The effects of consideration and initiating structure exhibited by principals on teacher morale in selected Louisiana secondary schools

This study was conducted to determine whether a statistically significant relationship exists between the leadership styles of principals and teacher morale in the public secondary schools of north Louisiana, as perceived by teachers. The Ohio State studies and Getzels and Guba\u27s Social Systems Model for educational organizations provided the theoretical framework for this study. Selected demographic variables of gender of the teacher, years of teaching experience, and race of the teacher were considered in this study. Information on teacher morale was collected from teachers in 14 randomly selected schools of north Louisiana. Data were obtained concerning teacher morale using the Purdue Teacher Opinionaire. Teachers also completed the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire, indicating their perception of the principals\u27 leadership style. Two primary areas of concern were consideration and initiating structure levels exhibited by the principals. In addition, teachers completed a questionnaire that provided demographic data for the study that was developed by the researcher. The researcher also conducted structured interviews with each principal. After completing the interviews with each principal and receiving the completed questionnaires from the teachers involved in the study, the researcher scored the data according to the instructions from the original authors. A rejection level of less than .05 was established prior to analysis. Analysis of variance (ANOVA), Duncan\u27s New Multiple Range Test, Levene\u27s Test for Equality of Variance, and t test were used to analyze the data. Content analysis was used to analyze the interview data. Statistical analysis of the data was accomplished through use of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS-X) computer program. The major findings of the study were: (1) The teachers\u27 perception of leadership style significantly affects teacher morale. Varying levels of consideration produced significant differences in levels of teacher morale. (2) According to the perceptions of the teachers in the study, high and low levels of initiating structure exhibited by the principals produced significantly different levels of teacher morale. High initiating structure produced high levels of teacher morale, while low initiating structure appeared to produce lower levels of teacher morale. (3) The demographic variables of gender, years of teaching experience, and race played no significant role in the morale levels of the teachers in the study. (4) The overall morale level in the 14 schools examined fell in the high range in mean scores. Interview data suggested that the principals perceived the morale level of their schools as high. The principals believed that their own leadership style played no major role in the level of morale among their teachers. The principals, in general, considered themselves to be high in consideration and more democratic in leadership style

Randomly sparsified Richardson iteration is really fast

Recently, a class of algorithms combining classical fixed point iterations with repeated random sparsification of approximate solution vectors has been successfully applied to eigenproblems with matrices as large as $10^{108} \times 10^{108}$. So far, a complete mathematical explanation for their success has proven elusive. Additionally, the methods have not been extended to linear system solves. In this paper we propose a new scheme based on repeated random sparsification that is capable of solving linear systems in extremely high dimensions. We provide a complete mathematical analysis of this new algorithm. Our analysis establishes a faster-than-Monte Carlo convergence rate and justifies use of the scheme even when the solution vector itself is too large to store.Comment: 27 pages, 2 figure

Conversation on Community : Conversation on Worship

...I would like to take my stab at, at giving two distinctives that I see of the, the emerging church movement as a whole. I know you don\u27t like the word, movement. Ah, and, and then maybe some, just comment on some worship practices, and then, if I have time, I\u27ll, I\u27ll raise, a few, ah questions that I have. What I see as distinctive are two things. Ah, the emerging church as an ecclesiological sort of movement, emphasizing community. Moving away from ah, an individualistic orientation, to the faith, for a communal, orientation

Rayleigh-Gauss-Newton optimization with enhanced sampling for variational Monte Carlo

Variational Monte Carlo (VMC) is an approach for computing ground-state wavefunctions that has recently become more powerful due to the introduction of neural network-based wavefunction parametrizations. However, efficiently training neural wavefunctions to converge to an energy minimum remains a difficult problem. In this work, we analyze optimization and sampling methods used in VMC and introduce alterations to improve their performance. First, based on theoretical convergence analysis in a noiseless setting, we motivate a new optimizer that we call the Rayleigh-Gauss-Newton method, which can improve upon gradient descent and natural gradient descent to achieve superlinear convergence with little added computational cost. Second, in order to realize this favorable comparison in the presence of stochastic noise, we analyze the effect of sampling error on VMC parameter updates and experimentally demonstrate that it can be reduced by the parallel tempering method. In particular, we demonstrate that RGN can be made robust to energy spikes that occur when new regions of configuration space become available to the sampler over the course of optimization. Finally, putting theory into practice, we apply our enhanced optimization and sampling methods to the transverse-field Ising and XXZ models on large lattices, yielding ground-state energy estimates with remarkably high accuracy after just 200-500 parameter updates.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure

Regulating Risk in a Managed Care Environment: Theory vs. Practice, The Minnesota Experience

The purpose of this Article is to illustrate the challenges state regulators face when attempting to translate theory into practice in the context of health care risk regulation. Section I reviews the evolution of the risk-bearing market in health care, recognizing that while risk is an inherent part of everyday life, it takes on a delicate meaning when used in the context of health care. Cost and demographic data will be discussed to provide a compelling rationale for the ongoing forceful movement toward cost containment strategies embodied in managed care strategies, as well as the need to develop the next generation of risk-bearing entities. Sections II and III provide an overview of state health care regulation and an examination of Minnesota\u27s regulatory experience. Sections IV through VII detail the emergence and ongoing development of direct contracting strategies. Throughout this Article, strategies will be reviewed from both a theoretical and practical perspective. These experiences can teach valuable lessons and underscore the challenges inherent in translating theory into practice, and the obvious, yet unwilling tradeoffs that are necessary to truly reform the health care regulatory infrastructure. The Article will conclude with a set of guiding principles that should be considered by state regulators in the development and oversight of new and emerging risk-bearing entities

Passivation of Flexible YBCO Superconducting Current Lead With Amorphous SiO2 Layer

Adiabatic demagnetization refrigerators (ADR) are operated in space to cool detectors of cosmic radiation to a few 10s of mK. A key element of the ADR is a superconducting magnet operating at about 0.3 K that is continually energized and de-energized in synchronism with a thermal switch, such that a piece of paramagnetic salt is alternately warm in a high magnetic field and cold in zero magnetic field. This causes the salt pill or refrigerant to cool, and it is able to suck heat from an object, e.g., the sensor, to be cooled. Current has to be fed into and out of the magnets from a dissipative power supply at the ambient temperature of the spacecraft. The current leads that link the magnets to the power supply inevitably conduct a significant amount of heat into the colder regions of the supporting cryostat, resulting in the need for larger, heavier, and more powerful supporting refrigerators. The aim of this project was to design and construct high-temperature superconductor (HTS) leads from YBCO (yttrium barium copper oxide) composite conductors to reduce the heat load significantly in the temperature regime below the critical temperature of YBCO. The magnet lead does not have to support current in the event that the YBCO ceases to be superconducting. Cus - tomarily, a normal metal conductor in parallel with the YBCO is a necessary part of the lead structure to allow for this upset condition; however, for this application, the normal metal can be dispensed with. Amorphous silicon dioxide is deposited directly onto the surface of YBCO, which resides on a flexible substrate. The silicon dioxide protects the YBCO from chemically reacting with atmospheric water and carbon dioxide, thus preserving the superconducting properties of the YBCO. The customary protective coating for flexible YBCO conductors is silver or a silver/gold alloy, which conducts heat many orders of magnitude better than SiO2 and so limits the use of such a composite conductor for passing current across a thermal gradient with as little flow of heat as possible to make an efficient current lead. By protecting YBCO on a flexible substrate of low thermal conductivity with SiO2, a thermally efficient and flexible current lead can be fabricated. The technology is also applicable to current leads for 4 K superconducting electronics current biasing. A commercially available thin-film YBCO composite tape conductor is first stripped of its protective silver coating. It is then mounted on a jig that holds the sample flat and acts as a heat sink. Silicon dioxide is then deposited onto the YBCO to a thickness of about 1 micron using PECVD (plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition), without heating the YBCO to the point where degradation occurs. Since SiO2 can have good high-frequency electrical properties, it can be used to coat YBCO cable structures used to feed RF signals across temperature gradients. The prime embodiment concerns the conduction of DC current across the cryogenic temperature gradient. The coating is hard and electrically insulating, but flexible