527 research outputs found
Does Size Matter? School Consolidation Policy Issues in Arkansas
Providing a reasonable education for all students in Arkansas is a legal responsibility explicitly mandated by the stateâs constitution. Consistent with the long-standing American tradition of âgrassrootsâ control of education, public schools in all states are funded and managed first and foremost at the local level. The federal government can and does enact legislation with which schools must conform. Directly or indirectly, federal mandates provide significant amounts of monies to support particular types of school services and programming. But ultimate responsibility for financing and operating schools devolves on state government. In Arkansas, it has been held, the state must provide âa general, suitable, and efficient system of free public schoolsâ (Lakeview v. Huckabee, 2001)
A new direction for public understanding of science: toward a participant-centered model of science engagement.
Engaging the public with science is not an easy task. When presented, scientific findings, public health recommendations, and other scientific information filter through the personal values, beliefs, and biases of members of the public. Science communicators must contend with these differences in order to be effective in cultivating a public understanding of science. Given the importance of scientific understanding for living well in a complex world, increasing science understanding through science engagement is imperative. The field of public engagement with science is dichotomized by a public information deficit approach and a contextualist approach. The deficit approach prizes the factual content of science, its epistemic authority, and its communication to the public while the contextualist approach recognizes the sociocultural embeddedness of science in society, how science is received by publics, and how local knowledges intersect with science. I contend both approaches are incomplete, and I put forth a synthesis. My approach, the participant-centered model of science engagement, incorporates the factual content of science and its epistemic authority, but in a way that is sensitive to context. I argue for a deliberative democratic approach to public engagement with science and articulate a model inspired by learner-centered approaches to teaching in the formal education literature. I outline and assess six participant-centered strategies along with recommendations for particular practices associated with each
TUBIS â Integration von Campusdiensten an der Technischen UniversitĂ€t Berlin
Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugĂ€nglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.Die IT-Landschaft der UniversitĂ€ten ist historisch gewachsen. Unterschiedliche Abteilungen und FakultĂ€ten haben jeweils fĂŒr sie optimale Softwarelösungen ausgewĂ€hlt und in ihre ArbeitsablĂ€ufe integriert. Die aktuellen Anforderungen an die UniversitĂ€ten erfordern eine Integration der unterschiedlichen Insellösungen. Die TU-Berlin setzt hierbei auf ein eigenes Produkt, das auf Basis verschiedener Open Source-Lösungen erstellt wurde und stetig erweitert wird. Dabei werden nicht nur Daten zusammengefĂŒhrt, sondern auch ein universitĂ€tsweites, rollen-basiertes Rechtesystem etabliert, das sich, wie bereits gezeigt, in unterschiedliche Anwendungen integrieren lĂ€sst
Banning Noncompetes in Virginia
The past decade has seen a nationwide wave of reform in noncompete law, specifically the limitation of noncompete agreements. Since 2016, ten statesâincluding Virginia in 2020â banned the use of noncompete agreements against certain âlowwageâ employees. In order to stay ahead of this curve and ensure Virginia remains and grows as one of the top states to do business, this Article suggests that Virginiaâlike its neighbor, the District of Columbia, initially did in 2021âpass a complete ban of all noncompete agreements in the employment context. Such a ban would make Virginia a lucrative destination for entrepreneurs and startups by maximizing the job and employee market and keeping the best business opportunities for employers and employees alike in-state. The Article forecasts this effect by examining the rise of Californiaâs Silicon Valley, where employee noncompete agreements are banned, and the converse decline of innovation in Michigan since 1985, when the state accidentally repealed its noncompete ban. Virginia would specifically benefit from a ban of employee noncompetes because its current noncompete law is inadequate. This Article argues that Virginia courtsâ longstanding three-prong test weighing legitimate business interest, undue hardship, and public policy is dangerously unpredictableâso much so that the Supreme Court of Virginia once upheld and struck down the exact same noncompete agreement in two different casesâresulting in legal guesswork and unfair bargaining power between employer and employee. This Article also suggests that Virginiaâs 2020 âlow wageâ ban insufficiently addresses the issues at hand and even further adds to the burden of deciphering the law. While some may claim employee noncompete agreements are necessary to protect legitimate business interests and advance the freedom of contract, this Article responds that such business interests are already adequately protected by other, less problematic provisionsânamely, confidentiality and nonsolicitation agreementsâand that the freedom of contract is not any less valuable than the freedom of trade, which employee noncompete agreements severely restrain. Finally, this Article proposes model legislation to aid the Virginia General Assembly, and other jurisdictions who may follow suit, in passing such a ban
ZTBus: A Dataset of 1000+ Complete, Second-Resolved Driving Missions of Inner-City Transit Buses
This paper presents the Zurich Transit Bus (ZTBus) dataset, which consists of
data recorded during driving missions of electric city buses in Zurich,
Switzerland. The data was collected over several years on two trolley buses as
part of multiple research projects. It involves more than a thousand missions
across all seasons, each mission usually covering a full day of operation. The
ZTBus dataset contains detailed information on the vehicle's power demand,
propulsion system, odometry, global position, ambient temperature, door
openings, number of passengers, dispatch patterns within the public
transportation network, etc. All signals are synchronized in time and include
an absolute timestamp in tabular form. The dataset can be used as a foundation
for a variety of studies and analyses. For example, the data can serve as a
basis for simulations to estimate the performance of different public transit
vehicle types, or to evaluate and optimize control strategies of hybrid
electric vehicles. Furthermore, numerous influencing factors on vehicle
operation, such as traffic, passenger volume, etc., can be analyzed in detail.Comment: This work has been submitted to Scientific Data for possible
publicatio
Medical use of cannabis in Switzerland: analysis of approved exceptional licences
In recent years, the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) granted exceptional licenses for the medical use of cannabinoids, typically for 6 months with possible extensions. A systematic review of cannabinoids for medical use commissioned by the FOPH supports the use of cannabinoids for the treatment of chronic pain and spasticity. However, little is known about the patients treated with cannabinoids. We aimed to study medical uses of cannabinoids as part of the FOPH's programme of exceptional licenses.; We examined all requests for medical use of cannabinoids sent to FOPH in 2013 and 2014. A standardised data sheet was developed to extract data from the files of approved requests. We extracted the duration of the licence, the year it was granted, and the payer of the therapy. At the level of the patient we collected the date of birth, sex, region of residence, diagnosis and the indication. Ethical approval was granted by the Ethics Committee of the Canton of Bern.; We analysed 1193 patients licenced for cannabinoid treatment in 2013 or 2014. During 2013, 542 patients were treated under the exceptional licencing programme (332 requesting physicians) compared with 825 in 2014 (446 physicians). Over half of patients (685; 57%) were women. The mean age was 57 years (standard deviation 15.0), chronic pain (49%) and spasticity (40%) were the most common symptoms, and co-medication was reported for 39% of patients. Seventy-eight different diagnoses were recorded, including multiple sclerosis (257 patients, 22%), soft tissue disorders (119, 10%), dorsalgia (97, 8.1%), spinal muscular atrophy (65, 5.5%) and paraplegia/tetraplegia (62, 5.2%). Licence extensions were granted to 143 patients (26.4%) in 2013 and 324 patients (39.3%) in 2014. There were substantial regional variations of the rates of patients treated with cannabinoids. On average, eight patients per 100 000 residents received an exceptional licence. Most patients (1083, 91%) paid out of pocket.; Exceptional licences for medical use of cannabinoids have increased substantially in Switzerland, with the programme including patients with a wide range of conditions
The Turn-On of Mass Transfer in AM CVn Binaries: Implications for RX J0806+1527 and RX J1914+2456
We report on evolutionary calculations of the onset of mass transfer in AM
CVn binaries, treating the donor's evolution in detail. We show that during the
early contact phase, while the mass transfer rate, \Mdot, is increasing,
gravity wave (GW) emission continues to drive the binary to shorter orbital
period, \Porb. We argue that the phase where \Mdot > 0 and \nudot > 0
(\nu = 1/\Porb) can last between and yrs, significantly longer
than previously estimated. These results are applied to RX J0806+1527 (\Porb =
321 s) and RX J914+2456 (\Porb=569 s), both of which have measured \nudot >
0. \emph{Thus, a \nudot > 0 does not select between the unipolar inductor
and accretion driven models proposed as the source of X-rays in these systems}.
For the accretion model, we predict for RX J0806 that \ddot{\nu} \approx
\ee{1.0-1.5}{-28} Hz s and argue that timing observations can probe
at this level with a total yr baseline. We also place
constraints on each system's initial parameters given current observational
data.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, accepted to ApJ
Highly Efficient Year-Round Energy and Comfort Optimization of HVAC Systems in Electric City Buses
In this paper, we present a novel approach to perform highly efficient
numerical simulations of the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC)
system of an electric city bus. The models for this simulation are based on the
assumption of a steady-state operation. We show two approaches to obtain the
minimum energy requirement for a certain thermal comfort criterion under
specific ambient conditions. Due to the computationally efficient approach
developed, we can evaluate the model on a large dataset of 7500 scenarios in
various ambient conditions to estimate the year-round performance of the system
subject to different comfort requirements. Compared to a heating strategy based
on positive temperature coefficient (PTC) elements, we can thus show that a
heat pump (HP) can reduce the annual mean power consumption by up to 60%.
Ceiling-mounted radiant heating elements complementing a PTC heating system can
reduce the annual mean power consumption by up to 10%, while they cannot
improve the energy efficiency when used in conjunction with a HP. Finally, a
broad sensitivity study reveals the fact that improving the HP's heating-mode
coefficient of performance (COP) manifests the largest leverage in terms of
mean annual power consumption. Moreover, the annual energy expenditure for
cooling are around eight times smaller than those for heating. The case study
considered thus reveals that the advantages of improving the COP of the cooling
mode are significantly lower.Comment: This work has been accepted to IFAC for publication under a Creative
Commons Licence CC-BY-NC-N
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