Most Popular Books by James Daly

An Early Snow (The Visions Come) is a Christmas story that takes place in northeastern Oklahoma in the mid-fifties. An energetic twelve-year-old boy named Toby is consumed by a perpetual dream of finding Santaas lost Christmas sack. In his mind, he must return it before Christmas. Toby is helped and encouraged by the aSquad, a a fraternal organization of sorts composed of his best friends from Murrow Indian Childrenas Home, Russell, Squee, Roscoe and Katy. Murrow Indian Childrenas Home is not an orphanage, but a home for children of dysfunctional families. The continuing dream is often in conflict with Tobyas real life at Murrow Indian Childrenas Home, and his mischievous activities get him and his friends into trouble. You are Toby. Will you be able to complete this decisive journey on time? Will a reunion forty years later dispel a few earlier myths and strengthen that long and unquenchable human spirit?

In this program, we proposed to demonstrate a compact, rugged, low-cost ammonia sensor with better than {+-}0.2 ppmv lower detection limit and resolution. Extensive design and trade studies indicated that this measurement could be made by exploiting the infrared absorbance of ammonia at 1527 nm to determine concentration. Key features of the design were (1) a electronically-tunable, wavelength-agile diode laser-pumped fiber laser, (2) a unique, low-cost folded path optical cell, and (3) an InGaAs photodiode (light detector). The sensor would be designed to make in situ measurements of ammonia in flue gas just downstream from the catalyst. The design proved robust and was able to operate at pressures in the range 1-3 atm and temperatures up to 500 C. With extensive signal processing, the sensor was able to make unambiguous ammonia measurements. But the signal processing degraded response time to almost 3 seconds and the measurement ambient conditions limited achievable resolution to about 20 ppmv ammonia. Extensive re-design, including a much longer optical path length and more robust real-time signal processing would be required to make sub-ppm measurements using this approach. During the performance period of this project, conventional in-situ laser based monitors and thick film ceramic ammonia sensors have been introduced and have gained acceptance in real-time feed-forward control for this application.

There is a critical civil rights issue in public education; the gap in achievement between Anglo students and their African-American and Latino counterparts. The gap has garnered the legislative attention of the federal government through No Child Left Behind. Despite gap pervasiveness, there are islands of excellence in seas of disparity; one of the defining qualities of these islands is strong educational leadership. Recent studies have suggested that educational leaders enacting a balance of adaptive and technical leadership have a direct effect on increasing student achievement. Using an originally designed instrument, 292 site administrators, district office administrators, and teachers were surveyed in 4 school districts, testing the hypothesis that the multi-faceted construct of trust has a predictive relationship with both adaptive and technical leadership. Results of multiple linear regression models indicate that the specific facets of respect, risk, and competence are significant predictors of adaptive and technical leadership. Significant differences were found between school and district office perceptions in both leadership and trust dimensions suggesting a lack of district-wide coherence.