Fostering Campus Diversity and Advancing the Internationalization of Education on College and University Campuses

This paper discusses the challenges that institutions of higher education face in educating and preparing students to work and live in an increasingly diverse global population. This concept-oriented discussion does not intend to provide detailed theoretical or experimental development and analysis. Instead, this paper presents an innovative paradigm that attempts to embrace many nuances associated with the terms diversity and globalization in the literature. The paper posits the internationalization of education as a strategy that can help universities demonstrate their commitment to educating students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Other strategies include targeted recruiting of highly competent international faculty and students, and focusing on the language skills that international faculty and students bring to U.S. campuses. The paper concludes that institutions of higher education must revise their mission to accommodate new operational methods that will enable students to be effective global citizens

Balancing Design Options with Sherpa

Application specific processors offer the potential of rapidly designed logic specifically constructed to meet the performance and area demands of the task at hand. Recently, there have been several major projects that attempt to automate the process of transforming a predetermined processor configuration into a low level description for fabrication. These projects either leave the specification of the processor to the designer, which can be a significant engineering burden, or handle it in a fully automated fashion, which completely removes the designer from the loop. In this paper we introduce a technique for guiding the design and optimization of application specific processors. The goal of the Sherpa design framework is to automate certain design tasks and provide early feedback to help the designer navigate their way through the architecture design space. Our approach is to decompose the overall problem of choosing an optimal architecture into a set of sub-problems that are, to the first order, independent. For each subproblem, we create a model that relates performance to area. From this, we build a constraint system that can be solved using integer-linear programming techniques, and arrive at an ideal parameter selection for all architectural components. Our approach only takes a few minutes to explore the design space allowing the designer or compiler to see the potential benefits of optimizations rapidly. We show that the expected performance using our model correlates strongly to detailed pipeline simulations, and present results showing design tradeoffs for several different benchmarks

Cooled optical filters for Q-band infrared astronomy (15-40 μm)

With a growing interest in mid- and far-infrared astronomy using cooled imaging and spectrometer instruments in high-altitude observatories and spaceflight telescopes, it is becoming increasingly important to characterise and assess the spectral performance of cooled multilayer filters across the Q-band atmospheric window. This region contains spectral features emitted by many astrophysical phenomena and objects fundamental to circumstellar and planetary formation theories. However extending interference filtering to isolate radiation at progressively longer wavelengths and improve photometric accuracy is an area of ongoing and challenging thin-film research. We have successfully fabricated cooled bandpass and edge filters with high durability for operation across the 15-30 µm Q-band region. In this paper we describe the rationale for selection of optical materials and properties of fabricated thin-film coatings for this region, together with FTIR spectral measurements and assessment of environmental durability

Addressable Superconductor Integrated Circuit Memory from Delay Lines

Recent advances in logic schemes and fabrication processes have renewed interest in using superconductor electronics for energy-efficient computing and quantum control processors. However, scalable superconducting memory still poses a challenge. To address this issue, we present an alternative to approaches that solely emphasize storage cell miniaturization by exploiting the minimal attenuation and dispersion properties of superconducting passive transmission lines to develop a delay-line memory system. This fully superconducting design operates at speeds between 20 GHz and 100 GHz, with $\pm$24\% and $\pm$13\% bias margins, respectively, and demonstrates data densities in the 10s of Mbit/cm$^2$ with the MIT Lincoln Laboratory SC2 fabrication process. Additionally, the circulating nature of this design allows for minimal control circuitry, eliminates the need for data splitting and merging, and enables inexpensive implementations of sequential access and content-addressable memories. Further advances in fabrication processes suggest data densities of 100s of Mbit/cm$^2$ and beyondComment: 13 pages, 8 figures, 1 table, under revie

Using Multi-Instructional Teaching and Technology-Supported Active Learning Strategies to Enhance Student Engagement

University professors are developing an increasing awareness of how creative teaching is contributing to active learning in the classroom. Much is being learned from research that explores the significance of engaging students in activities designed to increase their learning. This article examines essential components of active learning, discusses ways in which multi-instructional teaching and technology can be used to generate active learning in the classroom, and provides examples of strategies, models, and tools that can be implemented to enhance student engagement and active learning in today\u27s classroo

Low-Cost Superconducting Fan-Out with Repurposed Josephson Junctions

Superconductor electronics (SCE) promise computer systems with orders of magnitude higher speeds and lower energy consumption than their complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) counterpart. At the same time, the scalability and resource utilization of superconducting systems are major concerns. Some of these concerns come from device-level challenges and the gap between SCE and CMOS technology nodes, and others come from the way Josephson Junctions (JJs) are used. Towards this end, we notice that a considerable fraction of hardware resources are not involved in logic operations, but rather are used for fan-out and buffering purposes. In this paper, we ask if there is a way to reduce these overheads; propose the repurposing of JJs at the cell boundaries for fan-out; and establish a set of rules to discretize critical currents in a way that is conducive to this reassignment. Finally, we demonstrate the accomplished gains through detailed analog simulations and modeling analyses. Our experiments indicate that the introduced method leads to a 48% savings in the JJ count in a tree with a fan-out of 1024, as well as an average of 43% of the JJ count for signal splitting and 32% for clock fan-out in ISCAS'85 benchmarks.Comment: 11 pages, 20 figures, submitted to IEEE TA

'It has a bleak future': The effects of job loss on regional and rural journalism in Australia

Severe contractions in the Australian media landscape have led to a loss of jobs in major metropolitan newsrooms. In 2015, those cuts spread significantly to regional and rural newsrooms in Australia. This paper explores the effect of job loss on rural and regional journalism through a survey of 31 journalists working at rural and regional media organisations whose positions were made redundant from 2012 to 2015. As well as providing accounts of their own personal redundancy experiences, this paper explores the participants’ opinions of regional and rural journalism. It concludes that those whose positions in local journalism have become redundant are concerned about the resources of local newsrooms, and the quality of journalism these newsrooms can subsequently produce

An Overview of Guam's Inshore Fisheries

Guam's nearshore reef fishery is a multi-gear, multispecies fishery that has undergone major changes through the years. Methods have evolved and become more modern. This, along with the changing economic status of Guam, has severely stressed the fishery. Top targeted species are being overexploited and "growth overharvesting" is occurring; the more serious form of "recruitment overharvesting," is happening to some of the key species. Major management concerns are discussed with respect to overfishing and habitat destruction. Management recommendations for this fishery include gear restrictions, size restrictions, and the establishment of marine conservation areas

Submission to the Select Committee on the Future of Public Interest Journalism

New Beats is a project studying Australian journalists whose positions became redundant during or since 2012. The four-year project is funded by the Australian Research Council and is being conducted by a team of researchers at four universities. The project aims to create greater understanding about the process of redundancy in journalism and of the human effects and societal ramifications for an industry undergoing profound change. The project is also a means by which journalists who have been through the redundancy process can share information and gather data on jobs, demand for journalistic expertise, new career directions, re-training, and the impact of redundancy on professional identity, family life and well-being. This submission addresses themes that pertain to the current state of public interest journalism in Australia and around the world, including the role of government in ensuring a viable, independent and diverse range of media services. This inquiry is taking place at a time when the ranks of journalists employed by major news outlets have been in serious decline for a decade.Australian Research Counci