Real fields and repeated radical extensions

The main result of this paper is that if E is a field extension of finite odd degree over a real field Q, and if E is a repeated radical extension of Q, then every intermediate field is also a repeated radical extension of Q. This paper also contains a number of other results about repeated radical extensions

Causes of exotic bird establishment across oceanic islands

The probability that exotic species will successfully establish viable populations varies between regions, for reasons that are currently unknown. Here, we use data for exotic bird introductions to 41 oceanic islands and archipelagos around the globe to test five hypotheses for this variation: the effects of introduction effort, competition, predation, human disturbance and habitat diversity (island biogeography). Our analyses demonstrate the primary importance of introduction effort for avian establishment success across regions, in concordance with previous analyses within regions. However, they also reveal a strong negative interaction across regions between establishment success and predation; exotic birds are more likely to fail on islands with species-rich mammalian predator assemblages

La Petite Piaf: The Development and Performance of an Original One –Woman Show

My thesis project was the process of adapting the script and music, rehearsing, performing, and producing an original one-woman show. The production is called “La Petite Piaf” and is based on events in the life of Edith Piaf. I adapted, produced, starred in an original one-woman show. It ran seventy-five minutes without an intermission and consisted of dialogue in English and fifteen songs in French. I portrayed Edith Piaf. I oversaw every element of the production. I was in charge of my marketing, finding a performance space, securing dates, hiring a pianist, stage manager, and run crew, finding a lighting designer, transposing the music, adapting the script, locating properties, set and costume pieces, and ultimately performing the intermission-less seventy-two minute show. I executed this project through various mediums. I conducted research on Piaf’s life, wrote the script based off of various plays and texts, interpolated the music, transcribed and transposed some of the songs, rehearsed, and performed the production. I also oversaw marketing and production of the show. The process took place over the course of eighteen months. Needless to say, I completed the performances less than a month ago and I am still exhausted from the eighteen months of work leading up to its completion. Thank goodness I decided to do it, after all of my exhaustion is accompanied by the most exhilarating sense of accomplishment I have ever experienced as an artist. What a great way to end my college career. “La Petite Piaf” is an original adaptation based on Jean Cocteau’s play “La Voix Humane” as well as Pam Gems’s “PIAF”. Rodney Hudson and I have also incorporated our own text into the script based on biographical sources about Piaf. With the exception of “A Child Is Born” and “Martina”, all of the songs were recorded and performed by Piaf throughout her career. The show takes place throughout the course of an evening during a performance at the Versailles in New York City. The process of developing “La Petite Piaf” began in September of 2004. Rodney Hudson and I have worked together since then to shape the text, select the music and research the life of such a passionate and beautiful woman who’s artistry moved not only her nation, but all of Europe and the U.S. “For me singing is a way of escaping. It’s another world. I’m no longer on earth.” – Edith Pia

A word frequency study and definition of terms in typewriting methodology

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Authentic Topics as Organizers for Instruction

Context based approaches including STS, STSE, and SSI instruction have the potential to promote student content knowledge, deepen student understanding of the nature of science tenants, strengthen student argumentation skills, and promote student motivation and interest in science. This capstone project is a compilation of forty meaningful, curriculum generated science topics, which can be used as a foundation for designing lessons that incorporate strategies to promote written or verbal argumentation in living environment courses. The topics were selected such that their implementation would not significantly disrupt the existing organization of science content within a district curriculum. The project demonstrates the potential for context based approaches including STS, STSE, and SSI to be used in courses where science content to be taught is dictated by state standards and a major reorganization of the curriculum is not possible

Replicating Success: Developing an Educational Process for Improving Nursing Accuracy When Using a Patient Classification System

The use of patient classification systems (PCS), within hospitals has been and still is utilized primarily for determining staffing requirements, based upon the projected needs of the patient. Since its conception in the 1950\u27s, health care management has worked to develop a system that accurately depicts those needs to provide good patient care. Recently, a major tertiary health care center located in the Midwest region of the United States implemented a revised patient classification system within its acute care setting. Nurses were provided various levels of education regarding its use. Because of this, accuracy by nurses using the patient classification system varied. This project is designed to identify care areas which have been successful in utilizing the patient classification system, determine how their nursing staff were trained, and synthesize an educational process which will improve their accuracy using the system

Fall detection using a Gaussian distribution of clustered knowledge, augmented radial basis neural-network, and multilayer perceptron

The rapidly increasing population of elderly people has posed a big challenge to research in fall prevention and detection. Substantial amounts of injuries, disabilities, traumas and deaths among elderly people due to falls have been reported worldwide. There is therefore a need for a reliable, simple, and affordable automatic fall detection system. This paper proposes a reliable fall detection algorithm using minimal information from a single waist worn wireless tri-axial accelerometer. The method proposed is to approach fall detection using digital signal processing and neural networks. This method includes the application of Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), Regrouping Particle Swarm Optimization (RegPSO), a proposed method called Gaussian Distribution of Clustered Knowledge (GCK), and an Ensemble of Classifiers using two different classifiers: Multilayer Perceptron Neural Network (MLP) and Augmented Radial Basis Neural Networks (ARBF). The proposed method has been tested on 8 healthy individuals in a home environment and yields promising result of up to 100% sensitivity on ingroup, 97.65% sensitivity on outgroup, and 99.56% specificity on Activities of Daily Living (ADL) data. © 2011 IEEE