5,305 research outputs found
Student Attainment and the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program
In this report we examine high school completion and postsecondary enrollment (a.k.a. âeducational attainmentâ) of the cohort of 9th grade students who were in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) at the beginning of our state-mandated evaluation of the MPCP in 2006. After tracking the MPCP 9th graders following the 2006-07 year and comparing them to a carefully matched sample of 9th graders who were in Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) during the 2006-07 year, we use a combination of parent surveys and administrative (school) records to estimate attainment
School and Sector Switching in Milwaukee
In this report we analyze the movement of students to and from the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) and Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). We also analyze student mobility between schools within each sector. The analysis rests on two separate sets of data: the administrative records we have collected as part of our separate analysis of academic achievement in MPCP (Witte , Wolf, Cowen, Fleming, & Lucas-McLean, 2010), and the results of an extensive set of surveys collected from parents of private and public school students
Pallet Racking Using Cold-reduced Steel
Codes of practice for the design of cold-formed sections have generally included a requirement for the coil material to possess a specified amount of ductility prior to forming. The scientific basis for such ductility requirements is shrouded in historical mystery but code drafting committees have been reluctant to remove these requirements in the absence of good reason. However, very low ductility steels have been used for the manufacture of cold-formed steel components for many years by the two leading UK manufacturers of storage racks without this lack of ductility giving rise to any problems during either manufacture or service. This relatively hard material is produced by taking conventional coil material and cold-reducing it prior to forming it into beam, column and other components. The advantage gained by this procedure is a significant increase in the yield stress but the penalty is a considerable reduction in the ductility. As, up to the present time, storage racking has not been subject to formal approval procedures, the absence of clauses in UK or European Codes of Practice allowing the use of these hard steels has not caused any problems. However, this situation is now changing and it has become necessary to justify their performance in comparison with material of more usual ductility. It may be noted here that the use of low ductility steel is not unique to storage racking because very hard steels have been also used successfully in Europe for the manufacture of profiled steel cladding. Galvanised coil is available with a guaranteed yield stress of 550 N/mmĂÂČ and several manufacturers successfully form this material. Indeed, the first author has tested roof sheeting made from material which had a measured yield stress in excess of 700 N/mmĂÂČ together with zero elongation in a conventional tensile test. The buckling-yielding failure modes observed in both single and two-span tests to failure showed no evidence of the influence of reduced ductility. In this paper, the justification for the use of low-yield stress steel is taken a stage further by describing a series of tests on racking components made from both cold-reduced steel and an equivalent hot-rolled steel of similar yield stress but much greater ductility. It is shown that the use of hard steel has no adverse effect on performance. The paper concludes by describing a test to failure of a full scale rack structure fabricated using components made from cold-reduced steel
The MPCP Longitudinal Educational Growth Study Third Year Report
This is the third-year report in a five-year evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). The MPCP, which began in 1990, provides government-funded vouchers for low-income children to attend private schools in the City of Milwaukee. The maximum voucher amount in 2008-09 was $6,607, and approximately 20,000 children used a voucher to attend either secular or religious private schools. The MPCP is the oldest and largest urban school voucher program in the United States. This evaluation was authorized by Wisconsin Act 125 enacted in 2005
Going the distance for protein function prediction: a new distance metric for protein interaction networks
Due to an error introduced in the production process, the x-axes in the first panels of Figure 1 and Figure 7 are not formatted correctly. The correct Figure 1 can be viewed here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/annotation/343bf260-f6ff-48a2-93b2-3cc79af518a9In protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks, functional similarity is often inferred based on the function of directly interacting proteins, or more generally, some notion of interaction network proximity among proteins in a local neighborhood. Prior methods typically measure proximity as the shortest-path distance in the network, but this has only a limited ability to capture fine-grained neighborhood distinctions, because most proteins are close to each other, and there are many ties in proximity. We introduce diffusion state distance (DSD), a new metric based on a graph diffusion property, designed to capture finer-grained distinctions in proximity for transfer of functional annotation in PPI networks. We present a tool that, when input a PPI network, will output the DSD distances between every pair of proteins. We show that replacing the shortest-path metric by DSD improves the performance of classical function prediction methods across the board.MC, HZ, NMD and LJC were supported in part by National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 grant GM080330. JP was supported in part by NIH grant R01 HD058880. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant numbers CNS-0905565, CNS-1018266, CNS-1012910, and CNS-1117039, and supported by the Army Research Office under grant W911NF-11-1-0227 (to MEC). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript
Observation of the Cabibbo-suppressed charmed baryon decay Î_c^+âpÏ
We report the observation of the Cabibbo-suppressed decays Î_c^+âpK^-K^+ and Î_c^+âpÏ using data collected with the CLEO II detector at CESR. The latter mode, observed for the first time with significant statistics, is of interest as a test of color suppression in charm decays. We have determined the branching ratios for these modes relative to Î_c^+âpK^-Ï^+ and compared our results with theory
Weak interactions and quasi-stable particle energy loss
We discuss the interplay between electromagnetic energy loss and weak
interactions in the context of quasistable particle particle propagation
through materials. As specific examples, we consider staus, where weak
interactions may play a role, and taus, where they don't.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the Second
Workshop on TeV Particle Astrophysics (August 2006, Madison, WI
Noradrenaline effects on social behaviour, intergroup relations, and moral decisions
Recent research has begun to elucidate the neural basis of higher order social concepts, such as the mechanisms involved in intergroup relations, and moral judgments. Most theories have concentrated on higher order emotions, such as guilt, shame, or empathy, as core mechanisms. Accordingly, psychopharmacological and neurobiological studies have investigated the effects of manipulating serotonin or oxytocin activity on moral and social decisions and attitudes. However, recently it has been determined that changes in more basic emotions, such as fear and anger, might also have a significant role in social and moral cognition. This article summarizes psychopharmacological and fMRI research on the role of noradrenaline in higher order social cognition suggesting that indeed noradrenergic mediated affective changes might play key â and probably causal â role in certain social attitudes and moral judgments. Social judgments may also be directly influenced by numerous neurotransmitter manipulations but these effects could be mediated by modulation of basic emotions which appear to play an essential role in the formation of social concepts and moral behaviour
Austere Location Wind Turbine Energy System Analysis
One promising technology to combat an energy shortage in austere locations is wind energy. In combination with battery storage and generator backup, we explore the feasibility of using a hybrid energy system to reduce the volume of diesel fuel required. Modeling the energy demands in austere locations will enable missions in remote settings to optimize their energy costs, increased their energy resiliency and assure their supply. For a modeled time-series energy requirement that varied between 2.4 MW and 5.1 MW, the optimal wind system size was 9.9 MW of installed wind power paired with a 741 kWh battery. Assuming an elevated price of fuel, the cost of operating the base with only fuel was greater than 48 million dollars
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