The Relationship Between Mobility and Student Achievement

Mobility, at least sometime before a student graduates from high school, has become the norm rather than the exception in the United States today. The current study represented one high school administrator’s effort to examine mobile students’ academic performance. A quantitative, quasi-experimental design was utilized to examine the relationship between student mobility and academic achievement as measured by semester grades in mathematics and English classes, and raw scores on the state high school achievement examination. The results indicated that a statistically significant difference existed between the semester one grades in mathematics and English. However, the results further indicated that there was no statistical significance between the semester two grades in mathematics and English or the raw scores on the state assessment

Intensional Logic and Topology

This thesis is concerned with mathematical logic, in particular it is an investigation of a branch of mathematical logic called modal logic. This branch of mathematical logic extends the propositional calculus by adding two unary operators □ and 0 to the standard set of logical operators. This extension of classical logic has many interpretations; traditionally it is said to be the logic of necessity, denoted by the box operator, and possibility, denoted by the diamond operator. The notion of necessity within modal logic is ubiquitous and lends itself to a vast sea of metaphysics. For example, if X is necessarily true, denoted O X , then it is said to be true in all possible worlds. This way of understanding modalities gave imputes for a semantics that provided fodder for the first completeness proofs in modal logic. Modalities in logic have its roots in philosophy and dates back as far as Aristotle’s M etaphysics, but was brought into the limelight with the work of the philosopher mathematician Saul Kripke who in 1959, as a high school student, published the first completeness proof for a class of modal logics [Kripke]. His method used the so-called semantic-tableaux which was introduced by B eth’s The foundations of mathematics to obtain quick completeness proof for the propositional and predicate calculus. In this thesis, we are also interested in completeness for modal logics, but will use a more modern method known in the.literature as canonical model constructions . Moreover, we wish to provide a semantics for modal logics that is not the traditional possible world semantics. Our models will be topological in nature. Our goal is to provide a completeness proof for a particular modal logic called S4 which interprets the modal operators as the interior and closure operators on topological spaces. We will also prove that the logic S4 is complete with respect to the class of transitive and reflexive trees. This gives us two new completeness proof for the modal logic S4

Ecology of the Eastern Hognose Snake (Heterodon platirhinos) at Cape Cod National Seashore, Barnstable County, Massachusetts

The eastern hognose snake (Heterodon platirhinos) is an understudied species of increasing conservation concern, especially in the northeastern portion of its range. Conservation and management efforts often rely on ecological information to guide best practices when dealing with vulnerable and/or cryptic species. A radiotelemetry study was initiated at Cape Cod National Seashore, Barnstable County, Massachusetts on H. platirhinos in an effort to increase the understanding of spatial ecology, habitat selection, and associated natural history attributes. Sixteen adult H. platirhinos were tracked over two years yielding a total of 413 relocations. We observed a large variation in home range size among individuals (MCP mean = 31 ha, MCP range = 1-209 ha) and seasonal differences in movements between sexes with female movements peaking in July, and male movements peaking in September. Estimates of daily movements averaged 25.9 m/d and were less than estimates derived from other studies of H. platirhinos. Also contrary to other studies, females showed a high rate of reproduction with oviposition taking place in late-June to early-July. Probability of occurrence increased with certain physical and vegetative characteristics (grass, leaf litter) and decreased with others (open soil, cranberry). We documented the first instance of hibernaculum site fidelity in this species

Responses of a Spotted Turtle (\u3cem\u3eClemmys guttata\u3c/em\u3e) Population to Creation of Early-successional Habitat

The maintenance or creation of early successional habitat is commonly employed by natural resource managers, often for the benefit of native wildlife. In southern New England, USA, forest succession has reduced the amount of early successional habitat on the landscape making the creation of such habitat a management priority in the region. However, questions remain regarding the impacts of the creation of early successional habitat on certain species, especially those that are associated with late successional habitats. We conducted a radio-telemetry study of Spotted Turtles (Clemmys guttata) in Rhode Island, USA, for one year before, and one year after a 3-ha forest clear-cut in close proximity to wetlands known to contain a resident population of the species. The annual home range size of turtles was 18.5% larger post-cut, possibly due to changes in the distribution of resources and suitable habitat after the harvest. However, turtles exhibited fidelity to hibernacula and communal overwintering, despite nearby disturbance, and patterns of activity and habitat use were similar in both years and were generally consistent with those of other Spotted Turtle populations. Our results suggest that timber harvesting of this spatial scale and management approach may not have any short-term effects on the spatial ecology or habitat use of populations of Spotted Turtles, but further research is needed to understand longer-term effects. We strongly recommend that the timing of clear-cut harvesting be restricted to outside of the region-specific activity season of this species and that land managers avoid significant disturbance to wetlands containing Spotted Turtles, especially those containing hibernacula