STEMTEC Evaluation Report For Year 4 (Fall 2000/Spring 2001)

The Year 4 evaluation of the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Teacher Education Collaborative (STEMTEC) project. STEMTEC is a project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The STEMTEC project is collaborative, involving eight colleges and Universities in Western Massachusetts, as well as several K-12 public school districts. The Collaborative officially began as a five-year project, with NSF funding, beginning in the fall of 1997

Using the Instructional Quality Assessment toolkit to investigate the quality of reading comprehension assignments and student work (CSE Report 669)

This study presents preliminary findings from research developing an instructional quality assessment (IQA) toolkit that could be used to monitor the influence of reform initiatives on students' learning environments and to guide professional development efforts within a school or district. This report focuses specifically on the portion of the IQA used to evaluate the quality of teachers' reading comprehension assignments and student work. Results are limited due to a very small sample of participating teachers (N = 13, 52 assignments), and indicate a poor to moderate level of inter-rater agreement and a good degree of consistency for the dimensions measuring academic rigor, but not the clarity of teachers' expectations. The rigor of the assignments collected from teachers also was associated with the rigor of observed instruction. Collecting four assignments (two challenging and two recent) from teachers did not yield a stable estimate of quality. Additional analyses looking separately at the two different assignment types indicate, however, that focusing on one assignment type would yield a stable estimate of quality. This suggests that the way in which assignments are collected from teachers should be revised. Implications for professional development are also discussed. The 2003 Draft Observation and Assignment Rubrics for Reading Comprehension is appended. (Contains 6 tables, 4 figures, and 4 footnotes.

The Social and Cultural Context of Coping with Sickle Cell Disease: III. Stress, Coping Tasks, Family Functioning, and Children’s Adjustment

Conceptions of individual and family coping with sickle cell disease (SCD) must incorporate several disease and sociocultural factors. This article proposes an integrative model and tests the relative contribution of model parameters to the prediction of social, academic, and psychological adjustment of children with SCD. The individual coping and family functioning variables most highly predictive of the child’s psychological outcomes (anxiety, depression, and positive mood) include parental psychological functioning, maturity demands made of the ill child, and the quality of relations with parents and siblings. Academic adjustment was significantly predicted by parental academic expectations and by the child’s rejection of a restrictive sick role. Competent social functioning also was predicted by the extent to which the ill child rejected the role of being sick.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/67288/2/10.1177_0095798499025003006.pd

Eosinophils Are Important for Protection, Immunoregulation and Pathology during Infection with Nematode Microfilariae

Eosinophil responses typify both allergic and parasitic helminth disease. In helminthic disease, the role of eosinophils can be both protective in immune responses and destructive in pathological responses. To investigate whether eosinophils are involved in both protection and pathology during filarial nematode infection, we explored the role of eosinophils and their granule proteins, eosinophil peroxidase (EPO) and major basic protein-1 (MBP-1), during infection with Brugia malayi microfilariae. Using eosinophil-deficient mice (PHIL), we further clarify the role of eosinophils in clearance of microfilariae during primary, but not challenge infection in vivo. Deletion of EPO or MBP-1 alone was insufficient to abrogate parasite clearance suggesting that either these molecules are redundant or eosinophils act indirectly in parasite clearance via augmentation of other protective responses. Absence of eosinophils increased mast cell recruitment, but not other cell types, into the broncho-alveolar lavage fluid during challenge infection. In addition absence of eosinophils or EPO alone, augmented parasite-induced IgE responses, as measured by ELISA, demonstrating that eosinophils are involved in regulation of IgE. Whole body plethysmography indicated that nematode-induced changes in airway physiology were reduced in challenge infection in the absence of eosinophils and also during primary infection in the absence of EPO alone. However lack of eosinophils or MBP-1 actually increased goblet cell mucus production. We did not find any major differences in cytokine responses in the absence of eosinophils, EPO or MBP-1. These results reveal that eosinophils actively participate in regulation of IgE and goblet cell mucus production via granule secretion during nematode-induced pathology and highlight their importance both as effector cells, as damage-inducing cells and as supervisory cells that shape both innate and adaptive immunity

Multi-material additive manufacturing of low sintering temperature Bi2Mo2O9 ceramics with Ag floating electrodes by selective laser burnout

Additive manufacturing (AM) of co-fired low temperature ceramics offers a unique route for fabrication of novel 3D radio frequency (RF) and microwave communication components, embedded electronics and sensors. This paper describes the first-ever direct 3D printing of low temperature co-fired ceramics/floating electrode 3D structures. Slurry-based AM and selective laser burnout (SLB) were used to fabricate bulk dielectric, Bi2Mo2O9 (BMO, sintering temperature = 620–650°C, εr = 38) with silver (Ag) internal floating electrodes. A printable BMO slurry was developed and the SLB optimised to improve edge definition and burn out the binder without damaging the ceramic. The SLB increased the green strength needed for shape retention, produced crack-free parts and prevented Ag leaching into the ceramic during co-firing. The green parts were sintered after SLB in a conventional furnace at 645°C for 4 h and achieved 94.5% density, compressive strength of 4097 MPa, a relative permittivity (εr) of 33.8 and a loss tangent (tan δ) of 0.0004 (8 GHz) for BMO. The feasibility of using SLB followed by a post-printing sintering step to create BMO/Ag 3D structures was thus demonstrated

Measurements of Deuteron Photodisintegration up to 4.0 GeV

The first measurements of the differential cross section for the d(gamma,p)n reaction up to 4.0 GeV were performed at Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) at Jefferson Lab. We report the cross sections at the proton center-of-mass angles of 36, 52, 69 and 89 degrees. These results are in reasonable agreement with previous measurements at lower energy. The 89 and 69 degree data show constituent-counting-rule behavior up to 4.0 GeV photon energy. The 36 and 52 degree data disagree with the counting rule behavior. The quantum chromodynamics (QCD) model of nuclear reactions involving reduced amplitudes disagrees with the present data.Comment: 5 pages (REVTeX), 1 figure (postscript