Achieving 'excellent' indoor air quality in commercial offices equipped with air-handling unit--respirable suspended particulate.

PubMed

Lam, K S; Chan, F S; Fung, W Y; Lui, B S S; Lau, L W L

2006-04-01

A study was carried out to investigate the feasibility of achieving ultra low respirable suspended particulates (RSP) in commercial offices without major modification of existing ventilation systems by enhancing the particulates removal efficiency of existing central ventilation systems. Four types of filters which include pre-filters, cartridge filters, bag filters and high efficiency particulates air (HEPA) filters were tested in a commercial building in Causeway Bay. The results show that an RSP objective of <20 microg/m3 could be met by removing RSP from both the return air and outdoor air supply simultaneously. This level of performance is classed as 'excellent' by the Hong Kong Government, Environmental Protection Department. Filters with efficiency that exceed 80% placed both in the return air and outdoor air were sufficient to meet the objective. It is not necessary to install HEPA filters to achieve the 'excellent' class. The outdoor air filter has great influence on the steady state indoor RSP concentration while the effective cleaning rate is governed by the return air filter. Higher efficiency filters increased the static drop but the volume flow of the air fan was not affected significantly. The additional cost incurred was <5% of the existing operation cost. This paper reports a field study of RSP control for an indoor office environment. The results are directly applicable to building service engineering in the design of ventilation systems using air-handling units. Field observations indicated that indoor RSP in an office environment could be suppressed below 20 microg/m3 within 1 h by the simultaneous filtration of outdoor air and return air. Outdoor air filtration has a great influence on the steady state indoor concentration and return air filtration governs the cleaning rate. It is believed that the results of this study could be extended to the cleaning of other indoor pollutants such as volatile organic compounds.

Advanced Academic Performance: Exploring Country-Level Differences in the Pursuit of Educational Excellence. Policy Brief No. 7

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Plucker, Jonathan A.

2015-01-01

Every country strives for its students to have advanced achievement in some way, shape, or form. But too often, competence is a higher policy priority than excellence, and shrinking minimum competency gaps is a higher priority than closing excellence gaps. In this brief, educational excellence is defined as the percent of students who meet or…

Effects of Gender, Mathematics Anxiety and Achievement Motivation on College Students' Achievement in Mathematics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ajogbeje, Oke James; Borisade, Fidelis Tunde; Aladesaye, Charles Ademuyiwa; Ayodele, Oludolapo Bolanle

2013-01-01

The urge to excel or perform maximally in mathematics varies from individual to individual because achievement motivation is often developed or learnt during socialization and learning experiences. The study examined the relationship between College of Education students' achievement motivation and mathematics achievement, correlation coefficient…

Academic Success of Montgomery College Students in the Achieving Collegiate Excellence and Success (ACES) Program: 2014-2015

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cooper-Martin, Elizabeth; Wolanin, Natalie

2016-01-01

The Office of Shared Accountability in Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) is conducting a multiyear evaluation of the Achieving Collegiate Excellence and Success (ACES) program. The ACES program is a collaboration between MCPS, Montgomery College (MC) and the Universities at Shady Grove to create a seamless pathway from high school to college…

The nature of excellent clinicians at an academic health science center: a qualitative study.

PubMed

Mahant, Sanjay; Jovcevska, Vesna; Wadhwa, Anupma

2012-12-01

To understand the nature of excellent clinicians at an academic health science center by exploring how and why excellent clinicians achieve high performance. From 2008 to 2010, the authors conducted a qualitative study using a grounded theory approach. Members of the Clinical Advisory Committee in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Toronto nominated peers whom they saw as excellent clinicians. The authors then conducted in-depth interviews with the most frequently nominated clinicians. They audio-recorded and transcribed the interviews and coded the transcripts to identify emergent themes. From interviews with 13 peer-nominated, excellent clinicians, a model emerged. Dominant themes fell into three categories: (1) core philosophy, (2) deliberate activities, and (3) everyday practice. Excellent clinicians are driven by a core philosophy defined by high intrinsic motivation and passion for patient care and humility. They refine their clinical skills through two deliberate activities-reflective clinical practice and scholarship. Their high performance in everyday practice is characterized by clinical skills and cognitive ability, people skills, engagement, and adaptability. A rich theory emerged explaining how excellent clinicians, driven by a core philosophy and engaged in deliberate activities, achieve high performance in everyday practice. This theory of the nature of excellent clinicians provides a holistic perspective of individual performance, informs medical education, supports faculty career development, and promotes clinical excellence in the culture of academic medicine.

Achievement Goals in a Presentation Task: Performance Expectancy, Achievement Goals, State Anxiety, and Task Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tanaka, Ayumi; Takehara, Takuma; Yamauchi, Hirotsugu

2006-01-01

The aims of the study were to test the linkages between achievement goals to task performance, as mediated by state anxiety arousal. Performance expectancy was also examined as antecedents of achievement goals. A presentation task in a computer practice class was used as achievement task. Fifty-three undergraduates (37 females and 16 males) were…

Evaluation of Achieving Collegiate Excellence and Success Program: Student Outcomes Year One, Grades 11 and 12. Evaluation Brief

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wolanin, Natalie; Modarresi, Shahpar

2015-01-01

The Office of Shared Accountability in Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools (MCPS) is conducting a multiyear evaluation of the "Achieving Collegiate Excellence and Success" (ACES) program. ACES is a collaboration between MCPS, Montgomery College (MC), and the Universities at Shady Grove (USG) to create a seamless pathway from high…

What Price Excellence?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fischer, Robert J.; Wass, Hannelore

1970-01-01

This article discusses through the use of three case studies, the possible problems caused by pressure placed on high achievers to excell academically. Perhaps the maximization of academic achievement may well be accomplished at some crucial personal or social cost for the individual. (Author/KJ)

Elements of Engineering Excellence

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Blair, J. C.; Ryan, R. S.; Schutzenhofer

2012-01-01

The inspiration for this Contract Report (CR) originated in discussions with the director of Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) Engineering who asked that we investigate the question: "How do you achieve excellence in aerospace engineering?" Engineering a space system is a complex activity. Avoiding its inherent potential pitfalls and achieving a successful product is a challenge. This CR presents one approach to answering the question of how to achieve Engineering Excellence. We first investigated the root causes of NASA major failures as a basis for developing a proposed answer to the question of Excellence. The following discussions integrate a triad of Technical Understanding and Execution, Partnership with the Project, and Individual and Organizational Culture. The thesis is that you must focus on the whole process and its underlying culture, not just on the technical aspects. In addition to the engineering process, emphasis is given to the need and characteristics of a Learning Organization as a mechanism for changing the culture.

Discouraged by Peer Excellence: Exposure to Exemplary Peer Performance Causes Quitting.

PubMed

Rogers, Todd; Feller, Avi

2016-03-01

People are exposed to exemplary peer performances often (and sometimes by design in interventions). In two studies, we showed that exposure to exemplary peer performances can undermine motivation and success by causing people to perceive that they cannot attain their peers' high levels of performance. It also causes de-identification with the relevant domain. We examined such discouragement by peer excellence by exploiting the incidental exposure to peers' abilities that occurs when students are asked to assess each other's work. Study 1 was a natural experiment in a massive open online course that employed peer assessment (N = 5,740). Exposure to exemplary peer performances caused a large proportion of students to quit the course. Study 2 explored underlying psychological mechanisms in an online replication (N = 361). Discouragement by peer excellence has theoretical implications for work on social judgment, social comparison, and reference bias and has practical implications for interventions that induce social comparisons. © The Author(s) 2016.

Achieving Literacy Excellence through Identifying and Utilizing High Yield Strategies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hardison, Ashley

2017-01-01

The purpose of this study was to delve into the literacy instructional strategies of selected high-performing K-2 teachers in a Clark County, Nevada school district. The study assessed the efficacy of teachers using five core literacy components: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension for student achievement. High…

"Excellence" in STEM Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Clark, Aaron C.

2012-01-01

So what does it take to achieve excellence in STEM education? That is the title of the author's presentation delivered at International Technology and Engineering Educators Association's (ITEEA's) FTEE "Spirit of Excellence" Breakfast on March 16, 2012, in Long Beach, California. In preparation for this presentation, the author went back and read…

How Do You Achieve Inclusive Excellence in the Classroom?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Considine, Jennifer R.; Mihalick, Jennifer E.; Mogi-Hein, Yoko R.; Penick-Parks, Marguerite W.; Van Auken, Paul M.

2017-01-01

This chapter identifies pedagogical strategies promoting equity for all students. Historical roots of Inclusive Excellence (IE), theories surrounding IE, and ways to affirm student identity are described, as well as factors that may interfere with the adoption of inclusive pedagogy.

Explorations in the Meanings of Excellence and Its Importance for Counselors: The Culture of Excellence in the United States

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stewart, Alan E.

2010-01-01

Contemporary narratives of excellence embody the competitive striving and achievement themes underlying the idea of American exceptionalism. The author examines excellence through Aristotle's (trans. 2002) "Nicomachean Ethics". An overemphasis on winning or excelling can undermine general human excellence and harm well-being. Counselors are…

Correlates of Achieving the Guidelines of Four Forms of Physical Activity, and the Relationship between Guidelines Achievement and Academic Performance: Undergraduate Students in Finland.

PubMed

El Ansari, Walid; Suominen, Sakari; Draper, Steve

2017-06-01

We surveyed and compared, by gender, the levels and correlates of achieving the international guidelines of four forms of physical activity (PA): moderate PA (MPA), vigorous PA (VPA), moderate or vigorous PA (MVPA), and muscle strengthening PA (MSPA). The study assessed the associations between achieving the guidelines of the four PA forms and a range of socio-demographic, health and academic performance variables. Data was collected across the seven faculties of the University of Turku (2013-2014 from a representative sample of 1,189 undergraduates). An English language online self-administered questionnaire assessed frequency and duration of PA/week for each form of PA. We employed cut-offs for the guidelines in accordance with the American Heart Association. Chi-square statistic tested the differences in PA, socio-demographic variables and academic performance between males and females. Binary logistic regression examined the factors associated with achieving the four PA guidelines and linear regression examined the association between the frequency of PA and academic performance. Achievement of PA guidelines was relatively low across the sample. Female students were less likely to achieve the VPA or MSPA guidelines, but were more health conscious and in generally exhibited better academic performace than males. High health awareness and excellent/very good self-rated health were the strongest predictors of achieving all forms of PA. Parents' education level was positively related to likelihood of achieving the VPA, MVPA and MSPA guidelines. Achieving the MPA guidelines (but not VPA or MSPA) was positively associated with subjective perceptions of better academic performance. Achievement of PA guidelines was generally low for this sample of Finnish students, and was associated with positive health status and high health awareness. Universities need a holistic approach to improve awareness of health and promote PA in students' lifestyles. Copyright© by the

Urban-Rural Excellence Gaps: Features, Factors, and Implications

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hernández-Torrano, Daniel

2018-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the presence of excellence gaps (i.e., differences between subgroups of students performing at the highest levels of achievement) in a sample of 563 students nominated as gifted by their teachers in urban, semi-urban, and rural settings in Spain. In general, the results suggested the existence of excellence…

Achieving excellence in the management of accounts receivable.

PubMed

Ladewig, T L; Hecht, B A

1993-09-01

Recent changes in healthcare reimbursement rules and practices have made the task of accounts receivable management a particularly demanding one for most financial managers. One multihospital system, after pursuing numerous strategies to reduce its accounts receivable with only marginal levels of success, launched a systemwide initiative to share both the positive and the negative accounts receivable management experiences of each department at each hospital in the system with all patient accounting staff. The objective of the initiative was to use the lessons learned from those experiences to attain excellence in accounts receivable management throughout the system. The ultimate success of the initiative is detailed in the following article.

TH-D-204-00: The Pursuit of Radiation Oncology Performance Excellence

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

NONE

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Improvement Act was signed into law in 1987 to advance U.S. business competitiveness and economic growth. Administered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST, the Act created the Baldrige National Quality Program, now renamed the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program. The comprehensive analytical approaches referred to as the Baldrige Healthcare Criteria, are very well suited for the evaluation and sustainable improvement of radiation oncology management and operations. A multidisciplinary self-assessment approach is used for radiotherapy program evaluation and development in order to generate a fact based knowledge driven system for improving quality of care,more » increasing patient satisfaction, building employee engagement, and boosting organizational innovation. The methodology also provides a valuable framework for benchmarking an individual radiation oncology practice against guidelines defined by accreditation and professional organizations and regulatory agencies. Learning Objectives: To gain knowledge of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program as it relates to Radiation Oncology. To appreciate the value of a multidisciplinary self-assessment approach in the pursuit of Radiation Oncology quality care, patient satisfaction, and workforce commitment. To acquire a set of useful measurement tools with which an individual Radiation Oncology practice can benchmark its performance against guidelines defined by accreditation and professional organizations and regulatory agencies.« less

TH-D-204-01: The Pursuit of Radiation Oncology Performance Excellence

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Sternick, E.

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Improvement Act was signed into law in 1987 to advance U.S. business competitiveness and economic growth. Administered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST, the Act created the Baldrige National Quality Program, now renamed the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program. The comprehensive analytical approaches referred to as the Baldrige Healthcare Criteria, are very well suited for the evaluation and sustainable improvement of radiation oncology management and operations. A multidisciplinary self-assessment approach is used for radiotherapy program evaluation and development in order to generate a fact based knowledge driven system for improving quality of care,more » increasing patient satisfaction, building employee engagement, and boosting organizational innovation. The methodology also provides a valuable framework for benchmarking an individual radiation oncology practice against guidelines defined by accreditation and professional organizations and regulatory agencies. Learning Objectives: To gain knowledge of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program as it relates to Radiation Oncology. To appreciate the value of a multidisciplinary self-assessment approach in the pursuit of Radiation Oncology quality care, patient satisfaction, and workforce commitment. To acquire a set of useful measurement tools with which an individual Radiation Oncology practice can benchmark its performance against guidelines defined by accreditation and professional organizations and regulatory agencies.« less

The Performance Cycle: The Association between Student Achievement and State Policies Tying Together Teacher Performance, Student Achievement, and Accountability

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alexander, Nicola A.; Jang, Sung Tae; Kankane, Shipi

2017-01-01

This article explores the associations between student performance and the presence of state policies that include student achievement in teacher evaluations. We examined performance among states from 2007 through 2013. Including student performance in state teacher evaluation policies is modestly associated with higher reading achievement but had…

Achieving excellence in veterans healthcare--a balanced scorecard approach.

PubMed

Biro, Lawrence A; Moreland, Michael E; Cowgill, David E

2003-01-01

This article provides healthcare administrators and managers with a framework and model for developing a balanced scorecard and demonstrates the remarkable success of this process, which brings focus to leadership decisions about the allocation of resources. This scorecard was developed as a top management tool designed to structure multiple priorities of a large, complex, integrated healthcare system and to establish benchmarks to measure success in achieving targets for performance in identified areas. Significant benefits and positive results were derived from the implementation of the balanced scorecard, based upon benchmarks considered to be critical success factors. The network's chief executive officer and top leadership team set and articulated the network's primary operating principles: quality and efficiency in the provision of comprehensive healthcare and support services. Under the weighted benchmarks of the balanced scorecard, the facilities in the network were mandated to adhere to one non-negotiable tenet: providing care that is second to none. The balanced scorecard approach to leadership continuously ensures that this is the primary goal and focal point for all activity within the network. To that end, systems are always in place to ensure that the network is fully successful on all performance measures relating to quality.

STEM Excellence and Leadership Program: Increasing the Level of STEM Challenge and Engagement for High-Achieving Students in Economically Disadvantaged Rural Communities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ihrig, Lori M.; Lane, Erin; Mahatmya, Duhita; Assouline, Susan G.

2018-01-01

High-achieving students in economically disadvantaged, rural schools lack access to advanced coursework necessary to pursue science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) educational and employment goals at the highest levels, contributing to the excellence gap. Out-of-school STEM programming offers one pathway to students' talent…

The E-Balanced Scorecard (e-BSC) for Measuring Academic Staff Performance Excellence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yu, May Leen; Hamid, Suraya; Ijab, Mohamad Taha; Soo, Hsaio Pei

2009-01-01

This research paper is a pilot study that investigated the suitability of adopting an automated balanced scorecard for managing and measuring the performance excellence of academic staffs in the higher education setting. A comprehensive study of related literature with requirements elicited from the target population in a selected premier…

Excellence through Minimum Essentials and Individual Development.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alexander, William M.

1986-01-01

The author states that throughout the past century or more, especially during the twentieth century, the continuing conflict between proponents of the minimum essentials approach to curriculum excellence and those of the individual development approach has been an obstacle to the achievement of excellence. (CT)

Performance management excellence among the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Winners in Health Care.

PubMed

Duarte, Neville T; Goodson, Jane R; Arnold, Edwin W

2013-01-01

When carefully constructed, performance management systems can help health care organizations direct their efforts toward strategic goals, high performance, and continuous improvement needed to ensure high-quality patient care and cost control. The effective management of performance is an integral component in hospital and health care systems that are recognized for excellence by the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in Health Care. Using the framework in the 2011-2012 Health Care Criteria for Performance Excellence, this article identifies the best practices in performance management demonstrated by 15 Baldrige recipients. The results show that all of the recipients base their performance management systems on strategic goals, outcomes, or competencies that cascade from the organizational to the individual level. At the individual level, each hospital or health system reinforces the strategic direction with performance evaluations of leaders and employees, including the governing board, based on key outcomes and competencies. Leader evaluations consistently include feedback from internal and external stakeholders, creating a culture of information sharing and performance improvement. The hospitals or health care systems also align their reward systems to promote high performance by emphasizing merit and recognition for contributions. Best practices can provide a guide for leaders in other health systems in developing high-performance work systems.

Achieving excellence--creating customer passion.

PubMed

Scheuing, E E

1999-08-01

Customers are the lifeblood of any organization. Without them, it loses its meaning and purpose. Customers provide incentive, vitality, and growth. Serving them well requires a customer-focused culture and a customer-friendly system. It also requires unrelenting effort toward continuous improvement, but the rewards are well worth the effort: unflinching customer loyalty, sustainable growth, and impressive performance.

Thinly disguised contempt: a barrier to excellence.

PubMed

Brown-Stewart, P

1987-04-01

Many elements in contemporary leadership and management convey contempt for employees. "Thinly disguised contempt," a concept introduced by Peters and Austin in A Passion For Excellence, explains many barriers to the achievement of excellence in corporations across disciplines. Health care executives and managers can learn from the errors of corporate management and avoid replicating these errors in the health care industry.

Excellence: Achieving High Performance in the Army Personnel System.

DTIC Science & Technology

1985-05-09

11 Megatrends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 12 Demographics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 12 Economic...system. State-of-the-art microcomputers could revolutionize the way personnel management is accomplished. Not only is the hardware available to automate...changes fundamentally are altering our society. We are in a transition from an industrial to an information based society. We are relocating from the

Analytical performance evaluation of a high-volume hematology laboratory utilizing sigma metrics as standard of excellence.

PubMed

Shaikh, M S; Moiz, B

2016-04-01

Around two-thirds of important clinical decisions about the management of patients are based on laboratory test results. Clinical laboratories are required to adopt quality control (QC) measures to ensure provision of accurate and precise results. Six sigma is a statistical tool, which provides opportunity to assess performance at the highest level of excellence. The purpose of this study was to assess performance of our hematological parameters on sigma scale in order to identify gaps and hence areas of improvement in patient care. Twelve analytes included in the study were hemoglobin (Hb), hematocrit (Hct), red blood cell count (RBC), mean corpuscular volume (MCV), red cell distribution width (RDW), total leukocyte count (TLC) with percentages of neutrophils (Neutr%) and lymphocytes (Lymph %), platelet count (Plt), mean platelet volume (MPV), prothrombin time (PT), and fibrinogen (Fbg). Internal quality control data and external quality assurance survey results were utilized for the calculation of sigma metrics for each analyte. Acceptable sigma value of ≥3 was obtained for the majority of the analytes included in the analysis. MCV, Plt, and Fbg achieved value of <3 for level 1 (low abnormal) control. PT performed poorly on both level 1 and 2 controls with sigma value of <3. Despite acceptable conventional QC tools, application of sigma metrics can identify analytical deficits and hence prospects for the improvement in clinical laboratories. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Learning Motivation and Performance Excellence in Adolescents with High Intellectual Potential: What Really Matters?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schick, Hella; Phillipson, Shane N.

2009-01-01

In the development of performance excellence, the relative roles played by intellectual ability and motivation remain speculative. This study investigates the role played by general intelligence, school environment, self-efficacy, and aspects of personal identity in the formation of learning motivation in German students attending the Gymnasium…

Developing talent for operational excellence.

PubMed

Theadore, Jason C; O'Brien, Thaddeus J

2012-01-01

Many organizations have the expectation that their employees will prepare for their own professional development without much support or guidance. To achieve operational excellence, development of the people in an organization is just as important as the development of technologies and processes. Ohio Health Ambulatory Division in Columbus, OH created a plan to develop its people systematically in three distinct pillars: management development, staff engagement, and clinical excellence. Much was learned about talent development since work began on "The People Plan", perhaps the most critical lesson learned has been the importance of not giving up on the effort.

Achieving Deeper Energy Savings in Federal Energy Performance Contracts

DOE PAGES

Shonder, John A.; Nasseri, Cyrus

2015-01-01

Legislation requires each agency of the US federal government to reduce the aggregate energy use index of its buildings by 30% by 2015, with respect to a 2003 baseline. The declining availability of appropriated funding means that energy performance contracting will be key to achieving this goal. Historically however, energy performance contracts have been able to reduce energy use by only about 20% over baseline. Achieving 30% energy reductions using performance contracting will require new approaches and a specific focus on achieving higher energy savings, both by ESCOs and by agencies. This paper describes some of the ways federal agenciesmore » are meeting this challenge, and presents results from the efforts of one agency the US General Services Administration -- to achieve deeper energy savings in conventional energy savings performance contracts.« less

Achievement Goals and Achievement Emotions: Testing a Model of Their Joint Relations with Academic Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pekrun, Reinhard; Elliot, Andrew J.; Maier, Markus A.

2009-01-01

The authors propose a theoretical model linking achievement goals and achievement emotions to academic performance. This model was tested in a prospective study with undergraduates (N = 213), using exam-specific assessments of both goals and emotions as predictors of exam performance in an introductory-level psychology course. The findings were…

Graphene-based ultrathin microporous carbon with smaller sulfur molecules for excellent rate performance of lithium-sulfur cathode

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Peng, Zhenhuan; Fang, Wenying; Zhao, Hongbin; Fang, Jianhui; Cheng, Hongwei; Doan, The Nam Long; Xu, Jiaqiang; Chen, Pu

2015-05-01

Ultrathin microporous carbon (UMPC) for lithium-sulfur (Li-S) cathode with uniform pore width of approximately 0.6 nm and dozens nm in thickness is synthesized with graphene oxide as template by glucose hydrothermal carbonization and surfactant-assisted assembling method. The UMPC supplies desirable S pregnancy space and the intimate contact between UMPC and S, therefore improving the conductivity of S@UMPC composite and dynamic performance. Smaller sulfur molecules limited in UMPC thoroughly prevent the formation of electrolyte-soluble polysulfides, hence excellent cycling performance with 900 mAh g-1 after 150 cycles is kept. Ultrathin three-dimensional carbon nanosheets are significant to fast electron transfer and Li+ diffusion contributing to excellent dynamic performance (710 mAh g-1 at 3 C).

NASA Excellence Award for Quality and Productivity 1989 highlights. The 1989 recipient: Lockheed Engineering and Sciences Company

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1990-01-01

The NASA Excellence Award for Productivity and Quality is the result of NASA's desire to encourage superior quality and the continuous improvement philosophy in the aerospace industry. It is awarded to NASA contractors, subcontractors, and suppliers who have demonstrated sustained excellence, customer orientation, and outstanding achievements in a total quality management (TQM) environment. The 'highlights' booklet is intended to transfer successful techniques demonstrated by the performance and quality of major NASA contractors.

Achieving High Performance Perovskite Solar Cells

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yang, Yang

2015-03-01

Recently, metal halide perovskite based solar cell with the characteristics of rather low raw materials cost, great potential for simple process and scalable production, and extreme high power conversion efficiency (PCE), have been highlighted as one of the most competitive technologies for next generation thin film photovoltaic (PV). In UCLA, we have realized an efficient pathway to achieve high performance pervoskite solar cells, where the findings are beneficial to this unique materials/devices system. Our recent progress lies in perovskite film formation, defect passivation, transport materials design, interface engineering with respect to high performance solar cell, as well as the exploration of its applications beyond photovoltaics. These achievements include: 1) development of vapor assisted solution process (VASP) and moisture assisted solution process, which produces perovskite film with improved conformity, high crystallinity, reduced recombination rate, and the resulting high performance; 2) examination of the defects property of perovskite materials, and demonstration of a self-induced passivation approach to reduce carrier recombination; 3) interface engineering based on design of the carrier transport materials and the electrodes, in combination with high quality perovskite film, which delivers 15 ~ 20% PCEs; 4) a novel integration of bulk heterojunction to perovskite solar cell to achieve better light harvest; 5) fabrication of inverted solar cell device with high efficiency and flexibility and 6) exploration the application of perovskite materials to photodetector. Further development in film, device architecture, and interfaces will lead to continuous improved perovskite solar cells and other organic-inorganic hybrid optoelectronics.

Comparative Evaluation: Participants versus Nonparticipants in the Achieving Collegiate Excellence and Success (ACES) Program at Montgomery County Public Schools in Year One and Year Two

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Modarresi, Shahpar; Wolanin, Natalie; Cooper-Martin, Elizabeth

2016-01-01

The Achieving Collegiate Excellence and Success (ACES) program is a collaboration between MCPS, Montgomery College, and the Universities at Shady Grove to create a seamless pathway from high school to college completion; it targets students who are underrepresented in higher education, the first in their family to attend college, or both. As one…

Classroom Environment, Achievement Goals and Maths Performance: Gender Differences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gherasim, Loredana Ruxandra; Butnaru, Simona; Mairean, Cornelia

2013-01-01

This study investigated how gender shapes the relationships between classroom environment, achievement goals and maths performance. Seventh-grade students ("N"?=?498) from five urban secondary schools filled in achievement goal orientations and classroom environment scales at the beginning of the second semester. Maths performance was…

Stanford/NASA-Ames Center of Excellence in model-based human performance

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wandell, Brian A.

1990-01-01

The human operator plays a critical role in many aeronautic and astronautic missions. The Stanford/NASA-Ames Center of Excellence in Model-Based Human Performance (COE) was initiated in 1985 to further our understanding of the performance capabilities and performance limits of the human component of aeronautic and astronautic projects. Support from the COE is devoted to those areas of experimental and theoretical work designed to summarize and explain human performance by developing computable performance models. The ultimate goal is to make these computable models available to other scientists for use in design and evaluation of aeronautic and astronautic instrumentation. Within vision science, two topics have received particular attention. First, researchers did extensive work analyzing the human ability to recognize object color relatively independent of the spectral power distribution of the ambient lighting (color constancy). The COE has supported a number of research papers in this area, as well as the development of a substantial data base of surface reflectance functions, ambient illumination functions, and an associated software package for rendering and analyzing image data with respect to these spectral functions. Second, the COE supported new empirical studies on the problem of selecting colors for visual display equipment to enhance human performance in discrimination and recognition tasks.

Achievement goals, self-handicapping, and performance: a 2 x 2 achievement goal perspective.

PubMed

Ntoumanis, Nikos; Thøgersen-Ntoumani, Cecilie; Smith, Alison L

2009-11-01

Elliot and colleagues (2006) examined the effects of experimentally induced achievement goals, proposed by the trichotomous model, on self-handicapping and performance in physical education. Our study replicated and extended the work of Elliot et al. by experimentally promoting all four goals proposed by the 2 x 2 model (Elliot & McGregor, 2001), measuring the participants' own situational achievement goals, using a relatively novel task, and testing the participants in a group setting. We used a randomized experimental design with four conditions that aimed to induce one of the four goals advanced by the 2 x 2 model. The participants (n = 138) were undergraduates who engaged in a dart-throwing task. The results pertaining to self-handicapping partly replicated Elliot and colleagues' findings by showing that experimentally promoted performance-avoidance goals resulted in less practice. In contrast, the promotion of mastery-avoidance goals did not result in less practice compared with either of the approach goals. Dart-throwing performance did not differ among the four goal conditions. Personal achievement goals did not moderate the effects of experimentally induced goals on self-handicapping and performance. The extent to which mastery-avoidance goals are maladaptive is discussed, as well as the interplay between personal and experimentally induced goals.

Activated carbon with excellent chromium(VI) adsorption performance prepared by acid-base surface modification.

PubMed

Liu, S X; Chen, X; Chen, X Y; Liu, Z F; Wang, H L

2007-03-06

In the present work, activated carbon (AC) with excellent Cr(VI) adsorption performance especially at low concentrations was prepared by an acid-base surface modification method. Raw activated carbon (AC(0)) was first oxidized in boiling HNO(3) (AC(1)), then treated with a mixture of NaOH and NaCl (AC(2)). Batch equilibrium and continuous column adsorption were conducted to evaluate the adsorption performance. Boehm titration, elemental analysis, and N(2)/77K adsorption isotherm methods were used to characterize the surface properties and pore structure of modified ACs. The results revealed that the modified AC exhibited excellent Cr(VI) adsorption performance in terms of adsorption capacity and adsorption rate: AC(2)>AC(1)>AC(0). Modification caused S(BET) to decrease and the total number of surface oxygen acidic groups to increase. HNO(3) oxidization produced positive acid groups, and subsequently NaOH treatment replaced H(+) of surface acid groups by Na(+), and the acidity of AC decreased. The main cause of higher Cr(VI) adsorption capacity and rate for AC(2) was the presence of more oxygen surface acidic groups and suitable surface acidity. HNO(3)-NaOH modification shows potential for the preparation of high quality AC for the effective removal of low concentrations of Cr(VI).

Managing Instructor Training to Achieve Excellence.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Norton, Robert E.

A group of concerned companies in the nuclear electric power industry formed the Electric Utility Instructor Training Consortium to train instructors in a cost-effective and time-efficient manner. The companies collaborated with the Ohio State University to (1) conduct job and task analyses; (2) develop performance-based instructor modules; (3)…

Newcomers to Performance Funding: A Comparison of California's Partnership for Excellence to Other Performance Funding Programs. AIR 2000 Annual Forum Paper.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Serban, Andreea M.

This study provides a brief overview of the current status of performance funding programs around the country, and compares California's Partnership for Excellence for Community Colleges with programs applicable to two-year institutions in five other states: Florida, Illinois, Missouri, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The comparative analysis…

The effect of workshop groups on achievement goals and performance in biology: An outcome evaluation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Born, Wendi Kay

This two-year quasi-experiment evaluated the effect of peer-led workshop groups on performance of minority and majority undergraduate biology students in a three-course series and investigated motivational explanations for performance differences. The workshop intervention used was modeled after a program pioneered by Treisman (1992) at the University of California. Majority volunteers randomly assigned to workshops (n = 61) performed between 1/2 and 1 standard deviation better than those assigned to the control group (n = 60; p < .05) in each quarter without spending more time studying. During Quarter 1, workshop minority students (n = 25) showed a pattern of increasing exam performance in comparison to historic control minority students (n = 21), who showed a decreasing pattern (p < .05). Although sex differences in biology performance were a focus of investigation, none were detected. Motivational predictions derived from the hierarchical model of approach and avoidance achievement motivation (Elliot & Church, 1997) were partially supported. Self-report survey measures of achievement goals, modeled after those used by Elliot and colleagues, were requested from all enrolled students. Volunteers (n = 121) reported higher average levels of approach and avoidance goals than nonvolunteers (n = 439; p < .05) and the relationship of goals to performance was moderated by volunteer status. Performance of volunteers was negatively related to avoidance of failure goals (r = .41, p < .01) and unrelated to performance approach goals. Performance of nonvolunteers was unrelated to avoidance of failure goals and positively related to performance approach goals (r = .28, p < .01). Mastery goals were unrelated to performance for all students. Results were inconsistent with Dweck and Leggett's (1988) theory of mastery vs. performance orientation, but were similar to results found by Elliot and colleagues. Contrary to hypotheses, motivational goals did not mediate performance for

A meta-analysis of self-reported achievement goals and nonself-report performance across three achievement domains (work, sports, and education).

PubMed

Van Yperen, Nico W; Blaga, Monica; Postmes, Tom

2014-01-01

During the past three decades, the achievement goal approach to achievement motivation has emerged as an influential area of research, and is dedicated to understanding the reasons behind the individual's drive to achieve competence and performance. However, the current literature on achievement goals is segmented rather than integrated. That is, citations across the three major and distinct achievement domains (work, education, and sports) are more the exception than the rule and similarities and differences between findings for the different achievement domains have yet to be tested. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationships between self-reported achievement goals and nonself-report performance through meta-analysis, and the moderating potential of achievement domain. Identifying achievement domain as moderator improves our understanding to which contexts we can (not) generalize conclusions to, it helps to understand seemingly inconsistent findings, and opens avenues for future research on the underlying processes. Because the achievement goal (AG) measure used in a study is partially confounded with achievement domain, we examined the moderating role of this variable as well. Our findings suggest that - overall - approach goals (either mastery or performance) were associated positively with performance attainment, whereas avoidance goals (either mastery or performance) were associated negatively with performance attainment. These relationships were moderated by achievement domain. For example, relative to the education or work domain, in the sports domain, we did not observe negative correlations between avoidance goals and performance. The absence of statistical moderation due to AG measure suggests that the observed moderation of achievement domain cannot be explained by the AG measure utilized. We suggest further steps to integrate the achievement goal literature, and accordingly, to broaden and deepen understanding of performance

A Meta-Analysis of Self-Reported Achievement Goals and Nonself-Report Performance across Three Achievement Domains (Work, Sports, and Education)

PubMed Central

Van Yperen, Nico W.; Blaga, Monica; Postmes, Tom

2014-01-01

During the past three decades, the achievement goal approach to achievement motivation has emerged as an influential area of research, and is dedicated to understanding the reasons behind the individual’s drive to achieve competence and performance. However, the current literature on achievement goals is segmented rather than integrated. That is, citations across the three major and distinct achievement domains (work, education, and sports) are more the exception than the rule and similarities and differences between findings for the different achievement domains have yet to be tested. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationships between self-reported achievement goals and nonself-report performance through meta-analysis, and the moderating potential of achievement domain. Identifying achievement domain as moderator improves our understanding to which contexts we can (not) generalize conclusions to, it helps to understand seemingly inconsistent findings, and opens avenues for future research on the underlying processes. Because the achievement goal (AG) measure used in a study is partially confounded with achievement domain, we examined the moderating role of this variable as well. Our findings suggest that – overall – approach goals (either mastery or performance) were associated positively with performance attainment, whereas avoidance goals (either mastery or performance) were associated negatively with performance attainment. These relationships were moderated by achievement domain. For example, relative to the education or work domain, in the sports domain, we did not observe negative correlations between avoidance goals and performance. The absence of statistical moderation due to AG measure suggests that the observed moderation of achievement domain cannot be explained by the AG measure utilized. We suggest further steps to integrate the achievement goal literature, and accordingly, to broaden and deepen understanding of

Exploring the Relationship between the Ventures for Excellence Teacher StyleProfile Data and Teacher Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nelson, Barry

2013-01-01

The purpose of this study was to determine if a commercial teacher selection tool, the Ventures for Excellence Teacher StyleProfile, had a statistically significant relationship with teacher evaluation and performance feedback data gathered during a teacher's first year of teaching in the Midwest School District. A review of the literature…

The Relationship between Teachers' Performance on the Ventures for Excellence and Their Teaching Effectiveness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Winters, Michael Joseph

2017-01-01

This quantitative correlational study examined the relationship between teacher pre-hiring effectiveness evaluation and their performance evaluation scores at the end of the first year of teaching. Prior to this study, it was not known if and to what degree teachers' scores on the Ventures for Excellence B-22 screening interview correlated to…

Climate Leadership Award for Excellence in GHG Management (Goal Setting Certificate)

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Apply to the Climate Leadership Award for Excellence in GHG Management (Goal Achievement Award), which publicly recognizes organizations that achieve publicly-set aggressive greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals.

Understanding Research Strategies to Improve ERA Performance in Australian Universities: Circumventing Secrecy to Achieve Success

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Diezmann, Carmel M.

2018-01-01

Many Australian universities have prioritised improving discipline performance on the national research assessment--Excellence for Research in Australia. However, a "culture of secrecy" pervades "Excellence in Research for Australia" (ERA). There are no specified criteria for the assignment of ratings on a 5-point scale ranging…

Achieving high performance on the Intel Paragon

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Greenberg, D.S.; Maccabe, B.; Riesen, R.

1993-11-01

When presented with a new supercomputer most users will first ask {open_quotes}How much faster will my applications run?{close_quotes} and then add a fearful {open_quotes}How much effort will it take me to convert to the new machine?{close_quotes} This paper describes some lessons learned at Sandia while asking these questions about the new 1800+ node Intel Paragon. The authors conclude that the operating system is crucial to both achieving high performance and allowing easy conversion from previous parallel implementations to a new machine. Using the Sandia/UNM Operating System (SUNMOS) they were able to port a LU factorization of dense matrices from themore » nCUBE2 to the Paragon and achieve 92% scaled speed-up on 1024 nodes. Thus on a 44,000 by 44,000 matrix which had required over 10 hours on the previous machine, they completed in less than 1/2 hour at a rate of over 40 GFLOPS. Two keys to achieving such high performance were the small size of SUNMOS (less than 256 kbytes) and the ability to send large messages with very low overhead.« less

Surface-restrained growth of vertically aligned carbon nanotube arrays with excellent thermal transport performance.

PubMed

Ping, Linquan; Hou, Peng-Xiang; Liu, Chang; Li, Jincheng; Zhao, Yang; Zhang, Feng; Ma, Chaoqun; Tai, Kaiping; Cong, Hongtao; Cheng, Hui-Ming

2017-06-22

A vertically aligned carbon nanotube (VACNT) array is a promising candidate for a high-performance thermal interface material in high-power microprocessors due to its excellent thermal transport property. However, its rough and entangled free tips always cause poor interfacial contact, which results in serious contact resistance dominating the total thermal resistance. Here, we employed a thin carbon cover to restrain the disorderly growth of the free tips of a VACNT array. As a result, all the free tips are seamlessly connected by this thin carbon cover and the top surface of the array is smoothed. This unique structure guarantees the participation of all the carbon nanotubes in the array in the heat transport. Consequently the VACNT array grown on a Cu substrate shows a record low thermal resistance of 0.8 mm 2 K W -1 including the two-sided contact resistances, which is 4 times lower than the best result previously reported. Remarkably, the VACNT array can be easily peeled away from the Cu substrate and act as a thermal pad with excellent flexibility, adhesive ability and heat transport capability. As a result the CNT array with a thin carbon cover shows great potential for use as a high-performance flexible thermal interface material.

A Model of Statistics Performance Based on Achievement Goal Theory.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bandalos, Deborah L.; Finney, Sara J.; Geske, Jenenne A.

2003-01-01

Tests a model of statistics performance based on achievement goal theory. Both learning and performance goals affected achievement indirectly through study strategies, self-efficacy, and test anxiety. Implications of these findings for teaching and learning statistics are discussed. (Contains 47 references, 3 tables, 3 figures, and 1 appendix.)…

Intersection of Re-Designated National League for Nursing Centers of Excellence(TM) and Quality in Nursing Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Merriam, Deborah

2013-01-01

Nursing education is challenged to meet a growing demand for nurses, while substantiating the quality of the educational experience as well as the achievement of desired student outcomes. The National League for Nursing (NLN) Centers of Excellence (COE) in Nursing Education(TM) program represents high performing nursing schools which utilize…

Neurosurgery education: the pursuit of excellence.

PubMed

Benzel, Edward C

2010-01-01

The pursuit of excellence in education is a noble endeavor. Such has been the object of education and the goal of educators for eons. Neurosurgery education is no different from other domains in this regard. As with any discipline, this pursuit is complex and obligatorily multifaceted. It involves the use of what is often a broad and deep foundation of experience and knowledge. On this foundation, a modern and evolving infrastructure/suprastructure should be developed and nurtured. Once the infrastructure/suprastructure has taken form, a resident education plan can be derived. This plan, once enacted and executed, should be revisited, revised, and re-executed over and over again. One should never become satisfied with the status quo. A continued search for strategies and tools that achieve improvements over prior renditions of the education plan is mandatory if we hope to perpetually upgrade our process of education. Neurosurgical educators should seek criticism, admit mistakes, and modify educational behaviors accordingly. A strategy for achieving these goals regarding the pursuit of excellence in neurosurgical education is described in the pages that follow.

Center of Excellence in Model-Based Human Performance

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wandell, Brian A.

1997-01-01

The Center of Excellence (COE) was created in 1984 to facilitate active collaboration between the scientists at Ames Research Center and the Stanford Psychology Department. As this document will review, over that period of time, the COE served its function well. Funds from the Center supported a large number of projects over the last ten years. Many of the people who were supported by the Center have gone on to distinguished research careers in government, industry and university. In fact, several of the people currently working at NASA Ames were initially funded by the Center mechanism, which served as a useful vehicle for attracting top quality candidates and supporting their research efforts. We are grateful for NASA's support over the years. As we reviewed in the reports for each year, the COE budget generally provided a portion of the true costs of the individual research projects. Hence, the funds from the COE were leveraged with funds from industry and other government agencies. In this way, we feel that all parties benefitted greatly from the collaborative spirit and interactive aspects of the COE. The portion of the support from NASA was particularly important in helping members of the COE to set aside the time to publish papers and communicate advances in our understanding of human performance in NASA-related missions.

Center of Excellence in Model-Based Human Performance

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wandell, Brian A.

1997-01-01

The Center of Excellence (COE) was created in 1984 to facilitate active collaboration between the scientists at Ames Research Center and the Stanford Psychology Department. As this document will review, over that period of time, the COE served its function well. Funds from the Center supported a large number of projects over the last ten years. Many of the people who were supported by the Center Have gone on to distinguished research careers in government, industry and university. In fact, several of the people currently working at NASA Ames were initially funded by the Center mechanism, which served as a useful vehicle for attracting top quality candidates and supporting their research efforts. We are grateful for NASA's support over the years. As we reviewed in the reports for each year, the COE budget generally provided a portion of the true costs of the individual research project. Hence, the funds from the COE were leveraged with funds from industry and other government agencies. In this way, we feel that all parties benefitted greatly from the collaborative spirit and interactive aspects of the COE. The portion of the support from NASA was particularly important in helping members of the COE to set aside the time to publish papers and communicate advances in our understanding of human performance in NASA-related missions.

Patient satisfaction: focusing on "excellent".

PubMed

Otani, Koichiro; Waterman, Brian; Faulkner, Kelly M; Boslaugh, Sarah; Burroughs, Thomas E; Dunagan, W Claiborne

2009-01-01

In an emerging competitive market such as healthcare, managers should focus on achieving excellent ratings to distinguish their organization from others. When it comes to customer loyalty, "excellent" has a different meaning. Customers who are merely satisfied often do not come back. The purpose of this study was to find out what influences adult patients to rate their overall experience as "excellent." The study used patient satisfaction data collected from one major academic hospital and four community hospitals. After conducting a multiple logistic regression analysis, certain attributes were shown to be more likely than others to influence patients to rate their experiences as excellent. The study revealed that staff care is the most influential attribute, followed by nursing care. These two attributes are distinctively stronger drivers of overall satisfaction than are the other attributes studied (i.e., physician care, admission process, room, and food). Staff care and nursing care are under the control of healthcare managers. If improvements are needed, they can be accomplished through training programs such as total quality management or continuous quality improvement, through which staff employees and nurses learn to be sensitive to patients' needs. Satisfying patients' needs is the first step toward having loyal patients, so hospitals that strive to ensure their patients are completely satisfied are more likely to prosper.

What brain science tells us about how to excel.

PubMed

Hallowell, Edward M

2010-12-01

Millions of people are struggling at work. Some are in the wrong jobs. Others feel no connection to their colleagues or engagement with their. The result is rampant dissatisfaction and underachievement. Hallowell, a child psychiatrist specializing in learning differences, describes the Cycle of Excellence, a plan for helping people achieve peak performance. It consists of five steps: Select a job that reflects what you like to do and what you do best and that adds value to the organization. Research has shown that good job fit reduces stress and increases satisfaction and performance. Connect with the people around you. Robust relationships in the workplace galvanize people and build their engagement with their jobs. Small talk may seem trivial, but it pays big dividends. Play on the job. It sounds like an oxymoron, but people do their best--and are most satisfied--when they're imaginatively involved with their work. And when you're hard at play, you're building your brain. Grapple and Grow--that is, work hard to achieve a difficult task. The stress you may feel as you engage with a tough assignment and connect with others to complete it is not the toxic kind. Shine in the acknowledgment of your achievements. Praise releases chemicals that make us feel good, and it fills our uniquely human need to be of value, to matter. If you aren't getting it, ask for it. The need for recognition is fundamental to optimal human performance.

The Value of Full Correction: Achieving Excellent and Affordable Results.

PubMed

Kaplan, Julie Bass

2016-01-01

Patients often come to medical aesthetic offices with hopes to fully correct lost facial volume and achieve a natural appearance. Unfortunately, the cost per syringe of dermal filler can be a barrier to desired outcomes. Many aesthetic practitioners do the best they can with the amount of product the patient can afford, often falling short of the "wow" effect for the patient. This article describes what one office implemented to solve the conundrum of affordability while still allowing offices to cover its own financial realities. This tool can help patients achieve beautiful, natural, and affordable outcomes while helping offices advance in manufacturer's tiers, improve word-of-mouth advertising, and increase job satisfaction.

Essence of Excellence - Lessons from Naval Executives About Superior Performing Tactical and Readiness Staffs.

DTIC Science & Technology

1985-06-01

the organization. 21 7L III. CONSISTENCY -THE INSTRUMENT OF PERFORMANCE "Knowle -dge of our duties is the most essential part of the philosophy of life ...to accomplish them. This means remaining flex- ible under the operation of everyday crisis situ- ations. It requires focusing on what is important...as a way of life . All actions are dominated by a common vision or goal shared throughout the staff. These staffs are innovators, 15 - . t. excellent

Universities and the Mobilization of Claims of Excellence for Competitive Advantage

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wangenge-Ouma, Gerald; Langa, Patricio V.

2010-01-01

This study discusses the phenomenon of making claims of excellence by universities, which we interpret as a response, inter alia, to the hitherto unfamiliar context of scarce and diminishing resources. The main objective is to understand how claims of excellence are mobilised by higher education institutions to achieve "competitive advantage". The…

Implementing an excellence in teaching recognition system: needs analysis and recommendations.

PubMed

Schindler, Nancy; Corcoran, Julia C; Miller, Megan; Wang, Chih-Hsiung; Roggin, Kevin; Posner, Mitchell; Fryer, Jonathan; DaRosa, Debra A

2013-01-01

Teaching awards have been suggested to serve a variety of purposes. The specific characteristics of teaching awards and the associated effectiveness at achieving planned purposes are poorly understood. A needs analysis was performed to inform recommendations for an Excellence in Teaching Recognition System to meet the needs of surgical education leadership. We performed a 2-part needs analysis beginning with a review of the literature. We then, developed, piloted, and administered a survey instrument to General Surgery program leaders. The survey examined the features and perceived effectiveness of existing teaching awards systems. A multi-institution committee of program directors, clerkship directors, and Vice-Chairs of education then met to identify goals and develop recommendations for implementation of an "Excellence in Teaching Recognition System." There is limited evidence demonstrating effectiveness of existing teaching awards in medical education. Evidence supports the ability of such awards to demonstrate value placed on teaching, to inspire faculty to teach, and to contribute to promotion. Survey findings indicate that existing awards strive to achieve these purposes and that educational leaders believe awards have the potential to do this and more. Leaders are moderately satisfied with existing awards for providing recognition and demonstrating value placed on teaching, but they are less satisfied with awards for motivating faculty to participate in teaching or for contributing to promotion. Most departments and institutions honor only a few recipients annually. There is a paucity of literature addressing teaching recognition systems in medical education and little evidence to support the success of such systems in achieving their intended purposes. The ability of awards to affect outcomes such as participation in teaching and promotion may be limited by the small number of recipients for most existing awards. We propose goals for a Teaching Recognition

Hospitals Known for Nursing Excellence Perform Better on Value Based Purchasing Measures

PubMed Central

Lasater, Karen B.; Germack, Hayley D.; Small, Dylan S.; McHugh, Matthew D.

2018-01-01

It is well-established that hospitals recognized for good nursing care – Magnet hospitals – are associated with better patient outcomes. Less is known about how Magnet hospitals compare to non-Magnets on quality measures linked to Medicare reimbursement. The purpose of this study was to determine how Magnet hospitals perform compared to matched non-Magnet hospitals on Hospital Value Based Purchasing (VBP) measures. A cross-sectional analysis of three linked data sources was performed. The sample included 3,021 non-federal acute care hospitals participating in the VBP program (323 Magnets; 2,698 non-Magnets). Propensity score matching was used to match Magnet and non-Magnet hospitals with similar hospital characteristics. After matching, linear and logistic regression models were used to examine the relationship between Magnet status and VBP performance. After matching and adjusting for hospital characteristics, Magnet recognition predicted higher scores on Total Performance (Regression Coefficient [RC] = 1.66, p < 0.05), Clinical Processes (RC = 3.85; p < 0.01), and Patient Experience (RC = 6.33; p < 0.001). The relationships between Magnet recognition and the Outcome and Efficiency domains were not statistically significant. Magnet hospitals known for nursing excellence perform better on Hospital VBP measures. As healthcare systems adapt to evolving incentives that reward value, attention to nurses at the front lines may be central to ensuring high-value care for patients. PMID:28558604

Excel VBA for Physicists; A Primer

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liengme, Bernard V.

2016-11-01

This book is both an introduction and a demonstration of how Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) can greatly enhance Microsoft Excel® by giving users the ability to create their own functions within a worksheet and to create subroutines to perform repetitive actions. The book is written so readers are encouraged to experiment with VBA programming with examples using fairly simple physics or non-complicated mathematics such as root finding and numerical integration. Tested Excel® workbooks are available for each chapter and there is nothing to buy or install. A tested Excel workbook for each chapter can be downloaded from Book information

Rural Math Excel Partnership (RMEP) Project Final Performance Report

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harmon, Hobart; Tate, Veronica; Stevens, Jennifer; Wilborn, Sandy; Adams, Sue

2018-01-01

The goal of the Rural Math Excel Partnership (RMEP) project, a development project funded by the U.S. Department of Education Investing in Innovation (i3) grant program, was to develop a model of shared responsibility among families, teachers, and communities in rural areas as collective support for student success in and preparation for advanced…

Homework Variety: A Way To Educational Excellence.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Foyle, Harvey C.

Variety in homework is one way to achieve educational excellence in social studies. The twin social studies goals of teaching basic knowledge and teaching reasoning/critical thinking skills are accomplished by providing variety. In accordance with Lee and Pratt's homework taxonomy, homework can be placed under one of the following: preparation,…

Living excellence: life after Magnet designation.

PubMed

Malloch, Kathy

2009-01-01

The achievement of Magnet recognition is the beginning of a new way of being as an organization. Strategies to support innovation leadership, value-based decision making, agility, sustainability of excellence, technology advancements, and lifelong learning are discussed within the framework of the Magnet organization. Behaviors and challenges of living the expectations of the Magnet organization are presented as opportunities to assist healthcare leaders in this important work.

Achievement Goals, Learning Strategies and Instrumental Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nielsen, Siw Graabraek

2008-01-01

The current study is a survey of the achievement goals of music students and the manner in which their strategies and instrumental performance relate to these goals. In the context of advanced instrumental learning, the rationale for the present study was to contribute to the literature on motivation in music students, and thereby, help teachers…

Ethnic differences in adolescent achievement. An ecological perspective.

PubMed

Steinberg, L; Dornbusch, S M; Brown, B B

1992-06-01

Using data collected from a large sample of high school students, the authors challenge three widely held explanations for the superior school performance of Asian-American adolescents, and the inferior performance of African- and Hispanic-American adolescents: group differences in (a) parenting practices, (b) familial values about education, and (c) youngsters' beliefs about the occupational rewards of academic success. They found that White youngsters benefit from the combination of authoritative parenting and peer support for achievement, whereas Hispanic youngsters suffer from a combination of parental authoritarianism and low peer support. Among Asian-American students, peer support for academic excellence offsets the negative consequences of authoritarian parenting. Among African-American youngsters, the absence of peer support for achievement undermines the positive influence of authoritative parenting.

Crosslinked polybenzimidazoles containing branching structure as membrane materials with excellent cell performance and durability for fuel cell applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hu, Meishao; Ni, Jiangpeng; Zhang, Boping; Neelakandan, Sivasubramaniyan; Wang, Lei

2018-06-01

Crosslinking is an effective method to improve the properties of high temperature proton exchange membranes based on polybenzimidazole. However, the compact structure of crosslinked polybenzimidazole hinders the phosphoric acid absorption of the membranes, resulting in a relatively poor fuel cell performance. Recently, we find that branched polymers can absorb more phosphoric acid with a larger free volume, but suffer from deteriorated mechanical strength. In this work, a new method is proposed to obtain excellent over-all properties of high temperature proton exchange membranes. A series of crosslinked polybenzimidazoles containing branching structure as membrane materials are successfully prepared for the first time. Compared with conventional crosslinked membranes, these crosslinked polybenzimidazole membranes containing branching structure exhibit a higher phosphoric acid doping level and proton conductivity, improved durability, lower swelling rate and comparable mechanical strength. In particular, the fuel cell base on the crosslinked and branched membrane with a 10% ratio of crosslinker in non-humidified hydrogen/air at 160 °C achieves a power density of 404 mW cm-2. The results indicate that the combination of crosslinking and branching is an effective approach to improve the properties of polybenzimidazole membrane materials.

Trends in Education Excellence Gaps: A 12-Year International Perspective via the Multilevel Model for Change

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rutkowski, David; Rutkowski, Leslie; Plucker, Jonathan A.

2012-01-01

A recent study in the USA documented the existence and growth of "excellence gaps" among students. These gaps are similar to the minimum competency achievement gaps that proliferate in policy discussions in many Western countries, but excellence gaps focus on the highest level of achievement rather than minimum competency. We extend this…

Total integrated performance excellence system (TIPES): A true north direction for a clinical trial support center.

PubMed

Sather, Mike R; Parsons, Sherry; Boardman, Kathy D; Warren, Stuart R; Davis-Karim, Anne; Griffin, Kevin; Betterton, Jane A; Jones, Mark S; Johnson, Stanley H; Vertrees, Julia E; Hickey, Jan H; Salazar, Thelma P; Huang, Grant D

2018-03-01

This paper presents the quality journey taken by a Federal organization over more than 20 years. These efforts have resulted in the implementation of a Total Integrated Performance Excellence System (TIPES) that combines key principles and practices of established quality systems. The Center has progressively integrated quality system frameworks including the Malcom Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) Framework and Criteria for Performance Excellence, ISO 9001, and the Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3), as well as supplemental quality systems of ISO 15378 (packaging for medicinal products) and ISO 21500 (guide to project management) to systematically improve all areas of operations. These frameworks were selected for applicability to Center processes and systems, consistency and reinforcement of complimentary approaches, and international acceptance. External validations include the MBNQA, the highest quality award in the US, continued registration and conformance to ISO standards and guidelines, and multiple VA and state awards. With a focus on a holistic approach to quality involving processes, systems and personnel, this paper presents activities and lessons that were critical to building TIPES and establishing the quality environment for conducting clinical research in support of Veterans and national health care.

Working towards Excellence: Results from Schools Implementing New American Schools Designs.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

New American Schools Development Corp.

This report presents eight different approaches adapted by schools to dramatically raise student achievement. The schools combine comprehensive, whole-school change with systems-level restructuring to help a large proportion of schools around the country achieve excellence. The eight programs include (1) ATLAS (Authentic Teaching, Learning, and…

Use of a business excellence model to improve conservation programs.

PubMed

Black, Simon; Groombridge, Jim

2010-12-01

The current shortfall in effectiveness within conservation biology is illustrated by increasing interest in "evidence-based conservation," whose proponents have identified the need to benchmark conservation initiatives against actions that lead to proven positive effects. The effectiveness of conservation policies, approaches, and evaluation is under increasing scrutiny, and in these areas models of excellence used in business could prove valuable. Typically, conservation programs require years of effort and involve rigorous long-term implementation processes. Successful balance of long-term efforts alongside the achievement of short-term goals is often compromised by management or budgetary constraints, a situation also common in commercial businesses. "Business excellence" is an approach many companies have used over the past 20 years to ensure continued success. Various business excellence evaluations have been promoted that include concepts that could be adapted and applied in conservation programs. We describe a conservation excellence model that shows how scientific processes and results can be aligned with financial and organizational measures of success. We applied the model to two well-documented species conservation programs. In the first, the Po'ouli program, several aspects of improvement were identified, such as more authority for decision making in the field and better integration of habitat management and population recovery processes. The second example, the black-footed ferret program, could have benefited from leadership effort to reduce bureaucracy and to encourage use of best-practice species recovery approaches. The conservation excellence model enables greater clarity in goal setting, more-effective identification of job roles within programs, better links between technical approaches and measures of biological success, and more-effective use of resources. The model could improve evaluation of a conservation program's effectiveness and may be

Metrics help rural hospitals achieve world-class performance.

PubMed

Goodspeed, Scott W

2006-01-01

This article describes the emerging trend of using metrics in rural hospitals to achieve world-class performance. This trend is a response to the fact that rural hospitals have small patient volumes yet must maintain a profit margin in order to fulfill their mission to the community. The conceptual idea for this article is based largely on Robert Kaplan and David Norton's Balanced Scorecard articles in the Harvard Business Review. The ideas also come from the experiences of the 60-plus rural hospitals that are using the Balanced Scorecard and their implementation of metrics to influence performance and behavior. It is indeed possible for rural hospitals to meet and exceed the unique needs of patients and physicians (customers), to achieve healthy profit margins, and to be the rural hospital of choice that employees are proud to work for.

Measuring and improving quality in university hospitals in Canada: The Collaborative for Excellence in Healthcare Quality.

PubMed

Backman, Chantal; Vanderloo, Saskia; Forster, Alan John

2016-09-01

Measuring and monitoring overall health system performance is complex and challenging but is crucial to improving quality of care. Today's health care organizations are increasingly being held accountable to develop and implement actions aimed at improving the quality of care, reducing costs, and achieving better patient-centered care. This paper describes the development of the Collaborative for Excellence in Healthcare Quality (CEHQ), a 5-year initiative to achieve higher quality of patient care in university hospitals across Canada. This bottom-up initiative took place between 2010 and 2015, and was successful in engaging health care leaders in the development of a common framework and set of performance measures for reporting and benchmarking, as well as working on initiatives to improve performance. Despite its successes, future efforts are needed to provide clear national leadership on standards for measuring performance. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Excellence through Equity: Five Principles of Courageous Leadership to Guide Achievement for Every Student

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Blankstein, Alan M., Ed.; Noguera, Pedro, Ed.; Kelly, Lorena, Ed.

2016-01-01

"Excellence Through Equity" is an inspiring look at how real-world educators are creating schools where all students are able to thrive. In these schools, educators understand that equity is not about treating all children the same. They are deeply committed to ensuring that each student receives what he or she individually needs to…

The Effect of Using Microsoft Excel in a High School Algebra Class

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Neurath, Rachel A.; Stephens, Larry J.

2006-01-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of integrating Microsoft Excel into a high school algebra class. The results indicate a slight increase in student achievement when Excel was used. A teacher-created final exam and two Criterion Referenced Tests measured success. One of the Criterion Referenced Tests indicated that the…

Profiles of Excellence in Business and Education Leadership.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

National Alliance of Business, Inc., Washington, DC.

This document contains two papers on excellence in business and education leadership. "Corporate Leadership in Improving Student Achievement" (Edward B. Rust, Jr.) explains why business must remain involved in education and discusses the following efforts of the State Farm Insurance Company to assume a leadership role in educational…

A Program Aimed toward Inclusive Excellence for Underrepresented Undergraduate Women in the Sciences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Katz, Laura A.; Aloisio, Kathryn M.; Horton, Nicholas J.; Ly, Minh; Pruss, Sara; Queeney, Kate; Rowen, Cate; DiBartolo, Patricia Marten

2017-01-01

Created to foster inclusive excellence, Smith College's Achieving Excellence in Mathematics, Engineering, and Science (AEMES) Scholars program provides early faculty-mentored research opportunities and other programming as a way to foster success in academic outcomes for underrepresented women in science. Using academic record data, we compared…

Achieving High Performance on the i860 Microprocessor

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lee, King; Kutler, Paul (Technical Monitor)

1998-01-01

The i860 is a high performance microprocessor used in the Intel Touchstone project. This paper proposes a paradigm for programming the i860 that is modelled on the vector instructions of the Cray computers. Fortran callable assembler subroutines were written that mimic the concurrent vector instructions of the Cray. Cache takes the place of vector registers. Using this paradigm we have achieved twice the performance of compiled code on a traditional solve.

Test Anxiety and Academic Performance among Undergraduates: The Moderating Role of Achievement Motivation.

PubMed

Balogun, Anthony Gbenro; Balogun, Shyngle Kolawole; Onyencho, Chidi Victor

2017-02-13

This study investigated the moderating role of achievement motivation in the relationship between test anxiety and academic performance. Three hundred and ninety three participants (192 males and 201 females) selected from a public university in Ondo State, Nigeria using a purposive sampling technique, participated in the study. They responded to measures of test anxiety and achievement motivation. Three hypotheses were tested using moderated hierarchical multiple regression analysis. Results showed that test anxiety had a negative impact on academic performance (β = -.23; p < .05). Achievement motivation had a positive impact on academic performance (β = .38; p < .05). Also, achievement motivation significantly moderated the relationship between test anxiety and academic performance (β = .10; p < .01). These findings suggest that university management should design appropriate psycho-educational interventions that would enhance students' achievement motivation.

Cultural Leadership: The Culture of Excellence in Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cunningham, William G.; Gresso, Donn W.

Changing the system of rules, roles, and relationships that determine how the components of school redesign are addressed is the challenge that confronts administrators who seek to create a culture of excellence in schools. This book examines the role of effective leadership in achieving significant educational improvement, arguing that culture,…

The 2013 Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Perlstein, Linda

2013-01-01

For millions of Americans, community colleges provide an essential pathway to well-paying jobs and continuing higher education. The Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence honors those institutions that strive for and achieve exceptional levels of success for all students, while they are in college and after they graduate. Community colleges…

Excellent electrochemical performances of cabbage-like polyaniline fabricated by template synthesis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hu, Chenglong; Chen, Shaoyun; Wang, Yuan; Peng, Xianghong; Zhang, Weihong; Chen, Jian

2016-07-01

In this article, we explore a novel route to fabricate cabbage-like polyaniline (PANI) by in situ polymerization of aniline using the hydroxylated poly (methyl methacrylate) nanospheres (i.e. PMMAsbnd OHsbnd NS) as a template. A maximum specific capacitance of 584 F/g (the current density is 0.1 A/g) is achieved at 10 mV s-1 as well as a high stability of over 3000 cycles (the decrease in the SC is ∼9.1%), which suggests the potential application of the cabbage-like polyaniline in supercapacitors. The predominant electrochemical performances of the cabbage-like polyaniline can be attributed to their large surface area and larger-scale π-π conjugated system present in the quinoid structure of the PANI molecular chain, which can drastically facilitate electron diffusion and improve the utilization of the electroactive PANI during the charge/discharge processes. Accordingly, the facility of charge transfer can decrease resistance along with the PANI molecular chain to improve the electrochemical stability and achieve high-capacitance response characteristics. The present study introduces a new synthesis method for the development of various morphology of other conducting polymer, which may find potential applications in a variety of high-performance electrochemical devices.

The Bologna Process and the Search for Excellence: Between Rhetoric and Reality, the Emotional Reactions of Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bahia, Sara; Freire, Isabel P.; Estrela, Maria Teresa; Amaral, Anabela; Espírito Santo, José António

2017-01-01

There has been an overall change in higher education towards the achievement of outstanding patterns of quality and excellence that assure competitiveness at a global scale. Teachers feel the pressure of official regulations for achieving quality and excellence, based on questionable concepts of quality that do not take into account the experience…

Project EXCEL: Hotel Workers Literacy Enhancement Program. Final Performance Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Career Resources Development Center, Inc., San Francisco, CA.

Project EXCEL is a federally-funded workplace literacy program involving hotel enterprises in the San Francisco (California) Bay area. Its focus is on identification and instruction of literacy skills essential to job success for limited-English-proficient (LEP) workers. Training is intended to enable employees to understand written work orders,…

The Relationship Between Children's Academic Performance and Achievement Accountability

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Clifford, Margaret M.; Cleary, T. Anne

1972-01-01

Purpose of the study is to examine relationships between internality and achievement-related variables in a performance situation where students determine the difficulty level at which they desire to work. (Authors)

The Role of Achievement Goals in the Development of Interest: Reciprocal Relations between Achievement Goals, Interest, and Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harackiewicz, Judith M.; Durik, Amanda M.; Barron, Kenneth E.; Linnenbrink-Garcia, Lisa; Tauer, John M.

2008-01-01

The dynamics of individual and situational interest and academic performance were examined in the college classroom and 7 semesters later in conjunction with achievement goals. At the beginning of an introductory psychology course, participants reported their initial interest in psychology, achievement goals, and situational interest in course…

Achieving high performance polymer tandem solar cells via novel materials design

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dou, Letian

Organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices show great promise in low-cost, flexible, lightweight, and large-area energy-generation applications. Nonetheless, most of the materials designed today always suffer from the inherent disadvantage of not having a broad absorption range, and relatively low mobility, which limit the utilization of the full solar spectrum. Tandem solar cells provide an effective way to harvest a broader spectrum of solar radiation by combining two or more solar cells with different absorption bands. However, for polymer solar cells, the performance of tandem devices lags behind single-layer solar cells mainly due to the lack of suitable low-bandgap polymers (near-IR absorbing polymers). In this dissertation, in order to achieve high performance, we focus on design and synthesis of novel low bandgap polymers specifically for tandem solar cells. In Chapter 3, I demonstrate highly efficient single junction and tandem polymer solar cells featuring a spectrally matched low-bandgap conjugated polymer (PBDTT-DPP: bandgap, ˜1.44 eV). The polymer has a backbone based on alternating benzodithiophene and diketopyrrolopyrrole units. A single-layer device based on the polymer provides a power conversion efficiency of ˜6%. When the polymer is applied to tandem solar cells, a power conversion efficiency of 8.62% is achieved, which was the highest certified efficiency for a polymer solar cell. To further improve this material system, in Chapter 4, I show that the reduction of the bandgap and the enhancement of the charge transport properties of the low bandgap polymer PBDTT-DPP can be accomplished simultaneously by substituting the sulfur atoms on the DPP unit with selenium atoms. The newly designed polymer PBDTT-SeDPP (Eg = 1.38 eV) shows excellent photovoltaic performance in single junction devices with PCEs over 7% and photo-response up to 900 nm. Tandem polymer solar cells based on PBDTT-SeDPP are also demonstrated with a 9.5% PCE, which are more than 10

Characteristics and Determinants of Teacher-Designed Pay for Performance Plans: Evidence from Texas' Governor's Educator Excellence Grant (GEEG) Program. Research Brief

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

National Center on Performance Incentives, 2008

2008-01-01

In "Characteristics and Determinants of Teacher-Designed Pay for Performance Plans: Evidence from Texas' Governor's Educator Excellence Grant (GEEG) Program"--a paper presented at the February 2008 National Center on Performance Incentives research to policy conference--Lori Taylor, Matthew Springer, and Mark Ehlert describe the teacher…

Quantitative Guidance for Stove Usage and Performance to Achieve Health and Environmental Targets.

PubMed

Johnson, Michael A; Chiang, Ranyee A

2015-08-01

Displacing the use of polluting and inefficient cookstoves in developing countries is necessary to achieve the potential health and environmental benefits sought through clean cooking solutions. Yet little quantitative context has been provided on how much displacement of traditional technologies is needed to achieve targets for household air pollutant concentrations or fuel savings. This paper provides instructive guidance on the usage of cooking technologies required to achieve health and environmental improvements. We evaluated different scenarios of displacement of traditional stoves with use of higher performing technologies. The air quality and fuel consumption impacts were estimated for these scenarios using a single-zone box model of indoor air quality and ratios of thermal efficiency. Stove performance and usage should be considered together, as lower performing stoves can result in similar or greater benefits than a higher performing stove if the lower performing stove has considerably higher displacement of the baseline stove. Based on the indoor air quality model, there are multiple performance-usage scenarios for achieving modest indoor air quality improvements. To meet World Health Organization guidance levels, however, three-stone fire and basic charcoal stove usage must be nearly eliminated to achieve the particulate matter target (< 1-3 hr/week), and substantially limited to meet the carbon monoxide guideline (< 7-9 hr/week). Moderate health gains may be achieved with various performance-usage scenarios. The greatest benefits are estimated to be achieved by near-complete displacement of traditional stoves with clean technologies, emphasizing the need to shift in the long term to near exclusive use of clean fuels and stoves. The performance-usage scenarios are also provided as a tool to guide technology selection and prioritize behavior change opportunities to maximize impact.

Unconventional Synthesis of γ-Fe2O3: Excellent Low-Concentration Ethanol Sensing Performance

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Naskar, Atanu; Narjinary, Mousumi; Kundu, Susmita

2017-01-01

This study reports on a simple unconventional procedure for synthesis of γ-Fe2O3 nanopowder and its fabrication as a resistive ethanol sensor. γ-Fe2O3 powder having an average particle size of ˜15 nm was prepared by thermal decomposition of iron(III) acetylacetonate. Platinum incorporation (0.5-1.5 wt.%) was also carried out for enhancing sensing performance. The powders were characterized using an x-ray diffractometer, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface area, field area scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy along with energy dispersion x-ray analyses. Sensor fabricated from pure γ-Fe2O3 exhibited excellent ethanol sensing performance at concentrations down to 1 ppm, having a great demand in medical diagnosis and food-processing industries. The response observed for pure γ-Fe2O3 (˜75% for 1 ppm ethanol) was enhanced ˜10% after 1 wt.% Pt impregnation. Sensors were quite stable and selective towards ethanol vapour detection. A possible mechanism for high sensing performance has been discussed.

Awarding Teaching Excellence: "What Is It Supposed to Achieve?" Teacher Perceptions of Student-Led Awards

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Madriaga, Manuel; Morley, Krystle

2016-01-01

Although there is lack of agreement as to what constitutes teaching excellence, there remains a steady effort to make an intangible, ambiguous, multifaceted concept incarnate in the form of "student-led" teaching awards schemes within higher education institutions. What teaching staff say about such schemes have largely been ignored.…

Skeleton/skin structured (RGO/CNTs)@PANI composite fiber electrodes with excellent mechanical and electrochemical performance for all-solid-state symmetric supercapacitors.

PubMed

Liu, Dong; Du, Pengcheng; Wei, Wenli; Wang, Hongxing; Wang, Qi; Liu, Peng

2018-03-01

Polyaniline coated reduced graphene oxide/carbon nanotube composite fibers ((RGO/CNTs)@PANI, RCP) with skeleton/skin structure are designed as fiber-shaped electrodes for high performance all-solid-state symmetric supercapacitor. The one-dimensional reduced graphene oxide/carbon nanotube composite fibers (RGO/CNTs, RC) are prepared via a simple in-situ reduction of graphene oxide in presence of carbon nanotubes in quartz glass pipes, which exhibit excellent mechanical performance of >193.4 MPa of tensile strength. Then polyaniline is coated onto the RC fibers by electrodepositing technique. The electrochemical properties of the RCP fiber-shaped electrodes are optimized by adjusting the feeding ratio of carbon nanotubes. The optimized one exhibits good electrochemical characteristic such as highest volumetric specific capacitance of 193.1 F cm -3 at 1 A cm -3 , as well as excellent cyclic retention of 92.60% after 2000 cyclic voltammetry cycles. Furthermore, the all-solid-state symmetric supercapacitor, fabricated by using the final composite fiber as both positive and negative electrodes pre-coated with the poly(vinyl alcohol)/H 2 SO 4 gel polyelectrolyte, possesses volumetric capacitance of 36.7 F cm -3 at 0.2 A cm -3 and could light up a red light-emitting diode easily. The excellent mechanical and electrochemical performances make the designed supercapacitor as promising high performance wearable energy storage device. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

ESSA: New Law, New Opportunity. A Brief Guide to Excellence for State Leaders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dean, Stephanie; Hassel, Bryan C.; Hassel, Emily Ayscue; Steiner, Lucy

2016-01-01

State and district leaders have a chance under ESSA (the 2016 Every Student Succeeds Act) to use their new funding flexibility to take a new approach that focuses on excellence for teachers, and students. This brief explains four opportunities to go beyond the requirements of ESSA to achieve a culture of excellence, one that attracts even more…

[SLEEP OF ELITE YOUNG ATHLETE AT THE ACADEMY FOR SPORT EXCELLENCE AT THE WINGATE INSTITUTE].

PubMed

Navot Mintzer, Dalya; Shargal, Eyal; Fuxman, Yair; Wissblat, Dorit; Baharav, Anda

2016-06-01

Sleep duration and quality have a critical role in cognitive and athletic performances. A relationship was demonstrated between sleep deprivation, reduced performance and elevated injury risk. The recommended sleep duration for teenagers is at least 9 hours a day but most sleep less. To estimate sleep duration among elite adolescent athletes at the Academy for Sport Excellence at the Wingate Institute, by quantifying the changes after joining the academy and the relation to school performances and the usage of medical services. Data from medical records, including sleep screening questionnaires and a number of the athletes' medical appointments were analyzed. Athletes reported that sleep duration was less than recommended before joining the academy. After joining the academy the average sleep duration decreased (7.37 vs 7.7 hours, P = 0.05) and daytime sleepiness was elevated (13/24 v 11/24 Epworth-Sleepiness-Scale (ESS), P = 0.002). Correlations between changes in sleep duration and changes in school achievements before and after joining the academy were demonstrated (P = 0.027). No correlation was found between sleep duration at the academy and usage of medical services. Elite adolescent athletes do not sleep enough and are tired during the day. Reduction in sleep duration and elevation in sleepiness were observed with the transition to practice, study and life at the Academy for Sport Excellence. In accordance with previous studies, our findings showed elite young athletes are in a state of continuous sleep deprivation that interferes with their school achievements. Further research is needed to evaluate the importance of sleep duration and quality in performance for the health of young athletes.

Hypothyroidism with scholastic excellence

PubMed Central

Salini, S.; Ramesh, Shanthi; Ramesh, Jagdeep; Vijayasekaran, D.

2015-01-01

A 9-year-old boy had presented with not gaining adequate height with complaints of constipation from 5 years, lethargy and loss of appetite from past 6 months. He was diagnosed to have hypothyroidism with high thyroid antibody levels. Though he was stunted his neurocognition and scholastic performance was excellent as evidenced by his school rank cards. His physical symptoms had improved after thyroxin supplement PMID:26015757

Craig Reynolds: Recognized for Excellence in Medicine | Poster

Cancer.gov

The Distinguished Alumni Award is one of the most prestigious awards at the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine. This award recognizes influential alumni who have achieved excellence in the art and science of medicine. One of this year’s recipients is Craig Reynolds, Ph.D., associate director, NCI. When asked how he felt about receiving this

Workshop on Excellence Empowered by a Diverse Academic Workforce: Achieving Racial & Ethnic Equity in Chemistry

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Ali, Hassan B.

2008-02-13

The purpose of the Workshop 'Excellence Empowered by a Diverse Academic Workforce: Achieving Racial & Ethnic Equity in Chemistry' was to promote the development of a cadre of academic leaders who create, implement and promote programs and strategies for increasing the number of racial and ethnic minorities to equitable proportions on the faculties of departments throughout the academic chemistry community. An important objective of the workshop was to assist in creating an informed and committed community of chemistry leaders who will create, implement and promote programs and strategies to advance racial and ethnic equity in both the faculty and themore » student body with the goal of increasing the number of U.S. citizen underrepresented minorities (URM) participating in academic chemistry at all levels, with particular focus on the pipeline to chemistry faculty. This objective was met by (1) presentations of detailed data describing current levels of racial and ethnic minorities on the faculties of chemistry departments; (2) frank discussion of the obstacles to and benefits of racial/ethnic diversity in the chemistry professoriate; (3) summary of possible effective interventions and actions; and (4) promotion of the dissemination and adoption of initiatives designed to achieve racial/ethnic equity. Federal programs over the past thirty years have been instrumental in delivering to our universities URM students intending to major in the physical sciences such as chemistry. However, the near absence of URM faculty means that there is also an absence of URM as role models for aspiring students. For example, citing 2003 as a representative year, some statistics reveal the severity of the pipeline shrinkage for U. S. citizen URM starting from chemistry B.S. degrees awarded to the appointment to chemistry faculty. Compared to the URM population of approximately 30% for that year, 67% of the B.S. degrees in chemistry were awarded to white citizens and 17% were

Seizing Opportunity at the Top: Reaching Every Student with Excellent Teachers--Policymakers' Checklist

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Public Impact, 2012

2012-01-01

Research continues to confirm that without "excellent" teachers consistently, most students who start behind stay behind, and too few middling and advanced students leap ahead. Even solid teachers who achieve one year of learning progress leave achievement gaps intact. Schools that "consistently" provide all students with…

Key Issues in the Practice of College Student Personnel: A Commitment to Excellence.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Creamer, Don G.

The first "Student Personnel Point of View" (1937) still stands as the premiere statement of excellence for the student personnel profession. Several propositions are requisites to achieving the goal of development in students. Students, professional staff, and institutions must all achieve their goals. The environment must be…

Targeting Clusters, Achieving Excellence.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rosenfeld, Stuart; Jacobs, Jim; Liston, Cynthia

2003-01-01

Suggests that groups, or clusters, of industries form partnerships with community colleges in order to positively impact economic development. Asserts that a cluster-oriented community college system requires innovation, specialized resources and expertise, knowledge of trends, and links to industry. Offers suggestions for developing such a…

Fabrication of monolayer MoS2/rGO hybrids with excellent tribological performances through a surfactant-assisted hydrothermal route

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, Jinsuo; Xia, Yunfei; Yang, Jin; Chen, Beibei

2018-06-01

The extremely low friction between incommensurate two-dimensional (2D) atomic layers has recently attracted a great interest. Here, we demonstrated a promising surfactant-assisted strategy for the synthesis of MoS2/reduced graphene oxide (MoS2/rGO) hybrid materials with monolayer MoS2 and rGO, which exhibited excellent tribological metrics with a friction coefficient of ˜ 0.09 and a wear rate of ˜ 2.08 × 10-5 mm3/Nm in the ethanol dispersion. The incommensurate 2D atomic layer interface formed due to intrinsic lattice mismatch between MoS2 and graphene was thought to be responsible for the excellent lubricating performances. In addition to the benefits of unique hybrid structure, MoS2/rGO hybrids could also adsorb on metal surfaces and screen the metal-metal interaction to passivate the metal surfaces with a consequent reduction of corrosion wear during sliding. This work could pave a new pathway to design novel materials for pursuing excellent tribological properties by hybridizing different 2D atomic-layered materials.

Dynamic Effects of Performance-Avoidance Goal Orientation on Student Achievement in Language and Mathematics.

PubMed

Stamovlasis, Dimitrios; Gonida, Sofia-Eleftheria N

2018-07-01

The present study used achievement goal theory (AGT) as a theoretical framework and examined the role of mastery and performance goals, both performance-approach and performance-avoidance, on school achieve-ment within the nonlinear dynamical systems (NDS) perspective. A series of cusp catastrophe models were applied on students' achievement in a number of school subjects, such as mathematics and language for elementary school and algebra, geometry, ancient and modern Greek language for high school, using achievement goal orientations as control variables. The participants (N=224) were students attending fifth and eighth grade (aged 11 and 14, respectively) in public schools located in northern Greece. Cusp analysis based on the probability density function was carried out by two procedures, the maximum likelihood and the least squares. The results showed that performance-approach goals had no linear effect on achievement, while the cusp models implementing mastery goals as the asymmetry factor and performance-avoidance as the bifurcation, proved superior to their linear alternatives. The results of the study based on NDS support the multiple goal perspective within AGT. Theoretical issues, educational implications and future directions are discussed.

Quantitative Guidance for Stove Usage and Performance to Achieve Health and Environmental Targets

PubMed Central

Chiang, Ranyee A.

2015-01-01

Background Displacing the use of polluting and inefficient cookstoves in developing countries is necessary to achieve the potential health and environmental benefits sought through clean cooking solutions. Yet little quantitative context has been provided on how much displacement of traditional technologies is needed to achieve targets for household air pollutant concentrations or fuel savings. Objectives This paper provides instructive guidance on the usage of cooking technologies required to achieve health and environmental improvements. Methods We evaluated different scenarios of displacement of traditional stoves with use of higher performing technologies. The air quality and fuel consumption impacts were estimated for these scenarios using a single-zone box model of indoor air quality and ratios of thermal efficiency. Results Stove performance and usage should be considered together, as lower performing stoves can result in similar or greater benefits than a higher performing stove if the lower performing stove has considerably higher displacement of the baseline stove. Based on the indoor air quality model, there are multiple performance–usage scenarios for achieving modest indoor air quality improvements. To meet World Health Organization guidance levels, however, three-stone fire and basic charcoal stove usage must be nearly eliminated to achieve the particulate matter target (< 1–3 hr/week), and substantially limited to meet the carbon monoxide guideline (< 7–9 hr/week). Conclusions Moderate health gains may be achieved with various performance–usage scenarios. The greatest benefits are estimated to be achieved by near-complete displacement of traditional stoves with clean technologies, emphasizing the need to shift in the long term to near exclusive use of clean fuels and stoves. The performance–usage scenarios are also provided as a tool to guide technology selection and prioritize behavior change opportunities to maximize impact. Citation

Framework for Teacher Evaluation: Examining the Relationship between Teacher Performance and Student Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Parker, Neelie B.

2017-01-01

This action research study examined the relationship between teacher performance and student achievement in reading language arts and mathematics. The study sought to determine if teacher evaluation methods used to determine teacher performance, had a relationship in improving student achievement. The researcher investigated the topic using…

Excellence in the Knowledge-Based Economy: From Scientific to Research Excellence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sørensen, Mads P.; Bloch, Carter; Young, Mitchell

2016-01-01

In 2013, the European Union (EU) unveiled its new "Composite Indicator for Scientific and Technological Research Excellence." This is not an isolated occurrence; policy-based interest in excellence is growing all over the world. The heightened focus on excellence and, in particular, attempts to define it through quantitative indicators…

The impact of the achievement motive on athletic performance in adolescent football players.

PubMed

Zuber, Claudia; Conzelmann, Achim

2014-01-01

Researchers largely agree that there is a positive relationship between achievement motivation and athletic performance, which is why the achievement motive is viewed as a potential criterion for talent. However, the underlying mechanism behind this relationship remains unclear. In talent and performance models, main effect, mediator and moderator models have been suggested. A longitudinal study was carried out among 140 13-year-old football talents, using structural equation modelling to determine which model best explains how hope for success (HS) and fear of failure (FF), which are the aspects of the achievement motive, motor skills and abilities that affect performance. Over a period of half a year, HS can to some extent explain athletic performance, but this relationship is not mediated by the volume of training, sport-specific skills or abilities, nor is the achievement motive a moderating variable. Contrary to expectations, FF does not explain any part of performance. Aside from HS, however, motor abilities and in particular skills also predict a significant part of performance. The study confirms the widespread assumption that the development of athletic performance in football depends on multiple factors, and in particular that HS is worth watching in the medium term as a predictor of talent.

The Road to a College Diploma: The Complex Reality of Raising Educational Achievement for Hispanics in the United States. An Interim Report of the President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans, Washington, DC.

In 2001, the President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans was created to develop a multi-year plan for closing the achievement gap facing Hispanic Americans and attaining the goals established by the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. The Commission defined five strategic imperatives: coordinating a national…

Developing performance excellence guidance for rural tourism (case study: wangun lestari village, Bandung, West Java, Indonesia)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yopy, Maulana; Sitinjak, M. F.

2018-03-01

In response to Indonesian Ministry of Tourism objective to develop and improve the performance of tourism destination, specifically on rural tourism, Where there is no well-prepared implementation yet by the local government due to constrained human resources and lack of management knowledge and stakeholders. This research aims to develop an integrated rural tourism concept at Wangun Lestari Tourism Village. The Guideline of Rural Tourism Development of Ministry of Tourism, Malcolm Baldrige’s Performance Excellence, SWOT Analysis, and Value Proposition Analysis will be used to help to design the Rural Tourism program. The result of this research is a comprehensive concept of Leadership, Strategic Planning, Customer Management System, Knowledge Management, Workforce Engagement, Operation Focus and also Evaluation Metric for Wangun Lestari Tourism Village.

Massachusetts Charter Public Schools: Best Practices Using Data to Improve Student Achievement in Springfield. White Paper No. 142

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Candal, Cara Stillings

2016-01-01

Recent studies continue to shine light on high-performing charter schools. While Boston-area charter schools--a concentrated group of high-performers--garner more attention than others, many excellent schools outside of Boston have been quietly chipping away at the achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students. One of these schools…

Diversity and Excellence in Higher Education: Is There a Conflict?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ghosh, Ratna

2012-01-01

In her teaching, research, and community activities in Canada, the author has repeatedly confronted questions regarding equality, diversity, and power. In this article, the author discusses diversity and equal opportunity to achieve excellence in education. Reflecting on these issues should help everyone to understand the complexities involved in…

A Program Aimed toward Inclusive Excellence for Underrepresented Undergraduate Women in the Sciences

PubMed Central

Katz, Laura A.; Aloisio, Kathryn M.; Horton, Nicholas J.; Ly, Minh; Pruss, Sara; Queeney, Kate; Rowen, Cate; DiBartolo, Patricia Marten

2017-01-01

Created to foster inclusive excellence, Smith College’s Achieving Excellence in Mathematics, Engineering, and Science (AEMES) Scholars program provides early faculty-mentored research opportunities and other programming as a way to foster success in academic outcomes for underrepresented women in science. Using academic record data, we compared Scholars’ outcomes over time with those of underrepresented students before program launch and to relevant peer comparison groups. Since its launch, AEMES Scholars have achieved significantly higher gateway life sciences course grade point averages (GPAs), rates of persistence in life and natural sciences, and participation in natural sciences advanced research relative to baseline. Gains for Scholars in gateway course GPA eliminated the significant gap that previously existed between science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-underrepresented and other students, whereas gains in natural sciences persistence now has Scholars continuing in STEM at significantly higher rates than all other students. Many of the gains for AEMES Scholars were echoed in findings of improved outcomes for our STEM students overall since AEMES’ launch. Underrepresented students who were not part of the Scholars program also evidenced increased gateway course GPA over this same period. We discuss potential explanations for these outcomes and ongoing work aimed at achieving further inclusive excellence for women in the sciences. PMID:28213581

Strategies for Excellence: Recommendations for a Productive School Model with Strategies for Achieving the Model. The Final Report of the IASB Committee on Strategies for Excellence.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Iowa Association of School Boards, Des Moines.

The charge of the Committee on Strategies for Excellence was to examine the current status of elementary and secondary education in Iowa, and to investigate ways in which school districts could be educationally more productive. The report brings together recommendations from various state and national reports, reviews the literature, and makes…

Project EXCEL. Final Performance Report, March 1, 1991-October 31, 1992.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Career Resources Development Center, Inc., San Francisco, CA.

Project EXCEL is a workplace literacy project involving four small business enterprises in San Francisco. Over a 19-month period, the project focused on literacy and basic skills training for 271 limited-English-proficient (LEP) workers. All training was conducted at the work sites, and a variety of support services were provided, including…

Mobile-media pragmatism: innovation excellences and encumbrances

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lin, Chen-Ju

2017-10-01

Establishing two pragmatic models of enhancing entertainment and job-performance, this study aims to elaborate on how people adopt and perceive innovation excellences and encumbrances of modern mobile-media services through reflecting on their intrinsic expectancy. A survey methodology was executed to examine the hypothesised variable relationships using the purposive sampling method. CHT's Taipei think-tank head-office provided this study with a representative sampling frame and assisted to collect data from 725 focused subjects (with normative characteristics) who subscribed to HiNet or MOD, or predominantly used 4G telecommunication services. As a result of adopting the structural equation modelling test, the models of perceived innovation excellences and innovation encumbrances were affirmatively established to interpret the two applicative scenarios: entertainment and job-performance enhancement. Several valuable findings were generated. When a consumer targets entertainment technology pragmatism, he or she may stress the importance of innovative excellences, especially on product novelty. For the sake of pursuing job-performance enhancement, a customer was actively willing to invest his or her energy to meet and deal with the learning cost, customer unfamiliarity and complexity of telecom products and services. Importantly, the adopter's previous experiences with telecom products in the IT domain could effectively moderate the effect of pursuing new telecom innovation, adopting the product, and then strengthening self-evaluation.

Hierarchical flower-like C/NiO composite hollow microspheres and its excellent supercapacitor performance

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Tao; Jiang, Chuanjia; Cheng, Bei; You, Wei; Yu, Jiaguo

2017-08-01

Nickel (II) oxide (NiO) nanosheet grown on N-doped carbon hollow spheres (NiO/NCHS) with hierarchical pore structure are obtained via facile chemical bath deposition followed by calcination at 350 °C under nitrogen atmosphere. Phase structure measurements indicate that the material is composed of NiO and N-doped carbon. The NiO/NCHS composite exhibits a unique flower-like morphology, where ultrathin NiO nanosheets are vertically grown on the surface of NCHS. This hierarchical nanostructure is beneficial for facilitating electron and electrolyte ion transport and accelerating the reversible redox reaction. The specific capacitance of the NiO/NCHS composite (585 F g-1 at 1 A g-1) is higher than that of pure NiO particle (453 F g-1 at 1 A g-1). Meanwhile, the NiO/NCHS composite exhibits excellent rate performance and superior cycling stability over 6000 cycles. The enhanced supercapacitive performance of the NiO/NCHS nanocomposite indicates that it can be an appealing candidate electrode material for supercapacitors.

The Effect of Teacher Performance in Implementation of The 2013 Curriculum Toward Chemistry Learning Achievement

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dewi, L. P.; Djohar, A.

2018-04-01

This research is a study about implementation of the 2013 Curriculum on Chemistry subject. This study aims to determine the effect of teacher performance toward chemistry learning achievement. The research design involves the independent variable, namely the performance of Chemistry teacher, and the dependent variable that is Chemistry learning achievement which includes the achievement in knowledge and skill domain. The subject of this research are Chemistry teachers and High School students in Bandung City. The research data is obtained from questionnaire about teacher performance assessed by student and Chemistry learning achievement from the students’ report. Data were analyzed by using MANOVA test. The result of multivariate significance test shows that there is a significant effect of teacher performance toward Chemistry learning achievement in knowledge and skill domain with medium effect size.

Hierarchically assembled 3D nanoflowers and 0D nanoparticles of nickel sulfides on reduced graphene oxide with excellent lithium storage performances

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tronganh, Nguyen; Gao, Yang; Jiang, Wei; Tao, Haihua; Wang, Shanshan; Zhao, Bing; Jiang, Yong; Chen, Zhiwen; Jiao, Zheng

2018-05-01

Constructing heterostructure can endow composites with many novel physical and electrochemical properties due to the built-in specific charge transfer dynamics. However, controllable fabrication route to heterostructures is still a great challenge up to now. In this work, a SiO2-assisted hydrothermal method is developed to fabricate heterostructured nickel sulfides/reduced graphene oxide (NiSx/rGO) composite. The SiO2 particles hydrolyzed from tetraethyl orthosilicate could assist the surface controllable co-growth of 3D nanoflowers and 0D nanoparticles of Ni3S2/NiS decorated on reduced graphene oxide, and the possible co-growth mechanism is discussed in detail. In this composite, the heterostructured nanocomposite with different morphologies, chemical compositions and crystal structures, along with varied electronic states and band structure, can promote the interface charge transfer kinetics and lead to excellent lithium storage performances. Electrochemical measurements reveal that the NiSx/rGO composite presents 1187.0 mA h g-1 at 100 mA g-1 and achieves a highly stable capacity of 561.2 mA h g-1 even when the current density is up to 5 A g-1.

Size, Accumulation and Performance for Research Grants: Examining the Role of Size for Centres of Excellence

PubMed Central

Bloch, Carter; Schneider, Jesper W.; Sinkjær, Thomas

2016-01-01

The present paper examines the relation between size, accumulation and performance for research grants, where we examine the relation between grant size for Centres of Excellence (CoE) funded by the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF) and various ex post research performance measures, including impact and shares of highly cited articles. We examine both the relation between size and performance and also how performance for CoEs evolves over the course of grant periods. In terms of dynamics, it appears that performance over the grant period (i.e. 10 years) is falling for the largest CoEs, while it is increasing for those among the smallest half. Overall, multivariate econometric analysis finds evidence that performance is increasing in grant size and over time. In both cases, the relation appears to be non-linear, suggesting that there is a point at which performance peaks. The CoEs have also been very successful in securing additional funding, which can be viewed as a ‘cumulative effect’ of center grants. In terms of new personnel, the far majority of additional funding is spent on early career researchers, hence, this accumulation would appear to have a ‘generational’ dimension, allowing for scientific expertise to be passed on to an increasing number of younger researchers. PMID:26862907

Equity and Excellence: African-American Children's Access to Quality Preschool

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barnett, Steve; Carolan, Megan; Johns, David

2013-01-01

The White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African-Americans (WHIEEAA) has a mandate on behalf of African-American students to close the achievement gap. This goal requires attention to the full education continuum, from the early childhood years through adulthood. Learning begins at birth and the preparation for learning starts well…

Performance on large-scale science tests: Item attributes that may impact achievement scores

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gordon, Janet Victoria

Significant differences in achievement among ethnic groups persist on the eighth-grade science Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL). The WASL measures academic performance in science using both scenario and stand-alone question types. Previous research suggests that presenting target items connected to an authentic context, like scenario question types, can increase science achievement scores especially in underrepresented groups and thus help to close the achievement gap. The purpose of this study was to identify significant differences in performance between gender and ethnic subgroups by question type on the 2005 eighth-grade science WASL. MANOVA and ANOVA were used to examine relationships between gender and ethnic subgroups as independent variables with achievement scores on scenario and stand-alone question types as dependent variables. MANOVA revealed no significant effects for gender, suggesting that the 2005 eighth-grade science WASL was gender neutral. However, there were significant effects for ethnicity. ANOVA revealed significant effects for ethnicity and ethnicity by gender interaction in both question types. Effect sizes were negligible for the ethnicity by gender interaction. Large effect sizes between ethnicities on scenario question types became moderate to small effect sizes on stand-alone question types. This indicates the score advantage the higher performing subgroups had over the lower performing subgroups was not as large on stand-alone question types compared to scenario question types. A further comparison examined performance on multiple-choice items only within both question types. Similar achievement patterns between ethnicities emerged; however, achievement patterns between genders changed in boys' favor. Scenario question types appeared to register differences between ethnic groups to a greater degree than stand-alone question types. These differences may be attributable to individual differences in cognition

Nanoscaled Na3PS4 Solid Electrolyte for All-Solid-State FeS2/Na Batteries with Ultrahigh Initial Coulombic Efficiency of 95% and Excellent Cyclic Performances.

PubMed

Wan, Hongli; Mwizerwa, Jean Pierre; Qi, Xingguo; Xu, Xiaoxiong; Li, Hong; Zhang, Qiang; Cai, Liangting; Hu, Yong-Sheng; Yao, Xiayin

2018-04-18

Nanosized Na 3 PS 4 solid electrolyte with an ionic conductivity of 8.44 × 10 -5 S cm -1 at room temperature is synthesized by a liquid-phase reaction. The resultant all-solid-state FeS 2 /Na 3 PS 4 /Na batteries show an extraordinary high initial Coulombic efficiency of 95% and demonstrate high energy density of 611 Wh kg -1 at current density of 20 mA g -1 at room temperature. The outstanding performances of the battery can be ascribed to good interface compatibility and intimate solid-solid contact at FeS 2 electrode/nanosized Na 3 PS 4 solid electrolytes interface. Meanwhile, excellent cycling stability is achieved for the battery after cycling at 60 mA g -1 for 100 cycles, showing a high capacity of 287 mAh g -1 with the capacity retention of 80%.

Cognitive Performance, School Behavior, and Achievement of Children from One-Parent Households.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hetherington, E. Mavis; And Others

This report reviews the research literature on the effects of divorce and one-parent childrearing on academic achievement and intellectual functioning in children. Life changes following the decision to separate are described along with scholastic achievement measured by IQ and aptitude tests and patterns of cognitive performance. Factors…

Do achievement goals mediate stereotype threat?: an investigation on females' soccer performance.

PubMed

Chalabaev, Aina; Sarrazinr, Philippe; Stone, Jeff; Cury, François

2008-04-01

This research investigated stereotype threat effects on women's performance in sports and examined the mediation of this effect by achievement goals. The influence of two stereotypes-relative to the poor athletic ability and the poor technical soccer ability of women-were studied. Fifty-one female soccer players were randomly assigned to one of three conditions, introducing the task as diagnostic of athletic ability, technical soccer ability, or sports psychology. Next, they filled out a questionnaire measuring achievement goals and performed a soccer dribbling task. Results showed that compared with the control condition, females' performance significantly decreased in the athletic ability condition and tended to decrease in the technical soccer ability condition. Moreover, participants endorsed a performance-avoidance (relative to performance-approach) goal when the stereotypes were activated. However, this goal endorsement was not related to performance. The implications of these results for understanding the role of stereotypes in gender inequalities in sports are discussed.

An EXCEL macro for importing log ASCII standard (LAS) files into EXCEL worksheets

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Özkaya, Sait Ismail

1996-02-01

An EXCEL 5.0 macro is presented for converting a LAS text file into an EXCEL worksheet. Although EXCEL has commands for importing text files and parsing text lines, LAS files must be decoded line-by-line because three different delimiters are used to separate fields of differing length. The macro is intended to eliminate manual decoding of LAS version 2.0. LAS is a floppy disk format for storage and transfer of log data as text files. LAS was proposed by the Canadian Well Logging Society. The present EXCEL macro decodes different sections of a LAS file, separates, and places the fields into different columns of an EXCEL worksheet. To import a LAS file into EXCEL without errors, the file must not contain any unrecognized symbols, and the data section must be the last section. The program does not check for the presence of mandatory sections or fields as required by LAS rules. Once a file is incorporated into EXCEL, mandatory sections and fields may be inspected visually.

Craig Reynolds: Recognized for Excellence in Medicine | Poster

Cancer.gov

The Distinguished Alumni Award is one of the most prestigious awards at the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine. This award recognizes influential alumni who have achieved excellence in the art and science of medicine. One of this year’s recipients is Craig Reynolds, Ph.D., associate director, NCI. When asked how he felt about receiving this award, Reynolds responded, “Really good, I was pleased to even be nominated.”

The Spirit of Excellence. Each One, Reach One. A Program Manual.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

National Black Child Development Inst., Inc., Washington, DC.

Because disadvantaged children rarely receive extra assistance or encouragement, the National Black Child Development Institute created Each One, Reach One: The Spirit of Excellence, a comprehensive tutorial program designed to improve the academic skills and self-esteem of African American children to help them achieve. The program, originally…

Comparing standardized measures of diligence and achievement with dental student academic performance.

PubMed

Jedrychowski, Joseph; Lindemann, Robert

2005-04-01

Utilizing a reliable and valid instrument to measure a student's application of energy and effort towards a goal (diligence) or the ability to reach goals (achievement) would enable dental educators to anticipate academic performance. This knowledge could be used to better distribute faculty and educational resources, as additional tutors could be provided for students who score low on diligence and achievement instruments. In this study, fourth-year dental students completed the Diligence Inventory and the NachNaff Scale (which measures desire to achieve) immediately prior to graduation. The scores from both inventories were correlated with nine measures of academic performance. For males, the NachNaff Scale positively correlated (p<.05) only with the quantity of exceptional performance reports (EPR) and for females negatively correlated only with science DAT scores. The modest positive correlations, which differ for gender, suggest that the NachNaff may be of limited use to predict dental student performance. For males, the Total Diligence mean positively correlated with EPR and National Board Parts I and II scores. For females, the Total Diligence mean positively correlated with EPR and a predental biology-chemistry-physics grade composite. Given the simplicity of the Diligence Inventory and its significant correlations with academic performance demonstrated in this study, it appears to be a useful tool to gain insight into students' diligence in striving to obtain goals.

Seizing Opportunity at the Top II: State Policies to Reach Every Student with Excellent Teaching

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dean, Stephanie; Hassel, Emily Ayscue; Hassel, Bryan C.

2014-01-01

Research continues to confirm that without consistently excellent teaching, most students who start behind stay behind, and too few middling and advanced students leap ahead. Even hardworking, solid teachers who achieve one year of learning progress leave achievement gaps intact. When schools create an opportunity culture for teachers and…

Achieving excellence in community health centers: implications for health reform.

PubMed

Gurewich, Deborah; Capitman, John; Sirkin, Jenna; Traje, Diana

2012-02-01

Existing studies tell us little about care quality variation within the community health center (CHC) delivery system. They also tell us little about the organizational conditions associated with CHCs that deliver especially high quality care. The purpose of this study was to examine the operational practices associated with a sample of high performing CHCs. Qualitative case studies of eight CHCs identified as delivering high-quality care relative to other CHCs were used to examine operational practices, including systems to facilitate care access, manage patient care, and monitor performance. Four common themes emerged that may contribute to high performance. At the same time, important differences across health centers were observed, reflecting differences in local environments and CHC capacity. In the development of effective, community-based models of care, adapting care standards to meet the needs of local conditions may be important.

Supramolecular Polymer Network-Mediated Self-Assembly of Semicrystalline Polymers with Excellent Crystalline Performance.

PubMed

Cheng, Chih-Chia; Chuang, Wei-Tsung; Lee, Duu-Jong; Xin, Zhong; Chiu, Chih-Wei

2017-03-01

A novel application of supramolecular interactions within semicrystalline polymers, capable of self-assembling into supramolecular polymer networks via self-complementary multiple hydrogen-bonded complexes, is demonstrated for efficient construction of highly controlled self-organizing hierarchical structures to offer a direct, efficient nucleation pathway resulting in superior crystallization performance. Herein, a novel functionalized poly(ε-caprolactone) containing self-complementary sextuple hydrogen-bonded uracil-diamidopyridine (U-DPy) moieties is successfully developed and demonstrated excellent thermal and viscoelastic properties as well as high dynamic structural stability in the bulk state due to physical cross-linking created by reversible sextuple hydrogen bonding between U-DPy units. Due to the ability to vary the extent of the reversible network by tuning the U-DPy content, this newly developed material can be readily adjusted to obtain the desired crystalline products with specific characteristics. Importantly, incorporating only 0.1% U-DPy resulted in a polymer with a high crystallization rate constant, short crystallization half-time, and much more rapid crystallization kinetics than pristine PCL, indicating a low content of U-DPy moieties provides highly efficient nucleation sites that manipulate the nucleation and growth processes of polymer crystals to promote crystallization and chain alignment in bulk. This new system is suggested as a potential new route to substantially improve the performance of polymer crystallization. © 2017 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Recognition of Teaching Excellence*

PubMed Central

Piascik, Peggy; Medina, Melissa; Pittenger, Amy; Rose, Renee; Creekmore, Freddy; Soltis, Robert; Bouldin, Alicia; Schwarz, Lindsay; Scott, Steven

2010-01-01

The 2008-2009 Task Force for the Recognition of Teaching Excellence was charged by the AACP Council of Faculties Leadership to examine teaching excellence by collecting best practices from colleges and schools of pharmacy, evaluating the literature to identify evidence-based criteria for excellent teaching, and recommending appropriate means to acknowledge and reward teaching excellence. This report defines teaching excellence and discusses a variety of ways to assess it, including student, alumni, peer, and self-assessment. The task force identifies important considerations that colleges and schools must address when establishing teaching recognition programs including the purpose, criteria, number and mix of awards, frequency, type of award, and method of nominating and determining awardees. The report concludes with recommendations for the academy to consider when establishing and revising teaching award programs. PMID:21301598

Combining a clinical ladder and performance appraisal system as a reward strategy: the EXCEL clinical ladder program.

PubMed

Moe, J K; Lonowski, L R; Yancer, D A

1994-09-01

In response to the dramatic changes occurring in health care today and a desire to reward professional nurses for clinical behaviors that would be valued in the future, Bergan Mercy Medical Center (BMMC) has developed an innovative clinical ladder/performance appraisal system. The BMMC EXCEL Clinical Ladder program, which is based on the developmental model of Patricia Benner, is a competency-based system that uniquely combines a clinical ladder and performance appraisal system. The program is clinically focused and contains optional components in which registered nurses (RNs) can receive additional credit for participation in professional growth and leadership activities. Nurses document examples of their practice through nursing narratives that describe actual clinical situations. The development and implementation processes, challenges encountered, and recommendations for alternative approaches to the implementation of such a unique system are discussed.

Judging complex movement performances for excellence: a principal components analysis-based technique applied to competitive diving.

PubMed

Young, Cole; Reinkensmeyer, David J

2014-08-01

Athletes rely on subjective assessment of complex movements from coaches and judges to improve their motor skills. In some sports, such as diving, snowboard half pipe, gymnastics, and figure skating, subjective scoring forms the basis for competition. It is currently unclear whether this scoring process can be mathematically modeled; doing so could provide insight into what motor skill is. Principal components analysis has been proposed as a motion analysis method for identifying fundamental units of coordination. We used PCA to analyze movement quality of dives taken from USA Diving's 2009 World Team Selection Camp, first identifying eigenpostures associated with dives, and then using the eigenpostures and their temporal weighting coefficients, as well as elements commonly assumed to affect scoring - gross body path, splash area, and board tip motion - to identify eigendives. Within this eigendive space we predicted actual judges' scores using linear regression. This technique rated dives with accuracy comparable to the human judges. The temporal weighting of the eigenpostures, body center path, splash area, and board tip motion affected the score, but not the eigenpostures themselves. These results illustrate that (1) subjective scoring in a competitive diving event can be mathematically modeled; (2) the elements commonly assumed to affect dive scoring actually do affect scoring (3) skill in elite diving is more associated with the gross body path and the effect of the movement on the board and water than the units of coordination that PCA extracts, which might reflect the high level of technique these divers had achieved. We also illustrate how eigendives can be used to produce dive animations that an observer can distort continuously from poor to excellent, which is a novel approach to performance visualization. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

LICSS - a chemical spreadsheet in microsoft excel

PubMed Central

2012-01-01

Background Representations of chemical datasets in spreadsheet format are important for ready data assimilation and manipulation. In addition to the normal spreadsheet facilities, chemical spreadsheets need to have visualisable chemical structures and data searchable by chemical as well as textual queries. Many such chemical spreadsheet tools are available, some operating in the familiar Microsoft Excel environment. However, within this group, the performance of Excel is often compromised, particularly in terms of the number of compounds which can usefully be stored on a sheet. Summary LICSS is a lightweight chemical spreadsheet within Microsoft Excel for Windows. LICSS stores structures solely as Smiles strings. Chemical operations are carried out by calling Java code modules which use the CDK, JChemPaint and OPSIN libraries to provide cheminformatics functionality. Compounds in sheets or charts may be visualised (individually or en masse), and sheets may be searched by substructure or similarity. All the molecular descriptors available in CDK may be calculated for compounds (in batch or on-the-fly), and various cheminformatic operations such as fingerprint calculation, Sammon mapping, clustering and R group table creation may be carried out. We detail here the features of LICSS and how they are implemented. We also explain the design criteria, particularly in terms of potential corporate use, which led to this particular implementation. Conclusions LICSS is an Excel-based chemical spreadsheet with a difference: • It can usefully be used on sheets containing hundreds of thousands of compounds; it doesn't compromise the normal performance of Microsoft Excel • It is designed to be installed and run in environments in which users do not have admin privileges; installation involves merely file copying, and sharing of LICSS sheets invokes automatic installation • It is free and extensible LICSS is open source software and we hope sufficient detail is provided

Prediction of intrinsic motivation and sports performance using 2 x 2 achievement goal framework.

PubMed

Li, Chiung-Huang; Chi, Likang; Yeh, Suh-Ruu; Guo, Kwei-Bin; Ou, Cheng-Tsung; Kao, Chun-Chieh

2011-04-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of 2 x 2 achievement goals on intrinsic motivation and performance in handball. Participants were 164 high school athletes. All completed the 2 x 2 Achievement Goals Questionnaire for Sport and the Intrinsic Motivation subscale of the Sport Motivation Scale; the coach for each team rated his athletes' overall sports performance. Using simultaneous-regression analyses, mastery-approach goals positively predicted both intrinsic motivation and performance in sports, whereas performance-avoidance goals negatively predicted sports performance. These results suggest that athletes who pursue task mastery and improvement of their competence perform well and enjoy their participation. In contrast, those who focus on avoiding normative incompetence perform poorly.

WASP (Write a Scientific Paper) using Excel - 13: Correlation and Regression.

PubMed

Grech, Victor

2018-07-01

Correlation and regression measure the closeness of association between two continuous variables. This paper explains how to perform these tests in Microsoft Excel and their interpretation, as well as how to apply these tests dynamically using Excel's functions. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Indochinese Refugee Families and Academic Achievement.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Caplan, Nathan; And Others

1992-01-01

The children of the Southeast Asian boat people excel in the U.S. school system. A review of the factors underlying this achievement suggests that the U.S. educational crisis is more social than academic. (KR)

Three brief assessments of math achievement.

PubMed

Steiner, Eric T; Ashcraft, Mark H

2012-12-01

Because of wide disparities in college students' math knowledge-that is, their math achievement-studies of cognitive processing in math tasks also need to assess their individual level of math achievement. For many research settings, however, using existing math achievement tests is either too costly or too time consuming. To solve this dilemma, we present three brief tests of math achievement here, two drawn from the Wide Range Achievement Test and one composed of noncopyrighted items. All three correlated substantially with the full achievement test and with math anxiety, our original focus, and all show acceptable to excellent reliability. When lengthy testing is not feasible, one of these brief tests can be substituted.

Coaching in the Library: A Management Strategy for Achieving Excellence. Second Edition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Metz, Ruth F.

2010-01-01

Experienced librarian and coach Ruth Metz outlines a focused and results-oriented plan for achieving the best results from staff members through a coaching style of management. Real-world examples and coaching scenarios specific to library work will help librarians: (1) Be both a coach and a player by learning the terminology and techniques; (2)…

Chasing Perfection and Catching Excellence in Graduate Medical Education.

PubMed

Andolsek, Kathryn M

2015-09-01

The author reflects on the chapter titled "Preserving Excellence in Residency Training and Medical Care" in Dr. Kenneth Ludmerer's book Let Me Heal: The Opportunity to Preserve Excellence in American Medicine. Rather than assuming that the status quo represents excellence, however, the author asserts that we must make an informed judgment regarding the quality of graduate medical education (GME) by applying an evidence-based approach, carefully measuring performance against specific criteria. But what are the right criteria to judge excellence in GME? The author posits that the first criterion for excellence is the foundational concept identified by the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, that of accountability to the public. The author argues that for GME to be truly excellent it must produce a workforce "of sufficient size, specialty mix, and skill" needed to serve the public good. For GME to be truly excellent it must produce the right composition (reflecting the population it serves), use the right pedagogy, and be embedded within the right clinical learning environment. Implementation of competency-based education must be bolder and accelerated. The process of culling out service from education in GME must be more honest, not because all service cannot in some ways be educational but because it is simply too expensive to squander a single minute of time in training. Finally, the epidemic of burnout must be addressed urgently and innovatively.

Predicting subjective vitality and performance in sports: the role of passion and achievement goals.

PubMed

Li, Chiung-Huang

2010-06-01

The major purpose of this study was to test the hypothesized paths from dualistic passions through achievement goals to subjective vitality and performance in sports. 645 high school athletes participated. The proposed structural equation model, with relationships between dualistic passions and subjective vitality and sports performance mediated by achievement goals, fit the data well, especially for mastery-approach and performance-approach goals. Harmonious and obsessive passions may lead athletes to high performance via the adoption of mastery-approach goals. However, these passions seem to have two paths influencing personal functioning: direct effects make players feel energetic, and indirect effects on subjective vitality through adoption of mastery-approach and performance-approach goals.

Predicting Examination Performance Using an Expanded Integrated Hierarchical Model of Test Emotions and Achievement Goals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Putwain, Dave; Deveney, Carolyn

2009-01-01

The aim of this study was to examine an expanded integrative hierarchical model of test emotions and achievement goal orientations in predicting the examination performance of undergraduate students. Achievement goals were theorised as mediating the relationship between test emotions and performance. 120 undergraduate students completed…

Locus of Control, Interest in Schooling and Self-Efficacy as Predictors of Academic Achievement among Junior Secondary School Students in Osun State, Nigeria

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tella, Adeyinka; Tella, Adedeji; Adeniyi, Sam Olufemi

2011-01-01

Background: Academic achievement is interestingly an important issue; a fundamental premium upon which all teaching-learning activities are measured using some criteria of excellence e.g. good academic performance, poor academic performance and academic failure. Aims: This study examines locus of control, interest in schooling and self-efficacy as…

Achieving world class performance step by step.

PubMed

Kerr, L J

1992-02-01

Bridgestone of Japan acquired Firestone, a United States corporation, in early 1988. This article describes the integration process of the two organizations' cultures. There are many lessons in the approach that should apply to a variety of organizations. The Strategic Improvement Process, a rather highly structured approach, harnesses the strengths of both the Japanese and American organizations and starts the manufacturing and technical departments on the road to excellence.

Be(com)ing an Excellent Student: A Qualitative Study with Engineering Undergraduates

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Monteiro, Sílvia; Almeida, Leandro S.; Vasconcelos, Rosa M.; Cruz, José Fernando A.

2014-01-01

This study explores the factors affecting the development of academic excellence on a group of 33 high-achieving engineering students. Participants were interviewed individually to explore several personal and contextual aspects of their past and current academic pathways. The results obtained reflect three main contributions to the…

Excellent temperature performance of spherical LiFePO4/C composites modified with composite carbon and metal oxides.

PubMed

Zhang, Bao; Zeng, Tao; Zhang, Jiafeng; Peng, Chunli; Zheng, Junchao; Chen, Guomin

2014-01-01

Nanosized spherical LiFePO4/C composite was synthesized from nanosized spherical FePO4 ·2H2O, Li2C2O4, aluminum oxide, titanium oxide, oxalic acid, and sucrose by binary sintering process. The phases and morphologies of LiFePO4/C were characterized using SEM, TEM, CV, EIS, EDS, and EDX as well as charging and discharging measurements. The results showed that the as-prepared LiFePO4/C composite with good conductive webs from nanosized spherical FePO4 ·2H2O exhibits excellent electrochemical performances, delivering an initial discharge capacity of 161.7 mAh·g(-1) at a 0.1 C rate, 152.4 mAh·g(-1) at a 1 C rate and 131.7 mAh·g(-1) at a 5 C rate, and the capacity retention of 99.1%, 98.7%, and 95.8%, respectively, after 50 cycles. Meanwhile, the high and low temperature performance is excellent for 18650 battery, maintaining capacity retention of 101.7%, 95.0%, 88.3%, and 79.3% at 55°C, 0°C, -10°C, and -20°C by comparison withthat of room temperature (25°C) at the 0.5 C rate over a voltage range of 2.2 V to 3.6 V, respectively.

Achieving a precise color chart with common computer software for excellence in anterior composite restorations.

PubMed

Salat, Anna; Devoto, Walter; Manauta, Jordi

2011-01-01

Achieving similar features to those on natural teeth is a common problem with esthetic restorations. Color matching is a fundamental procedure required to perform a predictable composite resin restoration. It is no longer enough to measure these criteria with conventional shade guides, which provide the hue and chroma, but do not take into account other dimensions of the tooth such as value, intensives, opalescence and characterizations. The present article presents a simple and effective technique for color selection using a digital photograph of the tooth and an image-editing program such as Adobe Photoshop or Picture Project. The digital editing of the photograph with two simple steps described in this paper reveals the internal structures of the tooth easily. The modified photographs highlight the opalescence, white spots, shape of the internal mammelons and other features that are not visible at first glance. This procedure provides an accurate color chart with which the clinician can begin an esthetic restoration process.

LICSS - a chemical spreadsheet in microsoft excel.

PubMed

Lawson, Kevin R; Lawson, Jonty

2012-02-02

Representations of chemical datasets in spreadsheet format are important for ready data assimilation and manipulation. In addition to the normal spreadsheet facilities, chemical spreadsheets need to have visualisable chemical structures and data searchable by chemical as well as textual queries. Many such chemical spreadsheet tools are available, some operating in the familiar Microsoft Excel environment. However, within this group, the performance of Excel is often compromised, particularly in terms of the number of compounds which can usefully be stored on a sheet. LICSS is a lightweight chemical spreadsheet within Microsoft Excel for Windows. LICSS stores structures solely as Smiles strings. Chemical operations are carried out by calling Java code modules which use the CDK, JChemPaint and OPSIN libraries to provide cheminformatics functionality. Compounds in sheets or charts may be visualised (individually or en masse), and sheets may be searched by substructure or similarity. All the molecular descriptors available in CDK may be calculated for compounds (in batch or on-the-fly), and various cheminformatic operations such as fingerprint calculation, Sammon mapping, clustering and R group table creation may be carried out.We detail here the features of LICSS and how they are implemented. We also explain the design criteria, particularly in terms of potential corporate use, which led to this particular implementation. LICSS is an Excel-based chemical spreadsheet with a difference:• It can usefully be used on sheets containing hundreds of thousands of compounds; it doesn't compromise the normal performance of Microsoft Excel• It is designed to be installed and run in environments in which users do not have admin privileges; installation involves merely file copying, and sharing of LICSS sheets invokes automatic installation• It is free and extensibleLICSS is open source software and we hope sufficient detail is provided here to enable developers to add their

Effective University Leadership as Predictor of Academic Excellence in Southern Nigerian Universities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ofoegbu, Felicia O.; Alonge, Hezekiah O.

2017-01-01

The University is an educational system where high level manpower is trained for socio-economic and political growth of any nation. The leadership of a University plays invaluable roles in achieving academic excellence in dissemination and acquisition of universal knowledge, values; functional, technical and scientific skills and competencies…

A Comparison of Low Performing Students' Achievements in Factoring Cubic Polynomials Using Three Different Strategies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ogbonnaya, Ugorji I.; Mogari, David L.; Machisi, Eric

2013-01-01

In this study, repeated measures design was employed to compare low performing students' achievements in factoring cubic polynomials using three strategies. Twenty-five low-performing Grade 12 students from a secondary school in Limpopo province took part in the study. Data was collected using achievement test and was analysed using repeated…

Universal Factors of Student Achievement in High-Performing Eastern and Western Countries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Jihyun

2014-01-01

This study investigates whether a common set of student attitudes and behavioral tendencies can account for academic achievement across different, especially high-performing, countries via analysis of the PISA 2009 international data set. The 13 countries examined are 5 of the top-performing Eastern countries/systems, namely Shanghai China, South…

Positive Biases in Self-Assessment of Mathematics Competence, Achievement Goals, and Mathematics Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dupeyrat, Caroline; Escribe, Christian; Huet, Nathalie; Regner, Isabelle

2011-01-01

The study examined how biases in self-evaluations of math competence relate to achievement goals and progress in math achievement. It was expected that performance goals would be related to overestimation and mastery goals to accurate self-assessments. A sample of French high-school students completed a questionnaire measuring their math…

Partially Filled Aperture Interferometric Telescopes: Achieving Large Aperture and Coronagraphic Performance

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Moretto, G.; Kuhn, J.; Langlois, M.; Berdugyna, S.; Tallon, M.

2017-09-01

Telescopes larger than currently planned 30-m class instruments must break the mass-aperture scaling relationship of the Keck-generation of multi-segmented telescopes. Partially filled aperture, but highly redundant baseline interferometric instruments may achieve both large aperture and high dynamic range. The PLANETS FOUNDATION group has explored hybrid telescope-interferometer concepts for narrow-field optical systems that exhibit coronagraphic performance over narrow fields-of-view. This paper describes how the Colossus and Exo-Life Finder telescope designs achieve 10x lower moving masses than current Extremely Large Telescopes.

Improved Thermoelectric Performance Achieved by Regulating Heterogeneous Phase in Half-Heusler TiNiSn-Based Materials

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, Jun-Liang; Liu, Chengyan; Miao, Lei; Gao, Jie; Zheng, Yan-yan; Wang, Xiaoyang; Lu, Jiacai; Shu, Mingzheng

2018-06-01

With excellent high-temperature stability (up to 1000 K) and favorable electrical properties for thermoelectric application, TiNiSn-based half-Heusler (HH) alloys are expected to be promising thermoelectric materials for the recovery of waste heat in the temperature ranging from 700 K to 900 K. However, their thermal conductivity is always relatively high (5-10 W/mK), making it difficult to further enhance their thermoelectric figure-of-merit ( ZT). In the past decade, introducing nano-scale secondary phases into the HH alloy matrix has been proven to be feasible for optimizing the thermoelectric performance of TiNiSn. In this study, a series of TiNiSn-based alloys have been successfully synthesized by a simple solid-state reaction. The content and composition of the heterogeneous phase (TiNi2Sn and Sn) is accurately regulated and, as a result, the thermal conductivity successfully reduced from 4.9 W m-1 K-1 to 3.0 Wm-1 K-1 (750 K) due to multi-scale phonon scattering. Consequently, a ZT value of 0.49 is achieved at 750 K in our TiNiSn-based thermoelectric materials. Furthermore, the thermal stability of TiNiSn alloys is enhanced through reducing the Sn substance phase.

Improved Thermoelectric Performance Achieved by Regulating Heterogeneous Phase in Half-Heusler TiNiSn-Based Materials

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, Jun-Liang; Liu, Chengyan; Miao, Lei; Gao, Jie; Zheng, Yan-yan; Wang, Xiaoyang; Lu, Jiacai; Shu, Mingzheng

2017-12-01

With excellent high-temperature stability (up to 1000 K) and favorable electrical properties for thermoelectric application, TiNiSn-based half-Heusler (HH) alloys are expected to be promising thermoelectric materials for the recovery of waste heat in the temperature ranging from 700 K to 900 K. However, their thermal conductivity is always relatively high (5-10 W/mK), making it difficult to further enhance their thermoelectric figure-of-merit (ZT). In the past decade, introducing nano-scale secondary phases into the HH alloy matrix has been proven to be feasible for optimizing the thermoelectric performance of TiNiSn. In this study, a series of TiNiSn-based alloys have been successfully synthesized by a simple solid-state reaction. The content and composition of the heterogeneous phase (TiNi2Sn and Sn) is accurately regulated and, as a result, the thermal conductivity successfully reduced from 4.9 W m-1 K-1 to 3.0 Wm-1 K-1 (750 K) due to multi-scale phonon scattering. Consequently, a ZT value of 0.49 is achieved at 750 K in our TiNiSn-based thermoelectric materials. Furthermore, the thermal stability of TiNiSn alloys is enhanced through reducing the Sn substance phase.

Achieving Excellence in Library Instruction.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gilbert, Betty; And Others

The materials included in this document supporting library instruction are divided into two chapters. The first chapter contains bibliographies of instructional materials, professional periodicals, general reference tools, and religious reference tools. Throughout the bibliographies, the approximate cost of the materials is indicated by dollar…

Know thyself: misperceptions of actual performance undermine achievement motivation, future performance, and subjective well-being.

PubMed

Kim, Young-Hoon; Chiu, Chi-Yue; Zou, Zhimin

2010-09-01

Contrary to the popular assumption that self-enhancement improves task motivation and future performance, the authors propose that both inflated and deflated self-assessments of performance are linked to an increased likelihood of practicing self-handicapping and having relatively poor performance in future tasks. Consistent with this proposal, we found that irrespective of the level of actual performance, compared with accurate self-assessment, both inflated and deflated self-assessments of task performance are associated with a greater tendency to (a) practice self-handicapping (Study 1: prefer to work under distraction; Study 2: withhold preparatory effort), (b) perform relatively poorly in a subsequent task (Study 3), (c) have relatively low academic achievement (Study 4), and (d) report a relatively low level of subjective well-being (Study 5). The authors discuss these results in terms of their educational implications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

The Relationship between Title I Funding Allocations and Student Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Contreras, Heather

2011-01-01

Title I legislation was enacted in 1965 under the Improving the Academic Achievement of the Disadvantaged Act. The goal of Title I was to support disadvantaged students in achieving academic excellence and to close the achievement gap between disadvantaged students and students from high socioeconomic backgrounds. Despite billions of dollars, and…

Critical access hospital informatics: how two rural Iowa hospitals overcame challenges to achieve IT excellence.

PubMed

Bahensky, James A; Moreau, Brian; Frieden, Rob; Ward, Marcia M

2008-01-01

Critical access hospitals often have limited financial and personnel resources to implement today's healthcare IT solutions. Two CAHs in rural Iowa overcame these obstacles and found innovative ways to implement information technology. These hospitals earned recognition from Hospitals & Health Network's Most Wired Magazine for excellence in business processes, customer service, safety and quality, work force management, and public health and safety. Though the hospitals come from different environments-one is part of a system and the other is independent-both exemplify best practices on how to use healthcare IT solutions; engage clinicians from a community setting in informatics decisions; integrate technology into an organization's strategic directions; and support healthcare IT environments.

Obstacles to Excellence: Factors Leading to an Exaggerated Sense of Communication Proficiency.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Habbel, David M.

The achievement of excellence in communication is a function of both exposure to the best theory, research, and practice in communication, and the student's level of motivation to learn about communication. A major obstacle to managing conflict and interpersonal relationships successfully in general is the tendency people have to attribute…

WASP (Write a Scientific Paper) using Excel - 8: t-Tests.

PubMed

Grech, Victor

2018-06-01

t-Testing is a common component of inferential statistics when comparing two means. This paper explains the central limit theorem and the concept of the null hypothesis as well as types of errors. On the practical side, this paper outlines how different t-tests may be performed in Microsoft Excel, for different purposes, both statically as well as dynamically, with Excel's functions. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Everyday Excellence: A Framework for Professional Nursing Practice in Long-Term Care

PubMed Central

Lyons, Stacie Salsbury; Specht, Janet Pringle; Karlman, Susan E.

2009-01-01

Registered nurses make measurable contributions to the health and wellness of persons living in nursing homes. However, most nursing homes do not employ adequate numbers of professional nurses with specialized training in the nursing care of older adults to positively impact resident outcomes. As a result, many people never receive excellent geriatric nursing while living in a long-term care facility. Nurses have introduced various professional practice models into health care institutions as tools for leading nursing practice, improving client outcomes, and achieving organizational goals. Problematically, few professional practice models have been implemented in nursing homes. This article introduces an evidence-based framework for professional nursing practice in long-term care. The Everyday Excellence framework is based upon eight guiding principles: Valuing, Envisioning, Peopling, Securing, Learning, Empowering, Leading, and Advancing Excellence. Future research will evaluate the usefulness of this framework for professional nursing practice. PMID:20077966

ARS-Media for excel instruction manual

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

ARS-Media for Excel Instruction Manual is the instruction manual that explains how to use the Excel spreadsheet ARS-Media for Excel application. ARS-Media for Excel Instruction Manual is provided as a pdf file....

How to achieve and prove performance improvement - 15 years of experience in German wastewater benchmarking.

PubMed

Bertzbach, F; Franz, T; Möller, K

2012-01-01

This paper shows the results of performance improvement, which have been achieved in benchmarking projects in the wastewater industry in Germany over the last 15 years. A huge number of changes in operational practice and also in achieved annual savings can be shown, induced in particular by benchmarking at process level. Investigation of this question produces some general findings for the inclusion of performance improvement in a benchmarking project and for the communication of its results. Thus, we elaborate on the concept of benchmarking at both utility and process level, which is still a necessary distinction for the integration of performance improvement into our benchmarking approach. To achieve performance improvement via benchmarking it should be made quite clear that this outcome depends, on one hand, on a well conducted benchmarking programme and, on the other, on the individual situation within each participating utility.

Daily online testing in large classes: boosting college performance while reducing achievement gaps.

PubMed

Pennebaker, James W; Gosling, Samuel D; Ferrell, Jason D

2013-01-01

An in-class computer-based system, that included daily online testing, was introduced to two large university classes. We examined subsequent improvements in academic performance and reductions in the achievement gaps between lower- and upper-middle class students in academic performance. Students (N = 901) brought laptop computers to classes and took daily quizzes that provided immediate and personalized feedback. Student performance was compared with the same data for traditional classes taught previously by the same instructors (N = 935). Exam performance was approximately half a letter grade above previous semesters, based on comparisons of identical questions asked from earlier years. Students in the experimental classes performed better in other classes, both in the semester they took the course and in subsequent semester classes. The new system resulted in a 50% reduction in the achievement gap as measured by grades among students of different social classes. These findings suggest that frequent consequential quizzing should be used routinely in large lecture courses to improve performance in class and in other concurrent and subsequent courses.

Seizing Opportunity at the Top II: State Policies to Reach Every Student with Excellent Teaching. Policymakers' Checklist

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dean, Stephanie; Hassel, Emily Ayscue; Hassel, Bryan C.

2014-01-01

Research continues to confirm that without consistently excellent teaching, most students who start behind stay behind, and too few middling and advanced students leap ahead. Even hardworking, solid teachers who achieve one year of learning progress leave achievement gaps intact. When schools create an opportunity culture for teachers and…

A Commentary on "Differentiating Low Performance of the Gifted Learner: Achieving, Underachieving, and Selective Consuming Students"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Flint, Lori J.; Ritchotte, Jennifer A.

2012-01-01

This article presents the authors' critique on "Differentiating Low Performance of the Gifted Learner: Achieving, Underachieving, and Selective Consuming Students" (Figg, Low, McCormick, & Rogers 2012). The authors of "Differentiating Low Performance of the Gifted Learner: Achieving, Underachieving, and Selective Consuming Students" endeavored to…

Excel for Cost Engineers

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Butts, Glenn C.

2007-01-01

Excel is a powerful tool with a plethora of largely unused capabilities that can make the life of an engineer cognizant of them a great deal easier. This paper offers tips, tricks and techniques for better worksheets. Including the use of data validation, conditional formatting, subtotals, text formulas, custom functions and much more. It is assumed that the reader will have a cursory understanding of Excel so the basics will not be covered, if you get hung up try Excel's built in help menus, or a good book.

Performance-based alternative assessments as a means of eliminating gender achievement differences on science tests

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Brown, Norman Merrill

1998-09-01

Historically, researchers have reported an achievement difference between females and males on standardized science tests. These differences have been reported to be based upon science knowledge, abstract reasoning skills, mathematical abilities, and cultural and social phenomena. This research was designed to determine how mastery of specific science content from public school curricula might be evaluated with performance-based assessment models, without producing gender achievement differences. The assessment instruments used were Harcourt Brace Educational Measurement's GOALSsp°ler: A Performance-Based Measure of Achievement and the performance-based portion of the Stanford Achievement Testspcopyright, Ninth Edition. The identified independent variables were test, gender, ethnicity, and grade level. A 2 x 2 x 6 x 12 (test x gender x ethnicity x grade) factorial experimental design was used to organize the data. A stratified random sample (N = 2400) was selected from a national pool of norming data: N = 1200 from the GOALSsp°ler group and N = 1200 from the SAT9spcopyright group. The ANOVA analysis yielded mixed results. The factors of test, gender, ethnicity by grade, gender by grade, and gender by grade by ethnicity failed to produce significant results (alpha = 0.05). The factors yielding significant results were ethnicity, grade, and ethnicity by grade. Therefore, no significant differences were found between female and male achievement on these performance-based assessments.

Redesigning Schools: Models to Reach Every Student with Excellent Teachers. Model Summaries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Public Impact, 2012

2012-01-01

In the schoolhouse, nothing matters more to students' learning than their teachers. But only about one of every four U.S. classrooms has an "excellent teacher"--one who produces enough learning progress to close achievement gaps quickly and help all students leap ahead to higher-order learning. What can schools do, now, to reach many…

Au-embedded ZnO/NiO hybrid with excellent electrochemical performance as advanced electrode materials for supercapacitor.

PubMed

Zheng, Xin; Yan, Xiaoqin; Sun, Yihui; Bai, Zhiming; Zhang, Guangjie; Shen, Yanwei; Liang, Qijie; Zhang, Yue

2015-02-04

Here we design a nanostructure by embedding Au nanoparticles into ZnO/NiO core-shell composites as supercapacitors electrodes materials. This optimized hybrid electrodes exhibited an excellent electrochemical performance including a long-term cycling stability and a maximum specific areal capacitance of 4.1 F/cm(2) at a current density of 5 mA/cm(2), which is much higher than that of ZnO/NiO hierarchical materials (0.5 F/cm(2)). Such an enhanced property is attributed to the increased electro-electrolyte interfaces, short electron diffusion pathways and good electrical conductivity. Apart from this, electrons can be temporarily trapped and accumulated at the Fermi level (EF') because of the localized schottky barrier at Au/NiO interface in charge process until fill the gap between ZnO and NiO, so that additional electrons can be released during discharge. These results demonstrate that suitable interface engineering may open up new opportunities in the development of high-performance supercapacitors.

Boredom in Achievement Settings: Exploring Control-Value Antecedents and Performance Outcomes of a Neglected Emotion

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pekrun, Reinhard; Goetz, Thomas; Daniels, Lia M.; Stupnisky, Robert H.; Perry, Raymond P.

2010-01-01

The linkages of achievement-related boredom with students' appraisals and performance outcomes were examined in a series of 5 exploratory, cross-sectional, and predictive investigations. Studies 1 and 2 assessed students' boredom in a single achievement episode (i.e., state achievement boredom); Studies 3, 4, and 5 focused on their habitual…

Improving Achievement in Low-Performing Schools: Key Results for School Leaders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ward, Randolph E.; Burke, Mary Ann

2004-01-01

As accountability in schools becomes more crucial, educators are looking for comprehensive and innovative management practices that respond to challenges and realities of student academic achievement. In order to improve academic performance and the quality of instruction, the entire school community needs to be involved. This book provides six…

Achieving environmental excellence through a multidisciplinary grassroots movement.

PubMed

Herechuk, Bryan; Gosse, Carolyn; Woods, John N

2010-01-01

St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton (SJHH) supports a grassroots green team, called Environmental Vision and Action (EVA). Since the creation of EVA, a healthy balance between corporate projects led by corporate leaders and grassroots initiatives led by informal leaders has resulted in many successful environmental initiatives. Over a relatively short period of time, environmental successes at SJHH have included waste diversion programs, energy efficiency and reduction initiatives, alternative commuting programs, green purchasing practices, clinical and pharmacy greening and increased staff engagement and awareness. Knowledge of social movements theory helped EVA leaders to understand the internal processes of a grassroots movement and helped to guide it. Social movements theory may also have broader applicability in health care by understanding the passionate engagement that people bring to a common cause and how to evolve sources of opposition into engines for positive change. After early successes, as the limitations of a grassroots movement began to surface, the EVA team revived the concept of evolving the grassroots green program into a corporate program for environmental stewardship. It is hard to quantify the importance of allowing our staff, physicians, volunteers and patients to engage in changes that they feel passionately about. However, at SJHH, the transformation of a group of people unsatisfied with the organization's environmental performance into an 'engine for change' has led to a rapid improvement in environmental stewardship at SJHH that is now regarded as a success.

Three-dimensional ordered macroporous bismuth vanadates: PMMA-templating fabrication and excellent visible light-driven photocatalytic performance for phenol degradation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Yuxi; Dai, Hongxing; Deng, Jiguang; Zhang, Lei; Au, Chak Tong

2012-03-01

Three-dimension ordered macroporous (3D-OM) bismuth vanadates with a monoclinic crystal structure and high surface area (18-24 m2 g-1) have been prepared using ascorbic acid (AA)- or citric acid (CA)-assisted poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)-templating strategy with bismuth nitrate and ammonium metavanadate as the metal sources, HNO3 as the pH adjuster and ethylene glycol and methanol as the solvent. The materials were characterized by a number of analytical techniques. The photocatalytic performance of the porous BiVO4 samples was evaluated for the degradation of phenol in the presence of a small amount of H2O2 under visible light illumination. The effects of the initial phenol concentration and the H2O2 amount on the photocatalytic activity of the photocatalyst were examined. It is shown that the chelating agent, AA or CA, and the amount in which it is added had a significant impact on the quality of the 3D-OM structure, with a ``(Bi + V) : chelating agent'' molar ratio of 2 : 1 being the most appropriate. Among the as-prepared BiVO4 samples, the one with a surface area of ca. 24 m2 g-1 showed the best visible light-driven photocatalytic performance for phenol degradation (phenol conversion = ca. 94% at phenol concentration = 0.1 mmol L-1 and in the presence of 0.6 mL H2O2). A higher phenol conversion could be achieved within the same reaction time if the phenol concentration in the aqueous solution was lowered, but an excess amount of H2O2 was not a favorable factor for the enhancement of the catalytic activity. It is concluded that the excellent photocatalytic activity of 3D-OM BiVO4 is due to the high quality 3D-OM structured BiVO4 that has a high surface area and surface oxygen vacancy density. We are sure that the 3D-OM material is a promising photocatalyst for the removal of organics from wastewater under visible light illumination.Three-dimension ordered macroporous (3D-OM) bismuth vanadates with a monoclinic crystal structure and high surface area (18

Secondary Students' Writing Achievement Goals: Assessing the Mediating Effects of Mastery and Performance Goals on Writing Self-Efficacy, Affect, and Writing Achievement

PubMed Central

Yilmaz Soylu, Meryem; Zeleny, Mary G.; Zhao, Ruomeng; Bruning, Roger H.; Dempsey, Michael S.; Kauffman, Douglas F.

2017-01-01

The two studies reported here explored the factor structure of the newly constructed Writing Achievement Goal Scale (WAGS), and examined relationships among secondary students' writing achievement goals, writing self-efficacy, affect for writing, and writing achievement. In the first study, 697 middle school students completed the WAGS. A confirmatory factor analysis revealed a good fit for this data with a three-factor model that corresponds with mastery, performance approach, and performance avoidance goals. The results of Study 1 were an indication for the researchers to move forward with Study 2, which included 563 high school students. The secondary students completed the WAGS, as well as the Self-efficacy for Writing Scale, and the Liking Writing Scale. Students also self-reported grades for writing and for language arts courses. Approximately 6 weeks later, students completed a statewide writing assessment. We tested a theoretical model representing relationships among Study 2 variables using structural equation modeling including students' responses to the study scales and students' scores on the statewide assessment. Results from Study 2 revealed a good fit between a model depicting proposed relationships among the constructs and the data. Findings are discussed relative to achievement goal theory and writing. PMID:28878707

Students' Achievement Goals, Emotion Perception Ability and Affect and Performance in the Classroom: A Multilevel Examination

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vassiou, Aikaterini; Mouratidis, Athanasios; Andreou, Eleni; Kafetsios, Konstantinos

2016-01-01

Performance at school is affected not only by students' achievement goals but also by emotional exchanges among classmates and their teacher. In this study, we investigated relationships between students' achievement goals and emotion perception ability and class affect and performance. Participants were 949 Greek adolescent students in 49 classes…

Paternity analysis in Excel.

PubMed

Rocheta, Margarida; Dionísio, F Miguel; Fonseca, Luís; Pires, Ana M

2007-12-01

Paternity analysis using microsatellite information is a well-studied subject. These markers are ideal for parentage studies and fingerprinting, due to their high-discrimination power. This type of data is used to assign paternity, to compute the average selfing and outcrossing rates and to estimate the biparental inbreeding. There are several public domain programs that compute all this information from data. Most of the time, it is necessary to export data to some sort of format, feed it to the program and import the output to an Excel book for further processing. In this article we briefly describe a program referred from now on as Paternity Analysis in Excel (PAE), developed at IST and IBET (see the acknowledgments) that computes paternity candidates from data, and other information, from within Excel. In practice this means that the end user provides the data in an Excel sheet and, by pressing an appropriate button, obtains the results in another Excel sheet. For convenience PAE is divided into two modules. The first one is a filtering module that selects data from the sequencer and reorganizes it in a format appropriate to process paternity analysis, assuming certain conventions for the names of parents and offspring from the sequencer. The second module carries out the paternity analysis assuming that one parent is known. Both modules are written in Excel-VBA and can be obtained at the address (www.math.ist.utl.pt/~fmd/pa/pa.zip). They are free for non-commercial purposes and have been tested with different data and against different software (Cervus, FaMoz, and MLTR).

Excellence and Education: Rhetoric and Reality

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gillies, Donald

2007-01-01

"Excellence" has been a prevalent term in New Labour rhetoric on education, most notably in the stated goal of "excellence for all" in education. Despite that, the meaning of the term has remained imprecise, and the implications of universal excellence unclear. In this paper, three distinct definitions of excellence are…

DOE Centers of Excellence Performance Portability Meeting

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Neely, J. R.

2016-04-21

Performance portability is a phrase often used, but not well understood. The DOE is deploying systems at all of the major facilities across ASCR and ASC that are forcing application developers to confront head-on the challenges of running applications across these diverse systems. With GPU-based systems at the OLCF and LLNL, and Phi-based systems landing at NERSC, ACES (LANL/SNL), and the ALCF – the issue of performance portability is confronting the DOE mission like never before. A new best practice in the DOE is to include “Centers of Excellence” with each major procurement, with a goal of focusing efforts onmore » preparing key applications to be ready for the systems coming to each site, and engaging the vendors directly in a “shared fate” approach to ensuring success. While each COE is necessarily focused on a particular deployment, applications almost invariably must be able to run effectively across the entire DOE HPC ecosystem. This tension between optimizing performance for a particular platform, while still being able to run with acceptable performance wherever the resources are available, is the crux of the challenge we call “performance portability”. This meeting was an opportunity to bring application developers, software providers, and vendors together to discuss this challenge and begin to chart a path forward.« less

A Program Aimed toward Inclusive Excellence for Underrepresented Undergraduate Women in the Sciences.

PubMed

Katz, Laura A; Aloisio, Kathryn M; Horton, Nicholas J; Ly, Minh; Pruss, Sara; Queeney, Kate; Rowen, Cate; DiBartolo, Patricia Marten

2017-01-01

Created to foster inclusive excellence, Smith College's Achieving Excellence in Mathematics, Engineering, and Science (AEMES) Scholars program provides early faculty-mentored research opportunities and other programming as a way to foster success in academic outcomes for underrepresented women in science. Using academic record data, we compared Scholars' outcomes over time with those of underrepresented students before program launch and to relevant peer comparison groups. Since its launch, AEMES Scholars have achieved significantly higher gateway life sciences course grade point averages (GPAs), rates of persistence in life and natural sciences, and participation in natural sciences advanced research relative to baseline. Gains for Scholars in gateway course GPA eliminated the significant gap that previously existed between science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-underrepresented and other students, whereas gains in natural sciences persistence now has Scholars continuing in STEM at significantly higher rates than all other students. Many of the gains for AEMES Scholars were echoed in findings of improved outcomes for our STEM students overall since AEMES' launch. Underrepresented students who were not part of the Scholars program also evidenced increased gateway course GPA over this same period. We discuss potential explanations for these outcomes and ongoing work aimed at achieving further inclusive excellence for women in the sciences. © 2017 L. A. Katz et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2017 The American Society for Cell Biology. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0).

Education Criteria for Performance Excellence, 2002.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

National Inst. of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD.

The education criteria presented in this guide are designed to help organizations use an integrated approach to organizational performance management that results in delivery of ever-improving value to students and stakeholders. Implementation of the criteria will contribute to improvement of education quality, improvement of overall…

Teaching physics using Microsoft Excel

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Uddin, Zaheer; Ahsanuddin, Muhammad; Khan, Danish Ahmed

2017-09-01

Excel is both ubiquitous and easily understandable. Most people from every walk of life know how to use MS office and Excel spreadsheets. Students are also familiar with spreadsheets. Most students know how to use spreadsheets for data analysis. Besides basic use of Excel, some important aspects of spreadsheets are highlighted in this article. MS Excel can be used to visualize effects of various parameters in a physical system. It can be used as a simulating tool; simulation of wind data has been done through spreadsheets in this study. Examples of Lissajous figures and a damped harmonic oscillator are presented in this article.

The Effects of the Classroom Performance System on Student Participation, Attendance, and Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Termos, Mohamad Hani

2013-01-01

The Classroom Performance System (CPS) is an instructional technology that increases student performance and promotes active learning. This study assessed the effect of the CPS on student participation, attendance, and achievement in multicultural college-level anatomy and physiology classes, where students' first spoken language is not English.…

2D SnO2 Nanosheets: Synthesis, Characterization, Structures, and Excellent Sensing Performance to Ethylene Glycol

PubMed Central

Wan, Wenjin; Li, Yuehua; Ren, Xingping; Zhao, Yinping; Gao, Fan; Zhao, Heyun

2018-01-01

Two dimensional (2D)SnO2 nanosheets were synthesized by a substrate-free hydrothermal route using sodium stannate and sodium hydroxide in a mixed solvent of absolute ethanol and deionized water at a lower temperature of 130 °C. The characterization results of the morphology, microstructure, and surface properties of the as-prepared products demonstrated that SnO2 nanosheets with a tetragonal rutile structure, were composed of oriented SnO2 nanoparticles with a diameter of 6–12 nm. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) and high-resolution transmission electron microscope (FETEM) results demonstrated that the dominant exposed surface of the SnO2 nanoparticles was (101), but not (110). The growth and formation was supposed to follow the oriented attachment mechanism. The SnO2 nanosheets exhibited an excellent sensing response toward ethylene glycol at a lower optimal operating voltage of 3.4 V. The response to 400 ppm ethylene glycol reaches 395 at 3.4 V. Even under the low concentration of 5, 10, and 20 ppm, the sensor exhibited a high response of 6.9, 7.8, and 12.0 to ethylene glycol, respectively. The response of the SnO2 nanosheets exhibited a linear dependence on the ethylene glycol concentration from 5 to 1000 ppm. The excellent sensing performance was attributed to the present SnO2 nanoparticles with small size close to the Debye length, the larger specific surface, the high-energy exposed facets of the (101) surface, and the synergistic effects of the SnO2 nanoparticles of the nanosheets. PMID:29462938

Limitations of Using Microsoft Excel Version 2016 (MS Excel 2016) for Statistical Analysis for Medical Research.

PubMed

Tanavalee, Chotetawan; Luksanapruksa, Panya; Singhatanadgige, Weerasak

2016-06-01

Microsoft Excel (MS Excel) is a commonly used program for data collection and statistical analysis in biomedical research. However, this program has many limitations, including fewer functions that can be used for analysis and a limited number of total cells compared with dedicated statistical programs. MS Excel cannot complete analyses with blank cells, and cells must be selected manually for analysis. In addition, it requires multiple steps of data transformation and formulas to plot survival analysis graphs, among others. The Megastat add-on program, which will be supported by MS Excel 2016 soon, would eliminate some limitations of using statistic formulas within MS Excel.

Student Achievement in High Performing, Suburban Middle Schools and Low Performing, Urban Middle Schools: Plausible Explanations for the Differences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brown, Kathleen M.; Anfara, Vincent A., Jr.; Roney, Kathleen

2004-01-01

Utilizing a qualitative, multisite case study design and the theoretical framework of Hoy and Hannum (1997), the design and execution of this research investigates plausible explanations for the difference in student achievement between high performing (HPS) suburban middle schools and low performing (LPS) urban middle schools. Aside from the…

Project REACH. Regional Education to Achieve with Company Help. Performance Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Parkway School District, Chesterfield, MO.

Project REACH (Regional Education to Achieve with Company) was a regional workplace literacy (WL) program designed to increase the levels of literacy, job performance/satisfaction/retention, productivity, and self-esteem of the work force of six businesses in the Saint Louis area and to foster the development of business-education partnerships for…

ARS-Media for Excel

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

ARS-Media for Excel is an ion solution calculator that uses Microsoft Excel to generate recipes of salts for complex ion mixtures specified by the user. Generating salt combinations (recipes) that result in pre-specified target ion values is a linear programming problem. Thus, the recipes are genera...

Making a World of Difference: Collaboration. Excellence for Intercultural Teams

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schneider, Luise; Romberg, Claudia

2011-01-01

Cultural awareness training that emphasizes communication delivers only a partial solution to the challenges that intercultural work teams face. Improving collaboration requires a strong foundation of performance management before a work team can determine how they will cooperate to perform to excellence. Against the backdrop of the authors'…

Bronson Methodist Hospital: journey to excellence in quality and safety.

PubMed

Knapp, Cheryl

2006-10-01

Bronson Healthcare Group, a 343-bed not-for-profit health care system serving all of southwest Michigan and northern Indiana, has as its flagship Bronson Methodist Hospital, the recipient of the 2005 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. The Baldrige criteria were used to formalize Bronson's approach to performance excellence. The strategic plan is condensed and communicated via a "Plan for Excellence" focused on three strategies: clinical excellence, customer and service excellence, and corporate effectiveness. Initiatives include clinical scene investigation (a system for reporting and investigating sentinel and atypical events), a strategy for educating staff in the Situation-Background-Assessment-Recommendations (SBAR) communication technique, and mandatory influenza immunization for health care staff (safety), patient health literacy needs and a health information center (patient centeredness); methods to reduce bloodstream and ventilator-acquired pneumonia infections (effectiveness); a physician portal for access to forms, test results, and patient information (efficiency); restaurant-style pagers for patients and families while waiting (timeliness); and community outreach (equity). Bronson's journey to excellence continues with more accountability for hand-off communication and teamwork, enhancing a non-punitive environment for patient safety reporting, and further incorporating patient and family involvement.

Characteristics and Determinants of Teacher-Designed Pay for Performance Plans: Evidence from Texas' Governor's Educator Excellence Grant (GEEG) Program. Working Paper 2008-26

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Taylor, Lori L.; Springer, Matthew G.; Ehlert, Mark

2008-01-01

This study describes the teacher pay for performance plans designed and implemented by the public schools participating in the Governor's Educator Excellence Grant (GEEG) program in Texas. GEEG is a federally funded, incentive pay program that awarded non-competitive grants, ranging from $60,000 to $220,000 each year for three years, to 99 Texas…

The Network of Excellence 'Knowledge-based Multicomponent Materials for Durable and Safe Performance'

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Moreno, Arnaldo

The Network of Excellence 'Knowledge-based Multicomponent Materials for Durable and Safe Performance' (KMM-NoE) consists of 36 institutional partners from 10 countries representing leading European research institutes and university departments (25), small and medium enterprises, SMEs (5) and large industry (7) in the field of knowledge-based multicomponent materials (KMM), more specifically in intermetallics, metal-ceramic composites, functionally graded materials and thin layers. The main goal of the KMM-NoE (currently funded by the European Commission) is to mobilise and concentrate the fragmented scientific potential in the KMM field to create a durable and efficient organism capable of developing leading-edge research while spreading themore » accumulated knowledge outside the Network and enhancing the technological skills of the related industries. The long-term strategic goal of the KMM-NoE is to establish a self-supporting pan-European institution in the field of knowledge-based multicomponent materials--KMM Virtual Institute (KMM-VIN). It will combine industry oriented research with educational and training activities. The KMM Virtual Institute will be founded on three main pillars: KMM European Competence Centre, KMM Integrated Post-Graduate School, KMM Mobility Programme. The KMM-NoE is coordinated by the Institute of Fundamental Technological Research (IPPT) of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland.« less

[Managing a health research institute: towards research excellence through continuous improvement].

PubMed

Olmedo, Carmen; Buño, Ismael; Plá, Rosa; Lomba, Irene; Bardinet, Thierry; Bañares, Rafael

2015-01-01

Health research institutes are a strategic commitment considered the ideal environment to develop excellence in translational research. Achieving quality research requires not only a powerful scientific and research structure but also the quality and integrity of management systems that support it. The essential instruments in our institution were solid strategic planning integrated into and consistent with the system of quality management, systematic evaluation through periodic indicators, measurement of key user satisfaction and internal audits, and implementation of an innovative information management tool. The implemented management tools have provided a strategic thrust to our institute while ensuring a level of quality and efficiency in the development and management of research that allows progress towards excellence in biomedical research. Copyright © 2015 SESPAS. Published by Elsevier Espana. All rights reserved.

Melding Excellence and Equity.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bennett, David A.

1983-01-01

This document examines the issues of educational excellence and equity. The Milwaukee Public School System, Wisconsin, is cited as an example of a desegregation program that both exceeded court requirements of equity and also made a substantial contribution to the goals of excellence in education. The school effectiveness movement, like…

Strategies to Achieve High-Performance White Organic Light-Emitting Diodes

PubMed Central

Zhang, Lirong; Li, Xiang-Long; Luo, Dongxiang; Xiao, Peng; Xiao, Wenping; Song, Yuhong; Ang, Qinshu; Liu, Baiquan

2017-01-01

As one of the most promising technologies for next-generation lighting and displays, white organic light-emitting diodes (WOLEDs) have received enormous worldwide interest due to their outstanding properties, including high efficiency, bright luminance, wide viewing angle, fast switching, lower power consumption, ultralight and ultrathin characteristics, and flexibility. In this invited review, the main parameters which are used to characterize the performance of WOLEDs are introduced. Subsequently, the state-of-the-art strategies to achieve high-performance WOLEDs in recent years are summarized. Specifically, the manipulation of charges and excitons distribution in the four types of WOLEDs (fluorescent WOLEDs, phosphorescent WOLEDs, thermally activated delayed fluorescent WOLEDs, and fluorescent/phosphorescent hybrid WOLEDs) are comprehensively highlighted. Moreover, doping-free WOLEDs are described. Finally, issues and ways to further enhance the performance of WOLEDs are briefly clarified. PMID:29194426

Philanthropic Donor Perspectives on Supporting Nursing Excellence in a Community Hospital.

PubMed

Fickley, Sharon K; Mishler, Ray R; Black, Amelia S; DeGuzman, Pam B

2016-11-01

The purpose of this research is to explore donors' perspectives on support of nursing excellence in a community hospital. Philanthropic support is rapidly becoming critical to support nursing excellence in hospitals, including continuing education, nursing research, and professional development. However, no research has examined the experience of private donors who support nursing programs in community hospitals. Structured interviews were conducted with individuals with a history of providing significant financial support (gifts >$50 000) targeted specifically for nursing in a 176- bed community hospital in the southeastern United States. Analysis was performed using descriptive content analysis. Four themes emerged that centered around making a difference, helping nurses meet new challenges, an existing foundation of service, and valuing excellent nursing care received. This research provides specific information that nursing administrators can use when seeking philanthropic gifts to support nursing excellence programs in US community hospitals.

Excellence in Higher Education Workbook and Scoring Guide

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ruben, Brent D.

2007-01-01

Self-assessment leads to stronger performance in the nation's colleges and universities. That's the premise of "Excellence in Higher Education," a model self-assessment program that has earned accolades from the higher education community. Based on the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award framework, the fourth edition of this bestseller is the…

Academic Excellence: The Role of Research in the Physical Sciences at Undergraduate Institutions.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Doyle, Michael P., Ed.

Chapters of this collection show that students benefit from a research-based teaching environment, and that students who have the opportunity for research complete their science programs in greater numbers than those who do not. The chapters of section 1, "Achieving Excellence," are: (1) "The Role of Research at Undergraduate Institution: Why Is…

Alkali-corrosion synthesis and excellent DSSC performance of novel jujube-like hierarchical TiO2 microspheres

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xiao, Jiajia; Li, Po; Wen, Xiaogang

2018-04-01

Novel jujube-like hierarchical TiO2 microspheres (HTMs) were synthesized by an alkali-corrosion process of titanium phosphate (Ti2O3(H2PO4)2 · 2H2O) microspheres. The hierarchical titanium phosphate microsphere (HTPM) intermediates consisting of nanoflakes with a thickness of 20 nm were firstly prepared by a facile hydrothermal method. After reacting with diluted NaOH at low temperature and atmospheric pressure, followed by subsequent acid washing and a calcination process, the HTPM intermediates were transformed to TiO2 with the microsphere morphology well retained, while the nanoflakes became porous, and some new nanowires were formed between the nanoflakes. Finally, HTMs consisting of porous nanoflakes and nanowires were obtained. The possible growth mechanisms of HTPMs and HTMs are discussed. The HTMs demonstrate high specific surface area and excellent light-scattering ability. The performance of the dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) of the HTMs synthesized under different conditions is studied, and a total conversion efficiency of up to 8.93% was obtained. The improved DSSC performance was attributed to the enhanced dye loading, light-scattering, and charge transporting ability of the HTMs with a unique hierarchical nanostructure.

Alkali-corrosion synthesis and excellent DSSC performance of novel jujube-like hierarchical TiO2 microspheres.

PubMed

Xiao, Jiajia; Li, Po; Wen, Xiaogang

2018-04-27

Novel jujube-like hierarchical TiO 2 microspheres (HTMs) were synthesized by an alkali-corrosion process of titanium phosphate (Ti 2 O 3 (H 2 PO 4 ) 2  · 2H 2 O) microspheres. The hierarchical titanium phosphate microsphere (HTPM) intermediates consisting of nanoflakes with a thickness of 20 nm were firstly prepared by a facile hydrothermal method. After reacting with diluted NaOH at low temperature and atmospheric pressure, followed by subsequent acid washing and a calcination process, the HTPM intermediates were transformed to TiO 2 with the microsphere morphology well retained, while the nanoflakes became porous, and some new nanowires were formed between the nanoflakes. Finally, HTMs consisting of porous nanoflakes and nanowires were obtained. The possible growth mechanisms of HTPMs and HTMs are discussed. The HTMs demonstrate high specific surface area and excellent light-scattering ability. The performance of the dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) of the HTMs synthesized under different conditions is studied, and a total conversion efficiency of up to 8.93% was obtained. The improved DSSC performance was attributed to the enhanced dye loading, light-scattering, and charge transporting ability of the HTMs with a unique hierarchical nanostructure.

Kelp-derived three-dimensional hierarchical porous N, O-doped carbon for flexible solid-state symmetrical supercapacitors with excellent performance

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Yifu; Jiang, Hanmei; Wang, Qiushi; Zheng, Jiqi; Meng, Changgong

2018-07-01

Three-dimensional (3D) porous N, O-doped carbon with hierarchical structures composed of micropores, mesopores and macropores were synthesized by the direct carbonization of kelp with a "self-activation" process. The as-obtained 3D N, O-doped carbon remained abundant N and O functional groups and the BET specific surface area measured 656 m2 g-1. 3D hierarchical porous structures with the pore size ranged from several nanometers to hundred nanometers and lots of pores were attributed to mesopores with the average pore size of about 5.4 nm. Electrochemical properties of the 3D hierarchical porous N, O-doped carbon as a supercapactior (SC) electrode were investigated and it delivered excellent capacitance of 669 mF cm-2 at 1 mA cm-2 due to its 3D hierarchical porous structures with high specific surface area which is beneficial for improving ionic storage and transportation in electrodes. This kelp-derived carbon exhibited excellent cyclic performance with the retention of 104% after 10,000 cycles. A flexible solid-state symmetric SC (SSC) device was fabricated using the 3D hierarchical porous N, O-doped carbon and delivered an excellent capacitance of 412 mF cm-2 at 2 mA cm-2 and satisfying cyclic stability with the retention of 85% after 10,000 cycles. The areal energy density of the SSC device reach up to 0.146 mWh cm-2 at the power density of 0.8 mW cm-2. This facile route for low-cost carbonaceous materials with novel architecture and functionality can be as a promising alternative to synthesize biomass carbon for practical SC application.

Medicare Accountable Care Organizations of Diverse Structures Achieve Comparable Quality and Cost Performance.

PubMed

Comfort, Leeann N; Shortell, Stephen M; Rodriguez, Hector P; Colla, Carrie H

2018-01-31

To examine whether an empirically derived taxonomy of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) is associated with quality and spending performance among patients of ACOs in the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP). Three waves of the National Survey of ACOs and corresponding publicly available Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services performance data for NSACO respondents participating in the MSSP (N = 204); SK&A Office Based Physicians Database from QuintilesIMS. We compare the performance of three ACO types (physician-led, integrated, and hybrid) for three domains: quality, spending, and likelihood of achieving savings. Sources of performance variation within and between ACO types are compared for each performance measure. There is greater heterogeneity within ACO types than between ACO types. There were no consistent differences in quality by ACO type, nor were there differences in likelihood of achieving savings or overall spending per-person-year. There was evidence for higher spending on physician services for physician-led ACOs. ACOs of diverse structures perform comparably on core MSSP quality and spending measures. CMS should maintain its flexibility and continue to support participation of diverse ACOs. Future research to identify modifiable organizational factors that account for performance variation within ACO types may provide insight as to how best to improve ACO performance based on organizational structure and ownership. © Health Research and Educational Trust.

Performance and Accountability Report

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

2003-01-01

The NASA Fiscal Year 2002 Performance and Accountability Report is presented. Over the past year, significant changes have been implemented to greatly improve NASA's management while continuing to break new ground in science and technology. Excellent progress has been made in implementing the President's Management Agenda. NASA is leading the government in its implementation of the five government-wide initiatives. NASA received an unqualified audit opinion on FY 2002 financial statements. The vast majority of performance goals have been achieved, furthering each area of NASA's mission. The contents include: 1) NASA Vision and Mission; 2) Management's Discussion and Analysis; 3) Performance; and 4) Financial.

Polymer/boron nitride nanocomposite materials for superior thermal transport performance.

PubMed

Song, Wei-Li; Wang, Ping; Cao, Li; Anderson, Ankoma; Meziani, Mohammed J; Farr, Andrew J; Sun, Ya-Ping

2012-06-25

Boron nitride nanosheets were dispersed in polymers to give composite films with excellent thermal transport performances approaching the record values found in polymer/graphene nanocomposites. Similarly high performance at lower BN loadings was achieved by aligning the nanosheets in poly(vinyl alcohol) matrix by simple mechanical stretching (see picture). Copyright © 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

What Makes an Excellent Lecturer? Academics' Perspectives on the Discourse of "Teaching Excellence" in Higher Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wood, Margaret; Su, Feng

2017-01-01

In the context of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), we examine academics' perspectives on the discourse of "teaching excellence" based on an empirical study with 16 participants from five post-1992 universities. The article reports the findings on academics' views of the term and concept of "teaching excellence",…

Thermal-Performance Instability in Piezoresistive Sensors: Inducement and Improvement

PubMed Central

Liu, Yan; Wang, Hai; Zhao, Wei; Qin, Hongbo; Fang, Xuan

2016-01-01

The field of piezoresistive sensors has been undergoing a significant revolution in terms of design methodology, material technology and micromachining process. However, the temperature dependence of sensor characteristics remains a hurdle to cross. This review focuses on the issues in thermal-performance instability of piezoresistive sensors. Based on the operation fundamental, inducements to the instability are investigated in detail and correspondingly available ameliorative methods are presented. Pros and cons of each improvement approach are also summarized. Though several schemes have been proposed and put into reality with favorable achievements, the schemes featuring simple implementation and excellent compatibility with existing techniques are still emergently demanded to construct a piezoresistive sensor with excellent comprehensive performance. PMID:27886125

Establishing a malaria diagnostics centre of excellence in Kisumu, Kenya.

PubMed

Ohrt, Colin; Obare, Peter; Nanakorn, Ampon; Adhiambo, Christine; Awuondo, Ken; O'Meara, Wendy Prudhomme; Remich, Shon; Martin, Kurt; Cook, Earnest; Chretien, Jean-Paul; Lucas, Carmen; Osoga, Joseph; McEvoy, Peter; Owaga, Martin Lucas; Odera, James Sande; Ogutu, Bernhards

2007-06-12

Malaria microscopy, while the gold standard for malaria diagnosis, has limitations. Efficacy estimates in drug and vaccine malaria trials are very sensitive to small errors in microscopy endpoints. This fact led to the establishment of a Malaria Diagnostics Centre of Excellence in Kisumu, Kenya. The primary objective was to ensure valid clinical trial and diagnostic test evaluations. Key secondary objectives were technology transfer to host countries, establishment of partnerships, and training of clinical microscopists. A twelve-day "long" and a four-day "short" training course consisting of supervised laboratory practicals, lectures, group discussions, demonstrations, and take home assignments were developed. Well characterized slides were developed and training materials iteratively improved. Objective pre- and post-course evaluations consisted of 30 slides (19 negative, 11 positive) with a density range of 50-660 parasites/mul, a written examination (65 questions), a photographic image examination (30 images of artifacts and species specific characteristics), and a parasite counting examination. To date, 209 microscopists have participated from 11 countries. Seventy-seven experienced microscopists participated in the "long" courses, including 47 research microscopists. Sensitivity improved by a mean of 14% (CI 9-19%) from 77% baseline (CI 73-81 %), while specificity improved by a mean of 17% (CI 11-23%) from 76% (CI 70-82%) baseline. Twenty-three microscopists who had been selected for a four-day refresher course showed continued improvement with a mean final sensitivity of 95% (CI 91-98%) and specificity of 97% (CI 95-100%). Only 9% of those taking the pre-test in the "long" course achieved a 90% sensitivity and 95% specificity, which increased to 61% of those completing the "short" course. All measures of performance improved substantially across each of the five organization types and in each course offered. The data clearly illustrated that false positive

School Achievement and Performance in Chilean High Schools: The Mediating Role of Subjective Wellbeing in School-Related Evaluations

PubMed Central

López, Verónica; Oyanedel, Juan C.; Bilbao, Marian; Torres, Javier; Oyarzún, Denise; Morales, Macarena; Ascorra, Paula; Carrasco, Claudia

2017-01-01

School achievement gaps and school failure are problematic issues in Latin America, and are mainly explained by the socio-economic status (SES) of the students. What schools can do to improve school achievement and reduce school failure is a critical issue, both for school management and teacher training. In this study, we present the association of individual and school-related socio-emotional variables with school achievement and performance, controlling for the effects of SES. A probabilistic sample of 4,964 students, drawn from 191 schools enrolled in year 10 in urban areas of Chile, answered questionnaires assessing subjective wellbeing, social wellbeing in school, school climate, school social wellbeing and students’ perceptions of teachers’ wellbeing. Using structural equation modeling, and controlling for SES, we modeled subjective wellbeing as a mediator of the relationship between school-related variables, such as school climate and perception of teacher’s wellbeing, and (a) school achievement, and (b) school performance. School achievement was computed as a product of (a) the probability of passing the school year, and (b) the percentage of yearly attendance at school. Data on school achievement was drawn from administrative registries from the Chilean Ministry of Education. School performance was computed as the estimated grade point average (GPA) at the end of the school year, based on the students’ previous 5-year GPAs, and was also obtained through administrative data of the last 5 years. Findings reveal the mediating role of subjective wellbeing in the relationship between school-related evaluations (students’ social wellbeing at school, their perception of teachers’ wellbeing and school climate) and school achievement. For school achievement, two variables were mediated (students’ social wellbeing at school and school climate). However, for school performance, no significant mediations were found. We conclude that, on the one hand

School Achievement and Performance in Chilean High Schools: The Mediating Role of Subjective Wellbeing in School-Related Evaluations.

PubMed

López, Verónica; Oyanedel, Juan C; Bilbao, Marian; Torres, Javier; Oyarzún, Denise; Morales, Macarena; Ascorra, Paula; Carrasco, Claudia

2017-01-01

School achievement gaps and school failure are problematic issues in Latin America, and are mainly explained by the socio-economic status (SES) of the students. What schools can do to improve school achievement and reduce school failure is a critical issue, both for school management and teacher training. In this study, we present the association of individual and school-related socio-emotional variables with school achievement and performance, controlling for the effects of SES. A probabilistic sample of 4,964 students, drawn from 191 schools enrolled in year 10 in urban areas of Chile, answered questionnaires assessing subjective wellbeing, social wellbeing in school, school climate, school social wellbeing and students' perceptions of teachers' wellbeing. Using structural equation modeling, and controlling for SES, we modeled subjective wellbeing as a mediator of the relationship between school-related variables, such as school climate and perception of teacher's wellbeing, and (a) school achievement, and (b) school performance. School achievement was computed as a product of (a) the probability of passing the school year, and (b) the percentage of yearly attendance at school. Data on school achievement was drawn from administrative registries from the Chilean Ministry of Education. School performance was computed as the estimated grade point average (GPA) at the end of the school year, based on the students' previous 5-year GPAs, and was also obtained through administrative data of the last 5 years. Findings reveal the mediating role of subjective wellbeing in the relationship between school-related evaluations (students' social wellbeing at school, their perception of teachers' wellbeing and school climate) and school achievement. For school achievement, two variables were mediated (students' social wellbeing at school and school climate). However, for school performance, no significant mediations were found. We conclude that, on the one hand, after

The effect of authentic leadership, organizational justice, and achievement motivation on teachers' performance in vocational high school seventeen Temanggung

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sugi, Slamet, Achmad; Martono, S.

2018-03-01

Teachers' performance in Temanggung in 2016 did not show maximal result. It was shown from many indicators. The low score of UN, UKG and PKB result. Individual performance was different. Achievement motivation could be seen through their attitude and behavior performances. The purpose of this research is to know the effect of authentic leadership, organizational justice, and achievement motivation on teachers' performance. The objects of this research are authentic leadership, organizational justice, achievement motivation and teachers' performance in Vocational High School Seventeen in Temanggung. The research method used is quantitative. Data collection was done by questioners. Then, the data were analyzed by using Path SPSS 16. The result of this research showed that authentic leadership, organizational justice, achievement motivation had significant effect on teachers' performance in Vocational High School Seventeen in Temanggung.

Excellent photocatalytic performance under visible-light irradiation of ZnS/rGO nanocomposites synthesized by a green method

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Azimi, Hassan Rayat; Ghoranneviss, Mahmood; Elahi, Seyed Mohammad; Mahmoudian, Mohammad Reza; Jamali-Sheini, Farid; Yousefi, Ramin

2016-12-01

ZnS/graphene nanocomposites with different graphene concentrations (5, 10 and 15 wt.%) were synthesized using L-cysteine as surfactant and graphene oxide (GO) powders as graphene source. Excellent performance for nanocomposites to remove methylene blue (MB) dye and hexavalent chromium (Cr(VI)) under visible-light illumination was revealed. TEM images showed that ZnS NPs were decorated on GO sheets and the GO caused a significant decrease in the ZnS diameter size. XRD patterns, XPS and FTIR spectroscopy results indicated that GO sheets changed into reduced graphene oxide (rGO) during the synthesis process. Photocurrent measurements under a visiblelight source indicated a good chemical reaction between ZnS NPs and rGO sheets.

3D graphene from CO 2 and K as an excellent counter electrode for dye-sensitized solar cells

DOE PAGES

Wei, Wei; Stacchiola, Dario J.; Hu, Yun Hang

2017-07-19

3D graphene, which was synthesized directly from CO 2 via its exothermic reaction with liquid K, exhibited excellent performance as a counter electrode for a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC). The DSSC has achieved a high power conversion efficiency of 8.25%, which is 10 times larger than that (0.74%) of a DSSC with a counter electrode of the regular graphene synthesized via chemical exfoliation of graphite. The efficiency is even higher than that (7.73%) of a dye-sensitized solar cell with an expensive standard Pt counter electrode. This work provides a novel approach to use a greenhouse gas for DSSCs.

"Excellence" and Exclusion: The Individual Costs of Institutional Competitiveness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Watermeyer, Richard; Olssen, Mark

2016-01-01

A performance-based funding system like the United Kingdom's "Research Excellence Framework" (REF) symbolizes the re-rationalization of higher education according to neoliberal ideology and New Public Management technologies. The REF is also significant for disclosing the kinds of behaviour that characterize universities' response to…

Does Teacher Evaluation Improve School Performance? Experimental Evidence from Chicago's Excellence in Teaching Project

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Steinberg, Matthew P.; Sartain, Lauren

2015-01-01

Chicago Public Schools initiated the Excellence in Teaching Project, a teacher evaluation program designed to increase student learning by improving classroom instruction through structured principal-teacher dialogue. The pilot began in forty-four elementary schools in 2008-09 (cohort 1) and scaled up to include an additional forty-eight…

International benchmarking and best practice management: in search of health care and hospital excellence.

PubMed

von Eiff, Wilfried

2015-01-01

Hospitals worldwide are facing the same opportunities and threats: the demographics of an aging population; steady increases in chronic diseases and severe illnesses; and a steadily increasing demand for medical services with more intensive treatment for multi-morbid patients. Additionally, patients are becoming more demanding. They expect high quality medicine within a dignity-driven and painless healing environment. The severe financial pressures that these developments entail oblige care providers to more and more cost-containment and to apply process reengineering, as well as continuous performance improvement measures, so as to achieve future financial sustainability. At the same time, regulators are calling for improved patient outcomes. Benchmarking and best practice management are successfully proven performance improvement tools for enabling hospitals to achieve a higher level of clinical output quality, enhanced patient satisfaction, and care delivery capability, while simultaneously containing and reducing costs. This chapter aims to clarify what benchmarking is and what it is not. Furthermore, it is stated that benchmarking is a powerful managerial tool for improving decision-making processes that can contribute to the above-mentioned improvement measures in health care delivery. The benchmarking approach described in this chapter is oriented toward the philosophy of an input-output model and is explained based on practical international examples from different industries in various countries. Benchmarking is not a project with a defined start and end point, but a continuous initiative of comparing key performance indicators, process structures, and best practices from best-in-class companies inside and outside industry. Benchmarking is an ongoing process of measuring and searching for best-in-class performance: Measure yourself with yourself over time against key performance indicators. Measure yourself against others. Identify best practices. Equal or

Creating a climate for excellence.

PubMed

Lancaster, J

1985-01-01

Some people are motivated to achieve in a manner consistent with the goals of their organization while others pursue individual goals. The attitudes people hold determine their behavior. Therefore, the manager is charged with creating an environment that fosters employee commitment to organizational goals. To create a climate for achievement, managers must recognize that all employees want recognition. Employees perform more effectively when they understand the goals of the organization, know what is expected of them, and are part of a system that includes feedback and reinforcement. Generally, people perform more effectively in an environment with minimal threat and punishment; individual responsibility should be encouraged, rewards based on results, and a climate of trust and open communication should prevail.

CeO2 /Bi2 WO6 Heterostructured Microsphere with Excellent Visible-light-driven Photocatalytic Performance for Degradation of Tetracycline Hydrochloride.

PubMed

Zhang, Fengjun; Zou, Shuang; Wang, Tianye; Shi, Yuxi; Liu, Peng

2017-10-01

CeO 2 /Bi 2 WO 6 heterostructured microsphere with excellent and stable photocatalytic activity for degradation tetracyclines was successfully synthesized via a facile solvothermal route. The photocatalytic experiments indicated that CeO 2 /Bi 2 WO 6 heterostructured microspheres exhibited enhanced photocatalytic activity compared to pure Bi 2 WO 6 in both the degradation of tetracycline hydrochloride (TCH) and rhodamine B (RhB) under visible-light irradiation. The 1CeO 2 /2Bi 2 WO 6 exhibited the best photocatalytic activity for degradation of TCH, reaching 91% after 60 min reaction. The results suggested that the particular morphological conformation of the microspheres resulted in smaller size and more uniform morphology so as to increase the specific surface area. Meanwhile, the heterojunction was formed by coupling CeO 2 and Bi 2 WO 6 in the as-prepared microspheres, so that the separation efficiency of photogenerated electrons and holes was dramatically improved and the lifetimes of charge carriers were prolonged. Hence, introduction of CeO 2 could significantly enhance the photocatalytic activity of CeO 2 /Bi 2 WO 6 heterostructured microspheres and facilitate the degradation of TCH. This work provided not only a principle method to synthesize CeO 2 /Bi 2 WO 6 with the excellent photocatalytic performance for actual produce, but also a excellent property of the photocatalyst for potential application in photocatalytic treatment of tetracyclines wastewater from pharmaceutical factory. © 2017 The American Society of Photobiology.

Capturing 'R&D excellence': indicators, international statistics, and innovative universities.

PubMed

Tijssen, Robert J W; Winnink, Jos J

2018-01-01

Excellent research may contribute to successful science-based technological innovation. We define 'R&D excellence' in terms of scientific research that has contributed to the development of influential technologies, where 'excellence' refers to the top segment of a statistical distribution based on internationally comparative performance scores. Our measurements are derived from frequency counts of literature references ('citations') from patents to research publications during the last 15 years. The 'D' part in R&D is represented by the top 10% most highly cited 'excellent' patents worldwide. The 'R' part is captured by research articles in international scholarly journals that are cited by these patented technologies. After analyzing millions of citing patents and cited research publications, we find very large differences between countries worldwide in terms of the volume of domestic science contributing to those patented technologies. Where the USA produces the largest numbers of cited research publications (partly because of database biases), Switzerland and Israel outperform the US after correcting for the size of their national science systems. To tease out possible explanatory factors, which may significantly affect or determine these performance differentials, we first studied high-income nations and advanced economies. Here we find that the size of R&D expenditure correlates with the sheer size of cited publications, as does the degree of university research cooperation with domestic firms. When broadening our comparative framework to 70 countries (including many medium-income nations) while correcting for size of national science systems, the important explanatory factors become the availability of human resources and quality of science systems. Focusing on the latter factor, our in-depth analysis of 716 research-intensive universities worldwide reveals several universities with very high scores on our two R&D excellence indicators. Confirming the above

A Comparison of Organizational Climate and Nurses' Intention to Leave Among Excellence Awarded Hospitals and Other Hospitals in 2013.

PubMed

Mohamadzadeh Nojehdehi, Maryam; Ashgholi Farahani, Mansoureh; Rafii, Forough; Bahrani, Nasser

2015-05-01

Human resource is the most important factor of performance, success and better revelation of excellence goals of each organization. By performing excellence plan, healthcare organizations improve their organizational climate and play a valuable role in retaining nurses and improving the quality of their services to patients. The aim of this study was to compare hospital organizational climate and intention to leave among working nurses in hospitals performing the excellence plan and other hospitals of Tehran University of Medical Sciences. This was a cross-sectional descriptive comparison study. Its population included 248 nurses of the hospitals performing the excellence plan and other hospitals of Tehran University of Medical Sciences in Iran selected by random sampling. The used instrument had three parts: the first part was related to personal characteristics, the second part was the Munn's organizational climate questionnaire and the third part was Hinshaw's questionnaire of "anticipated turnover scale". Data was analyzed using SPSS software, version 17 and indices of descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The results of the mean and standard deviation for organizational climate and intention to leave in both performing and non-performing hospitals of the organizational excellence plan were respectively (65.28 ± 19.31 and 56.42 ± 21.36) and (33.64 ± 5.58 and 35.59 ± 4.94). Independent T test revealed a significant difference between the mean scores for organizational climate in both performing and non-performing hospitals, and also a significant difference between the mean scores for intention to leave in both performing and non-performing hospitals (P = 0.004). Moreover, Pearson Correlation test showed a reverse significant correlation between organizational climate and intention to leave in performing hospitals of the organizational excellence plan (r = -0.337) and non-performing hospitals (r = -0.282) (P = 0.001). Performing quality

A Comparison of Organizational Climate and Nurses’ Intention to Leave Among Excellence Awarded Hospitals and Other Hospitals in 2013

PubMed Central

Mohamadzadeh Nojehdehi, Maryam; Ashgholi Farahani, Mansoureh; Rafii, Forough; Bahrani, Nasser

2015-01-01

Background: Human resource is the most important factor of performance, success and better revelation of excellence goals of each organization. By performing excellence plan, healthcare organizations improve their organizational climate and play a valuable role in retaining nurses and improving the quality of their services to patients. Objectives: The aim of this study was to compare hospital organizational climate and intention to leave among working nurses in hospitals performing the excellence plan and other hospitals of Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Patients and Methods: This was a cross-sectional descriptive comparison study. Its population included 248 nurses of the hospitals performing the excellence plan and other hospitals of Tehran University of Medical Sciences in Iran selected by random sampling. The used instrument had three parts: the first part was related to personal characteristics, the second part was the Munn’s organizational climate questionnaire and the third part was Hinshaw’s questionnaire of “anticipated turnover scale”. Data was analyzed using SPSS software, version 17 and indices of descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Results: The results of the mean and standard deviation for organizational climate and intention to leave in both performing and non-performing hospitals of the organizational excellence plan were respectively (65.28 ± 19.31 and 56.42 ± 21.36) and (33.64 ± 5.58 and 35.59 ± 4.94). Independent T test revealed a significant difference between the mean scores for organizational climate in both performing and non-performing hospitals, and also a significant difference between the mean scores for intention to leave in both performing and non-performing hospitals (P = 0.004). Moreover, Pearson Correlation test showed a reverse significant correlation between organizational climate and intention to leave in performing hospitals of the organizational excellence plan (r = -0.337) and non-performing

Centers of Excellence: A Catalogue

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Phelps, Paul B. (Compiler)

1988-01-01

This report summarizes information on State-sponsored 'Centers of Excellence' gathered during a survey of State programs in the Fall of 1987. For the purposes of this catalog, 'Centers of Excellence' refers to organizations or activities with the following characteristics: institutionalized, focused, cooperative Research and Development (R&D) programs; supported in part by State governments, in addition to universities, industry and (in some cases) Federal agencies; performed by teams that may include both industry and university employees; and concentrated on relatively specific R&D agendas, usually with near term commercial or governmental applicability. Most of these activities involve state-of-the-art advancement of new technologies under conditions leading to early practical applications. Not included in this catalog are project-level matching grant programs. The principal purpose of this catalog is to help NASA program management, at all levels. to identify and where appropriate, to initiate relationships with other technology-developing organizations. These State-sponsored programs should be of particular interest, because: they present an opportunity to leverage NASA's R&D investments; they are concentrated at the frontier, yet have a concern for practical applications; and they involve industrial participation under conditions that increase the probability of prompt, widespread dissemination in the form of new or enhanced commercial products, processes, or services.

Design of a New Fused-Ring Electron Acceptor with Excellent Compatibility to Wide-Bandgap Polymer Donors for High-Performance Organic Photovoltaics.

PubMed

Liu, Wenrui; Zhang, Jianyun; Zhou, Zichun; Zhang, Dongyang; Zhang, Yuan; Xu, Shengjie; Zhu, Xiaozhang

2018-05-16

Fused-ring electron acceptors (FREAs) have recently received intensive attention. Besides the continuing development of new FREAs, the demand for FREAs featuring good compatibility to donor materials is becoming more and more urgent, which is highly desirable for screening donor materials and achieving new breakthroughs. In this work, a new FREA is developed, ZITI, featuring an octacyclic dithienocyclopentaindenoindene central core. The core is designed by linking 2,7-dithienyl substituents and indenoindene with small methylene groups, in which the indeno[1,2-b]thiophene-2-(3-oxo-2,3-dihydro-1H-inden-1-ylidene)malononitrile part provides a large and unoccupied π-surface. Most notably, ZITI possesses an excellent compatibility with commercially available polymer donors, delivering very high power conversion efficiencies of over 13%. © 2018 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Achieving Excellence: Bringing Effective Literacy Pedagogy to Scale in Ontario's Publicly-Funded Education System

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gallagher, Mary Jean; Malloy, John; Ryerson, Rachel

2016-01-01

This paper offers an insiders' perspective on the large-scale, system-wide educational change undertaken in Ontario, Canada from 2003 to the present. The authors, Ministry and school system leaders intimately involved in this change process, explore how Ontario has come to be internationally recognized as an equitable, high-achieving, and…

EXCELS!--Evaluating Integrated Language Arts and Social Studies. The Jamestown Integrated Performance Assessment Unit.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fenton, Ray; Straugh, Tom; Stofflet, Fred; Shaffer, Frank

The EXCELS! Project of the Anchorage School District (Alaska) was initiated in 1994 through a grant from the U.S. Department of Education to demonstrate the development of a kindergarten through sixth grade instructional program reflecting state and national standards in History, Civics, Geography, and English. More than 1,200 Anchorage teachers…

To master or perform? Exploring relations between achievement goals and conceptual change learning.

PubMed

Ranellucci, John; Muis, Krista R; Duffy, Melissa; Wang, Xihui; Sampasivam, Lavanya; Franco, Gina M

2013-09-01

Research is needed to explore conceptual change in relation to achievement goal orientations and depth of processing. To address this need, we examined relations between achievement goals, use of deep versus shallow processing strategies, and conceptual change learning using a think-aloud protocol. Seventy-three undergraduate students were assessed on their prior knowledge and misconceptions about Newtonian mechanics, and then reported their achievement goals and participated in think-aloud protocols while reading Newtonian physics texts. A mastery-approach goal orientation positively predicted deep processing strategies, shallow processing strategies, and conceptual change. In contrast, a performance-approach goal orientation did not predict either of the processing strategies, but negatively predicted conceptual change. A performance-avoidance goal orientation negatively predicted deep processing strategies and conceptual change. Moreover, deep and shallow processing strategies positively predicted conceptual change as well as recall. Finally, both deep and shallow processing strategies mediated relations between mastery-approach goals and conceptual change. Results provide some support for Dole and Sinatra's (1998) Cognitive Reconstruction of Knowledge Model of conceptual change but also challenge specific facets with regard to the role of depth of processing in conceptual change. © 2012 The British Psychological Society.

Understanding Solubility through Excel Spreadsheets

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Brown, Pamela

2001-02-01

This article describes assignments related to the solubility of inorganic salts that can be given in an introductory general chemistry course. Le Châtelier's principle, solubility, unit conversion, and thermodynamics are tied together to calculate heats of solution by two methods: heats of formation and an application of the van't Hoff equation. These assignments address the need for math, graphing, and computer skills in the chemical technology program by developing skill in the use of Microsoft Excel to prepare spreadsheets and graphs and to perform linear and nonlinear curve-fitting. Background information on the value of understanding and predicting solubility is provided.

The fabrication of graphene/polydopamine/nickel foam composite material with excellent electrochemical performance as supercapacitor electrode

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zheng, Yu; Lu, Shixiang; Xu, Wenguo; He, Ge; Cheng, Yuanyuan; Yu, Tianlong; Zhang, Yan

2018-02-01

A three dimensional composite electrode consisted of reduced graphene oxide (rGO), polydopamine (PDA) and nickel foam (NF) (rGO/PDA/NF) was fabricated by immersing NF into PDA aqueous solution and then graphene oxide (GO) suspension solution respectively, and followed by annealing treatment. During the procedure, GO was coated on NF with assistance of cohesive effect of the PDA middle film, and the reduction of GO and nitrogen doping occurred simultaneously while annealing. Through XRD analyzing, the composites GO/PDA and rGO/PDA treated in experiment are amorphous. The resulted rGO/PDA/NF composite electrode was directly applied as a supercapacitor electrode and showed excellent electrochemical performance, with a high specific capacitance of 566.9 F g-1 at 1 A g-1, the maximum energy density of 172.7 W h kg-1 and a power density of 27.2 kW kg-1 in 1 mol L-1 Na2SO4 electrolyte.

Achieving Excellence at Scale: State Support for High-Performing Charter School Expansion. Issue Brief

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bloomberg, Laura; Nathan, Joe; Berman, Ilene

2009-01-01

In communities nationwide, public charter schools are meeting the growing demand for high-quality education opportunities. This is especially true in communities with underperforming public district schools that are not meeting the academic needs of students, including poor and minority students. Forty states and the District of Columbia have laws…

Evaluating faculty clinical excellence in the academic health sciences center.

PubMed

Carey, R M; Wheby, M S; Reynolds, R E

1993-11-01

Although excellence in the clinical care of patients is the cornerstone of medicine, academic health sciences centers have increasingly given more weight to research and correspondingly less emphasis to patient care. To better recognize and reward clinical excellence, it is first necessary to effectively evaluate physicians' performances in patient care. In addition to addressing the value of faculty clinical excellence in the academic setting, the authors discuss different approaches to clinical assessment, theoretical and practical problems in assessing the performances of clinical faculty, and a system of evaluation being initiated at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. This system of evaluation combines--in annual individual reviews--a limited amount of objective assessment data with subjective evaluations from several sources. The objective data include board certification and recertification, analysis of outcomes data, and documentation of scholarly activity. The subjective evaluations include letters of recognition and appreciation from faculty colleagues and written observations from department chairs, housestaff, students, and nurses. The system has been accepted by department chairs, members of the Promotion and Tenure Committee, and the general faculty. In implementing this new system, periodic review of the pace and direction of change will be crucial to track progress and provide feedback for further modification.

Stateline: Virginia's Excellent Adventure

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Christie, Kathy

2004-01-01

The Virginia General Assembly is concerned that "there remains a significant gap between the best- and poorest-performing schools." Even as it acknowledged that most elementary and secondary schools are meeting academic achievement goals, the Assembly proceeded to request that information be collected on best practices used in…

Potassium-chemical synthesis of 3D graphene from CO 2 and its excellent performance in HTM-free perovskite solar cells

DOE PAGES

Wei, Wei; Hu, Baoyun; Jin, Fangming; ...

2017-03-29

The conversion of greenhouse gas CO 2 into novel materials is the most promising approach to solve greenhouse gas issues. In this paper, we report for the first time the reaction of potassium with CO 2 to synthesize three-dimensional honeycomb-like structured graphene (3DHG). Furthermore, 3DHG exhibited excellent performance as a counter electrode for hole transport material (HTM)-free perovskite solar cells, leading to a power conversion efficiency of 10.06%. Finally, this work constitutes a new aspect of potassium chemistry for material synthesis from a greenhouse gas and the generation of electrical energy from sunlight.

Does neuropsychological performance impact on real-life functional achievements in obsessive-compulsive disorder? A preliminary study.

PubMed

Perna, Giampaolo; Cavedini, Paolo; Harvey, Philip D; Di Chiaro, Nunzia Valentina; Daccò, Silvia; Caldirola, Daniela

2016-11-01

We investigated the association between neuropsychological performance and real-life functioning in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). As a secondary aim, we investigated the association between neuropsychological performance and self-reported quality of life (QoL). We retrospectively selected 68 of 240 inpatients with OCD, who had been hospitalised for a 4-week psychiatric rehabilitation programme. We used clinical information recorded in the patients' electronic medical records. We considered the following variables: neuropsychological performance (verbal/visual memory, sustained attention, visual-constructive ability, and language fluency; in a sub-sample of 37 subjects, divided attention, working memory, and attentional shifting were also available); real-life functional achievements (social/vocational outcomes and independent living); subjectively reported QoL (WHOQOL-BREF); obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms severity (DY-BOCS). We found significant associations between poorer neuropsychological performance and poorer achievements in independent living and vocational outcomes. Among the different neuropsychological tests, we found significant associations between language fluency/executive processing and independent living, and between divided attention, attentional shifting, working memory and vocational outcome. We found no significant associations between neuropsychological performance and subjectively reported QoL. OC symptoms severity was not associated with real-life functional achievements. Our preliminary results suggest that poorer neuropsychological performance may be associated with impaired real-life functioning in subjects with OCD.

Centers of excellence in healthcare institutions: what they are and how to assemble them.

PubMed

Elrod, James K; Fortenberry, John L

2017-07-11

Centers of excellence-specialized programs within healthcare institutions which supply exceptionally high concentrations of expertise and related resources centered on particular medical areas and delivered in a comprehensive, interdisciplinary fashion-afford many advantages for healthcare providers and the populations they serve. To achieve full value from centers of excellence, proper assembly is an absolute necessity, but guidance is somewhat limited. This effectively forces healthcare providers to pursue establishment largely via trial-and-error, diminishing opportunities for success. Successful development of a center of excellence first requires the acquisition of a detailed understanding of the delivery model and its benefits. Then, concerted actions must be taken on a particular series of administrative and clinical fronts, treating them in prescribed manners to afford synergies which yield an exceptionally high level of care. To reduce hardships associated with acquiring this rather elusive knowledge, remedy shortcomings in the literature, and potentially bolster community health broadly, this article presents information and insights gleaned from Willis-Knighton Health System's extensive experience assembling and operating centers of excellence. This work is intended to educate and enlighten, but most importantly, supply guidance which will permit healthcare establishments to replicate noted processes to realize their own centers of excellence. Centers of excellence have the ability to dramatically enhance the depth and breadth of healthcare services available in communities. Given the numerous mutual benefits afforded by this delivery model, it is hoped that the light shed by this article will help healthcare providers better understand centers of excellence and be more capable and confident in associated development initiatives, affording greater opportunities for themselves and their patient populations.

Awarding and promoting excellence in hearing loss prevention

PubMed Central

Meinke, Deanna K.; Morata, Thais C.

2015-01-01

Objective To describe the rationale and creation of a national award to recognize and promote hearing loss prevention. Design In 2007, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health partnered with the National Hearing Conservation Association to create the Safe-in-Sound Excellence in Hearing Loss Prevention Award™ (www.safeinsound.us). The objectives of this initiative were to recognize organizations that document measurable achievements and to share leading edge information to a broader community. Results An expert committee developed specific and explicit award evaluation criteria of excellence in hearing loss prevention for organizations in different industrial sectors. The general approach toward award criteria was to incorporate current ‘best practices’ and familiar benchmarks of hearing loss prevention programs. This approach was reviewed publicly. In addition, mechanisms were identified to measure the impact of the award itself. Interest in the award was recorded through the monitoring of the visitor traffic registered by the award web site and is increasing yearly. Specific values and strategies common across award winners are presented. Conclusion The Safe-in-Sound Award™ has obtained high quality field data; identified practical solutions, disseminated successful strategies to minimize the risk of hearing loss, generated new partnerships, and shared practical solutions with others in the field. PMID:22264064

Student Performance Standards of Excellence for Florida Schools in Mathematics, Science, Social Studies and Writing. Grades Three, Five, Eight, and Twelve. 1984-85 through 1988-89.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Florida State Dept. of Education, Tallahassee.

The student performance standards of excellence in mathematics, science, social studies, and writing for Florida schools were developed cooperatively by the Florida Department of Education, local school district personnel and representatives of institutions of higher education. These standards and skills were reviewed by teachers and supervisors…

Leading Others Toward Excellence.

PubMed

Hupp, James R

2015-12-01

This essay puts forth the proposition that academic program excellence does not arise by accident. Effective leadership is required. To support this proposition, the essay discusses the characteristics common to effective leaders. It then proceeds to use the example of a successful academic oral-maxillofacial surgery department and characteristics of its leader to provide evidence that excellence derives from effective leadership. Copyright © 2015 American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Green synthesis of layered 1T-MoS2/reduced graphene oxide nanocomposite with excellent catalytic performances for 4-nitrophenol reduction

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Meng, Nannan; Cheng, Jian; Zhou, Yifeng; Nie, Wangyan; Chen, Pengpeng

2017-02-01

A green and facile process was developed to prepare layered octahedral phase MoS2/reduced graphene oxide (1T-MoS2/RGO) nanocomposite by a Vitamin C-assisted self-assemble method, in which graphene oxide (GO) and LiMoS2 were used as starting materials. Catalytic performances of 1T-MoS2/RGO were evaluated by hydrogenation of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP). It was demonstrated that the prepared 1T-MoS2/RGO nanocomposite presented excellent catalytic performance and cycling stability for 4-NP reduction, which made it a promising noble-metal-free catalyst. Additionally, broadening work suggested some other RGO-based metal nanocomposite with well-defined porous structure could be also generated via this facile self-assembly method.

A methodology to assess performance of human-robotic systems in achievement of collective tasks

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Howard, Ayanna M.

2005-01-01

In this paper, we present a methodology to assess system performance of human-robotic systems in achievement of collective tasks such as habitat construction, geological sampling, and space exploration.

Data acquisition and real-time control using spreadsheets: interfacing Excel with external hardware.

PubMed

Aliane, Nourdine

2010-07-01

Spreadsheets have become a popular computational tool and a powerful platform for performing engineering calculations. Moreover, spreadsheets include a macro language, which permits the inclusion of standard computer code in worksheets, and thereby enable developers to greatly extend spreadsheets' capabilities by designing specific add-ins. This paper describes how to use Excel spreadsheets in conjunction to Visual Basic for Application programming language to perform data acquisition and real-time control. Afterwards, the paper presents two Excel applications with interactive user interfaces developed for laboratory demonstrations and experiments in an introductory course in control. 2010 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Identifying achievement goals and their relationship to academic achievement in undergraduate pharmacy students.

PubMed

Alrakaf, Saleh; Sainsbury, Erica; Rose, Grenville; Smith, Lorraine

2014-09-15

To compare the achievement goal orientations of first-year with those of third-year undergraduate Australian pharmacy students and to examine the relationship of goal orientations to academic achievement. The Achievement Goal Questionnaire was administered to first-year and third-year students during class time. Students' grades were obtained from course coordinators. More first-year students adopted performance-approach and mastery-approach goals than did third-year students. Performance-approach goals were positively correlated with academic achievement in the first year. Chinese Australian students scored the highest in adopting performance-approach goals. Vietnamese Australian students adopted mastery-avoidance goals more than other ethnicities. First-year students were more strongly performance approach goal-oriented than third-year students. Adopting performance-approach goals was positively correlated with academic achievement, while adopting avoidance goals was not. Ethnicity has an effect on the adoption of achievement goals and academic achievement.

Achieving Educational Excellence for Children at Risk. Selected Papers from the NASW National School Social Work Conference, "Educational Excellence in Transitional Times" (3rd, New Orleans, Louisiana, January 31-February 3, 1985).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hawkins, Mable T., Ed.

This book consists of selected conference papers that highlight the barriers faced by children at risk in the quest for educational excellence. After an introduction by Mable T. Hawkins, the following articles appear: (1) "Group Work with Gifted Children: A School Resource," by Jackolyn W. Durrett and others; (2) "Children with…

Three-dimensional ordered macroporous bismuth vanadates: PMMA-templating fabrication and excellent visible light-driven photocatalytic performance for phenol degradation.

PubMed

Liu, Yuxi; Dai, Hongxing; Deng, Jiguang; Zhang, Lei; Au, Chak Tong

2012-04-07

Three-dimension ordered macroporous (3D-OM) bismuth vanadates with a monoclinic crystal structure and high surface area (18-24 m(2) g(-1)) have been prepared using ascorbic acid (AA)- or citric acid (CA)-assisted poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)-templating strategy with bismuth nitrate and ammonium metavanadate as the metal sources, HNO(3) as the pH adjuster and ethylene glycol and methanol as the solvent. The materials were characterized by a number of analytical techniques. The photocatalytic performance of the porous BiVO(4) samples was evaluated for the degradation of phenol in the presence of a small amount of H(2)O(2) under visible light illumination. The effects of the initial phenol concentration and the H(2)O(2) amount on the photocatalytic activity of the photocatalyst were examined. It is shown that the chelating agent, AA or CA, and the amount in which it is added had a significant impact on the quality of the 3D-OM structure, with a "(Bi + V):chelating agent" molar ratio of 2:1 being the most appropriate. Among the as-prepared BiVO(4) samples, the one with a surface area of ca. 24 m(2) g(-1) showed the best visible light-driven photocatalytic performance for phenol degradation (phenol conversion = ca. 94% at phenol concentration = 0.1 mmol L(-1) and in the presence of 0.6 mL H(2)O(2)). A higher phenol conversion could be achieved within the same reaction time if the phenol concentration in the aqueous solution was lowered, but an excess amount of H(2)O(2) was not a favorable factor for the enhancement of the catalytic activity. It is concluded that the excellent photocatalytic activity of 3D-OM BiVO(4) is due to the high quality 3D-OM structured BiVO(4) that has a high surface area and surface oxygen vacancy density. We are sure that the 3D-OM material is a promising photocatalyst for the removal of organics from wastewater under visible light illumination. This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2012

Excellence Revisited.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Silverman, Linda Kreger, Ed.

1993-01-01

Excellence in education of gifted children is the focus of this journal theme issue. Two articles are featured: (1) "Making Connections for the At-Risk Gifted Child" by Mary Kay Finholt and Kathy Peckron, describing an exemplary support system developed for at-risk gifted students in the Rockwood School District in Missouri, which…

Carrying the Beacon of Excellence: Social Class Differentiation and Anxiety at a Time of Transition.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lucey, Helen; Reay, Diane

2002-01-01

Examines ways in which current United Kingdom school-choice policies interact with parental pressures on their children to achieve excellence and how these pressures affect the emotional health of their middle- and working-class children as they make the transition from primary to secondary school. Finds serious emotional consequences (exam…

Scientific Research in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: Potential for Excellence and Indicators of Underdevelopment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alshayea, Ali

2013-01-01

This study analyzes the status of scientific research and development efforts in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and then sheds lights on the potential for excellence in this area in terms of organization and structure, financing and partnership, and human resources. Accordingly, the study reviews both achievements and indicators of underdevelopment…

Tensions and Trade-Offs in Voluntary Involvement: Evaluating the Collaboratives for Excellence in Teacher Preparation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Greenseid, Lija O.; Lawrenz, Frances

2011-01-01

A team at the University of Minnesota conducted the Collaboratives for Excellence in Teacher Preparation (CETP) core evaluation between 1999 and 2004. The purpose of the CETP core evaluation was to achieve consensus among CETP project leaders and project evaluators on evaluation questions; to develop, pilot, and field test evaluation instruments…

Achieving Excellence: Investing in People, Knowledge and Opportunity. Canada's Innovation Strategy.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

2002

To become one of the world's most innovative countries, Canada requires a national innovation strategy for the 21st century. It is progressing toward a more innovative economy, but lags behind many developed countries in terms of overall innovation performance. A national innovation strategy to meet Canada's innovation challenge proposes goals,…

George M. Low Trophy: NASA's quality and excellence award

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1991-01-01

NASA's major goal is the preservation of America's position as a leader in the aerospace industry. To maintain that status, it is crucial that the products and services we depend upon from NASA contractors, subcontractors, and suppliers meet the highest quality standards to ensure the space program's success. The George M. Low Trophy: NASA's Quality and Excellence Award is the result of NASA's desire to encourage continuous improvement and Total Quality Management (TQM) in the aerospace industry and is awarded to members of NASA's contractor community that have demonstrated sustained excellence, customer orientation, and outstanding achievements in a Total Quality Management (TQM) environment. The purpose in presenting this award is to increase public awareness of the importance of quality and productivity to the nation's aerospace industry and the nation's leadership position overall; encourage domestic business to continuously pursue efforts that enhance quality and increase productivity which will strengthen the nation's competitiveness in the international arena; and provide a forum for sharing the successful techniques and strategies used by applicants with other American organizations. Awards to Rockwell International and Marotta Scientific Controls, Inc. are announced and discussed.

Novel lithium titanate-graphene hybrid containing two graphene conductive frameworks for lithium-ion battery with excellent electrochemical performance

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Ruiyi, Li; Tengyuan, Chen; Beibei, Sun

Graphical abstract: We developed a new Novel lithium titanate-graphene nanohybrid containing two graphene conductive frameworks. The unique architecture creates fast electron transfer and rapid mass transport of electrolyte. The hybrid electrode provides excellent electrochemical performances for lithium-ion batteries, including high specific capacity, outstanding rate capability and intriguing cycling stability. - Highlights: • We reported a new LTO-graphene nanohybrid containing two graphene conductive frameworks. • One graphene framework greatly improves the electrical conductivity of LTO crystal. • Another graphene framework enhances electrical conductivity of between LTO crystals and electrolyte transport. • The unique architecture creates big tap density, ultrafast electron transfermore » and rapid mass transport. • The hybrid electrode provides excellent electrochemical performance for lithium-ion batteries. - ABSTRACT: The paper reported the synthesis of lithium titanate(LTO)-graphene hybrid containing two graphene conductive frameworks (G@LTO@G). Tetrabutyl titanate and graphene were dispersed in tertbutanol and heated to reflux state by microwave irradiation. Followed by adding lithium acetate to produce LTO precursor/graphene (p-LTO/G). The resulting p-LTO/G offers homogeneous morphology and ultra small size. All graphene sheets were buried in the spherical agglomerates composed of primitive particles through the second agglomeration. The p-LTO/G was calcined to LTO@graphene (LTO@G). To obtain G@LTO@G, the LTO@G was further hybridized with graphene. The as-prepared G@LTO@G shows well-defined three-dimensional structure and hierarchical porous distribution. Its unique architecture creates big tap density, fast electron transfer and rapid electrolyte transport. As a result, the G@LTO@G provides high specific capacity (175.2 mA h g{sup −1} and 293.5 mA cm{sup −3}), outstanding rate capability (155.7 mAh g{sup −1} at 10C) and intriguing

WWC Quick Review of the Report "The Effect of Performance-Pay in Little Rock, Arkansas on Student Achievement"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

What Works Clearinghouse, 2008

2008-01-01

This review examined a study designed to evaluate whether the Achievement Challenge Pilot Project, a performance-pay program for teachers, improved the academic achievement of elementary school students. Study authors reported higher student test score gains for students in schools that implemented the performance- pay program than for students in…

Why Excel?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barreto, Humberto

2015-01-01

This article is not the usual Excel pedagogy fare in that it does not provide an application or example taught via a spreadsheet. Instead, it briefly reviews the history of spreadsheets in the economics classroom and explores the current environment, with an emphasis on modern learning theory. The conclusion is not surprising: spreadsheets improve…

Three-dimensional skeleton networks of graphene wrapped polyaniline nanofibers: an excellent structure for high-performance flexible solid-state supercapacitors

PubMed Central

Hu, Nantao; Zhang, Liling; Yang, Chao; Zhao, Jian; Yang, Zhi; Wei, Hao; Liao, Hanbin; Feng, Zhenxing; Fisher, Adrian; Zhang, Yafei; Xu, Zhichuan J.

2016-01-01

Thin, robust, lightweight, and flexible supercapacitors (SCs) have aroused growing attentions nowadays due to the rapid development of flexible electronics. Graphene-polyaniline (PANI) hybrids are attractive candidates for high performance SCs. In order to utilize them in real devices, it is necessary to improve the capacitance and the structure stability of PANI. Here we report a hierarchical three-dimensional structure, in which all of PANI nanofibers (NFs) are tightly wrapped inside reduced graphene oxide (rGO) nanosheet skeletons, for high-performance flexible SCs. The as-fabricated film electrodes with this unique structure showed a highest gravimetric specific capacitance of 921 F/g and volumetric capacitance of 391 F/cm3. The assembled solid-state SCs gave a high specific capacitance of 211 F/g (1 A/g), a high area capacitance of 0.9 F/cm2, and a competitive volumetric capacitance of 25.6 F/cm3. The SCs also exhibited outstanding rate capability (~75% retention at 20 A/g) as well as excellent cycling stability (100% retention at 10 A/g for 2000 cycles). Additionally, no structural failure and loss of performance were observed under the bending state. This structure design paves a new avenue for engineering rGO/PANI or other similar hybrids for high performance flexible energy storage devices. PMID:26795067

Can achievement emotions be used to better understand motivation, learning, and performance in medical education?

PubMed

Artino, Anthony R; Holmboe, Eric S; Durning, Steven J

2012-01-01

In this article, we consider an emergent theory of human emotion. The overarching purpose of the article is to introduce medical education researchers to the notion of achievement emotions and provide a brief overview of how this work can inform the theory, research, and practice of medical education. First, we define achievement emotions and describe one of the leading contemporary theories of achievement emotions, control-value theory (Pekrun R. 2006. The control-value theory of achievement emotions: Assumptions, corollaries, and implications for educational research and practice. Educ Psychol Rev 18:315-341.). Next, we distinguish between different types of achievement emotions, their proximal causes, and their consequences for motivation, learning, and performance, and we discuss several implications for educational practice. Finally, we end with a call for more research on achievement emotions in medical education to facilitate our understanding of emotions and their impact on important educational outcomes.

Excellence in Doctoral Supervision: An Examination of Authoritative Sources across Four Countries in Search of Performance Higher than Competence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McCulloch, Alistair; Kumar, Vijay; van Schalkwyk, Susan; Wisker, Gina

2016-01-01

Supervision is generally recognised as playing a crucial role in the quality of a research student's doctoral experience and their academic outcomes and, in common with most areas of higher education, there is an oft-stated desire to pursue excellence in this important area. Excellence in research degree supervision is, however, an elusive concept…

An Excel macro for generating trilinear plots.

PubMed

Shikaze, Steven G; Crowe, Allan S

2007-01-01

This computer note describes a method for creating trilinear plots in Microsoft Excel. Macros have been created in MS Excel's internal language: Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). A simple form has been set up to allow the user to input data from an Excel worksheet. The VBA macro is used to convert the triangular data (which consist of three columns of percentage data) into X-Y data. The macro then generates the axes, labels, and grid for the trilinear plot. The X-Y data are plotted as scatter data in Excel. By providing this macro in Excel, users can create trilinear plots in a quick, inexpensive manner.

Higher Education Counts: Achieving Results. 2007 Executive Summary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Connecticut Department of Higher Education (NJ1), 2007

2007-01-01

"Higher Education Counts" is the annual accountability report on Connecticut's system of higher education. Since 2000, the report has been the primary vehicle for reporting higher education's progress toward achieving six, statutorily-defined state goals: (1) To enhance student learning and promote academic excellence; (2) To join with…

Higher Education Counts: Achieving Results, 2008. Executive Summary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Connecticut Department of Higher Education (NJ1), 2008

2008-01-01

"Higher Education Counts" is the annual accountability report on Connecticut's system of higher education. Since 2000, the report has been the primary vehicle for reporting higher education's progress toward achieving six, statutorily-defined state goals: (1) To enhance student learning and promote academic excellence; (2) To join with…

Higher Education Counts: Achieving Results. 2009 Executive Summary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Connecticut Department of Higher Education (NJ1), 2009

2009-01-01

"Higher Education Counts" is the annual accountability report on Connecticut's system of higher education. Since 2000, the report has been the primary vehicle for reporting higher education's progress toward achieving six, statutorily-defined state goals: (1) To enhance student learning and promote academic excellence; (2) To join with…

The relationship between vertical teaming in science and student achievement as reported in the Academic Excellence Indicator System (AEIS) at selected public schools in Bexar County, Texas

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Arteaga, Veronica Hernandez

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between vertical teaming in science and student achievement. This study compared student achievement of campuses implementing vertical teaming with schools that do not practice vertical teaming. In addition, this study explored the relationship between selected demographic variables and vertical teaming using Grade 5 Science TAKS results in the Academic Excellence Indicator System (AEIS). Campus demographic variables such as economically disadvantaged, minority students, English language learners, student mobility, and experienced teachers were researched. A call-out yielded 168 responses. With the exclusion of the 12 campuses, a total of 156 participating campuses from 18 traditional school districts remained. Campuses employing vertical teaming were self-identified on the basis of having implemented the process for two or more years. The gain in percent mastered for Science TAKS scores from 2004 to 2007 was used as the Science TAKS score variable. Results indicated that there was no significant difference in student achievement in science for campuses practicing vertical teaming and campuses that did not. The two-way ANOVA was used to measure the relationship between the independent variables (vertical teaming and campus demographic variables) on the dependent variable (student achievement on Science TAKS). The results suggested that campuses having low percentages of economically disadvantaged students statistically gained more on the Science TAKS than campuses that have high percentages of economically disadvantaged students irrespective of vertical teaming practices. In addition, campuses that have low percentages of minority students statistically gained more on the Science TAKS than campuses that have high percentages of minority students despite vertical teaming participation. Recommendations include districts, state, and federal agencies providing campuses with a high percent of economically

Educational Policy Issues for the 1990s: Balancing Equity and Excellence in Implementing the Reform Agenda.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Marcoulides, George A.; Heck, Ronald H.

1990-01-01

Discusses problems with reform issues that focus specifically on changing the system of educational policymaking to achieve excellence but lack safeguards against compromising equality of educational opportunity in the public school system. Explores the conflicting political views of reform policy, which include economic issues and democratic…

A Model of Success: The Model Institutions for Excellence Program's Decade of Leadership in STEM Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Merisotis, Jamie P.; Kee, Arnold M.

2006-01-01

The Model Institutions for Excellence (MIE) Grant, funded by the National Science Foundation and National Aeronautics and Space Administration, enhanced student pathways into science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). It achieved these results through 10 years of sustained investment and collaborative leadership. Components of the MIE…

Excel2Genie: A Microsoft Excel application to improve the flexibility of the Genie-2000 Spectroscopic software.

PubMed

Forgács, Attila; Balkay, László; Trón, Lajos; Raics, Péter

2014-12-01

Excel2Genie, a simple and user-friendly Microsoft Excel interface, has been developed to the Genie-2000 Spectroscopic Software of Canberra Industries. This Excel application can directly control Canberra Multichannel Analyzer (MCA), process the acquired data and visualize them. Combination of Genie-2000 with Excel2Genie results in remarkably increased flexibility and a possibility to carry out repetitive data acquisitions even with changing parameters and more sophisticated analysis. The developed software package comprises three worksheets: display parameters and results of data acquisition, data analysis and mathematical operations carried out on the measured gamma spectra. At the same time it also allows control of these processes. Excel2Genie is freely available to assist gamma spectrum measurements and data evaluation by the interested Canberra users. With access to the Visual Basic Application (VBA) source code of this application users are enabled to modify the developed interface according to their intentions. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Actualizing culture change: The Promoting Excellent Alternatives in Kansas Nursing Homes (PEAK 2.0) program.

PubMed

Doll, Gayle A; Cornelison, Laci J; Rath, Heath; Syme, Maggie L

2017-08-01

Nursing homes have been challenged in their attempts to achieve deep, organizational change (i.e., culture change) aimed at providing quality of care and quality of life for nursing home residents through person-centered care. To attain deep change, 2 well-defined components must be in place: a shared understanding of (a) the what, or content goals, and (b) the how, or process of change. However, there are few examples of this at a macro or micro level in long-term care. In an effort to enact true culture change in nursing homes statewide, the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services implemented the Promoting Excellent Alternatives in Kansas Nursing Homes program. This program is a Medicaid, pay-for-performance program that formalizes the content and process of achieving culture change through person-centered care principles. This article aims to detail the content (what) and process (how) of a model macro-level program of culture change throughout the State of Kansas. Applications to the micro level (individual homes) are presented, and implications for psychologists' roles in facilitating culture change are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Mars Science Laboratory Interplanetary Navigation Performance

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Martin-Mur, Tomas J.; Kruizinga, Gerhard; Wong, Mau

2013-01-01

The Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft, carrying the Curiosity rover to Mars, hit the top of the Martian atmosphere just 200 meters from where it had been predicted more than six days earlier, and 2.6 million kilometers away. This un-expected level of accuracy was achieved by a combination of factors including: spacecraft performance, tracking data processing, dynamical modeling choices, and navigation filter setup. This paper will describe our best understanding of what were the factors that contributed to this excellent interplanetary trajectory prediction performance. The accurate interplanetary navigation contributed to the very precise landing performance, and to the overall success of the mission.

Making Employee Recognition a Tool for Achieving Improved Performance: Implication for Ghanaian Universities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Amoatemaa, Abena Serwaa; Kyeremeh, Dorcas Darkoah

2016-01-01

Many organisations are increasingly making use of employee recognition to motivate employees to achieve high performance and productivity. Research has shown that effective recognition occurs in organisations that have strong supportive culture, understand the psychology of praising employees for their good work, and apply the principles of…

75 FR 48661 - Equity and Excellence Commission

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-08-11

... DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Equity and Excellence Commission AGENCY: U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. ACTION: Notice of Establishment of the Equity and Excellence Commission. SUMMARY: The U.S. Secretary of Education (Secretary) announces the establishment of the Equity and Excellence...

Curriculum Reform and School Performance: An Evaluation of the "New Basics."

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alexander, Karl L.; Pallas, Aaron M.

This report examines whether a high school curriculum organized around the five "new basics" suggested by the National Commission on Excellence in Education is likely to enhance student achievement. Data from the ETS Growth Study reveals that completion of the core curriculum has sizable effects on senior-year test performance, even when…

Education Finance Reform, Education Spending, and Student Performance: Evidence from Maryland's Bridge to Excellence in Public Schools Act

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chung, Il Hwan

2015-01-01

The disparities in achievement among income and racial-ethnic groups of students have long been a major concern of educational policies. Among several identified factors that help explain the student performance gap, this paper focuses on inequity in funding for education among school districts, which resulted from heavy reliance of school…

Wind/tornado design criteria, development to achieve required probabilistic performance goals

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Ng, D.S.

1991-06-01

This paper describes the strategy for developing new design criteria for a critical facility to withstand loading induced by the wind/tornado hazard. The proposed design requirements for resisting wind/tornado loads are based on probabilistic performance goals. The proposed design criteria were prepared by a Working Group consisting of six experts in wind/tornado engineering and meteorology. Utilizing their best technical knowledge and judgment in the wind/tornado field, they met and discussed the methodologies and reviewed available data. A review of the available wind/tornado hazard model for the site, structural response evaluation methods, and conservative acceptance criteria lead to proposed design criteriamore » that has a high probability of achieving the required performance goals.« less

Wind/tornado design criteria, development to achieve required probabilistic performance goals

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Ng, D.S.

This paper describes the strategy for developing new design criteria for a critical facility to withstand loading induced by the wind/tornado hazard. The proposed design requirements for resisting wind/tornado loads are based on probabilistic performance goals. The proposed design criteria were prepared by a Working Group consisting of six experts in wind/tornado engineering and meteorology. Utilizing their best technical knowledge and judgment in the wind/tornado field, they met and discussed the methodologies and reviewed available data. A review of the available wind/tornado hazard model for the site, structural response evaluation methods, and conservative acceptance criteria lead to proposed design criteriamore » that has a high probability of achieving the required performance goals.« less

Excellent response to chemotherapy post immunotherapy

PubMed Central

Dwary, Ashish D.; Master, Samip; Patel, Abhishek; Cole, Constance; Mansour, Richard; Mills, Glenn; Koshy, Nebu; Peddi, Prakash; Burton, Gary; Hammoud, Dalia; Beedupalli, Kavitha

2017-01-01

Introduction Immunotherapy in the form of immune checkpoint inhibitors has changed the landscape of cancer treatment. Newer monoclonal antibodies are coming up and are being tested in various cancers during different stages of treatment. With the increasing use of immune checkpoint inhibitors in the management of various types of cancers, the question is raised as to what next can be offered to a patient who has progressed on this newer treatment. Does Sequence matter? There have been reports of improved responses to chemotherapy after immunotherapy in the form of vaccines. Here we present a case series of 6 patients who progressed on immunotherapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors after initial modality of treatment (chemotherapy/radiation), subsequently received chemotherapy with excellent response. Methods We have a cohort of six patients who had disease progression on second line Immunotherapy for solid or hematological malignancies and had ECOG < 2. All these patients received third line salvage chemotherapy. Three patients had metastatic head and neck cancer, 2 had non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), and one had T -cell rich B- cell lymphoma. Prior review and approval were obtained from our institutional review board. Results All patients had an excellent response to chemotherapy in third line setting, after immune checkpoint inhibitors and most of them achieved a complete response. Conclusion Targeting cancer with chemotherapy after failure of immunotherapy is a valid option and can lead to better response rates and PFS which may lead to OS. This effect may be secondary to immunotherapy removing the inhibition exerted by tumor cells or other immune cells initially followed by cytotoxic chemotherapy mediated killing of tumor cells. PMID:29207685

Establishing a malaria diagnostics centre of excellence in Kisumu, Kenya

PubMed Central

Ohrt, Colin; Obare, Peter; Nanakorn, Ampon; Adhiambo, Christine; Awuondo, Ken; O'Meara, Wendy Prudhomme; Remich, Shon; Martin, Kurt; Cook, Earnest; Chretien, Jean-Paul; Lucas, Carmen; Osoga, Joseph; McEvoy, Peter; Owaga, Martin Lucas; Odera, James Sande; Ogutu, Bernhards

2007-01-01

Background Malaria microscopy, while the gold standard for malaria diagnosis, has limitations. Efficacy estimates in drug and vaccine malaria trials are very sensitive to small errors in microscopy endpoints. This fact led to the establishment of a Malaria Diagnostics Centre of Excellence in Kisumu, Kenya. The primary objective was to ensure valid clinical trial and diagnostic test evaluations. Key secondary objectives were technology transfer to host countries, establishment of partnerships, and training of clinical microscopists. Case description A twelve-day "long" and a four-day "short" training course consisting of supervised laboratory practicals, lectures, group discussions, demonstrations, and take home assignments were developed. Well characterized slides were developed and training materials iteratively improved. Objective pre- and post-course evaluations consisted of 30 slides (19 negative, 11 positive) with a density range of 50–660 parasites/μl, a written examination (65 questions), a photographic image examination (30 images of artifacts and species specific characteristics), and a parasite counting examination. Discussion and Evaluation To date, 209 microscopists have participated from 11 countries. Seventy-seven experienced microscopists participated in the "long" courses, including 47 research microscopists. Sensitivity improved by a mean of 14% (CI 9–19%) from 77% baseline (CI 73–81 %), while specificity improved by a mean of 17% (CI 11–23%) from 76% (CI 70–82%) baseline. Twenty-three microscopists who had been selected for a four-day refresher course showed continued improvement with a mean final sensitivity of 95% (CI 91–98%) and specificity of 97% (CI 95–100%). Only 9% of those taking the pre-test in the "long" course achieved a 90% sensitivity and 95% specificity, which increased to 61% of those completing the "short" course. All measures of performance improved substantially across each of the five organization types and in

Are Stress and Coping Associated with Aptitude and Achievement Testing Performance among Children? A Preliminary Investigation.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Plante, Thomas G.; And Others

1993-01-01

Examined association of stress and coping variables with aptitude and achievement testing among children (n=100) aged 6 to 16 referred for multidisciplinary diagnostic testing. Stress and coping were significantly associated with performance on aptitude and achievement tests. Specific stress of physical and/or sexual abuse as well as parental…

Teaching to the Tails: Teacher Performance Pay and the Distribution of Student Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Loyalka, Prashant; Sylvia, Sean; Liu, Chengfang; Chu, James; Rozelle, Scott

2015-01-01

Growing evidence suggests that teachers in developing countries often have weak or misaligned incentives for improving student outcomes. In response, policymakers and researchers have proposed performance pay as a way to improve student outcomes by tying concrete measures like achievement scores to teacher pay. While evidence from randomized…

75 FR 48662 - Equity and Excellence Commission

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-08-11

... achieve equity in the distribution of educational resources and further student performance, especially for the students at the lower end of the achievement gap. The Commission will examine the disparities... good judgment. The Secretary will appoint members for the life of the Commission, which will span...

Excel-Based Tool for Pharmacokinetically Guided Dose Adjustment of Paclitaxel.

PubMed

Kraff, Stefanie; Lindauer, Andreas; Joerger, Markus; Salamone, Salvatore J; Jaehde, Ulrich

2015-12-01

Neutropenia is a frequent and severe adverse event in patients receiving paclitaxel chemotherapy. The time above a paclitaxel threshold concentration of 0.05 μmol/L (Tc > 0.05 μmol/L) is a strong predictor for paclitaxel-associated neutropenia and has been proposed as a target pharmacokinetic (PK) parameter for paclitaxel therapeutic drug monitoring and dose adaptation. Up to now, individual Tc > 0.05 μmol/L values are estimated based on a published PK model of paclitaxel by using the software NONMEM. Because many clinicians are not familiar with the use of NONMEM, an Excel-based dosing tool was developed to allow calculation of paclitaxel Tc > 0.05 μmol/L and give clinicians an easy-to-use tool. Population PK parameters of paclitaxel were taken from a published PK model. An Alglib VBA code was implemented in Excel 2007 to compute differential equations for the paclitaxel PK model. Maximum a posteriori Bayesian estimates of the PK parameters were determined with the Excel Solver using individual drug concentrations. Concentrations from 250 patients were simulated receiving 1 cycle of paclitaxel chemotherapy. Predictions of paclitaxel Tc > 0.05 μmol/L as calculated by the Excel tool were compared with NONMEM, whereby maximum a posteriori Bayesian estimates were obtained using the POSTHOC function. There was a good concordance and comparable predictive performance between Excel and NONMEM regarding predicted paclitaxel plasma concentrations and Tc > 0.05 μmol/L values. Tc > 0.05 μmol/L had a maximum bias of 3% and an error on precision of <12%. The median relative deviation of the estimated Tc > 0.05 μmol/L values between both programs was 1%. The Excel-based tool can estimate the time above a paclitaxel threshold concentration of 0.05 μmol/L with acceptable accuracy and precision. The presented Excel tool allows reliable calculation of paclitaxel Tc > 0.05 μmol/L and thus allows target concentration intervention to improve the benefit-risk ratio of the

Using Academy Standards of Excellence in Nutrition and Dietetics for organization self-assessment and quality improvement.

PubMed

Price, Joyce A; Kent, Sue; Cox, Sharon A; McCauley, Sharon M; Parekh, Janki; Klein, Catherine J

2014-08-01

Standards of Excellence in Nutrition and Dietetics for an Organization is a self-assessment tool to measure and evaluate an organization's program, services, and initiatives that identify and distinguish the Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN) brand as the professional expert in food and nutrition. The Standards of Excellence will serve as a road map to recognize RDNs as leaders and collaborators. Standards of Excellence criteria apply to all practice segments of nutrition and dietetics: health care, education and research, business and industry, and community nutrition and public health. Given the membership's call to action to be recognized for their professional expertise, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Quality Management Committee developed four Standards of Excellence in Nutrition and Dietetics for Organizations: Quality of Leadership, Quality of Organization, Quality of Practice, and Quality of Outcomes. Within each standard, specific indicators provide strategies for an organization to demonstrate excellence. The Academy will develop a self-evaluation scoring tool to assist the organization in applying and implementing one or more of the strategies in the Standards of Excellence indicators. The organization can use the self-assessment tool to establish itself as a Center of Excellence in Nutrition and Dietetics. The role examples illustrate initiatives RDNs and organizations can take to identify themselves as a Center of Excellence in Nutrition and Dietetics. Achieving the Excellence level is an important collaborative initiative between nutrition and dietetics organizations and the Academy to provide increased autonomy, supportive management, respect within peers and community, opportunities for professional development, support for further education, and compensation for the RDN. For purposes of the Standards, "organization" means workplace or practice setting. Copyright © 2014 Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Published by Elsevier Inc

WASP (Write a Scientific Paper) using Excel - 10: Contingency tables.

PubMed

Grech, Victor

2018-06-01

Contingency tables may be required to perform chi-test analyses. This provides pointers as to how to do this in Microsoft Excel and explains how to set up methods to calculate confidence intervals for proportions, including proportions with zero numerators. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Teaching Excellence Initiatives: Modalities and Operational Factors

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Land, Ray; Gordon, George

2015-01-01

Teaching excellence is at the centre of national and international higher education policy. The Higher Education Academy (HEA) is a part of the debate to develop a shared understanding of what constitutes teaching excellence and has published research including "Considering Teaching Excellence in Higher Education: 2007-2013" by Dr Vicky…

Teaching excellence in nursing education: a caring framework.

PubMed

Sawatzky, Jo-Ann V; Enns, Carol L; Ashcroft, Terri J; Davis, Penny L; Harder, B Nicole

2009-01-01

Nursing education plays a central role in the ability to practice effectively. It follows that an optimally educated nursing workforce begets optimal patient care. A framework for excellence in nursing education could guide the development of novice educators, establish the basis for evaluating teaching excellence, and provide the impetus for research in this area. However, a review of the social sciences and nursing literature as well as a search for existing models for teaching excellence revealed an apparent dearth of evidence specific to excellence in nursing education. Therefore, we developed the Caring Framework for Excellence in Nursing Education. This framework evolved from a review of the generic constructs that exemplify teaching excellence: excellence in teaching practice, teaching scholarship, and teaching leadership. Nursing is grounded in the ethic of caring. Hence, caring establishes the foundation for this uniquely nursing framework. Because a teaching philosophy is intimately intertwined with one's nursing philosophy and the ethic of caring, it is also fundamental to the caring framework. Ideally, this framework will contribute to excellence in nursing education and as a consequence excellence in nursing practice and optimal patient care.

Discrimination against Women as a Subtext of Excellence.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Watson, Scott B.

1993-01-01

Pursuing excellence in sport discriminates against women. Alongside the primary texts of the glories of excellence runs a subtext of inequality and discrimination. The paper traces the idea of sport as a quest for excellence through various interpretations of the meaning of sport, discussing excellence as a socially constructed concept. (SM)

The Stress of Black Male Achievement: Ten Nonnegotiables

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Henfield, Malik S.

2012-01-01

Oftentimes, when the subject of Black students' talent maximization in gifted and advanced courses and programs is broached, students are treated as a monolithic entity. In fact, there is considerable evidence to suggest that unsuccessful achievement of academic excellence may be more troublesome for males than females at many points along the…

WASP (Write a Scientific Paper) using Excel 9: Analysis of variance.

PubMed

Grech, Victor

2018-06-01

Analysis of variance (ANOVA) may be required by researchers as an inferential statistical test when more than two means require comparison. This paper explains how to perform ANOVA in Microsoft Excel. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Visual-Motor Test Performance: Race and Achievement Variables.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fuller, Gerald B.; Friedrich, Douglas

1979-01-01

Rural Black and White children of variant academic achievement were tested on the Minnesota Percepto-Diagnostic Test, which consists of six gestalt designs for the subject to copy. Analyses resulted only in a significant achievement effect; when intellectual level was statistically controlled, race was not a significant variable. (Editor/SJL)

Modern strategy for operational excellence: building agile and adaptive organizations.

PubMed

Gerwitz, Raymond J

2016-10-01

Healthcare security leaders who serve in an industry built on traditional and static protection and response protocols must become more agile and adaptive in planning and responding to evolving threat and risk profiles, the author states. In this article, he tells how to use operational excellence to continuously improve performance.

Classroom Behavior and Achievement Test Performance at the Kindergarten and First Grade Level.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Landsberger, Betty H.; And Others

This paper reports the results of a study which examined the longitudinal relationships between young children's classroom behavior and their performance on achievement tests. Subjects were 235 children who made up the first cohort to attend kindergarten in the public schools of North Carolina. Data were collected at four points: at the beginning…

Si nanowires/Cu nanowires bilayer fabric as a lithium ion capacitor anode with excellent performance

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lai, Chien-Ming; Kao, Tzu-Lun; Tuan, Hsing-Yu

2018-03-01

A light and binder-free bilayer fabric electrode composed of silicon nanowires and copper nanowires for lithium-ion capacitors (LICs) is reported. A lithium ion capacitor is proposed employing pre-lithiated silicon/copper nanowire fabric and activated carbon as the anode and the cathode, respectively. These LICs show remarkable performance with a specific capacitance of 156 F g-1 at 0.1 A g-1, which is approximately twice of that of activated carbon in electric double-layer capacitors (EDLCs), and still exhibit a fine specific capacitance of 68 F g-1 even at a high current density of 20 A g-1. At a low power density of 193 W kg-1, the Si/Cu fabric//AC LIC can achieve high energy density of 210 W h kg-1. As the power density is increased to 99 kW kg-1, the energy density still remains at 43 W h kg-1, showing the prominent rate performance.

Three-dimensional skeleton networks of graphene wrapped polyaniline nanofibers: An excellent structure for high-performance flexible solid-state supercapacitors

DOE PAGES

Hu, Nantao; Zhang, Liling; Yang, Chao; ...

2016-01-22

Thin, robust, lightweight, and flexible supercapacitors (SCs) have aroused growing attentions nowadays due to the rapid development of flexible electronics. Graphene-polyaniline (PANI) hybrids are attractive candidates for high performance SCs. In order to utilize them in real devices, it is necessary to improve the capacitance and the structure stability of PANI. Here we report a hierarchical three-dimensional structure, in which all of PANI nanofibers (NFs) are tightly wrapped inside reduced graphene oxide (rGO) nanosheet skeletons, for high-performance flexible SCs. The as-fabricated film electrodes with this unique structure showed a highest gravimetric specific capacitance of 921 F/g and volumetric capacitance ofmore » 391 F/cm 3. The assembled solid-state SCs gave a high specific capacitance of 211 F/g (1 A/g), a high area capacitance of 0.9 F/cm 2, and a competitive volumetric capacitance of 25.6 F/cm 3. The SCs also exhibited outstanding rate capability (~75% retention at 20 A/g) as well as excellent cycling stability (100% retention at 10 A/g for 2000 cycles). Additionally, no structural failure and loss of performance were observed under the bending state. Lastly, this structure design paves a new avenue for engineering rGO/PANI or other similar hybrids for high performance flexible energy storage devices.« less

Correlation between academic achievement goal orientation and the performance of Malaysian students in an Indian medical school.

PubMed

Barkur, Rajashekar Rao; Govindan, Sreejith; Kamath, Asha

2013-01-01

According to goal orientation theory, achievement goals are defined as the terminal point towards which one's efforts are directed. The four academic achievement goal orientations commonly recognised are mastery, performance approach, performance avoidance and work avoidance. The objective of this study was to understand the goal orientation of second year undergraduate medical students and how this correlates with their academic performance. The study population consisted of 244 second year Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) students of Melaka Manipal Medical College, Manipal campus, Manipal University, India. Students were categorised as high performers and low performers based on their first year university examination marks. Their goal orientations were assessed through a validated questionnaire developed by Was et al. These components were analysed by independent sample t-test and correlated to their first year university examination marks. Confirmatory component factor analysis extracted four factors, which accounted for 40.8% of the total variance in goal orientation. The performance approach goal orientation alone explained 16.7% of the variance followed by mastery (10.8%), performance avoidance (7.7%) and work avoidance (5.7%). The Cronbach's alpha for 19 items, which contributed to internal consistency of the tool, was observed to be 0.635. A strong positive correlation was shown between performance approach, performance avoidance and work avoidance orientations. Of the four goal orientations, only the mean scores in work avoidance orientation differed for low performers and high performers (5.0 vs. 4.3; P = 0.0003). Work avoidance type of goal orientation among the low performer group may account for their lower performance compared with high performer group. This indicates that academic achievement goal orientation may play a role in the performance of undergraduate medical students.

Creating a New Learning Community: A Case Study of School Leaders' Perceptions of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence and Their Implementation in a Suburban School District

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Adams, Denean

2013-01-01

The Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence (Baldrige categories) are increasingly being used throughout the health, education, and business sectors to drive continuous improvement in quality organizations. In each industry, specific categories are available to assist in identifying quality practices deployed throughout an organization. The…

Patients with History of Colonoscopy Are Less Likely to Achieve High Quality Preparation After Implementing Split-Dose Bowel Preparation.

PubMed

Madhoun, M F; Bitar, H; Parava, P; Bashir, M H; Zia, H

2017-01-01

Anecdotally, we observed that patients who had previous colonoscopies were less likely to follow newly implemented split-dose bowel preparation (SDBP) instructions. We investigated whether the indication for colonoscopy is an independent factor for achieving high quality bowel preparation among patients asked to follow SDBP. We performed a retrospective study of data from 1478 patients who received outpatient colonoscopies in 2014 (the year of SDBP implementation) at our Veterans Affairs Medical Center. We collected information related to demographics and factors known to affect bowel preparations. Reasons for colonoscopy were dichotomized into surveillance (previous colonoscopy) vs. non-surveillance (positive occult blood test or screening). Bowel preparation quality was scored using the Boston Bowel Preparation Scale (BBPS), and was categorized as either excellent vs. not excellent (BBPS≥7 vs. BBPS<7), or adequate vs. inadequate (BBPS≥6 vs. BBPS<6). Bowel preparation quality was excellent in 60% of colonoscopies and adequate in 84% of colonoscopies. Thirty-six percent (535) were surveillance colonoscopies. In multivariate logistic regression analysis, more patients in the non-surveillance group achieved excellent (OR 0.8 ; 95% CI [0.7-0.8], P <0.0001) and adequate (OR 0.8 ; 95% CI [0.7-0.9], P <0.006) bowel preparation than did patients in the surveillance group. Patients with a prior colonoscopy might not follow the split-dose bowel preparation instructions. Educational interventions emphasizing the benefits of SDBP in this group of patients may help ensure compliance and prevent the habitual use of day-before preparations. © Acta Gastro-Enterologica Belgica.

Achieving performance breakthroughs in an HMO business process through quality planning.

PubMed

Hanan, K B

1993-01-01

Kaiser Permanente's Georgia Region commissioned a quality planning team to design a new process to improve payments to its suppliers and vendors. The result of the team's effort was a 73 percent reduction in cycle time. This team's experiences point to the advantages of process redesign as a quality planning model, as well as some general guidelines for its most effective use in teams. If quality planning project teams are carefully configured, sufficiently expert in the existing process, and properly supported by management, organizations can achieve potentially dramatic improvements in process performance using this approach.

Pseudocapacitance and excellent cyclability of 2,5-dimethoxy-1,4-benzoquinone on graphene

DOE PAGES

Boota, Muhammad; Chen, Chi; Bécuwe, Matthieu; ...

2016-04-27

Electrochemically active organic materials are emerging as low cost, naturally abundant and sustainable alternatives to their metal-based counterparts. However, their usage in energy storage systems is mainly hindered by their poor conductivity, which results in capacitance fade upon cycling. In this paper, we present a redox-active xerogel composed of 2,5-dimethoxy-1,4-benzoquinone (DMQ) decorated on reduced graphene oxide (rGO) sheets via a hydrothermal method as a high capacitance and long cycle life pseudocapacitive electrode. DMQ not only provided stable redox-active centers but also served as a spacer to avoid rGO sheets aggregation and led to a three-dimensional (3D) hierarchical electrode architecture. Whenmore » a binder-free 50 μm thick rolled film was tested as a pseudocapacitive electrode, it exhibited an excellent capacitance of 650 F g -1 at 5 mV s -1 (780 F cm -3) in 1 M sulfuric acid, outperforming a large number of reported organic and inorganic electrodes. Most importantly, optimized electrodes showed an excellent capacitance retention of 99% after 25 000 cycles at 50 mV s -1. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations are further used to understand the charge storage mechanism, the preferred orientation of the adsorbed molecules, charge density distribution and density of states. In conclusion, our combined experimental and theoretical findings demonstrate that the careful selection of the conductive substrate, electrode architecture and organic molecules plays a crucial role in achieving high capacitance and long cycling performance.« less

The effects of chronic achievement motivation and achievement primes on the activation of achievement and fun goals.

PubMed

Hart, William; Albarracín, Dolores

2009-12-01

This research examined the hypothesis that situational achievement cues can elicit achievement or fun goals depending on chronic differences in achievement motivation. In 4 studies, chronic differences in achievement motivation were measured, and achievement-denoting words were used to influence behavior. The effects of these variables were assessed on self-report inventories, task performance, task resumption following an interruption, and the pursuit of means relevant to achieving or having fun. Findings indicated that achievement priming (vs. control priming) activated a goal to achieve and inhibited a goal to have fun in individuals with chronically high-achievement motivation but activated a goal to have fun and inhibited a goal to achieve in individuals with chronically low-achievement motivation.

The Effects of Chronic Achievement Motivation and Achievement Primes on the Activation of Achievement and Fun Goals

PubMed Central

Hart, William; Albarracín, Dolores

2013-01-01

This research examined the hypothesis that situational achievement cues can elicit achievement or fun goals depending on chronic differences in achievement motivation. In 4 studies, chronic differences in achievement motivation were measured, and achievement-denoting words were used to influence behavior. The effects of these variables were assessed on self-report inventories, task performance, task resumption following an interruption, and the pursuit of means relevant to achieving or having fun. Findings indicated that achievement priming (vs. control priming) activated a goal to achieve and inhibited a goal to have fun in individuals with chronically high-achievement motivation but activated a goal to have fun and inhibited a goal to achieve in individuals with chronically low-achievement motivation. PMID:19968423

Achievement Emotions and Academic Performance: Longitudinal Models of Reciprocal Effects.

PubMed

Pekrun, Reinhard; Lichtenfeld, Stephanie; Marsh, Herbert W; Murayama, Kou; Goetz, Thomas

2017-09-01

A reciprocal effects model linking emotion and achievement over time is proposed. The model was tested using five annual waves of the Project for the Analysis of Learning and Achievement in Mathematics (PALMA) longitudinal study, which investigated adolescents' development in mathematics (Grades 5-9; N = 3,425 German students; mean starting age = 11.7 years; representative sample). Structural equation modeling showed that positive emotions (enjoyment, pride) positively predicted subsequent achievement (math end-of-the-year grades and test scores), and that achievement positively predicted these emotions, controlling for students' gender, intelligence, and family socioeconomic status. Negative emotions (anger, anxiety, shame, boredom, hopelessness) negatively predicted achievement, and achievement negatively predicted these emotions. The findings were robust across waves, achievement indicators, and school tracks, highlighting the importance of emotions for students' achievement and of achievement for the development of emotions. © 2017 The Authors. Child Development © 2017 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.

Beyond Academia - Interrogating Research Impact in the Research Excellence Framework.

PubMed

Terama, Emma; Smallman, Melanie; Lock, Simon J; Johnson, Charlotte; Austwick, Martin Zaltz

2016-01-01

Big changes to the way in which research funding is allocated to UK universities were brought about in the Research Excellence Framework (REF), overseen by the Higher Education Funding Council, England. Replacing the earlier Research Assessment Exercise, the purpose of the REF was to assess the quality and reach of research in UK universities-and allocate funding accordingly. For the first time, this included an assessment of research 'impact', accounting for 20% of the funding allocation. In this article we use a text mining technique to investigate the interpretations of impact put forward via impact case studies in the REF process. We find that institutions have developed a diverse interpretation of impact, ranging from commercial applications to public and cultural engagement activities. These interpretations of impact vary from discipline to discipline and between institutions, with more broad-based institutions depicting a greater variety of impacts. Comparing the interpretations with the score given by REF, we found no evidence of one particular interpretation being more highly rewarded than another. Importantly, we also found a positive correlation between impact score and [overall research] quality score, suggesting that impact is not being achieved at the expense of research excellence.

Using Growth Rate of Reading Fluency to Predict Performance on Statewide Achievement Tests

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hinkle, Rachelle Whittaker

2011-01-01

Federal legislation has prescribed the increased use of statewide achievement tests as the culmination of a student's knowledge and ability at the end of a grade level; however, schools need to be able to predict those who are at-risk of performing poorly on these high-stakes tests. Three studies served to identify a means of predicting statewide…

Middle Start Schools Striving for Excellence: Steadily Improving High-Poverty Schools in the Mid South Delta

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rose, Lea Williams

2006-01-01

As part of a national Middle Start initiative led by the Academy for Educational Development (AED), Mid South Middle Start is committed to working with high-poverty schools in the Mid South Delta region to build their capacity to foster students' academic excellence, support the development of young adolescents, and achieve social equity in…

Excellent selector performance in engineered Ag/ZrO2:Ag/Pt structure for high-density bipolar RRAM applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Chao; Song, Bing; Zeng, Zhongming

2017-12-01

A high-performance selector with bidirectional threshold switching (TS) characteristics of Ag/ZrO2/Pt structure was prepared by incorporating metallic Ag into the ZrO2 matrix. The bidirectional TS device exhibited excellent switching uniformity, forming-free behavior, ultra-low off current of <1 nA and adjustable selectivity (from 102 to 107). The experiment results confirmed that metallic Ag clusters were penetrated into the ZrO2 matrix during the annealing process, which would function as an effective active source responsible for the bidirectional TS. The volatile behavior could be explained by the self-dissolution of unstable filaments caused by minimization of the interfacial energy and thermal effect. Furthermore, a bipolar-type one selector-one resistor (1S-1R) memory device was successfully fabricated and exhibited significant suppression of the undesired sneak current, indicating the great potential as selector in a cross-point array.

Achieving high energy absorption capacity in cellular bulk metallic glasses

PubMed Central

Chen, S. H.; Chan, K. C.; Wu, F. F.; Xia, L.

2015-01-01

Cellular bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) have exhibited excellent energy-absorption performance by inheriting superior strength from the parent BMGs. However, how to achieve high energy absorption capacity in cellular BMGs is vital but mysterious. In this work, using step-by-step observations of the deformation evolution of a series of cellular BMGs, the underlying mechanisms for the remarkable energy absorption capacity have been investigated by studying two influencing key factors: the peak stress and the decay of the peak stress during the plastic-flow plateau stages. An analytical model of the peak stress has been proposed, and the predicted results agree well with the experimental data. The decay of the peak stress has been attributed to the geometry change of the macroscopic cells, the formation of shear bands in the middle of the struts, and the “work-softening” nature of BMGs. The influencing factors such as the effect of the strut thickness and the number of unit cells have also been investigated and discussed. Strategies for achieving higher energy absorption capacity in cellular BMGs have been proposed. PMID:25973781

District Awards for Teacher Excellence (D.A.T.E.) Program: Year One Evaluation Report. Policy Evaluation Report. [Executive Summary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Springer, Matthew G.; Lewis, Jessica L.; Podgursky, Michael J.; Ehlert, Mark W.; Taylor, Lori L.; Lopez, Omar S.; Ghoshdastidar, Bonnie; Peng, Art

2010-01-01

The District Awards for Teacher Excellence's (D.A.T.E.'s) first year of implementation in 2008-09 occurred at a time when Texas was operating several state-funded performance pay programs. The three-year Governor's Educator Excellence Grant (G.E.E.G.) program was coming to its expected completion, while the Texas Educator Excellence Grant…

Incorporating C60 as Nucleation Sites Optimizing PbI2 Films To Achieve Perovskite Solar Cells Showing Excellent Efficiency and Stability via Vapor-Assisted Deposition Method.

PubMed

Chen, Hai-Bin; Ding, Xi-Hong; Pan, Xu; Hayat, Tasawar; Alsaedi, Ahmed; Ding, Yong; Dai, Song-Yuan

2018-01-24

To achieve high-quality perovskite solar cells (PSCs), the morphology and carrier transportation of perovskite films need to be optimized. Herein, C 60 is employed as nucleation sites in PbI 2 precursor solution to optimize the morphology of perovskite films via vapor-assisted deposition process. Accompanying the homogeneous nucleation of PbI 2 , the incorporation of C 60 as heterogeneous nucleation sites can lower the nucleation free energy of PbI 2 , which facilitates the diffusion and reaction between PbI 2 and organic source. Meanwhile, C 60 could enhance carrier transportation and reduce charge recombination in the perovskite layer due to its high electron mobility and conductivity. In addition, the grain sizes of perovskite get larger with C 60 optimizing, which can reduce the grain boundaries and voids in perovskite and prevent the corrosion because of moisture. As a result, we obtain PSCs with a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 18.33% and excellent stability. The PCEs of unsealed devices drop less than 10% in a dehumidification cabinet after 100 days and remain at 75% of the initial PCE during exposure to ambient air (humidity > 60% RH, temperature > 30 °C) for 30 days.

Getting the Best out of Excel

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Heys, Chris

2008-01-01

Excel, Microsoft's spreadsheet program, offers several tools which have proven useful in solving some optimization problems that arise in operations research. We will look at two such tools, the Excel modules called Solver and Goal Seek--this after deriving an equation, called the "cash accumulation equation", to be used in conjunction with them.

Comparisons of Student Achievement Levels by District Performance and Poverty. ACT Research Report Series 2016-11

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dougherty, Chrys; Shaw, Teresa

2016-01-01

This report looks at student achievement levels in Arkansas school districts disaggregated by district poverty and by the district's performance relative to other districts. We estimated district performance statistics by subject and grade level (4, 8, and 11-12) for longitudinal student cohorts, using statistical models that adjusted for district…

Predicting race performance in triathlon: the role of perfectionism, achievement goals, and personal goal setting.

PubMed

Stoeber, Joachim; Uphill, Mark A; Hotham, Sarah

2009-04-01

The question of how perfectionism affects performance is highly debated. Because empirical studies examining perfectionism and competitive sport performance are missing, the present research investigated how perfectionism affected race performance and what role athletes' goals played in this relationship in two prospective studies with competitive triathletes (Study 1: N = 112; Study 2: N = 321). Regression analyses showed that perfectionistic personal standards, high performance-approach goals, low performance-avoidance goals, and high personal goals predicted race performance beyond athletes' performance level. Moreover, the contrast between performance-avoidance and performance-approach goals mediated the relationship between perfectionistic personal standards and performance, whereas personal goal setting mediated the relationship between performance-approach goals and performance. The findings indicate that perfectionistic personal standards do not undermine competitive performance, but are associated with goals that help athletes achieve their best possible performance.

Partnerships for Educational Excellence and Research: HPT in the Townships of South Africa

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Robbins, Joanne K.; Weisenburgh-Snyder, Amy B.; Damons, Bruce; Van Rooyen, Marie; Ismail, Camila

2011-01-01

Effective performance-based instruction is making a sustained and noticeable impact on township schools in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. We document the performance improvement effort made over the past 7 years by Partnerships for Educational Excellence and Research International (P.E.E.R), a team of educators, instructional system designers,…

Persuasive Performance Feedback: The Effect of Framing on Self-Efficacy

PubMed Central

Choe, Eun Kyoung; Lee, Bongshin; Munson, Sean; Pratt, Wanda; Kientz, Julie A.

2013-01-01

Self-monitoring technologies have proliferated in recent years as they offer excellent potential for promoting healthy behaviors. Although these technologies have varied ways of providing real-time feedback on a user’s current progress, we have a dearth of knowledge of the framing effects on the performance feedback these tools provide. With an aim to create influential, persuasive performance feedback that will nudge people toward healthy behaviors, we conducted an online experiment to investigate the effect of framing on an individual’s self-efficacy. We identified 3 different types of framing that can be applicable in presenting performance feedback: (1) the valence of performance (remaining vs. achieved framing), (2) presentation type (text-only vs. text with visual), and (3) data unit (raw vs. percentage). Results show that the achieved framing could lead to an increased perception of individual’s performance capabilities. This work provides empirical guidance for creating persuasive performance feedback, thereby helping people designing self-monitoring technologies to promote healthy behaviors. PMID:24551378

Persuasive performance feedback: the effect of framing on self-efficacy.

PubMed

Choe, Eun Kyoung; Lee, Bongshin; Munson, Sean; Pratt, Wanda; Kientz, Julie A

2013-01-01

Self-monitoring technologies have proliferated in recent years as they offer excellent potential for promoting healthy behaviors. Although these technologies have varied ways of providing real-time feedback on a user's current progress, we have a dearth of knowledge of the framing effects on the performance feedback these tools provide. With an aim to create influential, persuasive performance feedback that will nudge people toward healthy behaviors, we conducted an online experiment to investigate the effect of framing on an individual's self-efficacy. We identified 3 different types of framing that can be applicable in presenting performance feedback: (1) the valence of performance (remaining vs. achieved framing), (2) presentation type (text-only vs. text with visual), and (3) data unit (raw vs. percentage). Results show that the achieved framing could lead to an increased perception of individual's performance capabilities. This work provides empirical guidance for creating persuasive performance feedback, thereby helping people designing self-monitoring technologies to promote healthy behaviors.

Neuroanatomical correlates of performance in a state-wide test of math achievement.

PubMed

Wilkey, Eric D; Cutting, Laurie E; Price, Gavin R

2018-03-01

The development of math skills is a critical component of early education and a strong indicator of later school and economic success. Recent research utilizing population-normed, standardized measures of math achievement suggest that structural and functional integrity of parietal regions, especially the intraparietal sulcus, are closely related to the development of math skills. However, it is unknown how these findings relate to in-school math learning. The present study is the first to address this issue by investigating the relationship between regional differences in grey matter (GM) volume and performance in grade-level mathematics as measured by a state-wide, school-based test of math achievement (TCAP math) in children from 3rd to 8th grade. Results show that increased GM volume in the bilateral hippocampal formation and the right inferior frontal gyrus, regions associated with learning and memory, is associated with higher TCAP math scores. Secondary analyses revealed that GM volume in the left angular gyrus had a stronger relationship to TCAP math in grades 3-4 than in grades 5-8 while the relationship between GM volume in the left inferior frontal gyrus and TCAP math was stronger for grades 5-8. These results suggest that the neuroanatomical architecture related to in-school math achievement differs from that related to math achievement measured by standardized tests, and that the most related neural structures differ as a function of grade level. We suggest, therefore, that the use of school-relevant outcome measures is critical if neuroscience is to bridge the gap to education. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Organizing for Excellence.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Duttweiler, Patricia Cloud

Factors that contribute to excellence in education, as well as those that have contributed to the failure of change efforts, are the subject of this document. It provides a summary of the literature on reform efforts; effective schools; new organizational perspectives derived from the business sector; organizational restructuring being tested in…

Using baldrige performance excellence program approaches in the pursuit of radiation oncology quality care, patient satisfaction, and workforce commitment.

PubMed

Sternick, Edward S

2011-01-01

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Improvement Act was signed into law in 1987 to advance US business competitiveness and economic growth. Administered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Act created the Baldrige National Quality Program, recently renamed the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program. The comprehensive analytical approaches referred to as the Baldrige Healthcare Criteria, are very well-suited for the evaluation and sustainable improvement of radiation oncology management and operations. A multidisciplinary self-assessment approach is used for radiotherapy program evaluation and development in order to generate a fact-based, knowledge-driven system for improving quality of care, increasing patient satisfaction, enhancing leadership effectiveness, building employee engagement, and boosting organizational innovation. This methodology also provides a valuable framework for benchmarking an individual radiation oncology practice's operations and results against guidelines defined by accreditation and professional organizations and regulatory agencies.

Preparation of novel oxidized mesoporous carbon with excellent adsorption performance for removal of malachite green and lead ion

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Xialan; Lin, Qilang; Luo, Shiyuan; Ruan, Kezhao; Peng, Kaiping

2018-06-01

An oxidized mesoporous carbon (OMC) with fluffy structure was fabricated from the mixture of petroleum asphalt and aluminum isopropoxide, and its structures were characterized by FESEM, TEM, BET, TG, XPS and FT-IR. In addition, bath absorption experiments for malachite green (MG) and lead ion (Pb2+) were carried out to explore the effects of pH, initial concentration, contact time and temperature on its absorption process. Results show that the OMC prepared has a fluffy ultrathin-wall structure with narrow pore size distribution and rich oxygen-containing groups. It exhibits excellent absorption performance for the removal of MG as well as Pb2+, as indicated by that its maximum adsorption capacity is 963.1 mg g-1 for MG and 198.6 mg g-1 for Pb2+. The absorption experimental data are all fitted well with pseudo-second-order model and Frendlich isotherm, respectively. More importantly, the OMC still maintains relatively high adsorption capacity after five cycles.

Mathematics, Engineering Science Achievement (MESA). Washington's Community and Technical Colleges

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, 2014

2014-01-01

Growing Science, Technology, Education, and Mathematics (STEM) talent Washington MESA--Mathematics Engineering Science Achievement--helps under-represented community college students excel in school and ultimately earn STEM bachelor's degrees. MESA has two key programs: one for K-12 students, and the other for community and technical college…

Why Ability Grouping Must End: Achieving Excellence and Equity in American Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Braddock, Jomills Henry, II; Slavin, Robert E.

This review of research focuses on policies and practices that result in placing students in groups that are more or less homogeneous with respect to academic performance. Recent analysis of data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 provides the largest and best-controlled multi-year study of ability grouping ever conducted…

Excellence in Tactical Fighter Squadrons

DTIC Science & Technology

1985-06-01

not luck.." Another interesting question is, how long will it take to identify a squadron as exce.lllent? There was some disagreement on this issue...excellence. It may work in the short term but the long term results will be the opposite of excellence, as the top people see the opennings passing by. In the...the commander who was tuned into his squadron. "I’ve been around the business long enough to say that when I was introduced to the commander at

Performance Concern, Contingent Self-Worth, and Responses to Repeated Achievement Failure in Second Graders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smiley, Patricia A.; Coulson, Sheri L.; Greene, Joelle K.; Bono, Katherine L.

2010-01-01

Individual differences in emotion, cognitions, and task choice following achievement failure are found among four- to seven-year-olds. However, neither performance deterioration during failure nor generalization after failure--aspects of the helpless pattern in 10-year-olds--have been reliably demonstrated in this age group. In the present study,…

Regulating Debilitating Emotions in the Context of Performance: Achievement Goal Orientations, Achievement-Elicited Emotions, and Socialization Contexts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tyson, Diana F.; Linnenbrink-Garcia, Lisa; Hill, Nancy E.

2009-01-01

A theoretical framework that incorporates emotional responses and emotion regulation into achievement goal theory is proposed as an alternative view to understanding the inconsistent pattern of findings linking achievement goal orientations to academic outcomes. In this critical review and synthesis, the relation of achievement goal orientations…

Toward Excellence with Equity: An Emerging Vision for Closing the Achievement Gap

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ferguson, Ronald F.

2007-01-01

For the past 15 years, economist Ronald Ferguson has investigated the myriad factors that combine to create racial disparities in academic performance. Beginning with his analysis of the impact of test scores in predicting racial wage gaps, Ferguson has explored how rates of progress in narrowing gaps have varied over the recent decades, the roles…

Reaching for Excellence.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wright, Emmett L.; Perna, Jack A.

1992-01-01

Presents the four program goals for biology set forth in the National Science Teacher Association's "A Focus on Excellence: Biology Revisited" to (1) address biosphere, human society, and individual needs; (2) encourage students to experience, understand, and appreciate of natural systems; (3) apply the basic concept of the biosphere; and (4)…

The honeymoon effect in job performance - Temporal increases in the predictive power of achievement motivation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Helmreich, Robert L.; Sawin, Linda L.; Carsrud, Alan L.

1986-01-01

Correlations between a job performance criterion and personality measures reflecting achievement motivation and an interpersonal orientation were examined at three points in time after completion of job training for a sample of airline reservations agents. Although correlations between the personality predictors and performance were small and nonsignificant for the 3-month period after beginning the job, by the end of six and eight months a number of significant relationships had emerged. Implications for the utility of personality measures in selection and performance prediction are discussed.

Governor's Educator Excellence Grant (GEEG) Program: Year Three Evaluation Report. Policy Evaluation Report

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Springer, Matthew G.; Lewis, Jessica L.; Podgursky, Michael J.; Ehlert, Mark W.; Taylor, Lori L.; Lopez, Omar S.; Peng, Art

2009-01-01

The Governor's Educator Excellence Grant (GEEG) program was federally- and state-funded and provided three-year grants to schools to design and implement performance pay plans from the 2005-06 to 2007-08 school years. GEEG was implemented in 99 high poverty, high performing Texas public schools. This report builds on the previous GEEG evaluation…

High-performance lithium-ion battery and symmetric supercapacitors based on FeCo₂O₄ nanoflakes electrodes.

PubMed

Mohamed, Saad Gomaa; Chen, Chih-Jung; Chen, Chih Kai; Hu, Shu-Fen; Liu, Ru-Shi

2014-12-24

A successive preparation of FeCo2O4 nanoflakes arrays on nickel foam substrates is achieved by a simple hydrothermal synthesis method. After 170 cycles, a high capacity of 905 mAh g(-1) at 200 mA g(-1) current density and very good rate capabilities are obtained for lithium-ion battery because of the 2D porous structures of the nanoflakes arrays. The distinctive structural features provide the battery with excellent electrochemical performance. The symmetric supercapacitor on nonaqueous electrolyte demonstrates high specific capacitance of 433 F g(-1) at 0.1 A g(-1) and 16.7 F g(-1) at high scan rate of 5 V s(-1) and excellent cyclic performance of 2500 cycles of charge-discharge cycling at 2 A g(-1) current density, revealing excellent long-term cyclability of the electrode even under rapid charge-discharge conditions.

Relationships of cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies to mathematics achievement in four high-performing East Asian education systems.

PubMed

Areepattamannil, Shaljan; Caleon, Imelda S

2013-01-01

The authors examined the relationships of cognitive (i.e., memorization and elaboration) and metacognitive learning strategies (i.e., control strategies) to mathematics achievement among 15-year-old students in 4 high-performing East Asian education systems: Shanghai-China, Hong Kong-China, Korea, and Singapore. In all 4 East Asian education systems, memorization strategies were negatively associated with mathematics achievement, whereas control strategies were positively associated with mathematics achievement. However, the association between elaboration strategies and mathematics achievement was a mixed bag. In Shanghai-China and Korea, elaboration strategies were not associated with mathematics achievement. In Hong Kong-China and Singapore, on the other hand, elaboration strategies were negatively associated with mathematics achievement. Implications of these findings are briefly discussed.

Powdery Emulsion Explosive: A New Excellent Industrial Explosive

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ni, Ouqi; Zhang, Kaiming; Yu, Zhengquan; Tang, Shujuan

2012-07-01

Powdery emulsion explosive (PEE), a new powdery industrial explosive with perfect properties, has been made using an emulsification-spray drying technique. PEE is composed of 91-92.5 wt% ammonium nitrate (AN), 4.5-6 wt% organic fuels, and 1.5-1.8 wt% water. Due to its microstructure as a water-in-oil (W/O) emulsion and low water content, it has excellent detonation performance, outstanding water resistance, reliable safety, and good application compared with other industrial explosives, such as ammonite, emulsion explosives, and ANFO.

1D Cu(OH)2 nanorod/2D SnO2 nanosheets core/shell structured array: Covering with graphene layer leads to excellent performances on lithium-ion battery

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xia, Huicong; Zhang, Jianan; Chen, Zhimin; Xu, Qun

2018-05-01

A facile in-situ growth strategy is employ to achieving the two-dimensional SnO2 nanosheets/one-dimensional Cu(OH)2 nanorods nanoarchitecture on Cu foil current collector (SnO2/Cu(OH)2/Cu foil), follow by modification of a uniform layer of graphene (G). Confine with the graphene layer and unique one-dimensional/two-dimensional the nanoarchitecture, the remarkably enhance electrical conductivity and structural stability of G/SnO2/Cu(OH)2/Cu foil leads to a high reversible capacity of 1080.6 mAh g-1 at a current density of 200 mA g-1, much better than the samples without graphene (512.6 mAh g-1) and Cu(OH)2 nanorod (117.4 mAh g-1). Furthermore, G/SnO2/Cu(OH)2/Cu foil electrode shows high rate capacity (600.8 mAh g-1 at 1 A g-1) and excellent cycling stability (1057.1 mAh g-1 at 200 mA g-1 even after 500 cycles). This work highlights that increasing surface and interface effects with desirable three-dimensional nanoarchitecture can open a new avenue to electrochemical performance improvement in lithium-ion battery for SnO2-base anode.

Development of Regional Excel-Based Stormwater/Nutrient BMP Optimization Tool (Opti-Tool)

EPA Science Inventory

During 2014, EPA Region 1 contracted with Tetra Tech, Inc. to work with a regional technical Advisory Committee to develop an Excel-based stormwater/nutrient BMP optimization tool (Opti-Tool) using regional precipitation data and regionally calibrated BMP performance data from UN...

Excellent Teachers' Thinking Model: Implications for Effective Teaching

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hamzah, Sahandri G.; Mohamad, Hapidah; Ghorbani, Mohammad R.

2008-01-01

This study aimed to suggest an Excellent Teacher Thinking Model that has the potential to be utilized in the development of excellent teachers. Interaction survey method using survey questions, observation, document review and interview was conducted in this study. One hundred and five excellent teachers were selected randomly as research…

A mediation analysis of achievement motives, goals, learning strategies, and academic achievement.

PubMed

Diseth, Age; Kobbeltvedt, Therese

2010-12-01

Previous research is inconclusive regarding antecedents and consequences of achievement goals, and there is a need for more research in order to examine the joint effects of different types of motives and learning strategies as predictors of academic achievement. To investigate the relationship between achievement motives, achievement goals, learning strategies (deep, surface, and strategic), and academic achievement in a hierarchical model. Participants were 229 undergraduate students (mean age: 21.2 years) of psychology and economics at the University of Bergen, Norway. Variables were measured by means of items from the Achievement Motives Scale (AMS), the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students, and an achievement goal scale. Correlation analysis showed that academic achievement (examination grade) was positively correlated with performance-approach goal, mastery goal, and strategic learning strategies, and negatively correlated with performance-avoidance goal and surface learning strategy. A path analysis (structural equation model) showed that achievement goals were mediators between achievement motives and learning strategies, and that strategic learning strategies mediated the relationship between achievement goals and academic achievement. This study integrated previous findings from several studies and provided new evidence on the direct and indirect effects of different types of motives and learning strategies as predictors of academic achievement.

Achieving realistic performance and decison-making capabilities in computer-generated air forces

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Banks, Sheila B.; Stytz, Martin R.; Santos, Eugene, Jr.; Zurita, Vincent B.; Benslay, James L., Jr.

1997-07-01

For a computer-generated force (CGF) system to be useful in training environments, it must be able to operate at multiple skill levels, exhibit competency at assigned missions, and comply with current doctrine. Because of the rapid rate of change in distributed interactive simulation (DIS) and the expanding set of performance objectives for any computer- generated force, the system must also be modifiable at reasonable cost and incorporate mechanisms for learning. Therefore, CGF applications must have adaptable decision mechanisms and behaviors and perform automated incorporation of past reasoning and experience into its decision process. The CGF must also possess multiple skill levels for classes of entities, gracefully degrade its reasoning capability in response to system stress, possess an expandable modular knowledge structure, and perform adaptive mission planning. Furthermore, correctly performing individual entity behaviors is not sufficient. Issues related to complex inter-entity behavioral interactions, such as the need to maintain formation and share information, must also be considered. The CGF must also be able to acceptably respond to unforeseen circumstances and be able to make decisions in spite of uncertain information. Because of the need for increased complexity in the virtual battlespace, the CGF should exhibit complex, realistic behavior patterns within the battlespace. To achieve these necessary capabilities, an extensible software architecture, an expandable knowledge base, and an adaptable decision making mechanism are required. Our lab has addressed these issues in detail. The resulting DIS-compliant system is called the automated wingman (AW). The AW is based on fuzzy logic, the common object database (CODB) software architecture, and a hierarchical knowledge structure. We describe the techniques we used to enable us to make progress toward a CGF entity that satisfies the requirements presented above. We present our design and

Modeling relationships of achievement motivation and physical fitness with academic performance in Japanese schoolchildren: Moderation by gender.

PubMed

Ishihara, Toru; Morita, Noriteru; Nakajima, Toshihiro; Okita, Koichi; Sagawa, Masato; Yamatsu, Koji

2018-04-25

The aim of this study was to determine, using structural equation modeling, the comprehensive relationships of achievement motivation (self-fulfillment achievement motivation [SFAM] and competitive achievement motivation [CAM]), daily behaviors (exercise habits, screen time, and learning duration), body mass index [BMI], and cardiorespiratory fitness [CRF]) with academic performance among schoolchildren. Three hundred twenty-five schoolchildren (172 males and 153 females; 12-13 years old) were recruited. Academic performance was assessed using the total grade points in 8 academic subjects (GP8); CRF using the 20-m shuttle run; and achievement motivation, daily behaviors, and socioeconomic status using questionnaires. Socioeconomic status was included as a control variable. In males, two cascade associations of achievement motivation to GP8 were detected: (1) SFAM → screen time/learning duration → GP8, and (2) CAM → exercise habit → CRF → GP8 (χ 2  = 8.72, p = .19, AGFI = .92). In females, two cascade associations were also detected: (1) SFAM → screen time/learning habit → GP8, and (2) exercise habit → BMI 2  → GP8 (χ 2  = 6.17, p = .41, AGFI = .93). Our results suggest that greater achievement motivation is associated with academic success via various physiological/behavioral factors, and that these associations differ by gender. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Performance Enhancement Using Selective Reinforcement for Metallic Single- and Multi-Pin Loaded Holes

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Farley, Gary L.; Seshadri, Banavara R.

2005-01-01

An analysis based investigation of aluminum with metal matrix composite selectively reinforced single- and multi-hole specimens was performed and their results compared with results from geometrically comparable non-reinforced specimens. All reinforced specimens exhibited a significant increase in performance. Performance increase of up to 170 percent was achieved. Specimen failure modes were consistent with results from reinforced polymeric matrix composite specimens. Localized reinforcement application (circular) proved as effective as a broader area (strip) reinforcement. Also, selective reinforcement is an excellent method of increasing the performance of multi-hole specimens.

The Excellent Researcher

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Angervall, Petra

2016-01-01

The neo-liberal university not only changes systems of governance but also impacts on how subject positions are valued. These changes justify critical questions on how academics manoeuvre in academia. In this study focus is on the told experiences of 18 researchers who describe how they made an excellent career in academia. The results show that…

Beyond Academia – Interrogating Research Impact in the Research Excellence Framework

PubMed Central

Smallman, Melanie; Lock, Simon J.; Johnson, Charlotte; Austwick, Martin Zaltz

2016-01-01

Big changes to the way in which research funding is allocated to UK universities were brought about in the Research Excellence Framework (REF), overseen by the Higher Education Funding Council, England. Replacing the earlier Research Assessment Exercise, the purpose of the REF was to assess the quality and reach of research in UK universities–and allocate funding accordingly. For the first time, this included an assessment of research ‘impact’, accounting for 20% of the funding allocation. In this article we use a text mining technique to investigate the interpretations of impact put forward via impact case studies in the REF process. We find that institutions have developed a diverse interpretation of impact, ranging from commercial applications to public and cultural engagement activities. These interpretations of impact vary from discipline to discipline and between institutions, with more broad-based institutions depicting a greater variety of impacts. Comparing the interpretations with the score given by REF, we found no evidence of one particular interpretation being more highly rewarded than another. Importantly, we also found a positive correlation between impact score and [overall research] quality score, suggesting that impact is not being achieved at the expense of research excellence. PMID:27997599

Preparation of layered graphene and tungsten oxide hybrids for enhanced performance supercapacitors.

PubMed

Xing, Ling-Li; Huang, Ke-Jing; Fang, Lin-Xia

2016-11-01

Tungsten oxide (WO 3 ), which was originally poor in capacitive performance, is made into an excellent electrode material for supercapacitors by dispersing it on graphene (Gr). The obtained Gr-WO 3 hybrids are characterized by X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and scanning electron microscopy techniques, and evaluated as electrode materials for high-performance supercapacitors by cyclic voltammetry, galvanostatic charge-discharge curves and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. A great improvement in specific capacitance is achieved with the present hybrids, from 255 F g -1 for WO 3 nanoparticles to 580 F g -1 for Gr-WO 3 hybrids (scanned at 1 A g -1 in 2 M KOH over a potential window of 0 to 0.45 V). The Gr-WO 3 hybrid exhibits an excellent high rate capability and good cycling stability with more than 92% capacitance retention over 1000 cycles at a current density of 5 A g -1 . The enhancement in supercapacitor performance of Gr-WO 3 is not only attributed to its unique nanostructure with large specific surface area, but also its excellent electro-conductivity, which facilitates efficient charge transport and promotes electrolyte diffusion. As a whole, this work indicates that Gr-WO 3 hybrids are a promising electrode material for high-performance supercapacitors.

The Meaning High-Achieving African-American Males in an Urban High School Ascribe to Mathematics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thompson, LaTasha; Davis, Julius

2013-01-01

Many researchers, educators, administrators, policymakers and members of the general public doubt the prevalence of high-achieving African-American males in urban high schools capable of excelling in mathematics. As part of a larger study, the current study explored the educational experiences of four high-achieving African-American males…

Enhancing Teaching using MATLAB Add-Ins for Excel

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hamilton, Paul V.

2004-01-01

In this paper I will illustrate how to extend the capabilities of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets with add-ins created by MATLAB. Excel provides a broad array of fundamental tools but often comes up short when more sophisticated scenarios are involved. To overcome this short-coming of Excel while retaining its ease of use, I will describe how…

Broadway High School: Moving Ahead in Math. Onward to Excellence II: Committing to CHANGE with OTE II.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Northwest Regional Educational Lab., Portland, OR. School Improvement Program.

This document describes the school reform movement at Broadway High School in rural Virginia which has led to great success in mathematics achievement as proven by the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) tests. The Onward to Excellence II model provided a way for the faculty to focus on math, especially Algebra I, and to involve the entire school…

Opportunities for recovery at work and excellent work ability - a cross-sectional population study among young workers.

PubMed

Boström, Maria; Sluiter, Judith K; Hagberg, Mats; Grimby-Ekman, Anna

2016-09-15

Better opportunities for recovery at work are thought to be associated with work ability in a young workforce but evidence is scarce to lacking. The aim of this study was to examine cross-sectional associations between opportunities for recovery at work and excellent work ability among young workers and specifically for young workers with high work demands. A study group of 1295 women and 1056 men aged 18-29 years was selected from three biennial years of a population cohort. The subsample reporting high work demands consisted of 439 women and 349 men. The study group had completed a work environment questionnaire in a survey conducted by Statistics Sweden. Associations between opportunities for recovery at work and excellent work ability were assessed by multiple logistic regression models stratified for gender. Having varied work was associated with excellent work ability in all young men (p < 0.0006; prevalence ratio [PR] 1.3) and also specifically in men with high work demands (p = 0.019; PR 1.3). For the latter group the possibility of deciding when to perform a work task was also associated with excellent work ability (p = 0.049; PR 1.3). Among young women with high work demands, the possibility of deciding one's working hours was associated with excellent work ability (p = 0.046; PR 1.2). For young men, having varied work can contribute to excellent work ability. In addition, for men with high work demands, the possibility of deciding when to perform a work task may be favourable for excellent work ability. For young women with high work demands, the possibility of deciding one's working hours can contribute to excellent work ability. Employers could use these opportunities for recovery in promoting work ability among young workers.

THE LINDA CRANE MEMORIAL LECTURE: Striving for Excellence

PubMed Central

Hayes, Sherrill H

2010-01-01

Historically, invited lecturers have often challenged us to define excel lence in physical therapy practice, or in our academic programs. While some have addressed different char acteristics of excellence, our profession has not really come together to address 2 very important questions: what does “quality” mean in physical therapist education? And how do we measure it? Using 3 elements of Friendship, Leadership, and Mentoring, and Defining Excellence and juxtaposing these with Linda Crane and her life, a vision of excellence in physical therapy educational programs was explored in this invited lecture. The text of that lecture ensues. PMID:20520760

Phase-change lines, scale breaks, and trend lines using Excel 2013.

PubMed

Deochand, Neil; Costello, Mack S; Fuqua, R Wayne

2015-01-01

The development of graphing skills for behavior analysts is an ongoing process. Specialized graphing software is often expensive, is not widely disseminated, and may require specific training. Dixon et al. (2009) provided an updated task analysis for graph making in the widely used platform Excel 2007. Vanselow and Bourret (2012) provided online tutorials that outline some alternate methods also using Office 2007. This article serves as an update to those task analyses and includes some alternative and underutilized methods in Excel 2013. To examine the utility of our recommendations, 12 psychology graduate students were presented with the task analyses, and the experimenters evaluated their performance and noted feedback. The task analyses were rated favorably. © Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.

Assessment of physician performance in Alberta: the Physician Achievement Review

PubMed Central

Hall, W; Violato, C; Lewkonia, R; Lockyer, J; Fidler, H; Toews, J; Jennett, P; Donoff, M; Moores, D

1999-01-01

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, in collaboration with the Universities of Calgary and Alberta, has developed a program to routinely assess the performance of physicians, intended primarily for quality improvement in medical practice. The Physician Achievement Review (PAR) provides a multidimensional view of performance through structured feedback to physicians. The program will also provide a new mechanism for identifying physicians for whom more detailed assessment of practice performance or medical competence may be needed. Questionnaires were created to assess an array of performance attributes, and then appropriate assessors were designated--the physician himself or herself (self-evaluation), patients, medical peers, consultants and referring physicians, and non-physician coworkers. A pilot study with 308 physician volunteers was used to evaluate the psychometric and statistical properties of the questionnaires and to develop operating policies. The pilot surveys showed good statistical validity and technical reliability of the PAR questionnaires. For only 28 (9.1%) of the physicians were the PAR results more than one standard deviation from the peer group means for 3 or more of the 5 major domains of assessment (self, patients, peers, consultants and coworkers). In post-survey feedback, two-thirds of the physicians indicated that they were considering or had implemented changes to their medical practice on the basis of their PAR data. The estimated operating cost of the PAR program is approximately $200 per physician. In February 1999, on the basis of the operating experience and the results of the pilot survey, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta implemented this innovative program, in which all Alberta physicians will be required to participate every 5 years. PMID:10420867

Promising Practices for Achieving Patient-centered Hospital Care: A National Study of High-performing US Hospitals.

PubMed

Aboumatar, Hanan J; Chang, Bickey H; Al Danaf, Jad; Shaear, Mohammad; Namuyinga, Ruth; Elumalai, Sathyanarayanan; Marsteller, Jill A; Pronovost, Peter J

2015-09-01

Patient-centered care is integral to health care quality, yet little is known regarding how to achieve patient-centeredness in the hospital setting. The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey measures patients' reports on clinician behaviors deemed by patients as key to a high-quality hospitalization experience. We conducted a national study of hospitals that achieved the highest performance on HCAHPS to identify promising practices for improving patient-centeredness, common challenges met, and how those were addressed. We identified hospitals that achieved the top ranks or remarkable recent improvements on HCAHPS and surveyed key informants at these hospitals. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, we described the interventions used at these hospitals and developed an explanatory model for achieving patient-centeredness in hospital care. Fifty-two hospitals participated in this study. Hospitals used similar interventions that focused on improving responsiveness to patient needs, the discharge experience, and patient-clinician interactions. To improve responsiveness, hospitals used proactive nursing rounds (reported at 83% of hospitals) and executive/leader rounds (62%); for the discharge experience, multidisciplinary rounds (56%), postdischarge calls (54%), and discharge folders (52%) were utilized; for clinician-patient interactions, hospitals promoted specific desired behaviors (65%) and set behavioral standards (60%) for which employees were held accountable. Similar strategies were also used to achieve successful intervention implementation including HCAHPS data feedback, and employee and leader engagement and accountability. High-performing hospitals used a set of patient-centered care processes that involved both leaders and clinicians in ensuring that patient needs and preferences are addressed.

Achieving Teaching and Learning Excellence with Technology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Marcoux, Elizabeth; Loertscher, David V.

2009-01-01

Since the very first introduction of a Commodore Pet, TRS 80, and the Apple II microcomputers beginning in 1977, billions of dollars have been spent chasing a dream about the effect of technology on teaching and learning. Now, educators face the second decade of the 21st Century with seemingly unlimited ways technology can influence what people…

Toward Achieving Educational Excellence for All Students.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Margaret C.

Information should be gathered on specific features of school learning environments that are effective in maximizing all students' chances for schooling success, particularly the chances of success for special students who require greater-than-usual educational support. Research and educational practice support the contention that information on…

Auto Draw from Excel Input Files

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Strauss, Karl F.; Goullioud, Renaud; Cox, Brian; Grimes, James M.

2011-01-01

The design process often involves the use of Excel files during project development. To facilitate communications of the information in the Excel files, drawings are often generated. During the design process, the Excel files are updated often to reflect new input. The problem is that the drawings often lag the updates, often leading to confusion of the current state of the design. The use of this program allows visualization of complex data in a format that is more easily understandable than pages of numbers. Because the graphical output can be updated automatically, the manual labor of diagram drawing can be eliminated. The more frequent update of system diagrams can reduce confusion and reduce errors and is likely to uncover symmetric problems earlier in the design cycle, thus reducing rework and redesign.

Highly conductive porous Na-embedded carbon nanowalls for high-performance capacitive deionization

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chang, Liang; Hu, Yun Hang

2018-05-01

Highly conductive porous Na-embedded carbon nanowalls (Na@C), which were recently invented, have exhibited excellent performance for dye-sensitized solar cells and electric double-layer capacitors. In this work, Na@C was demonstrated as an excellent electrode material for capacitive deionization (CDI). In a three-electrode configuration system, the specific capacity of the Na@C electrodes can achieve 306.4 F/g at current density of 0.2 A/g in 1 M NaCl, which is higher than that (235.2 F/g) of activated carbon (AC) electrodes. Furthermore, a high electrosorption capacity of 8.75 mg g-1 in 100 mg/L NaCl was obtained with the Na@C electrodes in a batch-mode capacitive deionization cell. It exceeds the electrosorption capacity (4.08 mg g-1) of AC electrodes. The Na@C electrode also showed a promising cycle stability. The excellent performance of Na@C electrode for capacitive deionization (CDI) can be attributed to its high electrical conductivity and large accessible surface area.

Achievement Motivation of the High School Students: A Case Study among Different Communities of Goalpara District of Assam

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sarangi, C.

2015-01-01

Achievement motivation is a consistent striving force of an individual to achieve success to a certain standard of excellence in competing situation. In this study an attempt was made to study the effect of achievement motivation on the academic achievement of the high school students of tribal and non tribal communities in relation to their sex…

How Statistics "Excel" Online.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chao, Faith; Davis, James

2000-01-01

Discusses the use of Microsoft Excel software and provides examples of its use in an online statistics course at Golden Gate University in the areas of randomness and probability, sampling distributions, confidence intervals, and regression analysis. (LRW)

Governor's Educator Excellence Grant (GEEG) Program: Year Three Evaluation Report. Policy Evaluation Report. [Executive Summary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Springer, Matthew G.; Lewis, Jessica L.; Podgursky, Michael J.; Ehlert, Mark W.; Taylor, Lori L.; Lopez, Omar S.; Peng, Art

2009-01-01

The Governor's Educator Excellence Grant (GEEG) program was federally- and state-funded and provided three-year grants to schools to design and implement performance pay plans from the 2005-06 to 2007-08 school years. GEEG was implemented in 99 high poverty, high performing Texas public schools. Performance pay for teachers entered Texas state…

Texas Educator Excellence Grant (TEEG) Program: Year Three Evaluation Report. Policy Evaluation Report. [Executive Summary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Springer, Matthew G.; Lewis, Jessica L.; Podgursky, Michael J.; Ehlert, Mark W.; Gronberg, Timothy J.; Hamilton, Laura S.; Jansen, Dennis W.; Stecher, Brian M.; Taylor, Lori L.; Lopez, Omar S.; Peng, Art

2009-01-01

The Texas Educator Excellence Grant (TEEG) program was state-funded and provided annual grants to schools to design and implement performance pay plans during the 2006-07 to 2009-10 school year. TEEG was implemented each year (i.e., Cycle) in approximately 1,000 high poverty, high performing Texas public schools. Performance pay for teachers…

A C-Te-based binary OTS device exhibiting excellent performance and high thermal stability for selector application.

PubMed

Chekol, Solomon Amsalu; Yoo, Jongmyung; Park, Jaehyuk; Song, Jeonghwan; Sung, Changhyuck; Hwang, Hyunsang

2018-08-24

In this letter, we demonstrate a new binary ovonic threshold switching (OTS) selector device scalable down to ø30 nm based on C-Te. Our proposed selector device exhibits outstanding performance such as a high switching ratio (I on /I off  > 10 5 ), an extremely low off-current (∼1 nA), an extremely fast operating speed of <10 ns (transition time of <2 ns and delay time of <8 ns), high endurance (10 9 ), and high thermal stability (>450 °C). The observed high thermal stability is caused by the relatively small atomic size of C, compared to Te, which can effectively suppress the segregation and crystallization of Te in the OTS film. Furthermore, to confirm the functionality of the selector in a crossbar array, we evaluated a 1S-1R device by integrating our OTS device with a ReRAM (resistive random access memory) device. The 1S-1R integrated device exhibits a successful suppression of leakage current at the half-selected cell and shows an excellent read-out margin (>2 12 word lines) in a fast read operation.

77 FR 29621 - Equity and Excellence Commission

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-05-18

...: The Commission will meet in Washington, DC at the United States Department of Education at 400... Equity and Excellence Commission will hold an open meeting in Washington, DC at the United States... DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Equity and Excellence Commission AGENCY: U.S. Department of Education...

A Carboxyl-Terminated Polybutadiene Liquid Rubber Modified Epoxy Resin with Enhanced Toughness and Excellent Electrical Properties

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dong, Lina; Zhou, Wenying; Sui, Xuezhen; Wang, Zijun; Cai, Huiwu; Wu, Peng; Zuo, Jing; Liu, Xiangrong

2016-07-01

The modification of epoxy (EP) resin with carboxyl-terminated polybutadiene (CTPB) liquid rubber was carried out in this work. The chemical reaction between the oxirane ring of EP and the carboxyl group of CTPB and kinetic parameters were investigated by Fourier transform infrared and differential scanning calorimetry. The resulting pre-polymers were cured with methyl hexahydrophthalic anhydride. Scanning electron microscopic observations indicate that the micro-sized CTPB particles dispersed uniformly in the EP matrix formed a two-phase morphology, mainly contributing to the improved toughness of the modified network. The best overall mechanical performance was achieved with 20 phr CTPB; above it, a fall in the strength and modulus was observed. The storage modulus and loss declined with the CTPB concentration due to its lower modulus and plasticizing effect from dynamic mechanical analysis measurements. Moreover, due to the weak polarity and excellent electrical insulation of CTPB, the CTPB-modified EP presented higher electrical resistivities and breakdown strength, and low dielectric permittivity and loss compared with neat EP.

My Path Into X-Ray, Optics and Pressure: Experiences and Achievements

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Evans, William

2013-04-01

A successful career path in science is rarely formulaic or achieved by following a predefined set of actions. Sustained commitment, perseverance, performance and relationships are all key ingredients. Judicious selection of opportunities (research projects, employers, etc.) can lead to significant scientific accomplishments and career advancements. In this presentation I will review the trajectory of my scientific career spanning my experiences from the Westinghouse STS and ISEF, through Caltech and Harvard to my current position of High Pressure Physics Group Leader at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. I will discuss my involvement in some exciting research projects using x-ray synchrotron sources and optical spectroscopy to study static and dynamic properties of materials at high-pressures. In addition, I will share my perspectives on the importance of excellence, preparedness and the value of professional relationships.

Clinical excellence in academia: perspectives from masterful academic clinicians.

PubMed

Christmas, Colleen; Kravet, Steven J; Durso, Samuel C; Wright, Scott M

2008-09-01

To better understand and characterize clinical excellence in academia by exploring the perspectives of clinically excellent faculty in the top American departments of medicine. Between March 1 and May 31, 2007, 2 investigators conducted in-depth semistructured interviews with 24 clinically excellent Department of Medicine physicians at 8 academic institutions. Interview transcripts were independently analyzed by 2 investigators and compared for agreement. Content analysis identified several major themes that relate to clinical excellence in academia. Physicians hailed from a range of internal medicine specialties; 20 (83%) were associate professors or professors and 8 (33%) were women. The mean percentage of time physicians spent in clinical care was 48%. Eight domains emerged as the major features of clinical excellence in academia: reputation, communication and interpersonal skills, professionalism and humanism, diagnostic acumen, skillful negotiation of the health care system, knowledge, scholarly approach to clinical care, and passion for clinical medicine. Understanding the core elements that contribute to clinical excellence in academia represents a pivotal step to defining clinical excellence in this setting. It is hoped that such work will lead to initiatives aimed at measuring and rewarding clinical excellence in our academic medical centers such that the most outstanding clinicians feel valued and decide to stay in academia to serve as role models for medical trainees.

The Influence of the Antecedent Variable on the Teachers' Performance through Achievement Motivation in Senior High School

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dewi, Erni R.; Bundu, Patta; Tahmir, Suradi

2016-01-01

This study aims at analysing whether the antecedent variable directly affects the performance of the high school teachers or not. In addition, this research strives to find out whether the antecedent variable indirectly affects the teachers' performance through the achievement motivation of the high school teachers. It was a quantitative research…

77 FR 484 - Equity and Excellence Commission

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-01-05

... DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Equity and Excellence Commission AGENCY: Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Education. ACTION: Notice of an open meeting. SUMMARY: This notice sets forth the schedule and proposed agenda of an up-coming meeting of the Equity and Excellence Commission (Commission). The notice...

76 FR 62394 - Equity and Excellence Commission

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-10-07

... DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Equity and Excellence Commission AGENCY: Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Education. ACTION: Notice of An Open Meeting. SUMMARY: This notice sets forth the schedule and proposed agenda of an up-coming meeting of the Equity and Excellence Commission (Commission). The notice...

77 FR 31605 - Equity and Excellence Commission

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-05-29

.... ADDRESSES: The Commission will meet in Washington, DC at the United States Department of Education at 400... Excellence Commission will hold an open meeting in Washington, DC at the United States Department of... DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Equity and Excellence Commission AGENCY: Office for Civil Rights, U.S...

A Tutorial on the Use of Excel 2010 and Excel for Mac 2011 for Conducting Delay-Discounting Analyses

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reed, Derek D.; Kaplan, Brent A.; Brewer, Adam T.

2012-01-01

In recent years, researchers and practitioners in the behavioral sciences have profited from a growing literature on delay discounting. The purpose of this article is to provide readers with a brief tutorial on how to use Microsoft Office Excel 2010 and Excel for Mac 2011 to analyze discounting data to yield parameters for both the hyperbolic…

The predictive value of pre-recruitment achievement on resident performance in anesthesiology.

PubMed

Chen, Fei; Arora, Harendra; Martinelli, Susan M; Teeter, Emily; Mayer, David; Zvara, David A; Passannante, Anthony; Smith, Kathleen A

2017-06-01

Selecting candidates for residency positions is challenging and there is little research on the correlation between commonly used selection criteria and subsequent performance in anesthesiology. This study examined the association between the selection measures and post-recruitment performance in residency. Retrospective review of archival data. Anesthesiology residency program at a large academic anesthesiology department. Residents who were matched to the anesthesiology program over 9years (graduation classes of 2006 to 2014). None. The pre-recruitment achievements included a comprehensive list of measures obtained from residents' application portfolios in conjunction with interview performance. The post-recruitment examination outcomes consisted of the in-training examination (ITE) scores in the three clinical anesthesia (CA) years and first-attempt success on the written board certification examination administered by the American Board of Anesthesiology (ABA). Scholarly output during residency was measured by publication record. Clinical performance at the conclusion of residency was independently rated by three faculty members. Bivariate analysis and regression models were conducted to examine association between predictors and outcomes. High United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) scores, class rank in medical school and interview performance were predictive of high examination scores in residency and good clinical performance. Class rank appeared to be the best predictor of scholarly publication and pursuing an academic career beyond residency. Comparative performance with classmates (i.e., class rank) in medical school appeared to be an effective predictor of overall performance in residency, which warrants more attention in future study. Although interview performance is subject to recruitment team members' interpretation, it is an important measure to include in recruitment decisions. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Achieving High Luminescent Performance K2SiF6:Mn4+ Phosphor by Co-precipitation Process with Controlling the Reaction Temperature

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tran, Tat-Dat; Nguyen, Duy-Hung; Pham, Thanh-Huy; Nguyen, Duy-Cuong; Duong, Thanh-Tung

2018-05-01

K2SiF6:Mn4+ (KSF:Mn) phosphor was synthesized by the one-step co-precipitation process, at different temperatures. It was found that the reaction temperature played a key role in photoluminescence performance of the product. When the reaction temperature decreased from 0°C to - 20°C, the doping concentration, Mn/Si ratio, increased from 2% to 10%. However, further decrement of temperature (to - 30°C) reduced the Mn/Si ratio to 7%. The photo-luminescence (PL) intensity was maximized at the highest Mn/Si (10%), which corresponds to a reaction temperature of - 20°C. The KSF:Mn phosphor showed excellent luminescent properties at a wide range of temperatures (from room temperature to 470 K), especially after being dispersed in a polymer matrix. When combined with a commercial white light emitting diode (WLED), KSF:Mn significantly improved luminescent properties, such as color rendering index (CRI), correlated color temperature (CCT) and luminous efficiency. In particular, CRI increased from 67.3 to 87.4, while the CCT decreased from 7800 K to 3204 K. The luminous efficiency increased from 82.0 lm/W to 95.3 lm/W. The results indicated that the high quality KSF:Mn red phosphor could be achieved by a simple one-step co-precipitation method with a fine control of reaction temperature.

Mastery of the mind East and West: excellence in being and doing and everyday happiness.

PubMed

Brown, Daniel

2009-08-01

Western psychological research on positive psychology and Buddhism have recently converged in their emphasis on the development of positive states, like states of excellence and everyday happiness. Yet, these traditions differ in their approaches to positive states, with respect to a state-trait and doing-being distinction. Western scientific research on peak performance emphasizes discontinuous, time-limited peak performance states wherein individuals do things extraordinarily well in sports and in the arts. The Eastern spiritual traditions emphasize continuous excellence of being, in the form of traits or character strengths. In both traditions mental imagery is a key ingredient to excellence training. With respect to everyday happiness, Western psychological research has focused on the role of meaning systems in the transformation of flow states into vital engagement in everyday life, while Buddhism stresses the role of meditation training to gain mastery over all levels of mind that leads to everyday happiness. Rorschach and tachistoscopic research on advanced meditators suggests that advance meditators have gained unusual mastery over states of mind not yet documented in the Western psychological research on positive psychology.

75 FR 4822 - 2010 Travel and Relocation Excellence Award

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-01-29

... GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION 2010 Travel and Relocation Excellence Award AGENCY: Office of... Administration (GSA) is seeking candidates for the biennial 2010 Travel and Relocation Excellence Award, which honors excellence in federal travel and relocation policy. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Go to GSA's...

Courageous leaders. The integral force behind organizational excellence.

PubMed

Snyder, N H

1995-01-01

For more than a decade, Total Quality Management (TQM) has been used as a powerful instrument in shaping the competitive strategies of businesses, and producing quality products and services has become the credo of firms trying to defend or expand their markets. During this time, we have come to realize that without effective leadership no quality program can succeed. That is why the quality guru, W. Edwards Deming, refused to work in any organization unless he could begin with the CEO. That is why the first criterion examined for the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award is leadership. Focusing on quality will not guarantee success in today's rapidly changing markets. Increasingly discriminating consumers have come to expect quality in the products and services they buy, and businesses that fail to deliver it will not survive. In a very real sense, quality performance is the price you must pay simply to play the game. But consumers want more, and satisfying their expectations will determine tomorrow's winners and losers. Building organizations capable of producing superior results that consistently meet the needs of customers is the responsibility of leaders. For this reason, leaders are more important today than they have ever been before. Leaders in successful businesses must show the way for their employees by nurturing "cultures" that encourage and reward superior performance and by exhibiting personal characteristics that inspire excellence. Great leaders possess three crucial characteristics--vision, strong values and beliefs, and the courage to do the job despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles. These characteristics make the difference between excellence and "business as usual."

A Vision of Excellence. The National Search for Excellence Awards in Rehabilitation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

J.M. Foundation, New York, NY.

This publication provides information on 1989 winners of the Search for Excellence award for outstanding vocational service programs for people with disabilities. A history and description of the search appears first. A winner and two finalists are described in each of four categories. An introduction to each category discusses typical applicant…

Concept of Sukha (comfort) mentioned in Dhatusarata (tissue excellence) w.s.r. to vocational guidance.

PubMed

Waghulade, Hemangini; Harit, Mahesh Kumar

2014-01-01

Agni (digestive fire), Prakruti (constitution), Dhatusarata (tissue excellence), Dosha (bio-energies) are the specialties of Ayurveda on which diagnosis, treatment and research are based. The description of Dhatusarata (tissue excellence) has been given under Dashavidha Pariksha (tenfold examination) in Charak Samhita, Viman Sthana, 8(th) chapter. Some qualities, which are mentioned in Dhatusarata are difficult to assess, e.g. Sukha, Aishwarya, Upabhoga, Bala, etc., There is a need to develop some quantitative parameters to measure these qualities according to tissue excellence i.e. Dhatusarata. By assessing Dhatu Sarata, one can judge the true strength of a particular Dhatu but only the ability or strength is not enough to get success; the liking or interest is also essential to achieve success. The purpose of this study is to elaborate the concept of Dhatusarata and reveal different aspects of Sukha according to the quality of that particular Dhatu in context of vocational guidance. It will help to establish interrelationship between Dhatusarata and vocational guidance. It will be assessed whether this Sukha quality is merely happiness or having different shades according to the excellence of Dhatus and whether this study is useful in guiding the person to choose appropriate profession, which will be according to his liking and ability. It has been concluded that shades of Sukha quality varies with particular Dhatusaras, which may be helpful in guiding a suitable profession to an individual which will be according to his ability and liking i.e. Sukha for intimate success.

Characteristics of Academically Excellent Business Studies Students in a Post-1992 University

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bennett, Roger; Barkensjo, Anna

2005-01-01

In contrast to the extensive investigation of the characteristics of students who fail or perform badly in "new" universities, research into the factors associated with academic excellence within post-1992 institutions has been sparse. This empirical study examined the profile of a sample of 81 high-flying business studies undergraduates…

Best Practices in Academic Mentoring: A Model for Excellence

PubMed Central

Nick, Jan M.; Delahoyde, Theresa M.; Del Prato, Darlene; Mitchell, Claudia; Ortiz, Jennifer; Ottley, Clarise; Young, Patricia; Cannon, Sharon B.; Lasater, Kathie; Reising, Deanna; Siktberg, Linda

2012-01-01

Mentoring is important for the recruitment and retention of qualified nurse faculty, their ongoing career development, and leadership development. However, what are current best practices of mentoring? The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of a model for excellence in establishing a formal mentoring program for academic nurse educators. Six themes for establishing a formal mentoring program are presented, highlighting best practices in mentoring as culled from experience and the literature. Themes reflect aims to achieve appropriately matched dyads, establish clear mentorship purpose and goals, solidify the dyad relationship, advocate for and guide the protégé, integrate the protégé into the academic culture, and mobilize institutional resources for mentoring support. Attending to the six themes will help mentors achieve important protégé outcomes, such as orientation to the educator role, integration into the academic community, development of teaching, scholarship, and service skills, as well as leadership development. The model is intended to be generalizable for faculty teaching in a variety of academic nursing institution types and sizes. Mentoring that integrates the six themes assists faculty members to better navigate the academic environment and more easily transition to new roles and responsibilities. PMID:22685645

Training the Trainers of Tomorrow Today - driving excellence in medical education.

PubMed

Fellow-Smith, Elizabeth; Beveridge, Ed; Hogben, Katy; Wilson, Graeme; Lowe, John; Abraham, Rachel; Ingle, Digby; Bennett, Danielle; Hernandez, Carol

2013-01-01

Training the Trainers of Tomorrow Today (T4) is a new way to deliver "Training for Trainers". Responding to local dissatisfaction with existing arrangements, T4 builds on 3 essential requirements for a future shape of training: 1. Clinical Leadership and a Collaborative Approach 2. Cross-Specialty Design and Participation 3. Local Delivery and Governance Networks Design principles also included: 3 levels of training to reflect differing needs of clinical supervisors, educational supervisors and medical education leader, mapping to GMC requirements and the London Deanery's Professional Development Framework; alignment of service, educational theory and research; recognition of challenges in delivering and ensuring attendance in busy acute and mental health settings, and the development of a faculty network. The delivery plan took into account census of professional development uptake and GMC Trainee Surveys. Strong engagement and uptake from the 11 Trusts in NW London has been achieved, with powerful penetration into all specialties. Attendance has exceeded expectations. Against an initial 12 month target of 350 attendances, 693 were achieved in the first 8 months. Evaluation of content demonstrates modules are pitched appropriately to attendees needs, with positive feedback from trainers new to the role. Delivery style has attracted high ratings of satisfaction: 87% attendees rating delivery as "good\\excellent". External evaluation of impact demonstrated improved training experiences through changes in supervision, the learning environment and understanding of learning styles. We have addressed sustainability of the programme by advertising and recruiting Local Faculty Development Trainers. Volunteer consultants and higher trainees are trained to deliver the programme on a cascade model, supported by the Specialty Tutors, individual coaching and educational bursaries. The Trainers are local champions for excellence in training, provide a communication between the

Feminist Rhetorical Practices: In Search of Excellence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kirsch, Gesa E.; Royster, Jacqueline J.

2010-01-01

In this article, we undertake three critical tasks: First, we delineate major shifts in feminist rhetorical inquiry, thus describing a new and changed landscape of the field. Second, we argue that as feminist rhetorical practices have shifted, so have standards of excellence. To articulate excellence in feminist rhetorical studies, we draw…

Achievement goals affect metacognitive judgments

PubMed Central

Ikeda, Kenji; Yue, Carole L.; Murayama, Kou; Castel, Alan D.

2017-01-01

The present study examined the effect of achievement goals on metacognitive judgments, such as judgments of learning (JOLs) and metacomprehension judgments, and actual recall performance. We conducted five experiments manipulating the instruction of achievement goals. In each experiment, participants were instructed to adopt mastery-approach goals (i.e., develop their own mental ability through a memory task) or performance-approach goals (i.e., demonstrate their strong memory ability through getting a high score on a memory task). The results of Experiments 1 and 2 showed that JOLs of word pairs in the performance-approach goal condition tended to be higher than those in the mastery-approach goal condition. In contrast, cued recall performance did not differ between the two goal conditions. Experiment 3 also demonstrated that metacomprehension judgments of text passages were higher in the performance-approach goal condition than in the mastery-approach goals condition, whereas test performance did not differ between conditions. These findings suggest that achievement motivation affects metacognitive judgments during learning, even when achievement motivation does not influence actual performance. PMID:28983496

The VCU Pressure Ulcer Summit-Developing Centers of Pressure Ulcer Prevention Excellence: A Framework for Sustainability.

PubMed

Creehan, Sue; Cuddigan, Janet; Gonzales, Dana; Nix, Denise; Padula, William; Pittman, Joyce; Pontieri-Lewis, Vicky; Walden, Christine; Wells, Belinda; Wheeler, Robinetta

2016-01-01

Hospital-acquired pressure ulcer occurrences have declined over the past decade as reimbursement policies have changed, evidence-based practice guidelines have been implemented, and quality improvement initiatives have been launched. However, the 2006-2008 Institute for Healthcare Improvement goal of zero pressure ulcers remains difficult to achieve and even more challenging to sustain. Magnet hospitals tend to have lower hospital-acquired pressure ulcer rates than non-Magnet hospitals, yet many non-Magnet hospitals also have robust pressure ulcer prevention programs. Successful programs share commonalities in structure, processes, and outcomes. A national summit of 55 pressure ulcer experts was convened at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center in March 2014. The group was divided into 3 focus groups; each was assigned a task to develop a framework describing components of a proposed Magnet-designated Center of Pressure Ulcer Prevention Excellence. Systematic literature reviews, analysis of exemplars, and nominal group process techniques were used to create the framework. This article presents a framework describing the proposed Magnet-designated Centers of Pressure Ulcer Prevention Excellence. Critical attributes of Centers of Excellence are identified and organized according to the 4 domains of the ANCC model for the Magnet Recognition Program: transformational leadership; structural empowerment; exemplary professional practice; and new knowledge innovation and improvements. The structures, processes, and outcome measures necessary to become a proposed Center of Pressure Ulcer Prevention Excellence are discussed.

Relationship between Motivation to Achieve and Professional Competence in the Performance of Elementary School Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sumantri, Mohamad Syarif; Whardani, Prayuningtyas Angger

2017-01-01

This study aims to determine the relationship between achievement motivation and professional competence with regard to the performance of teachers in public elementary schools in Central Java. The quantitative method is used in this study. The results of this study indicate that (1) there is a significant positive relationship between achievement…

Reading Achievement, Mastery, and Performance Goal Structures among Students with Learning Disabilities: A Nonlinear Perspective

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sideridis, Georgios D.; Stamovlasis, Dimitrios; Antoniou, Faye

2016-01-01

The purpose of the present study was to examine the hypothesis that a nonlinear relationship exists between a performance-classroom climate and the reading achievement of adolescent students with learning disabilities (LD). Participants were 62 students with LD (Grades 5-9) from public elementary schools in northern Greece. Classroom climate was…

Perceived ability and social support as mediators of achievement motivation and performance anxiety.

PubMed

Abrahamsen, F E; Roberts, G C; Pensgaard, A M; Ronglan, L T

2008-12-01

The present study is founded on achievement goal theory (AGT) and examines the relationship between motivation, social support and performance anxiety with team handball players (n=143) from 10 elite teams. Based on these theories and previous findings, the study has three purposes. First, it was predicted that the female athletes (n=69) would report more performance worries and more social support use than males (n=74). The findings support the hypothesis for anxiety, but not for social support use. However, females report that they felt social support was more available than males. Second, we predicted and found a positive relationship between the interaction of ego orientation and perceptions of a performance climate on performance anxiety, but only for females. As predicted, perceived ability mediated this relationship. Finally, we predicted that perceptions of a performance climate were related to the view that social support was less available especially for the male athletes. Simple correlation supports this prediction, but the regression analyses did not reach significance. Thus, we could not test for mediation of social support between motivational variables and anxiety. The results illustrate that fostering a mastery climate helps elite athletes tackle competitive pressure.

High-Achieving High School Students and Not so High-Achieving College Students: A Look at Lack of Self-Control, Academic Ability, and Performance in College

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Honken, Nora B.; Ralston, Patricia A. S.

2013-01-01

This study investigated the relationship among lack of self-control, academic ability, and academic performance for a cohort of freshman engineering students who were, with a few exceptions, extremely high achievers in high school. Structural equation modeling analysis led to the conclusion that lack of self-control in high school, as measured by…

Reading Achievement State by State, 1999. Goal 3: Student Achievement and Citizenship.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

National Education Goals Panel (ED), Washington, DC.

Noting that performance at the highest levels of achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is evidence that students have demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter and achieved the third National Educational Goal, this report presents the most up-to-date results in reading achievement for the states and…

Ideal Environment Nurtures Excellence.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baker, Goerge A.; And Others

1983-01-01

Based on interviews with excellent community college teachers and administrators, examines competencies exhibited by effective teachers (i.e., student-centered orientation, value for the learning process, need to influence behavior, and self-belief) and effective administrators (i.e., accepting resonsibility for effective learning climate,…

Using Microsoft Excel to Generate Usage Statistics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Spellman, Rosemary

2011-01-01

At the Libraries Service Center, statistics are generated on a monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis by using four Microsoft Excel workbooks. These statistics provide information about what materials are being requested and by whom. They also give details about why certain requests may not have been filled. Utilizing Excel allows for a shallower…

The relationship between early giftedness and later achievement.

PubMed

Gardner, H

1993-01-01

Although some prodigies grow up to become creative masters as adults, there is no necessary link between early signs of talent and ultimate achievement. Four possible relations between early and late achievement are explored here. The analysis draws upon two lines of evidence: (1) a new theoretical approach that posits the existence of multiple intelligences and examines the important role of the domains and fields in which individuals work; (2) case studies of seven highly creative individuals who lived at the turn of the century. A strong contrast emerges between the adult creator, who must discover the domain in which he or she can excel and the child prodigy, who must invent a creative personality.

Creating a Continuum of Excellence: A U.S. Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence Conference Proceedings (Coral Gables, Florida, 1999).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nalley, Donna

These proceedings of the conference "Creating a Continuum of Excellence: A U.S. Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence Conference," produced by SERVE in collaboration with Nova Southeastern University was held in Coral Gables, Florida, 1999. It lists keynote speakers, action planning meetings, think tanks, and titles of exemplary practice sessions, as…

Excellent long-term patient and graft survival are possible with appropriate use of livers from deceased septuagenarian and octogenarian donors

PubMed Central

Chedid, Marcio F; Rosen, Charles B; Nyberg, Scott L; Heimbach, Julie K

2014-01-01

Background Although increasing donor age adversely affects survival after liver transplantation, livers have been used from selected deceased donors older than 70 years. Although there are reports of excellent short-term results, long-term results are unknown. Our experience was reviewed with septuagenarian and octogenarian deceased donors to determine long-term outcomes. Methods All primary deceased donor liver transplants performed at our institution between July 1998 and December 2010 were reviewed. Recipients of livers procured after circulatory arrest, split and reduced-size livers and multiple organ transplants were excluded from the study. Patient and graft survival were calculated using the Kaplan–Meier method, and survival comparisons were made with the log-rank test. Results In total, 780 patients met inclusion criteria, and 109 patients received livers from donors older than 70 years (range = 70–86). There were no differences in long-term patient (P = 0.67) or graft (P = 0.42) survival between hepatitis C negative recipients of livers from older compared with younger donors. In contrast, 7-year survival for HCV-positive recipients of older donor livers was less than half that of HCV-negative recipients. Discussion Transplantation of livers from septua- and octogenarian donors can achieve excellent long-term patient and graft survival for selected HCV-negative patients. PMID:24467292

Four Language Skills Performance, Academic Achievement, and Learning Strategy Use in Preservice Teacher Training Programs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shawer, Saad Fathy

2016-01-01

This article examines the differences in language learning strategies (LLS) use between preservice teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) and Arabic as a second language (ASL). It also examines the relationship between LLS use and language performance (academic achievement and four language skills) among ASL students. The study made use…

Blood Pressure Directed Booster Trainings Improve Intensive Care Unit Provider Retention of Excellent Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Skills.

PubMed

Wolfe, Heather; Maltese, Matthew R; Niles, Dana E; Fischman, Elizabeth; Legkobitova, Veronika; Leffelman, Jessica; Berg, Robert A; Nadkarni, Vinay M; Sutton, Robert M

2015-11-01

Brief, intermittent cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training sessions, "Booster Trainings," improve CPR skill acquisition and short-term retention. The objective of this study was to incorporate arterial blood pressure (ABP) tracings into Booster Trainings to improve CPR skill retention. We hypothesized that ABP-directed CPR "Booster Trainings" would improve intensive care unit (ICU) provider 3-month retention of excellent CPR skills without need for interval retraining. A CPR manikin creating a realistic relationship between chest compression depth and ABP was used for training/testing. Thirty-six ICU providers were randomized to brief, bedside ABP-directed CPR manikin skill retrainings: (1) Booster Plus (ABP visible during training and testing) versus (2) Booster Alone (ABP visible only during training, not testing) versus (3) control (testing, no intervention). Subjects completed skill tests pretraining (baseline), immediately after training (acquisition), and then retention was assessed at 12 hours, 3 and 6 months. The primary outcome was retention of excellent CPR skills at 3 months. Excellent CPR was defined as systolic blood pressure of 100 mm Hg or higher and compression rate 100 to 120 per minute. Overall, 14 of 24 (58%) participants acquired excellent CPR skills after their initial training (Booster Plus 75% vs 50% Booster Alone, P = 0.21). Adjusted for age, ABP-trained providers were 5.2× more likely to perform excellent CPR after the initial training (95% confidence interval [95% CI], 1.3-21.2; P = 0.02), and to retain these skills at 12 hours (adjusted odds ratio, 4.4; 95% CI, 1.3-14.9; P = 0.018) and 3 months (adjusted odds ratio, 4.1; 95% CI, 1.2-13.9; P = 0.023) when compared to baseline performance. The ABP-directed CPR booster trainings improved ICU provider 3-month retention of excellent CPR skills without the need for interval retraining.

The performance of solar thermal electric power systems employing small heat engines

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Pons, R. L.

1980-01-01

The paper presents a comparative analysis of small (10 to 100 KWe) heat engines for use with a solar thermal electric system employing the point-focusing, distributed receiver (PF-DR) concept. Stirling, Brayton, and Rankine cycle engines are evaluated for a nominal overall system power level of 1 MWe, although the concept is applicable to power levels up to at least 10 MWe. Multiple concentrators are electrically connected to achieve the desired plant output. Best performance is achieved with the Stirling engine, resulting in a system Levelized Busbar Energy Cost of just under 50 mills/kWH and a Capital Cost of $900/kW, based on the use of mass-produced components. Brayton and Rankine engines show somewhat less performance but are viable alternatives with particular benefits for special applications. All three engines show excellent performance for the small community application.

The computerized OMAHA system in microsoft office excel.

PubMed

Lai, Xiaobin; Wong, Frances K Y; Zhang, Peiqiang; Leung, Carenx W Y; Lee, Lai H; Wong, Jessica S Y; Lo, Yim F; Ching, Shirley S Y

2014-01-01

The OMAHA System was adopted as the documentation system in an interventional study. To systematically record client care and facilitate data analysis, two Office Excel files were developed. The first Excel file (File A) was designed to record problems, care procedure, and outcomes for individual clients according to the OMAHA System. It was used by the intervention nurses in the study. The second Excel file (File B) was the summary of all clients that had been automatically extracted from File A. Data in File B can be analyzed directly in Excel or imported in PASW for further analysis. Both files have four parts to record basic information and the three parts of the OMAHA System. The computerized OMAHA System simplified the documentation procedure and facilitated the management and analysis of data.

Measuring Metacognition and Reaction Time: Further Findings on the Performances of General Education, Low-Achieving, and Institutionally Raised Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Al-Hilawani, Yasser A.; Abdullah, Ahmad A.

2010-01-01

The purpose of this study was to use the picture format to examine in depth the metacognitive performances and reaction time in general education, low-achieving, and institutionally raised students. Results revealed that institutionally raised students, unlike low-achieving students, took significantly the longest reaction time to finish the test…

A Correlation Study among Achievement Motivation, Goal-Setting and L2 Learning Strategy in EFL Context

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Han, Jing; Lu, Qingsheng

2018-01-01

Achievement motivation as one of the most important parts in learning motivation indicates a concern with success in competition with some standard of excellence. Learners who are highly motivated to learn a language are likely to use a variety of strategies. Besides achievement motivation, goal setting, a very important cognitive mediator between…

In Search of Excellence--For Ordinary People. [Parts 1 and 2]. Innovation Abstracts, Volume VI, Numbers 22 and 32.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

DeHart, A. Robert

1984-01-01

"In Search of Excellence," by Peters and Waterman identifies one characteristic of corporate excellence as "unusual effort on the part of apparently ordinary employees." The community college has many students who fit into the category of "ordinary people." Their academic performance can be maximized by recognizing their individual differences,…

Carry On-with Excellence.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thompson, Helen

2002-01-01

Discussion of the expanded role of teacher for library media specialists focuses on characteristics of teaching excellence based on a story about the life of Nathaniel Bowditch. Highlights include lifelong learning; caring about learners; believing everyone can learn; reflecting on teaching methods; understanding human nature; and contributing to…

Excellent Writers, Facile Thinkers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jacoby, Russell

2007-01-01

In this article, the author discusses the writing style of conservative writers. Here, the author describes conservatism and conservative writers as excellent and facile thinkers. He added that conservatives are best at puncturing liberal, especially academic, balderdash. Apart from that, they uphold a minimal government but maximum government…

Untangling Performance from Success

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yucesoy, Burcu; Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo

Fame, popularity and celebrity status, frequently used tokens of success, are often loosely related to, or even divorced from professional performance. This dichotomy is partly rooted in the difficulty to distinguish performance, an individual measure that captures the actions of a performer, from success, a collective measure that captures a community's reactions to these actions. Yet, finding the relationship between the two measures is essential for all areas that aim to objectively reward excellence, from science to business. Here we quantify the relationship between performance and success by focusing on tennis, an individual sport where the two quantities can be independently measured. We show that a predictive model, relying only on a tennis player's performance in tournaments, can accurately predict an athlete's popularity, both during a player's active years and after retirement. Hence the model establishes a direct link between performance and momentary popularity. The agreement between the performance-driven and observed popularity suggests that in most areas of human achievement exceptional visibility may be rooted in detectable performance measures. This research was supported by Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) under agreement FA9550-15-1-0077.

Two-Step Irradiance Treatment Can Achieve Excellent Pain Control During Red Light 5-Aminolevulinic Acid Photodynamic Therapy for Actinic Keratoses.

PubMed

Paragh, Gyorgy; Zeitouni, Nathalie C

2018-03-01

To evaluate the ability of two-step irradiance to maintain pain control during red light 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA) photodynamic therapy (PDT) for actinic keratoses (AK) and assess factors influencing pain. PDT provides excellent clinical and cosmetic results in the treatment AK and early basal cell carcinomas (BCC). Widespread use of PDT is limited, in part, by pain. A two-step irradiance method for PDT has previously been shown to significantly reduce PDT-associated pain during the treatment of BCC, but the ability of this method to limit pain during the treatment of AKs has not been reported. We performed a retrospective chart review to assess the level of pain during AK treatment by red light PDT (n = 99). Natural density filter was used to reduce the irradiance of the light source and initially 10 J/cm 2 dose was delivered at 35 mW/cm 2 and then, 65 J/cm 2 dose was delivered at 70 mW/cm 2 . Pain level was measured using a 10-point visual analog scale at three points during the procedure. Pain was low to moderate in most patients (mean ± standard error of the mean pain score: 2.35 ± 0.19). Higher pain was seen midprocedure versus at the beginning (p < 0.0001) and at the end (p = 0.003) of PDT. There was no significant difference in pain perception between genders and different treatment areas. Our results provide evidence that red light ALA PDT of AKs is very well tolerated with the two-step irradiance protocol.

Return to sport: Does excellent 6-month strength and function following ACL reconstruction predict midterm outcomes?

PubMed

Sousa, Paul L; Krych, Aaron J; Cates, Robert A; Levy, Bruce A; Stuart, Michael J; Dahm, Diane L

2017-05-01

The purpose of this study was to determine whether patients with excellent 6-month functional testing after ACL reconstruction had (1) higher risk of subsequent ACL tears, (2) superior knee function, and (3) increased activity levels compared to those with delayed clearance for return to sports at midterm follow-up. A total of 223 patients underwent primary ACL reconstruction by a single surgeon and had functional and isokinetic testing performed 6 months post-operatively between 1998 and 2005. Of the 223 patients, 52 (23 %) made the excellent group and were allowed return to sport at 6 months, and the remaining 171 (77 %) constituted the delayed group. Rate of ACL graft tear and native contralateral ACL tear was compared between groups. In addition, IKDC and Tegner scores were compared at a mean 4-year follow-up. The graft rupture rate was similar in the excellent group (3.8 %, n = 2) compared to the delayed group (4.7 %, n = 8; p = 0.30). However, there was a higher rate of contralateral ACL tear in the excellent group (15.4 %, n = 8 vs. 5.3 %, n = 9; p = 0.003). The excellent 6-month group had superior IKDC scores (94.3 ± 6.4 vs. 90.9 ± 9.7; p = 0.04) and Tegner scores (6.6 ± 1.8 vs. 5.7 ± 1.6; p = 0.01). Patients with an excellent performance on their isokinetic strength and functional testing at 6 months after ACL reconstruction have superior knee function and higher activity levels at midterm follow-up. However, these patients appear to be at greater risk of contralateral ACL injury, which may be related to their increased activity level. When isokinetic and functional testing is used for return-to-sport decisions, physicians should caution patients about the risk of contralateral ACL injury for high performing patients. Retrospective Review with Control, Level III.

Consequences of the Confucian Culture: High Achievement but Negative Psychological Attributes?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ho, Irene T.; Hau, Kit-Tai

2010-01-01

In "Unforgiving Confucian culture: A breeding ground for high academic achievement, test anxiety and self-doubt?" Stankov (in press) provides three reasons for caution against over-glorifying the academic excellence of Confucian Asian learners, namely that it may lead to a reluctance to change their rote learning approach which is not conducive to…

NOBLE and EXCEL: The debate for excellence in dealing with left main stenosis.

PubMed

Kindi, Hamood Al; Samaan, Amir; Hosny, Hatem

2018-03-14

Left main coronary artery (LMCA) disease is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Coronary artery bypass grafting surgery (CABG) has always been the standard revascularization strategy for this group of patients. However, with the recent developments in stents design and medical therapy over the past decade, several trials have been designed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) as an alternative to CABG surgery in patients with LMCA disease. Recently, the results of two major trials, EXCEL and NOBLE, comparing CABG versus PCI in this patient population have been released. In fact, the results of both trials might appear contradictory at first glance. While the EXCEL trial showed that PCI was non-inferior to CABG surgery, the NOBLE trial suggested that CABG surgery is a better option. In the following review, we will discuss some of the similarities and contrasts between these two trials and conclude with lessons to be learned to our daily practice.

NOBLE and EXCEL: The debate for excellence in dealing with left main stenosis

PubMed Central

Kindi, Hamood Al; Samaan, Amir

Left main coronary artery (LMCA) disease is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Coronary artery bypass grafting surgery (CABG) has always been the standard revascularization strategy for this group of patients. However, with the recent developments in stents design and medical therapy over the past decade, several trials have been designed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) as an alternative to CABG surgery in patients with LMCA disease. Recently, the results of two major trials, EXCEL and NOBLE, comparing CABG versus PCI in this patient population have been released. In fact, the results of both trials might appear contradictory at first glance. While the EXCEL trial showed that PCI was non-inferior to CABG surgery, the NOBLE trial suggested that CABG surgery is a better option. In the following review, we will discuss some of the similarities and contrasts between these two trials and conclude with lessons to be learned to our daily practice. PMID:29644230

Performance measures for improving the prevention of venous thromboembolism: achievement in clinical practice.

PubMed

Wilson, Kenneth C; Merli, Geno J

2011-10-01

Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a common complication during and after hospitalization for acute medical illness or surgery. Despite the existence of evidence-based guidelines for VTE prevention, real-world prescribing practices are frequently suboptimal. Specific performance measures relating to VTE prevention and treatment have been developed by US health care organizations to increase adherence with best-practice recommendations and ultimately reduce the number of preventable VTE events. Two measures developed by the Surgical Care Improvement Project have been endorsed by the National Quality Forum (NQF) and focus on VTE prevention. In addition, six measures have been developed recently by The Joint Commission in collaboration with the NQF; three measures relate to VTE prevention and three focus on treatment. To attain widespread achievement of these performance goals, it is essential to raise awareness of their existence and specifications. It is also imperative that hospitals develop and implement effective VTE protocols. The use of multiple, active strategies, such as computer decision support systems with regular audit and feedback, may be particularly valuable approaches to improve current practices within an integrated quality improvement program. During practical implementation of VTE protocols at Norton Healthcare (Kentucky's largest healthcare system), strong leadership, physician engagement, and caregiver accountability were identified as key factors influencing the process. As such, more hospitals may be able to increase adherence with guidelines, improve achievement of quality goals, and help to reduce the substantial burden associated with avoidable VTE.

Creating and Sustaining a Culture of Excellence: Insights From Accomplished University Team-Sport Coaches.

PubMed

Donoso-Morales, Daniela; Bloom, Gordon A; Caron, Jeffrey G

2017-12-01

Winning several national championships is an extraordinary feat that very few university coaches have accomplished. The objective of this study was to investigate how some of Canada's most accomplished university team-sport coaches created and sustained a culture of excellence in their programs. Six university coaches who had won more than 30 national titles participated in this study. Each coach participated in a semistructured interview, and the qualitative data were inductively analyzed using a thematic analysis. The coaches noted that hard work and daily attention to detail, effective emotional management of themselves and their athletes, and continuous self-assessment (self-reflection and seeking mentors) were crucial elements that led to sustained excellence in their programs. This study offers one of the first empirical accounts of how highly successful university coaches developed and maintained a culture of excellence and success in their high-performance sport setting.

Enriching the hierarchical model of achievement motivation: autonomous and controlling reasons underlying achievement goals.

PubMed

Michou, Aikaterini; Vansteenkiste, Maarten; Mouratidis, Athanasios; Lens, Willy

2014-12-01

The hierarchical model of achievement motivation presumes that achievement goals channel the achievement motives of need for achievement and fear of failure towards motivational outcomes. Yet, less is known whether autonomous and controlling reasons underlying the pursuit of achievement goals can serve as additional pathways between achievement motives and outcomes. We tested whether mastery approach, performance approach, and performance avoidance goals and their underlying autonomous and controlling reasons would jointly explain the relation between achievement motives (i.e., fear of failure and need for achievement) and learning strategies (Study 1). Additionally, we examined whether the autonomous and controlling reasons underlying learners' dominant achievement goal would account for the link between achievement motives and the educational outcomes of learning strategies and cheating (Study 2). Six hundred and six Greek adolescent students (Mage = 15.05, SD = 1.43) and 435 university students (Mage M = 20.51, SD = 2.80) participated in studies 1 and 2, respectively. In both studies, a correlational design was used and the hypotheses were tested via path modelling. Autonomous and controlling reasons underlying the pursuit of achievement goals mediated, respectively, the relation of need for achievement and fear of failure to aspects of learning outcomes. Autonomous and controlling reasons underlying achievement goals could further explain learners' functioning in achievement settings. © 2014 The British Psychological Society.

The Black-White-Other Achievement Gap: Testing Theories of Academic Performance among Multiracial and Monoracial Adolescents

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Herman, Melissa R.

2009-01-01

The study presented here tested three theories of racial differences in academic performance among monoracial and multiracial high school students. These theories (status attainment, oppositional culture, and educational attitudes) were developed to explain differences in achievement among monoracial groups, but the study tested how the theories…

The relation between perceived parental involvement and academic achievement: the roles of Taiwanese students' academic beliefs and filial piety.

PubMed

Chen, Wei-Wen; Ho, Hsiu-Zu

2012-01-01

The excellent academic performance among East-Asian students has drawn international attention from educators and psychologists. However, the process that underlies student academic achievement for this particular group has rarely been documented. The present study examines how the relation between perceived parental involvement and Taiwanese students' academic achievement is mediated by student academic beliefs (i.e., beliefs about effort, academic self-concept, and perceived control). The study further explores whether this mediating effect varies with types of filial piety. Participants were 468 first-year students from colleges and universities in Taiwan. Multiple-group mediating models were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). Results indicated that, for the Taiwanese sample, students' academic beliefs mediated the relation between perceived parental involvement and academic achievement. Furthermore, the mediational effect was significant for the reciprocal filial type, but not for the authoritarian filial type. The importance of the quality of the parent-child relationship and the internalization process related to children's assumptions of their parents' educational values indicate the need for a contextual view when examining predictors of student academic achievement.

When nursing takes ownership of financial outcomes: achieving exceptional financial performance through leadership, strategy, and execution.

PubMed

Goetz, Kristopher; Janney, Michelle; Ramsey, Kristin

2011-01-01

With nurses and unlicensed supportive personnel composing the greatest percentage of the workforce at any hospital, it is not surprising nursing leadership plays an increasing role in the attainment of financial goals. The nursing leadership team at one academic medical center reduced costs by more than $10 million over 4 years while outperforming national benchmarks on nurse-sensitive quality indicators. The most critical success factor in attaining exceptional financial performance is a personal and collective accountability to achieving outcomes. Whether it is financial improvement, advancing patient safety, or ensuring a highly engaged workforce, success will not be attained without thoughtful, focused leadership. The accountability model ensures there is a culture built around financial performance where nurses and leaders think and act, on a daily basis, in a manner necessary to understand opportunities, find answers, and overcome obstacles. While structures, processes, and tools may serve as the means to achieve a target, it is leadership's responsibility to set the right goal and motivate others.

Cultivating Excellence: A Curriculum for Excellence in School Administration. V. School-Based Management.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lawson, John

This report is the fifth in a series on cultivating excellence in education for the purpose of training and retraining school leaders of the 1990s. The role of school administrators, and especially building principals; the characteristic administrative functions; the step-by-step procedures for implementation; and the advantages and possible…

Preliminary performance of a vertical-attitude takeoff and landing, supersonic cruise aircraft concept having thrust vectoring integrated into the flight control system

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Robins, A. W.; Beissner, F. L., Jr.; Domack, C. S.; Swanson, E. E.

1985-01-01

A performance study was made of a vertical attitude takeoff and landing (VATOL), supersonic cruise aircraft concept having thrust vectoring integrated into the flight control system. Those characteristics considered were aerodynamics, weight, balance, and performance. Preliminary results indicate that high levels of supersonic aerodynamic performance can be achieved. Further, with the assumption of an advanced (1985 technology readiness) low bypass ratio turbofan engine and advanced structures, excellent mission performance capability is indicated.

Excellence in Teacher Education. 1968 Distinguished Achievement Awards of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, Washington, DC.

The University of Maryland received the distinguished achievement award for its development and implementation of the Teacher Education Center concept as a unified approach to the study of teaching and supervision. Recognition awards were also given to (1) The University of New Mexico for its New Elementary Teacher Education Program combining the…

Sex Differences in Attribution of Achievement and Actual Achievement.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Erkut, Sumru

One-hundred-seventy-six male and 116 female college freshmen took part in a questionnaire study of sex differences in attribution of achievemnt. Achievement was operationalized as grade point index, a performance measure of significance to the subjects, where success-failure feedback is contingent on one's own performance. The best predictor of…

The Achievement Motivation-Performance Relationship as Moderated by Sex-Role Attitudes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thurber, Steven

1976-01-01

The moderating effect of sex-role attitudes in relation to the predictive validity of Mehrabian's achievement tendency scale for females is examined. The scale predicts better for academic achievement with females classified as non-traditional in sex-role orientation, and in social achievement for females classified as traditional. (Author/JKS)

Strategic Staffing? How Performance Pressures Affect the Distribution of Teachers within Schools and Resulting Student Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Grissom, Jason A.; Kalogrides, Demetra; Loeb, Susanna

2017-01-01

School performance pressures apply disproportionately to tested grades and subjects. Using longitudinal administrative data--including achievement data from untested grades--and teacher survey data from a large urban district, we examine schools' responses to those pressures in assigning teachers to high-stakes and low-stakes classrooms. We find…

Excellent Beginnings: Evaluation of Phase I (1991-1994).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brickman, Alan

In 1991 the Plan for Social Excellence, Inc., funded three elementary schools to design and implement a comprehensive early childhood education program. This funding initiative, entitled "Excellent Beginnings," supports programs that include innovative curriculum and classroom-management strategies, extensive parent participation, the use of high…

An initial assessment of the performance achieved by the Seasat-1 radar altimeter

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Townsend, W. F.

1980-01-01

The results of an initial on-orbit engineering assessment of the performance achieved by the radar altimeter system flown on SEASAT-1 are presented. Additionally, the general design characteristics of this system are discussed and illustrations of altimeter data product are provided. The instrument consists of a 13.5 GHz monostatic radar system that tracks in range only using a one meter parabolic antenna pointed at the satellite nadir. Two of its unique features are a linear FM transmitter with 320 MHz bandwidth which yields a 3.125 nanosecond time delay resolution, and microprocessor implemented closed loop range tracking, automatic gain control (AGC), and real time estimation of significant wave height (SWH). Results presented show that the altimeter generally performed in accordance with its orginal performance requirments of measuring altitude to a precision of less the 10 cm RMS, significant wave height to an accuracy of + or - 0.5 m or 10%, whichever is greater, and ocean backscatter coefficient to an accuracy of + or - 1 db, all over an SWH range of 1 to 20 meters.

Confirmatory factor analysis using Microsoft Excel.

PubMed

Miles, Jeremy N V

2005-11-01

This article presents a method for using Microsoft (MS) Excel for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). CFA is often seen as an impenetrable technique, and thus, when it is taught, there is frequently little explanation of the mechanisms or underlying calculations. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that this is not the case; it is relatively straightforward to produce a spreadsheet in MS Excel that can carry out simple CFA. It is possible, with few or no programming skills, to effectively program a CFA analysis and, thus, to gain insight into the workings of the procedure.

CDF-XL: computing cumulative distribution functions of reaction time data in Excel.

PubMed

Houghton, George; Grange, James A

2011-12-01

In experimental psychology, central tendencies of reaction time (RT) distributions are used to compare different experimental conditions. This emphasis on the central tendency ignores additional information that may be derived from the RT distribution itself. One method for analysing RT distributions is to construct cumulative distribution frequency plots (CDFs; Ratcliff, Psychological Bulletin 86:446-461, 1979). However, this method is difficult to implement in widely available software, severely restricting its use. In this report, we present an Excel-based program, CDF-XL, for constructing and analysing CDFs, with the aim of making such techniques more readily accessible to researchers, including students (CDF-XL can be downloaded free of charge from the Psychonomic Society's online archive). CDF-XL functions as an Excel workbook and starts from the raw experimental data, organised into three columns (Subject, Condition, and RT) on an Input Data worksheet (a point-and-click utility is provided for achieving this format from a broader data set). No further preprocessing or sorting of the data is required. With one click of a button, CDF-XL will generate two forms of cumulative analysis: (1) "standard" CDFs, based on percentiles of participant RT distributions (by condition), and (2) a related analysis employing the participant means of rank-ordered RT bins. Both analyses involve partitioning the data in similar ways, but the first uses a "median"-type measure at the participant level, while the latter uses the mean. The results are presented in three formats: (i) by participants, suitable for entry into further statistical analysis; (ii) grand means by condition; and (iii) completed CDF plots in Excel charts.

77 FR 15089 - Equity and Excellence Commission Meeting

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-03-14

.... ADDRESSES: The Commission will meet in Washington, DC at the United States Department of Education at 400... Excellence Commission will hold an open meeting in Washington, DC at the United States Department of... DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Equity and Excellence Commission Meeting AGENCY: Office for Civil Rights...

Behavioral Performance and Neural Areas Associated with Memory Processes Contribute to Math and Reading Achievement in 6-year-old Children.

PubMed

Blankenship, Tashauna L; Keith, Kayla; Calkins, Susan D; Bell, Martha Ann

2018-01-01

Associations between working memory and academic achievement (math and reading) are well documented. Surprisingly, little is known of the contributions of episodic memory, segmented into temporal memory (recollection proxy) and item recognition (familiarity proxy), to academic achievement. This is the first study to observe these associations in typically developing 6-year old children. Overlap in neural correlates exists between working memory, episodic memory, and math and reading achievement. We attempted to tease apart the neural contributions of working memory, temporal memory, and item recognition to math and reading achievement. Results suggest that working memory and temporal memory, but not item recognition, are important contributors to both math and reading achievement, and that EEG power during a working memory task contributes to performance on tests of academic achievement.

Achievement Emotions and Academic Performance: Longitudinal Models of Reciprocal Effects

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pekrun, Reinhard; Lichtenfeld, Stephanie; Marsh, Herbert W.; Murayama, Kou; Goetz, Thomas

2017-01-01

A reciprocal effects model linking emotion and achievement over time is proposed. The model was tested using five annual waves of the Project for the Analysis of Learning and Achievement in Mathematics (PALMA) longitudinal study, which investigated adolescents' development in mathematics (Grades 5-9; N = 3,425 German students; mean starting…

Gamed by the System: Adequate Yearly Progress as an Indicator of Persistently Low-Achieving School Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hochbein, Craig; Mitchell, Amanda M.; Pollio, Martin

2013-01-01

The recent policy focus on the turnaround of persistently low-achieving schools has generated considerable debate about the reforms needed to dramatically and quickly increase school performance. The purpose of this article is not to focus on specific turnaround interventions, but rather on the identification of schools slated to receive these…

Light-responsive smart surface with controllable wettability and excellent stability.

PubMed

Zhou, Yin-Ning; Li, Jin-Jin; Zhang, Qing; Luo, Zheng-Hong

2014-10-21

Novel fluorinated gradient copolymer was designed for smart surface with light-responsive controllable wettability and excellent stability. The switchable mechanism and physicochemical characteristics of the as-prepared surface decorated by designed polymeric material were investigated by ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) spectrum, scanning electron microscope (SEM), atomic force microscope (AFM), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Thanks to the functional film and surface roughening, etched silicon surface fabricated by copolymer involving spiropyran (Sp) moieties possesses a fairly large variation range of WCA (28.1°) and achieves the transformation between hydrophilicity (95.2° < 109.2°) and hydrophobicity (123.3° > 109.2°) relative to blank sample (109.2°). The synthetic strategy and developed smart surface offer a promising application in coating with controllable wettability, which bridge the gap between chemical structure and material properties.

High-Performance and Omnidirectional Thin-Film Amorphous Silicon Solar Cell Modules Achieved by 3D Geometry Design.

PubMed

Yu, Dongliang; Yin, Min; Lu, Linfeng; Zhang, Hanzhong; Chen, Xiaoyuan; Zhu, Xufei; Che, Jianfei; Li, Dongdong

2015-11-01

High-performance thin-film hydrogenated amorphous silicon solar cells are achieved by combining macroscale 3D tubular substrates and nanoscaled 3D cone-like antireflective films. The tubular geometry delivers a series of advantages for large-scale deployment of photovoltaics, such as omnidirectional performance, easier encapsulation, decreased wind resistance, and easy integration with a second device inside the glass tube. © 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

When performance-approach goals predict academic achievement and when they do not: a social value approach.

PubMed

Dompnier, Benoît; Darnon, Céline; Butera, Fabrizio

2013-09-01

Research on achievement goal promotion at University has shown that performance-approach goals are perceived as a means to succeed at University (high social utility) but are not appreciated (low social desirability). We argue that such a paradox could explain why research has detected that performance-approach goals consistently predict academic grades. First-year psychology students answered a performance-approach goal scale with standard, social desirability and social utility instructions. Participants' grades were recorded at the end of the semester. Results showed that the relationship between performance-approach goals and grades was inhibited by the increase of these goals' social desirability and facilitated by the increase of their social utility, revealing that the predictive validity of performance-approach goals depends on social value. © 2013 The British Psychological Society.

Synthesis of u-channelled spherical Fex(CoyNi1-y)100-x Janus colloidal particles with excellent electromagnetic wave absorption performance.

PubMed

Li, Hao; Cao, Zhenming; Lin, Jiayao; Zhao, Hui; Jiang, Qiaorong; Jiang, Zhiyuan; Liao, Honggang; Kuang, Qin; Xie, Zhaoxiong

2018-01-25

Due to their distinctive structure, inherently anisotropic properties and broad applications, Janus colloidal particles have attracted tremendous attention and it is significant to synthesize high yield Janus colloidal particles in a cost-effective and reliable way. On the other hand, due to the expanded electromagnetic interference problems, it is highly desired to develop excellent electromagnetic wave absorbing materials with an ultra-wide absorption bandwidth for practical application. Herein, a confined liquid-solid redox reaction strategy has been developed to fabricate a series of Fe x (Co y Ni 1-y ) 100-x ternary alloy particles. The as-prepared particles are in the form of u-channelled noncentrosymmetric spheres, one kind of Janus colloidal particles which have been rarely observed. Due to the combination and synergy effects of multi-magnetic metals, the polycrystalline structure and their specific morphology, the as-prepared particles possess multiple magnetic resonance and multiple dielectric relaxation processes, and therefore show excellent electromagnetic wave absorption performances. In particular, the strongest reflection loss (RL) of the Fe 15 (Co 0.2 Ni 0.8 ) 85 Janus colloidal particles is up to -36.9 dB with a thickness of 2.5 mm, and the effective absorption (RL < -10 dB) bandwidth can reach 9.2 GHz (8-17.2 GHz) with a thickness of 2 mm. Such a wide bandwidth has barely been reported for magnetic metal alloys under a single thickness. These results suggest that the Fe x (Co y Ni 1-y ) 100-x Janus particles could be a promising candidate for highly efficient electromagnetic wave absorbing materials for practical application.

Taking It to the Next Level: Components of Excellent Secondary Educators.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zarra, Ernest J., III

This paper addresses what makes an excellent secondary school teacher, what training should occur for potential secondary school teachers to enable classroom excellence, what characteristics define such excellence, and whether excellence is learned or is the product of a particular predisposition, or both. It begins by explaining how excellent…

Unionization and Academic Excellence. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions (13th, New York, New York, April 1985).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Douglas, Joel M., Ed.

Issues concerning excellence in education and the 1985 strike at Yale University are considered in 27 conference papers. Topics include: a faculty and chancellor's perspectives on achieving excellence, employment discrimination, collective bargaining in community colleges, retirement issues, and campus bargaining and the law. Titles and authors…

Partners in Pittsburgh Public Schools' Excellence for All Initiative: Findings from the First Year of Implementation. Documented Briefing. DB-544-FFE

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tharp-Taylor, Shannah; Nelson, Catherine Awsumb; Dembosky, Jacob W.; Gill, Brian

2007-01-01

The Pittsburgh Public School District asked the RAND Corporation to monitor the first year's implementation (2006-2007) of Excellence for All (EFA) and provide feedback to district staff, the board, and other stakeholders. The Pittsburgh Public School District leadership developed EFA with the aim of increasing student achievement by improving…

Torsional Angle Driver (TorAD) System for HyperChem/Excel

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Starkey, Ronald

1999-02-01

The torsional angle driver system for HyperChem/Excel is a package of several Excel spreadsheets and macro programs to be used with HyperChem to obtain and plot information, such as total energy, for the conformations that result from a 360° rotation about a torsional angle system in a molecule. The TorAD system also includes several HyperChem scripts to facilitate its use. TorAD was developed for use in the undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory. The results obtained with TorAD could be obtained manually with HyperChem, but it would take considerable time and would not be instructive to the students. Use of the TorAD system allows students to spend their time on the more important aspect of conformation analysisinterpretation of results. The Excel spreadsheet/macro programs in TorAD include:

· Tor_xl_a and tor_xl obtain and plot the total energy at 5° torsional-angle intervals. The calculation method, the torsional-angle restraint, and the structure to be used at each angle can be set by the user. The advanced version, tor_xl_a, which requires HyperChem 4.5 or later, also allows torsional-angle structures to be saved for later recall as individual structures or, using a HyperChem script, in a movie format. It also provides a rapid scan of the 360° rotation where only single-point calculations, rather than geometry optimizations, are performed. The tor_xl system will perform routine tasks in a manner suitable for most instructional settings. · Tor_Comp performs molecular mechanics optimizations at 5° intervals and obtains and plots four energy parameters (total, torsional, nonbonded, and bond [bend plus stretch] energy) as a function of torsional angle. The calculation method and the restraint can be specified. · TorDipol produces a plot of the total energy and the calculated dipole moment at 5° steps of the torsional angle. The default calculation is the semi-empirical AM

Social intelligence and academic achievement as predictors of adolescent popularity.

PubMed

Meijs, Noortje; Cillessen, Antonius H N; Scholte, Ron H J; Segers, Eliane; Spijkerman, Renske

2010-01-01

This study compared the effects of social intelligence and cognitive intelligence, as measured by academic achievement, on adolescent popularity in two school contexts. A distinction was made between sociometric popularity, a measure of acceptance, and perceived popularity, a measure of social dominance. Participants were 512, 14-15 year-old adolescents (56% girls, 44% boys) in vocational and college preparatory schools in Northwestern Europe. Perceived popularity was significantly related to social intelligence, but not to academic achievement, in both contexts. Sociometric popularity was predicted by an interaction between academic achievement and social intelligence, further qualified by school context. Whereas college bound students gained sociometric popularity by excelling both socially and academically, vocational students benefited from doing well either socially or academically, but not in combination. The implications of these findings were discussed.

Three-Capital Approach to the Study of Young People Who Excel in Vocational Occupations: A Case of WorldSkills Competitors and Entrepreneurship

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chankseliani, Maia; Relly, Susan James

2016-01-01

This paper examines the entrepreneurial inclinations of young people who achieved excellence in vocational occupations. We propose a three-capital approach to the study of entrepreneurship. Relying on the existing theories and original qualitative and quantitative data analyses, findings from interviews with 30 entrepreneurial and 10…

Steltzer Receives 2013 Sulzman Award for Excellence in Education and Mentoring: Citation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Weintraub, Michael N.

2014-07-01

Heidi Steltzer, an assistant professor at Fort Lewis College, received the 2013 Sulzman Award for Excellence in Education and Mentoring at the 2013 Fall Meeting. This award "recognizes women in AGU who have sustained an active research career in a field related to biogeosciences, while excelling in teaching and especially in mentoring young scientists." Awardees are to serve as critical role models for the next generation of female scientists by sharing their passion for the natural world. Those who know her best agree that Heidi's passion for teaching and training the next generation of researchers truly embodies the spirit of the Sulzman award. According to one nominator, "Heidi single-handedly pushed [her] department toward a more modern and integrated view of the biological sciences, revamping curricula in both majors' and non-majors' courses to include citizen science, cross-disciplinary investigation techniques, and thought-provoking forays into real-world/real-time problems." Another nominator commented that "Heidi has made an incredibly strong impact on the careers of countless students through both compassionate and enthusiastic mentoring, as well as leadership in institutional and programmatic efforts that foster student professional development and that provide research experiences. I think it is extraordinary that at this relatively early point in her career, she has already achieved a lasting legacy."

Recognizing a Centre of Excellence in Ontario's Colleges

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Litwin, Jeffrey M.

2012-01-01

The term "Centre of Excellence" is increasingly used by Ontario's colleges with the expectation of portraying a superior level of proficiency, expertise, or investment in a particular academic discipline or program cluster. This paper proposes that the term Centre of Excellence should have a clearer definition so that when one of…

What Excellent Community Colleges Do: Preparing All Students for Success

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wyner, Joshua S.

2014-01-01

In "What Excellent Community Colleges Do," Joshua S. Wyner draws on the insights and evidence gained in administering the inaugural Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence. This book identifies four domains of excellence--degree completion, equity, student learning, and labor market success--and describes in rich detail the policies…

Texas Educator Excellence Grant (TEEG) Program: Year Three Evaluation Report. Policy Evaluation Report

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Springer, Matthew G.; Lewis, Jessica L.; Podgursky, Michael J.; Ehlert, Mark W.; Gronberg, Timothy J.; Hamilton, Laura S.; Jansen, Dennis W.; Stecher, Brian M.; Taylor, Lori L.; Lopez, Omar S.; Peng, Art

2009-01-01

The Texas Educator Excellence Grant (TEEG) program was state-funded and provided annual grants to schools to design and implement performance pay plans during the 2006-07 to 2009-10 school year. This report builds on the previous TEEG evaluation reports, presenting findings from three years of the TEEG program. Overall, the report discusses the…

Governor's Educator Excellence Grant (GEEG) Program: Year One Evaluation Report. Policy Evaluation Report

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Springer, Matthew G.; Podgursky, Michael J.; Lewis, Jessica L.; Ehlert, Mark W.; Gardner, Catherine G.; Ghoshdastidar, Bonnie; Lopez, Omar S.; Patterson, Christine H.; Taylor, Lori L.

2007-01-01

This report presents findings stemming from the first-year evaluation of the Governor's Educator Excellence Grant (GEEG) program, one of several statewide performance incentive programs in Texas. In the fall of 2006, the GEEG program made available non-competitive, three-year grants to 99 schools ranging from $60,000 to $220,000 per year. Grants…

Simulation of complex pharmacokinetic models in Microsoft Excel.

PubMed

Meineke, Ingolf; Brockmöller, Jürgen

2007-12-01

With the arrival of powerful personal computers in the office numerical methods are accessible to everybody. Simulation of complex processes therefore has become an indispensible tool in research and education. In this paper Microsoft EXCEL is used as a platform for a universal differential equation solver. The software is designed as an add-in aiming at a minimum of required user input to perform a given task. Four examples are included to demonstrate both, the simplicity of use and the versatility of possible applications. While the layout of the program is admittedly geared to the needs of pharmacokineticists, it can be used in any field where sets of differential equations are involved. The software package is available upon request.

A high performance lithium ion capacitor achieved by the integration of a Sn-C anode and a biomass-derived microporous activated carbon cathode

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sun, Fei; Gao, Jihui; Zhu, Yuwen; Pi, Xinxin; Wang, Lijie; Liu, Xin; Qin, Yukun

2017-02-01

Hybridizing battery and capacitor materials to construct lithium ion capacitors (LICs) has been regarded as a promising avenue to bridge the gap between high-energy lithium ion batteries and high-power supercapacitors. One of the key difficulties in developing advanced LICs is the imbalance in the power capability and charge storage capacity between anode and cathode. Herein, we design a new LIC system by integrating a rationally designed Sn-C anode with a biomass-derived activated carbon cathode. The Sn-C nanocomposite obtained by a facile confined growth strategy possesses multiple structural merits including well-confined Sn nanoparticles, homogeneous distribution and interconnected carbon framework with ultra-high N doping level, synergically enabling the fabricated anode with high Li storage capacity and excellent rate capability. A new type of biomass-derived activated carbon featuring both high surface area and high carbon purity is also prepared to achieve high capacity for cathode. The assembled LIC (Sn-C//PAC) device delivers high energy densities of 195.7 Wh kg-1 and 84.6 Wh kg-1 at power densities of 731.25 W kg-1 and 24375 W kg-1, respectively. This work offers a new strategy for designing high-performance hybrid system by tailoring the nanostructures of Li insertion anode and ion adsorption cathode.

A high performance lithium ion capacitor achieved by the integration of a Sn-C anode and a biomass-derived microporous activated carbon cathode.

PubMed

Sun, Fei; Gao, Jihui; Zhu, Yuwen; Pi, Xinxin; Wang, Lijie; Liu, Xin; Qin, Yukun

2017-02-03

Hybridizing battery and capacitor materials to construct lithium ion capacitors (LICs) has been regarded as a promising avenue to bridge the gap between high-energy lithium ion batteries and high-power supercapacitors. One of the key difficulties in developing advanced LICs is the imbalance in the power capability and charge storage capacity between anode and cathode. Herein, we design a new LIC system by integrating a rationally designed Sn-C anode with a biomass-derived activated carbon cathode. The Sn-C nanocomposite obtained by a facile confined growth strategy possesses multiple structural merits including well-confined Sn nanoparticles, homogeneous distribution and interconnected carbon framework with ultra-high N doping level, synergically enabling the fabricated anode with high Li storage capacity and excellent rate capability. A new type of biomass-derived activated carbon featuring both high surface area and high carbon purity is also prepared to achieve high capacity for cathode. The assembled LIC (Sn-C//PAC) device delivers high energy densities of 195.7 Wh kg -1 and 84.6 Wh kg -1 at power densities of 731.25 W kg -1 and 24375 W kg -1 , respectively. This work offers a new strategy for designing high-performance hybrid system by tailoring the nanostructures of Li insertion anode and ion adsorption cathode.

A high performance lithium ion capacitor achieved by the integration of a Sn-C anode and a biomass-derived microporous activated carbon cathode

PubMed Central

Sun, Fei; Gao, Jihui; Zhu, Yuwen; Pi, Xinxin; Wang, Lijie; Liu, Xin; Qin, Yukun

2017-01-01

Hybridizing battery and capacitor materials to construct lithium ion capacitors (LICs) has been regarded as a promising avenue to bridge the gap between high-energy lithium ion batteries and high-power supercapacitors. One of the key difficulties in developing advanced LICs is the imbalance in the power capability and charge storage capacity between anode and cathode. Herein, we design a new LIC system by integrating a rationally designed Sn-C anode with a biomass-derived activated carbon cathode. The Sn-C nanocomposite obtained by a facile confined growth strategy possesses multiple structural merits including well-confined Sn nanoparticles, homogeneous distribution and interconnected carbon framework with ultra-high N doping level, synergically enabling the fabricated anode with high Li storage capacity and excellent rate capability. A new type of biomass-derived activated carbon featuring both high surface area and high carbon purity is also prepared to achieve high capacity for cathode. The assembled LIC (Sn-C//PAC) device delivers high energy densities of 195.7 Wh kg−1 and 84.6 Wh kg−1 at power densities of 731.25 W kg−1 and 24375 W kg−1, respectively. This work offers a new strategy for designing high-performance hybrid system by tailoring the nanostructures of Li insertion anode and ion adsorption cathode. PMID:28155853

High-Speed 3D Printing of High-Performance Thermosetting Polymers via Two-Stage Curing.

PubMed

Kuang, Xiao; Zhao, Zeang; Chen, Kaijuan; Fang, Daining; Kang, Guozheng; Qi, Hang Jerry

2018-04-01

Design and direct fabrication of high-performance thermosets and composites via 3D printing are highly desirable in engineering applications. Most 3D printed thermosetting polymers to date suffer from poor mechanical properties and low printing speed. Here, a novel ink for high-speed 3D printing of high-performance epoxy thermosets via a two-stage curing approach is presented. The ink containing photocurable resin and thermally curable epoxy resin is used for the digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing. After printing, the part is thermally cured at elevated temperature to yield an interpenetrating polymer network epoxy composite, whose mechanical properties are comparable to engineering epoxy. The printing speed is accelerated by the continuous liquid interface production assisted DLP 3D printing method, achieving a printing speed as high as 216 mm h -1 . It is also demonstrated that 3D printing structural electronics can be achieved by combining the 3D printed epoxy composites with infilled silver ink in the hollow channels. The new 3D printing method via two-stage curing combines the attributes of outstanding printing speed, high resolution, low volume shrinkage, and excellent mechanical properties, and provides a new avenue to fabricate 3D thermosetting composites with excellent mechanical properties and high efficiency toward high-performance and functional applications. © 2018 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Overcoming Microsoft Excel's Weaknesses for Crop Model Building and Simulations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sung, Christopher Teh Boon

2011-01-01

Using spreadsheets such as Microsoft Excel for building crop models and running simulations can be beneficial. Excel is easy to use, powerful, and versatile, and it requires the least proficiency in computer programming compared to other programming platforms. Excel, however, has several weaknesses: it does not directly support loops for iterative…

What factors determine academic achievement in high achieving undergraduate medical students? A qualitative study.

PubMed

Abdulghani, Hamza M; Al-Drees, Abdulmajeed A; Khalil, Mahmood S; Ahmad, Farah; Ponnamperuma, Gominda G; Amin, Zubair

2014-04-01

Medical students' academic achievement is affected by many factors such as motivational beliefs and emotions. Although students with high intellectual capacity are selected to study medicine, their academic performance varies widely. The aim of this study is to explore the high achieving students' perceptions of factors contributing to academic achievement. Focus group discussions (FGD) were carried out with 10 male and 9 female high achieving (scores more than 85% in all tests) students, from the second, third, fourth and fifth academic years. During the FGDs, the students were encouraged to reflect on their learning strategies and activities. The discussion was audio-recorded, transcribed and analysed qualitatively. Factors influencing high academic achievement include: attendance to lectures, early revision, prioritization of learning needs, deep learning, learning in small groups, mind mapping, learning in skills lab, learning with patients, learning from mistakes, time management, and family support. Internal motivation and expected examination results are important drivers of high academic performance. Management of non-academic issues like sleep deprivation, homesickness, language barriers, and stress is also important for academic success. Addressing these factors, which might be unique for a given student community, in a systematic manner would be helpful to improve students' performance.

Excellence and Enjoyment: The Logic of a "Contradiction"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hartley, David

2006-01-01

In 2004, the Department for Education and Skills in England published its Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners (DfES, 2004). It was preceded by Excellence and Enjoyment: a strategy for primary schools (DfES, 003). "Excellence and enjoyment" seems to constitute an ambiguity, even a contradiction. The government's view is…

Excellence and Enjoyment: The Logic of a "Contradiction"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hartley, David

2006-01-01

In 2004, the Department for Education and Skills in England published its Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners (DfES, 2004). It was preceded by Excellence and Enjoyment: a strategy for primary schools (DfES, 2003). "Excellence and enjoyment" seems to constitute an ambiguity, even a contradiction. The government's view is…

Description and prediction of time-to-attainment of excellent recovery for borderline patients followed prospectively for 20 years.

PubMed

Zanarini, Mary C; Temes, Christina M; Frankenburg, Frances R; Reich, D Bradford; Fitzmaurice, Garrett M

2018-04-01

One purpose of this study was to determine the cumulative rates of excellent recovery for borderline patients and axis II comparison subjects followed prospectively for 20 years. Another purpose was to find the best set of baseline predictors of excellent recovery for borderline patients. A total of 290 inpatients meeting rigorous criteria for borderline personality disorder and 72 axis II comparison subjects completed semistructured interviews and self-report measures during their index admission. Subjects were reassessed prospectively over 10 contiguous two-year waves of follow-up. Thirty-nine percent of borderline patients and 73% of personality-disordered comparison subjects met our operationalized definition of excellent recovery (concurrent remission of borderline or another primary personality disorder, good social and full-time vocational functioning, and absence of an axis I disorder associated decreased social and/or vocational functioning). Five variables formed our multivariate predictive model of excellent recovery for borderline patients: higher IQ, good childhood work history, good adult vocational record, lower trait neuroticism, and higher trait agreeableness. The results of this study suggest that complete recovery is difficult for borderline patients to achieve even over long periods of time. They also suggest that competence displayed in both childhood and adulthood is the best predictor of this important outcome. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Superwettability-Induced Confined Reaction toward High-Performance Flexible Electrodes.

PubMed

Xiong, Weiwei; Liu, Hongliang; Zhou, Yahong; Ding, Yi; Zhang, Xiqi; Jiang, Lei

2016-05-18

To find a general strategy to realize confinement of the conductive layer for high-performance flexible electrodes, with improved interfacial adhesion and high conductivity, is of important scientific significance. In this work, superwettability-induced confined reaction is used to fabricate high-performance flexible Ag/polymer electrodes, showing significantly improved silver conversion efficiency and interfacial adhesion. The as-prepared flexible electrodes by superhydrophilic polymeric surface under oil are highly conductive with an order of magnitude higher than the Ag/polymer electrodes obtained from original polymeric surface. The high conductivity achieved via superhydrophilic confinement is ascribed to the fact that the superhydrophilic polymeric surface can enhance the reaction rate of silver deposition and reduce the size of silver nanoparticles to achieve the densest packing. This new approach will provide a simple method to fabricate flexible and highly conductive Ag/polymer electrodes with excellent adhesion between the conductive layer and the substrate, and can be extended to other metal/polymeric electrodes or alloy/polymeric electrodes.

An Examination of Secondary School Students' Academic Achievement in Science Course and Achievement Scores in Performance Assignments with Regard to Different Variables: A Boarding School Example

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bozdogan, Aykut Emre; Günaydin, Esra; Okur, Alperen

2014-01-01

The aim of the study is to explore the academic achievement and performance tasks of students studying in a regional primary boarding school in science course with regard to different variables. The study was carried out via survey method and total 96 students, 57 of them boarding students and 39 of them non-boarding students studying in the 5th,…

A tutorial on the use of Excel 2010 and Excel for Mac 2011 for conducting delay-discounting analyses.

PubMed

Reed, Derek D; Kaplan, Brent A; Brewer, Adam T

2012-01-01

In recent years, researchers and practitioners in the behavioral sciences have profited from a growing literature on delay discounting. The purpose of this article is to provide readers with a brief tutorial on how to use Microsoft Office Excel 2010 and Excel for Mac 2011 to analyze discounting data to yield parameters for both the hyperbolic discounting model and area under the curve. This tutorial is intended to encourage the quantitative analysis of behavior in both research and applied settings by readers with relatively little formal training in nonlinear regression.

A TUTORIAL ON THE USE OF EXCEL 2010 AND EXCEL FOR MAC 2011 FOR CONDUCTING DELAY-DISCOUNTING ANALYSES

PubMed Central

Reed, Derek D; Kaplan, Brent A; Brewer, Adam T

2012-01-01

In recent years, researchers and practitioners in the behavioral sciences have profited from a growing literature on delay discounting. The purpose of this article is to provide readers with a brief tutorial on how to use Microsoft Office Excel 2010 and Excel for Mac 2011 to analyze discounting data to yield parameters for both the hyperbolic discounting model and area under the curve. This tutorial is intended to encourage the quantitative analysis of behavior in both research and applied settings by readers with relatively little formal training in nonlinear regression. PMID:22844143

Best practices: applying management analysis of excellence to immunization.

PubMed

Wishner, Amy; Aronson, Jerold; Kohrt, Alan; Norton, Gary

2005-01-01

The authors applied business management tools to analyze and promote excellence and to evaluate differences between average and above-average immunization peformers in private practices. The authors conducted a pilot study of 10 private practices in Pennsylvania using tools common in management to assess practices' organizational climate and managerial style. Authoritative and coaching styles of physician leaders were common to both groups. Managerial styles that emphasized higher levels of clarity and responsibility managerial styles were evident in the large practices; and rewards and flexibility styles were higher in the small above-average practices. The findings of this pilot study match results seen in high performers in other industries. It concludes that the authoritative style appears to have the most impact on performance. It has interesting implications for training/behavior change to improve immunization rates, along with traditional medical interventions.

Pilot Study: EatFit Impacts Sixth Graders' Academic Performance on Achievement of Mathematics and English Education Standards

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shilts, Mical Kay; Lamp, Cathi; Horowitz, Marcel; Townsend, Marilyn S.

2009-01-01

Objective: Investigate the impact of a nutrition education program on student academic performance as measured by achievement of education standards. Design: Quasi-experimental crossover-controlled study. Setting: California Central Valley suburban elementary school (58% qualified for free or reduced-priced lunch). Participants: All sixth-grade…

An Excel Workbook for Identifying Redox Processes in Ground Water

USGS Publications Warehouse

Jurgens, Bryant C.; McMahon, Peter B.; Chapelle, Francis H.; Eberts, Sandra M.

2009-01-01

The reduction/oxidation (redox) condition of ground water affects the concentration, transport, and fate of many anthropogenic and natural contaminants. The redox state of a ground-water sample is defined by the dominant type of reduction/oxidation reaction, or redox process, occurring in the sample, as inferred from water-quality data. However, because of the difficulty in defining and applying a systematic redox framework to samples from diverse hydrogeologic settings, many regional water-quality investigations do not attempt to determine the predominant redox process in ground water. Recently, McMahon and Chapelle (2008) devised a redox framework that was applied to a large number of samples from 15 principal aquifer systems in the United States to examine the effect of redox processes on water quality. This framework was expanded by Chapelle and others (in press) to use measured sulfide data to differentiate between iron(III)- and sulfate-reducing conditions. These investigations showed that a systematic approach to characterize redox conditions in ground water could be applied to datasets from diverse hydrogeologic settings using water-quality data routinely collected in regional water-quality investigations. This report describes the Microsoft Excel workbook, RedoxAssignment_McMahon&Chapelle.xls, that assigns the predominant redox process to samples using the framework created by McMahon and Chapelle (2008) and expanded by Chapelle and others (in press). Assignment of redox conditions is based on concentrations of dissolved oxygen (O2), nitrate (NO3-), manganese (Mn2+), iron (Fe2+), sulfate (SO42-), and sulfide (sum of dihydrogen sulfide [aqueous H2S], hydrogen sulfide [HS-], and sulfide [S2-]). The logical arguments for assigning the predominant redox process to each sample are performed by a program written in Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). The program is called from buttons on the main worksheet. The number of samples that can be analyzed

Creating single-subject design graphs in Microsoft Excel 2007.

PubMed

Dixon, Mark R; Jackson, James W; Small, Stacey L; Horner-King, Mollie J; Lik, Nicholas Mui Ker; Garcia, Yors; Rosales, Rocio

2009-01-01

Over 10 years have passed since the publication of Carr and Burkholder's (1998) technical article on how to construct single-subject graphs using Microsoft Excel. Over the course of the past decade, the Excel program has undergone a series of revisions that make the Carr and Burkholder paper somewhat difficult to follow with newer versions. The present article provides task analyses for constructing various types of commonly used single-subject design graphs in Microsoft Excel 2007. The task analyses were evaluated using a between-subjects design that compared the graphing skills of 22 behavior-analytic graduate students using Excel 2007 and either the Carr and Burkholder or newly developed task analyses. Results indicate that the new task analyses yielded more accurate and faster graph construction than the Carr and Burkholder instructions.

Excellence in Education. Perspectives on Policy and Practice.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Altbach, Philip G., Ed.; And Others

The current reform movement in education is investigated in this book through analysis of the many reports on the state of the nation's schools collectively called the excellence reports. Five areas of investigation are focused upon in this volume: (1) an overview of what the excellence reports say; (2) a consideration of the social, political,…

Underpinning Excellence in Higher Education--An Investigation into the Leadership, Governance and Management Behaviours of High-Performing Academic Departments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kok, Seng Kiat; McDonald, Claire

2017-01-01

The changes in government funding alongside external pressures of increased international and national competition have meant that higher education institutions need to excel in a turbulent environment. The leadership, governance and management (LGM) of academic departments are key concerns. This study investigates the correlation between…

Promoting Excellence in Nursing Education (PENE): Pross evaluation model.

PubMed

Pross, Elizabeth A

2010-08-01

The purpose of this article is to examine the Promoting Excellence in Nursing Education (PENE) Pross evaluation model. A conceptual evaluation model, such as the one described here, may be useful to nurse academicians in the ongoing evaluation of educational programs, especially those with goals of excellence. Frameworks for evaluating nursing programs are necessary because they offer a way to systematically assess the educational effectiveness of complex nursing programs. This article describes the conceptual framework and its tenets of excellence. Copyright 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.