Controlled Surface Collection at the Spinach Patch Site, Franklin County, Arkansas

This paper discusses the technique of controlled surface collection as an interpretative aid at the Spinach Patch site, 3FR1, a prehistoric village site in Ozark Reservoir. The research involved was made possible through a cooperative agreement with the National Park Service, Southeast Region

Certificate Of Online Learning And Teaching (COLT) At The University Of Hawaii: A Horse Of Another Color For Earning College Credits

Current conventional wisdom may perceive that higher education is outdated and maybe even likely to collapse. Online education is often predicted to replace brick-and-mortar campuses with systems providing students access to world-class learning via smartphones and tablets. Many private and commercial ventures are embracing such concepts. However, in the race to implement large-scale models, significant key elements such as understanding that learning can be social, affective, personal, and even cultural may be missing. Thus, creative yet research-based programs at the university level are needed. While it is true that existing university structures might inhibit the implementation of radical programs, there are opportunities where such innovation can be offered. In the case of the Department of Educational Technology at the University of Hawaii, an option for a program at the certificate level not necessarily leading to a traditional degree was provided. The certificate option provided an opportunity to explore entrepreneurial models while also incorporating what we understand about learning, the brain, and newer technologies. This paper describes the circumstances and approach that led to the creation of an innovative program that still fit within current university structures

Planning For Evaluation In Online Learning: University Of Hawaii Case Study

With contemporary requirements for objective measurement, program evaluation is a certain necessity. Most program evaluation is designed in response to external demands for assessment. Moreover, such evaluation is typically developed only after programs already exist. However, the proliferation of online learning provides new opportunities for approaching evaluation. Specifically, many higher education institutions are currently augmenting existing campus-based programs with online learning—either by hybridizing traditional delivery or by providing parallel online options. At the University of Hawaii, while designing a parallel online delivery model for an existing campus-based program, careful consideration was given to the unique requirements for evaluation and assessment. In this way, an overall plan for evaluation was developed that incorporated multiple layers of assessment: from specific programmatic to internal university to external accreditation requirements. Commonalities among the multiple layers were considered to develop a single, overall evaluation approach. In a case study model, this paper describes eight practical steps taken to develop an overall, effective evaluation model

Identifying Neurotransmitter Spill-over in Hippocampal Field Recordings

A model of synaptic and extra-synaptic excitatory signaling in the hippocampus is presented. The model is used to analytically evaluate the potential contributions of homosynaptic and heterosynaptic glutamate spill-over to receptor signaling during an electrophysiological experiment in which glutamate transporters are pharmacologically blocked. Inhibition of glutamate uptake selectively prolongs the decay kinetics of the second field excitatory postsynaptic potential evoked by paired pulse stimulation of Schaffer collateral axons in area CA1. The model includes AMPA and NMDA glutamate receptors, and the removal of glutamate by transporters and diffusion. We establish analytically that the prolongation cannot be caused by local effects, i.e., the transporters acting within or near the synapse. In contrast, a time profile of glutamate consistent with spill-over from adjacent synapses can explain the effect. The different reaction kinetics of AMPA and NMDA receptors have a significant role in reproducing the experimental results, as explained by analysis of the ODEs governing the reactions

Can Law and Economics Be Both Practical and Principled?

This article describes important recent developments in normative law and economics, and the difficulties they create for the project of efficiency-based legal reform. After long proceeding without a well articulated moral justification for using economic decision procedures to choose legal rules, scholars have lately begun to devote serious attention to developing a philosophically attractive definition of well-being. At the same time, the empirical side of law and economics is also being enriched with an improved understanding of the complexities of individuals\u27 decision-making behavior. That is where the problems begin. Scholars may have better, more plausible conceptions of well-being in hand, but it is not at all clear how to develop practical techniques for measuring and comparing individuals\u27 gains and losses in well-being, so defined. And at the practical end, behavioral research suggests that the range of individual preferences that economic analysis must accommodate is broader and more complex than was previously assumed. We detail a variety of psychological studies that suggest that individuals often hold law-related preferences: direct preferences about the content and fairness of their legal system. These preferences defy market valuation, yet we argue that they cannot be ignored. Most intriguingly, studies suggest that in some cases people hold a preference that legal decisions should not be made on an economic basis. We describe such anti-utilitarian preferences, collecting evidence of their strength and permanence. In the final part of the article, we offer predictions about the future development of law and economics, in light of its growing theoretical sophistication and the evidence of law-related preferences. The most likely outcomes are: (1) scholars advocating various forms of paternalism, whether by excluding citizens from participation in the legal system or by discounting some types of individual preferences from consideration in choosing policies; or (2) a limited implementation of economic techniques, applying them strongly in some areas of the law but not in others. We discuss the relative strengths and failures of each proposed approach, and offer suggestions for future empirical work. We conclude by giving a tentative answer to the question that titles the article

Near Infrared Spectroscopic Monitoring During Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing Detects Anaerobic Threshold

Cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) provides assessment of the integrative responses involving the pulmonary, cardiovascular, and skeletal muscle systems. Application of exercise testing remains limited to children who are able to understand and cooperate with the exercise protocol. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) provides a noninvasive, continuous method to monitor regional tissue oxygenation (rSO2). Our specific aim was to predict anaerobic threshold (AT) during CPET noninvasively using two-site NIRS monitoring. Achievement of a practical noninvasive technology for estimating AT will increase the compatibility of CPET. Patients without structural or acquired heart disease were eligible for inclusion if they were ordered to undergo CPET by a cardiologist. Data from 51 subjects was analyzed. The ventilatory anaerobic threshold (VAT) was computed on VCO2 and respiratory quotient post hoc using the standard V-slope method. The inflection points of the regional rSO2 time-series were identified as the noninvasive regional NIRS AT for each of the two monitored regions (cerebral and kidney). AT calculation made using an average of kidney and brain NIRS matched the calculation made by VAT for the same patient. Two-site NIRS monitoring of visceral organs is a predictor of AT

Specificity and Actions of an Arylaspartate Inhibitor of Glutamate Transport at the Schaffer Collateral-CA1 Pyramidal Cell Synapse

In this study we characterized the pharmacological selectivity and physiological actions of a new arylaspartate glutamate transporter blocker, L-threo-ß-benzylaspartate (L-TBA). At concentrations up to 100 µM, L-TBA did not act as an AMPA receptor (AMPAR) or NMDA receptor (NMDAR) agonist or antagonist when applied to outside-out patches from mouse hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neurons. L-TBA had no effect on the amplitude of field excitatory postsynaptic potentials (fEPSPs) recorded at the Schaffer collateral-CA1 pyramidal cell synapse. Excitatory postsynaptic currents (EPSCs) in CA1 pyramidal neurons were unaffected by L-TBA in the presence of physiological extracellular Mg2+ concentrations, but in Mg2+-free solution, EPSCs were significantly prolonged as a consequence of increased NMDAR activity. Although L-TBA exhibited approximately four-fold selectivity for neuronal EAAT3 over glial EAAT1/EAAT2 transporter subtypes expressed in Xenopus oocytes, the L-TBA concentration-dependence of the EPSC charge transfer increase in the absence of Mg2+ was the same in hippocampal slices from EAAT3 +/+ and EAAT3 −/− mice, suggesting that TBA effects were primarily due to block of glial transporters. Consistent with this, L-TBA blocked synaptically evoked transporter currents in CA1 astrocytes with a potency in accord with its block of heterologously expressed glial transporters. Extracellular recording in the presence of physiological Mg2+ revealed that L-TBA prolonged fEPSPs in a frequency-dependent manner by selectively increasing the NMDAR-mediated component of the fEPSP during short bursts of activity. The data indicate that glial glutamate transporters play a dominant role in limiting extrasynaptic transmitter diffusion and binding to NMDARs. Furthermore, NMDAR signaling is primarily limited by voltage-dependent Mg2+ block during low-frequency activity, while the relative contribution of transport increases during short bursts of higher frequency signaling

Electronic band structure and carrier effective mass in calcium aluminates

First-principles electronic band structure investigations of five compounds of the CaO-Al2O3 family, 3CaO.Al2O3, 12CaO.7Al2O3, CaO.Al2O3, CaO.2Al2O3 and CaO.6Al2O3, as well as CaO and alpha-, theta- and kappa-Al2O3 are performed. We find that the conduction band in the complex oxides is formed from the oxygen antibonding p-states and, although the band gap in Al2O3 is almost twice larger than in CaO, the s-states of both cations. Such a hybrid nature of the conduction band leads to isotropic electron effective masses which are nearly the same for all compounds investigated. This insensitivity of the effective mass to variations in the composition and structure suggests that upon a proper degenerate doping, both amorphous and crystalline phases of the materials will possess mobile extra electrons

High Velocity Cloud Edges and Mini-HVCs

Arecibo mapping is reported of the neutral hydrogen distribution along selected directions out from the centers of two small High Velocity Clouds (HVC), W486 and W491. Both HVCs have a small inner region where the neutral hydrogen column density N_HI decreases slowly and a larger outer region where N_HI declines more rapidly, smoothly and exponentially from ~ 2 X 10^19 atoms cm^-2 down to < 10^18 atoms cm^-2. Line widths, and presumably temperature and turbulence, do not increase in the outermost regions. Therefore pressure decreases smoothly, making confinement by dark matter gravity more likely than confinement by external pressure. The more extended HVC, W491, has a superimposed small cloud (which we dub a ``mini-HVC''), offset by 66 km s^-1 in velocity along the line of sight with peak column density about 5 X 10^18 atoms cm^-2. Preliminary data toward future mapping of two more HVCs reveals two more mini-HVCs of similarly small size and central column density a bit less than 1 X 10^19 atoms cm^-2. We suggest that these three mini-HVCs are not physically associated with the HVCs on which they are superimposed, but are either very small outlyers of the extended Magellanic Stream HVC complex or more distant and/or smaller isolated CHVCs. The value of N_HI at the point where the neutral and ionized column densities are equal is ~ 2 X 10^19 atoms cm^-2 for the two mapped HVCs. Therefore the angular scalelength of the total hydrogen is appreciably larger than the observed HI scalelength. Previous distance estimates, related to absolute size and mass of the total hydrogen cloud, may have to be scaled down because of the undetected, more extended ionized hydrogen.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures, ApJ in pres