L.A. Story: Can a Parent Revolution Change Urban Education's Power Structure?

In 1990 Steve Barr "rocked the vote" in America by helping to engineer an upswing in voting among 18 to 24 year olds with the help of musicians and other pop culture icons. Now the political operative and education entrepreneur is tapping into the frustrations of working-class parents in Los Angeles to rock the city's public schools to their core

VisuaIs

Summary of the discussion sessions on Visuals, discussion leader Conrad Reinhardt

A Comparative Study of the Characteristics of Dropout Students in the Midland Independent School District in 1962-62 and 1974-75

No abstract was provided

Progressive Tennis Skills Test Developed for College Physical Education Classes with Varying Levels of Play

The purpose of the present investigation was to develop a reliable, valid and objective skills test for college physical education tennis classes which had students of varying ability levels. The subjects (N=50) were randomly divided into two groups based on whether they were experienced or inexperienced players. The tennis skill variables tested were consistency, depth, serve, forehand, backhand, and volley. Stability reliability was estimated at .94 p\u3c.05. Concurrent validity was estimated by correlating the average ratings of three experts with the first and second administrations of the test. Concurrent validity was estimated at .92 p\u3c.05. Construct validity was estimated at the p\u3c.05 level showing a significant difference in the two groups. Objectivity estimates were found to be p\u3c.05 when the test was administered by another instructor. The Progressive Tennis Skills Test proved to be reliable, valid and objective for college physical education classes with students at varying ability levels

Statistically constrained decimation of a turbulence model

The constrained decimation scheme (CDS) is applied to a turbulence model. The CDS is a statistical turbulence theory formulated in 1985 by Robert Kraichnan; it seeks to correctly describe the statistical behavior of a system using only a small sample of the actual dynamics. The full set of dynamical quantities is partitioned into groups, within each of which the statistical properties must be uniform. Each statistical symmetry group is then decimated down to a small sample set of explicit dynamics. The statistical effects of the implicit dynamics outside the sample set are modelled by stochastic forces.;These forces are not totally random; they must satisfy statistical constraints in the following way: Full-system statistical moments are calculated by interpolation among sample-set moments; the stochastic forces are adjusted by an iterative process until decimated-system moments match these calculated full-system moments. Formally, the entire infinite heirarchy of moments describing the system statistics should be constrained. In practice, a small number of low-order moment constraints are enforced; these moments are chosen on the basis of physical insights and known properties of the system.;The system studied in this work is the Betchov model--a large set of coupled, quadratically nonlinear ordinary differential equations with random coupling coefficients. This turbulence model was originally devised to study another statistical theory, the direct interaction approximation (DIA). By design of the Betchov system, the DIA solution for statistical autocorrelation is easy to obtain numerically. This permits comparison of CDS results with DIA results for Betchov systems too large to be solved in full.;The Betchov system is decimated and solved under two sets of statistical constraints. Under the first set, basic statistical properties of the full Betchov system are reproduced for modest decimation strengths (ratios of full-system size to decimated-system size); however, problems arise at stronger decimation. These problems are solved by the second set of constraints. The second constraint set is intimately related to the DIA; that relationship is shown, and results from the CDS under those constraints are shown to approach the DIA results as the decimation strength increases

Domestic Terrorism in the United States

Lone wolf terrorism has received considerable media attention, yet this phenomenon has not been sufficiently examined in an academic study. National security officials must distinguish between terrorist activities carried out by lone wolves and those carried out by terrorist networks for effective intervention and potential prevention. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the phenomenon of the leaderless lone wolf terrorist and the underlying mechanisms and processes that lead individuals to be drawn to or away from an existing radical movement. The theoretical framework for this study was leaderless resistance theory. Secondary data from interviews, field notes, and surveys from the RAND-MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base and the Global Terrorism Database were analyzed using open and selective coding. Findings revealed 3 individual-level underlying mechanisms and processes (personal and political grievance, risk and status seeking, unfreezing) that lead individuals to be drawn to or away from an existing radical movement and to act unilaterally without direction toward violent ends. Findings also indicated that no single typology fits all perpetrators. The findings benefit national security officials and intelligence agencies by identifying lone wolf individuals, weighing the actual threat versus the perception, developing better counterterrorism strategies for the lone wolf phenomenon, and enhancing relations with outside agencies. Results may improve understanding of lone wolf terrorism and may be used to develop new policies to predict and track future threats

Ozone in the atmospheric boundary layer: Transport mechanisms and predictive indicators at 36�N

Scope and Method of Study: The objectives of this study were the estimation of the background ozone concentration specific to the study location, correlation between the background concentration and ground-level ozone, evaluation of the relationship between meteorological parameters and ozone (measured as the background concentration and at ground level), and identification of transport pathways for the component of local ozone concentrations not explained by local photochemistry. Ozone was measured in 1-hour averages at an elevation of 210 meters above ground level, with a companion set of control data measured in 1-hour averages at ground level. Data collection occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a mid-sized city located at a latitude of 36ºN, over the period beginning on 01 June 2005 and ending on 30 November 2005. Additionally, meteorological data were collected at the 210-meter ozone installation and were retrieved from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sites that measure and record ground-level conditions, upper-air soundings, and vertical wind profiles. Solar radiation data was retrieved from the Oklahoma Mesonet.Findings and Conclusions: Local meteorological conditions were found to be more important to local photochemical generation of ozone than to the behavior of the 210-meter concentration, representative of background ozone in the troposphere. Specifically, a negative correlation with an R2 of 0.5286 was achieved between ground-level ozone and relative humidity, while a positive correlation with an R2 of 0.4897 was achieved between ground-level ozone and dry-bulb temperature. All ground-level ozone concentrations ≥ 0.08 ppm occurred at dry-bulb temperatures ≥ 27ºC and relative humidity ≤ 50%. Solar radiation was of marked importance to ground-level concentrations as well, as R2 equaled 0.6065. Wind speed had a lower correlation with ground-level ozone (R2 = 0.1121), but all occurrences of ground-level ozone ≥ 0.08 ppm during the study were accompanied by ground-level wind speeds < 5 m·s^-1. When compared with 210-meter ozone, local meteorological conditions showed poor or no correlation. Instead, the 210-meter concentration was found to be correlated with geopotential heights at 300 hPa, representative of the height of the polar jet stream. This correlation improved as heights in close proximity to the mean position of the polar jet were considered, with a maximum R2 of 0.38 when 210-meter ozone was compared with 300 hPa geopotential heights at 46ºN. Furthermore, the best correlation was achieved with an 18-hour lag between 210-meter ozone and 300 hPa geopotential heights, accounting for the vertically-tilted structure of atmospheric waves. From the correlation between 210-meter ozone and 300 hPa geopotential heights, it can be concluded that atmospheric disturbances, both as Rossby and baroclinic waves, strongly influence the tropospheric background ozone concentration, as high concentrations were favored during large-scale anti-cyclonic subsidence, while low concentrations were favored during large-scale cyclonic lift. These processes ultimately affected ground-level ozone, as a strong correlation was shown with 210-meter ozone (R2 = 0.8781) during the afternoon hours. Horizontal ozone transport was shown to be appreciable at a distance of 80 km, but based on dispersion modeling, transport at a horizontal distance of 400 km did not appear to contribute significantly to ground-level concentrations

An Architecture for Scaling NVO Services to TeraGrid

The term "cyberinfrastructure" has been adopted by the US National Science Foundation to mean "advanced computing engines, data archives and digital libraries, observation and sensor systems, and other research and education instrumentation [linked] into a common framework". One of the largest awards in this program is the TeraGrid, a linkage of large supercomputer centers based on the Globus software. Another cyberinfrastructure program is the National Virtual Observatory, a linkage of astronomical data publishers into a service-oriented framework. There are different philosophies behind the TeraGrid and the NVO architecture. This note explains a proposed service-oriented architecture for TeraGrid nodes that is an attempt to bridge these ways of working, and a prototype instantiation at Caltech