Women of Faith in Science: the Double Glass Ceiling

The majority of female pre-service elementary school teachers pursuing licensure is choosing English as their cognate rather than mathematics or science. The reason females are not choosing science as their cognate may be due to the fact that science has long been considered a masculine pursuit. To complicate the issue, pre-service female teachers of deep religious faith are further challenged to navigate the dichotomy of science and religion. As a result, women, and especially women of deep religious faith, are at risk of not participating in science studies. The author suggests that there is room in the science classroom for open dialogue with students regarding the distinction between science and religion. This dialogue may help students, especially women of faith, gain a deeper understanding of the nature of science and encourage participation in science

New Prospects for Organizational Democracy? How the Joint Pursuit of Social and Financial Goals Challenges Traditional Organizational Designs

Some interesting exceptions notwithstanding, the traditional logic of economic efficiency has long favored hierarchical forms of organization and disfavored democracy in business. What does the balance of arguments look like, however, when values besides efficient revenue production are brought into the picture? The question is not hypothetical: In recent years, an ever increasing number of corporations have developed and adopted socially responsible behaviors, thereby hybridizing aspects of corporate businesses and social organizations. We argue that the joint pursuit of financial and social objectives warrants significant rethinking of organizational democracy’s merits compared both to hierarchy and to non-democratic alternatives to hierarchy. In making this argument, we draw on an extensive literature review to document the relative lack of substantive discussion of organizational democracy since 1960. And we draw lessons from political theory, suggesting that the success of political democracy in integrating diverse values offers some grounds for asserting parallel virtues in the business case

NGMV control of delayed piecewise affine systems

A Nonlinear Generalized Minimum Variance (NGMV) control algorithm is introduced for the control of piecewise affine (PWA) systems. Under some conditions, discrete-time PWA systems can be transferred into an equivalent state-dependent nonlinear system form. The equivalent state-dependent systems maintain the hybrid nature of the original PWA systems and include both the discrete and continuous signals in one general description. In a more general way, the process is assumed to include common delays in input or output channels of magnitude k. Then the NGMV control strategy [1] can be applied. The NGMV controller is related to a well-known and accepted solution for time delay systems (Smith Predictor) but has the advantage that it may stabilize open-loop unstable processes [2]

Electrostatic forces on charged surfaces of bilayer lipid membranes

Simulating protein-membrane interactions is an important and dynamic area of research. A proper definition of electrostatic forces on membrane surfaces is necessary for developing electromechanical models of protein-membrane interactions. Here we modeled the bilayer membrane as a continuum with general continuous distributions of lipids charges on membrane surfaces. A new electrostatic potential energy functional was then defined for this solvated protein-membrane system. We investigated the geometrical transformation properties of the membrane surfaces under a smooth velocity field. These properties allows us to apply the Hadamard-Zolesio structure theorem, and the electrostatic forces on membrane surfaces can be computed as the shape derivative of the electrostatic energy functional