Researchers at the Gate: Factors Influencing Districts’ Right of Entry Decisions

Background: The No Child Left Behind legislation creates an increased need for new school-based empirical studies whose implementation will depend largely on researchers’ access to various school populations and records. Access decisions are typically made by superintendents, or their designees, functioning as gatekeepers who control right of entry. Understanding the factors driving these decisions could enhance the desirability of proposals and increase access rates for quantitative and qualitative researchers alike. Purpose: The purpose of this research was to query districts about four key access factors including (a) researcher trustworthiness, (b) associated risks, (c) costs and benefits, and (d) potential contribution to the field. Research Method: This study used a series of interviews followed by a systematic survey. Participants: Ten superintendents were interviewed followed by a survey of 310 districts in Connecticut, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. Findings: Although trustworthiness was expected to supercede other factors, districts reported greater interest in elements of risk and in research having widespread educational value. Costs and material benefits (e.g., equipment, credit, and compensation) were not highly emphasized nor relatively important. Professional development, planning, and instructional benefits mattered more. Implications for Research and Practice: Given the increasing emphasis on scientifically based research for school decision-making and program reform, the present study is notable for two reasons. First, it provides researchers with insights into the decision-making process involved in granting permission to conduct research in the schools. Second, it can help to improve the quality of proposals received by school districts, thereby increasing the likelihood of positive right-of-entry decisions and resulting in better informed decisions

Measuring the Reader Self-Perceptions of Adolescents: Introducing the RSPS2

This paper introduces a new affective instrument for assessing the reader self-perceptions of students in grades seven through ten. The Reader Self-Perception Scale 2 (RSPS2) builds upon its predecessor, the RSPS, a tool that measures the reading efficacy beliefs of children in grades four through six. New items were created for the RSPS2 to reflect differences in the expectations for adolescent reading. The instrument was piloted on 488 students, revised, and then validates with an additional 2,542 students in the target grades. Factor analytic procedures revealed four factors emerging on the RSPS2. Items for Progress, Observational Comparison, Social Feedback, and Physiological States clustered as expected into scales with reliabilities ranging from .87 to .95. The article includes a description of the instrument, an explanation of its possible uses in assessment, instruction, and research, as well as directions for administration, scoring, and interpretation

The Influence of Accelerated Reader on the Affective Literacy Orientations of Intermediate Grade Students

Although the highly popular Accelerated Reader (AR) book reading incentive program claims to motivate children of all reading ability levels, very little independent empirical research has examined this assertion. To help fill this void, we used two related three-factor mixed designs with Method (AR vs. Control), Gender, and either Grade Level(fourth vs. fifth) or Reading Ability (high vs. low) to explore AR’s influence on the reading attitudes and self-perceptions of children in two comparable school districts. The analyses indicate that AR positively influenced academic reading attitudes, but not recreational ones, and that it negatively influenced two types of self-perceptions in low achieving male readers. These findings and others of consequence are discussed along with implications for future research

Beyond the Economy: Internal Factors Affecting theFuture of the Russian Military

Since the breakup of The Soviet Union, many factors have been reshaping the new Russian military. The economy is of course the dominant factor in that process. Financial difficulties have been so severe that, according to a Russian deputy defense minister, as of early August 1993 more than 60% of servicemen [had] not received their pay for July ...[and] many units and subunits {had] not received it for June. People {were) refusing to carry out their duties, including alert duty

The Impact of Scientific Creationism in the Soviet Union and the Soviet Response

Increasing references to scientific creationism in Soviet atheistic publications indicate that it is having an impact. Attacks on creationism in Soviet publications have not ended with glasnost\u27, but concurrently, this policy-- which allows greater press freedoms and more importation of material published in the West--may eventually expose more persons in the Soviet Union than ever before to the concepts of scientific creationism

ALMA data suggest the presence of a spiral structure in the inner wind of CW Leo

(abbreviated) We aim to study the inner wind of the well-known AGB star CW Leo. Different diagnostics probing different geometrical scales have pointed toward a non-homogeneous mass-loss process: dust clumps are observed at milli-arcsec scale, a bipolar structure is seen at arcsecond-scale and multi-concentric shells are detected beyond 1". We present the first ALMA Cycle 0 band 9 data around 650 GHz. The full-resolution data have a spatial resolution of 0".42x0".24, allowing us to study the morpho-kinematical structure within ~6". Results: We have detected 25 molecular lines. The emission of all but one line is spatially resolved. The dust and molecular lines are centered around the continuum peak position. The dust emission has an asymmetric distribution with a central peak flux density of ~2 Jy. The molecular emission lines trace different regions in the wind acceleration region and suggest that the wind velocity increases rapidly from about 5 R* almost reaching the terminal velocity at ~11 R*. The channel maps for the brighter lines show a complex structure; specifically for the 13CO J=6-5 line different arcs are detected within the first few arcseconds. The curved structure present in the PV map of the 13CO J=6-5 line can be explained by a spiral structure in the inner wind, probably induced by a binary companion. From modeling the ALMA data, we deduce that the potential orbital axis for the binary system lies at a position angle of ~10-20 deg to the North-East and that the spiral structure is seen almost edge-on. We infer an orbital period of 55 yr and a binary separation of 25 au (or ~8.2 R*). We tentatively estimate that the companion is an unevolved low-mass main-sequence star. The ALMA data hence provide us for the first time with the crucial kinematical link between the dust clumps seen at milli-arcsecond scale and the almost concentric arcs seen at arcsecond scale.Comment: 22 pages, 18 Figures, Astronomy & Astrophysic

Chandra Observations of ULIRGs: Extended Hot Gas Halos in Merging Galaxies

We study the properties of hot gaseous halos in 10 nearby ultraluminous IRAS galaxies observed with the ACIS instrument on board Chandra. For all sample galaxies, diffuse soft X-ray emissions are found within ~10 kpc of the central region; their spectra are well fitted by a MEKAL model plus emission lines from alpha-elements and other ions. The temperature of the hot gas is about 0.7 keV and metallicity is about 1 solar. Outside the central region, extended hot gaseous halos are found for nine out of the ten ULIRGs. Most spectra of these extended halos can be fitted with a MEKAL model with a temperature of about 0.6 keV and a low metallicity (~ 0.1 solar). We discuss the implications of our results on the origin of X-ray halos in elliptical galaxies and the feedback processes associated with starbursts.Comment: 31 pages, 6 figuers, ApJ in press, accepted versio

Distribution of Water Vapor in Molecular Clouds

We report the results of a large-area study of water vapor along the Orion Molecular Cloud ridge, the purpose of which was to determine the depth-dependent distribution of gas-phase water in dense molecular clouds. We find that the water vapor measured toward 77 spatial positions along the face-on Orion ridge, excluding positions surrounding the outflow associated with BN/KL and IRc2, display integrated intensities that correlate strongly with known cloud surface tracers such as CN, C2H, 13CO J =5-4, and HCN, and less well with the volume tracer N2H+. Moreover, at total column densities corresponding to Av < 15 mag., the ratio of H2O to C18O integrated intensities shows a clear rise approaching the cloud surface. We show that this behavior cannot be accounted for by either optical depth or excitation effects, but suggests that gas-phase water abundances fall at large Av. These results are important as they affect measures of the true water-vapor abundance in molecular clouds by highlighting the limitations of comparing measured water vapor column densities with such traditional cloud tracers as 13CO or C18O. These results also support cloud models that incorporate freeze-out of molecules as a critical component in determining the depth-dependent abundance of water vapor

Quantifying offshore fore-arc deformation and splay-fault slip using drowned Pleistocene shorelines, Arauco Bay, Chile

Indexación: Web of Science; Scopus.Most of the deformation associated with the seismic cycle in subduction zones occurs offshore and has been therefore difficult to quantify with direct observations at millennial timescales. Here we study millennial deformation associated with an active splay-fault system in the Arauco Bay area off south central Chile. We describe hitherto unrecognized drowned shorelines using high-resolution multibeam bathymetry, geomorphic, sedimentologic, and paleontologic observations and quantify uplift rates using a Landscape Evolution Model. Along a margin-normal profile, uplift rates are 1.3 m/ka near the edge of the continental shelf, 1.5 m/ka at the emerged Santa María Island, −0.1 m/ka at the center of the Arauco Bay, and 0.3 m/ka in the mainland. The bathymetry images a complex pattern of folds and faults representing the surface expression of the crustal-scale Santa María splay-fault system. We modeled surface deformation using two different structural scenarios: deep-reaching normal faults and deep-reaching reverse faults with shallow extensional structures. Our preferred model comprises a blind reverse fault extending from 3 km depth down to the plate interface at 16 km that slips at a rate between 3.0 and 3.7 m/ka. If all the splay-fault slip occurs during every great megathrust earthquake, with a recurrence of ~150–200 years, the fault would slip ~0.5 m per event, equivalent to a magnitude ~6.4 earthquake. However, if the splay-fault slips only with a megathrust earthquake every ~1000 years, the fault would slip ~3.7 m per event, equivalent to a magnitude ~7.5 earthquake. ©2017. American Geophysical Union.http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016JB013339/epd