Latina Principals in Southern California: A Phenomenological Look into their Journey Towards Leadership

California is home to almost 15 million Latinos, however, according to the 2015 State of Higher Education Report for California, only 12% of the Latino population between the ages of 25 and 64 has a baccalaureate degree or higher, compared with 42% of the White population. Latina students have some of the lowest levels of educational attainment at every point in their K-12 journey and in general, very low occupational attainment. Given these troubling findings, this research sought to understand and tell the stories of Latinas in k-12 leadership positions in Southern California. In this study, Latinas describe how they successfully navigated through and were able to overcome many disparities to become effective educational leaders. The research questions that guided this study were: (a) How do Latina school principals describe their lived experiences as an academically successful Latina student in grades K-12? (b) How do Latina school principals describe their lived experiences during and after college as related to their development as leaders? (c) In what ways does the organizational culture of the K-12 setting influence or is influenced by a Latina leader? Using phenomenological research methods, in depth individual interviews with 10 Latina leaders examined how and in what ways participants prior experiences impact and manifest in their leadership practice. Some literature describe a hybrid space, which is the ethnic and mainstream culture that many Latinas must negotiate. However, results from this study support the addition of a third organizational culture, one that develops as a result of having authority within an educational institution. Thus this study posits that Latina leaders negotiate three cultures while leading: ethnic, mainstream and organizational culture. This research also found that some barriers in the United States that Latinas describe might also positively contribute to their development as leaders. The significance of this study is the possibility that the personal and professional experiences, as told in the stories that Latina educators shared, may enhance our understanding of this at-risk population, aiming to contribute positive counter-stories as exemplars and models for Latina youth living in the U.S

Ambient air pollution and cardiorespiratory outcomes amongst adult residing in four informal settlements in the Western Province of South Africa

Background Many studies investigating the relationship between ambient air pollution and cardiorespiratory outcomes have been conducted in developed countries despite more vulnerable populations in low- and middle-income countries especially in Africa. No studies previous studies have been done in South Africa informal settlements. Aim The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between ambient air pollutant exposure and self-reported cardiorespiratory outcomes amongst adults residing in four informal settlements of the Western Province of South Africa. Methods This cross-sectional study included 572 adults from four informal settlements (Khayelitsha, Marconi Beam, Oudtshoorn and Masiphumele) in the Western Cape, South Africa. The study made use of Land Use Regression to estimate each participant’s exposure to particulate matter of aerodynamic diameter of 2.5µm (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). A questionnaire was adapted from the European Community Respiratory Health Survey and National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey questionnaire to collect data on self-reported cardiorespiratory outcomes and specific confounding factors of interest. Results The median age the participants was 39 years (Interquartile Range (IQR): 33 - 45) with 88.5% female. The median NO2 level was 22.4 µg/m3 (IQR: 13.3 - 24.1) and the median PM2.5 level was 10.6 µg/m3 (IQR: 8.7 - 13.1). An increase of 10µg/m3 in annual NO2 level was found to be associated with a 2.9 (95%CI: 1.3 to 6.1) odds of having self-reported chest pain, adjusting for PM2.5 and confounders. No other significant association was found indicating an adverse health effect due to air pollution. Conclusion The study found preliminary circumstantial evidence of an association between annual ambient NO2 exposure and self-reported chest pain (a crude proxy of angina related pain), even at levels below both WHO Air Quality Guidelines and the South African National Ambient Air Quality Standards. However, the results should be interpreted cautiously due to the self-reported nature of the outcome measure and the cross-sectional design of the study

Service Provisioning for Lightweight Community Cloud Infrastructures

Service provision in low power network environments remains a very difficult task due to the lightweight nature of the devices involved. This paper explores and demonstrates the efficacy of the light weight resource allocation protocol (LRAP) in allocating services in a heterogeneous network environment consisting of primarily low power nodes. We show that with the correct resource brokering approach, services can be provisioned on nodes in a way which does not cripple individual nodes in network, while ensuring that services are distributed to nodes in the network where the lowest impact on overall performance will be made. This strategy provides an effective way of providing services especially in low power environment

Trustees of the Justice System: Quasi-Judicial Activity and the Failure of the 1990 ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct

This Article discusses the treatment of judges\u27 activities to improve the law in the 1990 Model Code of Judicial Conduct. The 1972 Code of Judicial Conduct separated the guidelines for engaging in acts to improve the law ( quasi-judicial activity ) from cautions against off-bench activity wholly unrelated to the law ( extra-judicial activity ). The 1990 Model Code of Judicial Conduct consolidates quasi-judicial activity and extra-judicial activity into a single canon - Canon 4. The authors argue that this consolidation provides judges with little encouragement to improve the law. They suggest that the failure to encourage judges to improve our justice system is contrary to the history of quasi-judicial activity and to other tenets of the 1990 Code itself. A modified version of Canon 4 is proposed which incorporates the rationale for consolidation yet encourages activities to improve the law

An Economic Feasibility Model for Sustainable 5G Networks in Rural Dwellings of South Africa

Numerous factors have shown Internet-based technology to be a key enabler in achieving the sustainable development goals (SDG), as well as narrowing the divide between the global north and south. For instance, smart farming, remote/online learning, and smart grids can be used to, respectively, address SDGs 1 and 2 (ending poverty and hunger), 3 (quality education), and 7 and 9 (energy and infrastructure development). Though such Internet-based solutions are commonplace in the global north, they are missing or sparsely available in global south countries. This is due to several factors including underdevelopment, which dissuades service providers from investing heavily in infrastructure for providing capable Internet solutions such as 5G networks in these regions. This paper presents a study conducted to evaluate the feasibility of deploying 5G networks in the rural dwellings of South Africa at affordable rates, which would then serve as a pre-cursor for deploying solutions to improve lives and achieve the SDGs. The study evaluates the economic viability of a hybrid network model which combines terrestrial and aerial networks to provide 5G coverage in rural areas. The feasibility study reveals that such a network can be engineered at low monthly subscription fees to the end users and yield good returns to the service providers in rural areas; however, for large but sparsely populated suburban locations, the traditional terrestrial network with base stations is more suitable

Cooperative Behaviours with Swarm Intelligence in Multirobot Systems for Safety Inspections in Underground Terrains

Underground mining operations are carried out in hazardous environments. To prevent disasters from occurring, as often as they do in underground mines, and to prevent safety routine checkers from disasters during safety inspection checks, multirobots are suggested to do the job of safety inspection rather than human beings and single robots. Multirobots are preferred because the inspection task will be done in the minimum amount of time. This paper proposes a cooperative behaviour for a multirobot system (MRS) to achieve a preentry safety inspection in underground terrains. A hybrid QLACS swarm intelligent model based on Q-Learning (QL) and the Ant Colony System (ACS) was proposed to achieve this cooperative behaviour in MRS. The intelligent model was developed by harnessing the strengths of both QL and ACS algorithms. The ACS optimizes the routes used for each robot while the QL algorithm enhances the cooperation between the autonomous robots. A description of a communicating variation within the QLACS model for cooperative behavioural purposes is presented. The performance of the algorithms in terms of without communication, with communication, computation time, path costs, and the number of robots used was evaluated by using a simulation approach. Simulation results show achieved cooperative behaviour between robots

On the design of smart parking networks in the smart cities: an optimal sensor placement model

Smart parking is a typical IoT application that can benefit from advances in sensor, actuator and RFID technologies to provide many services to its users and parking owners of a smart city. This paper considers a smart parking infrastructure where sensors are laid down on the parking spots to detect car presence and RFID readers are embedded into parking gates to identify cars and help in the billing of the smart parking. Both types of devices are endowed with wired and wireless communication capabilities for reporting to a gateway where the situation recognition is performed. The sensor devices are tasked to play one of the three roles: (1) slave sensor nodes located on the parking spot to detect car presence/absence; (2) master nodes located at one of the edges of a parking lot to detect presence and collect the sensor readings from the slave nodes; and (3) repeater sensor nodes, also called ''anchor'' nodes, located strategically at specific locations in the parking lot to increase the coverage and connectivity of the wireless sensor network. While slave and master nodes are placed based on geographic constraints, the optimal placement of the relay/anchor sensor nodes in smart parking is an important parameter upon which the cost and e ciency of the parking system depends. We formulate the optimal placement of sensors in smart parking as an integer linear programming multi-objective problem optimizing the sensor network engineering e ciency in terms of coverage and lifetime maximization, as well as its economic gain in terms of the number of sensors deployed for a specific coverage and lifetime. We propose an exact solution to the node placement problem using single-step and two-step solutions implemented in the Mosel language based on the Xpress-MPsuite of libraries. Experimental results reveal the relative e ciency of the single-step compared to the two-step model on di erent performance parameters. These results are consolidated by simulation results, which reveal that our solution outperforms a random placement in terms of both energy consumption, delay and throughput achieved by a smart parking network