From General Chemistry to Anatomy and Physiology: Revalidating and Adapting Assessments and Models

The 1980s saw an increasing demand for education standards that would create a scientifically literate society. In response, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) published a report that outlined four themes that are characteristic of a scientifically literate individual: systems, models, constancy and change, and scale (1). In 1993, the AAAS published the Benchmarks for Science Literacy which outlined common scientific skills that a student should be able to demonstrate by grades 2, 5, 8, and 12 (2). Beyond the AAAS scale was not included in national science educational standards until 2012 when the National Research Council released the Framework for K-12 science education followed by the Next Generation Science Standards in 2013. Scale was included as a cross-cutting concept titled “Scale, Proportion, and Quantity” (3). Because proportion and quantity were included along with scale, some instructors who cover proportion and quantity believe that they also cover scale but may not have fully addressed the scale portion of the cross-cutting concept. Previous research in general chemistry I and scale led to the development of two instruments: the Scale Literacy Skills Test (SLST) and the Scale Concept Inventory (SCI) (4). The average of the two assessments generated a Scale Literacy Score for a student providing a measure of their scale ability. Previous research has shown that scale literacy is a better predictor for success in chemistry than traditional measures. Scale has been systematically integrated as a theme in the undergraduate chemistry curriculum in lecture, laboratory, and supplemental instruction activities. When scale was integrated in all components of the course there was an increase in student learning as measured by final exam performance. Scale as a cross-cutting concept has applications beyond that of only chemistry, e.g. biology. When transferring disciplines from chemistry to biological sciences, the existing scale instruments, SLST and SCI, cannot be assumed to be valid. Before investigating students’ ability in scale in biological sciences the existing instruments were tested for reliability and validity. Once this was complete, the SLST and SCI were used to measure scale ability in Anatomy and Physiology I. The goal of this project is studying student scale understanding across STEM disciplines. This continues the previous research in General Chemistry II and adapts the research for Anatomy and Physiology I (5). This thesis contains the details of three studies between two courses covering student scale conception and scale’s relation, if any, to final exam performance. The first (Chapter 3) discusses the development and implementation of two supplemental instruction online adaptive activities for General Chemistry II students. Chapter 4 details semi-structured interviews with Anatomy and Physiology I students with regards to their scale conception. Chapter 5 details the building of a multiple regression model to predict cumulative final exam score for the Anatomy and Physiology I course. References: (1) American Association for the Advancement of Science, Project 2061; Science for all Americans: a project 2061 report on literacy goals in science, mathematics, and technology; Washington, D.C., 1989. (2) American Association for the Advancement of Science, Project 2061; Benchmarks for science literacy; New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. (3) National Research Council; Next Generation Science Standards: for states, by states; Washington, D.C., National Academies Press: Washington, D.C., 2013. (4) Gerlach, K.; Trate, J.; Blecking, A.; Geissinger, P.; Murphy, K. (2014). Valid and Reliable Assessments to Measure Scale Literacy of Students in Introductory College Chemistry Courses. Journal of Chemical Education. 91, 1538-1545. (5) Trate, J. (2017). Integrating Scale-Themed Instruction Across the General Chemistry Curriculum and Selected In-Depth Studies (Doctoral dissertation). University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI

Governance, scale and the environment: the importance of recognizing knowledge claims in transdisciplinary arenas

Any present day approach of the world’s most pressing environmental problems involves both scale and governance issues. After all, current local events might have long-term global consequences (the scale issue) and solving complex environmental problems requires policy makers to think and govern beyond generally used time-space scales (the governance issue). To an increasing extent, the various scientists in these fields have used concepts like social-ecological systems, hierarchies, scales and levels to understand and explain the “complex cross-scale dynamics” of issues like climate change. A large part of this work manifests a realist paradigm: the scales and levels, either in ecological processes or in governance systems, are considered as “real”. However, various scholars question this position and claim that scales and levels are continuously (re)constructed in the interfaces of science, society, politics and nature. Some of these critics even prefer to adopt a non-scalar approach, doing away with notions such as hierarchy, scale and level. Here we take another route, however. We try to overcome the realist-constructionist dualism by advocating a dialogue between them on the basis of exchanging and reflecting on different knowledge claims in transdisciplinary arenas. We describe two important developments, one in the ecological scaling literature and the other in the governance literature, which we consider to provide a basis for such a dialogue. We will argue that scale issues, governance practices as well as their mutual interdependencies should be considered as human constructs, although dialectically related to nature’s materiality, and therefore as contested processes, requiring intensive and continuous dialogue and cooperation among natural scientists, social scientists, policy makers and citizens alike. They also require critical reflection on scientists’ roles and on academic practices in general. Acknowledging knowledge claims provides a common ground and point of departure for such cooperation, something we think is not yet sufficiently happening, but which is essential in addressing today’s environmental problems

Rehearsing L2 academic vocabulary with cloze exercises: a computer-assisted language learning intervention

Choosing appropriate methods and levels of scaffolding (see, e.g., Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976) is a crucial skill in second language instruction. The observation that too little or too much scaffolding for a task leads to an inferior learning outcome, known as the assistance dilemma (Koedinger & Aleven, 2007), has resisted quantitative analysis. However, it is now possible to take advantage of computerized tutors’ ability to precisely measure response latencies and accuracy rates to provide quantitative data to analyze the merits of different methods of scaffolding with regard to students’ performance on individual tasks. The present study describes a computer-aided language learning intervention in which 46 intermediate-level adult ESL speakers used a web-based vocabulary rehearsal program several times over the course of nine weeks. The tutor led participants in completing cloze exercises of the target words, with half of the exercises being presented with a hint in the form of a short definition of the target word and half of the exercises being presented without a hint. The results of the experiment indicate that the presence of the hint significantly increased participants’ accuracy on the task, but also significantly increased time on task. These results suggest that the form of support selected was an appropriate scaffold. However, L1 speakers of Arabic (N = 29) proved exceptional in a few ways: they expressed negative attitudes toward L2 writing tasks in general and did not show any increase in accuracy in the scaffolded condition, despite the fact that speakers of other L1s showed a very large and statistically significant improvement in accuracy in that condition. These issues may relate to Arabic speakers’ exceptional difficulties processing English orthography (Martin, 2011) and warrant future study

Efficient classification using parallel and scalable compressed model and Its application on intrusion detection

In order to achieve high efficiency of classification in intrusion detection, a compressed model is proposed in this paper which combines horizontal compression with vertical compression. OneR is utilized as horizontal com-pression for attribute reduction, and affinity propagation is employed as vertical compression to select small representative exemplars from large training data. As to be able to computationally compress the larger volume of training data with scalability, MapReduce based parallelization approach is then implemented and evaluated for each step of the model compression process abovementioned, on which common but efficient classification methods can be directly used. Experimental application study on two publicly available datasets of intrusion detection, KDD99 and CMDC2012, demonstrates that the classification using the compressed model proposed can effectively speed up the detection procedure at up to 184 times, most importantly at the cost of a minimal accuracy difference with less than 1% on average

Is there too much certainty when measuring uncertainty

This paper criticises the econometric inflation uncertainty proxies found in the literature, which show an overly optimistic picture about our real ability to forecast, and highlights the sharp contrast between the evidence portrayed by that literature and the evidence conveyed by the literature on surveys of inflation expectations. While the latter shows that actual forecasts are usually biased and systematic forecast errors are pervasive the former shows a much more optimistic picture, in accordance with the rational expectations paradigm. Also, both literatures have historically shown conflicting evidence on the inflation level – inflation uncertainty link. Next, the performance of inflation forecasts from both the Central Bank of Brazil Inflation Report and the Focus Survey are analysed. The paper then pinpoints some simple measures that could be taken to improve the reliability of econometric inflation uncertainty proxies, and carries out a (pseudo) real-time forecasting simulation exercise to derive a set of such proxies for Brazil. The features of those forecasts are shown to be very similar to those found in surveys.inflation level, inflation uncertainty, in-sample forecasts, out-of-sample forecasts, temporal inconsistency, forecast failure, surveys of expectations, rationality

An Analysis of Ecological and Social Rationality: When are Lexicographic Heuristics Preferred?

In their book, Gigerenzer and Selten (2001) described human being as an organism that adaptively reacts to its environment by selecting ecologically rational heuristics that are contingent on task demands; that is, adaptivity assumption. Empirical evidence of the adaptivity assumption is, however, mixed. In this paper, I review prior experiments related to testing the adaptivity assumption and criticize some of the past findings. From this criticism, the research questions are formed. The research objective of this paper is to test whether or not people choose their decision strategy as a reaction to environmental conditions. In this dissertation, the use of the take-the-best (TTB) heuristic is investigated for different treatments, which are information structure, information cost, and social rationality. Participants go through 180 trials of a pair comparison task. Using the proportion of TTB trials as a dependent variable, three hypotheses regarding the effects of three treatments are tested. The results of the experiments indicate that only the social rationality is a significant factor in promoting the TTB heuristic. Besides the test of the hypothesis, an exploratory analysis of participants’ data is presented

Food allergies in pregnant women: a study of prevalence in expecting mothers and association with neonatal outcomes

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston UniversityIntroduction: Food allergies, the second most common form of allergic disorders in Western countries, have been on the rise in the US over the past few decades especially in young children. As the exact causes of food sensitizations are still unknown, much research has been dedicated to solving the mystery of how and why individuals develop food allergies in the first place. However, very few studies have focused solely on the prevalence of food allergies in the adult population. Furthermore, the prevalence of food allergies in expecting mothers and their potential impact on mother-baby health outcomes have barely been investigated. As such, this retrospective chart review study aimed at comparing the prevalence of food allergies in pregnant women to that of the adult US population and investigated the potential effects of maternal food allergies on perinatal maternal outcomes and infant health. Methods: A total of 595 maternal charts and 614 infant charts were reviewed for expecting mothers age 18 to 49 years old who gave birth at New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, NC, between November 15, 2011 and November 15, 2012. Mothers’ data collected included basic demographic information, presence and nature of food allergies, and if applicable, occurrence and length of High Risk Antepartum visits. In addition to basic infant demographic information, the infant health outcomes collected were, when applicable: gestational age at birth, birth weight, 1 and 5 minute APGAR scores, NICU admissions and length of stay, as well as infant death. All statistical tests were two-tailed and p values < 0.05 were considered significant. Results: Food allergies were documented in 5.6% (N = 22) of the mothers, which was not significantly different from the national average reported by the FDA (Vierk et al., 2007). The most commonly reported allergy in the study’s pregnant women sample was seafood (42.2%), and the least common maternal food hypersensitivity disorder in the sample was egg allergy (2.2%). No significant relationship was found between the presence of maternal food allergies and maternal or infant health outcomes. Conclusion: Our study found that the proportion of pregnant women with food allergies was consistent with the FDA-reported percentage of US adult population affected by food allergies. Furthermore, we were unable to establish significant relationships between the presence of maternal food allergies and mother-baby health outcomes

Outcomes in Children with Additional Disabilities Following Cochlear Implantation: A Systematic Review

Background: Thirty percent of children with hearing loss have an additional disability. These children may be difficult to test according to standard audiologic behavioral test protocols. Additionally, progress within this population may present differently than in children with no additional disability. Currently, no evidence-based protocol exists for assessing cochlear implant benefit and outcomes in this population. Objective: The purpose of this investigation is to perform a systematic review on the outcomes of cochlear implantation in children with additional disabilities. Specifically, this study focused on areas of function assessed, outcome measures used, and evidence of benefit observed. Methods: A comprehensive search was conducted utilizing the databases MEDLINE/PubMed, OneFile, ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health Source. The keywords used to identify relevant studies included pediatric, special needs, developmental disabilities, functional assessment, outcomes, benefit.” The keywords cochlear implantation or cochlear implant” were present throughout all searches. Results: Included in this study were 24 articles. The results revealed that despite wide variability among the studies, some benefit was observed in children with cochlear implantation and additional disabilities in the areas of auditory skills and speech perception, receptive and expressive language, and adaptive behaviors. Discussion: Many challenges arose when studying this population. Limited experimental control as well as wide variability in disability type were major issues noted throughout this review. However, overall children with cochlear implantation and additional disabilities showed some improvement in all areas, although they still did not perform as well as children with cochlear implantation and no additional disabilities, or normally hearing peers matched according to age and cognitive abilities. Conclusions: Research in this area is challenging due to the limitations involved in the ability to produce randomized, double blind studies to determine value of cochlear implantation in this population. Cognitive ability is a strong, but not the only, predictor of performance. Although on average the lower the cognitive ability, the lower the post implant performance, there was much variability among participants, adding to the challenge of deciding whether to implant such a child. There is some evidence to support the implantation of children with additional disabilities, however, more research is recommended involving more multicenter collaborations to increase the participant pool and to isolate individual disabilities to establish performance. Research should continue to explore use of alternative assessments such as quality of life measures