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Magnetic Properties of Eu_x Ca_(1-x) Fe_2 As_2 (0 ≤ x ≤ 1) Superconductor
Get PDFWe have investigated the evolution of magnetic properties of EuxCa1−xFe2As2 (0 ≤ x ≤ 1) materials at different Eu-content (x). The magnetic susceptibility increases while lowering the temperature, showing a typical paramagnetic behavior. There exists a sharp anomaly near 15 - 19 K that arises due to the Eu2+ antiferromagnetic ordering. The temperature dependence of the susceptibility data is analyzed using the Curie-Weiss model and determined the best-fit parameters, the Curie constant (C) and Weiss-temperature (θ) at different x. We found that both parameters, C and θ, vary almost linearly with x. The obtained results are compared with other published data, and their physical implications will be discussed.Killgore Faculty Research Gran
Multilevel Models for Single-Case Data: Using Virtual Manipulatives for Students With Disabilities
No full textExpected Findings:
The average immediate effect and trend during the intervention were statistically significant. The average immediate effect varied significantly by student grade, disability type, developer, device, type of virtual manipulative, and visual model embedded in virtual manipulatives. Additionally, the visual model embedded in virtual manipulatives significantly influenced the average trend during the use of virtual manipulatives.
Datasets and R codes are posted through an online data repository: https://osf.io/wvtxg/?view_only=8272597c1fb342beb40f2f088addcded%C2%A0The purpose of this study was to synthesize the effects of using virtual manipulatives to increase the mathematical accuracy of students with disabilities over the last 20 years of research. We extracted a total of 1,797 raw data points from 114 cases across 35 single-case studies. By applying three-level multilevel modeling, we analyzed both immediate effects and trends during the intervention phase, in addition to potential moderation effects related to student characteristics (case-level) and intervention features (study-level). The average immediate effect and trend during the intervention were statistically significant. The average immediate effect varied significantly by student grade, disability type, developer, device, type of virtual manipulative, and visual model embedded in virtual manipulatives. Additionally, the visual model embedded in virtual manipulatives significantly influenced the average trend during the use of virtual manipulatives.
Datasets and R codes are posted through an online data repository: https://osf.io/wvtxg/?view_only=8272597c1fb342beb40f2f088addcded%C2%A0Killgore Faculty Research Gran
Not for the Faint of Heart: A Content Analysis of FEMA's Use of Twitter During the 2017 Hurricane Season
No full textExpected Findings: Results showed FEMA provided information to affected publics and bolstered its work using various Twitter features. Differences were identified in tweets published by FEMA’s national and regional accounts. From hashtags to visual elements, FEMA's tweet content changed as the season progressed: more tweets included information about the impact of the storms. More tweets shared factual information from hurricane to hurricane, and the tweets tended to use more hashtags and account tags, which should broaden their audience.Link to digital presentation: https://youtu.be/WaTXpXvUYhU | Applying semantic and content analysis research methodologies, this study examined posts by 13 of FEMA’s Twitter accounts during the 2017 hurricane season comparing messaging content across time between FEMA and its regional counterparts during Harvey, Maria, Irma, and Nate. Results showed FEMA provided information to affected publics and bolstered its work using various Twitter features. Differences were identified in tweets published by FEMA’s national and regional accounts. From hashtags to visual elements, FEMA's tweet content changed as the season progressed: more tweets included information about the impact of the storms. More tweets shared factual information from hurricane to hurricane, and the tweets tended to use more hashtags and account tags, which should broaden their audience
Emerging Trends in Data Center Management Automation
Get PDFHistory:
Research paper accepted and presented at 2021 IEEE 11th Annual Computing and Communication Workshop and Conference (CCWC).
Expected Findings:
This research explored the three main emerging trends for data center management automation: 1) intelligent monitoring and management systems using data science; 2) simulation tools incorporating artificial intelligence and digital twinning; and 3) robotics for process automation. All three are innovative technologies will ultimately contribute to more effective and efficient operations of unmanned data centers, a goal visualized long ago, which has become more pressing to achieve with the global pandemic.New and emerging technologies have consolidated the Fourth Industrial Revolution, an era of cyber-physical systems, where the physical and digital worlds are closely connected. While most of the world is being impacted by a pandemic, data centers have managed to keep people connected and keep the economy afloat. As such, they are witnessing an unprecedented need for automation of their monitoring and management processes in order to minimize reliance on human interaction. A growing number of new technologies are transforming mission critical facilities into a highly connected, smart, and more efficient, productive and sustainable industry. Vast amounts of data are being collected in real-time, and processed to predict behavior, to produce actionable recommendations, and to improve decision-making. This paper summarizes the three main emerging technological trends, identified by the authors, which enable these processes in data center management automation: 1) intelligent monitoring and management systems using data science; 2) simulation tools incorporating artificial intelligence and digital twinning; and 3) robotics for process automation
Motivators of Pursuing Nursing Education at the Graduate Level
No full textTopic:
Having a greater understanding of the motivators to return to school, barriers preventing return, and factors that enable students to persist in a graduate level program will facilitate nursing programs to recruit qualified students and help (facilitate) meet the needs of current and future students. While there is an abundance of literature reporting on these factors for RN-BSN students, there is a dearth of information on the similar considerations for MSN students. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to ascertain what the motivators, barriers, and persistence factors are for nurses seeking to earn a graduate nursing degree.
History:
As the U.S. nursing shortage continues, there remains a growing need for a highly educated work force. The necessity to pursue a graduate degree in nursing has not been as widely encouraged as the baccalaureate degree. Master’s prepared nurses are essential across a variety of health care settings to serve in leadership, management, and advanced primary provider positions, as well as academic settings as faculty members and researchers. While the percentage of nurses earning a master’s degree has risen gradually, the need for additional highly educated nurses persists as rapid advancements in health care technology including telehealth and informatics occur.
Data Collection Methodology:
This study utilized a cross-sectional descriptive survey of graduate level nursing students to determine what factors motivated them to return to school, the barriers they had overcome, and what elements allowed them to persist in their studies.
Expected Findings:
A recommendation is made for more robust recruitment, expanded awareness of program/curriculum details for potential students, and encouraging employers to provide tuition reimbursement and loan repayments. Additionally, ensuring that employers who do provide financial support communicate this to their employees as a motivating factor.Motivators of Pursuing Nursing Education at the Graduate Level Abstract Background: As the U.S. nursing shortage continues, there remains a growing need for a highly educated work force. The necessity to pursue a graduate degree in nursing has not been as widely encouraged as the baccalaureate degree. Master’s prepared nurses are essential across a variety of health care settings to serve in leadership, management, and advanced primary provider positions, as well as academic settings as faculty members and researchers. While the percentage of nurses earning a master’s degree has risen gradually, the need for additional highly educated nurses persists as rapid advancements in health care technology including telehealth and informatics occur. Purpose: Having a greater understanding of the motivators to return to school, barriers preventing return, and factors that enable students to persist in a graduate level program will facilitate nursing programs to recruit qualified students and help (facilitate) meet the needs of current and future students. While there is an abundance of literature reporting on these factors for RN-BSN students, there is a dearth of information on the similar considerations for MSN students. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to ascertain what the motivators, barriers, and persistence factors are for nurses seeking to earn a graduate nursing degree. Methods: This study utilized a cross-sectional descriptive survey of graduate level nursing students to determine what factors motivated them to return to school, the barriers they had overcome, and what elements allowed them to persist in their studies. Results: The highest level of agreement for motivating factors included: finding personal satisfaction in earning an MSN (M = 4.76), a desire to expand nursing knowledge (M = 4.31), a belief that nurses with an MSN command greater respect as professional (M = 3.76), and the belief that earning an advanced degree would increase confidence at work (M = 3.61). Financial challenges (M = 3.70), inflexible work schedules (M 3.54), and difficult family situations (M = 3.20) were shown to be the main barriers students needed to overcome in order to return to school. The highest agreement among the factors that allowed students to persist in the MSN program included the following: personal reasons encourage me to persist (M = 4.82), confidence in ability to complete the program (M = 4.45), have the necessary family encouragement and support to complete the program (M = 4.45), and have the necessary faculty encouragement and support to complete the program (M = 4.18). Conclusion: A recommendation is made for more robust recruitment, expanded awareness of program/curriculum details for potential students, and encouraging employers to provide tuition reimbursement and loan repayments. Additionally, ensuring that employers who do provide financial support communicate this to their employees as a motivating factor
Musical Women: A Subject Worthy of Study
Get PDFHigh school and college students in MUSI-1306 music appreciation courses study many composers and compositions. Of those composers, music appreciation textbooks typically briefly mention a few women composers, most notably Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel and Clara Schumann. Most music courses focus on the master composers comprised of men. This lack of representation of women composers in music appreciation textbooks creates the illusion that there have not been many women performers or composers. Many women engaged in these musical activities. While many female musicians only performed or composed for family and friends, many others performed publicly and regularly published their works.
Music appreciation curricula should convey a more diverse population of composers by integrating the study of compositions written by women to achieve the learning objectives for the course. There are similar objectives used throughout MUSI-1306 college-level music appreciation courses across the state of Texas. In these classes, students learn to identify musical works and elements in a variety of styles, analyze the elements and structure of music using appropriate terminology, and critically evaluate the influence of social, political, technological, or cultural ideas on music. Educators should offer a more diverse compilation of works that would include women composers. Compositions written by women can fulfill the overall objectives in a music course just as well as using works written by men
West Texas A&M Atmospheric Profiling System
No full textData Collection Methodology: The West Texas A&M University atmospheric profiling system (APS) utilizes the Windsond low-cost boundary-layer profiling suite. A key feature of the Windsond is that the system is re-usable and the payload can be “cut down” by the user and retrieved for re-use. The following variables are collected vertically in the atmosphere by the APS: Temperature Humidity and dew point Wind speed and direction Barometric pressure The specification of the Windsond weather instrumentation: Weight: 13 g Battery type: Rechargeable lithium ion Battery lifetime > 60 m, 2 days in recovery mode Telemetry range 60 km; Data collection frequency 1 s Rate of ascent: Variable 0.5 – 3 m s-1 | Expected Findings: The West Texas A&M University atmospheric profiling system (APS) has been successfully set up and tested in both free-flying and recover and “tethersonde” mode. In addition, the free-flying sondes can be recovered and re-used, further enabling previously prohibitively expensive research to be conducted. The APS was leveraged to obtain a successful grant to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research COMET National Weather Service Partners Proposal Entitled: Improving Understanding of Spatiotemporal Variations in Extreme Summertime Heat at Palo Duro Canyon State Park. The APS will also be utilized in an upcoming research study on air quality (determining atmospheric stability and wind flow) in the western US (https://atmos.utah.edu/aquarius/) as well as severe weather research. The APS will be used for student training and real-world experience in ENVR 4404 (Environmental Sampling) and for other class demonstrations and for outreach at area schools.An atmospheric profiling system (APS) was funded by the Kilgore Faculty Research program at West Texas A&M University. Also known as a type of “weather balloon” system, the APS is a cornerstone of atmospheric science research that will support many studies going into the future at WTAMU, including extreme heat, severe weather, fire weather, and air pollution. Applications and results from preliminary system testing are presented. This system will be used this summer in a project involving ~10 WTAMU students working with the National Weather Service to map extreme heat variations in Palo Duro Canyon State Park.Kilgore Research Grant entitled "West Texas A&M University Atmospheric Profiling System (October 2019 - August 2020
Dogs and Rape in Coetzee’s _Disgrace_ and Ngugi’s _A Grain of Wheat_
No full textExpected Findings:
To reach a conclusion as how injustices such as rape and animal mutilation complicate the reclamation of lands from the colonizers in Kenya and South Africa.How do we see justice in lands once colonized and torn by racism and oppression? When does crime, particularly against animals and women, indicate a change in power? How do we punish the criminals when the rules of what is “just” have changed irrevocably? What do crime and justice have to do with decolonization? One of the common threads tying together Coetzee’s Disgrace and Ngugi’s A Grain of Wheat is the representation of rape coupled with the mutilation of dogs. For Coetzee, the rape of Lucy comes along with the splatter of “blood and brains” of the dogs Lucy keeps in kennels outside her South African home. Ngugi’s scene, though rewritten to exclude direct reference to rape after initial publication, sees Dr. Lynd attacked in her home, her dog torn to pieces before her eyes.This essay will examine the broader implications of these shared acts of violence: the coupling of violence against women with violence against dogs, and the coupling of woman/dog violence in two of the African continent’s most famous novels. Part of the conjecture at play is an idea that the indigenous men who commit these acts are not assaulting the weakest links in the colonial chain (women and animals who have accompanied the masculine colonial powers to the African shores), but instead are directing these acts of violence in efforts to recolonize their own land. In other words, the slaughter of dogs, animals used to promote fear, and the rape of women are direct assaults on colonizing power. Destroying fear in the form of dogs, and actually or potentially inseminating colonial women in acts of rape, suggest acts of violent reclamation—though maybe not justice in its purest sense. Perhaps, too, the reactions of the women attacked suggest something about the changing face of decolonization. Ngugi’s Dr. Lynd lives in fear and misery, injured whenever she sees a dog and remembers the day of her attack. Lucy, on the other hand, remains resolute, decides to remain on the land, fall under the family of a neighboring Black man, and carry the child thrust upon her to term. The results from each novel are mixed, but what is clear is that the face of justice changes when colonial power wanes—whether the true sense of justice is obeyed or not
Magnetotransport Studies of topological Sb_2Te_(2-x)Se_x Single Crystal
No full textExpected Findings:
Magnetoresistance of the Sb_2Te_(2-x)Se_x single crystal shows clear quantum oscillations with two distinct frequencies.We have studied the magnetotransport properties of a topological compound, Sb2Te2-xSex. The electrical resistance decreases with temperature showing the metallic behavior. Magnetoresistance (MR) increases with increasing magnetic field, and it reaches a value as high as 300 % at 14 T without showing any sign of saturation. At higher fields, MR shows clear Shubnikov de Haas (SdH) oscillations with a single frequency near 178 T. In addition, there appears a tiny peak near 24 T in the frequency spectrum. We have also analyzed the temperature-dependent quantum oscillations using the Lifshitz-Kosevich theory and calculated several physical parameters characterizing the SdH oscillations. The possible origin of the low frequency at 24 T will also be discussed.Killgore Research Gran
Investigation of a Possible Novel Genetic Mutation in Brangus Calves with Proportionate Dwarfism
No full textData Collection Methodology:
Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) were conducted in GenABEL (Aulchenko et al. 2007) with sex as a covariate and accounting for population stratification in the sample using a relationship matrix and/or principle components; the means most appropriate and thus the model assumed for various iterations of the data (e.g., with and without additional samples) was determined by the estimate of lambda, a measure of genomic inflation. For an additional means to conduct association analyses and to allow for investigation of regions of significance from the GWAS studies, DNA from four affected calves and their dams as well as from the semen of the sire was isolated and whole-genome sequenced. The resulting sequence was aligned to the UCD-ARS1.2 reference genome with BWA-MEM (Li 2013) and variants identified with freebayes (Garrison & Marth 2012). The functional impact of each variant was predicted using SNPEff (Cingolani et al. 2012).
Expected Findings:
Mapping and variant calling of WGS from the nine Brangus individuals resulted in 6.9 million variants for evaluation. Assuming a genetic cause of this condition is rare across breeds, WGS data from Heaton et al. (2016) representing over 100 individuals of over 20 breeds (including 6 Angus, 5 Brangus, and 5 Brahman) and that of the 12 other calves sequenced by our lab were utilized to remove common variants (found at >5% frequency). This reduced the data set to be more manageable with 51,460 candidate variants fitting a recessive mode of inheritance. 43,000 of the total variants remaining after filtering were predicted to have either a “high” or “moderate” impact on gene function. The WGS data were utilized to investigate the regions identified by GWAS of possible interest as well as to investigate possible variants in genes previously implicated in dwarfism in cattle and other species (Table 3). In regions of interest, variants were first examined to find any that may fit a recessive mode of inheritance (heterozygous in each parent but homozygous in the affected calves). As no clear candidate were resolved, variants having a predicted impact were also considered allowing for some error in phenotype assignment (e.g. only 3⁄4 calves affected). The possibility of a dominant trait resulting from mosaicism of the sire, in which case he may show no symptoms but pass this defect to a proportion of his offspring, was also considered by examining loci where the sire and calves are all heterozygous while the dams do not have the variant. In all evaluations, the position of each variant in the genome (e.g., intergenic, intronic, exonic) and predicted function was noted to prioritize variants with possible functional relevance.The University of Nebraska - Lincoln was contacted in May, 2018, with reports of calves born with proportionate dwarfism and in at least one case, mild scoliosis. The calves share the same sire and pedigree relationships observed between the sire and dams of the affected calves suggested a genetic basis of the condition. The purpose of this study was to use genomic tools to attempt to identify genomic variant(s) causative of small size and skeletal deformities in these Brangus calves. After many analyses, no clear candidate variants were identified by any method employed. Variants that fit one of the hypothesized modes of inheritance across all cases in the regions of interest were rare, and when present, had no clear functional impact. If the phenotype observed were due to a simple Mendelian cause, it would be expected that GWAS and homozygosity mapping analyses would each point to a similar region of the genome, and GWAS associations would include multiple, linked markers; this unfortunately was not the case