Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary Area to be Avoided (ATBA) Education and Monitoring Program

The National Marine Sanctuaries Act (16 U.S.C. 1431, as amended) gives the Secretary of Commerce the authority to designate discrete areas of the marine environment as National Marine Sanctuaries and provides the authority to promulgate regulations to provide for the conservation and management of these marine areas. The waters of the Outer Washington Coast were recognized for their high natural resource and human use values and placed on the National Marine Sanctuary Program Site Evaluation List in 1983. In 1988, Congress directed NOAA to designate the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary (Pub. L. 100-627). The Sanctuary, designated in May 1994, worked with the U.S. Coast Guard to request the International Maritime Organization designate an Area to be Avoided (ATBA) on the Olympic Coast. The IMO defines an ATBA as "a routeing measure comprising an area within defined limits in which either navigation is particularly hazardous or it is exceptionally important to avoid casualties and which should be avoided by all ships, or certain classes of ships" (IMO, 1991). This ATBA was adopted in December 1994 by the Maritime Safety Committee of the IMO, “in order to reduce the risk of marine casualty and resulting pollution and damage to the environment of the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary”, (IMO, 1994). The ATBA went into effect in June 1995 and advises operators of vessels carrying petroleum and/or hazardous materials to maintain a 25-mile buffer from the coast. Since that time, Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary (OCNMS) has created an education and monitoring program with the goal of ensuring the successful implementation of the ATBA. The Sanctuary enlisted the aid of the U.S. and Canadian coast guards, and the marine industry to educate mariners about the ATBA and to use existing radar data to monitor compliance. Sanctuary monitoring efforts have targeted education on tank vessels observed transiting the ATBA. OCNMS's monitoring efforts allow quantitative evaluation of this voluntary measure. Finally, the tools developed to monitor the ATBA are also used for the more general purpose of monitoring vessel traffic within the Sanctuary. While the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary does not currently regulate vessel traffic, such regulations are within the scope of the Sanctuary’s Final Environmental Impact Statement/Management Plan. Sanctuary staff participate in ongoing maritime and environmental safety initiatives and continually seek opportunities to mitigate risks from marine shipping.(PDF contains 44 pages.

Report of the ICES\NAFO Joint Working Group on Deep-water Ecology (WGDEC), 11–15 March 2013, Floedevigen, Norway.

On 11 February 2013, the joint ICES/NAFO WGDEC, chaired by Francis Neat (UK) and attended by ten members met at the Institute for Marine Research in Floedevi-gen, Norway to consider the terms of reference (ToR) listed in Section 2. WGDEC was requested to update all records of deep-water vulnerable marine eco-systems (VMEs) in the North Atlantic. New data from a range of sources including multibeam echosounder surveys, fisheries surveys, habitat modelling and seabed imagery surveys was provided. For several areas across the North Atlantic, WGDEC makes recommendations for areas to be closed to bottom fisheries for the purposes of conservation of VMEs

Better Implementation of Calculators in the Classroom Through Parental Involvement

This study examined the changes in parental attitudes towards calculator use in the classroom during their involvement in calculator activities with students. The study also investigated the effectiveness of involving parents in mathematics activities as a support mechanism for calculator implementation in the school as a whole. A class of year 6 students and their parents were chosen for the study. Parents were first given a questionnaire to evaluate their attitudes towards the use of calculators in schools. Interested parents were consequently invited to participate in one fifty-minute lesson per week for eight weeks. During these lessons, calculators were used for a variety of purposes. The changes in parent attitudes were analysed based on the initial questionnaire, initial interview, journal entries during the eight weeks, and the final interview at the conclusion of the study. The researcher\u27s journal was used to identify the researcher\u27s attitude towards calculator use and the effectiveness of parent involvement in the activities. It was concluded that the attitudes of the parents changed over the course of the study. They discovered the potential of calculators as tools and teaching aids and were able to identify more benefits following the study compared with their comments before the study. The benefits that they perceived during the study had a direct effect on their reservations about the use of calculators in the primary classroom. These were significantly reduced by the conclusion of the study and primarily related to the way in which calculators could be used rather than if they should be used. The study revealed that involving the parents in the calculator activities gave them a clearer idea of how they could be used, and that their misconceptions and reservations were minimised as they discovered the potential of calculators for their child\u27s learning

Special Libraries, October 1959

Volume 50, Issue 8https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1959/1007/thumbnail.jp

Evaluation of an instructional unit utilizing the worst case method in improving students' understanding of uncertainty analysis and propagation of error

The objective of most physics laboratory exercises is to investigate the validity of a physical law or theory. Students compare predictions, based on theoretical grounds, with experimental results and are often confronted with a discrepancy between these two. Instead of submitting an analysis or a conclusion that incorporates uncertainty analysis, students will often resort to a list of excuses to explain the difference, such as equipment malfunctions or human error. They fail to recognize that their results may support the theory, even without perfect correlation.Physics teachers are challenged to provide instruction on uncertainty analysis rigorous enough to analyze laboratory data while, at the same time, understandable to entry-level students. This study focused on evaluating the effects of an algebra-based instruction unit on student understanding of uncertainty analysis and propagation of error. A comparison of scores on a pretest and posttest showed a statistically significant improvement in scores. In Phase Two of the study, student laboratory assignments were evaluated for changes in the level of understanding. Students demonstrated improved ability to incorporate uncertainty analysis and propagation of error in their laboratory reports, but most did not obtain an in-depth level of understanding. In a similar manner, conceptual change was evident at the lower level of assimilation, but few students achieved a complete conceptual change regarding uncertainty analysis

Special Libraries, April 1959

Volume 50, Issue 4https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1959/1003/thumbnail.jp

Co-constructing decimal number knowledge

This mathematics education research provides significant insights for the teaching of decimals to children. It is well known that decimals is one of the most difficult topics to learn and teach. Annette’s research is unique in that it focuses not only on the cognitive, but also on the affective and conative aspects of learning and teaching of decimals. The study is innovative as it includes the students as co-constructors and co-researchers. The findings open new ways of thinking for educators about how students cognitively process decimal knowledge, as well as how students might develop a sense of self as a learner, teacher and researcher in mathematics