School Community Members\u27 Perceptions Regarding LGBT-based Bullying, Harassment, and Violence

In Tennessee, a majority of students who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgender (LGBT) do not feel safe due to bullying and harassment that is targeted toward them by their peers. Schools, such as MTS school (a pseudonym), are not required to specify protection for LGBT students, causing the LGBT bullying to continue without being reported and resulting in higher absences, lower achievement, greater mental health issues, and in some cases, suicidal ideation among LGBT students. Through confidential personal interviews that were transcribed and coded, this case study\u27s purpose was to better understand how MTS adult stakeholders perceive (a) the issue of LGBT based violence, (b) the effectiveness of the school\u27s current bullying policy in protecting LGBT students, and (c) the possibility of implementing a change in the school policy to protect LGBT students. Exploring the barriers to protecting LGBT students was based on the theoretical framework of antibias education in which students gain self-awareness, develop acceptance of human diversity, recognize unfairness in society, and are empowered to act against discrimination. The following four themes emerged: (a) accepting culture, (b) protection of students, (c) need for change, and (d) process for change. These findings have led to the development of a policy recommendation and plan of action that, through antibias education, will specifically protect the LGBT students and include acceptance and tolerance of the LGBT community in the counseling curriculum. The results of this study may create a positive social change by opening up dialogue concerning the effects of LGBT-based bullying on students and exploring opportunities to create a safe school environment for all children

Atmospheric corrosion of austenitic stainless steels

Atmospheric corrosion was investigated using electrochemical and droplet studies. The effects of changes in bulk solution concentration and local pit chemistry on pit propagation and repassivation of 304L and 316L stainless steels were investigated using $in$ $situ$ synchrotron X-radiation and electrochemical techniques. Radiography and zig-zag electrochemical sweeps showed that in dilute chloride solutions, partial passivation was observed to initiate locally and propagate across the corroding surface. This caused repassivation gradually rather than as a uniform event. In concentrated chloride solutions, repassivation did not show a sudden drop in current but rather a gradual decrease as potential swept down. Pitting behaviour was also affected by solution concentration. Dilute solutions showed metastable pitting followed by a sharp breakdown (pitting) potential. Concentrated solutions however showed no metastability and a gradual increase in current when pitting. To determine the cause of current oscillations in 304L artificial pits in NaCl:NaNO$_3$ solutions near the repassivation potential, the salt layers were scanned $in$ $situ$ using XRD. The salt layer was confirmed to be FeCl$_2$.4H$_2$O and no nitrate salt was found. A mechanism was suggested to explain the current oscillations in terms of partial passivation being undercut by the advancing corrosion front

Exercise physiologists: essential players in interdisciplinary teams for noncommunicable chronic disease management

Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), such as obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus, are a growing public health challenge in Australia, accounting for a significant and increasing cost to the health care system. Management of these chronic conditions is aided by interprofessional practice, but models of care require updating to incorporate the latest evidence-based practice. Increasing research evidence reports the benefits of physical activity and exercise on health status and the risk of inactivity to chronic disease development, yet physical activity advice is often the least comprehensive component of care. An essential but as yet underutilized player in NCD prevention and management is the “accredited exercise physiologist,” a specialist in the delivery of clinical exercise prescriptions for the prevention or management of chronic and complex conditions. In this article, the existing role of accredited exercise physiologists in interprofessional practice is examined, and an extension of their role proposed in primary health care settings

An Unstructured CFD Mini-Application for the Performance Prediction of a Production CFD Code

Maintaining the performance of large scientific codes is a difficult task. To aid in this task, a number of mini-applications have been developed that are more tractable to analyze than large-scale production codes while retaining the performance characteristics of them. These “mini-apps” also enable faster hardware evaluation and, for sensitive commercial codes, allow evaluation of code and system changes outside of access approval processes. In this paper, we develop MG-CFD, a mini-application that represents a geometric multigrid, unstructured computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code, designed to exhibit similar performance characteristics without sharing commercially sensitive code. We detail our experiences of developing this application using guidelines detailed in existing research and contributing further to these. Our application is validated against the inviscid flux routine of HYDRA, a CFD code developed by Rolls-Royce plc for turbomachinery design. This paper (1) documents the development of MG-CFD, (2) introduces an associated performance model with which it is possible to assess the performance of HYDRA on new HPC architectures, and (3) demonstrates that it is possible to use MG-CFD and the performance models to predict the performance of HYDRA with a mean error of 9.2% for strong-scaling studies

The Vicious Circle of Blackouts and Revenue Collection in Developing Economies: Evidence from Ghana

MacroeconomicsAs reliable electricity is needed to form and sustain successful businesses, power is critically important for economic growth, especially for developing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. In urban areas where most residences and businesses are connected to the power grid, utilities that are hampered by revenue shortfalls must implement load shedding, or rolling blackouts, to meet rising demand. In working paper 1809, PERC Professor Steven Puller, PERC Graduate Fellow Brittany Street and co-authors Belinda Yebuah-Dwamena and James Dzansi investigate whether revenue shortfalls from low bill collection rates contribute to a negative feedback loop that results in power supply shortages and a weaker electric utility

The Vicious Circle of Blackouts and Revenue Collection in Developing Economies: Evidence from Ghana

Retirement_SavingsAccess to reliable electricity is one of the largest barriers to economic growth in developing economies. Utilities suffer from the twin challenges of quasi-fiscal deficits and the need to implement rolling blackouts during periods with supply shortages. In this paper, the authors measure a negative feedback loop between bill payment and rolling blackouts that can create a “revenue trap� for electric utilities. Using household-level data on bill payment and power outages before and after a power crisis in Ghana, the authors estimate the impact of quasi-random exposure to power outages on subsequent bill payment. This paper studies a unique feature of the power grid whereby customers in close proximity are exposed to different levels of blackouts because some are served by a feeder with critical infrastructure “down the line� and others are served by feeders that do not service essential infrastructure. Findings show that households quasi-experimentally exposed to rolling blackouts accumulate larger unpaid balances relative to households on essential feeders. This is consistent with a negative feedback loop in which decreases in power reliability induce households to pay bills at lower rates and, thus, weaken the utility’s financial viability

The effect of deposition conditions on atmospheric pitting corrosion location under Evans droplets on 304L stainless steel

Pit location during atmospheric corrosion of Type 304L stainless steel under MgCl2 droplets depends on initial droplet concentration. Pits formed predominantly in the center of the droplet for concentrations ≥4 M, closer to the perimeter for 1.5 M to 3 M, and were randomly distributed for concentrations ≤1 M. Pits initiated only after the droplets had evaporated to a critical concentration &amp;gt;3 M, where droplets deposited with lower initial concentrations were thinner. The results can be explained in terms of “differential aeration” and IR drop effects, showing that corrosion in “splash zones” may differ from that under aerosol salt deposit layers that deliquesce forming initially saturated solutions.</jats:p