A Study of Assistant Principals’ Perceptions of the Principalship and their Career Aspirations

The importance of attracting, selecting, and retaining effective principals is essential. Due to the negative perceptions of the principalship, there are concerns about who will fill these vacancies. Therefore, this study focused on perceptions of second and third year assistant principals toward the principalship and their career aspirations. The following research questions guided this study: (a) How do assistant principals perceive the role of the principal? (b) What are the factors that influence assistant principals’ motivation to seek or not to seek a position as a school principal? The research design used a qualitative approach to ascertain in-depth information to describe assistant principals’ perceptions and motivations. One focus group session was held and nine in-depth phone interviews were conducted. The participants consisted of second year assistant principals in the “New Jersey Leaders To Leaders” program (L2L) and assistant principals who had just completed the L2L program requirements. The findings of this study indicated that 83% of the participants had aspirations of pursuing a principalship. The principalship was described as being a difficult job due to time requirements and responsibilities of dealing with difficult parents, personnel decisions, politics and discipline, while keeping constant communication and managing the day-to-day operations. Taking the next step, having positive experiences as an assistant principal, having leadership aspirations to make a difference, financial incentives and growing as an administrator were described as motivating factors for pursuing a principalship. Due to the finding that 91.6% of the assistant principals who participated in this study were from one of the top three DFG classifications in New Jersey, it is recommended that a research study be done to analyze and compare school district philosophy based on DFG. The experiences assistant principals have due to the school and/or their principal’s leadership style were indicated as impacting motivations for career advancement. It is recommended that a large-scale quantitative study be done to describe the effects on assistant principals’ aspirations to pursue a principalship due to their experiences working as assistant principals

Using genotype abundance to improve phylogenetic inference

Modern biological techniques enable very dense genetic sampling of unfolding evolutionary histories, and thus frequently sample some genotypes multiple times. This motivates strategies to incorporate genotype abundance information in phylogenetic inference. In this paper, we synthesize a stochastic process model with standard sequence-based phylogenetic optimality, and show that tree estimation is substantially improved by doing so. Our method is validated with extensive simulations and an experimental single-cell lineage tracing study of germinal center B cell receptor affinity maturation

Use of Combined Systemic Hypothermia and Local Heat Treatment to Enhance Temperature Differences Between Tumor and Normal Tissues

The feasibility of combining local heat treatment with wholebody hypothermia in an effort to improve therapeutic gain was assessed. Superficial, non perfused phantom tumors were fashioned in eight anesthetized mongrel dogs by transplantation of the spleen from the abdomen to a subcutaneous site on the hind limb. After pretreatment of the animal with the vasodilator hydralazine (0.5 mg/kg, IV) to enhance normal tissue perfusion, the spleen implant was heated with a 2450-MHz microwave diathermy apparatus, first with the animal\u27s core body temperature in the normal range (39°C) and then after the animal had been packed in ice to reduce core temperature to 30°C. Applied power density and temperatures in both the phantom tumor and underlying muscle tissue were recorded during brief interruptions of diathermy until steady-state temperatures had been achieved. Under normothermic conditions with time-averaged applied power of 0.038 W/ml to phantom tumor and 0.014 W/ml to underlying muscle, tumor temperature rose to 45.9 ± l.8°C, while muscle temperature remained at 40.5 ± 0.7°C. During whole-body hypothermia applied power could be increased to 0.114 W/ml in phantom tumor and to 0.025 W/ml in muscle. Muscle temperature rose only to 33.8 ± l.6°C, while that of the nonperfused phantom tumor rose to 53.6 ± 4.3°C with systemic hypothermia. These results are in agreement with predictions based on the bioheat transfer equation, i.e., heat extraction from well-perfused normal tissues is greatly augmented by cooling of the arterial blood, allowing greater power input to the tumor-bearing region, higher tumor temperatures, and enhanced therapeutic gain during local heat treatments of poorly perfused tumor nodules

Cosmological Surrealism: More than ``Eternal Reality" is Needed

Inflationary Cosmology makes the universe ``eternal" and provides for recurrent universe creation, ad infinitum -- making it also plausible to assume that ``our" Big Bang was also preceeded by others, etc.. However, GR tells us that in the ``parent" universe's reference frame, the newborn universe's expansion will never start. Our picture of ``reality" in spacetime has to be enlarged.Comment: 7 pages, TAUP N23

Loop Quantum Cosmology II: Volume Operators

Volume operators measuring the total volume of space in a loop quantum theory of cosmological models are constructed. In the case of models with rotational symmetry an investigation of the Higgs constraint imposed on the reduced connection variables is necessary, a complete solution of which is given for isotropic models; in this case the volume spectrum can be calculated explicitly. It is observed that the stronger the symmetry conditions are the smaller is the volume spectrum, which can be interpreted as level splitting due to broken symmetries. Some implications for quantum cosmology are presented.Comment: 21 page

Probability in Orthodox Quantum Mechanics: Probability as a Postulate Versus Probability as an Emergent Phenomenon

The role of probability in quantum mechanics is reviewed, with a discussion of the ``orthodox'' versus the statistical interpretive frameworks, and of a number of related issues. After a brief summary of sources of unease with quantum mechanics, a survey is given of attempts either to give a new interpretive framework assuming quantum mechanics is exact, or to modify quantum mechanics assuming it is a very accurate approximation to a more fundamental theory. This survey focuses particularly on the issues of whether probabilities in quantum mechanics are postulated or emergent.Comment: Latex; Submitted to the Proceedings of the Ischia Conference on ``Chance in Physics: Foundations and Perspectives'