Reliance structures of neophyte principals in rural contexts

The purpose of this study was to investigate the development and establishment of reliance structures among rural neophyte administrators in southern Saskatchewan during their first year as principal. The primary research question was, "What are the perspectives and reflections of rural based second year principals concerning the development and establishment of their own reliance structures during their neophyte year? Specifically the study focused on the contexts of the schools, the reliance structure, the formal and informal socialization processes, and the self-efficacy of neophyte principals. The significance of this study was based upon the lack of coherence between the theory and practice for the preparation of new educational administrators (McKague, 2001; Ferrandino, 2000; Griffith, 1999; Lawson, 1999; Renihan, 1999; Davis, 1998; Restine, 1997). This study addressed a deficiency in the research by exploring the reliance structures of neophyte principals through a multi-method approach. First, a questionnaire was utilized to gain a general perception from the participants on their own reliance structure. Second, in-depth interviews provided more detail on the perspectives and experiences of first year principals with their own reliance structure. The sample included 26 rural-based second year principals, who had no prior administrative experience. Twenty-five of the 26 neophyte principals returned the Reliance Structure for Neophyte Principals (RSNP) survey forms, for a return rate of 96.2 percent. As well, all 26 neophyte principals were asked to participate in an interview that further investigated their perceptions of how they established their supports in a reliance structure. Of the 26 neophyte principals, 24 participated in the interviews for a response rate of 92.3 per cent. A number of contextual factors were seen to influence neophyte principals' development of the reliance structure. These included: the location of the school, the size of the school, the size of the school system, educational background, and the prior experiences of the principal as an educator. Upon further analysis, the data suggested that location of the school, size of the school, educational background, and prior experiences as an educator were perceived as the most critical variables in the development of the reliance structure. In regard to periodization (the time periods between August to December and January to June), supervision of instruction emerged as the most important professional development need for the beginning principals during the first year. During the first term. (August to December), principals perceived that having access to formalized mentoring programs and knowledge of important dates would have better prepared and/or supported them. Another important finding was that respondents felt that budgets, timetabling, and graduation were areas which presented unexpected events and/or surprises during the second term (January to June). Overwhelmingly, the perception of the principals in this study was that there was a need to establish a formal reliance structure for beginning principals. Principals identified mentoring programs, professional development opportunities, longer induction and orientation opportunities, knowledge of the culture, and increased administration time as critical functions in a reliance structure. The most critical relationships were with (in order of frequency of mention) school staff, the director and central office staff, and other in-school administrators. Visiting the school meeting staff, and getting to know the community, were viewed as critical processes in the reliance structure. Beginning principals indicated that the informal socialization processes (casual relationships with others) were more effective than the formal socialization processes. The director and the assistant director were identified as the most frequently involved in orienting neophyte principals to their jobs. However, it was other in-school administrators who were the most valuable in orienting and providing support during the first year. Several implications were derived from the findings of this study. Important among these is the need for consideration of a number of functions, relationships, and processes in the reliance structure. In order for this to happen, socialization processes need to be formalized. Formalizing the socialization process warrants the time, energy, and participation of other in-school principals and central office personnel who play an integral role in developing and establishing the reliance structure. The establishment of the reliance structure for neophyte principals will be crucial to the future development of aspiring administrators. Such an initiative could improve the opportunities for success for beginning principals, particularly those in rural contexts

Recovering hidden Bloch character: Unfolding Electrons, Phonons, and Slabs

For a quantum state, or classical harmonic normal mode, of a system of spatial periodicity "R", Bloch character is encoded in a wavevector "K". One can ask whether this state has partial Bloch character "k" corresponding to a finer scale of periodicity "r". Answering this is called "unfolding." A theorem is proven that yields a mathematically clear prescription for unfolding, by examining translational properties of the state, requiring no "reference states" or basis functions with the finer periodicity (r,k). A question then arises, how should one assign partial Bloch character to a state of a finite system? A slab, finite in one direction, is used as the example. Perpendicular components k_z of the wavevector are not explicitly defined, but may be hidden in the state (and eigenvector |i>.) A prescription for extracting k_z is offered and tested. An idealized silicon (111) surface is used as the example. Slab-unfolding reveals surface-localized states and resonances which were not evident from dispersion curves alone.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure

Insights into a dinoflagellate genome through expressed sequence tag analysis

BACKGROUND: Dinoflagellates are important marine primary producers and grazers and cause toxic "red tides". These taxa are characterized by many unique features such as immense genomes, the absence of nucleosomes, and photosynthetic organelles (plastids) that have been gained and lost multiple times. We generated EST sequences from non-normalized and normalized cDNA libraries from a culture of the toxic species Alexandrium tamarense to elucidate dinoflagellate evolution. Previous analyses of these data have clarified plastid origin and here we study the gene content, annotate the ESTs, and analyze the genes that are putatively involved in DNA packaging. RESULTS: Approximately 20% of the 6,723 unique (11,171 total 3'-reads) ESTs data could be annotated using Blast searches against GenBank. Several putative dinoflagellate-specific mRNAs were identified, including one novel plastid protein. Dinoflagellate genes, similar to other eukaryotes, have a high GC-content that is reflected in the amino acid codon usage. Highly represented transcripts include histone-like (HLP) and luciferin binding proteins and several genes occur in families that encode nearly identical proteins. We also identified rare transcripts encoding a predicted protein highly similar to histone H2A.X. We speculate this histone may be retained for its role in DNA double-strand break repair. CONCLUSION: This is the most extensive collection to date of ESTs from a toxic dinoflagellate. These data will be instrumental to future research to understand the unique and complex cell biology of these organisms and for potentially identifying the genes involved in toxin production

Gene Discovery and Functional Genomics in the Pig

Advances in gene mapping and genomics in farm animals have been considerable over the past decade. Medium resolution linkage and physical maps have been reported, and specific chromosomal regions and genes associated with traits of biological and economic interest have been identified. We have reached an exciting stage in gene identification, mapping and quantitative trait locus discovery in pigs, as new molecular information is accumulating rapidly. Significant progress has been made by identifying candidate gene associations and low-resolution regions containing quantitative trail loci (QTL). However, we are still disadvantaged by the lack of tools available to efficiently use much of this new information. For example, current pig maps are neither of high enough resolution nor sufficiently informative at the comparative level for positional candidate gene cloning within QTL regions. As well, studying biological mechanisms underlying economically important traits such as reproduction is limited by the lack of molecular resources. This is especially important, as reproduction is very difficult to genetically improve by classical breeding methods due to the relatively low heritability and high expense in data collection. Thus, an improved understanding of porcine reproductive biology is of crucial economic importance, yet reproductive processes are poorly characterized at the molecular level. Recently, new methodologies have been brought to bear on a better understanding of pig molecular biology for accelerating genetic improvement in pigs. Several groups are developing molecular information in the pig, and the total Genbank sequence entries for porcine expressed genes have recently topped 100,000. Our Midwest EST Consortium has produced cDNA libraries containing the majority of genes expressed in major female reproductive tissues, and we have deposited nearly 15,000 gene sequences into public databases. These sequences represent over 8,900 different genes, based on sequence comparison among these data. Furthermore, we have developed computer software to automatically extract sequence similarity of these pig genes with their human counterparts, as well as the mapping information of these human homologues. Within our data set, we have identified nearly 1,500 pig genes with strong similarity to mapped human genes, and we are in the process of mapping 700 of these genes to improve the human-pig comparative map. This work and the complementary work of others can now be used to more rapidly understand and identify the genes controlling reproduction, so that genetic improvement of reproduction phenotypes can accelerate

Magnetically aligned single wall carbon nanotube films: preferred orientation and anisotropic transport properties

Thick films of single wall carbon nanotubes (SWNT) exhibiting in-plane preferred orientation have been produced by filter deposition from suspension in strong magnetic fields. We characterize the field-induced alignment with x-ray fiber diagrams and polarized Raman scattering, using a model which includes a completely unaligned fraction. We correlate the texture parameters with resistivity and thermal conductivity measured parallel and perpendicular to the alignment direction. Results obtained with 7 and 26 Tesla fields are compared. We find no significant field dependence of the distribution width, while the aligned fraction is slightly greater at the higher field. Anisotropy in both transport properties is modest, with ratios in the range 5–9, consistent with the measured texture parameters assuming a simple model of rigid rod conductors. We suggest that further enhancements in anisotropic properties will require optimizing the filter deposition process rather than larger magnetic fields. We show that both x-ray and Raman data are required for a complete texture analysis of oriented SWNT materials

Status of the National Ignition Facility and Control System

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a stadium-sized facility under construction that will contain a 192-beam, 1.8-Megajoule, 500-Terawatt, ultraviolet laser system together with a 10-meter diameter target chamber with room for multiple experimental diagnostics. NIF will be the world's largest and most energetic laser experimental system, providing a scientific center to study inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and matter at extreme energy densities and pressures. NIF's laser beams are designed to compress fusion targets to conditions required for thermonuclear burn, liberating more energy than required to initiate the fusion reactions. NIF is comprised of 24 independent bundles of 8 beams each using laser hardware that is modularized into line replaceable units such as optical assemblies, amplifiers, and multi-function sensor packages containing thousands of adjusting motors and diagnostic points. NIF is operated by the Integrated Computer Control System (ICCS) in an architecture partitioned by bundle and distributed among over 750 front-end processors and supervisory servers. Bundle control system partitions are replicated and commissioned by configuring the control database for each new bundle. NIF's automated control subsystems are built from a common object-oriented software framework based on CORBA distribution that deploys the software across the computer network and achieves interoperation between different languages and target architectures. ICCS software is approximately 80% complete with 1.1 million source lines of code delivered to the facility. NIF has successfully activated, commissioned and utilized the first four laser beams to conduct nearly 400 shots in 2003 and 2004, resulting in high quality data that could not be obtained on any other laser system. This presentation discusses NIF's early light commissioning, the status of the control system implementation and plans to complete installation of the remaining laser bundles on the path to fusion ignition

Extensive movement of LINES ONE sequences in beta-globin loci of Mus caroli and Mus domesticus.

LINES ONE (L1) is a family of movable DNA sequences found in mammals. To measure the rate of their movement, we have compared the positions of L1 elements within homologous genetic loci that are separated by known divergence times. Two models that predict different outcomes of this analysis have been proposed for the behavior of L1 sequences. (i) Previous theoretical studies of concerted evolution in L1 have indicated that the majority of the 100,000 extant L1 elements may have inserted as recently as within the last 3 million years. (ii) Gene conversion has been proposed as an alternative to a history of prolific recent insertions. To distinguish between these two models, we cloned and characterized two embryonic beta-globin haplotypes from Mus caroli and compared them with those of M. domesticus. In 9 of 10 instances, we observed an L1 element to be present in one chromosome and absent at the same site in a homologous chromosome. This frequency is quantitatively consistent with the known rate of concerted evolution. Therefore, we conclude that gene conversion is not required for concerted evolution of the L1 family in the mouse. Furthermore, we show that the extensive movement of L1 sequences contributes to restriction fragment length polymorphism. L1 insertions may be the predominant cause of restriction fragment length polymorphisms in closely related haplotypes

Bioinformatic Analysis of Gene Sets Regulated by Ligand-Activated and Dominant-Negative Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor in Mouse Aorta

Drugs that activate PPARγ improve glucose sensitivity and lower blood pressure, whereas dominant negative mutations in PPARγ cause severe insulin resistance and hypertension. We hypothesize that these PPARγ mutants regulate target genes opposite to that of ligand-mediated activation and tested this hypothesis on a genome-wide scale