Universal Diversity Training

The Cleveland County Schools (CCS) district has more minorities and children living in poverty than in past years. With this increase in diverse cultures, teaching and teachers have remained the same. As a result, the achievement gap has not gotten smaller. White students are not growing and achieving as they should. There is a need now more than ever for teachers to step outside the box and do things differently. Not only must they do things differently, but they must also “see” things differently. This requires a paradigm shift. The purpose of this project is to develop a framework for CCS to ensure that all students are receiving an education that will make them “globally competent.” The Universal Cultural Diversity Training framework will provide teachers and administrators with tools and resources to help address the cultural awareness gap in CCS. CCS’s testing and discipline data were reviewed. The testing data showed that minority, more specifically African-American, and low socioeconomic students are behind their counterparts. The discipline data showed that African-Americans had the most discipline referrals (their total was almost equal to the totals of all other races combined). This information suggests that there is a disconnect between teachers and their students. The Universal Diversity Training Framework was created from a compilation of other works to help guide Cleveland County Schools “to become one of the 10 best performing districts in the state by challenging each student with an exceptional educational experience” (CCS Vision Statement). It is a four-phase framework (Phase 1: Introspection; Phase 2: Education; Phase 3: Actions, and Phase 4: Reflection/Evaluation) that will help enlighten staff and prove beneficial to students by providing guidance and resources to help teachers and staff “reconnect” with all students

Scaling Methods for Simulating Aircraft In-Flight Icing Encounters

This paper discusses scaling methods which permit the use of subscale models in icing wind tunnels to simulate natural flight in icing. Natural icing conditions exist when air temperatures are below freezing but cloud water droplets are super-cooled liquid. Aircraft flying through such clouds are susceptible to the accretion of ice on the leading edges of unprotected components such as wings, tailplane and engine inlets. To establish the aerodynamic penalties of such ice accretion and to determine what parts need to be protected from ice accretion (by heating, for example), extensive flight and wind-tunnel testing is necessary for new aircraft and components. Testing in icing tunnels is less expensive than flight testing, is safer, and permits better control of the test conditions. However, because of limitations on both model size and operating conditions in wind tunnels, it is often necessary to perform tests with either size or test conditions scaled. This paper describes the theoretical background to the development of icing scaling methods, discusses four methods, and presents results of tests to validate them

A comparative study to investigate the effect of orthodontic treatment on the uniqueness of the human anterior dentition

AIM: The human dentition contains many features which can be used to identify an individual from the dentition or from bite marks created and bite mark evidence may be used to link a suspect to a crime. The aim of this research was to investigate the effect of orthodontic treatment on the uniqueness of the human anterior dentition by comparison of the number of dental shape matches between pre- and post-treatment dental casts for a group of patients who have undergone orthodontic treatment (dental braces) to improve the alignment of their teeth. METHOD: This comparative study utilised pre- and post-orthodontic treatment dental casts from 36 patients. The dental casts were scanned and the anterior 6 teeth landmarked with 24 landmarks in total. The dental casts were divided into 4 groups: pre-orthodontic upper jaw (maxillary) and lower jaw (mandibular) and post-orthodontic maxillary and mandibular. Partial and full Procrustes analyses were undertaken to investigate the similarity between dental casts within each group and whether any of the comparisons were similar enough to be classified as a match. A landmarking repeatability study performed on a set of digitised dental casts determined the error of the landmarking procedure and allowed a proposed match threshold to be established. RESULTS: Orthodontic treatment reduced the uniqueness, and increased the similarity, between dentitions, as evidenced by a reduction in the maximum partial Procrustes distances in the post-orthodontic dental cast groups. None of the dental cast comparisons in the pre- or post-orthodontic maxillary or mandibular groups were classified as a match with the partial Procrustes analysis. However, many false positive matches (between 35 and 61) were identified within the post-orthodontic maxillary and mandibular groups using the full Procrustes analysis. CONCLUSIONS: Orthodontic treatment reduced the uniqueness of the human anterior dentition between different patients. There were no matches identified with the partial Procrustes analysis, but a large number of false positive matches were identified using the full Procrustes analysis. It is therefore proposed that full Procrustes analysis is unsuitable for this type of work and that only partial Procrustes analysis should be utilised

Evaluation of failure diagnosis in conceptual design of mechanical systems

A methodology for improving quality and reducing life cycle costs of mechanical systems is described. The principal concept is that a system can be designed, in the conceptual stages, to be easier to diagnose for failures. To perform this, functional decomposition and form to function mapping are utilized both as a model of design and to demonstrate the relation of diagnosis to design. Design guidelines from other disciplines of engineering and concurrent engineering principles are applied to enhance the concept. Of the elements of concurrent engineering, design for manufacturability affects the others the greatest. Design for manufacturability principles impact the size of field replaceable units and can improve the ease of failure diagnosis of a system. A number of hypothetical cases are introduced that illustrate the form to function mapping of mechanical systems. Equivalent systems are presented with varying degrees of diagnostic complexity. These systems are analyzed for their ease of diagnosis and an evaluation methodology is described. In addition, a system which is difficult to diagnose is redesigned for improved diagnosis without changing the form to function mapping. The area of design for diagnosis offers promise in improving system quality and reducing life cycle cost; however, further research in this area will be required

Two-Spinon and Orbital Excitations of the Spin-Peierls System TiOCl

We combine high-resolution resonant inelastic x-ray scattering with cluster calculations utilizing a recently derived effective magnetic scattering operator to analyze the polarization, excitation energy, and momentum dependent excitation spectrum of the low-dimensional quantum magnet TiOCl in the range expected for orbital and magnetic excitations (0 - 2.5 eV). Ti 3d orbital excitations yield complete information on the temperature-dependent crystal-field splitting. In the spin-Peierls phase we observe a dispersive two-spinon excitation and estimate the inter- and intra-dimer magnetic exchange coupling from a comparison to cluster calculations

Bias-free photoelectrochemical water splitting with photosystem II on a dye-sensitized photoanode wired to hydrogenase

Natural photosynthesis stores sunlight in chemical energy carriers, but it has not evolved for the efficient synthesis of fuels, such as H2. Semi-artificial photosynthesis combines the strengths of natural photosynthesis with synthetic chemistry and materials science to develop model systems that overcome Nature’s limitations, such as low-yielding metabolic pathways and non-complementary light absorption by Photosystem (PS) I and II. Here, we report a bias-free semi-artificial tandem platform that wires PSII to hydrogenase for overall water splitting. This photoelectrochemical cell integrated the red and blue light-absorber PSII with a green light-absorbing diketopyrrolopyrrole dye-sensitised TiO2 photoanode enabling complementary panchromatic solar light absorption. Effective electronic communication at the enzyme-material interface was engineered using an Os complex-modified redox polymer on a hierarchically-structured TiO2. This system provides a design protocol for bias-free semi-artificial Z-schemes in vitro and provides an extended toolbox of biotic and abiotic components to re-engineer photosynthetic pathways.ERC Consolidator Grant, EPSRC (nanoDTC, DTA studentship), Christian Doppler Research Association, OMV Group, Royal Society Newton International Fellowship, Cluster of Excellence RESOLV (DFG) and European Unions' Horizon 202

The role of contralesional dorsal premotor cortex after stroke as studied with concurrent TMS-fMRI

Contralesional dorsal premotor cortex (cPMd) may support residual motor function following stroke. We performed two complementary experiments to explore how cPMd might perform this role in a group of chronic human stroke patients. First, we used paired-coil transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to establish the physiological influence of cPMd on ipsilesional primary motor cortex (iM1) at rest. We found that this influence became less inhibitory/more facilitatory in patients with greater clinical impairment. Second, we applied TMS over cPMd during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in these patients to examine the causal influence of cPMd TMS on the whole network of surviving cortical motor areas in either hemisphere and whether these influences changed during affected hand movement. We confirmed that hand grip-related activation in cPMd was greater in more impaired patients. Furthermore, the peak ipsilesional sensorimotor cortex activity shifted posteriorly in more impaired patients. Critical new findings were that concurrent TMS-fMRI results correlated with the level of both clinical impairment and neurophysiological impairment (i.e., less inhibitory/more facilitatory cPMd-iM1 measure at rest as assessed with paired-coil TMS). Specifically, greater clinical and neurophysiological impairment was associated with a stronger facilitatory influence of cPMd TMS on blood oxygenation level-dependent signal in posterior parts of ipsilesional sensorimotor cortex during hand grip, corresponding to the posteriorly shifted sensorimotor activity seen in more impaired patients. cPMd TMS was not found to influence activity in other brain regions in either hemisphere. This state-dependent influence on ipsilesional sensorimotor regions may provide a mechanism by which cPMd supports recovered function after stroke

Preferencias hacia carne de cordero en supermercados de Temuco, región de la Araucanía, Chile

Lobos, G (Lobos, German). Univ Talca, Escuela Ingn Comercial, Talca, ChileThe low levels of consumption of lamb meat in Chile suggest the need for studies on consumer preferences in order to orient production. A study with this object was carried out to evaluate preferences for various cuts, breeds, state (fresh or frozen) and price of lamb's meat among supermarket buyers in Temuco, Chile, and the existence of different market segments, through a survey of 400 persons. Using a fractional factorial design for conjoint analysis, it was determined that the state of the meat was more important than the cut, the price and the breed, with a preference for meat in half carcasses and quarters, Araucano lamb, fresh, at a medium price level. Four consumer segments were distinguished by analysis of hierarchic conglomerates. The majority group (47.7%) was sensitive to the state and the cut, with preference for meat in quarters, fresh, Texel breed. The second group (25.3%) was sensitive to the breed, presenting the strongest preferences for meat in whole carcass, fresh, Araucano lamb. The third group (14.3%) was sensitive to the price, preferred meat in quarters, fresh, Araucano lamb. The minority group (12.7%) was sensitive to the state and price, preferring meat in quarters, Texel breed, and was the only group which preferred frozen meat and would pay a higher price. The segments were distinguished by age, ethnic origin and satisfaction with food-related life. Thus the commercialisation strategy for lamb in supermarkets in Temuco should concentrate principally on the sale of fresh meat cut in quarter