The British Garden

The Royal Horticultural Society/Garden Club of America Interchange Fellowship was established in 1952 and is awarded to one American and one British student annually. It was formerly known as the Martin McLaren Scholarship and was created to help encourage the exchange of ideas and information in the horticultural world. Terry Huang was selected as the American 2013–2014 Royal Interchange Fellow. His travels and placements solidified for him the important role that botanic and public gardens play as interpreters of the plant world. He describes some of his experiences and examples of excellence that he saw while in Britain. He goes on to explain that the work placements have influenced and inspired the work he does today in the Botany Greenhouse at the University of Washington

The Design and Performance of Cyber-Physical Middleware for Real-Time Hybrid Structural Testing

Real-time hybrid testing of civil structures, in which computational models and physical components must be integrated with high fidelity at run-time represents a grand challenge in the emerging area of cyber-physical systems. Actuator dynamics, complex interactions among computers and physical components, and computation and communication delays all must be managed carefully to achieve accurate tests. To address these challenges, we have developed a novel middleware for integrating cyber and physical components flexibly and with suitable timing behavior within a Cyber-physical Instrument for Real-time hybrid Structural Testing (CIRST). This paper makes three main contributions to the state of the art in middleware for cyber-physical systems: (1) a novel middleware architecture within which cyber-physical components can be integrated flexibly through XML-based configuration specifications, (2) an efficient middleware implementation in C++ that can maintain necessary real-time performance, and (3) a case study that evaluates the middleware\u27s performance and demonstrates its suitability for real-time hybrid testing

Investigating the Relation between Student Engagement and Attainment in a Flexible Learning Environment

The use of technology is increasingly adopted to support flexible learning in Higher Education institutions. The adoption of more sophisticated technologies offers a broad range of facilities for communication and resource sharing, thereby creating a flexible learning environment that facilitates and even encourages students not to physically attend classes. However this emerging trend seems to contradict class attendance requirements within universities, inevitably leading to a dilemma between amending traditional regulations and creating new policies for the higher education institutions. This study presents an investigation into student engagement in a technology enhanced/driven flexible environment along with its relationship to attainment. We propose an approach to modelling engagement from different perspectives in terms of indicators and then consider what impact these indicators have on student academic performance. We have carried out a case study on the relation between attendance and attainment in a flexible environment. Although our preliminary results show attendance is quantitatively correlated with successful student development and learning outcomes, our results also indicate there is a cohort that did not follow such a pattern. Nevertheless the preliminary results could provide an insight into pilot studies in the wider deployment of new technology to support flexible learning

A hybrid analysis of ellipsometry data from patterned structures

Rigorous coupled wave analysis (RCWA) has been used for modeling the polarization dependent reflection from periodic patterns for process monitoring and control. However, the computational load of this vector method is very heavy. In this paper, we will carefully examine a much simpler scalar method for reflection modeling. We also extend the application of the vector analysis to some special non-periodic structures by combining RCWA with the scalar model. We conclude that this hybrid approach is of significant promise for in situ IC production applications. © 2001 American Institute of Physics.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/87397/2/373_1.pd

Red teaming ChatGPT via Jailbreaking: Bias, Robustness, Reliability and Toxicity

Recent breakthroughs in natural language processing (NLP) have permitted the synthesis and comprehension of coherent text in an open-ended way, therefore translating the theoretical algorithms into practical applications. The large language models (LLMs) have significantly impacted businesses such as report summarization software and copywriters. Observations indicate, however, that LLMs may exhibit social prejudice and toxicity, posing ethical and societal dangers of consequences resulting from irresponsibility. Large-scale benchmarks for accountable LLMs should consequently be developed. Although several empirical investigations reveal the existence of a few ethical difficulties in advanced LLMs, there is little systematic examination and user study of the risks and harmful behaviors of current LLM usage. To further educate future efforts on constructing ethical LLMs responsibly, we perform a qualitative research method called ``red teaming'' on OpenAI's ChatGPT\footnote{In this paper, ChatGPT refers to the version released on Dec 15th.} to better understand the practical features of ethical dangers in recent LLMs. We analyze ChatGPT comprehensively from four perspectives: 1) \textit{Bias} 2) \textit{Reliability} 3) \textit{Robustness} 4) \textit{Toxicity}. In accordance with our stated viewpoints, we empirically benchmark ChatGPT on multiple sample datasets. We find that a significant number of ethical risks cannot be addressed by existing benchmarks, and hence illustrate them via additional case studies. In addition, we examine the implications of our findings on AI ethics and harmal behaviors of ChatGPT, as well as future problems and practical design considerations for responsible LLMs. We believe that our findings may give light on future efforts to determine and mitigate the ethical hazards posed by machines in LLM applications.Comment: Technical Repor

The AKT theory of management: A theory based on an analysis of manager's activities, knowledge and tasks.

This thesis reports the development of a theory of management which describes what competent managers do or will do and prescribes what other managers could do or should do. The AKT theory of management and six organizational concepts are constructed, tested, and applied to explain and subsume many findings of other related studies The word AKT is made up of the initials of the theory's building blocks or the elements of managers' actions: activities, knowledges, and tasks (Managers' tasks are also the factors for organizational operation (FOOs) from the system viewpoint). The six organizational concepts, namely networked-cones structure, end-means chain, compatibility among FOOs, reflexivity in management, distributed managing, and momentum of organization, form a basic organization theory describing or prescribing the context of management. The analysis of questionnaire and diary data of 1,659 actions collected from 40 Taiwanese managers supports the AKT theory. Firstly, the nearly constant, significant coefficients of contingency from the overall and partial cross-tabulations between the 11 manager's activities and 14 manager's tasks suggest that the strength of association between them is independent of the manager's function, level, company, and industry. Secondly, data indicate that all the three building blocks are necessary for the AKT theory to be complete and parsimonious and that Mintzberg's (1973) ten roles theory and the process theories are incomplete and ill-structured Finally, regression analysis showing that managers with more management learning have higher rates of valid diary records justifies the prescriptive dimension in the AKT theory for those with less management learning. Besides, examinations of the characteristics of management practice from the perspectives of the AKT theory's elements modify several previous views. The wide-ranging implications and applications of the AKT theory and six organizational concepts are discussed

Early Program Enrollment in a Statewide Child Development Account Program

Early Program Enrollment in a Statewide Child Development Account Progra

Modeling Social Transmission Dynamics of Unhealthy Behaviors for Evaluating Prevention and Treatment Interventions on Childhood Obesity

Research evidence indicates that obesity has spread through social networks, but lever points for interventions based on overlapping networks are not well studied. The objective of our research was to construct and parameterize a system dynamics model of the social transmission of behaviors through adult and youth influence in order to explore hypotheses and identify plausible lever points for future childhood obesity intervention research. Our objectives were: (1) to assess the sensitivity of childhood overweight and obesity prevalence to peer and adult social transmission rates, and (2) to test the effect of combinations of prevention and treatment interventions on the prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity. To address the first objective, we conducted two-way sensitivity analyses of adult-to-child and child-to-child social transmission in relation to childhood overweight and obesity prevalence. For the second objective, alternative combinations of prevention and treatment interventions were tested by varying model parameters of social transmission and weight loss behavior rates. Our results indicated child overweight and obesity prevalence might be slightly more sensitive to the same relative change in the adult-to-child compared to the child-to-child social transmission rate. In our simulations, alternatives with treatment alone, compared to prevention alone, reduced the prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity more after 10 years (1.2–1.8% and 0.2–1.0% greater reduction when targeted at children and adults respectively). Also, as the impact of adult interventions on children was increased, the rank of six alternatives that included adults became better (i.e., resulting in lower 10 year childhood overweight and obesity prevalence) than alternatives that only involved children. The findings imply that social transmission dynamics should be considered when designing both prevention and treatment intervention approaches. Finally, targeting adults may be more efficient, and research should strengthen and expand adult-focused interventions that have a high residual impact on children