Academic Asset Or Instructor’s Indulgence? The Effect of Arts & Cultural Institutions on Academic Achievement

Across the country arts and cultural institutions seek to preserve our past and use it to educate our future. As their exhibits expand these institutions have become treasures in their own rights; places like the Smithsonian Institute are landmarks that attract visitors from around the world. In addition to travelers they also attract school groups. For decades schools have been using “field trips” to museums as a way to supplement their curriculum. But do these trips actually benefit the students or are they a waste of resources? This project aims to evaluate whether these institutions are an asset to academics or an indulgence of instructors that have the resources to visit them. Public school funding in the United States comes from federal, state, and local sources; the amount allocated to each school is dependent on a number of variables including community wealth and school performance on standardized tests. In recent years funding for education has not been diminishing requiring evaluation of expenditures. This project examines the effects of students visiting arts and cultural institutions, such as museums, on the academic performance of schools. The project compares and contrasts state scores and visitation practices to show how museums may be an expenditure worth keeping in the budget and curriculum of schools. By examining fixed effects and instrumental variable models, this project found that schools that visit arts and cultural institutions perform significantly higher on state testing in overall academics, in addition to certain skills, such as reading and writing, and specific topics such as social studies, arts and humanities. As a result, this project recommends that the Kentucky Department of Education and public schools throughout the state implement education policy that increases access to museum programming. This recommendation is a solution that accomplishes the goal of improving school performance while not having to implement an untested strategy or curriculum change. A policy implementation like this would also increase the availability of federal grants such as “Race to the Top.

CBD: A Resource for Patients

An educational resource for patients describing the current body of research on cannabidiol (CBD), the current legal landscape, regulatory and manufacturing considerations, drug interactions, and potential risks.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/fmclerk/1581/thumbnail.jp

THE ANALYSIS AND SIMULATION OF HYBRID STEPPING MOTORS USING THE PHASE PLANE APPROACH

Stepping motors have become very popular electromechanical interface devices because they are easy to interface to digital control logic. The most popular stepping motor currently used is the hybrid design stepping motor. It incorporates an efficient magnetic structure to obtain a high output torque, while maintaining a position resolution of fifty parts per million. All stepping motors are nonlinear devices and, therefore, control strategies have been difficult to develop and implement. A second order, nonlinear model was developed by Gauthier to describe the permanent magnet stepping motor. The results of this model are displayed using the phase plane and considerable insight into the motor\u27s performance and operating characteristics are obtained. In this work the model is modified to describe the hybrid stepping motor by including inductance, magnetic saturation, hysteresis and eddy current losses. This yields a sixth order, nonlinear model, the solution of which requires a six dimension space to display the results. The six dimension solution can be projected back into the two dimension phase plane. A strong understanding of the implications of this projection is necessary to properly interpret the results. Once this understanding is obtained, many of the operating and dynamic characteristics of the hybrid stepping motor can be understood and explained. In addition, the techniques that were developed for designing sequences or control strategies for the permanent magnet stepping motor can now be applied to the hybrid stepping motor. The hybrid motor can also be operated as a synchronous device. The model that was developed to describe its performance when being stepped can be used to predict the operating modes when the motor is driven by a synchronous AC source. The solution of the equations is again projected back into a two dimension space where many of the dynamic characteristics are easily seen. Both the stepping and synchronously driven models are then used to investigate the characteristics and cause of mid-frequency resonance in the hybrid motor. This instability phenomenon is shown to be caused by amplitude and frequency modulation effects in the stepping motor

The Sugar Content of Blood

Summary and Conclusions: 1 We have shown that the picric acid methods are not accurate. 2. We have shown that the titrimetric methods are not adapted to clinical use. 3. We have demonstrated that the Folin-Wu method, which gives the same results as the titrimetric methods, and is the most accurate method used in clinics, gives results approximately 15 per cent too high, because of interfering substances. 4. We have developed a mercuric nitrate method, specific for blood sugar by virtue of the fact that it precipitates interfering substances before making the determination. 5. We have developed an acetone method, specific for blood sugar, which gives the same results as the mercuric nitrate method. 6. We have adapted our mercuric nitrate method and acetone method for determining glucose in tissue extracts

The Ukrainian Voter: Electoral Behavior in a New Democracy

The “normalization” of politics in new democracies is an important concern of political science research. Normalization could refer to democratic consolidation when democracy “becomes the only game in town” (Linz and Stepan 1996). Some of the factors contributing to normalization are stable institutions, the rule of law, and transparency in power transfer, among others. Yet, it can be argued that the democratic process is normalized when programmatic parties compete for political office by wooing a sophisticated and knowledgeable electorate (Kitschelt 1992, 1995, 2000). This inquiry is a story of such normalization in the case of a new post-communist democracy – Ukraine. In the literature the Ukrainian public is depicted as highly apolitical, unsophisticated, and divided along the ethno-cultural regional cleavage which contributes to the problems of normalization of electoral competition. Moreover, there is a general sense that voters are “the least likely segment of Ukrainian polity" to influence political processes (Copsey 2005). Yet, the events of the Orange Revolutions showed otherwise. It does not seem reasonable any longer to ignore the Ukrainian voter and her role in the development of a democratic Ukraine. Recently Timothy J. Colton (2011) lamented the lack of the individual level analysis of Ukrainian electorate. This study is a decisive attempt to remedy this oversight. Using the survey data from International Foundation for Electoral Studies (IFES) from 1994, 1997 -2008 I develop and analyze a model of the sophisticated voter in the new democracy. I argue that over time, as voters have more experience with democratic processes, they learn how to properly link their own preferences with appropriate parties and candidates, relying on numerous factors including, but not limited to, the ethno-cultural and socioeconomic attributes, such factors as evaluation of the political leaders and issues are also instrumental in voter decision making. The results of this study have important implications for the study of Ukrainian politics and a broader literature on voting behavior. The curious case of the Ukrainian voter suggests a need to reexamine the theoretical and conceptual frameworks of democratic consolidation hypotheses as well as the developmental modes of electoral behavior

Dustbowl

Dustbowl is a dystopian novel that follows a young man named Ward as he joins a deadly cult that is intent on leaving the planet. He travels with a cleaning crew—a group of killers—through small towns, abducting children for the cult’s plan to have humankind populate the stars. The novel explores concepts like loneliness, grief, violence, love, and family, among others, as Ward traverses across a dust-filled, shambling American Midwest that is falling apart all around him. He finds solace from the harshness of the world in his crewmates, in a stray dog that he happens upon, in a girl that he tries to save, and eventually in himself