Horse Use and Care in Therapeutic Horseback Riding Programs

The Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship International (PATH Intl.) is an organization that offers therapeutic horseback riding (THR) and other equine-assisted activities and therapies in the United States. Research on how horses are used and cared for in PATH Intl.-affiliated THR programs is limited. Therefore, the objective of this study was to gather data regarding horse use and care to form a baseline. A survey developed via SurveyMonkey® and distributed through Google Mail Merge to 659 PATH Intl.-affiliated programs in September 2017. A total of 270 responses were received; 264 were eligible for data analysis. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. Mean session length was 8.30 ± 2.55 weeks (n = 111) while mean lesson length was 47.04 ± 13.68 minutes (n = 142); horses spent the majority of lessons at the walk. Most programs tracked horse use daily through written/electronic methods, over half of horses were donated, and the majority of horses were barefoot. Horses remained in THR programs for an average of 7.08 ± 3.02 years (n = 216) and most commonly left due to aging. Mean number of horses in programs was 11.44 ± 6.57 horses (n = 241). Most horses were geldings, aged 16 to 20 years, and of a stock-type breed (Quarter Horse, Appaloosa, Tennessee Walking Horse). Programs varied widely in client riding ability and types of disabilities served. Most common horse lameness issues were limb lameness, back soreness, and hoof issues. Most prevalent types of supplemental care were chiropractic adjustment and massage. Keywords: horse use, horse care, therapeutic horseback ridin

Vehicle swept path analysis based on GPS data

Vehicle swept path analysis presents an essential step while working on at-grade intersection and roundabout designs. Following the intensive development of computer-aided design (CAD) software in the past two decades, numerous CAD-based computer programs for vehicle movement simulation have been developed and commercially distributed. The accuracy of these simulation programs is usually verified by conducting experimental field tests in which real movement trajectories of design vehicles, equipped with global positioning system (GPS) receivers, are recorded. This paper proposes an improved methodology for retrieving vehicle movement trajectories from collected GPS data. The proposed methodology reduces the trajectory inaccuracy resulting from pavement grading characteristics and the inability to accurately install GPS receivers in relation to streamlined vehicle body. Results of field experiments show that the reduction of positioning errors in the horizontal projection is not smaller than 50.0 mm compared with previous studies.This is the peer-reviewed version of the article: V. Ilić, D. Gavran, S. Fric, F. Trpčevski, and S. Vranjevac, ‘Vehicle swept path analysis based on GPS data’, Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering, vol. 45, no. 10, pp. 827–839, 2018, [https://doi.org/10.1139/cjce-2017-0245

Organizational Improvement Plan: Improving Core French Teacher Equity within a French Immersion School

My Organizational Improvement Plan examines the systemic inequity between the Core French Program and the French Immersion Program in Ontario secondary schools. Leadership, in the form of Principals, can play a significant role in this issue. Principals who prioritize the equitable distribution of resources and professional development in French Immersion settings may positively impact teacher efficacy; however, in Core French settings, Principals’ realm of priorities often lies in other curriculum areas. Various researchers, such as Lapkin (2003) and Mady (2010), have looked at the systemic inequity between the two French programs. It has been shown that there is a disproportionate amount of support when comparing French Immersion and Core French programs. The use of Distributed Leadership (Spillane, 2005) as a leadership approach and the Mindset Theory (Dweck, 2006) as a leadership theory are presented as possible solutions to be used by principals to address this discrepancy. A comprehensive analysis of the Distributed Leadership approach (Spillane, 2005) and the Servant Leadership approach (Greenleaf, 2012) and their specific implementation in my organization are presented. Similarly, the use of professional leadership teams as a way to further implement these approaches is discussed. The information presented in my Organizational Improvement Plan is useful, since it provides school organizations, a path to start making a change for greater equity between the two French programs. Future recommendations are also presented

Holistic debugging - enabling instruction set simulation for software quality assurance

We present holistic debugging, a novel method for observing execution of complex and distributed software. It builds on an instruction set simulator, which provides reproducible experiments and non-intrusive probing of state in a distributed system. Instruction set simulators, however, only provide low-level information, so a holistic debugger contains a translation framework that maps this information to higher abstraction level observation tools, such as source code debuggers. We have created Nornir, a proof-of-concept holistic debugger, built on the simulator Simics. For each observed process in the simulated system, Nornir creates an abstraction translation stack, with virtual machine translators that map machine-level storage contents (e.g. physical memory, registers) provided by Simics, to application-level data (e.g. virtual memory contents) by parsing the data structures of operating systems and virtual machines. Nornir includes a modified version of the GNU debugger (GDB), which supports non-intrusive symbolic debugging of distributed applications. Nornir's main interface is a debugger shepherd, a programmable interface that controls multiple debuggers, and allows users to coherently inspect the entire state of heterogeneous, distributed applications. It provides a robust observation platform for construction of new observation tools

Blazes: Coordination Analysis for Distributed Programs

Distributed consistency is perhaps the most discussed topic in distributed systems today. Coordination protocols can ensure consistency, but in practice they cause undesirable performance unless used judiciously. Scalable distributed architectures avoid coordination whenever possible, but under-coordinated systems can exhibit behavioral anomalies under fault, which are often extremely difficult to debug. This raises significant challenges for distributed system architects and developers. In this paper we present Blazes, a cross-platform program analysis framework that (a) identifies program locations that require coordination to ensure consistent executions, and (b) automatically synthesizes application-specific coordination code that can significantly outperform general-purpose techniques. We present two case studies, one using annotated programs in the Twitter Storm system, and another using the Bloom declarative language.Comment: Updated to include additional materials from the original technical report: derivation rules, output stream label

Understanding how First-Generation College Students’ Out-of-School Experiences, Physics and STEM Identities Relate to Engineering Possible Selves and Certainty of Career Path

This full, research category study examines how out-of-school experiences in Grades 9-12 predict first-generation college students’ engineering possible selves and certainty of career path. The data for this study came from a large-scale survey on outreach programs which was distributed in first- semester English courses to capture an array of responses from students interested in STEM and non-STEM careers. We used structural equation modeling to examine a set of hypotheses: 1) out-of-school experiences would be mediated by interest and recognition in physics and STEM and no direct effect will be found for out-of-school experiences on physics and STEM identities, 2) these identities subsequently predict engineering possible selves, and 3) engineering possible selves will predict certainty of career path. The results of our structural equation modeling analysis supported our hypotheses, out-of-school experiences alone are not enough to develop an identity as a physics person or STEM person, rather they need to be mediated through recognition by others and an underlying interest. A physics identity and a broad STEM identity were found to significantly predict students engineering possible selves. Engineering possible selves were a significant predictor of first-generation college students’ certainty of career path. Future possible selves for first-generation college students have important implications for academic development, integration into their community of practice, retention, and the formation of a future professional identity