Florida Charter Schools: Hot and Humid with Passing Storms

This report examines the history of Florida's charter school initiative, results to date, and areas where the state can improve

Education’s Fiscal Cliff, Real or Perceived?

What would an education fiscal cliff do to public charter school funding, not to mention overall public education funding? And what role, if any, did federal funds play in averting a funding disaster for all public education? This research team currently is looking for answers to these questions. A new research project has been funded to evaluate the revenues provided to traditional public schools and public charter schools during the FY11 school year, and a report on the findings in 30 states and the District of Columbia will be released in spring 2014. Prior to the release of this report, however, we can review data in five cities to see if the alarms matched the reality of school funding

Development of the MyCyberSkills™ iPad App: A Scenarios-Based, Hands-On Measure of Non-IT Professionals’ Cybersecurity Skills

Although advances in Information Technology (IT) have been significant over the past several decades when it comes to protection of corporate information systems (IS), human errors and social engineering appear to prevail in circumventing such IT protections. While most employees may have the best of intentions, without cybersecurity skills they represent the weakest link in an organization’s IS security. Skills are defined as the combination of knowledge, experience, and ability to do something well. Cybersecurity skills correspond to the skills surrounding the hardware and software required to execute IS security to mitigate cyber-attacks. However, the current measures of end-user cybersecurity skills are based on self-reported surveys. This study is the second phase of a larger research project that is aimed to develop a scenario-based iPad application to measure cybersecurity skills based on actual scenarios with hands-on tasks that the participants complete in demonstrating their skills. To design a measure that has both high validity and reliability, subject matter experts’ (SMEs) opinion of the top nine cybersecurity skills and their skill importance weight were identified in the first phase of the study following the Delphi method. This phase of the research in progress involves the design and development of the MyCyberSkills™ iPad application (app) using scenario-based, hands-on tasks related to each of the nine SMEs identified cybersecurity skills

Charter School Funding: Inequity’s Next Frontier

Of all the controversies swirling around the nation’s charter schools, none is more hotly contested than the debate over funding. Charter opponents charge that] these autonomous public schools are draining scarce resources from public school districts. Proponents, by contrast, complain that charter schools do not get their fair share of public education dollars

Time resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy of surface-plasmon-enhanced light emission from conjugate polymers

The authors have experimentally verified that the light emission from conjugated polymers can be enhanced through the use of surface plasmon coupling layers. Carrier dynamics of such plasmon-enhanced organic light emitters were studied and a recombination rate increase due to surface plasmon polaritons was experimentally observed. Internal quantum efficiency data from the polyfluorenes studied follow the trend supported by the time resolved photoluminescence measurements

Diagnosing delirium in critically ill children: Validity and reliability of the Pediatric Confusion Assessment Method for the Intensive Care Unit*

To validate a diagnostic instrument for pediatric delirium in critically ill children, both ventilated and nonventilated, that uses standardized, developmentally appropriate measurements

Perinatal Outcome in the Live-Born Infant with Prenatally Diagnosed Omphalocele

OBJECTIVE: To compare perinatal outcomes between liveborn non-isolated and isolated omphaloceles diagnosed during a prenatal ultrasound. STUDY DESIGN: Fetuses (n=86) with omphalocele were identified between 1995–2007 at a single institution. Inclusion criteria were an omphalocele >14 weeks gestation, available fetal and/or neonatal karyotype, and a liveborn infant (n=46). Perinatal outcomes were compared in non-isolated (n=23) and isolated omphaloceles (n=23). RESULTS: For all omphaloceles, the majority delivered after 34 weeks by cesarean. Mean birth weight (2782 vs. 2704g), median length of stay (27 vs. 25 days), and mortality (2 in each group) was not different between the non-isolated and isolated groups, P>0.05. In the non-isolated group, 7 major anomalies were not confirmed postnatally. Of the prenatally diagnosed isolated omphaloceles, 8(35%) were diagnosed with a syndrome or other anomalies after birth. CONCLUSION: The outcomes were similar in non-isolated and isolated prenatally diagnosed omphaloceles, but ultrasound did not always accurately determine the presence or absence of associated anomalies