Activities and Role of School-Based Counselors in the US: A National Survey of American Counseling Association Members

This study was conducted to determine: how a US sample of American Counseling Association (ACA) affiliated school-based counselors viewed their role; the extent to which various activities were practiced; and, how demographic variables (e.g., work setting and professional identity) were related to both perceptions of role and practice. Participants (N = 249) completed the International Survey of School Counselors Activities-US (ISSA-US) online, which measured both perceptions of the appropriateness of 42 activities and whether these activities are reported to be enacted. US counselors had a broad definition of their role and showed a high degree of consensus regarding the appropriateness of activities. Grade level proved to be an important determinate of the level of enactment of both group counseling and college and career counseling. The implications for of these findings for redefining the role of school counselors in the US and for international comparative research are discussed

Superconducting properties of nanocrystalline MgB2_2 thin films made by an in situ annealing process

We have studied the structural and superconducting properties of MgB$_2$ thin films made by pulsed laser deposition followed by in situ annealing. The cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy reveals a nanocrystalline mixture of textured MgO and MgB$_2$ with very small grain sizes. A zero-resistance transition temperature ($T_{c0}$) of 34 K and a zero-field critical current density ($J_c$) of $1.3 \times 10^6$ A/cm$^2$ were obtained. The irreversibility field was $\sim$ 8 T at low temperatures, although severe pinning instability was observed. These bulk-like superconducting properties show that the in situ deposition process can be a viable candidate for MgB$_2$ Josephson junction technologies

Thermodynamic properties of binary HCP solution phases from special quasirandom structures

Three different special quasirandom structures (SQS) of the substitutional hcp $A_{1-x}B_x$ binary random solutions ($x=0.25$, 0.5, and 0.75) are presented. These structures are able to mimic the most important pair and multi-site correlation functions corresponding to perfectly random hcp solutions at those compositions. Due to the relatively small size of the generated structures, they can be used to calculate the properties of random hcp alloys via first-principles methods. The structures are relaxed in order to find their lowest energy configurations at each composition. In some cases, it was found that full relaxation resulted in complete loss of their parental symmetry as hcp so geometry optimizations in which no local relaxations are allowed were also performed. In general, the first-principles results for the seven binary systems (Cd-Mg, Mg-Zr, Al-Mg, Mo-Ru, Hf-Ti, Hf-Zr, and Ti-Zr) show good agreement with both formation enthalpy and lattice parameters measurements from experiments. It is concluded that the SQS's presented in this work can be widely used to study the behavior of random hcp solutions.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figure

Restricted and unrestricted Hartree-Fock calculations of conductance for a quantum point contact

Very short quantum wires (quantum contacts) exhibit a conductance structure at a value of conductance close to $0.7 \times 2e^2/h$. It is believed that the structure arises due to the electron-electron interaction, and it is also related to electron spin. However details of the mechanism of the structure are not quite clear. Previously we approached the problem within the restricted Hartree-Fock approximation. This calculation demonstrated a structure similar to that observed experimentally. In the present work we perform restricted and unrestricted Hartree-Fock calculations to analyze the validity of the approximations. We also consider dependence of the effect on the electron density in leads. The unrestricted Hartree-Fock method allows us to analyze trapping of the single electron within the contact. Such trapping would result in the Kondo model for the ``0.7 structure''. The present calculation confirms the spin-dependent bound state picture and does not confirm the Kondo model scenario.Comment: 6 pages, 9 figure

First-principles study of ternary fcc solution phases from special quasirandom structures

In the present work, ternary Special Quasirandom Structures (SQSs) for a fcc solid solution phase are generated at different compositions, $x_A=x_B=x_C=\tfrac{1}{3}$ and $x_A=\tfrac{1}{2}$, $x_B=x_C=\tfrac{1}{4}$, whose correlation functions are satisfactorily close to those of a random fcc solution. The generated SQSs are used to calculate the mixing enthalpy of the fcc phase in the Ca-Sr-Yb system. It is observed that first-principles calculations of all the binary and ternary SQSs in the Ca-Sr-Yb system exhibit very small local relaxation. It is concluded that the fcc ternary SQSs can provide valuable information about the mixing behavior of the fcc ternary solid solution phase. The SQSs presented in this work can be widely used to study the behavior of ternary fcc solid solutions.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figure

Improved i-Vector Representation for Speaker Diarization

This paper proposes using a previously well-trained deep neural network (DNN) to enhance the i-vector representation used for speaker diarization. In effect, we replace the Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) typically used to train a Universal Background Model (UBM), with a DNN that has been trained using a different large scale dataset. To train the T-matrix we use a supervised UBM obtained from the DNN using filterbank input features to calculate the posterior information, and then MFCC features to train the UBM instead of a traditional unsupervised UBM derived from single features. Next we jointly use DNN and MFCC features to calculate the zeroth and first order Baum-Welch statistics for training an extractor from which we obtain the i-vector. The system will be shown to achieve a significant improvement on the NIST 2008 speaker recognition evaluation (SRE) telephone data task compared to state-of-the-art approaches

Further solutions of critical ABF RSOS models

The restricted SOS model of Andrews, Baxter and Forrester has been studied. The finite size corrections to the eigenvalue spectra of the transfer matrix of the model with a more general crossing parameter have been calculated. Therefore the conformal weights and the central charges of the non-unitary or unitary minimal conformal field have been extracted from the finite size corrections.Comment: Pages 11; revised versio

Evidence for the Presentation of Major Histocompatibility Complex Class I–restricted Epstein-Barr Virus Nuclear Antigen 1 Peptides to CD8+ T Lymphocytes

The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-encoded nuclear antigen 1 (EBNA1) is expressed in all EBV-associated tumors, making it an important target for immunotherapy. However, evidence for major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I–restricted EBNA1 peptides endogenously presented by EBV-transformed B and tumor cells remains elusive. Here we describe for the first time the identification of an endogenously processed human histocompatibility leukocyte antigen (HLA)-B8–restricted EBNA1 peptide that is recognized by CD8+ T cells. T cell recognition could be inhibited by the treatment of target cells with proteasome inhibitors that block the MHC class I antigen processing pathway, but not by an inhibitor (chloroquine) of MHC class II antigen processing. We also demonstrate that new protein synthesis is required for the generation of the HLA-B8 epitope for T cell recognition, suggesting that defective ribosomal products (DRiPs) are the major source of T cell epitopes. Experiments with protease inhibitors indicate that some serine proteases may participate in the degradation of EBNA1 DRiPs before they are further processed by proteasomes. These findings not only provide the first evidence of the presentation of an MHC class I–restricted EBNA1 epitope to CD8+ T cells, but also offer new insight into the molecular mechanisms involved in the processing and presentation of EBNA1

A spectrum matching method for accurate frequency estimation of real sinusoids

It is well-known that incoherent sampling is detrimental for frequency estimation of a real sinusoid, and the estimation errors get worse when the signal lengths are very short. In this paper, a spectrum matching based frequency estimator is proposed as well as evaluated against other four two-step methods developed to suppress the effect of incoherent sampling. The spectral interference introduced by incoherent sampling is eliminated via a spectrum matching process including modulation and spectral analysis. A further error correction based on Fourier transform is conducted to generate the fine frequency estimate. Simulation results are carried out to show that the proposed method can closely approach the Cramér-Rao lower bound without any error floor, and it can outperform the other four methods particularly for short signal lengths