Placing the Standards

Rural areas in many parts of the U.S. experience population decline from outmigration. Geographic mobility has long been a contributing factor to the social and economic instability of rural communities; high-achieving and ambitious youth are inclined to leave rural areas to take advantage of the expansive economic opportunities and cultural and lifestyle amenities typically found in metropolitan locations. Here I review 20 years of research on rural population loss and migration theory to anticipate how patterns of rural youth mobility might intersect with the Common Core State Standards’ emphasis on preparing high-school students to be career and college ready. Given that the migration decisions of rural youth stem from a complex process that includes a range of social, economic, cultural, and environmental factors, I argue that certain types of rural communities are likely to be more strongly affected by the Common Core as are certain types of rural youth

Book Review: Paradigms of International Human Rights, by Aaron Xavier Fellmeth

Aaron Xavier Fellmeth\u27s Paradigms of International Human Rights Law makes an important contribution to the scholarship on international human rights law (IHRL). In the introduction, Fellmeth begins by noting that previous scholarly literature on IHRL has often focused on the content and enforceability of human rights, but that the broader structure and framing of human rights has been undertheorized. With that in mind, Fellmeth identifies that the first purpose of his book “is to begin a structural critique of some of [the] systemic features of IHRL.” The second purpose is “to make some progress in bridging moral theory with legal theory in the human rights field,” since human rights law is particularly imbued with normative assumptions about morality. Despite the ambitious nature of Fellmeth’s proposed undertaking, he goes to great lengths to underscore that the book’s aim is not to develop a comprehensive moral theory of IHRL

Harnessing Protein Transport Principles for Engineering Applications: A Computational Study

The biological world contains elegant solutions to complex engineering problems. Through reproducing these observed biological behaviors it may be possible to improve upon current technologies. In addition, the biological world is, at its core, built upon cellar mechanics. The combination of these observations prompts an exploration of cellular mechanics for engineering purposes This dissertation focuses on the construction of a computational model for predicting the behavior of biologically inspired systems of protein transporters, and linking the observed behaviors to desired attributes such as blocked force, free strain, purification, and vaccine delivery. The goal of the dissertation is to utilize these example cases as inspirations for development of cellular systems for engineering purposes. Through this approach it is possible to offer insights into the benefits and drawbacks associated with the usage of cellular mechanics, and to provide a framework for how these cellular mechanisms may be applied. The intent is to define a generalized modeling framework which may be applied to an extraordinary range of engineering design goals. Three distinctly different application cases are demonstrated via the bioderived model which serves as the basis of this dissertation. First the bioderived model is shown to be effective for characterizing the naturally occurring case of endocytosis. It is subsequently applied to the distinctly different cases of water purification and actuation to illustrate versatility

Experimentally validated continuous-time repetitive control of non-minimum phase plants with a prescribed degree of stability

This paper considers the application of continuous-time repetitive control to non-minimum phase plants in a continuous-time model predictive control setting. In particular, it is shown how some critical performance problems associated with repetitive control of such plants can be avoided by use of predictive control with a prescribed degree of stability. The results developed are first illustrated by simulation studies and then through experimental tests on a non-minimum phase electro-mechanical system