Satellite power systems program

The Department of Energy and NASA are engaged in an intense three-year analysis to determine what course of action the Federal government should pursue relative to this nonconventional energy system. Information is presented in the form of charts for the following: (1) program organization; (2) major program milestones; (3) activity schedule for the program; (4) preliminary baseline comparison by two Systems Definition Centers; and (5) program definition plan (funding by agency management responsibility)

The Common Core State Standards as Applied to the Instruction of Students With Disabilities: Special Education Teachers' Perceptions

The Common Core State Standards are a set of challenging learning goals in English language arts/literacy and math and their use in special education has been a controversial topic. On the one hand, many special education advocates have been pleased that the standards were written for all students, including students with disabilities. On the other hand, many special education teachers have been concerned that an overemphasis on the Common Core State Standards is limiting their students’ access to the full benefits of an Individualized Education Program, which is the central component of special education that makes it so special. Recent research conducted on teachers across the United States has shown that, overall, they believe that the Common Core State Standards are beneficial for students. However, there is a gap in the research documenting the specific views of special education teachers. It is important to understand their experiences because they have the unique task of balancing the general education curriculum with individualized instruction that may include skills not covered by the Common Core. This study aims to address this gap by answering several key questions about the experiences of special education teachers who use the Common Core State Standards with students with disabilities. A total of 476 special education teachers from across the United States were surveyed. This study found that they have a moderately strong understanding of the standards and they frequently used them to guide their teaching. The results of this study showed that while the majority of these teachers echoed the general belief that the Common Core State Standards are beneficial for students without disabilities, they did not believe that they are beneficial for students with disabilities. Strikingly, 86.9% did not believe that the standards provide adequate information about their application to students with disabilities. Of concern, 70.9% reported that, when using these standards, they are unable to address their students’ individualized goals—especially in the areas of social and functional skills. Moreover, when asked if they believed that the Common Core State Standards would help their students to be prepared for independent life, 79.1% said “no.” These results yield important information regarding current practice using the Common Core State Standards in special education and suggest important implications for teacher training courses related to the Common Core State Standards and students with disabilities as well as how the Common Core State Standards document and guidance materials may be revised to better meet the needs of students with disabilities

RISK-IN-CONTEXT: THE IMPACT OF A LOCAL LAND USE DISPUTE ON PERCEPTIONS OF TECHNOLOGICAL RISK

This risk perception study uses a survey of households in Elgin County, Ontario and Ottawa-West, Ontario proximal to a technological hazard (land use) dispute to test the explanatory power of traditional risk perception models when applied in the local context. It is hypothesized that ‘local context variables’ - akin to the approach of the social amplification/attenuation of risk framework - will be significant predictors of perceived threat, perhaps more so than the psychometric paradigm and the cultural theory of risk. Likewise, fiduciary equity is hypothesized to be a significant predictor also. Data are analyzed using binary logistic regression and cross tabulations; most notable is the consistent significance of ‘local context variables,’ both as predictors of perceived threat from the local facility (a landfill) as well as towards non-local controversial technologies (e.g., nuclear facilities). Also intriguing is the significance of fiduciary equity specific to the local hazard as a predictor of perceived threat from non-local technologies. These findings suggest that experience with the local land use dispute is influencing (i.e., sensitizing) perceived threat from the local facility, as well as from technological hazards in general; a finding supporting the importance of specific local contexts (i.e., daily lived experience) in risk perception

Temporal changes in quality of life and environment in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina

Understanding and assessing the spatial and temporal changes of quality of life and environment of a community is critical to its sustainable development, especially after a disaster strikes. This study explores an approach that integrates remote sensing with socioeconomic data to assess the temporal changes in quality of life and environment (QOL) using Orleans Parish as an example. Hurricane Katrina, which struck New Orleans in 2005, has had vast implications economically, socially, and environmentally for this city and the surrounding area. Empirically quantifying these concepts will help to rebuild the city more sustainably. This study investigated change in environmental quality pre- and post-Katrina using Landsat-TM imagery. Environmental quality was measured by means of vegetation productivity as an indicator, using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Tasseled Cap Index (T-cap) of greenness, wetness, and brightness derived from the Landsat images. Factor analysis was employed to create a QOL index at the zip code level that incorporated both environmental (vegetation, flood depth) and socioeconomic variables. The factor analysis yielded four factors with 95.3% of the variance explained. A weighted QOL index was created that included seven variables from the four factors: NDVI, median household income, population density, housing density, median home value, educational attainment, and flood depth. Validation of the QOL indices with households receiving mail post-Katrina resulted in correlations of 0.546 and 0.510 for the pre- and post-Katrina QOL indices, respectively. The QOL index maps demonstrated spatial contiguity pre- and post-Katrina. Areas that exhibited high QOL included Downtown, Uptown, Garden District, West Bank, and Lakefront. Low QOL was found in New Orleans East, Lower Ninth Ward, and Central Business District. Four years after Katrina, much of the city experienced a decrease in QOL. Zip codes with high wealth tended to maintain or even increase their high QOL, such as in Uptown and the Garden District. This study suggests that higher values of income, education, home value, and vegetation contribute to higher QOL and increase resilience to natural disturbances. These QOL indices link human and natural systems and provide an effective means for comparing changes in a region after a disaster

Palladium-catalyzed coupling of aryl halides, non-conjugated dienes and carbon nucleophiles

The present invention provides a method for the alpha,omega-arylation/alkylation of a non-conjugated diene in one step by reacting the diene with an aryl iodide or an aryl bromide and a carbon nucleophile in the presence of an amount of a Pd(O) complex effective to catalyze the reaction

HYPA: Efficient Detection of Path Anomalies in Time Series Data on Networks

The unsupervised detection of anomalies in time series data has important applications in user behavioral modeling, fraud detection, and cybersecurity. Anomaly detection has, in fact, been extensively studied in categorical sequences. However, we often have access to time series data that represent paths through networks. Examples include transaction sequences in financial networks, click streams of users in networks of cross-referenced documents, or travel itineraries in transportation networks. To reliably detect anomalies, we must account for the fact that such data contain a large number of independent observations of paths constrained by a graph topology. Moreover, the heterogeneity of real systems rules out frequency-based anomaly detection techniques, which do not account for highly skewed edge and degree statistics. To address this problem, we introduce HYPA, a novel framework for the unsupervised detection of anomalies in large corpora of variable-length temporal paths in a graph. HYPA provides an efficient analytical method to detect paths with anomalous frequencies that result from nodes being traversed in unexpected chronological order.Comment: 11 pages with 8 figures and supplementary material. To appear at SIAM Data Mining (SDM 2020

Account Monitoring Report at June 30, 2005

Account Monitoring Report at June 30, 200

From Murphy’s Christian Physicalism to Lowe’s Dualism

Nancey Murphy argues that God created us as physical beings without immortal souls. She supports this Christian physicalism by arguing that neuroscience can better explain minds in terms of physical information processing than dualists can in problematic nonphysical terms. We reply that Murphy overestimates neuroscience and underestimates dualism. She doesn’t show how neuroscience can explain the mind’s characteristic qualia, unity, privacy, or causality. We argue that Lowe’s dualism can better explain minds, often with experimental support and in testable ways. Murphy’s physicalism thus serves to highlight the value of Lowe’s dualism today

Thermosetting polymers and composites from agricultural oils

Renewable, bio-based thermosetting copolymer resins, ranging from tough and ductile rubbers to hard and glassy plastics to durable waterborne latex coatings, have been prepared by the polymerization of soybean, corn and linseed oils with various co-monomers. The development of these resin formulations with the right combination of processing viscosity, cure kinetics, and ultimate thermal mechanical properties for various manufacturing processes will be discussed. As expected, the thermal and mechanical properties, as well as the long term environmental durability of the material, are shown to be highly dependent on vegetable-oil composition, processing conditions, and co-monomer chemistry. These new bioplastic composites are likely to have a tremendous impact economically, environmentally and energy-wise, since the oils are (1) readily available in huge quantities from a renewable natural resource, (2) much cheaper than petroleum-based resins used in many polymers and composites, and (3) able to provide properties not presently available in commercial plastics