Excess mortality during heat waves in Ireland

Ireland is not known for having extreme high temperatures, with values above 30C uncommon. Ireland has significant excess winter mortality compared to summer. The objective of this study is to estimate the impact of nation-wide heat waves on the total, cardiovascular and respiratory relationship, for the period 1981–2003, to determine if there are any periods of excess summer mortality

Value Added Models and the Implementation of the National Standards of K-12 Physical Education

The implementation of value-added models of teacher evaluation continue to expand in public education, but the effects of using student test scores to evaluate K-12 physical educators necessitates further discussion. Using the five National Standards for K-12 Physical Education from the Society of Health and Physical Educators America (SHAPE), physical educators in New York State were polled about the most important goals of physical education and how value-added models may be affecting physical education practices. Participants were drawn using a proportionate stratified random sample (n=489). Standard 5 was selected as the most important by 36% of physical educators who responded, while standard 3 was chosen as most important by 33% of respondents. Thirty eight percent of physical educators reported that their performance reviews were based on student growth scores on written tests, 27% reported that their district selected fitness tests, standardized tests in English Language Arts or mathematics were reported being used by 18% of respondents, and performance-based assessments were reported being used by 17% of those completing the survey. The authors concluded that the affective domain (crucial to SHAPE standard 5) appears to be overlooked by policies that use student performance data to determine teacher effectiveness

My Alfond Grant CDA: Experience From 10 Years of Automatic Deposits for All Maine Newborns

For over a decade, the Alfond Scholarship Foundation has automatically enrolled every Maine-resident newborn into the United States’ first statewide, universal Child Development Account (CDA) by investing $500 on each child’s behalf in the NextGen 529 plan. This Policy Brief provides an overview of My Alfond Grant and tracks the growth of the CDA in the 10 years since it made the major policy-design change to implement automatic enrollment. The Brief also includes insights regarding partnerships and communications that have helped to improve My Alfond Grant’s ability to connect with Maine families

What They Think About How They Are Evaluated: Perspectives of New York State Physical Educators on Teacher Evaluation Policy

While research on high stakes testing continues to expand, little is known regarding how the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers is affecting physical education (PE).  A proportionate, stratified random sample of physical educators in New York State was drawn (n=489) to survey them about their district’s practices and their attitudes about the state’s new teacher evaluation policy. Results indicated that 38% of respondents were evaluated in part on the basis of results from written tests of students, while 27% indicated their district used student fitness tests for this purpose.  Eighteen percent of respondents reported their district used state mandated English Language Arts (ELA) and mathematics test scores in calculating physical educator performance ranks. While few reported using performance-based measures, 94% of respondents indicated these as the preferred means of assessment in PE. Eighty-three percent of respondents predicted that the new teacher evaluation system would not improve PE

Crew egress procedures for Apollo block 1 command module at sea

Crew egress procedures for Apollo block 1 command module at se

Structured light techniques for 3D surface reconstruction in robotic tasks

Robotic tasks such as navigation and path planning can be greatly enhanced by a vision system capable of providing depth perception from fast and accurate 3D surface reconstruction. Focused on robotic welding tasks we present a comparative analysis of a novel mathematical formulation for 3D surface reconstruction and discuss image processing requirements for reliable detection of patterns in the image. Models are presented for a parallel and angled configurations of light source and image sensor. It is shown that the parallel arrangement requires 35\% fewer arithmetic operations to compute a point cloud in 3D being thus more appropriate for real-time applications. Experiments show that the technique is appropriate to scan a variety of surfaces and, in particular, the intended metallic parts for robotic welding tasks