Debating the Truth

Students will spend six weeks discovering the value of opposing viewpoints on different current event topics. Students will learn to conduct a debate following the Middle School Public Debate Program model. Students will first research a variety of topics in teams of three, finding both the pros and cons of the topic. Students must be able to form arguments, find fallacies in both research and arguments refute and eventually debate their peers. The unit guides students through the debate process allowing for practice on each of the process stages. As the performance assessment pieces, students will conduct a debate using knowledge gained from the unit, in order to compete against a team of peers on the same topic

Who am I? [7th grade]

In this three week unit students will gain a better understanding of themselves and how their life experiences and environment have shaped them. Students will also understand that by gaining self-knowledge they are better able to set goals for their future. In order to better understand themselves, students will first examine others lives and obstacles that these individuals have overcome to achieve some level of success. Through this examination students will be able to discover that the past doesn t have to decide their future. They will gain an insight into how certain individuals have triumphed despite difficulties and have used these obstacles as spring boards to success. Through reading these life stories, students will be able to identify the positive attributes that motivate humans to persevere through difficult times. A greater understanding of oneself can be a productive tool for making decisions both now and in the future. In the performance assessment of this unit, students will use what they have learned about themselves and others in order to create a Road Map to Me . This road map is a reflective piece as well as a means of predicting what they think their future will hold. Also, students will be asked to describe the steps necessary for their predicted future to become a reality

Assessing the EE Program Outcome Assessment Process

Program outcome assessment is an integral part of systematic curriculum review and improvement. Accrediting commissions expect each student to achieve program outcomes by the time of graduation. Programs undergoing accreditation must have an assessment process that demonstrates program outcome achievement. Documenting and assessing just how graduates are meeting program outcomes can become a tedious and data intensive process. We report on our “assessment” of our assessment process that resulted in more streamlined procedures by targeting performance indicators. Our methodology included the development of a learn, practice and demonstrate model for each outcome that focuses performance indicators at the appropriate point in development. We target actual outcome achievement during the “demonstrate” phase with rubrics to detail the level of mastery on a modified Likert scale. We originally used seventy-eight embedded performance indicators spread throughout the curriculum. We reduced to thirty indicators using a mixture of internal and external measures such as individual classroom events and fundamentals of engineering exam topical area results. We also emplaced guidelines targeting a single outcome measurement per indicator. For example, in our capstone senior design course, virtually every assignment was being reviewed by one of our outcome monitors. By targeting performance indicators at specific sub-events and looking at those which had to be assessed during the course versus indicators assessed by advisors or senior faculty, we were able to reduce the embedded performance indicators by a factor of three. We applied similar techniques to reduce individual course director workload. We have found that by streamlining the outcome process and using a rubric approach applied across multiple outcomes, we can greatly reduce the number of performance indicators yet preserve our ability to accurately assess our program. Reduced workload assessing the program has enabled us to place more effort into improving the program

Inefficiently Automated Law Enforcement

Article published in the Michigan State Law Review

Beyond sunglasses and spray paint: A taxonomy of surveillance countermeasures

Surveillance and privacy are seeming locked in a continual game of one-upmanship. In the security context, adversarial relationships exist where an attacker exploits a vulnerability and the defender responds with countermeasures to prevent future attack or exploitation. From there, the cycle continues, with new vulnerabilities and better exploits, against improved countermeasures. In the privacy context, many have feared the government as a highly empowered threat actor who would invasively and ubiquitously violate privacy, perhaps best personified by DARPA\u27s Total Information Awareness Initiative or Orwell\u27s 1984. However, commercial companies today offer enticing free products and services in return for user information, examples include search social networking, email, and collaborative word processing, among myriad other offerings, leading to instrumentation, data collection, and retention on an unprecedented scale. End users, small business, and local governments themselves are often complicit by supporting, enabling, and conducting such activities. Whether a dystopia exists in our future remains to be seen, although we argue panopticon-like environments exist in today\u27s authoritarian regimes and increasingly surveillance is becoming embedded in the fabric of Western society to thwart terrorism, increase business efficiency, monitor physical fitness, track driving behavior, provide free web search, and many other compelling incentives

Deconstructing the Relationship Between Privacy and Security [Viewpoint]

From a government or law-enforcement perspective, one common model of privacy and security postulates that security and privacy are opposite ends of a single continuum. While this model has appealing properties, it is overly simplistic. The relationship between privacy and security is not a binary operation in which one can be traded for the other until a balance is found. One fallacy common in privacy and security discourse is that trade-offs are effective or even necessary. Consider the remarks of New York Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly shortly after the Boston Marathon bombing, “I\u27m a major proponent of cameras. I think the privacy issue has really been taken off the table” [1]. Poorly-designed security measures can consume significant resources without achieving either security or privacy; others can increase security at the expense of privacy. However, with careful consideration, there are solutions that benefit privacy and security

Inefficiently Automated Law Enforcement

For some crimes the entire law enforcement process can now be automated. No humans are needed to detect the crime, identify the perpetrator, or impose punishment. While automated systems are cheap and efficient, governments and citizens must look beyond these obvious savings as manual labor is replaced by robots and computers. Inefficiency and indeterminacy have significant value in automated law enforcement systems and should be preserved. Humans are inefficient, yet more capable of ethical and contextualized decision-making than automated systems. Inefficiency is also an effective safeguard against perfectly enforcing laws that were created with implicit assumptions of leniency and discretion. This Article introduces a theory of inefficiently automated law enforcement built around the idea that those introducing or increasing automation in one part of an automated law enforcement system should ensure that inefficiency and indeterminacy are preserved or increased in other parts of the system. A theory of governance is critical for those who implement and administer automated law enforcement systems. Without it, systems become unmoored from ethics. Ironically, failure to responsibly automate law enforcement risks creating systems that actually undermine law and democracy. One way to preserve ethics in automated law enforcement systems is to preserve ethical actors, inefficiency and all

Ongoing monitoring of Tortugas Ecological Reserve: Assessing the consequences of reserve designation

Over the past five years, a biogeographic characterization of Tortugas Ecological Reserve(TER) has been carried out to measure the post-implementation effects of TER as a refuge for exploited species. Our results demonstrate that there is substantial microalgal biomass at depths between 10 and 30 m in the soft sediments at the coral reef interface, and that this community may play an important role in the food web supporting reef organisms. In addition, preliminary stable isotope data, in conjunction with prior results from the west Florida shelf, suggest that the shallow water benthic habitats surrounding the coral reefs of TER will prove to be an important source of the primary production ultimately fueling fish production throughout TER. The majority of the fish analyzed so far have exhibited a C isotope signature consistent with a food web which relies heavily on benthic primary production. Fish counts indicate a marked increase in the abundance of large fish (>20 cm) within the Reserve relative to the Out and Park strata, across years. Faunal collections from open and protected soft bottom habitat near the northern boundary of Tortugas North strongly suggest that relaxation of trawling pressure has increased benthic biomass and diversity in this area of TER. These data, employing an integrated Before - After Control Impact (BACI) design at multiple spatial scales, will allow us to continue to document and quantify the post-implementation effects of TER. (PDF contains 58 pages

Twenty year fitness trends in young adults and incidence of prediabetes and diabetes: the CARDIA study

The prospective association between cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) measured in young adulthood and middle age on development of prediabetes, defined as impaired fasting glucose and/or impaired glucose tolerance, or diabetes by middle age remains unknown. We hypothesised that higher fitness levels would be associated with reduced risk for developing incident prediabetes/diabetes by middle age

Pharmacokinetic study and evaluation of the safety of taurolidine for dogs with osteosarcoma

Background: Osteosarcoma in dogs and humans share many similarities and the dog has been described as an excellent model to study this disease. The median survival in dogs has not improved in the last 25 years. Taurolidine has been shown to be cytotoxic to canine and human osteosarcoma in vitro. The goals of this study were to determine the pharmacokinetics and safety of taurolidine in healthy dogs and the safety of taurolidine in combination with doxorubicin or carboplatin in dogs with osteosarcoma. Methods: Two percent taurolidine was infused into six healthy dogs (150 mg/kg) over a period of two hours and blood samples were taken periodically. One dog received taurolidine with polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as its carrier and later received PVP-free taurolidine as did all other dogs in this study. Serum taurolidine concentrations were determined using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) online coupled to ESI-MS/MS in the multiple reaction monitoring mode. Subsequently, the same dose of taurolidine was infused to seven dogs with osteosarcoma also treated with doxorubicin or carboplatin. Results: Taurolidine infusion was safe in 6 healthy dogs and there were no significant side effects. Maximum taurolidine serum concentrations ranged between 229 to 646 μM. The dog that received taurolidine with PVP had an immediate allergic reaction but recovered fully after the infusion was stopped. Three additional dogs with osteosarcoma received doxorubicin and taurolidine without PVP. Toxicities included dilated cardiomyopathy, protein-losing nephropathy, renal insufficiency and vasculopathy at the injection site. One dog was switched to carboplatin instead of doxorubicin and an additional 4 dogs with osteosarcoma received taurolidine-carboplatin combination. One incidence of ototoxicity occurred with the taurolidine- carboplatin combination. Bone marrow and gastro-intestinal toxicity did not appear increased with taurolidine over doxorubicin or carboplatin alone. Conclusions: Taurolidine did not substantially exacerbate bone marrow or gastro-intestinal toxicity however, it is possible that taurolidine increased other toxicities of doxorubicin and carboplatin. Administering taurolidine in combination with 30 mg/m2 doxorubicin in dogs is not recommended but taurolidine in combination with carboplatin (300 mg/m2) appears safe.Keywords: Taurolidine, Osteosarcoma, Carboplatin, Doxorubicin, Do