An Analysis of Middle School Physical Science Teachers\u27 Understanding of Accelerated Motion

Continued observation of teachers within the University of Maine Physical Sciences Partnership showed persistence over many iterations of professional development (PD) the use of an inconsistent model of accelerated motion. This model identified acceleration in the same direction as velocity as positive (speeding up is defined as positive acceleration) and acceleration opposed to velocity as negative; we will call this the speed model. We found use of this model in middle school physical science teachers in a survey and through interviews. A PD activity was also observed to study the teachers’ use of vectors and coordinate systems to solve kinematics problems. The “speed model” is used in place of the coordinate-based formalism of physics – termed the “direction model” in this paper – even though the speed model is insufficient to describe all physical situations. After careful identification of teacher resources, we see that they have the mathematical skills, and ability to use vectors within a coordinate system, which should allow them to arrive at the direction model; however, when faced with acceleration questions, many revert to using the speed model. The speed model may come from minus sign confusion in calculating changes in velocity, or it may be a velocity-dependent coordinate system; either way its persistence in the teacher population needs to be addressed

CULICOIDES VARIIPENNIS AND BLUETONGUE-VIRUS EPIDEMIOLOGY IN THE UNITED STATES1

The bluetongue viruses are transmitted to ruminants in North America by Culicoides vuriipennis.US annual losses of approximately $125 million are due to restrictions on the movement of livestock and germplasm to bluetongue-free countries. Bluetongue is the most economically important arthropod-borne animal disease in the United States. Bluetongue is absent in the northeastern United States because of the inefficient vector ability there of C. variipennis for bluetongue. The vector of bluetongue virus elsewhere in the United States is C. vuriipennis sonorensis. The three C. variipennis subspecies differ in vector competence for bluetongue virus in the laboratory. Understanding C.vuriipennis genetic variation controlling bluetongue transmission will help identify geographic regions at risk for bluetongue and provide opportunities to prevent virus transmission. Information on C. vuriipennis and bluetongue epidemiology will improve trade and provide information to protect US livestock from domestic and foreign arthropod-borne pathogens

On the field of school choice: Conversations capturing white middle class maternal privilege: A case study

This study examined the results of high school choice in a small community through the experiences of White Middle class mothers. In capturing the conversations of these mothers I aimed to make explicit the implicit structures of power inherent in the school choices of this small community. Using a Bourdieusian framework I was able to document ways that the White Middle Class strategize within these structures for their own gains. I was also able to document the ways that these structures advance these strategies often at the expense of those in subordinate positions, and in this country subordinate positions are tied to race. These findings confirm that school choice often benefits those in power and adds to the literature calling for active measures regulating demographics in choice schools

The impact of future goals on students' proximal subgoals and on their perceptions of task instrumentality.

Path analysis was performed to test the predictions of two models explaining the impact of students' future goals (both extrinsic and intrinsic) on their adoption of a system of proximal subgoals, and on their perceptions of task instrumentality. The models were based on the Miller and Brickman (2004) conceptualization of Future-Oriented Motivation and Self-Regulation, which draws primarily from Social Cognitive and Self Determination Theories. Participants were 421 college students who completed a questionnaire that included scales measuring future goals, college graduation and college instrumentality target subgoals, proximal subgoals, and perceived task instrumentality. Data strongly supported the model suggesting that students' future goals have an impact on their college graduation target subgoal, their adoption of pertinent proximal subgoals, and their perceptions of task instrumentality. The data also indicated that intrinsic, rather than extrinsic, future goals are the most strongly related to the adoption of a strong college graduation target subgoal, robust proximal subgoals, and positive perceptions of task instrumentality

Maximizing Intellectual Property: Optimality, Synchronicity, and Distributive Justice

This Article addresses the distributive structure of intellectual property and innovation policy1 and the foundational role it plays in distributive justice. Distributive accounts of law are undergoing a renaissance; an unprecedented paradigm shift away from the wealth-maximizing approach to law and legal theory and toward a distributive view.2 In line with this shift, this Article breaks new ground in providing a needed framework for a distributive theory of intellectual property law and innovation policy and articulates an appealing, egalitarian alternative to wealth- or welfare-maximizing accounts of intellectual property and innovation policy. In doing so, this Article diagnoses and serves as a corrective to a seemingly systematic omission in the mature scholarly literature surrounding intellectual property

Property, Duress, and Consensual Relationships

Professor Seana Valentine Shiffrin has produced an exciting new book, Speech Matters: On Lying, Morality, and the Law. Shiffrin’s previous rigorous, careful, and morally sensitive work spans contract law, intellectual property, and the freedoms of association and expression. Speech Matters is in line with Shiffrin’s signature move: we ought to reform our social practices and legal and political institutions to, in various ways, address or accommodate moral values—here, a stringent moral prohibition against lying, a strident principle of promissory fidelity, that is, the principle that one ought to keep one’s promises, and the general value of veracity. The book grows out of Shiffrin’s Hempel Lectures at Princeton University and honorary lectures she has given at Cornell and New York Universities. Shiffrin cotaught a seminar with the late Professor Ronald Dworkin, which discussed a prepublication draft of the book (pp. ix–x). The volume is organized into six essentially independent chapters or lectures. Chapters One, Two, and Six began as independent, stand-alone lectures; Shiffrin crafted Chapters Three, Four, and Five to further expand on the arguments of One and Six (p. 4). While the volume bears a unifying theme, Shiffrin intended the chapters to retain their independence as distinct lectures, and she welcomes readers to delve into the chapters independently of one another (p. 4). Speech Matters is, at its core, a rich discussion of moral agency and the normative values of sincerity, truth telling, promissory fidelity, and the effect they ought to bear on personal and social relations, and political and legal institutions. This Review brings forward this unifying theme and provides a critical appraisal, contrasting Shiffrin’s stridently Kantian approach with an alternative foundationally deontic, if less severe, distributive approach

Maximizing Intellectual Property: Optimality, Synchronicity, and Distributive Justice

(Excerpt) This Article addresses the distributive structure of intellectual property and innovation policy and the foundational role it plays in distributive justice. Distributive accounts of law are undergoing a renaissance; an unprecedented paradigm shift away from the wealth-maximizing approach to law and legal theory and toward a distributive view. In line with this shift, this Article breaks new ground in providing a needed framework for a distributive theory of intellectual property law and innovation policy and articulates an appealing, egalitarian alternative to wealth- or welfare-maximizing accounts of intellectual property and innovation policy. In doing so, this Article diagnoses and serves as a corrective to a seemingly systematic omission in the mature scholarly literature surrounding intellectual property. This omission is namely the underappreciated role that optimal tax rates and optimal legal rule construction play in the context of a distributive account of intellectual property and innovation policy. This Article concludes that for maximizing accounts of intellectual property—whether aimed at net-aggregate wealth or welfare, or in egalitarian fashion, aimed at the economic position of the least well-off—rules governing intellectual property are on a conceptual par with legal rules traditionally conceived of as merely operating in the “background” of intellectual property. Intellectual property has traditionally been understood as the legal doctrine surrounding copyrights, patents, and trade secrets. But legal institutions well beyond these areas of law are crucial to setting optimal incentives surrounding innovation and the governance and control of knowledge goods; this broader range of legal institutions can be described as innovation policy. This Article shows that maximizing principles demand a certain synchronicity among entitlement-governing legal rules, and those distinct maximizing principles demand unique sets of optimal legal rules—inclusive of intellectual property and innovation policy—and, further, that each respective set of legal rules must be constructed in light of a unique optimal tax rate. These observations have important ramifications for ongoing disputes in intellectual property scholarship—for example, the debate over monopolistic legal rules versus taxation and prizes—as well as ramifications for doctrinal intellectual property disputes concerning the copyright/patent divide and bankruptcy’s treatment of intellectual property

Vision-related symptoms as a clinical feature of chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis? Evidence from the DePaul Symptom Questionnaire

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) or Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) is a debilitating disorder, affecting at least 250,000 people in the UK. Marked by debilitating fatigue, its aetiology is poorly understood and diagnosis controversial. A number of symptoms overlap with other illnesses with the result that CFS/ME is commonly misdiagnosed. It is important therefore that significant clinical features are investigated. People diagnosed with CFS/ME consistently report that they experience vision-related symptoms associated with their illness1-3 with some of these reports being verified experimentally. Although vision-related symptoms may represent a significant clinical feature of CFS/ME that could be useful in its diagnosis, they have yet to be included in clinical guidelines