Shared Reading Activities: A Recommendation For Deaf Children

There should be a focus on fun in shared reading activities with preschoolers in order to prepare them for later literacy, particularly those at risk of a poor foundation in a first language (L1), including deaf children (here “deaf” covers hard of hearing, as well). We look at how shared reading activities (SRAs) develop pre-literacy skills and describe bilingual-bimodal ebooks aimed purely at producing enjoyment, so families will engage in SRAs frequently

Cell motility: a viscous fingering analysis of active gels

The symmetry breaking of the actin network from radial to longitudinal symmetry has been identified as the major mechanism for keratocytes (fish cells) motility on solid substrate. For strong friction coefficient, the two dimensional actin flow which includes the polymerisation at the edge and depolymerisation in the bulk can be modelled as a Darcy flow, the cell shape and dynamics being then modelled by standard complex analysis methods. We use the theory of active gels to describe the orientational order of the filaments which varies from the border to the bulk. We show analytically that the reorganisation of the cortex is enough to explain the motility of the cell and find the velocity as a function of the orientation order parameter in the bulk.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in EPJ - Plu

Radial Solutions for Hamiltonian Elliptic Systems with Weights

We prove the existence of infinitely many radial solutions for elliptic systems in Rn with power weights. A key tool for the proof will be a weighted imbedding theorem for fractional-order Sobolev spaces, that could be of independent interest.Comment: 13 page

Housing Affordability in Metropolitan Areas. The Application of a Combination of the Ratio Income and Residual Income Approaches to Two Case Studies in Sicily, Italy

Housing affordability problems have become more serious over the course of the last few decades and are now also affecting the middle-class, despite the fall in prices on the housing market. This study proposes a methodology to assess threshold-income as an index for measuring housing affordability by applying a combination of the ratio income and residual income approaches. The methodology is applied to two particular areas of Sicily in Italy as case studies consisting of medium-size metropolitan areas located in a less developed European region. The areas have been chosen on the basis of their different territorial structure: a polarized area that comprises a high-density city centre and a polynuclear urban region. The results are diversified for income level, as well as for town and urban zone, and allow us to compare the housing affordability problems between towns belonging to the same metropolitan area

EMSEE

To create an application that achieves safety on the road for first responders and bystanders through the use of location in GPS navigation and volume control. This app would signal smart phone devices in surrounding cars to limit distractions by objectively decreasing their vehicle audio so the public is alert of the first responders driving to their destination. There is a short amount of time to process where the emergency vehicle is once you see lights or hear sirens. However, if one or both of these senses are impaired by distractions of the bystander, this could result in danger of others, confusion, or even delayed time for the person in need of assistance. This is an opportunity for the community to be of service to people in need by being perceptive of their surroundings on the road. We all want to be of service to first responders, as if they were on their way to help you

Resonant effects in a SQUID qubit subjected to non adiabatic changes

By quickly modifying the shape of the effective potential of a double SQUID flux qubit from a single-well to a double-well condition, we experimentally observe an anomalous behavior, namely an alternance of resonance peaks, in the probability to find the qubit in a given flux state. The occurrence of Landau-Zener transitions as well as resonant tunneling between degenerate levels in the two wells may be invoked to partially justify the experimental results. A quantum simulation of the time evolution of the system indeed suggests that the observed anomalous behavior can be imputable to quantum coherence effects. The interplay among all these mechanisms has a practical implication for quantum computing purposes, giving a direct measurement of the limits on the sweeping rates possible for a correct manipulation of the qubit state by means of fast flux pulses, avoiding transitions to non-computational states.Comment: 6 pages and 6 figures. The paper, as it is, has been accepted for publication on PRB on March 201