Using Emotion Regulation to Support Informed Literacy

When it comes to fake news, no medium circulates and reaches more youth than social media. Social media can provide an opportunity for students to create and post with an authentic audience; however, social media can also perpetuate the danger of fake news. Youth across the globe emotionally engage with content several hours a day and can become vulnerable to the clickbait style of news. Therefore, although research has studied how critical literacy instruction supports informed reading, literacy instruction must also address students’ emotional regulation needs. This research-to-practice article describes the dangers of fake news on youth interactions and provides practical emotional regulation tips for teachers. Emotional regulation strategies in this paper specifically concentrate on implementing affect labeling and mindful breathing in classrooms in order to support informed literacy

Advocating for Mother Earth in the Undergraduate Classroom: Uniting Twenty-First Century Technologies, Local Resources, Art, and Activism to Explore Our Place in Nature

Despite the growing evidence of humanity’s impact on the natural world and the urgent need to shape citizens who understand the impact that their choices and actions have on their local and global environments, colleges and universities throughout the United States have been slow to add environmental education as a core component of their undergraduate curricula. Harnessing our shared interest in environment issues and the humanities, we designed and taught an experimental course in environmental literature for the honors program at Western Michigan University that we hope will become a template of what is possible in postsecondary environmental education. Using a dynamic blend of art, activism, and twenty-first-century technologies, as well as a cadre of expert guest speakers and field trips outside of the classroom, we encouraged our students to consider the natural world and their place in it via activities that we hope will continue to influence their attitudes and actions for years to come. Our essay provides an overview of the texts, activities, and pedagogies we employed, as well as insights into the rewards and challenges of executing a course with an agenda that is both vital and timely

Using Satellite Remote Sensing and Modelling for Insights into N02 Air Pollution and NO2 Emissions

Nitrogen oxides (NO(x)) are key actors in air quality and climate change. Satellite remote sensing of tropospheric NO2 has developed rapidly with enhanced spatial and temporal resolution since initial observations in 1995. We have developed an improved algorithm and retrieved tropospheric NO2 columns from Ozone Monitoring Instrument. Column observations of tropospheric NO2 from the nadir-viewing satellite sensors contain large contributions from the boundary layer due to strong enhancement of NO2 in the boundary layer. We infer ground-level NO2 concentrations from the OMI satellite instrument which demonstrate significant agreement with in-situ surface measurements. We examine how NO2 columns measured by satellite, ground-level NO2 derived from satellite, and NO(x) emissions obtained from bottom-up inventories relate to world's urban population. We perform inverse modeling analysis of NO2 measurements from OMI to estimate "top-down" surface NO(x) emissions, which are used to evaluate and improve "bottom-up" emission inventories. We use NO2 column observations from OMI and the relationship between NO2 columns and NO(x) emissions from a GEOS-Chem model simulation to estimate the annual change in bottom-up NO(x) emissions. The emission updates offer an improved estimate of NO(x) that are critical to our understanding of air quality, acid deposition, and climate change

Comparison of Remote Sensing and Fixed-Site Monitoring Approaches for Examining Air Pollution and Health in a National Study Population

Satellite remote sensing (RS) has emerged as a cutting edge approach for estimating ground level ambient air pollution. Previous studies have reported a high correlation between ground level PM2.5 and NO2 estimated by RS and measurements collected at regulatory monitoring sites. The current study examined associations between air pollution and adverse respiratory and allergic health outcomes using multi-year averages of NO2 and PM2.5 from RS and from regulatory monitoring. RS estimates were derived using satellite measurements from OMI, MODIS, and MISR instruments. Regulatory monitoring data were obtained from Canada's National Air Pollution Surveillance Network. Self-reported prevalence of doctor-diagnosed asthma, current asthma, allergies, and chronic bronchitis were obtained from the Canadian Community Health Survey (a national sample of individuals 12 years of age and older). Multi-year ambient pollutant averages were assigned to each study participant based on their six digit postal code at the time of health survey, and were used as a marker for long-term exposure to air pollution. RS derived estimates of NO2 and PM2.5 were associated with 6e10% increases in respiratory and allergic health outcomes per interquartile range (3.97 mg m3 for PM2.5 and 1.03 ppb for NO2) among adults (aged 20e64) in the national study population. Risk estimates for air pollution and respiratory/ allergic health outcomes based on RS were similar to risk estimates based on regulatory monitoring for areas where regulatory monitoring data were available (within 40 km of a regulatory monitoring station). RS derived estimates of air pollution were also associated with adverse health outcomes among participants residing outside the catchment area of the regulatory monitoring network (p < 0.05)

Spatial adiabatic passage as a quantum wire

Qubit transport has been identified as vital in improving quantum error correction thresholds in scalable quantum computer architectures. Introducing practical transport in the solid-state is problematic, but in phosphorus in silicon implementations we have shown an interesting adiabatic protocol for qubit transfer, Coherent Tunneling Adiabatic Passage (CTAP). Here we review the role of CTAP as a quantum wire, highlighting the protocol and the temporal scaling as the length of the transport chain is increased. We also highlight an extension of CTAP to generate spatial superposition states which demonstrates some of the flexibility of quantum electronic structures over quantum optical systems

Scanning transmission ion microscopy of nanoscale apertures

Ion-beam lithography (IBL) with MeV ions at the nanometer scale can be achieved using ion masking with a nanoscale aperture. In this work, nanoscale apertures are produced using focused-ion-beam (FIB) nulling of Si cantilevers, and mask location is defined using a piezoelectrically-driven scanning stage. Experimental verification of the simulations used to model ion-aperture scattering is required. Scanning transmission ion microscopy (STIM) imaging of the apertures mounted above an active detector substrate has been conducted. The analysis of the STIM images that result from thousands of ions is complicated by the presence of stray ions scattered from upstream beam components which hit the detector substrate outside the area under investigation. A reduction in the fraction of stray ions has been achieved using extra masking of the detector substrate and by use of a slotted aperture. The slotted aperture allows investigation of the tilt alignment in only one dimension at a time whilst providing a large aperture area so that good statistics in the energy spectra of transmitted ions may be acquired. Further, the damage rate of the detector has been determined, and it was found that the ion transmission energy spectrum may be acquired without any significant influence from detector damage, provided the number of counts is below 10 4 ions