Guest Editorial: One Size Does Not Fit All, One Critique Does Not Fit All Schools of Education

Many years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King reminded us that skin tone should never be a factor to judge an individual, but rather the content of the individual’s character is the issue to be considered. Just a few years ago the sociologists Lawrence Harrington and Samuel Huntington (2000) completed a study which addresses Max Weber’s premise that culture does matter when looking at the differing levels of societal effectiveness. As we read Dr. Arthur Levine’s Educating School Leaders, we question if Dr. Levine has operated from the understanding that the differences in schools of education are numerous and that each must be evaluated based on the content and outputs of their programs

Observations of extremely thin clouds in the tropical tropopause region by a ship based lidar.

During the cruises ANT XVII/4 (Punta Arenas Bremerhaven, 2000) and ANT XX1/1 (Bremerhaven - Cape Town, 2003) continuous measurements of clouds and aerosol have been performed by a Mobile Aerosol Raman Lidar (MARL). This system measures backscatter of light at 355 nm and 532 nm and is able to detect even extremely thin layers of particles in the atmosphere. Cloud base and top height, depolarisation optical depth and color index can be deduced from this data. During the Polarstern cruises very thin layers of ice particles have been observed frequently in the tropical tropopause layer (TTL). Cases of persistent cloud layers with an optical depth below 10^-3 are reported. Based on the data of radiosondes which were launched daily aboard the vessel, the conditions at which these type of clouds form are analysed. It is shown, that these clouds form in a layer below the cold point, but above the lapse rate tropopause. The relation between cloud occurrence and temperature and wind in the TTL as well as state of the QBO are discussed

Nonfarm Employment Change In Iowa from 1987 to 1997

The pace and patterns of growth in Iowa's economy have produced distinct groups of winners and losers during the past decade. Drastic differences are evident in both the geographic location and industrial mix of employment growth. As we begin a new decade, it is useful to review recent changes in the Iowa economy, identify its strengths, and assess opportunities for future growth. This report describes the nature of nonfarm employment and earnings growth from 1987 to 1997 and discusses possible implications for Iowa's future economy. The report covers statewide changes in total nonfarm employment and employment by major industrial division. In addition, the report describes the kinds of employment growth experienced by Iowa's metropolitan, urban, and rural counties. This report was prepared for use by state and local decision-makers, community planners, economic development groups, and other organizations and individuals with an interest in Iowa's changing economy.

Quantifying alternative splicing from paired-end RNA-sequencing data

RNA-sequencing has revolutionized biomedical research and, in particular, our ability to study gene alternative splicing. The problem has important implications for human health, as alternative splicing may be involved in malfunctions at the cellular level and multiple diseases. However, the high-dimensional nature of the data and the existence of experimental biases pose serious data analysis challenges. We find that the standard data summaries used to study alternative splicing are severely limited, as they ignore a substantial amount of valuable information. Current data analysis methods are based on such summaries and are hence suboptimal. Further, they have limited flexibility in accounting for technical biases. We propose novel data summaries and a Bayesian modeling framework that overcome these limitations and determine biases in a nonparametric, highly flexible manner. These summaries adapt naturally to the rapid improvements in sequencing technology. We provide efficient point estimates and uncertainty assessments. The approach allows to study alternative splicing patterns for individual samples and can also be the basis for downstream analyses. We found a severalfold improvement in estimation mean square error compared popular approaches in simulations, and substantially higher consistency between replicates in experimental data. Our findings indicate the need for adjusting the routine summarization and analysis of alternative splicing RNA-seq studies. We provide a software implementation in the R package casper.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/13-AOAS687 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org). With correction

The determination for the modal age level for grades four and six for the difficulty of the principle: trees are a key to the past

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Constructing a gazebo: supporting teamwork in a tightly coupled, distributed task in virtual reality

Many tasks require teamwork. Team members may work concurrently, but there must be some occasions of coming together. Collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) allow distributed teams to come together across distance to share a task. Studies of CVE systems have tended to focus on the sense of presence or copresence with other people. They have avoided studying close interaction between us-ers, such as the shared manipulation of objects, because CVEs suffer from inherent network delays and often have cumbersome user interfaces. Little is known about the ef-fectiveness of collaboration in tasks requiring various forms of object sharing and, in particular, the concurrent manipu-lation of objects. This paper investigates the effectiveness of supporting teamwork among a geographically distributed group in a task that requires the shared manipulation of objects. To complete the task, users must share objects through con-current manipulation of both the same and distinct at-tributes. The effectiveness of teamwork is measured in terms of time taken to achieve each step, as well as the impression of users. The effect of interface is examined by comparing various combinations of walk-in cubic immersive projection technology (IPT) displays and desktop devices

Dynamical Schwinger process in a bifrequent electric field of finite duration: survey on amplification

The electron-positron pair production due to the dynamical Schwinger process in a slowly oscillating strong electric field is enhanced by the superposition of a rapidly oscillating weaker electric field. A systematic account of the enhancement by the resulting bifrequent field is provided for the residual phase space distribution. The enhancement is explained by a severe reduction of the suppression in both the tunneling and multiphoton regimes