The Use of Diverse Young Adult Literature in High School Classrooms

This departmental honors project outlined research that has been completed on the benefits of incorporating young adult literature in the secondary English Language Arts classroom and discussed the benefits of using young adult literature as a means of introducing students to various aspects of diversity. While young adult literature continues to grow in popularity among teen readers, there are many negative connotations associated with texts falling under this label and their merit within the classroom. Similarly, classroom dynamics are becoming more diverse each year through the number of students representing different races, ethnicities, ability levels, interests, socioeconomic backgrounds, genders, and more. However, there is very little quantitative or qualitative research on how young adult literature can be used in secondary curricula to engage students in assigned reading and to increase students’ exposure to facets of diversity. Thus, this study aimed to reveal how a sample of secondary English Language Arts educators perceives young adult literature, how it is being used in the classroom, the challenges that teachers face when attempting to include it in the curriculum, and the extent to which teachers are addressing facets of diversity in their classrooms

The Boys and the Bees

In Zora Neale Hurston\u27s Their Eyes Were Watching God, the pear tree is seen as a symbol of Janie Crawford\u27s sexuality and self-discovery. However, the pear tree can also be used to analyze Hurston\u27s use of flipped gender roles and Freud\u27s theories on physical maturation. Janie takes on the role of the bee, rather than the flower she wishes to be, in order to go through her journey to self-discovery and change Eatonville by sharing what she has learned

The Use of Diverse Young Adult Literature in High School Classrooms

This departmental honors project outlined research that has been completed on the benefits of incorporating young adult literature in the secondary English Language Arts classroom and discussed the benefits of using young adult literature as a means of introducing students to various aspects of diversity. While young adult literature continues to grow in popularity among teen readers, there are many negative connotations associated with texts falling under this label and their merit within the classroom. Similarly, classroom dynamics are becoming more diverse each year through the number of students representing different races, ethnicities, ability levels, interests, socioeconomic backgrounds, genders, and more. However, there is very little quantitative or qualitative research on how young adult literature can be used in secondary curricula to engage students in assigned reading and to increase students’ exposure to facets of diversity. Thus, this study aimed to reveal how a sample of secondary English Language Arts educators perceives young adult literature, how it is being used in the classroom, the challenges that teachers face when attempting to include it in the curriculum, and the extent to which teachers are addressing facets of diversity in their classrooms

The Boys and the Bees

In Zora Neale Hurston\u27s Their Eyes Were Watching God, the pear tree is seen as a symbol of Janie Crawford\u27s sexuality and self-discovery. However, the pear tree can also be used to analyze Hurston\u27s use of flipped gender roles and Freud\u27s theories on physical maturation. Janie takes on the role of the bee, rather than the flower she wishes to be, in order to go through her journey to self-discovery and change Eatonville by sharing what she has learned

The Use of Diverse Young Adult Literature in High School Classrooms

Although young adult literature (abbreviated YAL) is increasing in popularity, its benefits in the classroom are lacking in research, particularly in large-scale studies featuring both qualitative and quantitative data. Furthermore, as our world continues to become more diverse, students can not only connect with characters like themselves but also learn to appreciate others from diverse backgrounds through reading YAL texts, which are proven to increase students’ engagement with texts. To better analyze if young adult literature is being used in secondary English Language Arts classrooms and how frequently the various facets of diversity are being considered when choosing texts for the curriculum, a sample of high school English teachers were surveyed on their use and perceptions of YAL in the classroom. Results of this study remain consistent with those similar to it and conclude that, while there is a strong interest in incorporating more YAL into the curriculum, there are many different factors that limit its inclusion into the classroom including lack of funding, desire to teach from the literary canon, and feeling limited by the Common Core State Standards

Low Cost Gunshot Detection using Deep Learning on the Raspberry Pi

Many cities using gunshot detection technology depend on expensive systems that ultimately rely on humans differentiating between gunshots and non-gunshots, such as ShotSpotter. Thus, a scalable gunshot detection system that is low in cost and high in accuracy would be advantageous for a variety of cities across the globe, in that it would favorably promote the delegation of tasks typically worked by humans to machines. A repository of audio data was created from sound clips collected from online audio databases as well as from clips recorded using a USB microphone in residential areas and at a gun range. One-dimensional as well as two-dimensional convolutional neural networks were then trained on this sound data, and spectrograms created from this sound data, to recognize gunshots. These models were deployed to a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ with a short message service modem and a USB microphone attached, using a software pipeline to continuously analyze discrete two-second chunks of audio and alert a set of phone numbers if a gunshot is detected in that chunk. Testing found that a majority-rules ensemble of our one-dimensional and two-dimensional models fared best, with an accuracy above 99% on validation data as well as when distinguishing gunshots from fireworks. Besides increasing the safety standards for a city's residents, the findings generated by this research project expand the current state of knowledge regarding sound-based applications of convolutional neural networks

An invasive podosome-like structure promotes fusion pore formation during myoblast fusion

An F-actin–enriched protrusion resembling an invasive podosome promotes fusion pore formation between muscle founder cells and fusion-competent myoblasts

The United States COVID-19 Forecast Hub dataset

Academic researchers, government agencies, industry groups, and individuals have produced forecasts at an unprecedented scale during the COVID-19 pandemic. To leverage these forecasts, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) partnered with an academic research lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to create the US COVID-19 Forecast Hub. Launched in April 2020, the Forecast Hub is a dataset with point and probabilistic forecasts of incident cases, incident hospitalizations, incident deaths, and cumulative deaths due to COVID-19 at county, state, and national, levels in the United States. Included forecasts represent a variety of modeling approaches, data sources, and assumptions regarding the spread of COVID-19. The goal of this dataset is to establish a standardized and comparable set of short-term forecasts from modeling teams. These data can be used to develop ensemble models, communicate forecasts to the public, create visualizations, compare models, and inform policies regarding COVID-19 mitigation. These open-source data are available via download from GitHub, through an online API, and through R packages

Tumour genomic and microenvironmental heterogeneity as integrated predictors for prostate cancer recurrence: a retrospective study

Clinical prognostic groupings for localised prostate cancers are imprecise, with 30–50% of patients recurring after image-guided radiotherapy or radical prostatectomy. We aimed to test combined genomic and microenvironmental indices in prostate cancer to improve risk stratification and complement clinical prognostic factors

The Use of Diverse Young Adult Literature in High School Classrooms

Although young adult literature (abbreviated YAL) is increasing in popularity, its benefits in the classroom are lacking in research, particularly in large-scale studies featuring both qualitative and quantitative data. Furthermore, as our world continues to become more diverse, students can not only connect with characters like themselves but also learn to appreciate others from diverse backgrounds through reading YAL texts, which are proven to increase students’ engagement with texts. To better analyze if young adult literature is being used in secondary English Language Arts classrooms and how frequently the various facets of diversity are being considered when choosing texts for the curriculum, a sample of high school English teachers were surveyed on their use and perceptions of YAL in the classroom. Results of this study remain consistent with those similar to it and conclude that, while there is a strong interest in incorporating more YAL into the curriculum, there are many different factors that limit its inclusion into the classroom including lack of funding, desire to teach from the literary canon, and feeling limited by the Common Core State Standards