Interpretations of Student Engagement in the Context of the Orff Schulwerk Music Classroom at the DuBard School for Language Disorders

The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore the lived experiences of four students with language disorders within the context of their Orff Schulwerk music class at the DuBard School for Language Disorders. In addition, the observational insights of their classroom teachers and the practitioner researcher were compared with the responses of the students in order to determine any discrepancies between the child’s awareness of his or her musical engagement and that of the observer. Using data collected from interviews, stimulated recall (Dempsey, 2010), and student generated artwork (Freeman & Mathison, 2009), I explored the lived experiences of the students as they were conveyed through their words and images. The participants’ classroom teachers participated in similar stimulated recall sessions using the same excerpts of video recorded music classes. A comparison of responses illustrated whether students, teachers, and I had the same or similar perceptions of the same event. Emergent themes were found in the areas of musical, social, societal, and physical engagement in the music classroom, and were related to the three research questions: (1) How do music students with language disorders interpret their own actions in the music classroom; (2) What, if any, discrepancies exist between teacher and student interpretations of student engagement in the music classroom; and (3) What choices regarding engagement do music students with language disorders make in the context of the Orff Schulwerk music classroom? Emergent themes were explored in relation to participants’ musical vocabulary, societal involvement, self-awareness, transfer of knowledge, music vs. classroom, discrepancies in student and teacher perception, kinesthetic engagement, instrumental engagement. After considering these themes in regard to the research questions, I asserted that the depth of meaning within their musical experience was largely superficial. This study hoped to inform those who interact with children with language disorders as to their perceptions, their lived experiences, and their ability or inability to communicate their thought processes in regards to educational, specifically musical, school settings

Intraspecific trait variation and changing life-history strategies explain host community disease risk along a temperature gradient

Predicting how climate change will affect disease risk is complicated by the fact that changing environmental conditions can affect disease through direct and indirect effects. Species with fast-paced life-history strategies often amplify disease, and changing climate can modify life-history composition of communities thereby altering disease risk. However, individuals within a species can also respond to changing conditions with intraspecific trait variation. To test the effect of temperature, as well as inter- and intraspecifc trait variation on community disease risk, we measured foliar disease and specific leaf area (SLA; a proxy for life-history strategy) on more than 2500 host (plant) individuals in 199 communities across a 1101 m elevational gradient in southeastern Switzerland. There was no direct effect of increasing temperature on disease. Instead, increasing temperature favoured species with higher SLA, fast-paced life-history strategies. This effect was balanced by intraspecific variation in SLA: on average, host individuals expressed lower SLA with increasing temperature, and this effect was stronger among species adapted to warmer temperatures and lower latitudes. These results demonstrate how impacts of changing temperature on disease may depend on how temperature combines and interacts with host community structure while indicating that evolutionary constraints can determine how these effects are manifested under global change. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Infectious disease ecology and evolution in a changing world’

Improving Access to General Education via Co-Teaching in Secondary Mathematics Classrooms: An Evaluation of Utah\u27s Professional Development Initiative

Co-teaching may be a promising strategy to improve inclusive secondary mathematics education in rural schools. Professional development (PD) aids in special and general education teachers\u27 co-teaching implementation, yet little empirical research examines how to effectively train and support co-teachers. In this study we describe one U.S. state\u27s PD model for secondary mathematics co-teaching, evaluate outcomes of the PD on co-teachers\u27 behaviors and beliefs, and examine the impact of co-teaching on students\u27 mathematics achievement. We examined data from observations, surveys, and students\u27 pre/post assessments across nine classes within seven U.S. school districts, including three rural school districts, over 3 years. We report data from a total of 19 teachers and 281 students in sixth through ninth grades. The PD participants implemented effective co-teaching strategies and reported positive viewpoints toward co-teaching. Additionally, students with and without disabilities improved their mathematics scores. We present key findings for rural schools to guide future implementation and research

Multiple dimensions of biodiversity mediate effects of temperature on invertebrate herbivory in a montane grassland

Invertebrate herbivores are important and diverse, and their abundance and impacts will likely shift under climate change. Yet, past studies of invertebrate herbivory have documented highly variable responses to changing temperature, making it challenging to predict the direction and magnitude of these shifts. One explanation for these responses is that changing environmental conditions drive concurrent changes in plant communities and herbivore traits. The impacts of changing temperature on herbivory might therefore depend on how temperature combines and interacts with characteristics of plant and herbivore communities. To test this, we surveyed damage to leaves by invertebrate herbivores on 4400 plant individuals in 220 sampling plots along a 1101 m elevational gradient. Increasing temperature drove community‐level herbivory via at least three overlapping mechanisms: increasing temperature directly reduced herbivory, indirectly affected herbivory by reducing plant‐community phylogenetic diversity, and indirectly affected herbivory by altering the effects of plant‐community functional and phylogenetic diversity on herbivory. Consequently, increasing plant functional diversity reduced herbivory in colder environments while increasing plant phylogenetic diversity increased herbivory in warmer environments. Moreover, different herbivore feeding guilds varied in their response to temperature and plant community composition. These results indicate that, even along a single elevation gradient in a single year, a variety of mechanisms can concurrently drive herbivory, thereby supporting the hypothesis that a universal response of herbivory to changing environmental conditions is unlikely to exist. Instead, our results highlight the importance of considering both plant and herbivore community context to predict how climate change will alter invertebrate herbivory

Effects of abiotic environment on invertebrate herbivory depend on plant community context in a montane grassland

Invertebrate herbivores are important and diverse, and their abundance and impacts are expected to undergo unprecedented shifts under climate change. Yet, past studies of invertebrate herbivory have documented a wide variety of responses to changing temperature, making it challenging to predict the direction and magnitude of these shifts. One explanation for these idiosyncratic responses is that changing environmental conditions may drive concurrent changes in plant communities and herbivore traits. Thus, the impacts of changing temperature on herbivory might depend on how temperature combines and interacts with characteristics of plant communities and the herbivores that occupy them. Here, we test this hypothesis by surveying invertebrate herbivory in 220, 0.5 meter-diameter herbaceous plant communities along a 1101-meter elevational gradient. Our results suggest that increasing temperature can drive community-level herbivory via at least three overlapping mechanisms: increasing temperature directly reduced herbivory, indirectly affected herbivory by reducing phylogenetic diversity of the plant community, and indirectly affected herbivory by altering the effects of functional and phylogenetic diversity on herbivory. Consequently, increasing functional diversity of plant communities had a negative effect on herbivory, but only in colder environments while a positive effect of increasing phylogenetic diversity was observed in warmer environments. Moreover, accounting for differences among herbivore feeding guilds considerably improved model fit, because different herbivore feeding guilds varied in their response to temperature and plant community composition. Together, these results highlight the importance of considering both plant and herbivore community context in order to predict how climate change will alter invertebrate herbivory

Biodiversity loss underlies the dilution effect of biodiversity

The dilution effect predicts increasing biodiversity to reduce the risk of infection, but the generality of this effect remains unresolved. Because biodiversity loss generates predictable changes in host community competence, we hypothesised that biodiversity loss might drive the dilution effect. We tested this hypothesis by reanalysing four previously published meta-analyses that came to contradictory conclusions regarding generality of the dilution effect. In the context of biodiversity loss, our analyses revealed a unifying pattern: dilution effects were inconsistently observed for natural biodiversity gradients, but were commonly observed for biodiversity gradients generated by disturbances causing losses of biodiversity. Incorporating biodiversity loss into tests of generality of the dilution effect further indicated that scale-dependency may strengthen the dilution effect only when biodiversity gradients are driven by biodiversity loss. Together, these results help to resolve one of the most contentious issues in disease ecology: the generality of the dilution effect.Non peer reviewe

A Study of Interstellar Gas and Stars in the Gravitationally Lensed Galaxy `The Cosmic Eye' from Rest-Frame Ultraviolet Spectroscopy

We report the results of a study of the rest-frame UV spectrum of the Cosmic Eye, a luminous Lyman break galaxy at z=3.07331 gravitationally lensed by a factor of 25. The spectrum, recorded with the ESI spectrograph on the Keck II telescope, is rich in absorption features from the gas and massive stars in this galaxy. The interstellar absorption lines are resolved into two components of approximately equal strength and each spanning several hundred km/s in velocity. One component has a net blueshift of -70 km/s relative to the stars and H II regions and presumably arises in a galaxy-scale outflow similar to those seen in most star-forming galaxies at z = 2-3. The other is more unusual in showing a mean redshift of +350 km/s relative to the systemic redshift; possible interpretations include a merging clump, or material ejected by a previous star formation episode and now falling back onto the galaxy, or more simply a chance alignment with a foreground galaxy. In the metal absorption lines, both components only partially cover the OB stars against which they are being viewed. We tentatively associate the redshifted component with the strong damped Lyman alpha line, indicative of a column density N(H I) = (3.0 +/- 0.8) x 10(21) atoms/cm2, and propose that it provides the dust `foreground screen' responsible for the low ratio of far-infrared to UV luminosities of the Cosmic Eye. Compared to other well-studied examples of strongly lensed galaxies, we find that the young stellar population of the Cosmic Eye is essentially indistinguishable from those of the Cosmic Horseshoe and MS 1512-cB58, while the interstellar spectra of all three galaxies are markedly different, attesting to the real complexity of the interplay between starbursts and ambient interstellar matter in young galaxies (abridged).Comment: 14 pages, 6 Figures, Accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society after minor revision

Multiscale digital Arabidopsis predicts individual organ and whole-organism growth

Understanding how dynamic molecular networks affect wholeorganism physiology, analogous to mapping genotype to phenotype, remains a key challenge in biology. Quantitative models that represent processes at multiple scales and link understanding from several research domains can help to tackle this problem. Such integrated models are more common in crop science and ecophysiology than in the research communities that elucidate molecular networks. Several laboratories have modeled particular aspects of growth in Arabidopsis thaliana, but it was unclear whether these existing models could productively be combined. We test this approach by constructing a multiscale model of Arabidopsis rosette growth. Four existing models were integrated with minimal parameter modification (leaf water content and one flowering parameter used measured data). The resulting framework model links genetic regulation and biochemical dynamics to events at the organ and whole-plant levels, helping to understand the combined effects of endogenous and environmental regulators on Arabidopsis growth. The framework model was validated and tested with metabolic, physiological, and biomass data from two laboratories, for five photoperiods, three accessions, and a transgenic line, highlighting the plasticity of plant growth strategies. The model was extended to include stochastic development. Model simulations gave insight into the developmental control of leaf production and provided a quantitative explanation for the pleiotropic developmental phenotype caused by overexpression of miR156, which was an open question. Modular, multiscale models, assembling knowledge from systems biology to ecophysiology, will help to understand and to engineer plant behavior from the genome to the field. (Résumé d'auteur

Thymus transplantation for complete DiGeorge syndrome: European experience

Background: Thymus transplantation is a promising strategy for the treatment of athymic complete DiGeorge syndrome (cDGS). Methods: Twelve patients with cDGS were transplanted with allogeneic cultured thymus. Objective: To confirm and extend the results previously obtained in a single centre. Results: Two patients died of pre-existing viral infections without developing thymopoeisis and one late death occurred from autoimmune thrombocytopaenia. One infant suffered septic shock shortly after transplant resulting in graft loss and the need for a second transplant. Evidence of thymopoeisis developed from 5-6 months after transplantation in ten patients. The median (range) of circulating naïve CD4 counts (x10663 /L) were 44(11-440) and 200(5-310) at twelve and twenty-four months post-transplant and T-cell receptor excision circles were 2238 (320-8807) and 4184 (1582 -24596) per106 65 T-cells. Counts did not usually reach normal levels for age but patients were able to clear pre-existing and later acquired infections. At a median of 49 months (22-80), eight have ceased prophylactic antimicrobials and five immunoglobulin replacement. Histological confirmation of thymopoeisis was seen in seven of eleven patients undergoing biopsy of transplanted tissue including five showing full maturation through to the terminal stage of Hassall body formation. Autoimmune regulator (AIRE) expression was also demonstrated. Autoimmune complications were seen in 7/12 patients. In two, early transient autoimmune haemolysis settled after treatment and did not recur. The other five suffered ongoing autoimmune problems including: thyroiditis (3); haemolysis (1), thrombocytopaenia (4) and neutropenia (1). Conclusions: This study confirms the previous reports that thymus transplantation can reconstitute T cells in cDGS but with frequent autoimmune complications in survivors