The Art of Creating a School. The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy 1979-1986

The art of creating the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, (IMSA) covered in the following pages, occurred over a period of seven years. The events took place between the summer of 1979, and \u27move-in\u27 day, September 7, 1986, the day the students arrived on the IMSA campus for the first time. Located in the Fox River Valley community of Aurora, Illinois, the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy has earned international recognition for its unique curriculum and teaching strategies. It has grown into the most renowned three year residential math and science high school in the nation. Each year more than 160 gifted high school students from all over the state of Illinois join its community of close to 800 students. Approximately 99% of its graduates accept invitations to attend institutions of higher education, with an average of 45% of the graduates staying in Illinois. When it began its life in September of 1986, the Academy had 210 gifted high school students, twelve creative faculty members, a list of twenty-one courses, no residence halls, no computers, no library books, limited funding, many unanswered questions and an uncertain future. Students lived in converted classrooms while the first residence balls were being built

Subsurface Imaging with Reverse Vertical Seismic Pro les

A novel imaging process, referred to as vector image isochron (VII) migration, is specifically designed to reduce artifacts caused by arrays with limited apertures. By examining the assumptions behind generalized Radon transform (GRT) migration, a new approach is found which identities and suppresses array artifacts, based on the array geometry and the migration earth model. The new method works in four steps: 1) The conventional image is broken down according to the orientation of imaged planes within the image space, forming a vector image of the earth; 2) the earth model and the geometry of the arrays are used to derive vector image isochrons, which define the shape of reflection events in the vector image space; 3) the vector image is transformed by summing along the isochrons so that it depends on subsurface location and reflector orientation, rather than imaged plane orientation. This process is referred to as vector image isochron (VII) transformation; and 4) the transformed vector image is collapsed to a scalar image by summing over reflector orientations. The VII imaging method is derived in both 2D and 3D with the assumption that at least one of the arrays, source or receiver, is oriented horizontally. The surface array can have any distribution along the surface. The other array can have any orientation, although in this paper it will be assumed to be either another surface array or a vertically oriented downhole array. Downhole surveys in deviated wells, or in multiple wells, can be imaged with VII migration, at the likely cost of more computation time. The VII imaging method is tested on field data acquired in 1998 by MIT and several industry partners. The dataset is a 3D reverse vertical seismic profile (RVSP) over a hydrocarbon-bearing pinnacle reef in the northern Michigan reef trend. The survey exhibited two features of note: 1) A new, strong, downhole vertical vibrator, and 2) a random distribution of surface receiver locations. Due to adverse conditions, a large portion of the surface spread had to be abandoned. The reduced spatial coverage presents a challenge to the new migration method, but also limits the extent of the migrated image, precluding an evaluation of the reflectiveness of the random receiver spread. The limited nature of the receiver array also causes artifacts in the image which resemble migration "smiles". These are partially suppressed by limiting the dip aperture of the migration, but this also limits the reflector dips that can be imaged. The new VII imaging scheme, on the other hand, removes the artifacts without diminishing dipping reflectors. The VII images show more continuity along reflectors than images made with the conventional method

Imaging With Reverse Vertical Seismic Profiles Using A Downhole, Hydraulic, Axial Vibrator

We present the analysis of a reverse vertical seismic profile (RVSP) acquired over a pinnacle reef in the northern Michigan reef trend. The survey exhibited two features of note: (1) a new, strong, downhole vertical vibrator, and (2) a random distribution of surface receiver locations. A short sequence of processing steps followed by diffraction summation migration provide a high-resolution image of a portion of the target reef at 4600 feet depth. The high-resolution of the image is due largely to the downhole source, which generated a high-powered signal at frequencies up to several hundred Hz. The source signal was repeatable, allowing our processing scheme to recover these high frequencies. Due to adverse conditions, a large portion of the surface spread was abandoned. The reduced spatial coverage limits the extent of the migrated image, and therefore precludes an evaluation of the effectiveness of the random receiver spread. However, the partial image agrees with our previous interpretation of the reef. The high-resolution offers new insight into the structure of the reef, although a detailed geological interpretation is not possible due to the limited extent of the image

2021 Veterans Civic Health Index Defining Our Future Leaders: The Civic Health of Post- 9/11 Veterans

This report represents the fourth edition of this type of analysis on the veterans community- again showing that veterans outperform non-veterans in multiple forms of civic engagement including voting, donating, and volunteering

In-situ resonant band engineering of solution-processed semiconductors generates high performance n-type thermoelectric nano-inks.

Thermoelectric devices possess enormous potential to reshape the global energy landscape by converting waste heat into electricity, yet their commercial implementation has been limited by their high cost to output power ratio. No single "champion" thermoelectric material exists due to a broad range of material-dependent thermal and electrical property optimization challenges. While the advent of nanostructuring provided a general design paradigm for reducing material thermal conductivities, there exists no analogous strategy for homogeneous, precise doping of materials. Here, we demonstrate a nanoscale interface-engineering approach that harnesses the large chemically accessible surface areas of nanomaterials to yield massive, finely-controlled, and stable changes in the Seebeck coefficient, switching a poor nonconventional p-type thermoelectric material, tellurium, into a robust n-type material exhibiting stable properties over months of testing. These remodeled, n-type nanowires display extremely high power factors (~500 µW m-1K-2) that are orders of magnitude higher than their bulk p-type counterparts

Does gender matter? A cross-national investigation of primary class-room discipline.

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupFewer than 15% of primary school teachers in both Germany and the UK are male. With the on-going international debate about educational performance highlighting the widening gender achievement gap between girl and boy pupils, the demand for more male teachers has become prevalent in educational discourse. Concerns have frequently been raised about the underachievement of boys, with claims that the lack of male ‘role models’ in schools has an adverse effect on boys’ academic motivation and engagement. Although previous research has examined ‘teaching’ as institutional talk, men’s linguistic behaviour in the classroom remains largely ignored, especially in regard to enacting discipline. Using empirical spoken data collected from four primary school classrooms in both the UK and in Germany, this paper examines the linguistic discipline strategies of eight male and eight female teachers using Interactional Sociolinguistics to address the question, does teacher gender matter?Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Implementation of an Ultraviolet Phototherapy Service at a National Referral Hospital in Western Kenya: Reflections on Challenges and Lessons Learned.

IntroductionIn order to manage skin conditions at a national referral hospital level in Kenya, specialized dermatology services, such as dermatologic surgery, dermatopathology, phototherapy, and sub-specialty care, should be offered, as is typically available in referral hospitals around the world. A Kenyan patient with prurigo nodularis, whose severe itch remitted after phototherapy treatment at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), inspired the development of a phototherapy service at Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare (AMPATH), a partnership in Western Kenya between Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, Moi University College of Health Sciences, and a consortium of North American academic medical centers.MethodsInitial project funds were raised through a crowdfunding campaign and fundraising events. A new narrowband ultraviolet B phototherapy unit and replacement bulbs were donated and air shipped to Eldoret, Kenya. A team of dermatologists and phototherapy nurses from UCSF conducted a 2-day training session. US-based dermatologists affiliated with AMPATH provide ongoing support through regular communication and on-site visits.ResultsEarly in implementation, challenges faced included training clinical staff with limited experience in phototherapy and improving communication between nurses and clinicians. More recent challenges include frequent rotation of specialty clinic nurses in the dermatology clinic, adaptation of phototherapy guidelines to balance patient volume with service delivery capacity, and training assessment of disease activity in darkly pigmented skin.ConclusionStrategies that have been helpful in addressing implementation challenges include: increasing on-site and remote training opportunities for clinicians and nurses, developing a tiered payment schema, educating patients to combat misconceptions about phototherapy, dynamic phototherapy referral guidelines to accommodate service delivery capacity, and prioritizing the engagement of a multidisciplinary team