующие: во-первых, разговорная речь всегда отличается активностью проникновения во все сферы жизнедеятельности людей и функционирует как в повседневном общении, так и в различных сферах (литературе, кино, политике и т.д.). Во-вторых, разговорная речь носит многожанровый характер, что зачастую затрудняет ее понимание иностранными студентами. В-третьих, в разговорную речь помимо слов нейтрального стиля все активнее стала проникать арготическая лексика. Именно в связи с этим особый интерес у нас вызывает разговорный стиль речи в преломлении на инофонную аудиторию