Fenway High School: Social Emotional Learning as the Foundation for Social Justice

This report is one of a series of publications on social emotional learning in high school, focusing on the experience of three high schools. This case study provides rich description of social emotional learning and its link to social justice in Fenway High School in Boston, Massachusetts

Application of Ant Colony Optmization to the Routing and Wavelength Assignment problem

The transmission capacity of a link in today's optical networks has increased significantly due to wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) technology. A unique feature of optical WDM networks is tight coupling between routing and wavelength selection. A lightpath is implemented by selecting a set or sequence of physical links between the source and destination nodes, and reserving a wavelength on each of these links for the lightpath. Thus, in establishing an optical connection we must deal with both routing (selecting a suitable path, i.e., sequence of physical links) and wavelength assignment (allocating an available wavelength for the connection (source-destination pair)). The resulting problem is referred to as the routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) problem, and is significantly more difficult than the routing problem in electrical networks. In this thesis, we offer a new heuristic algorithm to solve the RWA problem using Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) meta-heuristic. An edge disjoint path problem and a partition coloring problem are used to formulate the algorithm

A Review on the Computational Methods for Emotional State Estimation from the Human EEG

A growing number of affective computing researches recently developed a computer system that can recognize an emotional state of the human user to establish affective human-computer interactions. Various measures have been used to estimate emotional states, including self-report, startle response, behavioral response, autonomic measurement, and neurophysiologic measurement. Among them, inferring emotional states from electroencephalography (EEG) has received considerable attention as EEG could directly reflect emotional states with relatively low costs and simplicity. Yet, EEG-based emotional state estimation requires well-designed computational methods to extract information from complex and noisy multichannel EEG data. In this paper, we review the computational methods that have been developed to deduct EEG indices of emotion, to extract emotion-related features, or to classify EEG signals into one of many emotional states. We also propose using sequential Bayesian inference to estimate the continuous emotional state in real time. We present current challenges for building an EEG-based emotion recognition system and suggest some future directions.open

Effects of Active Participation and Education of Caregivers on Peripheral Intravenous Injections for Their Child

This study was to determine the effects of active participation and education of caregivers on the pain experienced by their hospitalized children, the anxiety of the caregivers, and the working efficiency of nurses when administering peripheral intravenous (IV) injections to their children. It was found IV injections were the most feared procedures experienced by inpatient pediatric patients. A quasi-experimental design used in which different types of treatment were given to subjects in three groups. All caregivers received brief verbal information about the peripheral IV injection procedure for their child. Those in the control group then stayed outside the treatment room, those in the first experimental group observed the procedure, and those in the second experimental group participated actively in the procedure for their child after additionally receiving written information about it. Hospitalized children’s pain level did not differ among the three study groups (F=1.18, p=.323) while caregivers’ anxiety level differed being lowest in the second experimental group (F=5.98, p=.001). The nursing action duration of performing the intravenous injection was longest and shortest in the first and control group, respectively (F=5.07, p=.003). This study shows that active participation and education of caregivers decreased the caregiver’s anxiety during peripheral IV injections for their children, while the absence of caregivers shortened the duration of performing the IV injection. The outcomes of caregiver anxiety and the duration of the IV injection were worse for caregivers who observed their child without receiving additional education about or participating in the injection

Observation of trapped-modes excited in double-layered symmetric electric ring resonators

We report on experimental observations of trapped-mode resonances in double-layered symmetric electric ring resonators separated by dielectric inserts. The resulting metamaterial introduces trapped-mode resonances that were thought to be produced only by asymmetric metamaterial unit cells. Experimental verification of the newly observed trapped modes, along with the analysis of the stacked metamaterial geometry reported in this paper, opens an alternative way of forming sharp resonances in a symmetric metamaterial structure extended in all three dimensions.open9

Ten Key Decisions in Creating Early Colleges: Design Options Based on Research

Where do you turn if you want to know how to design an Early College? While there are lots of resources on this topic, there is no summary of the research that provides direction on making key design decisions. Since 2002, the National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools and Teaching (NCREST) at Teachers College, Columbia University has been involved in research and development projects related to Early Colleges. We have worked with a range of schools and intermediaries, but the majority of our work has been carried out in partnership with the Middle College National Consortium. We wrote this publication to share the findings of our studies and those of many other researchers whose work can be used in making key design decisions. Ultimately, our goal is to support school leaders in creating great Early Colleges – those that offer life‐changing experiences to traditionally underserved students and lead to excellent educational outcomes