The Equity and Engagement Challenges of Teaching Reading in Middle School

The point is to look at midlevel and high school students—those often encapsulated by the term ‘adolescent literacy’—and to ask what it is that makes those students less likely to engage in productive reading practice. That may at first look like a psychological question about motivation, which makes the challenge seem like it is something inside the student that needs attention or ‘fixing’. But the orientation here is instead more sociological. If we talk about instruction, in this case reading instruction, it is intrinsically interactive, between teacher and student most obviously, but also interactive between students and their peers (e.g. how ‘cool’ is reading viewed in their classroom), and even between student and author (e.g. prospective readers can ask: Why should I care about what this author could tell me?)

Designing tree-structured organizations for computational agents

We describe a framework for defining the space of organization designs for computational agents, use our framework for analyzing the expected performance of a class of organizations, and describe how our analyses can be applied to predict performance for a distributed information gathering task. Our analysis specifically addresses the impact of the span of control (branching factor) in tree-structured hierarchical organizations on the response time of such organizations. We show quantitatively how the overall task size and granularity influence the design of the span of control for the organization, and that within the class of organizations considered the apropriate span of control is confined to a relatively narrow range. The performance predicted by our overall model correlates with the actual performance of a distributed organization for computer network monitoring. Consequently, we argue that our framework can support aspects of organizational self-design for computational agents, and might supply insights into the design of human organizations as well.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44720/1/10588_2004_Article_BF00127275.pd

Combining a thermal-imaging diagnostic with an existing imaging VISAR diagnostic at the National Ignition Facility (NIF)

Optical diagnostics are currently being designed to analyze high-energy density physics experiments at the National Ignition Facility (NIF). Two independent line-imaging Velocity Interferometer System for Any Reflector (VISAR) interferometers have been fielded to measure shock velocities, breakout times, and emission of targets having sizes of 1–5 mm. An 8-inch-diameter, fused silica triplet lens collects light at f/3 inside the 30-foot-diameter NIF vacuum chamber. VISAR recordings use a 659.5-nm probe laser. By adding a specially coated beam splitter to the interferometer table, light at wavelengths from 540 to 645 nm is spilt into a thermal-imaging diagnostic. Because fused silica lenses are used in the first triplet relay, the intermediate image planes for different wavelengths separate by considerable distances. A corrector lens on the interferometer table reunites these separated wavelength planes to provide a good image. Thermal imaging collects light at f/5 from a 2-mm object placed at Target Chamber Center (TCC). Streak cameras perform VISAR and thermal-imaging recording. All optical lenses are on kinematic mounts so that pointing accuracy of the optical axis may be checked. Counter-propagating laser beams (orange and red) are used to align both diagnostics. The red alignment laser is selected to be at the 50 percent reflection point of the beam splitter. This alignment laser is introduced at the recording streak cameras for both diagnostics and passes through this special beam splitter on its way into the NIF vacuum chamber

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

Vampires in the village Žrnovo on the island of Korčula: following an archival document from the 18th century

Središnja tema rada usmjerena je na raščlambu spisa pohranjenog u Državnom arhivu u Mlecima (fond: Capi del Consiglio de’ Dieci: Lettere di Rettori e di altre cariche) koji se odnosi na događaj iz 1748. godine u korčulanskom selu Žrnovo, kada su mještani – vjerujući da su se pojavili vampiri – oskvrnuli nekoliko mjesnih grobova. U radu se podrobno iznose osnovni podaci iz spisa te rečeni događaj analizira u širem društvenom kontekstu i prate se lokalna vjerovanja.The main interest of this essay is the analysis of the document from the State Archive in Venice (file: Capi del Consiglio de’ Dieci: Lettere di Rettori e di altre cariche) which is connected with the episode from 1748 when the inhabitants of the village Žrnove on the island of Korčula in Croatia opened tombs on the local cemetery in the fear of the vampires treating. This essay try to show some social circumstances connected with this event as well as a local vernacular tradition concerning superstitions