Community Foundations: Learning from a Collective Experience: Process of Systematization

The report of a community foundation strengthening program involving eight Mexican community foundations: Tecate CF, Frontera Norte CF, Matamoros CF, Oaxaca CF, Puebla CF, Fundación Comunidad, Fundación del Empresariado Chihuahuense (FECHAC), and Fundación Internacional de la Comunidad (FIC). The report is also available in Spanish

Development of a technique to measure the MTF of a transducer used in an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner

Beam characteristics of a transducer play a major role in defining the resolution of any ultrasound imaging system. Direct experimental estimation of the beam profile is often desirable, however, one has to carefully correct for effects that are attributed to the measurement process itself. We report here our experience of using a measurement technique developed for circular disk focused transducers. When the anticipated beam size is much smaller than 0.5 mm the use of a hydrophone to scan the monochromatic beam is not adequate. A more suitable approach is to make a measurement in pulse-echo mode using a thin (125 micron or less) wire target. In this case, a short pulse excitation is used from which the monochromatic information is derived via Fourier transform. However, two measurement artifacts need to be corrected. Multiple reflections due to the finite wire size show up as periodic spikes in the spectrum. These were corrected for using Cepstrum domain filtering method. Second, the wire target measurement essentially represents a one-dimensional projection of the two-dimensional beam pattern in a plane perpendicular to the beam axis. Smoothing effects were investigated by comparing experimental results and theoretical predictions based on Lommel diffraction formulation. The apodization of the transducer to remove the side-lobes would have also caused an increase in width of the main lobe. Line Spread Function and Modulation Transfer Function, with respect to frequency and distance from the target to the transducer, were characterized and reported

Comparison of Exercise and Eating in Collegiate Athletes Vs. Non-Athletes Active in High School Sports

Numerous studies have been conducted on eating disorders (ED) in collegiate athletes. Many studies conclude that collegiate athletes are more at risk of developing an ED compared to non-athletes, while some report the opposite. Purpose. To determine if collegiate athletes are more likely to exhibit ED characteristics compared to those who only participated in high school sports. Method. Each participant completed The Eating Attitude Test-26 (EAT), The Eating Disorder Inventory subscales Body Dissatisfaction (EDIBD), Drive for Thinness (EDIDFT), and Bulimia (EDIBUL) and The Body Shape Questionnaire-34 (BSQ). Group differences were examined for males (N=101), females (N=189), collegiate athletes (N=107), non-athletes who played sports in high school (high school athletes) (N=152), and those who did not play sports in high school (non-athletes) (N=31). Results. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) shothat when combining both genders combined, collegiate athletes scored significantly lower than high school athletes and non-athletes regarding EAT, EDIDFT, EDIBD, and BSQ. No significant difference was found between high school athletes and non-athletes. When separating male and female samples, the ANOVA shothat female collegiate athletes (N=64) scored significantly lower than female high school athletes regarding EAT, while female high school athletes (N=99) and female non-athletes (N=26) did not differ significantly. Female collegiate athletes also scored significantly lower in EDIBD and BSQ than both female high school athletes and female non-athletes. No significant difference was found between female high school athletes and female non-athletes in these measures. No significant difference was found between these groups regarding EDIDFT and EDIBUL. For the male only sample, the ANOVA found no significant differences between collegiate athletes (N=43), high school athletes (N=53), and non-athletes (N=5). Two-tailed independent-sample T tests for equality of means (equal variances not assumed) found that in comparison to males, females scored significantly higher on the EAT, EDIDFT, EDIBD, and BSQ. No significant differences were found regarding EDIBUL. Discussion. Compared to collegiate athletes, high school athletes and non-athletes scored significantly higher on the EAT, EDIDFT, EDIBD, and BSQ, indicating they are at a greater risk of an ED. No significant difference was found between high school athletes and non-athletes, indicating the need for more research. When males and females were analyzed separately based on athlete status, most measures found that female high school athletes and non-athletes were at a greater risk of an ED compared to collegiate athletes. No significant difference was found between the 3 groups regarding males indicating the need for more research concerning these groups. Consistent with most literature, females are more at risk for an ED compared to males. Overall, this study suggests female high school only athletes and non-athletes are more at risk of developing an ED compared to collegiate athletes

Closing the Floodgates: Defining a Class of Third-Party Plaintiffs for Title VII Retaliation Claims

The article offers information on the law related to retaliation claims made under Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964. It mentions the third-party plaintiffs\u27 class which is eligible to file retaliation claims. It expresses the need to set standards for third party retaliation claims. It informs that a third party plaintiff who files a claim should have pretext, direct retaliation evidence, and a proof that retaliation is the only cause for an employer\u27s action

The return home : experiences of deterritorialization in post-Pinochet Chilean literature

Ph.D. University of Kansas, Spanish and Portuguese 2002In response to the experiences of exile and the return, the subsequent preoccupation with a sense of belonging, the blurring of the traditional understanding of borders triggered by a permanent sense of displacement, and the quest for assimilation within the boundaries of the restored motherland have become some of the most dominant themes of post-Pinochet Chilean literature. In chapter one, the characters in Ariel Dorfman's play La muerte y la doncella (1991) illustrate returnees, struggles to establish a sense of place so that they may recover their original imagined community and highlight the breakdown of communication due to the effects of dislocation. But when an exile experiences separation from home and lives in the context of another place, the imagined community representing the original home and the new one begin to mix and merge. Seen in Heading South, Looking North (1997), Dorfman reinterprets what this original community represents and demonstrates acceptance of an ironic conception of nostalgia that celebrates the fragmentation of a place balanced in-between. Antonio Skármeta evokes the memory of home and exile in the second chapter as two distinct, independent locations. Skármeta remembers the place called home in the play Ardiente paciencia (1983) and the place of exile in the novel Match Ball (1989) as home and host communities. In this manna, Skármeta replaces nostalgia for home and the expression of national traditions with the exposition of transnational migrants, socio-political refugees, and international frontier conditions. The third chapter looks at a younger generation of post-Pinochet writers, represented by author Alberto Fuguet, who inherited the experience of exile and the return as “borrowed” conditions, and who experienced the return to Chile not as a process of re-discovery but rather as new discovery. Fuguet's novel Mala onda (1991) and short story collection Por favor, rebobinar (1994), express the emergence of young Chileans into deterritorialized worlds where sentiments of dislocation caused by the blurring of the definitions of home and location represent a society existing in a precarious and orphaned state

Integrating Item Accuracy and Reaction Time to Improve the Measurement of Inhibitory Control Abilities in Early Childhood

Efforts to improve children’s executive function are often hampered by the lack of measures that are optimized for use during the transition from preschool to elementary school. Whereas preschool-based measures often emphasize response accuracy, elementary school-based measures emphasize reaction time (RT)—especially for measures inhibitory control (IC) tasks that typically have a speeded component. The primary objective of this study was to test in a preschool-aged sample whether the joint use of item-level accuracy and RT data resulted in improved scoring for three IC tasks relative to scores derived from accuracy data alone. Generally, the joint use of item-level accuracy and RT data resulted in modest improvements in the measurement precision of IC abilities. Moreover, the joint use of item-level accuracy and RT helped eliminate floor and ceiling effects that occurred when accuracy data were considered alone. Results are discussed with respect to the importance of scoring IC tasks in ways that are maximally informative for program evaluation and longitudinal modeling

Gender in Engineering Departments: Are There Gender Differences in Interruptions of Academic Job Talks?

We use a case study of job talks in five engineering departments to analyze the under-studied area of gendered barriers to finalists for faculty positions. We focus on one segment of the interview day of short-listed candidates invited to campus: the “job talk”, when candidates present their original research to the academic department. We analyze video recordings of 119 job talks across five engineering departments at two Research 1 universities. Specifically, we analyze whether there are differences by gender or by years of post-Ph.D. experience in the number of interruptions, follow-up questions, and total questions that job candidates receive. We find that, compared to men, women receive more follow-up questions and more total questions. Moreover, a higher proportion of women’s talk time is taken up by the audience asking questions. Further, the number of questions is correlated with the job candidate’s statements and actions that reveal he or she is rushing to present their slides and complete the talk. We argue that women candidates face more interruptions and often have less time to bring their talk to a compelling conclusion, which is connected to the phenomenon of “stricter standards” of competence demanded by evaluators of short-listed women applying for a masculine-typed job. We conclude with policy recommendations