Paradox, problem, and potential in secondary school jazz education

Thesis (D.M.A.)--Boston UniversitySeveral rationales for secondary school jazz education are commonly referenced in pedagogy manuals, advocacy literature, and instructional resources: jazz education can develop certain musicianship skills more effectively than traditional large ensemble classes (e.g., concert band), jazz education fosters lifelong music-making, jazz education can help build and sustain an audience for jazz, and jazz education is important because jazz holds a special place in American art and culture. The growth of jazz education, however, does not seem to have led to the expansion of the jazz audience and consumers in the USA or increased the likelihood of lifelong music making of students. Furthermore, jazz educators have not employed the kind of curricular structure and pedagogical practices necessary to take advantage of salient features of jazz in secondary music education. A close examination of the incongruence between rationales for jazz education and the practices of jazz education in secondary schools reveals certain paradoxes: student jazz participation grows, while broader jazz consumption ebbs; jazz education resources multiply, while diversity of theory and practice within jazz education diminishes; student jazz ensembles become more polished, but at the expense of developing skills that enhance students' personal music agency. I contend in this study that paradoxes such as these can be useful as a framework for problematizing as well as imagining (and ultimately enacting) possibilities. I propose that a "this-with-that" dialectic described by Jorgensen enables paradoxes to be analyzed and potentials to be discovered. I describe three paradoxes in secondary school jazz education with a twofold purpose: 1) to critique secondary school jazz education and offer recommendations based on this critique, and 2) to provide a practical example of how paradoxes in music education might be engaged by music educators. Although this project will have special significance to secondary school jazz educators because it offers a sustained critique in that area, it is my hope that this project will benefit music educators of all types as they encounter paradoxes in music education

Dose Modeling and Statistical Assessment of Hot Spots for Decommissioning Applications

A primary goal of this research was to develop a technically defensible approach for modeling the receptor dose due to smaller hot spots of residual radioactivity. Nearly 700 combinations of environmental pathways, radionuclides and hot spot sizes were evaluated in this work. The hot spot sizes studied ranged from 0.01 m2 to 10 m2, and included both building and land area exposure pathways. Dose modeling codes RESRAD, RESRAD-BUILD, and MicroShield were used to assess hot spot doses and develop pathway-specific area factors for eleven radionuclides. These area factors are proposed for use within the existing Multiagency Radiation Survey and Site Investigation Manual (MARSSIM) context of final status survey design and implementation. The research identified pathways that are particularly hot spot sensitive —i.e., particularly sensitive to changes in the areal size of the contaminated area. The external radiation pathway was the most hot spot sensitive for eight of the eleven radionuclides studied. These area factors were evaluated both when the receptor was located directly on the soil hot spot and ranged from 6.6 to 11.4 for 1 m2 hot spot; and ranged from 650 to 785 when the receptor was located 6 m from the 1 m2 hot spot. The external radiation pathway was also the most sensitive of the building occupancy pathways. For the smallest building hot spot studied (100 cm2), the area factors were approximately 1100 for each of the radionuclides. A Bayesian statistical approach for assessing the acceptability of hot spots is proposed. A posterior distribution is generated based on the final status survey data that provides an estimate of the 99th percentile of the contaminant distribution. Hot spot compliance is demonstrated by comparing the upper tolerance limit——defined as the 95% upper confidence level on the 99th percentile of the contaminant distribution in the survey unit—with the DCGL99th value. The DCGL99th is the hot spot dose limit developed using the dose modeling research to establish area factors mentioned above. The proposed approach provides a hot spot assessment approach that considers hot spots that may be present, but not found. Examples are provided to illustrate this approach

A Description of the Approaches to Communication Apprehension

The relationship between speech and personality has been an area of study for many years and is understood to reflect both self-identity and communication proficiency. This thesis project surveys the major methods utilized in the treatment of communication apprehension, commonly described as stage fright or speech anxiety, specifically an “average person” in an educational setting. The research was centered on a clarifying question - what are the major methods of treating communication apprehension as revealed through a survey of textbooks and journals? The literature research notes several causes of speech tension such as societal expectations and performance guilt and further explores the human response to stress in relation to public speaking. It discusses the differing definitions by scholars, and explores systematic desensitization, its practices and effectiveness. Closing comments encourage the integration of basic communication skills training to improve student’s social and academic lives

PNG commodity prices - an opportunity not to be missed

Papua New Guinea is enjoying yet another mineral price boom which is underpinning a recent expansion in manufacturing and services. But with a difference. Unlike in previous booms, prices of most cash crops have also been surging, with significant parts of the rural economy benefiting. However, it is not clear that there is much expansion of smallholder productive capacity. The fundamental constraints continue to exist-transport, communication and financial services, as well as the poor environment for formal sector investment in agricultural services, logistics and processing. The real test of Papua New Guinea's management of the boom will be how it translates the surge in earnings into investment to address these problems

An Unusual Treatment for Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia

A 76-year-old female with a past medical history of an extraosseous chondrasrcoma status-post-resection thirty years prior, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and hypothyroidsimm presented to her primary care physicial with fatigue, two weeks of dyspnea on exertion, lightheadedness, and nausea

Life’s Lessons in the Lab: A Summer of Learning from Undergraduate Research Experiences

Research experiences for undergraduates (REUs) seek to increase the participating students’ knowledge and perceptions of scientific research through engagement in laboratory research and related activities. Various REU outcomes have been investigated, including influence on participants’ content knowledge, career plans, and general perceptions of their domains of research. The complexity of REUs and dynamic nature of student development provide opportunity for exploring how REUs influence student growth. Our research focused on first and second-year college students who participated in a residential REU program that took place in a chemistry department in a metropolitan university in the western United States. We assessed the standard REU outcomes and sought to document the emotions the students experienced through their participation. In addition, we used the developmental framework of self-authorship (Baxter-Magolda, 2004) as a lens to investigate the participants’ professional identity development. Our mixed methods research revealed shifts in the participants’ perceptions of science, increases in their knowledge of chemistry, and clarity in their career trajectories. We also found that the REU participants experienced profound levels of professional identity growth and used a number of affective terms, such as confidence, persistence, patience, and enjoyment, to describe their experience. Interpretations and implications are discussed

Poly-Pattern Compressive Segmentation of ASTER Data for GIS

Pattern-based segmentation of multi-band image data, such as ASTER, produces one-byte and two-byte approximate compressions. This is a dual segmentation consisting of nested coarser and finer level pattern mappings called poly-patterns. The coarser A-level version is structured for direct incorporation into geographic information systems in the manner of a raster map. GIs renderings of this A-level approximation are called pattern pictures which have the appearance of color enhanced images. The two-byte version consisting of thousands of B-level segments provides a capability for approximate restoration of the multi-band data in selected areas or entire scenes. Poly-patterns are especially useful for purposes of change detection and landscape analysis at multiple scales. The primary author has implemented the segmentation methodology in a public domain software suite

Regeneratively and Passively Constrained Control of Vibratory Networks

This dissertation is focused on the control of vibratory networks. Mechanical examples of vibratory systems include a civil structure, automobile, and a cantilever beam. These systems are excited by external disturbances such as earthquakes, wind, or uneven road elevations. Both passive and active control laws can be utilized to suppress vibrations in these networks. Each type of control law possesses inherent advantages and drawbacks. Active control provides the highest performance but is expensive, relies on an external power source, and is complicated to implement and maintain. Passive control devices (composed of springs, inertial elements, dashpots) represent the cheapest option and provide energy-autonomy, but have inferior performance when compared to an active control device. Due to their reliability and low cost, passive control technologies set the baseline for comparison for other, more sophisticated technologies. On the other hand, although it yields superior performance, active control presumes availability of unlimited energy, which may be an impractical or unreliable assumption. This dissertation examines a new class of control technologies, called regenerative control systems. A regenerative control system theoretically possesses energy-autonomy, but does so with better performance when compared to a passive control system. However, regenerative control devices are more expensive than passive and therefore the improved performance they attain must warrant utilization. A regenerative control device is assumed to be connected to a large energy storage device (battery, supercapacitor, etc). At times, the control device will draw energy from the energy storage device in order to actuate the network. At other times, the control device converts mechanical energy from the network into electrical energy and replenishes the energy in the storage device. The regenerative controller is constrained such that, on average, it generates more energy than it expends. This constraint, which is a relaxation of a passive control law constraint, ensures the local energy storage device never completely depletes. One of the main focuses of this research is to develop theory which can can solve for optimal regenerative and passive control laws. Optimizing control laws for both types of technology, in the context of the same problem, allows for a fair comparison.The regenerative control design problem can be formulated as a convex optimization and therefore can be solved easily with many commercial solvers. Passively constrained control design is a nonconvex problem and a new technique, Iterative Convex Over-Bounding (ICO) is proposed and developed to solve this nonconvex optimization. We show that optimal regenerative control outperforms optimal passive control if parasitic losses are sufficiently small. We also propose a technique to quantify how large the parasitics can be for a regenerative controller to still outperform a passive controller for a given problem.PHDCivil EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138455/1/erwarner_1.pd

Iron-Line Emission as a Probe of Bardeen-Petterson Accretion Disks

In this work we show that Bardeen-Petterson accretion disks can exhibit unique, detectable features in relativistically broadened emission line profiles. Some of the unique characteristics include inverted line profiles with sharper red horns and softer blue horns and even profiles with more than 2 horns from a single rest-frame line. We demonstrate these points by constructing a series of synthetic line profiles using simple two-component disk models. We find that the resultant profiles are very sensitive to the two key parameters one would like to constrain, namely the Bardeen-Petterson transition radius r_{BP} and the relative tilt \beta between the two disk components over a range of likely values [10 < r_{BP}/(GM/c^2) < 40 ; 15deg < \beta < 45deg]. We use our findings to show that some of the ``extra'' line features observed in the spectrum of the Seyfert-I galaxy MCG--6-30-15 may be attributable to a Bardeen-Petterson disk structure. Similarly, we apply our findings to two likely Bardeen-Petterson candidate Galactic black holes - GRO J1655-40 and XTE J1550-564. We provide synthetic line profiles of these systems using observationally constrained sets of parameters. Although we do not formally fit the data for any of these systems, we confirm that our synthetic spectra are consistent with current observations.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, submitted to Ap

A Fleet Tracking System using G.P.S. and Radios

Doc Warner\u27s Alaska Fishing LLC is a growing business operating out of Excursion Inlet, Alaska. Based in Bountiful, Utah, this company has experienced large amounts of growth in the past few years, and as a result has needed to make quick adaptations to accommodate larger groups of people fishing with them. Doc Warner\u27s offers a unique experience in that they do not charter boats, but rather allow their guests to captain the boats. The number of vessels that might be fishing at any time has increased from four to more than twenty in the last three years. This large increase has made it difficult for the staff to watch over each individual boat, and the business feels that its customer service is declining from the high standard it desires to give. For example, if a boat has engine troubles, it is often over an hour before the staff is able to discover this and assist the guests. Doc Warner\u27s would also like a way to alert their guests to current fishing hot-spots . Other problems include guests wandering too far from the camp and potentially heading into dangerous waters, or guests staying out too late after curfew. Doc Warner\u27s would like a system that will give them the location of each of their boats at any given time