Quality Counts 2012

In an attempt to gauge the educational progress of the nation and each state, Education Week has published state report cards since 1997 in its annual Quality Counts series. The 16th annual report - Quality Counts 2012 - was released in January. Overall, Arkansas ranked 5th among the 50 states and was one of only nine states in the U.S. that received a B. This policy brief examines Arkansas’ rank in each category of the report as well as the quality of the report itself

Active rc networks of low sensitivity for integrated circuit transfer function

Active RC network is capable of extremely high Q performance with exceptional stability and has independently adjustable zeros and poles. The circuit consists of two integrators and two summers that are interconnected to produce a complete second-order numerator and a second-order denominator

On model checking data-independent systems with arrays without reset

A system is data-independent with respect to a data type X iff the operations it can perform on values of type X are restricted to just equality testing. The system may also store, input and output values of type X. We study model checking of systems which are data-independent with respect to two distinct type variables X and Y, and may in addition use arrays with indices from X and values from Y . Our main interest is the following parameterised model-checking problem: whether a given program satisfies a given temporal-logic formula for all non-empty nite instances of X and Y . Initially, we consider instead the abstraction where X and Y are infinite and where partial functions with finite domains are used to model arrays. Using a translation to data-independent systems without arrays, we show that the u-calculus model-checking problem is decidable for these systems. From this result, we can deduce properties of all systems with finite instances of X and Y . We show that there is a procedure for the above parameterised model-checking problem of the universal fragment of the u-calculus, such that it always terminates but may give false negatives. We also deduce that the parameterised model-checking problem of the universal disjunction-free fragment of the u-calculus is decidable. Practical motivations for model checking data-independent systems with arrays include verification of memory and cache systems, where X is the type of memory addresses, and Y the type of storable values. As an example we verify a fault-tolerant memory interface over a set of unreliable memories.Comment: Appeared in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming, vol. 4, no. 5&6, 200

Polymorphic systems with arrays : decidability and undecidability

Polymorphic systems with arrays (PSAs) is a general class of nondeterministic reactive systems. A PSA is polymorphic in the sense that it depends on a signature, which consists of a number of type variables, and a number of symbols whose types can be built from the type variables. Some of the state variables of a PSA can be arrays, which are functions from one type to another. We present several new decidability and undecidability results for parameterised control-state reachability problems on subclasses of PSAs

The differential diagnosis of some of the more important cystic diseases of the bones

Thesis (M.D.)--Boston Universit

Raising the Kindergarten Entry Age

In recent years, the standards in Arkansas for entry into kindergarten underwent changes that can be difficult to understand. Across the nation, states have increased the minimum age of entry into public schools, and Arkansas is no exception. Recently, a policymaker in our state asked the OEP to look into the research surrounding the question of raising the kindergarten entry age. This policy brief discusses the new requirements as well as the impact of these requirements on families and children in the short and long term by looking at recent changes in Arkansas law and studies concerning the effect of entry age on student achievemen

Low Temperature Photo-oxidation of Chloroperoxidase Compound II

Oxidation of the heme-thiolate enzyme chloroperoxidase (CPO) from Caldariomyces fumago with peroxynitrite (PN) gave the Compound II intermediate, which was photo-oxidized with 365 nm light to give a reactive oxidizing species. Cryo-solvents at pH ≈ 6 were employed, and reactions were conducted at temperatures as low as − 50 °C. The activity of CPO as evaluated by the chlorodimedone assay was unaltered by treatment with PN or by production of the oxidizing transient and subsequent reaction with styrene. EPR spectra at 77 K gave the amount of ferric protein at each stage in the reaction sequence. The PN oxidation step gave a 6:1 mixture of Compound II and ferric CPO, the photolysis step gave an approximate 1:1 mixture of active oxidant and ferric CPO, and the final mixture after reaction with excess styrene contained ferric CPO in 80% yield. In single turnover reactions at − 50 °C, styrene was oxidized to styrene oxide in high yield. Kinetic studies of styrene oxidation at − 50 °C displayed saturation kinetics with an equilibrium constant for formation of the complex of Kbind = 3.8 × 104 M− 1 and an oxidation rate constant of kox = 0.30 s− 1. UV–Visible spectra of mixtures formed in the photo-oxidation sequence at ca. − 50 °C did not contain the signature Q-band absorbance at 690 nm ascribed to CPO Compound I prepared by chemical oxidation of the enzyme, indicating that different species were formed in the chemical oxidation and the photo-oxidation sequence