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This paper reports on new efforts in the modernization of the basic undergraduate courses and a graduate curriculum in electric power engineering. The main focus of the paper is the modernization of the way power engineering is portrayed to students. The motivation is the recognition of the new deregulated and restructured environment in power engineering and the broadening of the area in general. At the undergraduate level, a multimedia approach is described in which renovation of the curriculum is done in such a way as to allow broadening of the subject material. At the graduate level, new efforts in power electronics and electric power quality are described. The implementations of changes as those reported here were made at several universities including Arizona State University.

Agricultural decision support tools (DSTs) with weather or climate information can provide useful information to help stakeholders make operational farming decisions and adapt to increasingly variable weather or climate in the context of climate change. However, many of these DSTs are still not fully utilized. Understanding the use of DSTs can help identify strategies to promote their usage to more end-users. This study surveyed farmers (n = 2,633) and advisors (n = 2,719) across 12 states in the Midwest to draw comparisons on their usage of DSTs and factors influencing the usage. The advisors are more likely to take advantage of free and publicly available sources than farmers. Advisors are also more likely to agree on the usefulness of DSTs, feel social pressure to use DSTs, be concerned and perceive risks from variable weather, believe in climate change, and show positive attitudes towards climate change adaptation than farmers. Concerns about weather or climate, descriptive social norms, greater farm size, and general propensity to adopt a new technology are positively associated with higher adoption rate of DSTs for both farmers and advisors. Higher level of perceived behavioral control to deal with weather-related risks, injunctive social norms, gender (male), and age are positively associated with higher adoption rate of DSTs for only advisors. Positive adaptation attitude towards climate change and higher education level are positively associated with higher adoption rate of DSTs for only farmers. Unlike advisors, age is negatively associated with higher adoption rate of DSTs for farmers. Implications of our findings include DST educators leveraging social networks and reinforcing social norms to promote usage among current non-users, building up both farmers' and advisors' confidence and knowledge in using DSTs, understanding the role of advisors as "change agents" to promote DST usage among farmers, and connecting networks of "innovators" and "early adopters." With more and more DSTs developed, future scholarship can draw upon our findings to understand how to encourage DSTs adoption among current non-users and extend to other regions.

Power engineering education feeds the power engineering profession. If the profession is to continue to be a vital part of electrical engineering, something must be done about the educational stem. In some sense, power education is at a crossroads, and there is a need to take a positive growth path by moving the most pressing and difficult problems in power engineering to a viable high-tech power program. Such an educational program must center on systems, new materials, applications of advanced mathematics and physics, and the integration of economic principles. One potential avenue is to appeal to national governments worldwide to support power engineering research through university-based centers. An upsurge in student interest at the undergraduate level and the importance and complexity of typical power engineering problems are indicative of positive growth in the field; however, vigilance and increased industry participation in all educational sectors are needed to ensure vitality of the field. This article discusses various aspects of power engineering education including the power engineering curriculum, supply and demand for education, faculty careers, and alternative strategies for power engineering education.

Online access to the Internet and the World Wide Web has become important for public awareness and for educating the world's population, including its political leaders, students, researchers, teachers, and ordinary citizens seeking information. After a brief Introduction, relevant information found on photosynthesis-related Web sites and other online locations is presented under five categories: (a) group sites, (b) sites by subject, (c) individual researcher's sites, (d) sites for educators and students, and (e) other useful sites.

Alcohol use and sexual assault (SA) are common on college campuses. The purpose of this study is to examine if the association between alcohol use and SA differs by gender identity, sexual orientation, race, or ethnicity.A total of 3,243 college students aged 18-25 at two large, minority-serving, public universities in the southwest and southeast United States completed an online survey about alcohol and sexual behaviors. Two negative binomial regressions were conducted to examine main effects and interaction effects.Almost half of the sample reported a SA victimization history. The main effects negative binomial regression indicated that more drinks per week, older age, identifying as a cisgender woman (vs. cisgender man), identifying as a gender minority (vs. cisgender man), and identifying as a sexual minority (vs. heterosexual) were associated with more severe SA victimization. Participants who identified as Latine (vs. non-Latine White) reported less severe SA. The negative binomial regression assessing interactions indicated that the association between alcohol use and SA severity was stronger among cisgender women and gender minority identities than cisgender men, and Black identities than non-Latine White identities.Findings suggests that alcohol use is an important factor for SA severity among all students, but that the association is stronger among some with marginalized identities. Given that perpetrators target people who hold some marginalized identities, prevention programming could address cisnormative, heteronormative, and White normative ideas about alcohol and sex to attain social justice and health equity.

An aging workforce and rapid growth in STEM-related occupations provide critical reasons to involve precollege students and teachers in science and engineering activities. Additionally, concerns about climate change and green energy sources provide motivation for students to pursue careers in the electric power industry. NSF-supported FREEDM ERC precollege programs address these issues through three components, which are described in this paper: 1) a Research Experience for Teachers; 2) a Young Scholars commuter program for high school students; and 3) weeklong renewable energy camps for middle school students. Assessment results for the first four years of the effort at four university campuses are presented.

The paper describes the use of general-purpose mathematical software "GPMS" as a major advancement in simplifying simulation procedures for junior level engineering studies. GPMS handles general and specific mathematical formulas and is packed with a vast array of codes to perform many scientific and engineering functions in an interactive mode. In order for the student to interact positively, the numerical examples in the textbook must be converted into an interactive media to support the theory and provide a deeper understanding of the physical phenomena. By this method, the students enhance their problem-solving abilities with minimal programming skills. By using examples, the paper presents an approach to computer-aided problem solving methods for junior level courses. The methods described in the paper have proven to be of value to students studying electric machines and power engineering at Arizona State University.

This letter describes electric power quality as an important component of electric power engineering education. Because power quality engineering relies on signal processing concepts as well as applied power engineering, students in both undergraduate and graduate educational programs find the topics cross-disciplinary, practical, and motivational.

Sixty-three male college students were assessed on the number of aversive sound blasts they administered in response to their fictitious task partner's blasts in a variation of the Taylor aggression paradigm. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of three alcohol dosing conditions (placebo, placebo/expect alcohol, and alcohol) and one of three instruction conditions (aggression-told the noise blasts were meant to disrupt task performance; altruism-told the noise blasts were meant to improve concentration; ambiguous-either aggression or altruism). A significant three-way interaction of dosing condition by instruction by subjects' sensation seeking was found, such that high sensation seekers in the alcohol condition, compared to low sensation seekers, delivered more noise blasts in the aggression instruction condition, whereas they administered fewer blasts in the altruism condition. High sensation seekers in the placebo condition yielded an opposite pattern of results. The results were interpreted in terms of the effects of "alcohol myopia" on the disinhibition of socially disapproved behaviors and in terms of the moderating effects of personality and situational factors.