Critical Conversations with Suburban Administrative Leaders on Special Education Disproportionality: Case Studies of Suburban School Districts

This dissertation study explored high school administrators\u27 beliefs about why racial disproportionality exists, sought to understand the local practices that contribute to disproportionality, and identified interventions and supports that impact disproportionality in the special education referral, eligibility, and placement process. Research shows that students who are disproportionately represented in special education are negatively affected by factors such as stigmatization, substandard instruction, zero tolerance policies, and isolation from the general education setting (Sullivan, Kozleski, & Smith, 2008). Administrators were invited to participate in this study because they have a significant impact on student achievement and system-wide changes in schools. This research study focused on three high schools in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. Three administrative leaders participated in a face-to-face semi-structured interview and completed a questionnaire via Opinio (ObjectPlanet, Inc, 2018). The Constant Comparative Method (Olson, McAllister, Grinnell, Walters, & Appunn, 2016) was utilized to perform data analysis and make meaning of administrators\u27 beliefs. Major themes emerged as to why racial disproportionality existed in their schools, which included sociodemographic factors, biases, and perceived student deficits by teachers. Three major themes emerged by administrators regarding the practices that contribute to racial disproportionality, which included absent school-wide systems, hopeless beliefs about student failure, and decisions affected by implicit bias. The heart of this qualitative study was to move beyond the causes, and to hear from local administrators which steps they will implement to address the unjust practices that contribute to disproportionality. Three major themes emerged for eliminating disproportionality, which included developing a systematic plan, collaborating with stakeholder groups, and increasing resources to help school personnel meet the needs of all students

Definition of dose rate for FLASH pencil-beam scanning proton therapy: A comparative study

Purpose: Highlight the distinctions, both in terms of concept and numerical values, of the various definitions that can be established for the dose rate in PBS proton therapy. Methods: In an in silico study, five definitions of the dose rate, namely the PBS dose rate, the percentile dose rate, the maximum percentile dose rate, the average dose rate, and the dose averaged dose rate (DADR) were analyzed first through theoretical comparison, and then applied to a head and neck case. To carry out this study, a treatment plan utilizing a single energy level and requiring the use of a patient-specific range modulator was employed. The dose rate values were compared both locally and by means of dose rate volume histograms (DRVHs). Results: The PBS dose rate, the percentile dose rate, and the maximum percentile dose are definitions that are specifically designed to take into account the time structure of the delivery of a PBS treatment plan. Although they may appear similar, our study shows that they can vary locally by up to 10%. On the other hand, the DADR values were approximately twice as high as those of the PBS, percentile and maximum percentile dose rates, since the DADR disregards the periods when a voxel does not receive any dose. Finally, the average dose rate can be defined in various ways, as discussed in this paper. The average dose rate is found to be lower by a factor of approximately 1/2 than the PBS, percentile and maximum percentile dose rates. Conclusions: We have shown that using different definitions for the dose rate in FLASH proton therapy can lead to variations in calculated values ranging from a few percent to a factor of two. Since the dose rate is a critical parameter in FLASH radiation therapy, it is essential to carefully consider the choice of definition. However, to make an informed decision, additional biological data and models are needed

Chapter H-BIM semantico come strumento di documentazione inclusiva e accesso al Nuovo Catalogo Digitale dei Beni Culturali: il caso studio di Santa Maria delle Vergini a Macerata

The 43rd UID conference, held in Genova, takes up the theme of ‘Dialogues’ as practice and debate on many fundamental topics in our social life, especially in these complex and not yet resolved times. The city of Genova offers the opportunity to ponder on the value of comparison and on the possibilities for the community, naturally focused on the aspects that concern us, as professors, researchers, disseminators of knowledge, or on all the possibile meanings of the discipline of representation and its dialogue with ‘others’, which we have broadly catalogued in three macro areas: History, Semiotics, Science / Technology. Therefore, “dialogue” as a profitable exchange based on a common language, without which it is impossible to comprehend and understand one another; and the graphic sign that connotes the conference is the precise transcription of this concept: the title ‘translated’ into signs, derived from the visual alphabet designed for the visual identity of the UID since 2017. There are many topics which refer to three macro sessions: - Witnessing (signs and history) - Communicating (signs and semiotics) - Experimenting (signs and sciences) Thanks to the different points of view, an exceptional resource of our disciplinary area, we want to try to outline the prevailing theoretical-operational synergies, the collaborative lines of an instrumental nature, the recent updates of the repertoires of images that attest and nourish the relations among representation, history, semiotics, sciences

Integrate range shifter in immobilization for proton therapy: 3D printed materials characterization

3D printing is investigated for application in patient immobilization during proton therapy (PT). It potentially enables a merge of immobilization, range shifting and other functionality into one patient-specific structure. Beside minimizing the lateral beam spread due to the removal of air gap it could also reduce the collision risk and the treatment time compared to movable nozzle snouts. In this first study, 9 different 3D printed materials were characterized in detail. The resulting data (Table 1) will serve as input for the design of a printed immobilization structure. The printed test objects showed reduced geometric printing accuracy for 3 materials. Compression testing yielded Young’s moduli from 0.6 MPa to 3445 MPa, without deterioration after exposure to 100 Gy in a MV photon beam. Dual-energy CT methods were used to estimate the effective atomic number Zeff, the relative electron density e and the stopping power ratio SPR. Zeff ranged from 5.91 to 10.43. The SPR and e both ranged from 0.6 to 1.22. The measured photon attenuation coefficients at therapeutic energies scaled linearly with e. In a 62 MeV proton beam, good agreement was seen between the DECT estimated SPR and the measured range shift, except for the higher Zeff. As opposed to the photon attenuation, the proton range shifting was printing orientation dependent for certain materials. In conclusion printed materials exhibit a wide variation in structural and radiological properties. The quantification of these characteristics enables optimal material selection for the design of a multifunctional 3D printed immobilization structure for PT

Three-Dimensional Dose Prediction for Lung IMRT Patients with Deep Neural Networks: Robust Learning from Heterogeneous Beam Configurations

The use of neural networks to directly predict three-dimensional dose distributions for automatic planning is becoming popular. However, the existing methods only use patient anatomy as input and assume consistent beam configuration for all patients in the training database. The purpose of this work is to develop a more general model that, in addition to patient anatomy, also considers variable beam configurations, to achieve a more comprehensive automatic planning with a potentially easier clinical implementation, without the need of training specific models for different beam settings

Cognición imitativa para un robot mediante una comunidad de replicadores neuro-meméticos

Memetic computation, as an artificial intelligence tool, uses models of certain cerebral elements, called neuro-memes, hypothetically implicated in symbolization, dissemination and evolution of cultural characteristics in the human societies. In order to simulate the great evolutionary potential of neuro-memes, the Self-supervised perceptron (SSP) was recently presented as an artificial neuro-meme, and its imitative learning capability was verified through the control of a simple robot. Regarding that capability, it was observed an apprehensive deficiency when the imitator looks only the instructor´s freely evidenced behavior. When attending that deficiency, it was found the incapability to imitate a behavior with certain characteristics. Whereas the SSP is a model oriented to develop collective systems, this paper presents an SSP-based multi-agent system, by which such difficulties found in a single SSP were solved.Como herramienta de inteligencia artificial, la computación memética emplea modelos de ciertos elementos cerebrales, llamados neuro-memes, hipotéticamente implicados en la simbolización, diseminación y evolución de las características culturales en las sociedades humanas. Con la finalidad de simular el gran potencial evolutivo de los neuro-memes, recientemente se presentó el Perceptrón auto-supervisado (SSP) como replicador neuro-memético artificial, cuya capacidad de aprendizaje imitativo fue verificada al controlar un robot muy sencillo. Con respecto a dicha capacidad se observó una deficiencia aprehensiva cuando el imitador solamente observa la conducta libremente evidenciada por el instructor. Al atender dicha deficiencia se encontró la incapacidad de imitar una conducta con ciertas características. Considerando que el SSP es un modelo orientado al desarrollo de sistemas colectivos, en este artículo se presenta un sistema multi-agente compuesto por varios SSP, con el cual se solucionaron dichas dificultades encontradas en un SSP individual

GeNeSys - sistema de co-evolución genética y neuro-memética para la auto-organización senso-motriz y conductual en una sociedad de robots

Bio-inspired computing can be used to model natural and social systems, including societies with cultural development. Currently, two positions on cultural evolution stand out: with and without replicators. The existence of memes, as cultural replicators, is still hypothetical, and it seems better to look for them in the brain, because they can only be: neuro-memes. In literature there are only two models inspired by the neuro-memetics, and culture evolves side by side with genetics, so it’s necessary to model a gene-culture co-evolution, with neuro-memes. Such a model would be used to help validate the neuro-memetics, on the one hand, and on the other hand, it would help to understand and heal serious problems in human societies. Here, a genetic and neuro-memetic co-evolutionary system was achieved, and a robotic society used it for survive by developing behavioural patterns as a cultural tradition.La computación bio-inspirada puede ser empleada para modelar sistemas naturales y sociales, entre los cuales están las sociedades con desarrollo cultural. En la actualidad, sobresalen dos posturas sobre la evolución cultural: con y sin replicadores. La existencia de memes, como replicadores culturales, es aún hipotética, y parece mejor buscarlos en el cerebro, porque solo pueden ser: neuro-memes. En la literatura hay apenas dos modelos inspirados en la concepción neuro-memética, y como la evolución cultural va de la mano con la genética, se requiere entonces modelar una co-evolución gene-cultura, basada en neuro-memes. Un modelo así, se usaría para ayudar a validar la hipótesis neuro-memética, por un lado, y por el otro, ayudaría a comprender y atender serias problemáticas en las sociedades humanas. Con este proyecto se logró un sistema de co-evolución genética y neuro-memética, que fue usado por una sociedad de robots para sobrevivir, desarrollando un comportamiento cultural.Magíster en Ingeniería de Sistemas y ComputaciónMaestrí