Creating A Culture Of Independent Reading Among African American Students, Especially Black Males

The research question addressed in this project is: How can I create a culture of independent reading among African American students, especially black males? The goal is to help motivate students to become lifelong readers who will be prepared to develop their life choices into great successes. The author examines the history of education of African Americans and the ensuing achievement gap. She discusses literature on the topic of motivating African American students, especially males, to see the value of reading and education, and includes literature on culturally relevant teaching. She documents three areas of teaching that influence the development of a culture of readers. These are vocabulary, independent reading, and teacher read-alouds. Research has shown that teacher read-alouds have a positive impact on independent reading, so the teacher shared read-aloud project was developed. The structure and implementation of the read-aloud project are documented and described for use by others

Multi-level Governance Processes - Citizens & Local Budgeting: Comparing Brazil, China, & the United States

Modifications to policy-making processes and actors are crucial when transitioning to multi-level governance. Civic engagement in budgeting processes, where crucial policy decisions are determined, is an important component of shared governance. Understanding the new roles for citizens in the budget process, then, can extend our knowledge of multi-level governance. This research explores the ways in which the budget process incorporates citizen participation to foster an ideal of civil society in the United States, Brazil, and China. The comparative case analysis probes the extent to which institutional changes have occurred, why they have occurred, and the degree to which municipal budget processes are characterized by multi-level governance

A Lost Novel by George Chamier

Discussion of George Chamier's nineteenth-century nove

Recruitment of High School Minority Students into Engineering, Math, Science and Technology Futures on Predominantly White Campuses

“This session is for college administrators who wish to make traditionally elitist program more inclusive. Its is also helpful to community and school district personnel who wish to investigate how to set up a similar program in their community.

Engaging the disengaged indefinitely, and with no budget: creating a sustainable model for student library ambassadors

University Libraries offer a wide range of services and facilities to help enhance the student learning experience and to aid the transition into learning at University. Often, too few Science and Engineering students fully engage with the services and facilities on offer and therefore do not benefit from the opportunities available to them. Drawing on research highlighting the value of peer support, and the fact that students are far more likely to use their peers as an information source than ‘experts’, Loughborough University Library obtained small project funding in 2010 to employ four Student Ambassadors in a pilot project to improve student engagement with the Library. The successful project demonstrated the potency of the idea in engaging with students, particularly non-users, a large proportion of which are based in the Science and Engineering Faculties. In the absence of continued funding, the challenge, addressed here, is how to make such posts sustainable. Past experience at both Nottingham and Loughborough Universities has proven how difficult it is to recruit students on a voluntary basis to engage with University Libraries. In this paper, an innovative and creative method of recruiting and supporting “Learning Resource Leaders” (LRLs) at Nottingham and Loughborough Universities is discussed. The strategies employed have resulted in the recruitment of four LRLs – two at each institution – supported by an industrial sponsor who provides a package of non-monetary incentives. The paper also describes the techniques used by the LRLs to disseminate information about the resources offered by the University Libraries and to engage with the student cohort

Improving near-surface retrievals of surface humidity over the global open oceans from passive microwave observations

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Earth and Space Science, 6(7), (2019): 1220-1233, doi:10.1029/2018EA000436.Ocean evaporative fluxes are a critical component of the Earth's energy and water cycle, but their estimation remains uncertain. Near‐surface humidity is a required input to bulk flux algorithms that relate mean surface values to the turbulent fluxes. Several satellite‐derived turbulent flux products have been developed over the last decade that utilize passive microwave imager observations to estimate the surface humidity. It is known, however, that these estimates tend to diverge from one another and from in situ observations. Analysis of current state‐of‐the‐art satellite estimates provided herein reveals that regional‐scale biases in these products remain significant. Investigations reveal a link between the spatial coherency of the observed biases to atmospheric dynamical controls of water vapor vertical stratification, cloud liquid water, and sea surface temperature. This information is used to develop a simple state‐dependent bias correction that results in more consistent ocean surface humidity estimates. A principal conclusion is that further improvements to ocean near‐surface humidity estimation using microwave radiometers requires incorporation of prior information on water vapor stratification and sea surface temperature.Data products used in this study are made publicly available via multiple repositories hosted by individual data product producers. JOFUROv2 and JOFUROv3 data are available online (https://j‐ofuro.scc.u‐tokai.ac.jp/en/). IFREMERv4 and NOCS surface data are available through the OceanHeatFlux project (https://www.ifremer.fr/oceanheatflux/Data). GSSTFv3 (doi:10.5067/MEASURES/GSSTF/DATA301) and MERRA‐2 data are obtained from the Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center. HOAPSv3.2 data are available from Satellite Application Facility on Climate Monitoring (https://doi.org/10.5676/EUM_SAF_CM/HOAPS/V001). SEAFLUXv2 data are accessed through the National Centers for Environmental Information (http://doi.org/10.7289/V59K4885). Daily surface observations were provided by David Berry and Elizabeth Kent. This work is supported under the NASA Physical Oceanography Program Grant NNX14AK48A

Characterization of Turbulent Latent and Sensible Heat Flux Exchange Between the Atmosphere and Ocean in MERRA

Turbulent fluxes of heat and moisture across the atmosphere-ocean interface are fundamental components of the Earth's energy and water balance. Characterizing both the spatiotemporal variability and the fidelity of these exchanges of heat and moisture is critical to understanding the global water and energy cycle variations, quantifying atmosphere-ocean feedbacks, and improving model predictability. This study examines the veracity of the recently completed NASA Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) product with respect to its representation of the surface turbulent heat fluxes. A validation of MERRA turbulent heat fluxes and near-surface bulk variables at local, high-resolution space and time scales is achieved by making comparisons to a large suite of direct observations. Both in situ and satellite-observed gridded surface heat flux estimates are employed to investigate the spatial and temporal variability of the surface fluxes with respect to their annual mean climatologies, their seasonal covariability of near-surface bulk parameters, and their representation of extremes. The impact of data assimilation on the near-surface parameters is assessed through evaluation of incremental analysis update tendencies produced by the assimilation procedure. It is found that MERRA turbulent surface heat fluxes are relatively accurate for typical conditions but have systematically weak vertical gradients in moisture and temperature and have a weaker covariability between the near-surface gradients and wind speed than found in observations. This results in an underestimate of the surface latent and sensible heat fluxes over the western boundary current and storm track regions. The assimilation of observations mostly acts to bring MERRA closer to observational products by increasing moisture and temperature near the surface and decreasing the near-surface wind speeds. The major patterns of spatial and temporal variability of the turbulent heat fluxes produced by MERRA compare favorably to observationally based estimates. However, MERRA is distinct in terms of amplitude. These results suggest that MERRA is likely to be a valuable resource for a number of research applications though, as with all turbulent flux estimates, systematic issues should be taken into accoun

Are we All Touching the Same Camel?: Exploring a Model of Participation in Budgeting

Theory offers a vast quantity of normative prescriptions concerning citizen participation in budget decisions. Yet cities struggle with this activity and report unsatisfactory outcomes. Why does this occur? It may be because, similar to the parable of the blind men describing the different parts of the camel, the extant literature suggests so many variables but does not integrate what we know to see the whole picture, nor does it eliminate variables having little explanatory value and there has been limited systematic testing of hypotheses in this area. To manage the complexity caused by a multiplicity of variables, the authors test a causal model with four different factors (structure, participants, process, and mechanisms) thought to influence effective citizen participation outcomes on cases of two midwestern cities. In this limited application, the model shows promise for predictive validity.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Voices from the Ivory Tower

Perspectives on the move from being a school librarian to teaching and researching with those preparing to enter the field are provided. Personal perspectives of a doctoral student, an assistant professor, an associate professor, and a full professor are provided

Second order predictor-corrector pairs

The purpose of this study is to introduce multistep methods for approximating the solutions of ordinary differential equations and to study the general convergent, second order, predictor-corrector pair. Given the values of a solution function, either exact or approximate, at certain points on the x-axis, a multistep method approximates the values of that function at other points on the x-axis. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the convergence of a multistep method are the conditions of consistency and stability. A multistep method which approximates the value of the solution function y at xN with no knowledge of the value of the derivative y1 at xN is called a predictor. A corrector is a multistep method which uses the value of the derivative of y at xN to approximate y at xN. The predictor is used to generate a rough estimate of the solution function at a point x then the corrector is used to correct the predicted value at xN . Used together they constitute a predictor-corrector pair. If the differential equation to be solved is of the form y' = ?y, the predictor can be substituted in the corrector to yield a linear recursion. Constraints on the roots of the recursion which would ensure convergence to the true solution are discussed along with their applicability to equations of the form y' = f(x,y)