Making a scene: empowering third-grade students towards creative, independent, and collaborative musicianship in an after-school general music program

This project-thesis introduces an elementary general music curriculum designed to empower students towards creative music making. Building off the work related to creativity in music education by Green (2005), Hickey (2001), and Ruthmann (2008), this curriculum consists of two parts which highlight fundamental musical skill development and creative music making, respectively. The curriculum is rationalized in the contexts of a proposed local teaching environment and education policy, philosophy of music education, and current educational funding policies at the levels of state and federal governments, and non-governmental organizations

The status of Otala punctata (Muller, 1774) : a recently established terrestrial gastropod in Malta

A population of the alien helicid Otala punctata (Müller, 1774) has recently been found on the island of Malta (Central Mediterranean), located around a single plant nursery at Mosta in the central part of the island. Extensive field collections indicate that this species was very probably introduced via the horticultural trade and is gradually extending its range from its point of introduction, occupying a variety of natural and anthropic habitats. Analysis of size-frequency data suggests that Otala punctata has successfully bred through at least three consecutive reproductive events until 2006. We hypothesise that Otala punctata was originally imported accidentally with plant material and established itself in the nursery, from where it then escaped into the surrounding land since 2003. This situation represents the introduction of yet another alien species on Malta with the potential of becoming an agricultural pest, and a threat to the islands’ biodiversity.peer-reviewe

Capital Account Liberalization and the Role of the Renminbi

Despite an erosion of consensus on its benefits, capital account convertibility remains a long-term goal of China. This paper identifies three major preconditions for convertibility in China: a strong domestic banking system, relatively developed domestic financial markets, and an equilibrium exchange rate. The authors examine each of these in turn and find that, in significant respects, China does not yet meet any of the conditions necessary for convertibility. They then evaluate China’s progress to date on capital account liberalization, including recent efforts to promote renminbi internationalization and greater use of the renminbi in trade settlement. The paper concludes with an overview of remaining obstacles to convertibility and policy recommendations.China, renminbi, capital account

Cross-Platform Presentation of Interactive Volumetric Imagery

Volume data is useful across many disciplines, not just medicine. Thus, it is very important that researchers have a simple and lightweight method of sharing and reproducing such volumetric data. In this paper, we explore some of the challenges associated with volume rendering, both from a classical sense and from the context of Web3D technologies. We describe and evaluate the pro- posed X3D Volume Rendering Component and its associated styles for their suitability in the visualization of several types of image data. Additionally, we examine the ability for a minimal X3D node set to capture provenance and semantic information from outside ontologies in metadata and integrate it with the scene graph

Contra Epstein, Good Explanations Predict

Epstein has argued that an explanation\'s capacity to make predictions should play a minor role in its evaluation . This view contradicts centuries of scientific practice and, at least, decades of philosophy of science. We argue that the view is not only unfounded but seems to arise from a mistaken fear that ABM models are in need of defense against the criticism that they don\'t necessarily forecast events in the natural or social world.ABM, Agent Based Model, Modeling, Prediction, Explanation, Philosophy of Science