No Good Options: Analysis of Catholic School Reopening Plans in Fall 2020

As schools across the country made decisions about how to safely reopen during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Fall of 2020, Catholic schools reopened for in-person instruction more than surrounding public schools. This study analyzes published reopening plans from 136 Catholic schools in 18 different states to explore how schools reopened and how they communicated their plans. Results showed that Catholic schools mostly did not decide to reopen virtually, consistent with local health data trends and public school decisions. Rather, Catholic schools offered in-person education with health and safety protocols in place. Most schools in the sample did not communicate their plans in full on their websites. Plans that were accessible on websites were analyzed based on the National Standards and Benchmarks of Effective Catholic Schools for evidence of the added value of Catholic education during this time

Modeling of the hydrogen Lyman lines in solar flares

The hydrogen Lyman lines (91.2 nm < λ < 121.6 nm) are significant contributors to the radiative losses of the solar chromosphere, and they are enhanced during flares. We have shown previously that the Lyman lines observed by the Extreme Ultraviolet Variability instrument onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory exhibit Doppler motions equivalent to speeds on the order of 30 km s−1. However, contrary to expectations, both redshifts and blueshifts were present and no dominant flow direction was observed. To understand the formation of the Lyman lines, particularly their Doppler motions, we have used the radiative hydrodynamic code, RADYN, along with the radiative transfer code, RH, to simulate the evolution of the flaring chromosphere and the response of the Lyman lines during solar flares. We find that upflows in the simulated atmospheres lead to blueshifts in the line cores, which exhibit central reversals. We then model the effects of the instrument on the profiles, using the Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment (EVE) instrument's properties. What may be interpreted as downflows (redshifted emission) in the lines, after they have been convolved with the instrumental line profile, may not necessarily correspond to actual downflows. Dynamic features in the atmosphere can introduce complex features in the line profiles that will not be detected by instruments with the spectral resolution of EVE, but which leave more of a signature at the resolution of the Spectral Investigation of the Coronal Environment instrument onboard the Solar Orbiter

Measuring Students’ Sense of School Catholic Identity

As a ministry of the Catholic Church, Catholic schools are charged with educating stu­dents’ hearts and minds. Multiple standardized academic tests and other student assessments are available for monitoring both student and teacher outcomes in Catholic schools, but fewer measures exist for considering the school’s faith-related mission. Although tests of student religious knowledge and benchmarks related to specific Catholic elements of the school are available, we do not yet have a robust set of instruments that provide teachers and leaders an understanding of their progress in providing a school environment permeated by Catholic culture and faith. To consider how students in Catholic schools perceive the Catholicity of their school and how these perceptions vary among different student groups, we developed, piloted, and validated the Sense of School Catholic Iden­tity Survey (SSCI). This 20-­item survey measures Grade 5 through 8 students’ perceptions of their Catholic school as personal and invitational, sacramental, unitive, and eucharistic. Findings from the pilot study suggest that responses differ by student grade level, religious tradition, and gender. Future testing of the scale will examine school­-level differences in Catholic identity

Hydrogen Balmer Line Broadening in Solar and Stellar Flares

The broadening of the hydrogen lines during flares is thought to result from increased charge (electron, proton) density in the flare chromosphere. However, disagreements between theory and modeling prescriptions have precluded an accurate diagnostic of the degree of ionization and compression resulting from flare heating in the chromosphere. To resolve this issue, we have incorporated the unified theory of electric pressure broadening of the hydrogen lines into the non-LTE radiative transfer code RH. This broadening prescription produces a much more realistic spectrum of the quiescent, A0 star Vega compared to the analytic approximations used as a damping parameter in the Voigt profiles. We test recent radiative-hydrodynamic (RHD) simulations of the atmospheric response to high nonthermal electron beam fluxes with the new broadening prescription and find that the Balmer lines are over-broadened at the densest times in the simulations. Adding many simultaneously heated and cooling model loops as a "multithread" model improves the agreement with the observations. We revisit the three-component phenomenological flare model of the YZ CMi Megaflare using recent and new RHD models. The evolution of the broadening, line flux ratios, and continuum flux ratios are well-reproduced by a multithread model with high-flux nonthermal electron beam heating, an extended decay phase model, and a "hot spot" atmosphere heated by an ultrarelativistic electron beam with reasonable filling factors: 0.1%, 1%, and 0.1% of the visible stellar hemisphere, respectively. The new modeling motivates future work to understand the origin of the extended gradual phase emission.Comment: 31 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Flow mediated vasodilation predicts the development of gestational diabetes mellitus

To prospectively measure flow mediated vasodilation (FMD) in a cohort of women with risk factors for preeclampsia and to identify poor obstetrical outcomes associated with changes in FMD

ANCOVA for nonparallel slopes: the Johnson-Neyman technique

The Johnson-Neyman (JN) procedure, as originally formulated (Stat Res Mem, 1 (1936) 57-93), applies to a situation in which measurements on 1 dependent (response) variable, X, and 2 independent (predictor) variables, Z1 and Z2, are available for the members of 2 groups. The expected value of X is assumed to be a linear function of Z1 and Z2, but not necessarily the same function for both groups. The JN technique is used to obtain a set of values for the Z variables for which one would reject, at a specified level of significance [alpha] (e.g., [alpha] = 0.05), the hypothesis that the 2 groups have the same expected X values. This set of values, or `region of significance,' may then be plotted to obtain a convenient description of those values of Z1 and Z2 for which the 2 groups differ. The technique can thus be described as a generalization of the analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) which does not make the assumption that the regression coefficients for the regression of X on the covariates, Z1 and Z2, are equal in the groups being compared. In this paper we describe, illustrate and make available a menu-driven PC program (TXJN2) implementing the JN procedure.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/31210/1/0000112.pd

Assessing the effect of a treatment when subjects are growing at different rates

The analysis of covariance is often used in the context of premeasure/postmeasure designs to compare treatment and control groups in both randomized [1] and nonrandomized [2] studies. The intent is to adjust the difference between the changes in the 2 groups for any difference which might exist at baseline, i.e., for any difference between the premeasures in the 2 groups. An important assumption underlying the use of the analysis of covariance is that the slopes of the lines for the regression of the postmeasure on the premeasure in the 2 groups are equal. In this paper we describe a program which can be used to test the hypothesis of equal slopes; and performs an alternative analysis which does not depend on this assumption. This is done in the context of comparing treatment and control groups with respect to a measurement subject to natural maturation as in [3]. Equal slopes in this context means equal growth rates; unequal slopes implies that the 2 groups are growing at different rates. The method, known as the Johnson-Neyman procedure [4] is, however, more general than this, and can be used in any two-sample comparison where an alternative to the usual analysis of covariance is deemed appropriate. The procedure identifies a `region of significance' which is especially useful in practice. This region consists of a set of values of the premeasure for which the treatment and the control groups are significantly different with respect to the postmeasure.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/31282/1/0000188.pd

Clustering on the basis of longitudinal data

A menu-drive PC program, ZDIST, for computing the distances between the estimated polynomial growth curves of subjects who have been followed longitudinally is described, illustrated, and made available to interested readers. These distances can be computed on the basis of the individual growth curves themselves and/or from estimates of individuals' growth velocity and acceleration curves. The resulting distance matrices can be saved in ASCII format and subsequently imported into any clustering program which accepts this type of input, e.g. SYSTAT.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/30607/1/0000244.pd