Education and Community Development Among Nineteenth-Century Irish and Contemporary Cambodians in Lowell, Massachusetts

As cities undergo dramatic demographic changes, schools become important sites of conflict between the interests of established and emerging communities. This article presents a case study of Lowell, Massachusetts, where the second largest Irish community in the country resided during the 1850s, and which is now home to the second largest Cambodian community in the United States. Analysis of nineteenth-century Irish community dynamics, particularly in relation to issues of public education in Lowell, reveals the significance of religious institutions and middle-class entrepreneurs in the process of immigrant community development and highlights important relationships to ethnicity, electoral politics, and economic development. In light of the Irish example, a conceptual framework is presented to understand current dynamics of leadership, institution building, and community empowerment among Cambodians and their contemporary struggles for educational equity

Discharge Patterns of Single Fibers in the Cat's Auditory Nerve

Discharge patterns of single fibers in cat auditory nerve in response to controlled acoustic stimul

Toward Malaria Risk Prediction in Afghanistan Using Remote Sensing

Malaria causes more than one million deaths every year worldwide, with most of the mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is also a significant public health concern in Afghanistan, with approximately 60% of the population, or nearly 14 million people, living in a malaria-endemic area. Malaria transmission has been shown to be dependent on a number of environmental and meteorological variables. For countries in the tropics and the subtropics, rainfall is normally the most important variable, except for regions with high altitude where temperature may also be important. Afghanistan s diverse landscape contributes to the heterogeneous malaria distribution. Understanding the environmental effects on malaria transmission is essential to the effective control of malaria in Afghanistan. Provincial malaria data gathered by Health Posts in 23 provinces during 2004-2007 are used in this study. Remotely sensed geophysical parameters, including precipitation from TRMM, and surface temperature and vegetation index from MODIS are used to derive the empirical relationship between malaria cases and these geophysical parameters. Both neural network methods and regression analyses are used to examine the environmental dependency of malaria transmission. And the trained models are used for predicting future transmission. While neural network methods are intrinsically more adaptive for nonlinear relationship, the regression approach lends itself in providing statistical significance measures. Our results indicate that NDVI is the strongest predictor. This reflects the role of irrigation, instead of precipitation, in Afghanistan for agricultural production. The second strongest prediction is surface temperature. Precipitation is not shown as a significant predictor, contrary to other malarious countries in the tropics or subtropics. With the regression approach, the malaria time series are modelled well, with average R2 of 0.845. For cumulative 6-month prediction of malaria cases, the average provincial accuracy reaches 91%. The developed predictive and early warning capabilities support the Third Strategic Approach of the WHO EMRO Malaria Control and Elimination Plan

Embedded metal oxide plasmonics using local plasma oxidation of AZO for planar metasurfaces

New methods for achieving high‐quality conducting oxide metasurfaces are of great importance for a range of emerging applications from infrared thermal control coatings to epsilon‐near‐zero nonlinear optics. This work demonstrates the viability of plasma patterning as a technique to selectively and locally modulate the carrier density in planar Al‐doped ZnO (AZO) metasurfaces without any associated topographical surface profile. This technique stands in strong contrast to conventional physical patterning which results in nonplanar textured surfaces. The approach can open up a new route to form novel photonic devices with planar metasurfaces, for example, antireflective coatings and multi‐layer devices. To demonstrate the performance of the carrier‐modulated AZO metasurfaces, two types of devices are realized using the demonstrated plasma patterning. A metasurface optical solar reflector is shown to produce infrared emissivity equivalent to a conventional etched design. Second, a multiband metasurface is achieved by integrating a Au visible‐range metasurface on top of the planar AZO infrared metasurface. Independent control of spectral bands without significant cross‐talk between infrared and visible functionalities is achieved. Local carrier tuning of conducting oxide films offers a conceptually new approach for oxide‐based photonics and nanoelectronics and opens up new routes for integrated planar metasurfaces in optical technology

Educational Engagement in Boston’s Vietnamese Community: Asian American Studies Program student-faculty-alumni engagement with teachers, students, and families of the Mather School (BPS) in Dorchester

Founded in 1639, the Mather Elementary School in Dorchester is the oldest public elementary school in the US. In 2012, nearly 40% of Mather students were Vietnamese American from immigrant households. The Mather School’s Vietnamese Structured English Immersion (SEI) program is the largest in Boston. In 1993, Ngoc-lan (Loni) Nguyen, a Vietnamese refugee student in education and Asian American Studies at UMass Boston, was hired as a 4th grade bilingual teacher. Many of Lan’s students later attended UMass Boston where they reconnected educationally with the importance of Vietnamese American identity, community, and empowerment in AsAmSt courses. In 2007, Lan visited an AsAmSt class with three former 4th-graders present. In 2010, UMass Boston AsAmSt alumna, Songkhla (Kha) Nguyen began teaching 2nd grade SEI at the Mather, and in 2012, Tuyet Dinh, a founder of AsAmSt’ s Coalition for Asian Pacific American Youth (CAPAY) was hired to teach Kindergarten SEI

Size Effects in Carbon Nanotubes

The inter-shell spacing of multi-walled carbon nanotubes was determined by analyzing the high resolution transmission electron microscopy images of these nanotubes. For the nanotubes that were studied, the inter-shell spacing ${\hat{d}_{002}}$ is found to range from 0.34 to 0.39 nm, increasing with decreasing tube diameter. A model based on the results from real space image analysis is used to explain the variation in inter-shell spacings obtained from reciprocal space periodicity analysis. The increase in inter-shell spacing with decreased nanotube diameter is attributed to the high curvature, resulting in an increased repulsive force, associated with the decreased diameter of the nanotube shells.Comment: 4 pages. RevTeX. 4 figure

Climate of Earth-Like Planets With and Without Ocean Heat Transport Orbiting a Range of M and K Stars

The mean surface temperature of a planet is now acknowledged as insufficient to surmise its full potential habitability. Advancing our understanding requires exploration with 3D general circulation models (GCMs), which can take into account how gradients and fluxes across a planet's surface influence the distribution of heat, clouds, and the potential for heterogeneous distribution of liquid water. Here we present 3D GCM simulations of the effects of alternative stellar spectra, instellation, model resolution, and ocean heat transport, on the simulated distribution of heat and moisture of an Earth-like planet (ELP)