The Technology Crisis in US-based Emergency Management: Toward a Well-Connected Future

For many years, CI has tried to show the value of computational techniques for response to hazard events but has yet to see success outside of post-hoc analyses. Meanwhile, emergency management (EM) has been struggling to cope with the impact of computation. This duality wherein we know technology can be useful yet also complicates EM (and has not yet been fully integrated into EM) is what we dub the technology crisis in EM. To begin to address this crisis and revitalize CI, we argue that it is necessary to develop an inventory of what technologies EM is competent with and to design training that can extend that competency. This research reports a survey of EM Practitioners in the United States. We offer one of the first inventories of EM technologies and technological skills and identify how current EM technological integration issues are a crisis

A Cross-Site Inquiry Into Reading Instruction in Differentially Successful Title I Schools.

By design, elementary schools are places where students perform specified tasks and become literate. In practice, elementary schools enroll students who engage in instructional activity, yet many of these students fail to reach minimum literacy standards. This multiple-case qualitative inquiry focused on the inner workings of schools where students placed at risk learned to read and examined schools where similar students did not learn to read. Research conducted in four elementary schools addressed the following questions: (a) What resources, time factors, and management systems do elementary teachers use to create an effective reading environment? (b) How do reading assessment measures and practices inform instruction? (c) Within the school context, what is the level of continuity in reading instruction from one classroom to the next? Four general findings emerged in response to the research questions. First, material resources were in short supply; and teachers did not utilize instructional-level appropriate materials to facilitate independent work. Human resources were squandered. In the majority of cases, ancillary teacher behaviors were counterproductive to student learning. These support personnel were scheduled inefficiently and were inadequately monitored, yet frequent principal classroom visitations positively impacted student and teacher performance. Second, management and use of time were not maximized in the two unsuccessful schools. In the two successful schools, learning time was extended by thirty minutes each day as a result of efficient time management; upper grades were departmentalized; and at one school, pull-out rather than inclusion was implemented for specialized instruction. Third, assessment practices limited rather than informed instruction. Teachers used intuition for informal assessment and inconsistent documentation for reporting. Finally, continuity was apparent at one site, Star One School, where grade-level teachers implemented like-reading instruction within each of the six grade levels. In the final analysis, this was the only school in the inquiry demonstrating aspects of successful reading instruction. Implicit in these findings is the need for further study. Yet insight can be gained; and students placed at risk could conceivably attend schools where factors within our control, such as those uncovered in this inquiry, would cease to interfere with their learning

Neonatal iron supplementation potentiates oxidative stress, energetic dysfunction and neurodegeneration in the R6/2 mouse model of Huntington's disease

Huntington’s disease (HD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder caused by a CAG repeat expansion that encodes a polyglutamine tract in huntingtin (htt) protein. Dysregulation of brain iron homeostasis, oxidative stress and neurodegeneration are consistent features of the HD phenotype. Therefore, environmental factors that exacerbate oxidative stress and iron dysregulation may potentiate HD. Iron supplementation in the human population is common during infant and adult-life stages. In this study, iron supplementation in neonatal HD mice resulted in deterioration of spontaneous motor running activity, elevated levels of brain lactate and oxidized glutathione consistent with increased energetic dysfunction and oxidative stress, and increased striatal and motor cortical neuronal atrophy, collectively demonstrating potentiation of the disease phenotype. Oxidative stress, energetic, and anatomic markers of degeneration were not affected in wild-type littermate iron-supplemented mice. Further, there was no effect of elevated iron intake on disease outcomes in adult HD mice. We have demonstrated an interaction between the mutant huntingtin gene and iron supplementation in neonatal HD mice. Findings indicate that elevated neonatal iron intake potentiates mouse HD and promotes oxidative stress and energetic dysfunction in brain. Neonatal-infant dietary iron intake level may be an environmental modifier of human HD