Saint Mary's College

Specifications, or specs, grading has become more popular in recent years for postsecondary chemical educators as an alternative to points-based grading systems. There are a number of publications on the implementation of specs grading systems with data from these publications often focusing on grade distributions and qualitative feedback from instructors and students. We have previously published a specs grading system in General Chemistry and upper division courses, but we wanted to better understand if the grading system was more effective at promoting positive student learning outcomes, as compared to traditional grading. In the current study, we deployed three previously published instruments to assess student mindset in a General Chemistry I course. The Cognitive Test Anxiety Scale (CTAS) captures students’ perceptions of assessment anxiety, the Stress Mindset Measure (SMM) measures healthy stress mindset (viewing stress in ways that emphasize its benefits for the individual experiencing stress), and the Perceptions of Grading Scales (PGS) instrument compares perceptions of the specs grading system to traditional grading systems. We found that the students’ assessment anxiety decreased significantly (CTAS average of 72.82 at the beginning of term to 67.34 at the end of the term) in the specs grading system, while it remained statistically unchanged for other STEM courses (CTAS average of 72.25 at the beginning of term to 71.24 at the end of the term). This was coupled with students improving their healthy stress mindset in all STEM classes across the term. It was also found that the specs grading system promoted student motivation to learn more than a traditionally graded course according to the PGS instrument (standardized factor score of 0.15 with 95% confidence interval above 0). These results, and how they can be used to better understand and improve specs grading systems, are discussed.

We present a conditional variational autoencoder (CVAE) that generates stellar spectra covering 4000 ≤ Teff ≤ 11,000 K, 2.0≤logg≤5.0 dex, −1.5≤[M/H]≤+1.5 dex, vsini≤300 km/s, ξt between 0 and 4 km/s, and for any instrumental resolving powers less than 115,000. The spectra can be calculated in the wavelength range 4450–5400 Å. Trained on a grid of SYNSPEC spectra, the network synthesizes a spectrum in around two orders of magnitude faster than line-by-line radiative transfer. We validate the CVAE on 104 test spectra unseen during training. Pixel-wise statistics yield a median absolute residual of <1.8×10−3 flux units with no wavelength-dependent bias. A residual error map across the parameters plane shows ⟨|ΔF|⟩<2×10−3 everywhere, and marginal diagnostics versus Teff, logg, vesini, ξt, and [M/H] reveal no relevant trends. These results demonstrate that the CVAE can serve as a drop-in, physics-aware surrogate for radiative transfer codes, enabling real-time forward modeling in stellar parameter inference and offering promising tools for spectra synthesis for large astrophysical data analysis.

Surgiendo en un trasfondo sociohistórico de naturalizada discriminación contra las mujeres, sancionada por las previsiones legales del Código Civil en vigor, las novelas cortas de Carmen de Burgos intentan poner de relieve las injustas desigualdades de género de la España coetánea y ofrecer unos muy necesarios contramodelos femeninos. El intento de proyectar unos nuevos y modernos patrones de afecto y convivencia, basados no solo en el amor romántico sino también en una amistad intelectual, llevan a la escritora a idealizar la sociedad inglesa contemporánea, vinculada reiteradamente con unas relaciones más igualitarias entre los sexos. Novelas como El perseguidor (1917), El brote (1925) y Cuando la ley lo manda (1932), en las cuales se enfoca el presente trabajo, parecen mitificar al compañero amoroso inglés, capaz de respeto y camaradería intelectual en su relación con una joven española y contrastado, de este modo, con un posible novio o esposo español, incapaz de superar una estrecha mentalidad patriarcal. La proyección de un beligerante ideal de «mujer nueva» española, tan frecuente en los escritos de Carmen de Burgos, parece depender en gran medida, en estas novelas analizadas, de un cambio de la mentalidad masculina, propuesta que no deja de ser problemática para el desarrollo de una conciencia feminista dado los finales narrativos ambiguos de estas novelas.

With appreciation for how Stephanie Edwards and Catherine Yanko apply insights from Coblentz’s Dust in the Blood: A Theology of Life with Depression to theologies focused on other forms of psychological distress, Coblentz elucidates from their essays six insights or “lessons” to apply to the ongoing work of theologizing psychological distress. These lessons variously explore the relationship of different mental health conditions, mental health stigma, social dimensions of psychological distress, complexities of moral agency, epistemic injustice, and the place of Christ in the ongoing project of theologizing mental health.