Rhetoric and Institutional Environments: the Legitimation of Higher Education in Twentieth Century America.

This dissertation seeks to discover and analyze the divergent ways that higher education has been legitimated by American discourse in the twentieth century. Institutions of higher learning have been able to survive and flourish because they have been seen as essential to the health of a democracy, of a free-market economy, and of religious institutions. However, the explanations for such legitimacy have been diverse and varied. Bormann\u27s fantasy theme analysis can account for the values and beliefs that form the institutional environments shaping and legitimating organizations such as colleges and universities. Fantasy themes expressed in popular discourse are expressions of the shared social reality of those who enact organizations. My dissertation study explores the ways that rhetorical visions of higher education have changed or persisted in the twentieth century, and it also considers whether positive public sentiments toward colleges and universities have been enhanced or undermined by these shared fantasies. Texts for analysis included the addresses, essays, and books of significant figures from a variety of areas including education, government, and business. The results reveal tension between individualistic and communal fantasy themes. One also recognizes competition for control of education, and such competition impinges on the independence of the academy. A college degree has been presented as useful for equipping individuals to be self-sufficient, financially prosperous, virtuous citizens. Conversely, colleges have also been valued for encouraging students to become servant leaders in a democracy, productive members of the business community, and benevolent members of a spiritual community. In recent discourse, however, the individualistic fantasy has dominated, and higher education has surrendered independence and power to government and industry. These findings are significant because educational rhetoric helps us to understand current beliefs and practices in higher education by tracing the historical development of these attitudes. The results also clarify the relationship between rhetoric and the environments within which organizations exist

Concerns with AED conversion: comparison of patient and physician perspectives.

When discussing AED conversion in the clinic, both the patient and physician perspectives on the goals and risks of this change are important to consider. To identify patient-reported and clinician-perceived concerns, a panel of epilepsy specialists was questioned about the topics discussed with patients and the clinician's perspective of patient concerns. Findings of a literature review of articles that report patient-expressed concerns regarding their epilepsy and treatment were also reviewed. Results showed that the specialist panel appropriately identified patient-reported concerns of driving ability, medication cost, seizure control, and medication side effects. Additionally, patient-reported concerns of independence, employment issues, social stigma, medication dependence, and undesirable cognitive effects are important to address when considering and initiating AED conversion

Uncertainties in the Production of p Nuclides in SN Ia Determined by Monte Carlo Variations

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019Several thousand tracers from a 2D model of a thermonuclear supernova were used in a Monte Carlo post-processing approach to determine p-nuclide abundance uncertainties originating from nuclear physics uncertainties in the reaction rates.Final Accepted Versio

The s-Process Nucleosynthesis in Low Mass Stars : Impact of the Uncertainties in the Nuclear Physics Determined by Monte Carlo Variations

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019We investigated the impact of uncertainties in neutron-capture and weak reactions (on heavy elements) on the s-process nucleosynthesis in low-mass stars using a Monte-Carlo based approach. We performed extensive nuclear reaction network calculations that include newly evaluated temperature-dependent upper and lower limits for the individual reaction rates. Our sophisticated approach is able to evaluate the reactions that impact more significantly the final abundances. We found that -decay rate uncertainties affect typically nuclides near s-process branchings, whereas most of the uncertainty in the final abundances is caused by uncertainties in neutron capture rates, either directly producing or destroying the nuclide of interest. Combined total nuclear uncertainties due to reactions on heavy elements are approximately 50%

Evaluating Launch Vehicle / Reentry Vehicle (LV/RV) Separation Concepts

Launch Vehicle/Reentry Vehicle (LV/RV) operations are expected to increase across the National Airspace System (NAS) as their reliability and availability improve. LV/RV designs and the industry landscape have vastly changed since the 1960’s, and the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) methods for handling these operations need to evolve to support the expected growth. Currently, large amounts of airspace are segregated for every LV/RV operation. This increases costs for NAS users and may limit LV/RV opportunities. The FAA’s NextGen office recently proposed two more efficient separation concepts for LV/RV operations called Space Transition Corridors, and Four-Dimensional Trajectory Deconfliction. Prior safety research for LV/RV separation concepts has been limited to the interactions between falling debris and aircraft during in-flight breakup. However, there have been limited studies on the interactions between aircraft and LV/RV, aircraft and aircraft, and impacts on controller workload for LV/RV separation concepts and standards. Understanding these interactions is critical to implementing more efficient separation concepts and standards. The MITRE Corporation (MITRE) is building a flexible, fast-time modeling and simulation capability that fills this gap and provides operational measures of safety for each type of LV/RV operation using different separation concepts and associated standards, which helps support the FAA’s Safety Management System process. This capability will allow the FAA to determine which separation concepts meet a target level of safety for each type of LV/RV operation and will provide insight into the required surveillance performance, air traffic control and pilot response times, and traffic limits to enable the concepts. This paper describes the research, modeling, and current progress of MITRE’s analytic capability

Application of Machine Learning Algorithms to Predict Body Condition Score from Liveweight Records of Mature Romney Ewes

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The Effect of Herbage Availability and Season of Year on the Rate of Liveweight Loss during Weighing of Fasting Ewe Lambs

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Uncertainties in s-process nucleosynthesis in massive stars determined by Monte Carlo variations

This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. ©: 2017 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.The $s$-process in massive stars produces the weak component of the $s$-process (nuclei up to $A \sim 90$), in amounts that match solar abundances. For heavier isotopes, such as barium, production through neutron capture is significantly enhanced in very metal-poor stars with fast rotation. However, detailed theoretical predictions for the resulting final $s$-process abundances have important uncertainties caused both by the underlying uncertainties in the nuclear physics (principally neutron capture reaction and $\beta$-decay rates) as well as by the stellar evolution modeling. In this work, we investigated the impact of nuclear-physics uncertainties relevant to the $s$-process in massive stars. Using a Monte-Carlo based approach, we performed extensive nuclear reaction network calculations that include newly evaluated upper and lower limits for the individual temperature dependent reaction rates. We found that most of the uncertainty in the final abundances is caused by uncertainties in the neutron captures rates, while $\beta$-decay rate uncertainties affect only a few nuclei near $s$-process branchings. The $s$-process in rotating metal-poor stars shows quantitatively different uncertainties and key reactions, although the qualitative characteristics are similar. We confirmed that our results do not significantly change at different metallicities for fast rotating massive stars in the very low metallicity regime. We highlight which of the identified key reactions are realistic candidates for improved measurement by future experiments.Peer reviewe

A Comparison of Two Shallow Water Models with Non-Conforming Adaptive Grids: classical tests

In an effort to study the applicability of adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) techniques to atmospheric models an interpolation-based spectral element shallow water model on a cubed-sphere grid is compared to a block-structured finite volume method in latitude-longitude geometry. Both models utilize a non-conforming adaptation approach which doubles the resolution at fine-coarse mesh interfaces. The underlying AMR libraries are quad-tree based and ensure that neighboring regions can only differ by one refinement level. The models are compared via selected test cases from a standard test suite for the shallow water equations. They include the advection of a cosine bell, a steady-state geostrophic flow, a flow over an idealized mountain and a Rossby-Haurwitz wave. Both static and dynamics adaptations are evaluated which reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the AMR techniques. Overall, the AMR simulations show that both models successfully place static and dynamic adaptations in local regions without requiring a fine grid in the global domain. The adaptive grids reliably track features of interests without visible distortions or noise at mesh interfaces. Simple threshold adaptation criteria for the geopotential height and the relative vorticity are assessed.Comment: 25 pages, 11 figures, preprin

Inhibitory Effects of ab initio Antiviral Peptides Efficiently Designed Based on APD3 Database

Natural antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) aid in many organisms innate immune defense against pathogens. Engineering new therapeutics from natural AMP templates may provide an effective treatment to emerging microbial infections such as SARS-CoV-2, Ebola viruses, and drug-resistant bacteria. One way to design antimicrobial peptides is the database filtering technology (DFT). The DFT is an ab initio design that selects the most probable parameters for an AMP by statistical analysis in the antimicrobial peptide database (https://aps.unmc.edu). To our knowledge, the DFT design has never been used to develop an antiviral peptide. We present here the improved DFT that enables a faster and more efficient design. Indeed, the peptide designed in this manner inhibits both SARS-CoV-2 and Ebola viruses. We also validated that deviations from the most probable length or amino acids led to a decrease in peptide activity. Further refinement of the peptide by introducing a disulfide bond improved peptide stability to proteases such as chymotrypsin and trypsin. Our database designed and improved peptide 1 (DDIP1) has the potential as a novel antiviral agent.https://digitalcommons.unmc.edu/surp2021/1033/thumbnail.jp