Preparing Teachers for Their Zoo Trip With an Interactive Website

Zoos and aquariums have an attendance of 50 million children visitors every year with 12 million of those being student learners on field trips (Association of Zoos and Aquariums, 2018, Annual Survey Results, Informal Science Education). According to Willis, Weiser, and Kirkwood, (2014) field trips are not just a ‘day off’ from school, they serve to provide enriching experiences that help students to explore the world outside of their direct environment. To ensure that learning is happening before, during, and after the field trip takes preparation on part of the teacher. Anderson, et al. (2006) state that students should be prepared by the curriculum, participate actively during the trip, and information gained during the experience should be reinforced following the field trip. In addition, Bitgood (1989) has found that a successful visit is more likely when teachers know the content of the lesson, know how to assist museum staff, and are informed about the details of the agenda of the trip. To support teachers in the planning aspect of a field trip to a zoo this capstone explores the question how can an interactive website help teachers plan a more effective field trip to the zoo? The purpose of this website is to support already busy teachers by creating a one-stop-shop website to support them in creating pre-, post-, and activities to complete during the trip. The website will also have a contact page for teachers to leave feedback for future updates. A second purpose of the website is to be a virtual space for schools or students without the opportunity to take field trips

A comparison of VHDL and microprogrammed implementations of synchronous finite state machines in field programmable logic devices

Digital design engineers often must balance the design issues of implementing finite state machines in field programmable logic devices, obtaining the highest clock frequency possible, and keeping the amount of logic resources utilized as small as possible. This and other design issues are discussed in this thesis. A comparison of VHDL and microprogrammed implementations of synchronous finite state machines in field programmable logic devices is presented. Three representative state machines, a Tap controller, temperature controller, and quarter-inch tape cartridge controller, with 16, 22, and 61 states respectively were chosen to be implemented using five basic methods: VHDL, a scaled-down microsequencer utilizing embedded array blocks (EABs) as the memory storage element, a scaled-down microsequencer utilizing lookup tables (LUTs) as the memory storage element, and a full-scale microsequencer with EABs and a full-scale microsequencer with LUTs. Altera Max Plus II software was used including versions 7.21 and 9.4. The Altera Flex 10K and 10KE components were used. The results from these methods were analyzed and compared. Areas of interest were clock frequency, logic cell utilization, and software efficiency As the number of states was increased for a finite state machine, VHDL became increasingly inefficient in terms of clock frequency and resource utilization. A scaled-down microsequencer approach using LUTs as the memory storage element was found to be the most efficient in overall clock frequency and resource utilization

The dynamics and environmental impact of 3C452

We present a detailed analysis of a new XMM-Newton observation of the FRII radio galaxy 3C452 and its environment. We detect X-ray emission from the hot intragroup medium and measure its temperature as well as obtaining the surface brightness and pressure profiles. We provide evidence that 3C452 is currently heating its environment, measuring a temperature of $1.18\pm0.11$ keV for the immediate environment of the radio source compared to $0.86^{+0.13}_{-0.05}$ keV for the outer environment. We also present evidence that the outer regions of the lobes are overpressured (internal pressure of $2.6\times10^{-13}$ Pa and external pressure of $1.11\pm{0.11}\times10^{-13}$ Pa at the edge of the lobes) and therefore are driving a shock at the lobe edges (with a temperature which we constrain to be $1.7^{+0.9}_{-0.5}$ keV), while the inner regions of the lobes are underpressured and contracting. Taking into account the very large amount of energy stored in the lobes, we show that this relatively low-powered FRII radio galaxy will have an extremely significant impact on its group environment.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures (4 in colour). Accepted by MNRA

Restoring Health to Health Reform: Integrating Medicine and Public Health to Advance the Population\u27s Wellbeing

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is a major achievement in improving access to health care services. However, evidence indicates that the nation could achieve greater improvements in health outcomes, at a lower cost, by shifting its focus to public health. By focusing nearly exclusively on health care, policy makers have chronically starved public health of adequate and stable funding and political support. The lack of support for public health is exacerbated by the fact that health care and public health are generally conceptualized, organized, and funded as two separate systems. In order to maximize gains in health status and to spend scarce health resources most effectively, health care and public health should be treated as two interactive parts of a single, unified health system. The core purpose of health reform ought to be the improvement of the population’s health. We propose five criteria that would significantly advance this goal: prevention and wellness, human resources, a strong and sustainable health infrastructure, robust performance measurement, and reduction of health disparities. Although the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act includes provisions addressing these criteria, population health is not a central focus of the reform. In order to guide health reform implementation and to inform future health reform efforts, we offer three major policy reforms: changing the environment to incentivize healthy behavioral choices, strengthening the public health infrastructure at the state and local levels, and developing a health-in-all policies strategy that would engage multiple agencies in improving health incomes. Adopting these reforms would facilitate integration and dramatically improve the population’s health, particularly when compared to the health gains likely to be realized from a continued focus on access to health care services

A Chandra study of particle acceleration in the multiple hotspots of nearby radio galaxies

We present Chandra observations of a small sample of nearby classical double radio galaxies which have more than one radio hotspot in at least one of their lobes. The X-ray emission from the hotspots of these comparatively low-power objects is expected to be synchrotron in origin, and therefore to provide information about the locations of high-energy particle acceleration. In some models of the relationship between the jet and hotspot the hotspots that are not the current jet termination point should be detached from the energy supply from the active nucleus and therefore not capable of accelerating particles to high energies. We find that in fact some secondary hotspots are X-ray sources, and thus probably locations for high-energy particle acceleration after the initial jet termination shock. In detail, though, we show that the spatial structures seen in X-ray are not consistent with naive expectations from a simple shock model: the current locations of the acceleration of the highest-energy observable particles in powerful radio galaxies need not be coincident with the peaks of radio or even optical emission.Comment: Accepted for ApJ. 33 pages, 8 figures inc. 2 in colo

Neurofibromatosis (von Recklinghausen's disease) - An unusual cause of parenchymal lung disease : a case report

CITATION: Hardcastle, S. W. & Hendricks, M. L. 1984. Neurofibromatosis (von Recklinghausen's disease) - An unusual cause of parenchymal lung disease : a case report. South African Medical Journal, 66:959-960.The original publication is available at http://www.samj.org.zaInterstitial pulmonary fibrosis and bullae are uncommon findings in neurofibromatosis. A case of this disease with pulmonary parenchymal involvement is presented and the association between the two is discussed.Publisher’s versio

Economic inequalities in burden of illness, diagnosis and treatment of five long-term conditions in England: panel study

We compared the distribution by wealth of self-reported illness burden (estimated from validated scales, biomarker and reported symptoms) for angina, cataract, depression, diabetes and osteoarthritis, with the distribution of self-reported medical diagnosis and treatment. We aimed to determine if the greater illness burden borne by poorer participants was matched by appropriately higher levels of diagnosis and treatment

X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy investigations of the chemistries of soils

The present study continues our x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) or electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis investigations of silicate systems, particularly those in contact with biological materials. In the present case, the investigations are extended to a detailed analysis for a wide variety of soil samples extracted from different locations around the world. The samples were selected from relatively pristine sites, pressed into wafers, and were examined without further modification. All of the materials were insulators and therefore analysis required extensive use of the electron flood gun. Careful XPS chemical shift assignments have been achieved for many silicate minerals. These have been exploited in the present study along with the detailed XPS analysis of organofunctional groups rendered by Beamson and Briggs. As a result, a fairly detailed simultaneous nondestructive description is provided of the surface of both the humus and silt components of these soil samples. Substantial variations in the composition are demonstrated and questions are raised about our classifications of fertility