Building Teacher Capacity to Support English Language Learners in Schools Receiving School Improvement Grants

The Study of School Turnaround examines the improvement process in a purposive sample of 35 case study schools receiving federal funds through the School Improvement Grants (SIG) program over a three-year period (2010 -- 11 to 2012 -- 13 school years). This brief focuses on 11 of these SIG schools with high proportions of English Language Learner (ELL) students (a median of 45 percent ELLs), describing their efforts to improve teachers' capacity for serving ELLs through staffing strategies and professional development (PD). Key findings that emerged from the ELL case study data collected during the 2011 -- 12 and 2012 -- 13 school years include:Few schools reported leveraging staffing strategies to improve teacher capacity for serving ELLs. Administrators in 3 of the 11 schools reported considering ELL expertise and experience when hiring classroom teachers, while respondents in 2 of the 11 schools reported that teachers' ELL expertise and experience purposefully factored into assignment of teachers to specific classrooms.Most teacher survey respondents (54 to 100 percent) in all 11 schools reported participating in ELL-related PD during the 2011 -- 12 school year. On average, teachers reported that ELL-related PD accounted for less than 20 percent of their total PD hours.Teacher survey respondents in schools that reported a greater PD focus on ELL-related topics, such as instructional strategies for advancing English proficiency or instructional strategies to use for ELLs within content classes, also generally appeared more likely to report that PD improved their effectiveness as teachers of ELLs

The SIMPSONS project: An integrated Mars transportation system

In response to the Request for Proposal (RFP) for an integrated transportation system network for an advanced Martian base, Frontier Transportation Systems (FTS) presents the results of the SIMPSONS project (Systems Integration for Mars Planetary Surface Operations Networks). The following topics are included: the project background, vehicle design, future work, conclusions, management status, and cost breakdown. The project focuses solely on the surface-to-surface transportation at an advanced Martian base

New Baryons in the Delta eta and Delta omega Channels

The decays of excited nonstrange baryons into the final states Delta eta and Delta omega are examined in a relativized quark pair creation model. The wavefunctions and parameters of the model are fixed by previous calculations of N pi and N pi pi, etc., decays through various quasi-two body channels including N eta and N omega. Our results show that the combination of thresholds just below the region of interest and the isospin selectivity of these channels should allow the discovery of several new baryons in such experiments.Comment: 10 pages, RevTe

Radiative and mechanical feedback into the molecular gas in the Large Magellanic Cloud. I. N159W

We present Herschel SPIRE Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS) observations of N159W, an active star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). In our observations, a number of far-infrared cooling lines including CO(4-3) to CO(12-11), [CI] 609 and 370 micron, and [NII] 205 micron are clearly detected. With an aim of investigating the physical conditions and excitation processes of molecular gas, we first construct CO spectral line energy distributions (SLEDs) on 10 pc scales by combining the FTS CO transitions with ground-based low-J CO data and analyze the observed CO SLEDs using non-LTE radiative transfer models. We find that the CO-traced molecular gas in N159W is warm (kinetic temperature of 153-754 K) and moderately dense (H2 number density of (1.1-4.5)e3 cm-3). To assess the impact of the energetic processes in the interstellar medium on the physical conditions of the CO-emitting gas, we then compare the observed CO line intensities with the models of photodissociation regions (PDRs) and shocks. We first constrain the properties of PDRs by modelling Herschel observations of [OI] 145, [CII] 158, and [CI] 370 micron fine-structure lines and find that the constrained PDR components emit very weak CO emission. X-rays and cosmic-rays are also found to provide a negligible contribution to the CO emission, essentially ruling out ionizing sources (ultraviolet photons, X-rays, and cosmic-rays) as the dominant heating source for CO in N159W. On the other hand, mechanical heating by low-velocity C-type shocks with ~10 km/s appears sufficient enough to reproduce the observed warm CO.Comment: accepted for publication in A&

Strange Decays of Nonstrange Baryons

The strong decays of excited nonstrange baryons into the final states Lambda K, Sigma K, and for the first time into Lambda(1405) K, Lambda(1520) K, Sigma(1385) K, Lambda K*, and Sigma K*, are examined in a relativized quark pair creation model. The wave functions and parameters of the model are fixed by previous calculations of N pi and N pi pi, etc., decays. Our results show that it should be possible to discover several new negative parity excited baryons and confirm the discovery of several others by analyzing these final states in kaon production experiments. We also establish clear predictions for the relative strengths of certain states to decay to Lambda(1405) K and Lambda(1520) K, which can be tested to determine if a three-quark model of the Lambda(1405) K is valid. Our results compare favorably with the results of partial wave analyses of the limited existing data for the Lambda K and Sigma K channels. We do not find large Sigma K decay amplitudes for a substantial group of predicted and weakly established negative-parity states, in contrast to the only previous work to consider decays of these states into the strange final states Lambda K and Sigma K.Comment: 25 pages, 8 figures, RevTe

Carbon monoxide in the solar atmosphere I. Numerical method and two-dimensional models

The radiation hydrodynamic code CO5BOLD has been supplemented with the time-dependent treatment of chemical reaction networks. Advection of particle densities due to the hydrodynamic flow field is also included. The radiative transfer is treated frequency-independently, i.e. grey, so far. The upgraded code has been applied to two-dimensional simulations of carbon monoxide (CO) in the non-magnetic solar photosphere and low chromosphere. For this purpose a reaction network has been constructed, taking into account the reactions which are most important for the formation and dissociation of CO under the physical conditions of the solar atmosphere. The network has been strongly reduced to 27 reactions, involving the chemical species H, H2, C, O, CO, CH, OH, and a representative metal. The resulting CO number density is highest in the cool regions of the reversed granulation pattern at mid-photospheric heights and decreases strongly above. There, the CO abundance stays close to a value of 8.3 on the usual logarithmic abundance scale with [H]=12 but is reduced in hot shock waves which are a ubiquitous phenomenon of the model atmosphere. For comparison, the corresponding equilibrium densities have been calculated, based on the reaction network but also under assumption of instantaneous chemical equilibrium by applying the Rybicki & Hummer (RH) code by Uitenbroek (2001). Owing to the short chemical timescales, the assumption holds for a large fraction of the atmosphere, in particular the photosphere. In contrast, the CO number density deviates strongly from the corresponding equilibrium value in the vicinity of chromospheric shock waves. Simulations with altered reaction network clearly show that the formation channel via hydroxide (OH) is the most important one under the conditions of the solar atmosphere.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, final version will contain online materia

The mechanisms of spatial and temporal earthquake clustering

The number of earthquakes as a function of magnitude decays as a power law. This trend is usually justified using spring-block models, where slips with the appropriate global statistics have been numerically observed. However, prominent spatial and temporal clustering features of earthquakes are not reproduced by this kind of modeling. We show that when a spring-block model is complemented with a mechanism allowing for structural relaxation, realistic earthquake patterns are obtained. The proposed model does not need to include a phenomenological velocity weakening friction law, as traditional spring-block models do, since this behavior is effectively induced by the relaxational mechanism as well. In this way, the model provides also a simple microscopic basis for the widely used phenomenological rate-and-state equations of rock friction.Comment: 7 pages, 10 figures, comments welcom

Glueball Spectroscopy in a Relativistic Many-Body Approach to Hadron Structure

A comprehensive, relativistic many-body approach to hadron structure is advanced based on the Coulomb gauge QCD Hamiltonian. Our method incorporates standard many-body techniques which render the approximations amenable to systematic improvement. Using BCS variational methods, dynamic chiral symmetry breaking naturally emerges and both quarks and gluons acquire constituent masses. Gluonia are studied both in the valence and in the collective, random phase approximations. Using representative values for the strong coupling constant and string tension, calculated quenched glueball masses are found to be in remarkable agreement with lattice gauge theory.Comment: 12 pages, 1 uuencoded ps figure, RevTe

Three-Nucleon Electroweak Capture Reactions

Recent advances in the study of the p-d radiative and mu-3he weak capture processes are presented and discussed. The three-nucleon bound and scattering states are obtained using the correlated-hyperspherical-harmonics method, with realistic Hamiltonians consisting of the Argonne v14 or Argonne v18 two-nucleon and Tucson-Melbourne or Urbana IX three-nucleon interactions. The electromagnetic and weak transition operators include one- and two-body contributions. The theoretical accuracy achieved in these calculations allows for interesting comparisons with experimental data.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, invited talk at the CFIF Fall Workshop: Nuclear Dynamics, from Quarks to Nuclei, Lisbon, 31st of October - 1st of November 200