Smith Hill Community Development Center/Smith Hill Annex History

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Models of Service and Civic Education: An Occasional Paper of the Project on Integrating Service and Academic Study

Citizenship education is generally recognized as the primary reason for supporting service-learning on college campuses. Assumptions about citizenship affect how programs and curricula are structured. An analysis of programs around the country identified four sets of core assumptions about civic education that inform service-learning courses and programs. This paper is intended to be useful to faculty designing service-learning courses and to those who want to make explicit multiple frameworks for understanding service experiences

Facultative Altitudinal Movements by Mountain White-Crowned Sparrows (Zonotrichia Leucophrys Oriantha) in the Sierra Nevada

Mountain White-crowned Sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys oriantha) winter in Mexico and often arrive in the vicinity of their breeding grounds in the Sierra Nevada well before nesting is possible. Arrival at Tioga Pass, California (elevation 3,030 m), usually occurs in early May, but residual winter snow and adverse weather can delay nesting for weeks. We used radiotelemetry to determine whether prebreeding Mountain White-crowned Sparrows engaged in weather-related altitudinal movements during the waiting period between the end of spring migration and onset of breeding during 1995-2001, with a range of residual winter snowpacks. Interannual variation in arrival date and onset of egg laying was 18 and 41 days, respectively. We tracked females for two years and males for all seven years. During spring snowstorms (which occurred in four years), radiomarked individuals moved to lower elevation sites, where they often remained for several days. Departing birds left Tioga Pass by early afternoon and returned early in the morning after storms. More frequent storms during tracking increased the likelihood of facultative altitudinal movements, but heavier residual winter snowpack did not. Warm days increased the likelihood of birds returning to Tioga Pass from low elevation. This study demonstrates that facultative altitudinal movement behavior can be a common feature of spring arrival biology in montane-breeding birds. Received 1 November 2002, accepted 30 June 2004.Integrative Biolog

The New Student Politics Curriculum Guide

The New Student Politics: The Wingspread Statement on Student Civic Engagement (2002) can be assigned as a text in a political science service-learning course that has as an explicit course objective the exploration of contemporary conceptions of citizenship, or a sociology service-learning course that focuses on community building and social transformation. Additionally, the text can be incorporated in service-learning courses across the disciplines with the aid of The New Student Politics Curriculum Guide. The Curriculum Guide is designed to provide a structure for engaging students in reflection on their community service experiences in a way that allows for the exploration of the connections between service and politics, the purposes of their education and their work in community, and their role as participants in the civic life of American democracy. The structured reflection provided in the Curriculum Guide recognizes that all disciplinary competence is infused with an element of civic awareness and purpose, or as William Sullivan has written, there is no viable pursuit of technical excellence without participation in those civic enterprises through which expertise discovers its human meaning. The Curriculum Guide delves deeper into the concept of service politics introduced in The New Student Politics, provides a guide to including civic engagement reflection in service-learning courses, and includes concrete tools for reflection on student civic engagement

Improving the detection limit for 182 Hf

A nearby supernova would deposit radionuclides on earth. The long-lived radionuclide 182Hf (t1/2 = 8.9 Ma) is one of a number of candidates for an isotopic signature of such an event. Together with 60Fe, observation of 182Hf would be direct evidence for a supernova site of the r-process. The most suitable site for searching for such a signature would be a deep-sea sediment of slow deposition rate. Measurement of 182Hf at the anticipated level requires very effective suppression of the interfering stable isobar 182W. Chemical separation and the injection of HfF5- allow for suppression by several orders of magnitude, but more is needed for detection of 182Hf as a supernova isotope signature. We are currently developing AMS methods for measuring 182Hf/180Hf isotope ratios at the required level using a 15 MV tandem accelerator . Both projectile X-ray emission and the use of a solid passive absorber with a subsequent measurement of the residual energy are being explored. The former suffers from low efficiency, but the latter looks promising

Point-of-care platelet function assays demonstrate reduced responsiveness to clopidogrel, but not aspirin, in patients with Drug-Eluting Stent Thrombosis whilst on dual antiplatelet therapy

BackgroundTo test the hypothesis that point-of-care assays of platelet reactivity would demonstrate reduced response to antiplatelet therapy in patients who experienced Drug Eluting Stent (DES) ST whilst on dual antiplatelet therapy compared to matched DES controls. Whilst the aetiology of stent thrombosis (ST) is multifactorial there is increasing evidence from laboratory-based assays that hyporesponsiveness to antiplatelet therapy is a factor in some cases.MethodsFrom 3004 PCI patients, seven survivors of DES ST whilst on dual antiplatelet therapy were identified and each matched with two patients without ST. Analysis was performed using (a) short Thrombelastogram PlateletMapping™ (TEG) and (b) VerifyNow Aspirin and P2Y12 assays. TEG analysis was performed using the Area Under the Curve at 15 minutes (AUC15) as previously described.ResultsThere were no differences in responses to aspirin. There was significantly greater platelet reactivity on clopidogrel in the ST group using the Accumetrics P2Y12 assay (183 ± 51 vs. 108 ± 31, p = 0.02) and a trend towards greater reactivity using TEG AUC15 (910 ± 328 vs. 618 ± 129, p = 0.07). 57% of the ST group by TEG and 43% of the ST cases by Accumetrics PRU had results > two standard deviations above the expected mean in the control group.ConclusionThis study demonstrates reduced platelet response to clopidogrel in some patients with DES ST compared to matched controls. The availability of point-of-care assays that can detect these responses raises the possibility of prospectively identifying DES patients at risk of ST and manipulating their subsequent risk

Addressing key risk factors for suicide at a societal level

A public health approach to suicide prevention recognises the powerful influence of social determinants. In this paper-the fifth in a Series on a public health approach to suicide prevention-we consider four major risk factors for suicide (alcohol use, gambling, domestic violence and abuse, and suicide bereavement) and examine how their influence on suicide is socially determined. Cultural factors and societal responses have an important role in all four risk factors. In the case of alcohol use and gambling, commercial entities are culpable. This Series paper describes a range of universal, selective, and indicated interventions that might address these risk factors, and focuses particularly on key universal interventions that are likely to yield substantial population-level benefits

Current Activities of the ASME Subgroup NUPACK

Current activities of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Section III Subgroup on Containment Systems for Spent Fuel High-Level Waste Transport Packagings (also known as Subgroup NUPACK) are reviewed with emphasis on the recent revision of Subsection WB. Also, brief insightson new proposals for the development of rules for internal support structures and for a strain-based acceptance criteria are provided

Standardized DOE Spent Nuclear Fuel Canister and Transportation System for Shipping to the National Repository

The U.S.Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Spent Nuclear Fuel Program (NSNFP), located at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL), has been chartered with the responsibility for developing spent nuclear fuel (SNF) standardized canisters and a transportation cask system for shipping DOE SNF to the national repository. The mandate for this development is outlined in the Memorandum of Agreement for Acceptance of Department of Energy Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste that states, “EM shall design and fabricate … DOE SNF canisters for shipment to RW.” (1) It also states, “EM shall be responsible for the design, NRC certification, and fabrication of the transportation cask system for DOE SNF canisters or bare DOE SNF in accordance with 10 CFR Part 71.” (2) In fulfillment of these requirements, the NSNFP has developed four SNF standardized canister configurations and has conceptually designed a versatile transportation cask system for shipping the canisters to the national repository.1 The standardized canister sizes were derived from the national repository waste package design for co-disposal of SNF with high-level waste (HLW). One SNF canister can be placed in the center of the waste package or one can be placed in one of five radial positions, replacing a HLW canister. The internal cavity of the transportation cask was derived using the same logic, matching the size of the internal cavity of the waste package. The size of the internal cavity for the transportation cask allows the shipment of multiple canister configurations with the application of a removable basket design. The standardized canisters have been designed to be loaded with DOE SNF, placed into interim storage, shipped to the national repository, and placed in a waste package without having to be reopened. Significant testing has been completed that clearly demonstrates that the standardized canisters can safely achieve their intended design goals. The transportation cask system will include all of the standard design features, with the addition of dual containment for the shipment of failed fuel. The transportation cask system will also meet the rigorous licensing requirements of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to ensure that the design and the methods of fabrication employed will result in a shipping cask that will safely contain the radioactive materials under all credible accident scenarios. The standardization of the SNF canisters and the versatile design of the transportation cask system will eliminate a proliferation of designs and simplify the operations at the user sites and the national repository