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The Implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in a Virtual Public Charter School
Get PDFThe Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) guarantees certain rights and protections to students with disabilities enrolled in public schools, and to their families. Even though virtual schools are one of the fastest growing trends in public k-12 education, there is evidence that these schools may not be fully implementing IDEA for enrolled students with disabilities. There has been some concern regarding the appropriateness of virtual education for student with disabilities, as well as some concern for the spectrum of services being offered in virtual schools. This case study examined the implementation of special education supports and services in one public virtual k-12 school in the United States. Interviews, document review, and participant observations were used to collect data. Findings indicated that components of IDEA were not being universally implemented for students with disabilities. Limited programming options, large special education caseloads, and an over-dependence on parents and other non-teacher adults limits students’ access to Free and Appropriate Public Education, Least Restrictive Environment, and Individualized Education Plans. Issues were also identified in the provision of Appropriate Evaluation, Parent Participation, and Procedural Safeguards. Regardless of documented challenges, benefits to virtual education were noted. Parent, faculty and staff participants reported being happier with virtual school than brick-and-mortar. Faculty enjoys easy access to a multitude of academic data. Relationships and communication among community members was reported to be stronger than what was previously experienced in brick-and-mortar schools. Faculty, staff and parent participants discussed students’ emotional and physical safety as a benefit of virtual education
Detecting Metagame Shifts in League of Legends Using Unsupervised Learning
Get PDFOver the many years since their inception, the complexity of video games has risen considerably. With this increase in complexity comes an increase in the number of possible choices for players and increased difficultly for developers who try to balance the effectiveness of these choices. In this thesis we demonstrate that unsupervised learning can give game developers extra insight into their own games, providing them with a tool that can potentially alert them to problems faster than they would otherwise be able to find. Specifically, we use DBSCAN to look at League of Legends and the metagame players have formed with their choices and attempt to detect when the metagame shifts possibly giving the developer insight into what changes they should affect to achieve a more balanced, fun game
Wolf at the Door: A Novella
Get PDFWolf at the Door concerns a thirteen year old boy, Wilmer, during the summer of his sexual awakening, where he explores the boundaries of his sexuality and his attraction to violence and danger, primarily through an older teenage boy, Bricktone, all while young women from his working class community are being kidnapped, abused, and murdered by a human predator. Wilmer considers what kind of man he will become and whether can escape the influence of the wolf
Unintentional Community
Get PDFThe contents of this thesis will detail the entire process I took in making the first episode of Unintentional Community. I have broken up my process into six parts. Part One will discuss the inspirations for the show as well as how it came about. Part Two will cover all of the pre-production work that my team and I went through. Part Three discusses the entire process of my shooting experience as a director and actor. Part Four details the long post-production process. Part Five talks about the show’s bible. Finally, Part Six lays out our entire plan for how we intend to shop Unintentional Community
Generalizing Multistage Partition Procedures for Two-parameter Exponential Populations
Get PDFANOVA analysis is a classic tool for multiple comparisons and has been widely used in numerous disciplines due to its simplicity and convenience. The ANOVA procedure is designed to test if a number of different populations are all different. This is followed by usual multiple comparison tests to rank the populations. However, the probability of selecting the best population via ANOVA procedure does not guarantee the probability to be larger than some desired prespecified level. This lack of desirability of the ANOVA procedure was overcome by researchers in early 1950\u27s by designing experiments with the goal of selecting the best population. In this dissertation, a single-stage procedure is introduced to partition k treatments into good and bad groups with respect to a control population assuming some key parameters are known. Next, the proposed partition procedure is genaralized for the case when the parameters are unknown and a purely-sequential procedure and a two-stage procedure are derived. Theoretical asymptotic properties, such as first order and second order properties, of the proposed procedures are derived to document the efficiency of the proposed procedures. These theoretical properties are studied via Monte Carlo simulations to document the performance of the procedures for small and moderate sample sizes
Characterization of genes involved in the biosynthesis of Phycoerythrin I and II in cyanobacteria
Get PDFCyanobacteria are photosynthetic prokaryotes that able to produce oxygen. They have light harvesting complexes called phycobilisomes (PBS). PBS are generally composed of an allophycocyanin core with phycocyanin and phycoerythrin rods connected to the core. PBS are able to efficiently harvest light energy from different wavelengths of visible light due to the evolution of PBP. Phycoerythrin has five chromophores that are attached to six cysteine residues and is essential for efficient green light capture and transfer of energy for use in photosynthesis. The attachment of these chromophores to PBP is facilitated by enzymes known as bilin lyases.
In this study, we characterize and explore the role of enzymes that are involved in the biosynthesis of phycoerythrin in cyanobacteria. Biochemical and molecular techniques were used in the characterization of these proteins to gain a better understanding of their roles in the post-translational modification of phycobiliprotein. In F. diplosipohon, the lyase activity of CpeT was characterized and studied using a heterologous, co-expression system in E. coli. It was determined that CpeT was able to ligate PEB to Cys-165 of CpeB in the presence of CpeZ, a chaperone-like protein.
Next, the roles of three proteins, MpeY from RS9916 and MpeQ and MpeW from A15-62, were analyzed using a combination of gene-interruption mutants and recombinant protein expression techniques. The absence of mpeY resulted in the reduction of PEB chromophorylation of MpeA in green light conditions, and recombinant protein coexpression confirmed that MpeY was responsible for PEB attachment to Cys-83 of MpeA. The interruption of mpeQ in A15-62 resulted in a reduced PUB phenotype in MpeA in blue light. Recombinant protein expressions revealed that MpeQ was a lyase-isomerase responsible for the attachment of PUB to Cys-83 of MpeA.
Two regulatory proteins located in two conserved configurations of a genomic island present in species that are able to change their phycobilin content in response to different light environments, known as Type-IV chromatic acclimation (CA4), were investigated. FciA and FciB from RS9916 were studied using gene interruption mutants from RS9916 and they were found to be responsible for the CA4 response in CA4-A containing species of Synechococcus
Sino Evil − See No Evil: Graphic Violence in Octave Mirbeau and Judith Gautier
Get PDFLa fiction naturaliste est une source particulièrement fertile en représentations de la douleur et des attaques cruelles susceptibles d’être endurées par le corps humain. Si Le Jardin des supplices (1899) d’Octave Mirbeau en est un exemple relativement connu, Le Dragon impérial (1869), un bestseller de Judith Gautier, fille aînée de Théophile Gautier, est voué aujourd’hui à une obscurité relative. Cet essai s’attache à corriger cette situation en examinant la parenté particulière et jusqu’ici inexplorée qui unit les deux auteurs. Il s’avère que tous deux accordent une position proéminente au sang, à l’horreur et au macabre et qu’ils envisagent la violence comme la pierre d’angle de la beauté esthétique. Alors que Zola et ses confrères orientalistes considèrent le Japon comme l’incarnation de l’Orient, Mirbeau et Gautier lui préfèrent la Chine, qu’ils imaginent comme un site privilégié informé par la mort.
À la lumière de la notion de plaisir du texte mise en avant par Roland Barthes, nous examinerons plusieurs scènes de violence et de torture tirées du Jardin des supplices de Mirbeau et du Dragon impérial de Gautier aux fins de déterminer les relations que de telles représentations présupposent entre auteur, lecteur et texte. Plus précisément, nous chercherons à mettre en avant la position problématique du lecteur qui se trouve tout à la fois dans la situation d’un sadique prenant indirectement plaisir à la souffrance qu’il est forcé de confronter et dans celle d’un masochiste qui se complaît aux manipulations de l’auteur. Enfin, nous souhaitons démontrer comment ces œuvres explorent, par des voies différentes, le point de vue de Michel Foucault, selon lequel la spécularité fait partie inhérente du “supplice.
Numerical Simulation of Dropped Cylindrical Objects into Water in Two Dimensions (2D)
Get PDFThe dropped objects are identified as one of the top ten causes of fatalities and serious injuries in the oil and gas industry. It is of importance to understand dynamics of dropped objects under water in order to accurately predict the motion of dropped objects and protect the underwater structures and facilities from being damaged. In this thesis, we study nondimensionalization of dynamic equations of dropped cylindrical objects. Nondimensionalization helps to reduce the number of free parameters, identify the relative size of effects of parameters, and gain a deeper insight of the essential nature of dynamics of dropped cylindrical objects under water. The resulting simulations of dimensionless trajectory confirms that drop angle, trailing edge and drag coefficient have the significant effects on dynamics of trajectories and landing location of dropped cylindrical objects under water