CORN AND SOYBEAN CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION IN VIRGINIA

Crop Production/Industries,

From Design Inception through Project Completion: Constructing a Secure Homestead in Swaziland, Africa

This paper documents the year-long scholastic and experiential journey of a multi-disciplinary, student design team from schematic design through construction administration. The student team worked in tandem with an Architectural Technology professor designing and building a sustainable and secure homestead, or one-room home, in Swaziland, Africa. This experience gave students exposure to the design process from project programming through construction completion, and this paper will focus on describing and documenting both the student and professor experiences for the project’s entirety. The student’s perspective will focus on personal involvement and perceived academic outcomes from the project exposure, while the professor’s perspective will focus on the learning outcomes from the student team involved in the process, as well as extrapolating how this experience could be applied elsewhere

Estimation of Lower-Body Kinetics from Loading Profile and Kinematics Alone, Without Measured Ground Reaction Forces

Biomechanical models of human motion can estimate kinetic outcomes, such as joint moments, joint forces and muscle forces. Typically, one performs an inverse dynamics (ID) analysis to compute joint moments from joint angles and measured external forces. Sometimes it is impractical to measure ground reaction forces and moments (GRF&M). We devised an empirical method for performing ID analysis of resistance exercises without measured GRF&M. The method solves the multibody dynamics equations of motion with four key assumptions about the GRF&M that reduce the number of unknowns. The assumptions are 1) negligible ground reaction moments, 2) fixed lateral/medial location of the center of pressure (COP), 3) equal fore/aft location of the COP between the feet, and 4) constant angle of the GRF vector relative to the vertical axis in the frontal plane. We used evaluation trials from a spaceflight countermeasure resistance training device to test this approach. Four participants performed squat and deadlift exercises at various loads. We compared results from traditional ID analysis to results without measured GRF&M using our method. We found that joint moment trajectories in the sagittal plane were qualitatively similar in shape between the two methods, and the amount of root mean squared error (RMSE), measured by difference in joint moment impulse, was typically under 10 percent. Non-sagittal joint moment trajectories, which are much lower in overall magnitude, were not qualitatively similar in shape between the two methods. Non-sagittal moments displayed much higher RMSE, with typical values well over 50 percent. These findings were further supported by validation metrics (Sprague and Geers' P and M metrics, Pearson's r correlation coefficient). Based on these findings, we concluded that useful kinetic results are obtained from ID analysis of squat and deadlift exercises, even when GRF&M are not measured, as long as the outcomes of interest lie in the sagittal plane

Steiner t-designs for large t

One of the most central and long-standing open questions in combinatorial design theory concerns the existence of Steiner t-designs for large values of t. Although in his classical 1987 paper, L. Teirlinck has shown that non-trivial t-designs exist for all values of t, no non-trivial Steiner t-design with t > 5 has been constructed until now. Understandingly, the case t = 6 has received considerable attention. There has been recent progress concerning the existence of highly symmetric Steiner 6-designs: It is shown in [M. Huber, J. Algebr. Comb. 26 (2007), pp. 453-476] that no non-trivial flag-transitive Steiner 6-design can exist. In this paper, we announce that essentially also no block-transitive Steiner 6-design can exist.Comment: 9 pages; to appear in: Mathematical Methods in Computer Science 2008, ed. by J.Calmet, W.Geiselmann, J.Mueller-Quade, Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Scienc

The relationship of principal leadership style and student achievement in low socio -economic schools

In order to assist school districts in addressing national and state level mandates imperative for school improvement, this study examined whether a specific leadership style is more conducive to improving student achievement in high poverty schools than another. A second focus was to determine if there is a relationship between leadership styles and teacher satisfaction, willingness to give extra effort, and teacher perception of principal effectiveness. This study was conducted in Indiana elementary schools with grade configurations of kindergarten through grade five. One hundred and six schools were selected based on their school\u27s test results on Indiana\u27s annual achievement test and the school\u27s poverty rate. Each school\u27s principal was contacted to seek support for participation in the study. Follow-up phone calls were made to each school asking if they had received the surveys and if they had any questions. Data were gathered from teachers via voluntary completion of the Bass and Avolio\u27s Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire Form 5X ( Short Form). The data were analyzed using T-test, Spearman Rank Correlation, and the Kruskal-Wallis statistical analysis test. No relationship was found between leadership styles and improved student achievement. It was concluded however, that transformational leadership was related to increased teacher satisfaction, a greater perception of principal effectiveness, and an increased willingness on the part of teachers to give extra effort. Thirteen questions and hypotheses were explored comparing leadership styles in high and low achieving with high poverty schools and led to the following conclusions. Transformational leadership is practiced by principals in elementary schools of both high achieving and low achieving school and was found to be the most common leadership style. While transformational leadership did not have an impact on student achievement it improved teacher satisfaction, effectiveness, and the willingness for teachers to provide extra effort for the principal in both high and low achieving schools. This study found support for the use of the transformational leadership model in elementary schools to increase teacher satisfaction, effectiveness, and extra effort. In terms of improving student achievement, it appeared from this research that transactional leadership made a difference in student learning as measured by a standardized test in elementary schools with a high poverty rate

Fostering Civic Identity in Architectural Technology Students through the Evaluation of Critical Reflection in Service Learning Coursework

This case study follows a semester long, commercial construction course in architectural technology. Students worked both individually and as a class to transform an existing residential structure into a mixed use building for a predominantly commercial use. The semester project was an existing house in a local, urban neighborhood, which is owned by the community partner. The non-profit organization wished to repurpose the house to a mixed-use commercial building, which would house art gallery space on the main level, as well as both short term and long term residences on the second floor. Students spent the entire semester to work through the design process, from field verification, to project programming, all the way through to construction documents, to create a code compliant and aesthetically pleasing building design solution. The authors seek to document from both the student and professor’s perspective, the progress in students’ civic identity, through artifacts collected which centered on values, attitudes, and/or beliefs. The student’s perspective will focus on her personal involvement, architectural technology related project deliverables and perceived academic outcomes, while the professor’s perspective will focus on the development of the students’ increased civic identity through the use of meaningful reflection. Lastly, the authors will conclude by extrapolating this experience to other disciplines and applications

Fostering Civic Identity in Architectural Technology Students through the Evaluation of Critical Reflection in Service Learning Coursework

This case study follows a semester long, commercial construction course in architectural technology. Students worked both individually and as a class to transform an existing residential structure into a mixed use building for a predominantly commercial use. The semester project was an existing house in a local, urban neighborhood, which is owned by the community partner. The non-profit organization wished to repurpose the house to a mixed-use commercial building, which would house art gallery space on the main level, as well as both short term and long term residences on the second floor. Students spent the entire semester to work through the design process, from field verification, to project programming, all the way through to construction documents, to create a code compliant and aesthetically pleasing building design solution. The authors seek to document from both the student and professor’s perspective, the progress in students’ civic identity, through artifacts collected which centered on values, attitudes, and/or beliefs. The student’s perspective will focus on her personal involvement, architectural technology related project deliverables and perceived academic outcomes, while the professor’s perspective will focus on the development of the students’ increased civic identity through the use of meaningful reflection. Lastly, the authors will conclude by extrapolating this experience to other disciplines and applications

Evaluating the Long Term Effects of Teacher Enhancement: Final Report (2001)

This is the culminating report of an in-depth, six- year study of science education reform. The reform included teacher enhancement activities as well as curricular materials and was designed to help science students achieve the National Research Council’s Science Standards (NRC, 1995). The longitudinal evaluation project was quite complex, used several data gathering methods and sources, and produced several reports and articles. The evaluation effort had two major components. The first component was designed to compare students who had participated in the reform effort with students from the same site who had not participated in the reform. The second component was to follow a subset of the sites to identify the long-term effects of the reform effort. For all six years of the evaluation effort both qualitative and quantitative data were gathered from principals, teachers and students through extensive site visits and assessment of student outcomes. The purpose of this report is to summarize and condense the findings from the subset sites. It presents the data gathered throughout the course of the evaluation effort by discussing the data from all of the sites as a set and by providing detailed information about each site individually. Furthermore the data are synthesized into a theoretical model for teacher enhancement and curricular implementation, and recommendations for future implementation and evaluation efforts are provided.This evaluation was supported by a grant from the National Science FoundationLawrenz, Frances; Huffman, Douglas; Lavoie, Beth. (2001). Evaluating the Long Term Effects of Teacher Enhancement: Final Report (2001). Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/139154