MARS Pathfinders
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This community was created in October 2005 for the first Mason faculty, staff, and students to deposit items in MARS.
As more departments and research units join MARS, items in this community will be cross-listed in other relevant communities. The collections will remain here also, as MARS's small gesture of thanks to its pathfinders.
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Item Addressing Chronic Conditions Through Community Partnerships: A Formative Evaluation of "Taking on Diabetes"(The Commonwealth Fund, 2004-09) Palsbo, Susan E.; Kroll, Thilo; McNeil, MelissaCommunity partnerships—coalitions of health plans, physicians, and local groups—can help overcome organizational boundaries and allow competing parties to work together to focus on a shared goal, like the treatment of a chronic condition. In this study, researchers evaluated three community partnership projects sponsored by a national trade association of health plans. These initiatives, focused on quality mprovement in diabetes care, were located in three very different markets in the United States: Albuquerque, New Mexico; Kansas City, Missouri; and Westchester County, New York. Successful community partnerships, the researchers found, can be formed from different starting points and by following different paths. Instead of following a strict set of protocols, the researchers uggest that these groups pay careful attention to principles of group dynamic theory. In addition, a neutral facilitator, like a trade association, can build bridges and help competing concerns be less proprietary.Item Alternative strategies for school violence(New Directions for Youth Development: Theory, Practice, and Research, 2001) Gagnon, Joseph Calvin; Leone, Peter E.This chapter reviews the efficacy of programming in three areas: universal or schoolwide approaches, targeted or intensive interventions for individual students or groups of students, and the use of security measures such as metal detectors and surveillance cameras. Within this framework, a number of programs with empirical evidence of effectiveness in addressing problems of aggression and disruption have emerged, including: (a) the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program; (b) Project ACHIEVE; (c) Positive Behavior Intervention and Support; (d) early detection through schoolwide procedures, such as the Systematic Screening for Behavioral Disorders; (e) The Positive Adolescent Choices Training program; (f) The First Step to Success program; and (g) intensive interventions for students that do not benefit from universal or secondary interventions.Item Amaro lagrimar: the poems of Vittoria Colonna(2006-04-03T17:25:20Z) Colonna, Vittoria, 1492-1547; DiMeglio, Vittorio; Moody, EllenItem Amelie Mansfield(1803) Cottin, Madame (Sophie), 1770-1807; Moody, EllenItem An Interactive Decision-Support Tool for Telemedicine: Making the Business Case(2005-04-17) Palsbo, Susan E.; McCue, Michael J.Item Anne Kingsmill Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661-1720)(2006-04-11T20:19:10Z) Winchilsea, Anne Kingsmill Finch, Countess of, 1661-1720; Moody, EllenItem Anthony Trollope(2006-05-15T14:32:59Z) Moody, Ellen; Trollope, Anthony, 1815-1882Item Best practices for teaching mathematics to secondary students with special needs: Implications from teacher perceptions and a review of the literature(Focus on Exceptional Children, 2000) Maccini, Paula; Gagnon, Joseph CalvinThe article addresses the results of open-ended responses from special and general education teachers regarding their perceptions of teaching secondary students with LD and/or EBD relative to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. The results are discussed relative to a comprehensive review of the literature for teaching secondary students with LD and/or EBD.Item Bibliography for women's studies(2006-05-18T19:56:41Z) Moody, EllenOn this page the reader interested in women's studies will find a bibliography of scholarship on women's art and lives, with an emphasis on women writers from the medieval through the 19th century European world. I include works on women in the visual arts, in music, and in film. To make these lists useful and to direct it generally I have divided and arranged the items as follows: 1) modern studies (general: historical, thematic, theoretical); 2) modern dictionaries (biographical and bibliographical, handbooks and companions); 3) anthologies (older as well as more recent); 4) modern studies (on individual women); and 5) primary texts.Item Calendars for Jane Austen's Novels(2006-05-08T16:35:46Z) Moody, EllenItem Caroline de Lichtfield, ou Memoires d'une Famille Prussienne(2006-04-13T16:43:25Z) Montolieu, Isabelle de, 1751-1832; Moody, EllenItem Cellular automata in structural design(Wolfram Media, 2004-04) Kicinger, Rafal P.The goal of this project was to introduce NKS to engineering design problems and estimate a true potential of this approach. It was an initial step in exploring the world of simple programs for engineering design applications as well as introducing a novel methodology presented in Wolfram's A New Kind of Science. The motivation for this research was based on the fact that even designers of complex and sophisticated engineering systems (bridges, tall buildings, space structures, etc.) use only a relatively small set of design/decision rules to develop design concepts. Hence, it is plausible that even very complex designs of engineering systems can be modeled using simple programs like cellular automata (CA). Two potential ways of attacking this problem are based on the following observations. First, one of the important problems in engineering design is the problem of topological optimum design, where one seeks the optimal configuration of design elements satisfying some constraints, and optimizing a certain objective function, e.g. deflection, or weight, of a steel structure. This search for the optimal configuration of design elements sometimes yields very interesting patterns. It is possible that the search for such interesting structural patterns can be vastly enhanced using CA and other simple programs. Second, it is usually the case that engineering designs have repetitive forms. CA can generate both very simple and repetitive behavior as well as complex forms and configurations. It is definitely worth exploring whether the complex configurations of engineering systems will be better than traditional designs. The initial exploration of the space of simple programs has been focused on one-dimensional CA (1D CA) and two-dimensional CA (2D CA). 1D CA have been used to generate design concepts of wind bracing systems in tall buildings. These experiments were performed using both elementary CA where two possible types of bracings were used and more complex 1D CA involving 7 possible types of bracing elements. In another set of experiments 2D CA were used. Several types of totalistic 2D CA were studied, including Moore neighborhood and von Neumann neighborhood. The fitness of the generated design concepts was determined based on rigidity of the structural systems and measured by their maximum deflection. Results of the conducted experiments have shown that CA can generate interesting structural shaping patterns. They included both traditionally known patterns for this class of buildings like vertical and horizontal trusses, but also some novel arrangements of wind bracings characterized by high fitness values. The best results in the reported experiments were obtained using 1D CA. 2D CA also have the potential of producing interesting structural patterns but the search space is vastly larger compared to the 1D CA case and much larger number of experiments is necessary.Item Comparative Quality Indicators for Adults with Disabilities in SNPs(George Mason University Center for Health Policy, Research & Ethics, 2005-11-02) Palsbo, Susan E.; Mastal, MargaretThis presentation proposes strategies and criteria for selecting performance measures relevant to adults with disabilities, and suggests specific indicators as well as resources for additional measures.Item Conceptual design in structural engineering: An evolutionary computation approach(2003-07) Kicinger, Rafal P.; Arciszewski, Tomasz; De Jong, Kenneth A.This paper describes a new design paradigm, evolutionary structural design, that involves the entire design process, including conceptual and detailed design stages. In this paper, first a brief overview of the fundamentals of evolutionary computation is provided. Next, the concept of evolutionary structural design and its principia are discussed. Inventor 2001 is described in the following section. It is an experimental research and design system based on evolutionary computation. The system has been developed by the authors at George Mason University for applications in the design of tall buildings. Inventor 2001 allows for the conducting of evolutionary structural design, including the generation of structural concepts and the detailed design, analysis of internal forces, dimensioning, and optimization. Selected specific research results are also provided, including a discussion of the discovered emergent structural shaping patterns that are surprisingly consistent with the state of the art in structural shaping of steel skeleton structures of tall buildings. Finally, the initial research conclusions are provided.Item Conceptual Model of a Self-Organizing Traffic Management Hazard Response System(2006-01) Bronzini, Michael; Kicinger, Rafal P.The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 have sparked renewed interest in developing effective policies and strategies for evacuating densely populated areas. The current analytical tools for dealing with such evacuations are sorely lacking, in both theory and practice. The conceptual model presented in this paper marries the technical areas of cellular automata, evolutionary computation, and transportation science, along with some recent research on infrastructure security, to make significant progress in traffic management and hazard response systems. The overall goal of this research is to develop a fundamental understanding of the evolutionary and emergent behavior of transportation systems that are operating under emergency evacuation conditions. This new knowledge can be utilized to develop more effective operational strategies and consequently more robust hazard response systems. Furthermore, the specific research objective is to investigate the formulation and application of cellular automata models of metropolitan transportation systems, with a focus on systems operating under emergency evacuation conditions. The basic context is evacuation of a defined urban area, such as the urban core of Washington, DC under terrorist attacks. The conceptual model proposes the use of evolutionary algorithms to search the space of the evacuation control strategies and determine the most successful strategies for a given urban area.Item Critical Infrastructure Protection(2005) Arciszewski, Tomasz; Kicinger, Rafal P.Item Curiosities of Street Literature(Reeves and Turner, 1871) Hindley, Charles, d. 1893Item Curiosities of Street Literature: comprising "cocks" or "catchpennies", a large and curious assortment of street-drolleries, squibs, histories, comic tales in prose and verse, broadsides on the royal family, political litanies, dialogues, catechisms, acts of Parliament, street political papers, a variety of "ballads on a subject", dying speeches and confessions.(Reeves and Turner, 1871) Hindley, Charles, d. 1893Item Curriculum, assessment, and accountability in day treatment and residential schools(Exceptional Children, 2004) Gagnon, Joseph Calvin; McLaughlin, Margaret J.This study determined school-level curricular, assessment, and accountability policies and practices in private and public day treatment and residential schools for elementary-age children with emotional or behavioral disorders (E/BD). A national random sample of 271 (56.45%) principals and 229 (47.70%) teachers responded to a mail survey. No significant differences existed between teacher and principal reports of school-level curricular, assessment, and accountability policies. However, several statistically significant differences existed in school policies for schools that served students from a single district and those that served students from across a single state or more than one state. Across all schools, teachers and principals indicated a prescribed school curriculum was common. District and state standards and student individualized education programs (IEPs) were used to receive information on curriculum of local schools. Approximately two thirds of all of the schools administered district and state assessments and most schools used their state’s accommodations guidelines. Assessment results were frequently reported to parents, teachers, and used to adjust instruction and curriculum. Implications and suggestions for future research are provided.Item Day and residential schools: Program characteristics and entrance and exit policies(Remedial & Special Education, 2005) Gagnon, Joseph Calvin; Leone, Peter E.Limited information exists about treatment programs for children with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) in the elementary grades. This national study provides a description of first through sixth grade day treatment and residential schools for students with EBD in two areas: (a) characteristics of schools (e.g., philosophy, accreditation, length of school year); and (b) current school-level entrance and exit policies. A random sample of 480 principals from public and private day treatment and residential schools were mailed a survey. A total of 271 (56.45%) principals responded. Results indicated that schools relied on a behavioral philosophy, maintained a balance between education and therapeutic issues, and were commonly accredited by state departments of education. Additionally, few schools had specific policies related to follow-up of students after discharge. The implications of these findings are discussed.