The Way Forward: From Sanctions to Supports

The New York City Working Group on School Transformation brought together education practitioners, school reformers, policy-makers, advocates, and parent and student leaders to propose alternatives to the school closings policy of the New York City Department of Education (DOE). (See the list of Working Group members in Appendix 1.) The group was initiated by the New York City Coalition for Educational Justice and coordinated by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform following the fall 2011 conference Effective Alternatives to School Closings: Transforming Struggling Schools in New York City. This report presents the Working Group's conclusions about the limitations of school closings and a set of recommendations for systemic responses to the needs of struggling schools

Interesse e aspettative degli studenti di Scienze della Formazione verso il loro studio e la loro futura professione: una ricerca empirica e riflessioni critiche su competenze e qualifiche

Student teachers’ interest and expectations guide their future behavior in relation to work and are relevant for their professionalization and also in in relation to the demands that will be made of them by the labor market. This paper elucidates student teachers’ interest in and expectations of their studies and their future profession; specifically, it considers their expectations of the future and of their studies, their decision to undertake study and their interest in it, and their motivation for attending classes. 154 student teachers at the Faculty of Education at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano participated in the research and filled out the online questionnaire. The participants’ responses show a strong focus on qualifications, labor market opportunities, teaching practice, and aspirations to security  for example, a stable relationship, children, and their own home. Student teachers choose the study program out of personal interest and its perceived fit with their individual competencies. However, the content of study does not always meet their expectations. Finally, the results of the research are used as the basis for critical reflection on teaching competencies and academic qualifications.Gli interessi e le aspettative degli studenti di Scienze della Formazione diri-gono il loro futuro comportamento lavorativo e orientano lo stesso iter di professionalizzazione, anche in considerazione delle richieste provenienti dal mondo del lavoro. Questo contributo fa emergere nuovi risultati empirici sull’interesse e sulle aspettative degli studenti nei confronti dei loro studi e della loro futura professione; in particolare, l’articolo fornisce informazioni sulle loro prospettive di vita, sulle aspettative nei confronti dello studio, sulla scelta e sull’interesse per gli studi e sulla motivazione a frequentare le lezioni. 154 studenti della Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione della Libera Università di Bolzano hanno partecipato alla ricerca e hanno compilato il questionario online. Le risposte dei partecipanti mostrano un forte orientamento verso l’ottenimento del titolo di studio, le opportunità sul mercato del lavoro, la pratica dell’insegnamento, e verso valori quali la sicurezza, rappresentata da una relazione stabile, figli e una casa di proprietà. Gli studenti di Scienze della Formazione scelgono questo programma di studio perché riflette l’interesse e le competenze personali, anche se i contenuti delle lezioni non sempre soddisfano le loro aspettative. I risultati della ricerca conducono a una riflessione critica sulle competenze professionali e sulle qualifiche accademiche.&nbsp

L’autovalutazione e la percepita valutazione sociale della professione dell’insegnante da parte degli studenti delle Scienze della Formazione in Alto Adige – Italia

Focusing on the student teachers’ evaluation of the prestige of their future profession is needed to include this aspect of the professionalization process in teacher education and training. Hence, knowledge on student teachers’ perceptions is of fundamental worldwide relevance for universities to make the teaching profession more attractive to a wider pool of candidates. Researchhas shown that the teaching profession has a low social prestige, especially in the Mediterranean area, but there is no evidence on whether the perceived social prestige of the students’ future profession coincides with the students’ personal esteem of the profession. Therefore, this paper gives new insights in the self-evaluation and perceived external, social evaluation of the prestige of the teaching profession among student teachers in one Italian university (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, N = 154). The results show that student teachers’ self-evaluation and perceived external, social evaluation considerably and significantly diverge. Finally, implications for decision makers and university stakeholders will be discussed in this paper.I futuri insegnanti, oggi studenti di Scienze della Formazione, necessitano di concentrarsi sulla percezione del prestigio della loro futura professione per includerla come uno degli aspetti salienti del processo di professionalizzazione all’interno della loro formazione. A motivo di ciò le università devono curare a livello mondiale la comprensione, da parte dei futuri insegnanti, della rilevanza della loro professione quale aspetto di fondamentale importanza, anche al fine di rendere la professione docente più attraente per un più ampio spettro di candidati. Le ricerche hanno dimostrato che la professione dell’insegnante ha un basso prestigio sociale, specialmente nell'area mediterranea, ma non vi è alcuna prova che il prestigio sociale percepito della futura professione degli studenti coincida con la valutazione che il singolo soggetto ha della sua professione. Questo articolo fornisce pertanto nuovi risultati sull’autovalutazione e la valutazione sociale del prestigio della professione percepita da parte degli studenti delle Scienze della Formazione alla Libera Università di Bolzano (N = 154). I risultati dimostrano che l’autovalutazione degli studenti e la valutazione sociale percepita differiscono in modo considerevole e significativo. Questo contributo tratta inoltre le implicazioni per i decisori e gli stakeholder universitari

Transport-Based Neural Style Transfer for Smoke Simulations

Artistically controlling fluids has always been a challenging task. Optimization techniques rely on approximating simulation states towards target velocity or density field configurations, which are often handcrafted by artists to indirectly control smoke dynamics. Patch synthesis techniques transfer image textures or simulation features to a target flow field. However, these are either limited to adding structural patterns or augmenting coarse flows with turbulent structures, and hence cannot capture the full spectrum of different styles and semantically complex structures. In this paper, we propose the first Transport-based Neural Style Transfer (TNST) algorithm for volumetric smoke data. Our method is able to transfer features from natural images to smoke simulations, enabling general content-aware manipulations ranging from simple patterns to intricate motifs. The proposed algorithm is physically inspired, since it computes the density transport from a source input smoke to a desired target configuration. Our transport-based approach allows direct control over the divergence of the stylization velocity field by optimizing incompressible and irrotational potentials that transport smoke towards stylization. Temporal consistency is ensured by transporting and aligning subsequent stylized velocities, and 3D reconstructions are computed by seamlessly merging stylizations from different camera viewpoints.Comment: ACM Transaction on Graphics (SIGGRAPH ASIA 2019), additional materials: http://www.byungsoo.me/project/neural-flow-styl

Retrieval of divergent lexical definitions of homographs in young, mature and elderly adults.

The ability to communicate one\u27s needs, desires and knowledge is a basic requirement for succeeding in society. It is an ability that is taken for granted by most individuals for whom mastery seemed automatic. The stages of language acquisition and development in young children have been extensively researched and documented. A wide range of semantic abilities of college freshman also have been investigated. Beyond the traditional college age, eighteen to twenty-two years, little normative data concerning functional language ability is available. Information pertinent to the evolution of language functioning across the adult lifespan would be useful in planning appropriate goals for adults with acquired language disorders and in making decisions regarding the termination of therapy services for clients. In a related area, normative data concerning adult language proficiency would be beneficial in planning educational materials for the normal healthy adult population. There is, however, a crucial issue which must be addressed at the outset of a study which is proposing to describe and compare individuals of varying ages on ·a cognitive processing task. One must be cognizant of the fact that individuals of widely varying ages are functioning in response to different foundations of life experiences, educational backgrounds and physical well-being. In recognition of this, Arenberg (1977) suggested calling differences found in cross-sectional studies age/cohort differences. It must not be assumed that apparent age-related deficits have any direct ·causal relationship with the aging process. Such deficits may, in fact, be more closely related to societal factors (i.e. forced retirement, stereotypes) or health conditions (i.e. circulatory, renal, thyroid disorders) which, while more prevalent among the aged, are not a direct result of the the aging process. (Avorn, 1982; Craik & Byrd, 1982). The focus of this study was to investigate and compare the ability of adults from three age groups (18-30, 33-56, 65-86) to retrieve divergent lexical definitions for graphically presented homographs. A divergent processing task requires cognitive flexibility as well as the ability to purposefully shift one\u27s attention. Previous research by Guilford (1967) and Chapey, Rigrodsky and Morrison (1975) provided the basis for the design of this study

Master stability functions reveal diffusion-driven pattern formation in networks

We study diffusion-driven pattern-formation in networks of networks, a class of multilayer systems, where different layers have the same topology, but different internal dynamics. Agents are assumed to disperse within a layer by undergoing random walks, while they can be created or destroyed by reactions between or within a layer. We show that the stability of homogeneous steady states can be analyzed with a master stability function approach that reveals a deep analogy between pattern formation in networks and pattern formation in continuous space.For illustration we consider a generalized model of ecological meta-foodwebs. This fairly complex model describes the dispersal of many different species across a region consisting of a network of individual habitats while subject to realistic, nonlinear predator-prey interactions. In this example the method reveals the intricate dependence of the dynamics on the spatial structure. The ability of the proposed approach to deal with this fairly complex system highlights it as a promising tool for ecology and other applications.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. E (2018

The influence of dispersal on a predator-prey system with two habitats

Dispersal between different habitats influences the dynamics and stability of populations considerably. Furthermore, these effects depend on the local interactions of a population with other species. Here, we perform a general and comprehensive study of the simplest possible system that includes dispersal and local interactions, namely a 2-patch 2-species system. We evaluate the impact of dispersal on stability and on the occurrence of bifurcations, including pattern forming bifurcations that lead to spatial heterogeneity, in 19 different classes of models with the help of the generalized modelling approach. We find that dispersal often destabilizes equilibria, but it can stabilize them if it increases population losses. If dispersal is nonrandom, i.e. if emigration or immigration rates depend on population densities, the correlation of stability with migration rates is positive in part of the models. We also find that many systems show all four types of bifurcations and that antisynchronous oscillations occur mostly with nonrandom dispersal

Statistical Delay Bound for WirelessHART Networks

In this paper we provide a performance analysis framework for wireless industrial networks by deriving a service curve and a bound on the delay violation probability. For this purpose we use the (min,x) stochastic network calculus as well as a recently presented recursive formula for an end-to-end delay bound of wireless heterogeneous networks. The derived results are mapped to WirelessHART networks used in process automation and were validated via simulations. In addition to WirelessHART, our results can be applied to any wireless network whose physical layer conforms the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, while its MAC protocol incorporates TDMA and channel hopping, like e.g. ISA100.11a or TSCH-based networks. The provided delay analysis is especially useful during the network design phase, offering further research potential towards optimal routing and power management in QoS-constrained wireless industrial networks.Comment: Accepted at PE-WASUN 201