The Many Birds of Passage: A Cultural Self Study on Immigration Then and Now

The Many Birds of Passage: A Cultural Study of Then and Now, is a docu-drama based upon the Norwegian experience of immigration and the Mexican experience of immigration. It focuses on the current system of immigration and the way in which our policies are formed by presenting different voices of immigrants, including a self monologue as well. They are powerful stories representing a few immigrants’ experiences from different points of the process of migration. It begins with the decision process and goes from the journey to arrival and the ultimate experience of staying or returning home or beginning a new journey. It uses the power of stories and myths in attempt to create transformative power to create a greater environment of understanding by connecting people to their humanity while looking at this complex current issue of immigration reform in theUnited States. It is meant to inspire people to ground themselves to their own ancestral history and also consider their own immigration background. Human beings are often migratory by nature and in fact we often can find in ourselves, someone in our family, or in our past, the triumphs and trials faced throughout the migratory process

NASA's Astromaterials Collections: housed at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX

No abstract availabl

Apollo Missions to the Lunar Surface

Six Apollo missions to the Moon, from 1969-1972, enabled astronauts to collect and bring lunar rocks and materials from the lunar surface to Earth. Apollo lunar samples are curated by NASA Astromaterials at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX. Samples continue to be studied and provide clues about our early Solar System. Learn more and view collected samples at: https://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/lunar

Nasa's Astromaterials Collections: Housed at the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, TX

The Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division at JSC is responsible for the curation of extraterrestrial samples from NASA's past, present and future sample return missions. These samples provide data that help scientists better understand the history and evolution of our Solar System. Our mission is to preserve, protect, and distribute samples for research by the present and future scientific community

Engaging Students Through Classroom Connection Webinars to Improve Their Understanding of the Mars Science Laboratory Mission

Planetary exploration missions to other worlds, like Mars, can generate a lot of excitement and wonder for the public. The Mars Science Laboratory Mission is one of the latest planetary missions that has intrigued the public perhaps more than most. How can scientists and educational specialists capitalize on the allure of this mission and involve students and teachers in a way that not only shares the story of the mission, but actively engages classrooms with scientists and improves their understanding of the science? The Expedition Earth and Beyond (EEAB) Program [1], facilitated by the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) Directorate Education Program at the NASA Johnson Space Center achieves this by facilitating MSL mission focused classroom connection webinars. Five MSL-focused webinars facilitated through EEAB during the 2012 fall semester engaged almost 3000 students and teachers. Involved STEM experts/role models helped translate the science behind the Mars Science Laboratory mission in a comprehensive, exciting, and engaging manner. These virtual events captured participants attention while increasing their science awareness and understanding of the MSL mission

Masters-Level Counseling Students’ Awareness of Council of Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs Accreditation

As the counseling profession continues to evolve and change, there is a growing need for more professional counselors who are appropriately trained. Research indicated that a high percentage of prospective and current counseling graduate students lacked awareness of the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) accreditation prior to and following enrollment in a counseling graduate program; therefore, these students were not making fully informed decisions when selecting an appropriate graduate program that would prove beneficial to their professional goals. In this descriptive phenomenological inquiry, 7 master’s-level counseling students provided their lived experiences of searching for and selecting a graduate program, specifying how CACREP-awareness was influential. The collected data was analyzed using the 6 steps of the descriptive phenomenological psychological method. Five clear themes emerged, under which 2 presented additional sub-themes. The theme of chosen program factors, familiarity, and flexibility yielded 5 subthemes: format, location, finances, faculty, and program requirements. Theme 5, identification of CACREP-accreditation, was further divided into discovery of CACREP-accreditation and state licensure requirements. These results provided a foundation for use in future research on CACREP-awareness and how students learn about CACREP. In addition, the findings aid in the facilitation of outreach efforts to increase CACREP-dialogue across the profession and within undergraduate programs. This information can be used to inform counseling programs about the importance student’s ascribe to accreditation resulting in increased advertisement and strengthened recruitment measures

Bounds on changes in Ritz values for a perturbed invariant subspace of a Hermitian matrix

The Rayleigh-Ritz method is widely used for eigenvalue approximation. Given a matrix $X$ with columns that form an orthonormal basis for a subspace \X, and a Hermitian matrix $A$, the eigenvalues of $X^HAX$ are called Ritz values of $A$ with respect to \X. If the subspace \X is $A$-invariant then the Ritz values are some of the eigenvalues of $A$. If the $A$-invariant subspace \X is perturbed to give rise to another subspace \Y, then the vector of absolute values of changes in Ritz values of $A$ represents the absolute eigenvalue approximation error using \Y. We bound the error in terms of principal angles between \X and \Y. We capitalize on ideas from a recent paper [DOI: 10.1137/060649070] by A. Knyazev and M. Argentati, where the vector of absolute values of differences between Ritz values for subspaces \X and \Y was weakly (sub-)majorized by a constant times the sine of the vector of principal angles between \X and \Y, the constant being the spread of the spectrum of $A$. In that result no assumption was made on either subspace being $A$-invariant. It was conjectured there that if one of the trial subspaces is $A$-invariant then an analogous weak majorization bound should only involve terms of the order of sine squared. Here we confirm this conjecture. Specifically we prove that the absolute eigenvalue error is weakly majorized by a constant times the sine squared of the vector of principal angles between the subspaces \X and \Y, where the constant is proportional to the spread of the spectrum of $A$. For many practical cases we show that the proportionality factor is simply one, and that this bound is sharp. For the general case we can only prove the result with a slightly larger constant, which we believe is artificial.Comment: 12 pages. Accepted to SIAM Journal on Matrix Analysis and Applications (SIMAX

Reinventing Image Detective: An Evidence-Based Approach to Citizen Science Online

Usability studies demonstrate that web users are notoriously impatient, spending as little as 15 seconds on a home page. How do you get users to stay long enough to understand a citizen science project? How do you get users to complete complex citizen science tasks online? Image Detective, a citizen science project originally developed by scientists and science engagement specialists at the NASA Johnson Space center to engage the public in the analysis of images taken from space by astronauts to help enhance NASA's online database of astronaut imagery, partnered with the CosmoQuest citizen science platform to modernize, offering new and improved options for participation in Image Detective. The challenge: to create a web interface that builds users' skills and knowledge, creating engagement while learning complex concepts essential to the accurate completion of tasks. The project team turned to usability testing for an objective understanding of how users perceived Image Detective and the steps required to complete required tasks. A group of six users was recruited online for unmoderated and initial testing. The users followed a think-aloud protocol while attempting tasks, and were recorded on video and audio. The usability test examined users' perception of four broad areas: the purpose of and context for Image Detective; the steps required to successfully complete the analysis (differentiating images of Earth's surface from those showing outer space and identifying common surface features); locating the image center point on a map of Earth; and finally, naming geographic locations or natural events seen in the image. Usability test findings demonstrated that the following best practices can increase participation in Image Detective and can be applied to the successful implementation of any citizen science project: (1) Concise explanation of the project, its context, and its purpose; (2) Including a mention of the funding agency (in this case, NASA); (3) A preview of the specific tasks required of participants; (4) A dedicated user interface for the actual citizen science interaction. In addition, testing revealed that users may require additional context when a task is complex, difficult, or unusual (locating a specific image and its center point on a map of Earth). Video evidence will be made available with this presentation