Flipping Cubical Meshes

We define and examine flip operations for quadrilateral and hexahedral meshes, similar to the flipping transformations previously used in triangular and tetrahedral mesh generation.Comment: 20 pages, 24 figures. Expanded journal version of paper from 10th International Meshing Roundtable. This version removes some unwanted paragraph breaks from the previous version; the text is unchange

Recent Migration Patterns in Rural and Small Town Canada

Community/Rural/Urban Development, Labor and Human Capital,

Inquiry in Motion: Increasing the Science Achievement of All Students by Improving Teacher Inquiry-based Instruction

Student performance in science classrooms has continued to falter throughout the United States. Even though proficiency rates on national tests such as National Assessment of Educational Progress are higher for Caucasian students than African Americans and Hispanics, all groups lack achieving desired proficiency rates. Therefore, much work is needed in our classrooms to achieve the new more rigorous performance expectations found in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). This five year professional development study sought to link the involvement of teachers in a sustained intervention, designed to improve the quantity and quality of guided inquiry-based instruction in middle school science classrooms, to student academic growth. Specifically we wanted to see if we could link higher quality inquiry-based instruction with the narrowing of the achievement gap between student groups. Findings show statistically significant gains for all student groups (aggregate, males, females, Caucasians, African Americans, and Hispanics) on all three science MAP tests (composite, science practices, science concepts) when compared to students of non-participating teachers

Energy Choices Revisited : An Examination of the Costs and Benefits of Maine\u27s Energy Policy

https://digitalmaine.com/mainewatch_publications/1003/thumbnail.jp

Costs of Storing and Handling Grain in Oklahoma Cooperative Elevators

This study presents an analysis of the costs of storing and handling grain in Oklahoma cooperative elevators. The primary objective is to develop a procedure for determining consistent estimates of the costs of storing and handling grain for individual elevators and an average across all elevators. Individual elevators can compare their costs to the average to determine the relative strengths and weaknesses in their cost structure.Agricultural Economic

Reviews

The following publications have been reviewed by the mentioned authors;A Compendium of Craft Books, reviewed by John EgglestonDesign and Designing by I. Burden, J. Morrison and J. Twyford, reviewed by Jeff HardmanThe Establishment and Management of Wildflower Meadows by the Nature Conservancy Council, reviewed by Derek WellsTelephone Boxes by Gavin Stamp, reviewed by John EgglestonShop Fronts by Alan Powers, reviewed by John EgglestonTroughs & Drinking Fountains by Philip Davies, reviewed by John EgglestonSIMCAD Computer Aided Design by OWL Micro Systems, reviewed by Marshall HughesTechnical Drawing by Susan Peach, reviewed by Keith Vicker

Grappling with methodologies in educational research: science and engineering educators finding their way

Science and Engineering faculties at South African tertiary institutions have seen dramatic changes since the 1980’s due to a changing student body as a result of equity and redress measures. There has also been an increasing interest in educational research that might help improve student learning. Some of these researchers are disciplinary experts taking an interest in teaching and learning, while others have moved from undergraduate scientific work to postgraduate educational qualifications. Many of these researchers have no foundations in social science research. As a result much of the research produced by this group tends to unproblematically apply the ‘scientific method’ to problems in the social sciences. As authors of this chapter, we fit the above description, and describe our journeys in developing more appropriate and critical ways of conducting research in these complex and changing higher education contexts. Our initial research efforts were conducted in largely positivist frames. While there were many opportunities to develop (and publish) within this framework, we became increasingly aware that this framework offered superficial understandings of the student experience and failed to engage with broader societal issues. Interpretivist and critical perspectives appeared to offer more productive frames within which to work, yet we struggled to make sense of and gain access to these discourses. In this chapter we analyse and describe the experiences gained from two different research projects we have pursued during the 1990’s. The first theme concerns issues around gender and engineering education, and began with a narrow focus on why women choose to study engineering and shifted to grappling more critically with notions of gender and race. The second theme concerns students’ experiences of learning, initially exploring the approaches to learning framework and in later work responding more critically to the dominant theories in this area. Some of the questions which we address include: What are the methodological challenges involved in shifting to a more interpretive and critical paradigm? Is critical theory a useful framework for researching tertiary science and engineering education

Enforced home-working under lockdown and its impact on employee wellbeing: a cross-sectional study

Abstract: Background: The Covid-19 pandemic precipitated a shift in the working practices of millions of people. Nearly half the British workforce (47%) reported to be working at home under lockdown in April 2020. This study investigated the impact of enforced home-working under lockdown on employee wellbeing via markers of stress, burnout, depressive symptoms, and sleep. Moderating effects of factors including age, gender, number of dependants, mental health status and work status were examined alongside work-related factors including work-life conflict and leadership quality. Method: Cross-sectional data were collected over a 12-week period from May to August 2020 using an online survey. Job-related and wellbeing factors were measured using items from the COPSOQIII. Stress, burnout, somatic stress, cognitive stress, and sleep trouble were tested together using MANOVA and MANCOVA to identify mediating effects. T-tests and one-way ANOVA identified differences in overall stress. Regression trees identified groups with highest and lowest levels of stress and depressive symptoms. Results: 81% of respondents were working at home either full or part-time (n = 623, 62% female). Detrimental health impacts of home-working during lockdown were most acutely experienced by those with existing mental health conditions regardless of age, gender, or work status, and were exacerbated by working regular overtime. In those without mental health conditions, predictors of stress and depressive symptoms were being female, under 45 years, home-working part-time and two dependants, though men reported greater levels of work-life conflict. Place and pattern of work had a greater impact on women. Lower leadership quality was a significant predictor of stress and burnout for both men and women, and, for employees aged > 45 years, had significant impact on level of depressive symptoms experienced. Conclusions: Experience of home-working under lockdown varies amongst groups. Knowledge of these differences provide employers with tools to better manage employee wellbeing during periods of crisis. While personal factors are not controllable, the quality of leadership provided to employees, and the ‘place and pattern’ of work, can be actively managed to positive effect. Innovative flexible working practices will help to build greater workforce resilience

Detection and Analysis of the Bacterium, Xylella fastidiosa, in Glassy-Winged Sharpshooter, Homalodisca vitripennis, Populations in Texas

The glassy-winged sharpshooter, Homalodisca vitripeninis Germar (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae), is a xylophagous insect that is an endemic pest of several economically important plants in Texas. H. vitripennis is the main vector of Xylella fastidiosa Wells (Xanthomonadales: Xanthomonadaceae), the bacterium that causes Pierce's disease of grapevine and can travel long distances putting much of Texas grape production at risk. Understanding the movement of H. vitripennis populations capable of transmitting X. fastidiosa into Pierce's-disease-free areas is critical for developing a management program for Pierce's disease. To that end, the USDA-APHIS has developed a program to sample vineyards across Texas to monitor populations of H. vitripennis. From this sampling, H vitripennis collected during 2005 and 2006 over the months of May, June, and July from eight vineyards in different regions of Texas were recovered from yellow sticky traps and tested for the presence of X. fastidiosa. The foregut contents were vacuum extracted and analyzed using RT-PCR to determine the percentage of H. vitripennis within each population that harbor X. fastidiosa and have the potential to transmit this pathogen. H. vitripennis from vineyards known to have Pierce's disease routinely tested positive for the presence of X. fastidiosa. While almost all H. vitripennis collected from vineyards with no history of Pierce's disease tested negative for the presence of the pathogen, three individual insects tested positive. Furthermore, all three insects were determined, by DNA sequencing, to be carrying a strain of X. fastidiosa homologous to known Pierce's disease strains, signifying them as a risk factor for new X. fastidiosa infections