A Follow-Up Study of 137 Students Who Graduated From Farragut Community School During 1963-1967

Since the release of the Great Plains School District Organization Project, much criticism has been leveled at the small rural school of the four states involved in the study. The report has done an excellent job of creating an intense interest in the question: What effect does the size of the school have on the quality of education the student receives? Educators and lay citizens have begun to question whether the small school can offer a well rounded educational program to its constituents. School programs have been re-examined with especially critical attention devoted to programs in school districts with smaller enrollments than those suggested in the guidelines of the Great Plains Project. Some educators in many of these small school districts share the common feeling that the graduates of their respective schools are not deprived of educational opportunities but are just as well prepared to cope with later enterprises as those graduating from large metropolitan schools

A History of the Schools of Edgar County, Illinois

No abstract provided by author

Falling in Acute Mental Health Settings for Older People : Who falls, where, when and why?

Copyright: © 2014 Dickinson A et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Falls, slips and trips are a major patient safety concern in hospital settings accounting for 26 per cent of all reported patient safety incidents in England. Mental health conditions and their treatments add further to fall risk but we have little information regarding who falls, where and when within mental health settings. Methods: This paper presents an overview of the pattern of falls by older patients within an in-patient mental health setting in the South of England using routine records completed by staff when a fall occurs. 920 fall reports over three years were analysed, and 7 focus groups were undertaken with ward staff to explore how staff understood falls and their experiences of using the falls reporting system. Results: In terms of diagnosis 40% of fallers had a primary functional diagnosis, 46% an organic mental health diagnosis (14% non-specific diagnosis), average age was 81.7 years (range 59 to 99 years; SD 8.3) and 57% were female. Approximately one quarter, 27%, of falls were observed by staff. Falls were not evenly distributed across either day of week or time of day, with peak times for falls on Tuesday and Saturday and morning (7-8 and 9-10am) and subsidiary peaks between noon and 1pm and early evening (5-6pm). Almost half of falls occurred in private spaces in the ward such as bedrooms, and 42% in public spaces such as sitting rooms. However 60% of falls in public spaces were unseen. Reporting in these settings was problematic for staff and patients were sometimes described as placing themselves on the floor as a consequence of their mental health condition. The average time to first fall was 5 weeks. Conclusions: Routine mapping of falls could be undertaken at ward and organization level and contribute to better understanding of the local factors contributing to falls. Exploring incident report data in focus groups with staff helped us and them to interpret the data and to understand some of the decision making staff engage in everyday when reporting falls.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Controls on Septic System Wastewater Treatment and Shallow Groundwater Quality in Coastal North Carolina

Excess nitrogen and bacteria concentrations in coastal waters of North Carolina have led to eutrophic conditions, fish kills, and the closure of shellfish waters. Regulatory efforts by the state to reduce nitrogen and bacteria loading to surface waters have focused on agriculture, urban runoff, and centralized wastewater treatment plant discharges without regard to septic system derived nitrogen and bacteria. The effects of septic systems on groundwater quality (nitrogen and bacteria) were evaluated in eastern North Carolina. Sixteen sites (residential yards) with septic systems in soils ranging from sand (group I) to sandy clay loam (group III) were instrumented with groundwater monitoring wells adjacent to the systems. It was determined that the soil type and separation distance had strong influences on septic system treatment efficiency. Increasing the separation distance requirements from systems to the seasonal high water table to 60 cm (from 30-45 cm) could improve the treatment efficiency of systems (4 mg/L decrease in median NH4+-N concentrations and 65 cfu/100 mL decrease in geometric mean E. coli densities) and groundwater quality.  Soil profile descriptions and groundwater level data from the sites were used to evaluate the accuracy of soil color (chroma 2 or 1 colors) for determining the depth to the seasonal high water table (SHWT) for septic system design purposes. For most sites, soil colors and the measured SHWT were within 18 cm of each other. Therefore water level data also suggest an increase (15+ cm) in separation distance to SHWT indicators would be beneficial.   Using groundwater quality and flow data from the sites, nitrogen loads from septic systems to groundwater were estimated.   For the Newport River watershed, the septic system nitrogen loading rate to groundwater for systems in group I and II soils (28.5 to 57.5 kg/ha/yr) were similar to the nitrogen loading rate attributed to agriculture (37.5 kg/ha/yr) in the same county, and higher than estimates of atmospheric nitrogen deposition for the area (8 to 12 kg/ha/yr). Therefore, the potential pollutant contributions from septic systems to ground and surface waters should be included in watershed-scale efforts to reduce nitrogen and bacteria loading.  Ph.D

Design and fabrication of a collective and cyclic pitch propeller

Autonomous underwater vehicle propulsion has been primarily driven by conventional thruster arrangements and control fins. The development of a collective and cyclic pitch propeller system provides a highly maneuverable alternative to these conventional designs. Therefore, a computer controlled and fully actuated collective and cyclic pitch propeller was designed and fabricated to fulfill this need. -- The new propeller was designed using a helicopter like linkage system. The swash plates mounted inside of the propeller housing, as opposed to propeller hub like a helicopter. Locating the linkages in the housing provided a more maintainable system of linkages, due to space limitations in the propeller hub. The swash plate was positioned using three ball screw electric actuators using absolute positioning feedback. The swash plate position was transmitted to the propeller hub by a set of four control rods, one for each blade. Four blades were chosen for the propeller to reduce pulsing of the propeller when operating in cyclic mode. -- Initial testing of the prototype demonstrates the propeller's potential ability to control the underwater vehicle at little or no forward speed. While operating in the 50% ahead, 100% to port condition, a thrust value of 26.7 N (6 lbf) with a turning moment of 18.9 Nm (168 in-lb) was measured. The turning moment generated at a forward speed of 1 .6 m/s was sufficient to turn the C-SCOUT vehicle in 38% of the present required turning circle using a conventional thruster and control fins

Sero-Prevalence and Factors Associated with Toxoplasma gondii Infection among Pregnant Women Attending Antenatal Care in Mwanza, Tanzania.

Serological screening of pregnant women for Toxoplasma gondii-specific antibodies is not practiced as an antenatal care in Tanzania; and there is a limited data about sero-prevalence of T. gondii infection in developing countries. We therefore conducted this study to determine the sero-prevalence and factors associated with T. gondii infection among pregnant women attending antenatal care clinics in Mwanza, Tanzania. Between 1st November 2012 and 31st May 2013 a total of 350 pregnant women attending antenatal care clinics in Mwanza were enrolled and screened for IgG and IgM antibodies against T. gondii using the ELISA technique. Of 350 pregnant women, 108 (30.9%) were sero-positive for T. gondii-specific antibodies. The risk of contracting T. gondii infection increases by 7% with each yearly increase in a woman's age (OR=1.07, 95% CI: 1.02 - 1.11, p=0.002). The sero-positivity rate of T. gondii-specific antibodies was higher among pregnant women from the urban than those from rural communities (41.5% versus 22.0%); [OR=2.2, 95% CI; 1.4 - 3.7, p=0.001]. Likewise employed/business women were more likely to get T. gondii infection than peasants (40.0% versus 25.9%) [OR=1.9, 95% CI: 1.2 - 3.0, p=0.006]. Sero-prevalence of T. gondii-specific antibodies is high among pregnant women in Mwanza with a significant proportion of women at risk of contracting primary T. gondii infections. Screening of T. gondii infections during antenatal care should be considered in Tanzania as the main strategy to minimize congenital toxoplasmosis

Factors That Hinder Teachers’ Use of Constructivism in Teaching and Learning of Science at Junior High School in Ghana

The purpose of the study is to find out the factors hinder the teachers’ use of constructivism in teaching and learning of science in their classroom and extent to which the methodology topics in science for Colleges of Education in Ghana equip basic teachers with the constructivist’s pedagogy so that a strong background for the promotion of constructivist-based teacher training courses could be considered. A descriptive survey design was employed for this study. The sample size for the study was 200 JHS science teachers from Kumasi Metropolis in the Ashanti Region. The main instrument used for the collection of data in this study was the close-ended questionnaire. The study revealed that factors that hinder the teachers’ use of constructivism in teaching and learning of science in their classroom include large class size, inadequate supply of teaching and learning materials, the nature and structure of national examinations and truancy.  The concept of constructivism is less popular if not missing in the curriculum of the Colleges of Education in Ghana. Again, the methodology course as indicated in the results does not adequately discuss the constructivists` epistemology well enough to make prospective teachers well informed about the concept. It was recommended that pre-service teacher education programs should focus more on helping prospective teachers to have an in-depth knowledge about the constructivist pedagogy so that a strong background for the promotion of the constructivist-based teaching courses could be considered. Keywords: Constructivism, methodology, prospective teacher

Patients’ preferred mode of travel to the orthopaedic theatre

AIM: To determine the preferred mode of travel to the operating theatre for elective orthopaedic patients. METHODS: Data was collected prospectively over a 2-wk period at an elective Orthopaedic Treatment Centre. Patients were asked to complete a patient satisfaction questionnaire following their surgery on their experience and subsequent preferred mode of transport to theatre. The data was then recorded in a tabulated format and analysed with percentages. Fisher’s exact test was used to determine if there was any statistical association between patients’ preference to walk and various groups; in-patient or day case procedures, and whether patients were < 60 years or > 60 years of age. RESULTS: Seventy patients (40 females and 30 males) fully completed the questionnaire. In total there were 33 d-cases and 37 in-patients. The spectrum of orthopaedic sub-specialties included was knee (41%), hip (17%), foot and ankle (24%), spine (13%) and upper limb (4%). Patient satisfaction for overall experience of travelling to theatre was either excellent (77%) or good (23%). Following their experience of travelling to theatre, 87% (95%CI: 79%-95%) of the total cohort would have preferred to walk to the operating theatre. There was a statistically significant association (P = 0.003) between patients’ preference to walk and whether they were day-case or in-patients. Similarly, there was a statistically significance association (P = 0.028) between patients’ preference to walk and whether they were < 60 years or > 60 years of age. CONCLUSION: This study confirms the majority of Orthopaedic elective patients would prefer to walk to theatre, when given the choice and if practically possible