Echoes of the sea around us—Human hopes in the balance

Earth’s human life-support system shows signs of failing. Human capacity to alter landscapes and the atmosphere is reaching catastrophic levels. Only the oceans seemed to be beyond control, but still they are not beyond human influence. Limited experience in protecting nature’s integrity, health, and resilience in seascapes offers the potential to reverse sliding global environmental conditions by providing realistic expectations, offering moral fortitude, stimulating imagination, and proffering hope. The ocean’s capacity to evoke human awe and inspiration may be sufficient to focusmankind on the global existential threats we face. It is now vital to heed Rachael Carson’s 1937 prescient observation “Against this cosmic background the lifetime of a particular plant or animal appears not as a drama complete in itself but only as a brief interlude in a panorama of endless change.” The world will keep spinning, whether people are able to enjoy the ride or not

Beyond the scenery: Parks as giant living classrooms

Parks offer numerous forms of educational value, but these values will be diminished or lost if society is left unaware of history or we become oblivious to our surroundings

Cost of Appeal

Cost of Appea

Cost of Appeal

Cost of Appea

Cognitive demands and second-language learners: A framework for analyzing mathematical instructional contexts

The issues involved in teaching English language learners mathematics while they are learning English pose many challenges for mathematics teachers and highlight the need to focus on language-processing issues related to teaching mathematical content. Two realistic-type problems from high-stakes tests are used to illustrate the complex interactions between culture, language, and mathematical learning. The analyses focus on aspects of the problems that potentially increase cognitive demands for second-language learners. An analytical framework is presented that is designed to enable mathematics teachers to identify critical elements in problems and the learning environment that contribute to increased cognitive demands for students of English as a second language. The framework is proposed as a cycle of teacher reflection that would extend a constructivist model of teaching to include broader linguistic, cultural, and cognitive processing issues of mathematics teaching, as well as enable teachers to develop more accurate mental models of student learning

Street Fights: Corporate Social Responsibility and a Dragway\u27s Attempt to Reduce Illegal Street Racing

This study sought to explore a professional sport venue’s use of Corporate social responsibility (CSR) to promote positive social change, by addressing illegal street racing, through events designed for community participation. This study specifically looked at public dragracing events, titled “Street Fights,” held at a professional dragway. The purpose of this study was to 1) examine drivers’ awareness of the event’s social responsibility initiatives with Street Fight events and 2) determine if these initiatives are promoting behavioral changes in drivers. Drivers at Street Fight events were surveyed (n=77, 60% response rate) on their levels of awareness of the venue’s social responsibility initiatives, as well as, the event and venue’s overall influence on positive social change within the community. Results showed that Street Fight racers seem to be aware that the events were created to offer a safe, legal, and affordable place to dragrace. Street Fight racers also indicated they were less likely to engage in excessive speeding on open roadways due to their participation in Street Fight events

Polarization Measurements on SUMI's TVLS Gratings

We present measurements of toroidal variable-line-space (TVLS) gratings for the Solar Ultraviolet Magnetograph Investigation (SUMI), currently being developed at the National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC). SUMI is a spectro-polarimeter designed to measure magnetic fields in the solar chromosphere by observing two UV emission lines sensitive to magnetic fields, the CIY line at 155nm and the MgII line at 280nm. The instrument uses a pair of TVLS gratings, to observe both linear polarizations simultaneously. Efficiency measurements were done on bare aluminum gratings and aluminum/MgF2 coated gratings, at both linear polarizations