The Old Forest : Story into Film

On April 12,1985, Sacred Heart University hosted the New England premiere of The Old Forest, an hour-long film adaptation by Steven John Ross of Peter Taylor\u27s short story. The Old Forest is, in Ross\u27s words, an ethnographic film, in this case focusing on various aspects of pre- World War II Memphis: the conventional, upper-class world of Nat Ramsey and Caroline Braxley, his fiance; the new working class world of Lee Ann Deehart, one of Nat\u27s girlfriends; and the primeval world of the Old Forest, to which Lee Ann runs away in the crucial incident that forces Nat and Caroline to look closely at each other and themselves. The Old Forest is scheduled for nationwide television presentation on the Arts and Entertainment Network. Ross introduced the film at Sacred Heart and led a discussion after the screening on various problems of adapting a literary work to the film medium. The following is an edited transcript of his comments and responses to questions raised by the audience

Searching for Wordin Avenue

This film commemorates the Hungarian community in Bridgeport and the immigrant experience, particularly the people of Hungary and other countries who made America their home. The film depicts the fortunes of a Hungarian immigrant family in Bridgeport, Connecticut during the first half of the twentieth century and offers coverage of Hungarian festivals there along with interviews, stills, dramatizations, and historic footage. Scarcely a trace of the once bustling immigrant community exists there today. A production of Sacred Heart University, Media Studies Department. Producer and director, Steven John Ross. Co-producer and sound recordist, Donald Coonley. Cinematographer, Larry McConkey. Narrated by Ralph Corrigan

Application of Time Projection Chambers with GEMs and Pixels to WIMP Searches and Fast Neutron Detection

We present work on the detection of neutral particles via nuclear recoils in gas-filled Time Projection Chambers (TPCs). We employ Gas Electron Multipliers (GEMs) to amplify the signal and silicon pixel electronics to detect the avalanche charge. These technologies allow ionization in the target gas to be detected with low noise, improved position and time resolution, and high efficiency. We review experimental results obtained in previous years, and report on ongoing simulation studies and construction of the first prototype at the University of Hawaii. We also present prospects of using such detectors to perform direction-sensitive searches for WIMP dark matter and fast neutron from fissionable material.Comment: Proceedings of 2nd International Conference on Technology and Instrumentation in Particle Physics (TIPP 2011), to be published in Physics Procedia, 8 pages, 9 figure

COVID-19 and Visual Disability: Can’t Look and Now Don’t Touch

Article provides a scientific explanation for pandemic-related challenges blind and visually impaired (BVI) people experience. These challenges include spatial cognition, nonvisual information access, and environmental perception. Also offers promising technical solutions for the above challenges

Image Quality vs. NEC in 2D and 3D PET

To investigate the relationship between NEC and image quality to 2D and 3D PET, while simultaneously optimizing 3D low energy threshold (LET), we have performed a series of phantom measurements. The phantom consisted of 46 1 cm fillable hollow spheres on a random grid inside a water-filled oval cylinder, 21 cm tall, 36 cm wide, and 40 cm long. The phantom was imaged on a Discovery ST PET/CT system (GE Healthcare, Milwaukee, WI) in a series of 3 min scans as it decayed from an activity of 7.2 mCi. The scans included LET settings of 375,400, and 425 keV in 3D, and 375 keV in 2D. Image signal-to-noise (SNR) was calculated and compared wash NEC. While both NEC and image quality in 3D improved for LETs above the default of 375 keV, we found that there were significant differences between NEC and image quality for 2D and 3D. Most importantly, 3D image-quality was strongly dependent on the reconstruction algorithm and its associated parameters. In conclusion, a direct measure of image quality as necessary for comparing 2D vs. 3D performance

A Cancer Risk Assessment of Inner-City Teenagers Living in New York City and Los Angeles

BACKGROUND: The Toxics Exposure Assessment Columbia–Harvard (TEACH) project assessed exposures and cancer risks from urban air pollutants in a population of high school teenagers in New York City (NYC) and Los Angeles (LA). Forty-six high school students participated in NYC and 41 in LA, most in two seasons in 1999 and 2000, respectively. METHODS: Personal, indoor home, and outdoor home 48-hr samples of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), aldehydes, particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter ≤ 2.5 μm, and particle-bound elements were collected. Individual cancer risks for 13 VOCs and 6 particle-bound elements were calculated from personal concentrations and published cancer unit risks. RESULTS: The median cumulative risk from personal VOC exposures for this sample of NYC high school students was 666 per million and was greater than the risks from ambient exposures by a factor of about 5. In the LA sample, median cancer risks from VOC personal exposures were 486 per million, about a factor of 4 greater than ambient exposure risks. The VOCs with the highest cancer risk included 1,4-dichlorobenzene, formaldehyde, chloroform, acetaldehyde, and benzene. Of these, benzene had the greatest contributions from outdoor sources. All others had high contributions from indoor sources. The cumulative risks from personal exposures to the elements were an order of magnitude lower than cancer risks from VOC exposures. CONCLUSIONS: Most VOCs had median upper-bound lifetime cancer risks that exceeded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) benchmark of 1 × 10(−6) and were generally greater than U.S. EPA modeled estimates, more so for compounds with predominant indoor sources. Chromium, nickel, and arsenic had median personal cancer risks above the U.S. EPA benchmark with exposures largely from outdoors and other microenvironments. The U.S. EPA–modeled concentrations tended to overestimate personal cancer risks for beryllium and chromium but underestimate risks for nickel and arsenic

Resilience, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and anger: A linguistic inquiry into the psychological processes associated with resilience in secondary school STEM learning.

AIM: To examine resilience in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) learning within an ecological model, identifying the psychological processes associated with resilient, and non-resilient learning to develop a framework for promoting STEM resilience. SAMPLE AND METHOD: From a sample of secondary-school students (n = 4,936), 1,577 students who found their STEM lesson difficult were identified. Students were assessed on three resilience capabilities and asked to write a commentary on how they responded to the lesson. RESULTS: Factor analysis revealed that resilience in STEM learning could be positioned within the ecological systems model, with students' resilience being comprised of three capabilities; the ability to quickly and easily recover (Recovery), remain focussed on goals (Ecological), and naturally adjust (Adaptive capacity). Using a linguistic analysis programme, we identified the prevalence of words within the student commentaries which related to seven psychological processes. Greater ability to recover was negatively related to negative emotional processes. To increase the specificity of this relationship, we identified high and low resilient students and compared their commentaries. Low resilient students used significantly more anger words. Qualitative analysis revealed interpersonal sources of anger (anger at teacher due to lack of support) and intrapersonal sources of anger (including rumination, expression and control, and seeking distraction). CONCLUSIONS: Anger is a key process that distinguishes students who struggle to recover from a difficult STEM lesson. An ecological systems model may prove useful for understanding STEM resilience and developing intervention pathways. Implications for teacher education include the importance of students' perceptions of teacher support