4-H as a culturally responsive program : building an afterschool 4-H program that engages Latino youth and parents in Sacramento, CA

In a richly diverse state -- and one where no single ethnic group makes a clear majority -- the University of California 4-H Youth Development Program (CA 4-H YDP) is proposing new program structures to attract and serve Latino audiences, especially through a 4-H Club experience. One such structure creates 4-H Clubs in established after-school programs that take place on school sites. The 4-H Youth Development Program in Sacramento, California, has a history of engaging African American, Asian, and Latino youth in a variety of non-club programs, and is seeking to establish an after-school 4-H Club at a charter school serving primarily Latino children. In an effort to better understand the qualities that best support Latino participation inpositive youth development (PYD) programs, CA 4-H YDP also commissioned a review to synthesize the research and literature in this area. The resulting paper (Erbstein and Fabionar, 2014) explores Latino participation in PYD programs through a framework, Positive Youth Development Program Elements, which includes four components: conceptual framework, program elements, organizational infrastructure, and organizational and community relationships. This paper has two purposes: to describe the process, challenges, and outcomes in forming a predominately Latino 4-H Club in an after school setting; and to view the process of forming the Club through the lens of the Positive Youth Development Program Elements framework

Intern and Mentor Perceptions of the Internship Experience

For more than twenty-five years reform efforts have been pervasively pursued across the nation to improve student achievement at the K-12 level. It is generally agreed that the impetus for these reform efforts was the publication of the report, A Nation at Risk, in 1983(National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983). This report, which concluded that a “rising tide of mediocrity” was sweeping across the educational system served as the clarion call that spurned the national efforts to reform and improve America’s schools. Although these reform efforts have covered nearly every aspect of schooling and taken a variety of forms, fundamentally they have addressed how schools are governed, organized, and operated for the purpose of improving teaching and learning. Additionally, and most important, these reform efforts have focused upon the quality of personnel in the schools, especially teachers and administrators, because reformers have argued that they are the most important resource for effecting significant school improvement. Given the emphasis on the quality of personnel, many of the reform efforts have addressed the quality of both pre-service and professional development programs for teachers and administrators. Of these, the focus, structure, content, and quality of the preservice programs have received the most attention

Principal Interns’ Level of Involvement and Perceived Knowledge and Skills Developed During the Internship Process

The review of the literature clearly shows that the exploration of a critical question is missing from the analysis of internships: Do interns who experience higher levels of involvement develop higher levels of knowledge and skills? In this study, learning experiences are defined as the type of involvement (i.e., low-involvement or high-involvement). The purpose of this study is to examine if higher levels of intern involvement result in the acquisition of higher levels of perceived knowledge and skills. Survey research method was used to assess the principle interns’ level of involvement in a set of specified activities and to assess the relative importance of each kind of involvement

Attitudes to Interpersonal Touch in the Workplace in Autistic and non-Autistic Groups

Unemployment and underemployment have consistently been shown to be higher in autistic adults relative to non-autistic adults. This may be due, in part, to a lack of workplace accommodations being made for autistic people. One factor that may contribute to employment inequalities in autistic people is differences in attitudes towards interpersonal touch. This study acts as a preliminary investigation into whether employed autistic and non-autistic participants differ in their attitudes towards touch in the workplace, and in their loneliness and wellbeing. The current dataset was drawn from a larger online survey (the Touch Test) designed to explore attitudes and experiences towards touch. We found that employed autistic participants had more negative attitudes to general, social and workplace touch relative to non-autistic participants. Autistic participants also experienced greater loneliness and reduced wellbeing. Attachment-related anxiety was the only significant predictor of wellbeing in employed autistic adults. However, attachment-related anxiety, general attitudes to touch and the role of touch in the workplace predicted wellbeing in employed non-autistic adults. With regards to loneliness, general attitudes to touch and the role of touch in the workplace predicted loneliness in autistic participants. We also replicated the finding that a greater proportion of autistic participants were unemployed relative to non-autistic participants. Collectively, this research highlights the importance of considering touch in research investigating employment, and its impact on loneliness and wellbeing, in autistic participants

Ein Bild des eigenen Lebens zeichnen: der Kalender als Visualisierungsinstrument zur Erfassung individueller Lebensverläufe

"Gegenstand dieses Arbeitspapiers, welches im Rahmen des Sfb 186 entstand, ist die Darstellung eines Vorgehens zur Erfassung der Lebensverläufe von Frauen unterschiedlicher Kohorten anhand retrospektiver Daten. Dargestellt wird ein im Projekt 'Berufe im weiblichen Lebenslauf und sozialer Wandel' entwickeltes und eingesetztes, in dieser Form eher (noch) unübliches Erhebungs-Instrumentarium. Neben dem als vorrangig einzustufenden Ziel, es zur Diskussion und damit auf den Prüfstand zu stellen, wird mit den Ausführungen einweiteres verfolgt, nämlich durch die Offenlegung und Nachzeichnung dieses Prozesses die Transparenz empirisch-sozialforscherischen Arbeitens zu erhöhen.

Analysis of biochars for C,H,N,O and S by elemental analyser

[Extract] The basic principles of elemental analysis by dry combustion are straightforward. An accurately weighed aliquot of a sample is combusted to decompose it into gases that are then separated from each other and from other undesired components of the sample. The analytes of interest are then quantified through comparison to standards of known composition and the results presented as a percentage by mass of the original sample

Report of a small feasibility study involving group analysts and groupwork practitioners in facilitating self-practice/self-reflection groups in the training of cognitive behaviour therapists

This article provides a narrative account of a small research study run with a grant from the Institute of Group Analysis (IGA) Legacy Fund. It discusses the challenges and opportunities of engaging in research involving interdisciplinary collaboration between trainee cognitive behaviour therapists working in the NHS and group analysts/groupwork practitioners. It makes the case for building on the results of this study by developing a protocol for a pre-post pilot study using a mixed methods approach to explore whether IGA-led groupwork in CBT training has any effect on patient outcomes and service key performance indicators

Genetic disruption of serine biosynthesis is a key driver of macular telangiectasia type 2 aetiology and progression.

BACKGROUND: Macular telangiectasia type 2 (MacTel) is a rare, heritable and largely untreatable retinal disorder, often comorbid with diabetes. Genetic risk loci subtend retinal vascular calibre and glycine/serine/threonine metabolism genes. Serine deficiency may contribute to MacTel via neurotoxic deoxysphingolipid production; however, an independent vascular contribution is also suspected. Here, we use statistical genetics to dissect the causal mechanisms underpinning this complex disease. METHODS: We integrated genetic markers for MacTel, vascular and metabolic traits, and applied Mendelian randomisation and conditional and interaction genome-wide association analyses to discover the causal contributors to both disease and spatial retinal imaging sub-phenotypes. RESULTS: Genetically induced serine deficiency is the primary causal metabolic driver of disease occurrence and progression, with a lesser, but significant, causal contribution of type 2 diabetes genetic risk. Conversely, glycine, threonine and retinal vascular traits are unlikely to be causal for MacTel. Conditional regression analysis identified three novel disease loci independent of endogenous serine biosynthetic capacity. By aggregating spatial retinal phenotypes into endophenotypes, we demonstrate that SNPs constituting independent risk loci act via related endophenotypes. CONCLUSIONS: Follow-up studies after GWAS integrating publicly available data with deep phenotyping are still rare. Here, we describe such analysis, where we integrated retinal imaging data with MacTel and other traits genomics data to identify biochemical mechanisms likely causing this disorder. Our findings will aid in early diagnosis and accurate prognosis of MacTel and improve prospects for effective therapeutic intervention. Our integrative genetics approach also serves as a useful template for post-GWAS analyses in other disorders

Large Scale Magnetic Fields and the Number of Cosmic Ray Sources above 10^(19) eV

We present numerical simulations for the two-point correlation function and the angular power spectrum of nucleons above 10^{19} injected by a discrete distribution of sources following a simple approximation to the profile of the Local Supercluster. We develop a method to constrain the number of sources necessary to reproduce the observed sky distribution of ultra-high energy cosmic rays, as a function of the strength of the large scale cosmic magnetic fields in the Local Supercluster. While for fields B < 0.05 micro Gauss the Supercluster source distribution is inconsistent with the data for any number of sources, fields of strength B~0.3 micro Gauss could reproduce the observed data with a number of sources around 10.Comment: 10 latex pages, 17 postscript figures include

US Cosmic Visions: New Ideas in Dark Matter 2017: Community Report

This white paper summarizes the workshop "U.S. Cosmic Visions: New Ideas in Dark Matter" held at University of Maryland on March 23-25, 2017.Comment: 102 pages + reference