How school generated funding reinforces a two-tier education system in Ontario

This thesis examines School Generated Funding (SGF) within the Toronto District School (TDSB) to see if SGF is reinforcing a two-tier education system. Five sources of data were analyzed: The SGF Record of the TDSB from 2008-2009, The Preliminary School Budget from 2010-2011, EQAO test results from 2008 to 2009, The Learning Opportunity Index (LOI) from 2009, and three socio-economic status factors (income, education and occupation) using the Toronto Wards Profiles. Using the SGF record, twenty green schools (schools that raised the most SGF, amounting to $4,043,837) were compared, using the five sources of data against twenty red schools (schools that raised the least amount of SGF, amounting to$109,885). Two recommendations have been suggested: SGF be capped at a median amount throughout the TDSB and extra funding be put into a funding account for the TDSB to disperse to schools that need it.Master's These

Near-infrared photoluminescence of erbium tris(8-hydroxyquinoline) spin-coated thin films induced by low coherence light sources

Copyright 2007 AIP Publishing LLC. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. This article appeared in Applied Physics Letters [91, 021106 (2007)] and may be found at

Emerging heterogeneities in Italian customs and comparison with nearby countries

In this work we apply techniques and modus operandi typical of Statistical Mechanics to a large dataset about key social quantifiers and compare the resulting behaviours of five European nations, namely France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland. The social quantifiers considered are $i.$ the evolution of the number of autochthonous marriages (i.e. between two natives) within a given territorial district and $ii.$ the evolution of the number of mixed marriages (i.e. between a native and an immigrant) within a given territorial district. Our investigations are twofold. From a theoretical perspective, we develop novel techniques, complementary to classical methods (e.g. historical series and logistic regression), in order to detect possible collective features underlying the empirical behaviours; from an experimental perspective, we evidence a clear outline for the evolution of the social quantifiers considered. The comparison between experimental results and theoretical predictions is excellent and allows speculating that France, Italy and Spain display a certain degree of {\em internal heterogeneity}, that is not found in Germany and Switzerland; such heterogeneity, quite mild in France and in Spain, is not negligible in Italy and highlights quantitative differences in the customs of Northern and Southern regions. These findings may suggest the persistence of two culturally distinct communities, long-term lasting heritages of different and well-established cultures.Comment: in PLoS One (2015

An MBO scheme for clustering and semi-supervised clustering of signed networks

We introduce a principled method for the signed clustering problem, where the goal is to partition a weighted undirected graph whose edge weights take both positive and negative values, such that edges within the same cluster are mostly positive, while edges spanning across clusters are mostly negative. Our method relies on a graph-based diffuse interface model formulation utilizing the Ginzburg–Landau functional, based on an adaptation of the classic numerical Merriman–Bence–Osher (MBO) scheme for minimizing such graph-based functionals. The proposed objective function aims to minimize the total weight of inter-cluster positively-weighted edges, while maximizing the total weight of the inter-cluster negatively-weighted edges. Our method scales to large sparse networks, and can be easily adjusted to incorporate labelled data information, as is often the case in the context of semisupervised learning. We tested our method on a number of both synthetic stochastic block models and real-world data sets (including financial correlation matrices), and obtained promising results that compare favourably against a number of state-of-the-art approaches from the recent literature

I limiti al potere di controllo datoriale nell’era digitale

In questo breve intervento tenterò di rispondere, in maniera sommaria e salvo migliore approfondimento in successive riflessioni, al seguente quesito: ha ancora un senso parlare di limiti al potere di controllo datoriale in contesti organizzativi del lavoro pienamente digitalizzati

Double entry method for the verification of data a chromatography data system receives

The importance of software validation increases since the need for a high usability and suitability of software applications grows. In order to reduce costs and manage risk factors more and more recommendations up to rules have been established. In the field of pharmacy the vendors of so called chromatography data systems (CDS) had to implement the guidelines of the Code of Federal Regulations Title 21 (CFR 21) during the last years in order to fulfill the increasing requirements. The CFR 21 part 11 deals with electronic records and signatures. This part is binding for each company in the regulated environment that will create, edit and sign electronic information instead of printing them on paper. The subsection CFR 21 part 11.10(h) explains how to perform an input check but it is very focused on the manual entry of data by the user. In this article we like to present a method in order to extend the input check to the data that will be provided by the hardware instrument and received by the CDS. A software tool has been written which allowes to communicate with a HPLC detector and acquire data from it. The communication is completely independent from a CDS which is started separately and connected to the same system. Using this configuration we made a parallel data acquisition of two instances at the same time possible. Two CDSs have been tested and for at least one of them it has been shown that a comparison of the acquired data can be done as like as the double entry method for the data verification. Same would be applicable for the second CDS after a few modifications. The given approach could be either used for a live data verification of produced raw data or as a single test during a software operational qualification to verify the data acquisition functionality of the software

Synthesis and Photophysical Properties of 9,10-Disubstituted Anthracenes

We report the synthesis and photophysical characterization of four 9,10-disubstituted diphenylanthracenes with specific modifications of the model backbone which involve both the 9,10 para substituents at the phenyl rings and the substitution with carbon-carbon triple bonds. The effects of such modifications on the photoluminescence and electroluminescence properties have been investigated on the basis of the diphenylanthracene molecular characteristics and in view of application to light-emitting devices. We have found that the substitution with the carbon-carbon triple bonds at the two 9,10-phenyls noticeably alters the electronic states of the reference molecule, also introducing a certain degree of sensitivity to the phenyl substituents, which improves the tunability of the optical emission. Differently, the 9,10 para substituents produce minor changes in the single-molecule properties, due to the lack of electronic conjugation across the 9,10-phenyls. However, even a single nitro substituent in the phenyl para position produces the formation of excimers, which appreciably reduces the optical quantum efficiency. These properties are maintained in solid-state blends and simple spin-coated bilayer electroluminescent devices have been fabricated