The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts

Presents findings from a survey that examines why some students do not complete their high school education, and what academic and personal supports would have helped them stay in school. Includes recommendations for improving graduation rates

Comfort Food for All: The Scalability of LMS-Embedded Librarianship

Embedded librarianship provides information literacy instruction right where students prefer to do course related research: online. The learning management system (LMS) provides an effective arena for librarians to collaborate with professors and reach students with library services alongside course content. How scalable, though, is this service so that it can meet the needs of all students? Presenters will share data from a 2011 international survey, material from the professional literature, and the experiences of LMS embedded librarians to help answer this question. Time will be spent discussing how to reorganize information literacy efforts and workflow within the library to address the scalability question head-on. Observant library administrators would do well to reallocate staff responsibilities to ensure LMS embedded librarianship becomes standard fare, as it reaches the many at their point of need. The presenters will address questions such as the following: Is it just too time-consuming to undertake? Is it meant for a select few classes? Which information literacy instruction methods can be incorporated to innovatively meet the needs of students? What time-saving tools can be employed to sustain the program long-term? Librarians must re-envision themselves as virtual information literacy instructors because that is where users prefer to slice and dice research assignments. Come learn tools, techniques, and staffing innovations to make LMS embedded librarianship sustainable on your campus

IT Portfolio Management: A Case Study

IT Portfolio Management is increasingly becoming an important topic of research in IS/IT. The number of IT projects in a company can number in the hundreds, and it is difficult for upper level executives to manage this portfolio effectively without using some guiding methodology. This paper focuses on one such methodology that is being developed by a Fortune 100 company. Although many excellent papers have discussed using Real Options in the valuation of IT, there has been relatively little work in using Real Options in the IT Portfolio management context. Furthermore, most of the papers in the main IS journals have used relatively simple option models to evaluate (1) a single investment decision (2) assuming independence between projects. The focus of this paper is on a company that is actually managing IT portfolios of projects, and on some issues that may make exotic option models and more appropriate valuation tools

PhoSim-NIRCam: Photon-by-photon image simulations of the James Webb Space Telescope's Near-Infrared Camera

Recent instrumentation projects have allocated resources to develop codes for simulating astronomical images. Novel physics-based models are essential for understanding telescope, instrument, and environmental systematics in observations. A deep understanding of these systematics is especially important in the context of weak gravitational lensing, galaxy morphology, and other sensitive measurements. In this work, we present an adaptation of a physics-based ab initio image simulator: The Photon Simulator (PhoSim). We modify PhoSim for use with the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) -- the primary imaging instrument aboard the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This photon Monte Carlo code replicates the observational catalog, telescope and camera optics, detector physics, and readout modes/electronics. Importantly, PhoSim-NIRCam simulates both geometric aberration and diffraction across the field of view. Full field- and wavelength-dependent point spread functions are presented. Simulated images of an extragalactic field are presented. Extensive validation is planned during in-orbit commissioning

Towards a more inclusive and precautionary indicator of global sustainability

We construct a hybrid, economic indicator of the sustainability of global well-being, which is more inclusive than existing indicators and incorporates an environmentally pessimistic, physical constraint on global warming. Our methodology extends the World Bank's Adjusted Net Saving (ANS) indicator to include the cost of population growth, the benefit of technical progress, and a much higher, precautionary cost of current CO2 emissions. Future warming damage is so highly unknowable that valuing emissions directly is rather arbitrary, so we use a novel, inductive approach: we modify damage and climate parameters in the deterministic DICE climate-economy model so it becomes economically optimal to control emissions in a way likely to limit warming to an agreed target, here 2 degrees Celsius. If future emissions are optimally controlled, our ANS then suggests that current global well-being is sustainable. But if emissions remain uncontrolled, our base-case ANS is negative now and our corresponding, modified DICE model has an unsustained development path, with well-being peaking in 2065. Current ANS on an uncontrolled path may thus be a useful heuristic indicator of future unsustainability. Our inductive method might allow ANS to include other very hard-to-value, environmental threats to global sustainability, like biodiversity loss and nitrogen pollution