Dynamothermal metamorphism of the Chiwaukum Schist in the Steven\u27s Pass Area, Cascade Mountains, Washington

The Chiwaukum Schist in the Steven\u27s Pass region of the North Cascade Mountains, Washington is a metamorphic rock suite of pelitic protolith bordering the Mount Steward Batholith. This clay-right parent material experienced contact metamorphism during the intrusion of the Mount Steward batholith, followed by Buchan style, dynamothermal metamorphism. The minerals produced by these early metamorphic events were later overprinted by minerals of Barrovian style, dynamothermal metamorphism. The index minerals of the contact and Buchan facies metamorphism extend into the andalusite zone, while the Barrovian facies is characterized by aluminosilicate polymorph minerals reaching the sillimanite zone. Calculation of mineral abundances and assemblages in thin section allow for the construction of a detailed petrographic analysis of the are

A Young African-American Woman’s Story: Risk and Protective Factors in Developing Identity

The purpose of this research study is to explore the life experiences of an African American young woman specifically focusing on risk and protective factors and their impact on identity formation. The research asks the questions, “What are the risk and protective life experiences of an African American young woman? How do these possible life experiences impact the way the young woman participant views herself and her world?” The methodology chosen for this research is a qualitative case study allowing for an in-depth and holistic look at an individual’s life. Two semi-structured interviews were conducted with a young African American woman and her uncle, who the young woman identified as a “special adult” within her life. Interview questions called upon participants to reflect upon the life of the young woman. The young woman was instructed to take photographs of the places and things that are most important to her allowing an active role within data collection. A visual analysis of photographs taken provides a meaningful interpretation of the young woman’s life including her dreams, values, ambition, and sense of safety. Furthermore, findings suggest risks within the forming identity of a young African American woman are relationships and social perception. Protective factors consist of a vision for her future, a sense of purpose, and resilience. These findings propose a need for future research, funding, and social work practice that is informed of risk and protective factor’s impact on identity development within the lives of young African American women. An informed practice has the potential to create a more inclusive world

A Young African-American Woman\u27s Story: Risk and Protective Factors in Developing Identity

The purpose of this research study is to explore the life experiences of an African American young woman specifically focusing on risk and protective factors and their impact on identity formation. The research asks the questions, What are the risk and protective life experiences of an African American young woman? How do these possible life experiences impact the way the young woman participant views herself and her world? The methodology chosen for this research is a qualitative case study allowing for an in-depth and holistic look at an individual\u27s life. Two semi-structured interviews were conducted with a young African American woman and her uncle, who the young woman identified as a special adult within her life. Interview questions called upon participants to reflect upon the life of the young woman. The young woman was instructed to take photographs of the places and things that are most important to her allowing an active role within data collection. A visual analysis of photographs taken provides a meaningful interpretation of the young woman\u27s life including her dreams, values, ambition, and sense of safety. Furthermore, findings suggest risks within the forming identity of a young African American woman are relationships and social perception. Protective factors consist of a vision for her future, a sense of purpose, and resilience. These findings propose a need for future research, funding, and social work practice that is informed of risk and protective factor\u27s impact on identity development within the lives of young African American women. An informed practice has the potential to create a more inclusive world

Algebraic Geometric Codes on Anticanonical Surfaces

Algebraic geometric codes (or AG codes) provide a way to correct errors that occur during the transmission of digital information. AG codes on curves have been studied extensively, but much less work has been done for AG codes on higher dimensional varieties. In particular, we seek good bounds for the minimum distance. We study AG codes on anticanonical surfaces coming from blow-ups of P2 at points on a line and points on a conic. We can compute the dimension of such codes exactly due to known results. For certain families of these codes, we prove an exact result on the minimum distance. For other families, we obtain lower bounds on the minimum distance. We also investigate and obtain some results for codes on blow-ups of Pr, where r is at least 3. We include tables of code parameters as well as Magma functions which can be used to generate the codes

Development of a Translator from LLVM to ACL2

In our current work a library of formally verified software components is to be created, and assembled, using the Low-Level Virtual Machine (LLVM) intermediate form, into subsystems whose top-level assurance relies on the assurance of the individual components. We have thus undertaken a project to build a translator from LLVM to the applicative subset of Common Lisp accepted by the ACL2 theorem prover. Our translator produces executable ACL2 formal models, allowing us to both prove theorems about the translated models as well as validate those models by testing. The resulting models can be translated and certified without user intervention, even for code with loops, thanks to the use of the def::ung macro which allows us to defer the question of termination. Initial measurements of concrete execution for translated LLVM functions indicate that performance is nearly 2.4 million LLVM instructions per second on a typical laptop computer. In this paper we overview the translation process and illustrate the translator's capabilities by way of a concrete example, including both a functional correctness theorem as well as a validation test for that example.Comment: In Proceedings ACL2 2014, arXiv:1406.123

EPA Oversight in Determining Best Available Control Technology: The Supreme Court Determines the Proper Scope of Enforcement

In Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation v. EPA, the Supreme Court addressed the issue of whether the EPA was authorized to bar construction of a new major emitting facility where it found the state permitting authority’s best available control technology (BACT) determination unreasonable. The Court held that, given the legislative history and plain language of the enforcement provisions contained in the Clean Air Act, the EPA reasonably believes that the state permitting authority has acted arbitrarily in determining BACT. This Note explores the analysis employed by the Court and argues that, in light of the underlying purpose of the PSD program, the Court in Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation reached the correct conclusion

The impact of freeze-drying infant fecal samples on measures of their bacterial community profiles and milk-derived oligosaccharide content.

Infant fecal samples are commonly studied to investigate the impacts of breastfeeding on the development of the microbiota and subsequent health effects. Comparisons of infants living in different geographic regions and environmental contexts are needed to aid our understanding of evolutionarily-selected milk adaptations. However, the preservation of fecal samples from individuals in remote locales until they can be processed can be a challenge. Freeze-drying (lyophilization) offers a cost-effective way to preserve some biological samples for transport and analysis at a later date. Currently, it is unknown what, if any, biases are introduced into various analyses by the freeze-drying process. Here, we investigated how freeze-drying affected analysis of two relevant and intertwined aspects of infant fecal samples, marker gene amplicon sequencing of the bacterial community and the fecal oligosaccharide profile (undigested human milk oligosaccharides). No differences were discovered between the fecal oligosaccharide profiles of wet and freeze-dried samples. The marker gene sequencing data showed an increase in proportional representation of Bacteriodes and a decrease in detection of bifidobacteria and members of class Bacilli after freeze-drying. This sample treatment bias may possibly be related to the cell morphology of these different taxa (Gram status). However, these effects did not overwhelm the natural variation among individuals, as the community data still strongly grouped by subject and not by freeze-drying status. We also found that compensating for sample concentration during freeze-drying, while not necessary, was also not detrimental. Freeze-drying may therefore be an acceptable method of sample preservation and mass reduction for some studies of microbial ecology and milk glycan analysis

On using Cholesky-based factorizations and regularization for solving rank-deficient sparse linear least-squares problems

By examining the performance of modern parallel sparse direct solvers and exploiting our knowledge of the algorithms behind them, we perform numerical experiments to study how they can be used to efficiently solve rank-deficient sparse linear least-squares problems arising from practical applications. The Cholesky factorization of the normal equations breaks down when the least-squares problem is rank-deficient, while applying a symmetric indefinite solver to the augmented system can give an unacceptable level of fill in the factors. To try to resolve these difficulties, we consider a regularization procedure that modifies the diagonal of the unregularized matrix. This leads to matrices that are easier to factorize. We consider both the regularized normal equations and the regularized augmented system. We employ the computed factors of the regularized systems as preconditioners with an iterative solver to obtain the solution of the original (unregularized) problem. Furthermore, we look at using limited-memory incomplete Cholesky-based factorizations and how these can offer the potential to solve very large problems