Engineering analysis and design of a mechanism to simulate a sonic boom

Mechanism simulating vibrational and acoustic properties of sonic boom

Creative Movement and Dance Integration: Their Connection to Learning Third Grade Math Concepts

In education, there are various methods of instruction used to engage students and strengthen learning of academic concepts. One method that can be used is arts integration. Arts integration is a pathway to learning that integrates an art form with another subject. Using movement and dance to help teach concepts that are part of an academic discipline is dance integration. This thesis involves dance integration and examines creating and presenting a movement and dance-integrated curriculum that teaches concepts that are part of the math discipline. The study explores how the movement and a dance-integrated curriculum affects student behavior and learning, and answers three essential questions: What is the sequence of lessons to be included in a dance integrated curriculum structured for teaching third grade math concepts? Which third grade math concepts can most easily be taught using a dance-integrated curriculum? And what is the student response to the dance integrated curriculum used to teach third grade math concepts? The created curriculum includes math concepts in geometry, algebraic reasoning, and number sense and operation

Everyday food practices among three low-income groups: Rural, homeless, and refugee

Lower-income groups are more susceptible to diet-related diseases like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease (CDC, 2010). They are also more likely to need food and nutritional assistance (USDA, 2011). Yet very little is known about the day-to-day food practices of these individuals and families. Many times those who are relatively adjacent in terms of income are assumed to have similarities in food consumption (Hupkens, Knibbe, & Drop, 2000); however, this has not been empirically examined. The main objectives of this research are to 1) gain an exploratory in-depth understanding of the everyday food practices of individuals in three low-income groups: rural, homeless, and refugee, 2) to examine the cultural variations in food practices among the groups, and 3) to investigate the everyday strategies used to obtain food. An ethnographic design was used, including 60 hours of observations in group venues and individual/family homes, and 22 semi-structured interviews, conducted in urban and rural settings in the northeastern United States. The main findings suggest that each group has distinct patterns of everyday food practices, and vary in cultural competence around food. The refugee group demonstrated more cultural competence around food, i.e., knowledge of how to grow, prepare, cook, and celebrate food, in comparison to the rural and homeless groups. Additionally, each group employs the various capital resources they have, in a reasonable way, to feed themselves and their families. This research calls for a greater appreciation of the role of culture in everyday food practices and to increase scholarly recognition of the differences that exists within groups who share a similar economic situation. Additionally, with escalating obesity and food insecurity rates in the US, understanding food culture can alert policy makers that no one intervention is necessarily effective for all low-income groups. Economic strain is undoubtedly linked to food hardships. The findings from this study, however, suggest that cultural capital may be as relevant as income in increasing food security

Utilization and Application of Business Computing Systems in Corporate Real Estate

This study reports on the utilization of business computing systems by corporate real estate executives. A survey was undertaken to examine four issues: types of property data collected, MIS report generation, hardware/software usage, and decision models and experts employed. NACORE members were surveyed and reported extensive usage of well-known business computing systems (e.g., transaction processing and management information systems), while newer systems (e.g., decision support and expert systems) are just beginning to be introduced into corporate real estate. Empirical analysis revealed differences among industries in the types of reports and property financial data that are maintained.

Irrigating Corn on Well-Drained, Limestone-Derived Soils

In trying to determine if it would pay Kentucky farmers to irrigate corn, one of the most important steps is to ascertain the long-time average yield increases to be expected from supplemental irrigation. The yield data reported below are the results of an experiment applicable for a fairly large group of soils occurring in Kentucky

Improved drive current in RF vertical MOSFETS using hydrogen anneal

This letter reports a study on the effect of a hydrogen anneal after silicon pillar etch of surround-gate vertical MOSFETs intended for RF applications. A hydrogen anneal at 800 ?C is shown to give a 30% improvement in the drive current of 120-nm n-channel transistors compared with transistors without the hydrogen anneal. The value of drive current achieved is 250 ?A/?m, which is a record for thick pillar vertical MOSFETs. This improved performance is obtained even though a sacrificial oxidation was performed prior to the hydrogen anneal to smooth the pillar sidewall. The values of subthreshold slope and DIBL are 79 mV/decade and 45 mV/V, respectively, which are significantly better than most values reported in the literature for comparable devices. The H2 anneal is also shown to decrease the OFF-state leakage current by a factor of three

Mopra CO Observations of the Bubble HII Region RCW120

We use the Mopra radio telescope to test for expansion of the molecular gas associated with the bubble HII region RCW120. A ring, or bubble, morphology is common for Galactic HII regions, but the three-dimensional geometry of such objects is still unclear. Detected near- and far-side expansion of the associated molecular material would be consistent with a three-dimensional spherical object. We map the $J = 1\rightarrow 0$ transitions of $^{12}$CO, $^{13}$CO, C$^{18}$O, and C$^{17}$O, and detect emission from all isotopologues. We do not detect the $0_0\rightarrow 1_{-1} E$ masing lines of CH$_3$OH at 108.8939 GHz. The strongest CO emission is from the photodissociation region (PDR), and there is a deficit of emission toward the bubble interior. We find no evidence for expansion of the molecular material associated with RCW120 and therefore can make no claims about its geometry. The lack of detected expansion is roughly in agreement with models for the time-evolution of an HII region like RCW120, and is consistent with an expansion speed of $< 1.5\, {\rm km\, s^{-1}}$. Single-position CO spectra show signatures of expansion, which underscores the importance of mapped spectra for such work. Dust temperature enhancements outside the PDR of RCW120 coincide with a deficit of emission in CO, confirming that these temperature enhancements are due to holes in the RCW120 PDR. H$\alpha$ emission shows that RCW120 is leaking $\sim5\%$ of the ionizing photons into the interstellar medium (ISM) through PDR holes at the locations of the temperature enhancements. H-alpha emission also shows a diffuse "halo" from leaked photons not associated with discrete holes in the PDR. Overall $25\pm10\%$ of all ionizing photons are leaking into the nearby ISM.Comment: 35 pages, 14 figures. Accepted to Ap

The Acquisition and Disposition of Real Estate by Corporate Executives: A Survey

Rising property values as well as corporate restructuring have given real estate greater importance in corporate asset management. Previous research has examined the capital budgeting procedures of corporations and institutional investors for real estate. However, these studies have not examined both the capital budgeting and disposition criteria used by service, retail, and manufacturing corporations for real estate. This study surveys the acquisition and disposition rules used by executives as well as the use of leasing. This survey covers the size of real estate investments, use of real property leasing, use of real estate sale/leaseback arrangements and the real estate asset acquisition and disposition criteria of corporations.

Price's law on Minkowski space in the presence of an inverse square potential

We consider the pointwise decay of solutions to wave-type equations in two model singular settings. Our main result is a form of Price's law for solutions of the massless Dirac-Coulomb system in (3+1)-dimensions. Using identical techniques, we prove a similar theorem for the wave equation on Minkowski space with an inverse square potential. One novel feature of these singular models is that solutions exhibit two different leading decay rates at timelike infinity in two regimes, distinguished by whether the spatial momentum along a curve which approaches timelike infinity is zero or non-zero. An important feature of our analysis is that it yields a precise description of solutions at the interface of these two regions which comprise the whole of timelike infinity.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures; version 2: significant revisions, emphasized Dirac-Coulomb application and clarified expositio