Best Practices to Build Relationships between Students with Exceptionalities and General Education Students in a Unified Dance Class

Cook, Charlotte. Best Practices to Build Relationships between Students with Exceptionalities and General Education Students in a Unified Dance Class. Unpublished Master of Arts thesis, University of Northern Colorado, 2021. The goal of this study was to analyze various studies or curriculums, which included both general education students and students with exceptionalities to find best practices to build relationships in a unified dance class. For this study the researcher analyzed ten pieces of literature which focused on inclusive movement classes. These sources included five studies and five curriculums. More specifically, the researcher created the following essential questions to examine sources which included students with and without exceptionalities. Q1 What strategies and activities best foster growing relationships in a unified dance class? Q2 What creative dance content best fosters building of interpersonal relationships between exceptional students and general education students? The purpose of the study was to aid the researcher in finding best practices in building relationships in order to create a custom curriculum that could meet the needs of all students the researcher’s teaches. The researcher had three goals for the unified program she wished to create that influenced this study. First, the researcher wanted to provide students with exceptionalities an appropriate dance education. The researcher also saw a need for the general education students to have more interaction with students with exceptionalities. Finally, for all students, the researcher wanted to create a curriculum that included a peer buddy system, in order for both sets of students to build lasting relationships. Quantitative and qualitative data for all ten sources was collected and analyzed utilizing a survey. Survey questions were organized into three groups: general information, strategies and activities which foster growing student relationships, and developing curriculum content. General information data revealed commonalities in the novelty of each program and true commonalities. The researcher found the following seven strategies were discussed in numerous sources: 1) allowing students to explore and create their own movement modifications, 2) making all students responsible for one another by using safe movement practices, 3) cultivating nonverbal communication, 4) valuing each person\u27s contributions to choreography/class, 5) using students’ first language, 6) pairing students, and 7) including peer feedback. Five activities appeared in multiple sources as well. These five activities are: 1) circle activities, 2) rhythmic activities, 3) mirroring, 4) leading and following, and 5) floorwork. Finally, the researcher found four parallels in curriculum content: 1) creating movement, 2) including the elements of dance, 3) the structure of the class, and 4) performances. This study had three major limitations. First, the sources chosen were selected with the researcher’s goals for her own class in mind. The study was also limited by the small sample size. Finally, the study could have been swayed by the survey used to collect data. Exploring best practices for building relationships in a dance class can expand literature on inclusive dance education. This study and future studies like it, can also support all educators in creating inclusive environments that strengthen students’ relationships and teach the whole child

The Influence of Carbon Dioxide on Cellular Cyclic Adenosine Monophosphate

Inorganic carbon is fundamental to the physiology of all organisms, however elevated CO2 is generally detrimental. Numerous class III adenylyl cyclases (AC) from both prokaryotic and mammalian organisms have been shown to respond to inorganic carbon in vitro, however, at present there is limited evidence in vivo. This thesis demonstrates in cellulo evidence that hypercapnia CO2 blunts agonist induced cAMP signalling. The eect of CO2 is independent of changes in intracellular and extracellular pH, independent of the mechanism used to activate the cAMP signalling pathway, and is independent of the cell line employed. Through a combination of pharmacological and genetic tools this eect of elevated CO2 on cAMP signalling is demonstrated to require Ca2+ ion release from IP3 receptors in the endoplasmic reticulum. Consistent with these ndings, CO2 caused an increase in cytoplasmic Ca2+ concentrations which require the presence of active IP3 receptors and is absent under comparable acidotic conditions. Physiological relevance for this signalling mechanism is demonstrated through activity of the sodium dependant proton exchanger NHE3. This transporter exhibits well-characterised inhibition by cAMP dependant protein kinase PKA to increase bicarbonaturia in vivo. Overall these results provide conclusive evidence of potentially profound eects of inorganic carbon on intracellular cell signalling, which could lead to signicant insight into the pathophysiology and treatment of numerous disorders including metabolic acidosis, reperfusion injuries, acute lung injury and obesity

A systematic review of the relationship between behavioral and psychological symptoms (BPSD) and caregiver well-being

Background: Behavioural and psychological symptoms in dementia (BPSD) are important predictors of institutionalisation as well as caregiver burden and depression. Previous reviews have tended to group BPSD as one category with little focus on the role of the individual symptoms. This review investigates the role of the individual symptoms of BPSD in relation to the impact on different measures of family caregiver wellbeing. Methods: Systematic review and meta-analysis of articles published in English between 1980 and December 2015 reporting which BPSD affect caregiver wellbeing. Article quality was appraised using the Downs and Black Checklist (1998). Results: 40 medium and high quality quantitative articles met the inclusion criteria, 16 were suitable to be included in a meta-analysis of mean distress scores. Depressive behaviours were the most distressing for caregivers followed by agitation/aggression and apathy. Euphoria was the least distressing. Correlation coefficients between mean total behaviour scores and mean distress scores were pooled for 4 studies. Irritability, aberrant motor behaviour and delusions were the most strongly correlated to distress, disinhibition was the least correlated. Conclusion: The evidence is not conclusive as to whether some BPSD impact caregiver wellbeing more than others. Studies which validly examined BPSD individually were limited, and the included studies used numerous measures of BPSD and numerous measures of caregiver wellbeing. Future research may benefit from a consistent measure of BPSD, examining BPSD individually, and by examining the causal mechanisms by which BPSD impact wellbeing by including caregiver variables so that interventions can be designed to target BPSD more effectively

The Basins in 2050: Workshop Scenarios

A poster focused on different scenarios on CPWF rivers basins: Andes System of Basins, Ganges, Limpopo, Mekong, Nile and Volt

Sequencing and Analysis of the Diel Transcriptome of Botryococcus braunii

Microalgae are widely viewed as a potential source of renewable biofuels. Microalgae are highly productive and can be cultured in recycled water on margial or non-agricultural land. Despite their advantages, the industrial scale deployment of microalgae faces numerous challenges including relatively little knowledge of the algae themselves and the comparatively expensive infrastructures required for culture. The green microalga, Botryococcus braunii is particularly interesting because it synthesizes long-chain (C30- C40) hydrocarbons that can be converted to liquid fuel by hydrogenation and catalytic cracking. Moreover, B. braunii is the major fossil present in the Ordovician oil shales and kerogen deposits. Although studied since the 1970s, very little is known regarding critical aspects of B. braunii, notably its molecular biology. In higher plants molecular clocks have been well defined and transcript profiling has revealed a sophisticated network of circadian scheduling of metabolic processes. Characterization of temporal controls over hydrocarbon synthesis is therefore of importance to optimization of biofuel production from B. braunii. In this project B. braunii (Race B, strain Guadeloupe) were cultured in a 12-hour photoperiod and either maintained in that regime or transferred to constant light. Algae were sampled every 4 hours, during a 28-hour time-course and mRNA extracted. mRNA was reverse-transcribed to cDNA and sequenced using a paired-end protocol on an Illumina HiSeq 2000 platform. Over 2 billion sequence reads of 100 bp were generated and assembled de novo, into a complete transcriptome for B. braunii. The transcriptome was comprehensively annotated using global and targeted protocols and differential expression and co-expression analyses were performed. Metabolic pathway analysis confirmed the presence, and photoperiodic regulation of the MEP/DOXP Terpenoid Backbone synthesis pathway. Targeted annotation and expression analysis revealed two predicted B. braunii circadian clock components, which were incorporated into a B. braunii circadian clock model. In non-hierarchical cluster analysis, contigs of the B. braunii transcriptome clustered under four distinct patterns of diel expression. Networks of co- and anti-expressed contigs were elucidated by hierarchical clustering. These results demonstrate the exquisite control over metabolism in B. braunii. Such knowledge is essential for the industrial applications of B. braunii, either directly or through the engineering of selected B. braunii genes or molecular pathways into alternative chassis.Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research CouncilPlymouth Marine Laborator

What drives change? A framework to observe and understand broad-­‐ scale change in river basins

Development in river basins is strongly influenced by a range of non-­‐random factors, called global drivers. These can present a bewildering array of effects that confound concerted action. This report summarizes these effects with the CPWF’s six basins and presents a method of visualizing them together within a process of scenario visualization

Sex allocation theory reveals a hidden cost of neonicotinoid exposure in a parasitoid wasp

P.R.W. was funded by the University of Stirling, C.V.B. and S.M.G. were funded by Nuffield Research Placements and N.C., J.G. and D.M.S. were funded by NERC (NE/J024481/1).Sex allocation theory has proved to be one the most successful theories in evolutionary ecology. However, its role in more applied aspects of ecology has been limited. Here we show how sex allocation theory helps uncover an otherwise hidden cost of neonicotinoid exposure in the parasitoid wasp Nasonia vitripennis. Female N. vitripennis allocate the sex of their offspring in line with Local Mate Competition (LMC) theory. Neonicotinoids are an economically important class of insecticides, but their deployment remains controversial, with evidence linking them to the decline of beneficial species. We demonstrate for the first time to our knowledge, that neonicotinoids disrupt the crucial reproductive behaviour of facultative sex allocation at sub-lethal, field-relevant doses in N. vitripennis. The quantitative predictions we can make from LMC theory show that females exposed to neonicotinoids are less able to allocate sex optimally and that this failure imposes a significant fitness cost. Our work highlights that understanding the ecological consequences of neonicotinoid deployment requires not just measures of mortality or even fecundity reduction among non-target species, but also measures that capture broader fitness costs, in this case offspring sex allocation. Our work also highlights new avenues for exploring how females obtain information when allocating sex under LMC.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Taking into account the quality of the relationship in HIV disclosure

Despite growing interest in HIV disclosure, most theoretical frameworks and empirical studies focus on individual and social factors affecting the process, leaving the contribution of interpersonal factors relatively unexplored. HIV transmission and disclosure often occur within a couple however, and this is where disclosure has the most scope as a HIV transmission intervention. With this in mind, this study explores whether perceived relationship quality influences HIV disclosure outcomes. Ninety-five UK individuals with HIV participated in a cross-sectional survey. Retrospective data were collected on their perceived relationship quality prior to disclosing their HIV positive status, and on disclosure outcomes. Perceived relationship quality was found to significantly affect disclosure outcomes. Positive qualities in the relationship were associated with positive outcomes, whereas negative qualities were associated with negative outcomes. Results further confirmed that this association was not merely correlational, but demonstrated predictive power. Relationship quality might act as either a risk or a resilience factor in the disclosure process, and thus warrants greater attention in future research

Stigma among UK family carers of people living with dementia

Background Models of caregiving seldom include the role of stigma when understanding the experiences of carers of people living with dementia. Aims To investigate the validity of the Family Stigma Instrument (FAMSI), and use it to explore the extent to which experiences of stigma are endorsed in family carers of people living with dementia. Method The FAMSI was tested with 70 carers of people living with dementia. They also completed a measure of self-esteem. Results The FAMSI demonstrated some good preliminary psychometric properties. Carers endorsed stigma by association more so than affiliate stigma constructs, suggesting that carers were aware that others viewed or treated them in a stigmatising fashion but did not endorse internalised consequences of this as much (e.g. behavioural or affective affiliate stigma). Conclusions The FAMSI offers new avenues for understanding the contribution of stigma to caregiver burden in dementia. It also captures the positive aspects of caregiving, which may mitigate internalised stigma in family carers, and has good potential for evaluating stigma-neutralising interventions in dementia care