Reflections on Teaching over a Decade in a Christian Institution of Higher Education

After many years in public education followed by 10 years of preparing teachers in a faith-based institution, this essay shares insights into what it means to cultivate and maintain a Christian ethic of care, toward self and others. This story of God’s faithfulness in my life is reflected outward through multiple lenses of care

Biometric responses to music-rich segments in films: the CDVPlex

Summarising or generating trailers for films or movies involves finding the highlights within those films, those segments where we become most afraid, happy, sad, annoyed, excited, etc. In this paper we explore three questions related to automatic detection of film highlights by measuring the physiological responses of viewers of those films. Firstly, whether emotional highlights can be detected through viewer biometrics, secondly whether individuals watching a film in a group experience similar emotional reactions as others in the group and thirdly whether the presence of music in a film correlates with the occurrence of emotional highlights. We analyse the results of an experiment known as the CDVPlex, where we monitored and recorded physiological reactions from people as they viewed films in a controlled cinema-like environment. A selection of films were manually annotated for the locations of their emotive contents. We then studied the physiological peaks identified among participants while viewing the same film and how these correlated with emotion tags and with music. We conclude that these are highly correlated and that music-rich segments of a film do act as a catalyst in stimulating viewer response, though we don't know what exact emotions the viewers were experiencing. The results of this work could impact the way in which we index movie content on PVRs for example, paying special significance to movie segments which are most likely to be highlights

The Need for Higher Minimum Staffing Standards in U.S. Nursing Homes.

Many U.S. nursing homes have serious quality problems, in part, because of inadequate levels of nurse staffing. This commentary focuses on two issues. First, there is a need for higher minimum nurse staffing standards for U.S. nursing homes based on multiple research studies showing a positive relationship between nursing home quality and staffing and the benefits of implementing higher minimum staffing standards. Studies have identified the minimum staffing levels necessary to provide care consistent with the federal regulations, but many U.S. facilities have dangerously low staffing. Second, the barriers to staffing reform are discussed. These include economic concerns about costs and a focus on financial incentives. The enforcement of existing staffing standards has been weak, and strong nursing home industry political opposition has limited efforts to establish higher standards. Researchers should study the ways to improve staffing standards and new payment, regulatory, and political strategies to improve nursing home staffing and quality

Capture of Leptophilic Dark Matter in Neutron Stars

Dark matter particles will be captured in neutron stars if they undergo scattering interactions with nucleons or leptons. These collisions transfer the dark matter kinetic energy to the star, resulting in appreciable heating that is potentially observable by forthcoming infrared telescopes. While previous work considered scattering only on nucleons, neutron stars contain small abundances of other particle species, including electrons and muons. We perform a detailed analysis of the neutron star kinetic heating constraints on leptophilic dark matter. We also estimate the size of loop induced couplings to quarks, arising from the exchange of photons and Z bosons. Despite having relatively small lepton abundances, we find that an observation of an old, cold, neutron star would provide very strong limits on dark matter interactions with leptons, with the greatest reach arising from scattering off muons. The projected sensitivity is orders of magnitude more powerful than current dark matter-electron scattering bounds from terrestrial direct detection experiments.Comment: 26 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables, 2 appendices. Discussion extended, references added, matches JCAP published versio

Plasmon Generation through Electron Tunneling in Graphene

The short wavelength of graphene plasmons relative to the light wavelength makes them attractive for applications in optoelectronics and sensing. However, this property limits their coupling to external light and our ability to create and detect them. More efficient ways of generating plasmons are therefore desirable. Here we demonstrate through realistic theoretical simulations that graphene plasmons can be efficiently excited via electron tunneling in a sandwich structure formed by two graphene monolayers separated by a few atomic layers of hBN. We obtain plasmon generation rates of $\sim10^{12}-10^{14}/$s over an area of the squared plasmon wavelength for realistic values of the spacing and bias voltage, while the yield (plasmons per tunneled electron) has unity order. Our results support electrical excitation of graphene plasmons in tunneling devices as a viable mechanism for the development of optics-free ultrathin plasmonic devices.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, 92 reference

Model Predictive Controller for piecewise affine system

2005 IFAC 16th Triennial World Congress, Prague, Czech RepublicThis paper presents a hybrid procedure to solve Model Predictive Controller (MPC) for Piecewise Affine System (PWA) The approach presented here belong to the class of Branch and Bound (B&B) methods. The procedure uses the concepts of reachable set combined to the specific B&B methods, in order to reduce the number of Quadratic Problems (QP) needed to be solved by the optimization algorithm

A FOLLOW-UP STUDY OF FIFTY-TWO RICHMOND PUBLIC SCHOOL PUPILS GIVEN PSYCHIATRIC STAFFING DURING THE 1966-1967 SCHOOL YEAR

This research study is a descriptive study of the effectiveness of the psychiatric staffing as determined by a follow-up study of fifty-two Richmond Public School Pupils given such staffing during the l966-67 school year. The review of pertinent literature reveals what others have contributed to the knowledge of the nature and function of the school helping team. The teamwork approach, which involves the efforts of several professions and disciplines working closely together, is seen as the best present method to meet the complex, overlapping needs which have been found to affect students\u27 learning. As a means of establishing guidelines and limits for this study, five areas of concern were defined. The questions to be answered by this study were: 1. What are the socio-economic backgrounds represented by the sample? 2. Were the recommendations made by the school psychiatrist implemented? 3. Is the overall psychiatric staffing effective according to the improvement in pupils presenting problems and the extent to which the recommendations were carried out? 4. To what extent do the available records contain sufficient information for a follow-up study? 5. What are the attitudes of the key persons responsible for the psychiatric staffing toward the effective operation of these staffings? The Pupil Personnel Services gave its approval to conduct this study. The sample numbered fifty-two. The agency requested and it was agreed that no pupil, school, or agency be contacted and that information be obtained only from the files and employees of Pupil Personnel Services. An interview schedule was constructed to elicit information to determine the extent to which the recommendations made during the psychiatric staffing were initiated and carried out. This schedule was applied to the pupil records. Open ended questions were used in interview schedules to gather pertinent information from three key persons responsible for the effective operation of the psychiatric staffing. The fifty-two pupil cases revealed the pupils to be largely from low income families, mostly males with acting-out behavior problems, and with no significant concentration from any one school. A larger percentage of the recommendations that were initiated involved the use of school resources rather than community resources. In nearly half of the pupil cases the recommendations were completely carried out, with a remaining few being carried out to a lesser extent. The findings suggested that, if the recommendations were carried out, the pupil would show behavior improvement. To a large extent the statements made by the key persons generally reflected that methods of record keeping be improved within the Department of Visiting Teachers; that there be an increase in the number and quality of the visiting teachers, especially for elementary and Junior high school placements; that parents of the pupils given psychiatric staffings become involved in the staffings and be included in the treatment process themselves; and that the visiting teacher exercise more responsibility for follow-up on the pupils given psychiatric staffing