State of the Science Conference: Abstract and Executive Summary

This document provides an overview of research findings presented and audience response at the “state-the-science” conference conducted by Cornell University October 22-23, 2013 in Washington, D.C. on the topic of Innovative Research on Employment Practices: Improving Employment for People with Disabilities

Leveling the Playing Field: Attracting, Engaging, and Advancing People with Disabilities

People with disabilities experience significant challenges in finding employment. The participation of people with disabilities in the workforce and their median income are both less than half that of the civilian workforce. They work part time 68 percent more frequently than people without disabilities. These disheartening results persist despite the enactment of significant federal legislation aimed at making the workplace more supportive and accessible to people with disabilities. The Conference Board Research Working Group (RWG) on Improving Employment Outcomes for People with Disabilities was convened to address how to overcome these disparities. It was sponsored by the Employment and Disability Institute at Cornell University, under a grant from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research of the U.S. Department of Education. The RWG members focused on four questions: 1) The business case: Is it advantageous for organizations to employ people with disabilities? 2) Organizational readiness: What should organizations do to create a workplace that enables people with disabilities to thrive and advance? 3) Measurement: How can success for both people with disabilities and the organization itself be determined? 4) Self-disclosure: How can people with disabilities, especially those whose disabilities are not obvious, be encouraged to identify themselves so that resources can be directed toward them and outcomes can be measured

Bionomics of a Greenbug Parasite Lysiphlebus testaceipes (Cresson)

The greenbug, Schizaphis graminum (Rondani), is a major pest to grain crops in the Great Plains states. In 1968, 7.3 X 106 acres of sorghum were infested in nine of these states. The loss of sorghum in Kansas alone was estimated at lJ.5 X 106 bushels. In 1969 and 1970 the combined South Dakota recorded sorghum yield and control losses were over $2.6 X io6 (USDA 1970 and 1971). The greenbug is an economic vector for diseases of winter wheat, barley, oats, sorghum, and cane. Severe infestations on winter wheat have led to reduced crop cover and soil erosion. S. graminum has evolved three biotypes, A, B, and C. Biotype C has been one of the main limiting factors to grain production, thriving over a wide temperature and plant host range. The greenbug has migrated northward to the central states each spring. There has been a natural time lag which has enabled establishment of the greenbug between its entrance in April and the parasite-predator build-up. Greenbug populations have been effectively reduced by topical applications of chemicals, often harsh to natural controls and poorly timed. Systemic insecticides are being tested for early, preventative and residual control. Such insecticides will possibly be less damaging to native greenbug predator and parasite populations, allowing their build-up while suppressing the greenbug numbers. A combination of biological and chemical controls may be the solution to improved production. The objectives of this project were to contribute to the knowledge of the biology of Lysiphlebus testaceipes (Cresson), considered to be an effective control of the greenbug, and to investigate the influence of certain systemic insecticides in sorghum, on the greenbug populations and on the greenbug predator and parasite populations. The influence of low temperature on successful parasite copulation and emergence was investigated under controlled environmental conditions, and the population studies, under field conditions

Food Animal Veterinarians: Where We Came From and Where We Might Go

The history of veterinary medicine has been one of growth and adaptation to the needs of society. Today, the discipline relating to food animals is being challenged by various forces ranging from projected shortages of qualified personnel, to economic challenges and deficiencies in training future graduates. Despite these challenges, veterinarians interested in working with food animals have tremendous opportunities. Combining current interests and attention with a well-planned vision to shape the profession can likely ensure food animal veterinarian\u27s relevance and contributions to society

Crowding-out or crowding-in? Effects of LEAP 1000 unconditional cash transfer program on household and community support among women in rural Ghana

Social protection programs are not introduced in a vacuum and it is important to understand what effects such programs have on existing informal support networks of family, friends and community members. A social cash transfer may reduce receipt of informal financial support, which can water down part of the program's impact. However, cash transfers can also reduce barriers to social participation and enable participants to engage in reciprocal support systems. We use data from the quasi-experimental mixed method impact evaluation of Ghana's Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) 1000 program, a social cash transfer program for pregnant women and mothers of children under one year living in poverty, to estimate program effects on social support and participation. Using a difference-in-differences approach we find that LEAP 1000 increases overall social support, as well as both emotional and instrumental support. In addition, program beneficiaries are more likely to participate in community groups. In in-depth interviews, participants confirmed increased support with descriptions of improved access to financial markets, such as borrowing money or contributing to local savings schemes, and strengthening of social participation in local groups and gatherings. Beneficiary women also highlighted reduced need for economic support and new opportunities to support others. By creating opportunities for additional social support within the household and community, LEAP 1000 crowded-in support, rather than reducing existing sources of support or crowding-out support

Use of positron emission tomography in evaluation of brachial plexopathy in breast cancer patients

18-Fluoro-2-deoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) has previously been used successfully to image primary and metastatic breast cancer. In this pilot study, 19 breast cancer patients with symptoms/signs referrable to the brachial plexus were evaluated with 18FDG-PET. In 11 cases computerized tomography (CT) scanning was also performed. Of the 19 patients referred for PET study, 14 had abnormal uptake of 18FDG in the region of the symptomatic plexus. Four patients had normal PET studies and one had increased FDG uptake in the chest wall that accounted for her axillary pain. CT scans were performed in 9 of the 14 patients who had positive brachial plexus PET studies; six of these were either normal or showed no clear evidence of recurrent disease, while three CTs demonstrated clear brachial plexus involvement. Of two of the four patients with normal PET studies, one has had complete resolution of symptoms untreated while the other was found to have cervical disc herniation on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan. The remaining two patients almost certainly had radiation-induced plexopathy and had normal CT, MRI and PET study. These data suggest that 18FDG-PET scanning is a useful tool in evaluation of patients with suspected metastatic plexopathy, particularly if other imaging studies are normal. It may also be useful in distinguishing between radiation-induced and metastatic plexopathy. © 1999 Cancer Research Campaig

Learning teams : a communities-of-practice approach to faculty development and university course design

Success or failure in teaching and learning is often associated with the level of expertise in individual faculty or motivation and abilities in students. Rarely do departments or the university as a whole share responsibility (Biggs, 2001). A potential gateway to change is learning teams, an abridged title for learning-oriented course design teams (McAlpine, 2002a). Learning teams are intentionally organized around course design projects that evolve over time to foster learning from experience. They provide an opportunity to deliberate on course decisions with a strategic group of people---faculty, pedagogical experts, instructional technologists, librarians, and students---for the purpose of initiating change. Learning teams represent a systematic process for linking people to new communities of practice, crossing boundaries we may not even know exist. The research context is McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Internal funding was provided to increase access to a core faculty development workshop on Course Design and Teaching (CDT). The CDT workshop is a five-day intensive experience that provides a framework for helping professors think intentionally about their instructional decisions (Saroyan & Amundsen, 2004). A major challenge in the workshop over the years has been how to model and make explicit issues around the role of technology in instruction, and more recently information resources, while preserving the theoretical integrity of the workshop. The redesign of the CDT workshop with these goals in mind presented an opportunity to experiment formally with the learning team strategy. A learning team met for one year, generating and reflecting on the results of three design iterations. Grounded theory analysis of interviews with participants proceeded through an initial searching phase looking for variation in perspectives and dominant themes followed by focused coding and the seeking of patterns. Findings were validated through triangulation of different data sources (interviews, observations, documents, products) and two credibility checks (one with a colloquium of the learning team and another with an external consultant). Only findings validated with participants are cited. A conceptual model of learning teams emerged with a core concept captured in the phrase "a systematic way of talking to each other" and seven related concepts: context sensitivity, mutual goals, diversity, design framework, dialogue, collective self-reflection, and momentum. The model integrates literature from the fields of faculty development, university course design, and educational technology. What fundamentally happened in the learning team? A WebCT environment now houses a dynamic record of the CDT workshop. People in the Libraries are cued to how they can best inform the course design process. Team members have a deepened awareness and shared commitment to multidisciplinary collaboration. However, in concentrating on achieving explicit goals the team failed to reflect collectively on their own learning that occurred. Focusing attention on team processes provides a way forward on this research agenda. The real problem will lie in scaling out the learning team strategy. A new reality is needed in the professoriate to move people from individual responsibility to collective responsibility in university course design, not as groups of experts but as multidisciplinary teams

Characterizing Polytobacco Use Trajectories and Their Associations With Substance Use and Mental Health Across Mid-Adolescence.

Background:Polytobacco product use is suspected to be common, dynamic across time, and increase risk for adverse behavioral outcomes. We statistically modeled characteristic types of polytobacco use trajectories during mid-adolescence and tested their prospective association with substance use and mental health problems. Methods:Adolescents (N = 3393) in Los Angeles, CA, were surveyed semiannually from 9th to 11th grade. Past 6-month combustible cigarette, e-cigarette, or hookah use (yes/no) over four assessments were analyzed using parallel growth mixture modeling to identify a parsimonious set of polytobacco use trajectories. A tobacco product use trajectory group was used to predict substance use and mental health at the fifth assessment. Results:Three profiles were identified: (1) tobacco nonusers (N = 2291, 67.5%) with the lowest use prevalence (<3%) of all products across all timepoints; (2) polyproduct users (N = 920, 27.1%) with moderate use prevalence of each product (8-35%) that escalated for combustible cigarettes but decreased for e-cigarettes and hookah across time; and (3) chronic polyproduct users (N = 182, 5.4%) with high prevalence of each product use (38-86%) that escalated for combustible cigarettes and e-cigarettes. Nonusers, polyproduct users, and chronic polyproduct users reported successively higher alcohol, marijuana, and illicit drug use and ADHD at the final follow-up, respectively. Both tobacco using groups (vs. nonusers) reported greater odds of depression and anxiety at the final follow-up but did not differ from each other. Conclusions:Adolescent polytobacco use may involve a common moderate risk trajectory and a less common high-risk chronic trajectory. Both trajectories predict substance use and mental health symptomology. Implications:Variation in use and co-use of combustible cigarette, e-cigarette, and hookah use in mid-adolescence can be parsimoniously characterized by a small set common trajectory profiles in which polyproduct use are predominant patterns of tobacco product use, which predict adverse behavioral outcomes. Prevention and policy addressing polytobacco use (relative to single product use) may be optimal tobacco control strategies for youth, which may in turn prevent other forms of substance use and mental health problems