Considering Quality Control in Distance and Online Education: A Commentary

Quality control measures are needed in distance education. The author examined the strengths and weaknesses of course delivery in distance education and provided recommendations for a successful series of steps that should be followed in course development to assure quality control. Quality control measures can become valuable tools to enhance the educational delivery of distance and online coursework and develop the professional competence of instructors. Measures can range from course oversight by trained personnel, to mandated components that are common within all courses. New technologies especially in rich multimedia and asynchronous communication methods allow for increased learning opportunities. Students can have access to a vast wealth of content available over various media, and if correctly designed and navigated, take control of their own learning. However, quality high-value learning will not take place unless common design elements are put into place for all distance learning courses. These elements include rich multimedia, asynchronous communication, and the mentoring of faculty that teach distance and online courses. Distance learning is gaining momentum in higher education. The student of today would select a distance or online course over a formal class if given the chance to choose. The literature on distance education and online learning is growing and this contribution will add to that body of literature

An analytical arrangement of the holy scriptures: according to the principles developed under the name of parallelism, in the writings of Bishop Lowth, Bishop Jebb, and the Rev. Thomas Boys, with an appendix and notes. Volume 1

https://place.asburyseminary.edu/ecommonsatsdigitalresources/1558/thumbnail.jp

Brain amyloid in preclinical Alzheimer\u27s disease is associated with increased driving risk

INTRODUCTION: Postmortem studies suggest that fibrillar brain amyloid places people at higher risk for hazardous driving in the preclinical stage of Alzheimer's disease (AD). METHODS: We administered driving questionnaires to 104 older drivers (19 AD, 24 mild cognitive impairment, and 61 cognitive normal) who had a recent (18)F-florbetapir positron emission tomography scan. We examined associations of amyloid standardized uptake value ratios with driving behaviors: traffic violations or accidents in the past 3 years. RESULTS: The frequency of violations or accidents was curvilinear with respect to standardized uptake value ratios, peaking around a value of 1.1 (model r(2) = 0.10, P = .002); moreover, this relationship was evident for the cognitively normal participants. DISCUSSION: We found that driving risk is strongly related to accumulating amyloid on positron emission tomography, and that this trend is evident in the preclinical stage of AD. Brain amyloid burden may in part explain the increased crash risk reported in older adults

Growth, Development, and Synchronization of Larval Diatraea Saccharalis and Characterization of Plasma Juvenile Hormone Esterase.

Male sugarcane borer, Diatraea saccharalis (F.), larvae at egg hatch were equal in weight to females, but on artificial diet, pupated in less time and achieved a smaller larval maximum and 1 day old pupal weight. The peak period for egg hatch and ecdysis was within a few hours after lights-on, and pupation occurred at random. Males completed larval development in 5 and 6 stadia and females in 6 stadia. Net larval growth was greater for males and females completing development in 6 stadia than in 5 stadia. Ecdysis to the last stadium occurred during the 12th to 14th day after egg hatch. By choosing last stadium 0 day old borers (GREATERTHEQ) 70 mg and 1 day old borers (GREATERTHEQ) 140 mg, a synchronous population of female sugarcane borers was obtained which completed the last stadium in 5 days. The prepupal stage occurred during the 5th day. Synchronous female borers were used in a physiological study of growth during the last stadium. The results were consistent with the literature and were reproducible even when tested as much as 1 year apart. A peak in the plasma juvenile hormone esterase (JHE) activity occurred near the time when female last stadium borers reached their maximum weight, and a second peak of plasma JHE activity and a peak in the plasma (alpha)-naphthyl acetate esterase ((alpha)-NAE) activity occurred at the prepupal stage. The peak JHE activity was 1.73 nmoles/min/ml and the peak (alpha)-NAE activity was 123.6 nmoles/min/ml. The last stadium JHE and (alpha)-NAE activity pattern, the inhibition profile, enzyme stability, isoelectric focusing, gel filtration, and HPLC analysis indicated that JH I and JH III was metabolized by the same JH specific esterase(s) distinct from the (alpha)-NAE\u27s. Juvenile hormone I was metabolized at twice the rate of JH III. Two JHE forms were resolved by isoelectric focusing and by HPLC analysis. The surgarcane borer JHE activity was not inhibited by paraoxon as it was in other Lepidoptera studied. The apparent K(,m) for the JHE metabolism of JH I was 2.80 uM

The effects of charge transfer inefficiency (CTI) on galaxy shape measurements

(Abridged) We examine the effects of charge transfer inefficiency (CTI) during CCD readout on galaxy shape measurements required by studies of weak gravitational lensing. We simulate a CCD readout with CTI such as that caused by charged particle radiation damage. We verify our simulations on data from laboratory-irradiated CCDs. Only charge traps with time constants of the same order as the time between row transfers during readout affect galaxy shape measurements. We characterize the effects of CTI on various galaxy populations. We baseline our study around p-channel CCDs that have been shown to have charge transfer efficiency up to an order of magnitude better than several models of n-channel CCDs designed for space applications. We predict that for galaxies furthest from the readout registers, bias in the measurement of galaxy shapes, Delta(e), will increase at a rate of 2.65 +/- 0.02 x 10^(-4) per year at L2 for accumulated radiation exposure averaged over the solar cycle. If uncorrected, this will consume the entire shape measurement error budget of a dark energy mission within about 4 years. Software mitigation techniques demonstrated elsewhere can reduce this by a factor of ~10, bringing the effect well below mission requirements. CCDs with higher CTI than the ones we studeied may not meet the requirements of future dark energy missions. We discuss ways in which hardware could be designed to further minimize the impact of CTI.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, and 2 tables. Accepted for publication in PAS

The DESI Experiment, a whitepaper for Snowmass 2013

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is a massively multiplexed fiber-fed spectrograph that will make the next major advance in dark energy in the timeframe 2018-2022. On the Mayall telescope, DESI will obtain spectra and redshifts for at least 18 million emission-line galaxies, 4 million luminous red galaxies and 3 million quasi-stellar objects, in order to: probe the effects of dark energy on the expansion history using baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), measure the gravitational growth history through redshift-space distortions, measure the sum of neutrino masses, and investigate the signatures of primordial inflation. The resulting 3-D galaxy maps at z<2 and Lyman-alpha forest at z>2 will make 1%-level measurements of the distance scale in 35 redshift bins, thus providing unprecedented constraints on cosmological models.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, a White Paper for Snowmass 201

The Mutual Interaction between Continental-Scale Ice Sheets and Atmospheric Stationary Waves

The great continental ice sheets of the Pleistocene represented significant obstacles to the Northern Hemisphere midlatitude westerlies. They must therefore have forced large changes in the atmospheric circulation, and con-sequently also in the patterns of accumulation and melting over the ice sheets themselves. A simplified three-dimensional coupled ice sheet–stationary wave model is developed in order to understand the ice sheet’s response to the circulation changes that it induces. Consistent with ice age climate simulations, the ice sheet topography induces an anticyclonic circulation over the ice sheet, causing a slight warming over the western slopes and a stronger cooling over the remainder. The modeled feedbacks significantly affect the ice sheet configuration, with the most important influences being the patterns of summer temperature, and the topographically induced pre-cipitation field. The time evolution of the ice sheet is also changed by the atmospheric feedbacks and the results suggest the possibility of multiple equilibrium solutions. 1