Client Preferences for Counselor Characteristics: Attitudes Towards Handicapped

The objective of this research was to constructively replicate the research of Brabham and Thoreson (1973) and Mitchell and Frederickson (1975) that led to the conclusion that handicapped counselors are preferred. Subjects were 337 male and female volunteers enrolled in psychology 101 which was taught during the Fall Quarter, 1984, at Utah State University. All subjects were asked to indicate their preference when considering 20 hypothetical problem situations for one counselor from among six photographs of handicapped and non-handicapped counselors. The 20 situations consisted of three types (personal, vocational, and educational). Each subject\u27s score was the total number of times that the subject selected a handicapped counselor. T-tests for independent means were conducted to determined whether or not the group had a statistically significant preference for either handicapped or non-handicapped counselor when the subjects were considering all problems together and when subjects were considering specific problem types. Results indicate that subjects have no significant preference for either handicapped or non-handicapped counselor when all problems were considered. For Personal problems subjects preferred handicapped counselors. For vocational problems subjects preferred non-handicapped counselors. For educational problems subjects had no statistical significant preference. Interpretation of the results suggested preference for a handicapped or non-handicapped counselor is differentially affected by the problem type. It was recommended that much research remains to measure the magnitude of these preferences and the influence of these preferences on the process and outcome of therapy

Asylum Essentials:The U.S. Asylum Program Needs More Resources, Not Restrictions

The public debate surrounding passage of the REAL ID Act by the House of Representatives on February 10 has raised the question of whether or not the U.S. asylum system is vulnerable to infiltration by foreign terrorists. Sponsors of the legislation, which now moves to the Senate for consideration, claim the Act would enhance security by making it more difficult for asylum seekers to prove their cases. However, the realities of asylum processing and the impact of reforms to the asylum system over the past decade point to a need for more resources rather than new restrictions. Abuses of the asylum system, including the most notorious cases cited by supporters of the REAL ID Act, have resulted primarily from applicants getting lost in bureaucratic backlogs or from over-worked Asylum Officers not having sufficient time to closely scrutinize the stories and evidence presented by asylum seekers. The integrity of the asylum system is enhanced by sufficient staffing and funding to allow the thorough and timely adjudication of asylum cases, and adequate training of the immigration inspectors who first come into contact with asylum seekers. Current law already denies asylum to individuals who have engaged in terrorist activity, committed serious crimes, or who may pose a danger to national security.1 And asylum applicants already undergo extensive security checks. The critical issue is whether or not the Asylum Officers who are assigned to review asylum claims have the time and resources they need to efficiently and effectively determine who is a legitimate refugee. The provisions of the REAL ID Act that would raise the bar for all asylum applicants do nothin

Methane storms as a driver of Titan's dune orientation

Titan's equatorial regions are covered by eastward propagating linear dunes. This direction is opposite to mean surface winds simulated by Global Climate Models (GCMs), which are oriented westward at these latitudes, similar to trade winds on Earth. Different hypotheses have been proposed to address this apparent contradiction, involving Saturn's gravitational tides, large scale topography or wind statistics, but none of them can explain a global eastward dune propagation in the equatorial band. Here we analyse the impact of equinoctial tropical methane storms developing in the superrotating atmosphere (i.e. the eastward winds at high altitude) on Titan's dune orientation. Using mesoscale simulations of convective methane clouds with a GCM wind profile featuring superrotation, we show that Titan's storms should produce fast eastward gust fronts above the surface. Such gusts dominate the aeolian transport, allowing dunes to extend eastward. This analysis therefore suggests a coupling between superrotation, tropical methane storms and dune formation on Titan. Furthermore, together with GCM predictions and analogies to some terrestrial dune fields, this work provides a general framework explaining several major features of Titan's dunes: linear shape, eastward propagation and poleward divergence, and implies an equatorial origin of Titan's dune sand.Comment: Published online on Nature Geoscience on 13 April 201

Exploring Oregon Teacher Retention: Patterns and Reasons for Teachers' Persistence

K-12 teacher retention is an enduring concern in the United States as teachers are vital for educational achievement and change. National trends demonstrate how widespread an issue teacher retention is, yet teacher labor markets remain highly localized and highlight the complexity of teacher retention decisions. We need an improved understanding of conditions closer to home and work to inform improvements in teacher retention. In this dissertation, I present two studies that collectively examine issues related to the retention of Oregon’s teachers. Utilizing both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, the findings from these studies offer novel insights concerning the factors associated with and the stories of teachers’ retention decisions. In the first study, I report descriptive statistics and estimate regression models from 2007-2020 Oregon state-level teacher data to understand patterns in teacher retention for recently-hired and longer-term teachers. Results suggest disaggregating teacher populations offers nuanced areas of struggle and opportunities for improvement within Oregon’s localized education systems. Some factors differentially impact teacher retention across their career trajectory, while some influence teacher retention consistently. Factors affecting Oregon’s teaching population differently than reported elsewhere include race and ethnicity, education level, student-teacher ratio, and geographic locale. In the second study, I relied on semi-structured interviews to examine Oregon teachers’ perceived reasons for staying in their schools, districts, and communities over long periods. In this phenomenological study, I looked for similarities and differences among participants from varying Oregon geographical contexts and districts with varying historical success in retaining teachers. Participants included 24 Oregon teachers from eight school districts. While some themes from this study were explained similarly by teachers across the district and geographic factors, some were described by teachers from only smaller districts and communities or based on their communities’ demographics. Other findings were dependent on participants’ residency status. The job embeddedness framework proved useful in interpreting and organizing results. I look across the two studies to discuss overarching themes that emerged and provide recommendations for stakeholders to support improvements in teacher retention

Rethinking America's Illegal Drug Policy

This paper provides a critical review of the empirical and theoretical literatures on illegal drug policy, including cross-country comparisons, in order to evaluate three drug policy regimes: criminalization, legalization and “depenalization.” Drawing on the experiences of various states, as well as countries such as Portugal and the Netherlands, the paper attempts to identify cost-minimizing policies for marijuana and cocaine by assessing the differing ways in which the various drug regimes would likely change the magnitude and composition of the social costs of each drug. The paper updates and evaluates Jeffrey Miron’s 1999 national time series analysis of drug prohibition spending and the homicide rate, which underscores the lack of a solid empirical base for assessing the theoretically anticipated crime drop that would come from drug legalization. Nonetheless, the authors conclude that given the number of arrests for marijuana possession, and the costs of incarceration and crime systemic to cocaine criminalization, the current regime is unlikely to be cost-minimizing for either marijuana or cocaine.

Cut-sets and Cut-vertices in the Zero-Divisor Graph of ∏Zni

We examine minimal sets of vertices which, when removed from a zero-divisor graph, separate the graph into disconnected subgraphs. We classify these sets for all direct products of Γ ∏Zn

Facilitating Pre-Service Teachers to Engage Emergent Bilinguals in Productive Struggle

This study utilized a multiple case study with qualitative research to examine how Pre-service teachers (PSTs) might engage Emergent Bilinguals (EBs) in productive struggle—grappling to solve problems (Warshauer, 2015). The researchers created a rubric based on Warshauer’s (2015) case study to record the types of questions PSTs asked as they tutored fourth grade EBs. Warshauer (2015) claimed PSTs should allow students more wait time and ask questions. She referred to such questions as affordance and probing guidance, which facilitates productive struggle. In order to discover more about the PSTs’ thinking, the researchers interviewed the PSTs before and after their first, third, and seventh lesson. The researchers’ findings are that the PSTs struggled to incorporate more affordance and probing guidance-based questions as the semester progressed. However, PSTs use of telling based questions decreased during the semester. Another finding was two of the EBs spoke only English at the beginning of the semester, but later used code switching during the lessons. Perhaps the students felt more comfortable with their surroundings, and speaking in Spanish helped facilitate them to engage in productive struggle. Furthermore, PSTs utilized culturally relevant teaching strategies during their lessons and created an environment to encourage positive mindsets for learning mathematics. Implications are teacher educators should teach PSTs how to engage all students in productive struggle

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

Differences in genotype and virulence among four multidrug-resistant <i>Streptococcus pneumoniae</i> isolates belonging to the PMEN1 clone

We report on the comparative genomics and characterization of the virulence phenotypes of four &lt;i&gt;S. pneumoniae&lt;/i&gt; strains that belong to the multidrug resistant clone PMEN1 (Spain&lt;sup&gt;23F&lt;/sup&gt; ST81). Strains SV35-T23 and SV36-T3 were recovered in 1996 from the nasopharynx of patients at an AIDS hospice in New York. Strain SV36-T3 expressed capsule type 3 which is unusual for this clone and represents the product of an in vivo capsular switch event. A third PMEN1 isolate - PN4595-T23 - was recovered in 1996 from the nasopharynx of a child attending day care in Portugal, and a fourth strain - ATCC700669 - was originally isolated from a patient with pneumococcal disease in Spain in 1984. We compared the genomes among four PMEN1 strains and 47 previously sequenced pneumococcal isolates for gene possession differences and allelic variations within core genes. In contrast to the 47 strains - representing a variety of clonal types - the four PMEN1 strains grouped closely together, demonstrating high genomic conservation within this lineage relative to the rest of the species. In the four PMEN1 strains allelic and gene possession differences were clustered into 18 genomic regions including the capsule, the blp bacteriocins, erythromycin resistance, the MM1-2008 prophage and multiple cell wall anchored proteins. In spite of their genomic similarity, the high resolution chinchilla model was able to detect variations in virulence properties of the PMEN1 strains highlighting how small genic or allelic variation can lead to significant changes in pathogenicity and making this set of strains ideal for the identification of novel virulence determinant