Exploring Regional Differences In Social Work Pedagogy: Attitudes Toward Poverty

This study explores regional differences in student learning outcomes from pre and post-test surveys of undergraduate and first year graduate social work students (N = 373) enrolled in a social welfare policy class at six different CSWE accredited institutions. As expected, overall results showed a shift in student attitudes away from a personal deficiency explanation for poverty, a decline in stigmatization of poverty, and toward a more structural explanation for the causes of poverty, but significant differences were reported by geographical region. Future research should explore the instructor, pedagogical, and geographical factors that may help of hinder attitudinal preparation for practice social work students

Considerations on the use of video playbacks as visual stimuli: The Lisbon workshop consensus

This paper is the consensus of a workshop that critically evaluated the utility and problems of video playbacks as stimuli in studies of visual behavior. We suggest that video playback is probably suitable for studying motion, shape, texture, size, and brightness. Studying color is problematic because video systems are specifically designed for humans. Any difference in color perception must lead to a different color sensation in most animals. Another potentially problematic limitation of video images is that they lack depth cues derived from stereopsis, accommodation, and motion parallax. Nonetheless, when used appropriately, video playback allows an unprecedented range of questions in visual communication to be addressed. It is important to note that most of the potential limitations of video playback are not unique to this technique but are relevant to all studies of visual signaling in animals

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

FloridaPop

Florida population genetics file (.ped

Data from: Rapid evolution and the genomic consequences of selection against interspecific mating

While few species introduced into a new environment become invasive, those that do provide critical information on ecological mechanisms that determine invasions success and the evolutionary responses that follow invasion. Aedes albopictus (the Asian tiger mosquito) was introduced into the naturalized range of Aedes aegypti (the yellow fever mosquito) in the USA in the mid-1980s, resulting in the displacement of A. aegypti in much of the southeastern USA. The rapid displacement was likely due to the superior competitive ability of A. albopictus as larvae and asymmetric mating interference competition, in which male A. albopictus mate with and sterilize A. aegypti females, a process called “satyrization”. The goal of this study was to examine the genomic responses of a resident species to an invasive species in which the mechanism of character displacement is understood. We used double-digest restriction enzyme DNA sequencing (ddRADseq) to analyze outlier loci between selected and control lines of laboratory-reared A. aegypti females from two populations (Tucson, AZ and Key West, Florida, USA), and individual females classified as either “resisted” or “mated with” A. albopictus males via mating trials of wild-derived females from four populations in Florida. We found significant outlier loci in comparing selected and control lines and between mated and non-mated A. aegypti females in the laboratory and wild-derived populations, respectively. We found overlap in specific outlier loci between different source populations that support consistent genomic signatures of selection within A. aegypti. Our results point to regions of the A. aegypti genome and potential candidate genes that may be involved in mating behavior, and specifically in avoiding interspecific mating choices

SelectedvsWild-expermt

.ped file for comparisons of population genomics for field populations from Florid

FloridaPop

Map of Florida Populations "Wild Derived

Geometrically enforced donor-facilitated dehydrocoupling leading to an isolable arsanylidine-phosphorane

This work was made open access through funds from the RCUK open access block grant.A proximate Lewis basic group facilitates the mild dehydrogenative P–As intramolecular coupling in the phosphine-arsine peri-substituted acenaphthene 3 , affording thermally and hydrolytically stable arsanylidine-phosphorane 4 with a sterically accessible two-coordinate arsenic atom. The formation of 4 is thermoneutral due to the dehydrogenation being concerted with the donor coordination. Reaction of 4 with a limited amount of oxygen reveals arsinidene-like reactivity via formation of cyclooligoarsines, supporting the formulation of the bonding in 4 as base-stabilized arsinidene R3P→AsR.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Changing Social Work Students’ Perceptions of the Role of Government in a Policy Class

Understanding student political attitudes—feelings about government and perceptions of its role—has long been of interest to social scientists. One factor that may influence political attitudes is belief in a just world, a complex psychological construct well established in the literature. Our study explores changes in social work students’ perception of a supportive role of government and their beliefs in a just world after one policy course using a pretest and posttest design. Student perceptions changed toward a more supportive government role, but there was no significant change for belief in a just world. The study contributes to empirical evaluation of the social work education policy class in terms of the Council on Social Work Education competencies