Cultivating Classroom Spaces as Homes for Learning

Our action research ethnography explores sixth grade students’ perceptions of their classroom space as conducive or distracting to their learning experiences. Issues of physical environment, students’ self-governance, and disciplinary management are explored. We conclude by offering recommendations for other educators to consider

Does a School-Based Social Skills Program Have an Effect on Students’ Behavior and Social Skills?

Pulver and Fisher present a brief overview and analysis of the article, Social skills training in schools: An evaluation study, originally published in Adolescence. The authors present a summary of the key components of the article including the introduction, method and results of the study. They offer an additional analysis of implications for future practice, including a discussion of the translation of positive intervention outcomes to outside of the classroom, as well as a critique based on the lack of a control group in the study

Does the PeaceBuilders Intervention Reduce Violence in Schools?

Fisher and Pulver present a brief overview and analysis of the article, Initial behavior outcomes for the PeaceBuilders Universal School-Based Violence Prevention Program, originally published in Developmental Psychology. The authors present a summary of the key components of the article including the introduction, method and results of the study. They offer an additional analysis of implications for future practice, including a discussion of the positive impacts of PeaceBuilders on student experience and teacher perception of student social competence

Radiometric correction procedure study

A comparison of MSS radiometric processing techniques identified as a preferred radiometric processing technique a procedure which equalizes the mean and standard deviation of detector-specific histograms of uncalibrated scene data. Evaluation of MSS calibration data demonstrated that the relationship between detector responses is essentially linear over the range of intensities typically observed in MSS data, and that the calibration wedge data possess a high degree of temporal stability. An analysis of the preferred radiometric processing technique showed that it could be incorporated into the MDP-MSS system without a major redesign of the system, and with minimal impact on system throughput

Amorphous interface layer in thin graphite films grown on the carbon face of SiC

Cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is used to characterize an amorphous layer observed at the interface in graphite and graphene films grown via thermal decomposition of C-face 4H-SiC. The amorphous layer does not to cover the entire interface, but uniform contiguous regions span microns of cross-sectional interface. Annular dark field scanning transmission electron microscopy (ADF-STEM) images and electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) demonstrate that the amorphous layer is a carbon-rich composition of Si/C. The amorphous layer is clearly observed in samples grown at 1600{\deg}C for a range of growth pressures in argon, but not at 1500{\deg}C, suggesting a temperature-dependent formation mechanism

Modal Noise Mitigation through Fiber Agitation for Fiber-fed Radial Velocity Spectrographs

Optical fiber modal noise is a limiting factor for high precision spectroscopy signal-to-noise in the near-infrared and visible. Unabated, especially when using highly coherent light sources for wavelength calibration, modal noise can induce radial velocity (RV) errors that hinder the discovery of low-mass (and potentially Earth-like) planets. Previous research in this field has found sufficient modal noise mitigation through the use of an integrating sphere, but this requires extremely bright light sources, a luxury not necessarily afforded by the next generation of high-resolution optical spectrographs. Otherwise, mechanical agitation, which "mixes" the fiber's modal patterns and allows the noise to be averaged over minutes-long exposures, provides some noise reduction but the exact mechanism behind improvement in signal-to-noise and RV drift has not been fully explored or optimized by the community. Therefore, we have filled out the parameter space of modal noise agitation techniques in order to better understand agitation's contribution to mitigating modal noise and to discover a better method for agitating fibers. We find that modal noise is best suppressed by the quasi-chaotic motion of two high-amplitude agitators oscillating with varying phase for fibers with large core diameters and low azimuthal symmetry. This work has subsequently influenced the design of a fiber agitator, to be installed with the EXtreme PREcision Spectrograph, that we estimate will reduce modal-noise-induced RV error to less than 3.2 cm/s.Comment: Accepted by The Astrophysical Journa