The Voice of Parents, Students, and Teachers Regarding Chinese Heritage Schools in Southeast Texas

This qualitative study shared the voices of parents, students, and teachers and their perspectives on and experiences at community-based Chinese heritage schools (CHSs) in Southeast Texas. Their voices can be seen as critical inquiries that truly represent the phenomenon of after-school Chinese language education in the United States. With in-depth interviews and content analysis, this dissertation sought to provide greater understanding in: (a) creating a dialogue among the unique perspectives and voices of parents, students, and teachers; (b) documenting how teachers, first-generation parents, and second-generation students negotiate their own unique roles within the CHS system; (c) providing recommendations to school leaders, administrators, and teachers regarding particular methods of working with parents, to make students' heritage language (HL) learning more meaningful; and, (d) underscoring the contention that HL learning is a critical component of a functioning in pluralistic society

Hunting for Heavy Majorana Neutrinos with Lepton Number Violating Signatures at LHC

The neutrinophilic two-Higgs-doublet model ($\nu$2HDM) provides a natural way to generate tiny neutrino mass from interactions with the new doublet scalar $\Phi_\nu$ ($H^\pm,~H,~A$) and singlet neutrinos $N_R$ of TeV scale. In this paper, we perform detailed simulations for the lepton number violating (LNV) signatures at LHC arising from cascade decays of the new scalars and neutrinos with the mass order $m_{N_R}<m_{\Phi_\nu}$. Under constraints from lepton flavor violating processes and direct collider searches, their decay properties are explored and lead to three types of LNV signatures: $2\ell^\pm 4j+\cancel{E}_T$, $3\ell^\pm 4j+\cancel{E}_T$, and $3\ell^\pm\ell^\mp 4j$. We find that the same-sign trilepton signature $3\ell^\pm4j+\cancel{E}_T$ is quite unique and is the most promising discovery channel at the high-luminosity LHC. Our analysis also yields the $95\%$ C.L. exclusion limits in the plane of the $\Phi_\nu$ and $N_R$ masses at 13 (14) TeV LHC with an integrated luminosity of 100~(3000)/fb.Comment: 31 pages, 17 figures, 6 tables; v2: added a few refs and updated one ref, without other change

Understanding Driver Response Patterns to Mental Workload Increase in Typical Driving Scenarios

As vehicles become more complex and traffic increases, the associated mental workload of driving should increase, potentially compromising driving safety. As mental workload increases (as measured by the detection response time task), does how people drive (as assessed by driving performance and eye fixations) change? How does driving experience impact on such response patterns? To address those questions, data were collected in a motion-based driving simulator. Two driving scenarios were examined, a stop-controlled intersection (high workload — 16 participants, 320 trials) and speed-limited highway (low workload — 11 participants, 264 trials). In each scenario, in half of the trials, the participants were required to complete or not to complete a distracting secondary task. Hierarchical cluster analysis was used to identify driver response patterns. For highway driving, they are: (1) increased eye fixation variability and unchanged driving performance, and (2) unchanged fixation variability and increased mean speed. For intersection driving, they are: (1) increased and (2) decreased fixation variability both with decreased speed (mean and variance), and (3) increased fixation variability with increased speed. Eye fixation variability was more strongly associated with increased mental workload than other driving performance statistics. Furthermore, in contrast to prior research, changes in driving performance and eye fixations were not necessarily correlated with each other as mental workload increased. Novice drivers exhibit higher gaze variability, and they are more prone to maintain vehicle control than experienced drivers