Censoring the Student: A Bibliography

This thesis project includes a comprehensive bibliography that is centered on the topic of censorship as it applies to literature within the school and library setting. It also highlights the rights of students to read, write, and experience potentially controversial topics within the classroom and library. The Introduction examines the reasoning for the ongoing concern with censorship and cites several landmark legal cases and their outcomes. It briefly discusses the intersection of censorship, student rights, and the First Amendment. The successive chapters incorporate the bibliography itself and are organized by specific topics which include: the censorship debate, author and book censorship, court mandated censorship, school board censorship, students First Amendment rights, effects of censorship on librarians and school professionals, parents and students as instigators and/or victims, censorship effects on students

Gain Control With A-Type Potassium Current: IA As A Switch Between Divisive And Subtractive Inhibition

Neurons process and convey information by transforming barrages of synaptic inputs into spiking activity. Synaptic inhibition typically suppresses the output firing activity of a neuron, and is commonly classified as having a subtractive or divisive effect on a neuron’s output firing activity. Subtractive inhibition can narrow the range of inputs that evoke spiking activity by eliminating responses to non-preferred inputs. Divisive inhibition is a form of gain control: it modifies firing rates while preserving the range of inputs that evoke firing activity. Since these two “modes” of inhibition have distinct impacts on neural coding, it is important to understand the biophysical mechanisms that distinguish these response profiles. In this study, we use simulations and mathematical analysis of a neuron model to find the specific conditions (parameter sets) for which inhibitory inputs have subtractive or divisive effects. Significantly, we identify a novel role for the A-type Potassium current (IA). In our model, this fast-activating, slowly-inactivating outward current acts as a switch between subtractive and divisive inhibition. In particular, if IA is strong (large maximal conductance) and fast (activates on a time-scale similar to spike initiation), then inhibition has a subtractive effect on neural firing. In contrast, if IA is weak or insufficiently fast-activating, then inhibition has a divisive effect on neural firing. We explain these findings using dynamical systems methods (plane analysis and fast-slow dissection) to define how a spike threshold condition depends on synaptic inputs and IA. Our findings suggest that neurons can “self-regulate” the gain control effects of inhibition via combinations of synaptic plasticity and/or modulation of the conductance and kinetics of A-type Potassium channels. This novel role for IA would add flexibility to neurons and networks, and may relate to recent observations of divisive inhibitory effects on neurons in the nucleus of the solitary tract

Trunk muscle activity during drop jump performance in adolescent athletes with back pain

It was with great interest we read the recently published article “Trunk Muscle Activity during Drop Jump Performance in Adolescent Athletes with Back Pain.” Investigating back pain (BP) in adolescents is commendable as there is growing evidence that for many, an experience of BP as early as 14 years of age may relate to ongoing pain in adulthood (Coenen et al., 2017). Indeed, the conventional narrative is changing as individual physical factors such as posture, use of schoolbags, and hypermobility are only weakly associated with adolescent BP. Rather, factors which predict BP at a young age are considered to be multi-dimensional and include gender, negative BP beliefs and poor mental health (O\u27Sullivan et al., 2017; Smith et al., 2017). Mueller et al. (2017) have focused on a single physical factor (trunk muscle activation patterns) drawing inferences regarding BP prevention and treatment. This article prompts consideration of three essential aspects regarding research design and interpretation of findings: 1. Interpreting results from cross-sectional designs 2. Interpreting pain-related differences in motor behavior 3. Translating and conveying scientific results to the end-user (patients, healthcare professionals and policy makers)

Public Speaking for Graduate Student Reachers in the Diploma of Education.

Graduate student teachers in the Diploma of Education took part in a 10 hour elective on speaking in groups, aimed at helping those who were communication apprehensive or shy to overcome their fears. Confident speakers also took part, to provide modelling and assistance, and to learn ways of teaching oral communication in school. McCroskey\u27s (1977) Verbal Activity Scale (VAS) and Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA) were used with a questionnaire evaluating the programme (EvaIProg) to compare the reactions of the more and less confident speakers to the activities. The less confident speakers claimed to benefit from the programme, which is outlined. Certain activities were preferred by confident speakers and others by less confident speakers, reflecting the different ways each of the groups view themselves and their audience

Novel mid-infrared dispersive wave generation in gas-filled PCF by transient ionization-driven changes in dispersion

Gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fibre (PCF) is being used to generate ever wider supercontinuum spectra, in particular via dispersive wave (DW) emission in the deep and vacuum ultraviolet, with a multitude of applications. DWs are the result of the resonant transfer of energy from a self-compressed soliton, a process which relies crucially on phase matching. It was recently predicted that, in the strong-field regime, the additional transient anomalous dispersion introduced by gas ionization would allow phase-matched DW generation in the mid-infrared (MIR)-something that is forbidden in the absence of free electrons. Here we report for the first time the experimental observation of such MIR DWs, embedded in a 4.7-octave-wide supercontinuum that uniquely reaches simultaneously to the vacuum ultraviolet, with up to 1.7 W of total average power

TimewarpVAE: Simultaneous Time-Warping and Representation Learning of Trajectories

Human demonstrations of trajectories are an important source of training data for many machine learning problems. However, the difficulty of collecting human demonstration data for complex tasks makes learning efficient representations of those trajectories challenging. For many problems, such as for handwriting or for quasistatic dexterous manipulation, the exact timings of the trajectories should be factored from their spatial path characteristics. In this work, we propose TimewarpVAE, a fully differentiable manifold-learning algorithm that incorporates Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) to simultaneously learn both timing variations and latent factors of spatial variation. We show how the TimewarpVAE algorithm learns appropriate time alignments and meaningful representations of spatial variations in small handwriting and fork manipulation datasets. Our results have lower spatial reconstruction test error than baseline approaches and the learned low-dimensional representations can be used to efficiently generate semantically meaningful novel trajectories.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figure

Disordered, stretched, and semiflexible biopolymers in two dimensions

We study the effects of intrinsic sequence-dependent curvature for a two dimensional semiflexible biopolymer with short-range correlation in intrinsic curvatures. We show exactly that when not subjected to any external force, such a system is equivalent to a system with a well-defined intrinsic curvature and a proper renormalized persistence length. We find the exact expression for the distribution function of the equivalent system. However, we show that such an equivalent system does not always exist for the polymer subjected to an external force. We find that under an external force, the effect of sequence-disorder depends upon the averaging order, the degree of disorder, and the experimental conditions, such as the boundary conditions. Furthermore, a short to moderate length biopolymer may be much softer or has a smaller apparent persistent length than what would be expected from the "equivalent system". Moreover, under a strong stretching force and for a long biopolymer, the sequence-disorder is immaterial for elasticity. Finally, the effect of sequence-disorder may depend upon the quantity considered

App Store for EHRs and Patients Both

The Substitutable Medical Applications, Reusable Technologies (SMART) Platforms project ( www.smartplatforms.org ) seeks to develop an iPhone-like health information technology platform with substitutable apps constructed around core services. It is funded by a grant from the Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology’s Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) Program. SMART technologies enable existing electronic health records and HIT platforms to run substitutable apps. Substitutability is the capability inherent in a system of replacing one application with another of similar functionality. We created a patient-facing SMART instance using the open source Indivo personally controlled health record (PCHR). The SMART “read-only” API has been deployed on multiple systems, including the Cerner installation at Boston Children’s Hospital and the World Vista EHR. We sought to SMART-enable Indivo, the open source reference PCHR upon which HealthVault and other PCHRs were modeled. PCHRs provide patients with a secure repository of their health information that can be exposed to apps across a programming interface. We updated the open source Indivo PCHR to support the SMART API, enabling Indivo to act as a patient-facing apps platform, running the same or similar versions of apps that face clinicians

Prise en compte de l’hétérogénéité des préférences dans le cadre de la méthode des choix multi-attributs : application à un bien culturel public à vocation non touristique

Taking into account the heterogeneity of preferences in the choice experiment method : application to a non-tourist public cultural goodAs noted by W. J. Baumol, many cultural activities would not exist without public subsidies. The legitimation of these expenditures is all the more likely to occur if cultural preferences of individuals are taken into account when designing projects. In this sense, we apply the Choice Experiment method to the valuation of a municipal music school project intended for residents of Angers (France), avoiding a superposition of tourism and cultural concerns. Using random parameters Logit and latent class models, we show the existence of a heterogeneity of the individuals’ preferences according to their proximity to cultural and sporting activities. The results also indicate that it may be in the interest of public authorities to design a music school with a collective dimension beyond the interests of the only future users