Discarded: Exploring material stories and movements through participatory, public art interventions

Drawing on DeCerteau’s (1984) philosophy of tactics, which subvert dominant ways of being through creative appropriations of space and behavior, and New Materialist philosophies that offer vitality and agency to non-human objects (Barad, 2007; Bennett, 2004; 2010), this paper explores a three-part series of participatory, public art interventions related to waste, consumption and material relationships. The three installations were distinct but connected, situated in public spaces and corridors as a means of disrupting daily moments while encouraging moments of pause to be with discarded, material objects in playful and creative ways (de Certeau, 1984; Debord, 1956). With these installations we challenged hierarchical perceptions of object matter by encouraging care and attentiveness to these discarded objects through imaginative story-building. This attentiveness to discard objects further invited compassionate ways of being with this matter that may extend to other forms of life matter, in pursuit of more sustainable and socially just practices of being (and becoming). Through a combination of photographs, participant accounts, and materials created during the installations, this article explores the stories of these events and the ways in which such work may open space for arts-based pedagogical encounters (O’Sullivan, 2006)

Super-Fast Distributed Algorithms for Metric Facility Location

This paper presents a distributed O(1)-approximation algorithm, with expected-$O(\log \log n)$ running time, in the $\mathcal{CONGEST}$ model for the metric facility location problem on a size-$n$ clique network. Though metric facility location has been considered by a number of researchers in low-diameter settings, this is the first sub-logarithmic-round algorithm for the problem that yields an O(1)-approximation in the setting of non-uniform facility opening costs. In order to obtain this result, our paper makes three main technical contributions. First, we show a new lower bound for metric facility location, extending the lower bound of B\u{a}doiu et al. (ICALP 2005) that applies only to the special case of uniform facility opening costs. Next, we demonstrate a reduction of the distributed metric facility location problem to the problem of computing an O(1)-ruling set of an appropriate spanning subgraph. Finally, we present a sub-logarithmic-round (in expectation) algorithm for computing a 2-ruling set in a spanning subgraph of a clique. Our algorithm accomplishes this by using a combination of randomized and deterministic sparsification.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures. This is the full version of a paper that appeared in ICALP 201

Kinetic roughening of vicinal Si(001)

The kinetic roughening behavior of vicinal Si(001) surfaces is studied with scanning tunneling microscopy. By analyzing the height-height correlation function of the Si layers that have been grown we found, in the case of islands growth, an algebraic roughening behavior with a roughness exponent of 0.68 ± 0.05. In the step flow mode, however, we found non-algebraic roughening behavior

Ethanol-water separation by pervaporation

The separation of ethanol-water mixtures is of great importance for the production of ethanol from biomass. Both ultrafiltration and pervaporation processes can be used for the continuous processing of fermentation and separation, The removal of ethanol from the ultrafiltration permeate can be accomplished by pervaporation. Separation of ethanol-water mixtures by the pervaporation process has been investigated. Results are presented for membranes which are preferentially permeable for ethanol and for others which are preferentially water permeable. Details on the preparation of several membrane types (homogeneous, asymmetric and composite) are given. A schematic process diagram is given in which the fermentation of sugars to ethanol is membrane-controlled

Jet production in the D0 experiment: measurements and data-to-Monte Carlo comparisons

A preliminary measurement is presented of the inclusive jet production cross section in pp collisions with the D0 detector using an integrated luminosity of 800 pb-1 of Tevatron RunII data. The cross section is studied as a function of jet pT and rapidity and compared to perturbative QCD predictions in next-to-leading order including two-loop threshold corrections. Also presented is a preliminary measurement of Z/γ∗+jet production based on 950 pb-1. A comparison to the sherpa event generator shows excellent agreement for jet multiplicities and good agreement for the pT spectra of the jets and the Z boson and for the inter-jet angular correlations

Social Network Analysis as a Predictor of Communication Patterns in a Small Group

Few studies have examined interdisciplinary collaboration in primary care using social network analysis. The present study seeks to examine connections among leadership in the Interprofessional Primary Care Institute (IPCI) in order to measure the effect of changes in the network over time, effect of work group collaboration, and centralization on communication patterns within the group. This study involved a secondary analysis, using data from Gathercoal et al.’s (2019) social network analysis (SNA) of the IPCI, and follow-up data collection. Data were gathered via an online survey, meeting records, and collateral information about IPCI. Social connections within the network, specifically eigenvector centrality measures, were calculated using the Cytoscape program. Results showed that individuals in two or more workgroups had more incoming comments while individuals in fewer work groups were more likely to send outgoing comments. Individuals with higher centrality at the beginning of the network participated in fewer workgroups. Members’ eigenvector centrality did not differ significantly at Time 2 as a function of the number of work groups to which they belonged. The present study revealed the importance of influence centrality (e.g., eigenvector centrality) and work group involvement in the IPCI network as it relates to the value and communication patterns of its members. SNA is a valuable method to analyze the interworking of interdisciplinary networks to support and enhance collaboration among diverse professionals in the health sector

The use of assessment for institutional sensemaking by top administrative officials

This study explored the relationship between the degree to which top administrators of four-year colleges and universities that have been effective in implementing and sustaining assessment view the use of assessment and seven components of institutional sensemaking at their institutions. The underlying premise is that outcomes assessment practices represent a transformational change in higher education, and institutional sensemaking has been identified as a central feature of institutional transformation efforts. Understanding how assessment results and institutional sensemaking are intertwined should be useful for professionals charged with designing or implementing assessment plans, because it may lead to new ways to connect assessment with institutional decision-making and planning.;Surveys were completed by 311 top academic and student affairs administrators at 66 four-year institutions of higher education in the United States that were identified as having mature cultures of institutional assessment. Strong relationships were found between perceived use of assessment at those institutions and six aspects of sensemaking: Identity type, identity commitment, strategic orientation, present image, information processing structure, and issue interpretation. These findings suggest the importance of intentionally linking assessment planning with sensemaking activities

Measurement of the top quark pair production cross section in proton-antiproton collisions at Vs=1.96 TeV : hadronic top decays with the d0 detector

Of the six quarks in the standard model the top quark is by far the heaviest: 35 times more massive than its partner the bottom quark and more than 130 times heavier than the average of the other five quarks. Its correspondingly small decay width means it tends to decay before forming a bound state. Of all quarks, therefore, the top is the least affected by quark confinement, behaving almost as a free quark. Since in the standard model top quarks couple almost exclusively to bottom quarks (t ! Wb), top quark decays provide a window on the standard model through the direct measurement of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa quark mixing matrix element Vtb. In the same way any lack of top quark decays into W bosons could imply the existence of decay channels beyond the standard model, for example charged Higgs bosons as expected in two-doublet Higgs models: t ! H+b. This thesis sets out to measure the top-antitop quark pair production cross section at a center-of-mass energy of ps = 1:96 TeV in the fully hadronic decay channel. The analysis is performed on 1 fb1 of Tevatron Run IIa data taken with the D0 detector between July 2002 and February 2006. A neural network is used to identify jets from b-quarks and a likelihood ratio method is used to separate signal from background. To avoid reliance on, possibly imperfect, Monte Carlo models for the modelling of the QCD background,\ud the background was modelled using a dedicated data sample. The tt signal was modelled using the alpgen and pythia Monte Carlo event generators. \ud The generated signal sample was passed through the full, geant based, D0\ud detector simulation and reconstructed using the default D0 reconstruction\ud software.\u