Handwriting Performance of Typical Second-Grade Students as Measured by the Evaluation Tool of Children\u27s Handwriting - Manuscript and Teacher Perceptions of Legibility

Background: The purpose of the study was to describe scores achieved by typical second-grade students on the Evaluation Tool of Children’s Handwriting – Manuscript and to compare scores with teacher perceptions. Method: As part of a larger study, the ETCH-M was administered to 74 second-grade students. Teachers scored classroom samples of handwriting assignments using a researcher-developed scale and scores were compared to ETCH-M scores to determine cutoff values for good versus poor handwriting. Results: Mean scores for total word legibility, total letter legibility, and total numeral legibility were 88.82%, 84.30%, and 89.26%, respectively. Cutoff scores below 82% for word legibility and 77% for letter legibility for second-grade students based on teacher perceptions of below average handwriting are cautiously suggested. Research with a larger dataset is needed. Boys scored significantly lower on the ETCH-M and this finding warrants further research. Conclusion: The findings add to the limited body of information about the psychometric properties of the ETCH-M and the normative performance of typical second-grade students

An annotated catalog of published marimba concertos in the United States from 1940--2000.

The purpose of this study was to document the development of the marimba concerto from 1940--2000. This work provides an annotated list of marimba concertos published during that time period and notes trends in each of three major periods. The first period includes works composed between 1940 and 1968, beginning with Paul Creston's first composed marimba concerto in 1940. The second period consists of works composed between 1969 and 1986, a period dominated by concertos composed by Japanese and European composers, including those by Minoru Miki and Akira Miyoshi in 1969, marking the beginning of the major Japanese influence on the marimba concerto. The most recent period consists of works written between 1987 and 2000. This period is dominated by works commissioned by American marimba artists, beginning with Leigh Howard Stevens' commission of John Serry's marimba concerto completed in 1987.It is the author's hope that the information provided in this document will serve as a useful resource for performers and educators, and will bring awareness to the large number of quality works available that are still rarely performed.Each chapter includes an annotation of each work in that period. Annotations include information about the premiere of the work, technical requirements, and range of instrument required, in addition to other information found to be useful or relevant to teachers and performers. Each chapter concludes with a summary of trends noted during that period, including an increase in the number of works written, greater technical demands, and an expansion in the range of instrument required.The marimba concerto traces its short history to the year 1940, when Paul Creston wrote Concertino for Marimba. Marimba concertos were among the earliest known works composed for marimba, and thus played an important role in the development of the marimba as a viable solo instrument and in the development of original literature composed for the marimba

High atomic weight, high-energy radiation (HZE) induces transcriptional responses shared with conventional stresses in addition to a core "DSB" response specific to clastogenic treatments.

Plants exhibit a robust transcriptional response to gamma radiation which includes the induction of transcripts required for homologous recombination and the suppression of transcripts that promote cell cycle progression. Various DNA damaging agents induce different spectra of DNA damage as well as "collateral" damage to other cellular components and therefore are not expected to provoke identical responses by the cell. Here we study the effects of two different types of ionizing radiation (IR) treatment, HZE (1 GeV Fe(26+) high mass, high charge, and high energy relativistic particles) and gamma photons, on the transcriptome of Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings. Both types of IR induce small clusters of radicals that can result in the formation of double strand breaks (DSBs), but HZE also produces linear arrays of extremely clustered damage. We performed these experiments across a range of time points (1.5-24 h after irradiation) in both wild-type plants and in mutants defective in the DSB-sensing protein kinase ATM. The two types of IR exhibit a shared double strand break-repair-related damage response, although they differ slightly in the timing, degree, and ATM-dependence of the response. The ATM-dependent, DNA metabolism-related transcripts of the "DSB response" were also induced by other DNA damaging agents, but were not induced by conventional stresses. Both Gamma and HZE irradiation induced, at 24 h post-irradiation, ATM-dependent transcripts associated with a variety of conventional stresses; these were overrepresented for pathogen response, rather than DNA metabolism. In contrast, only HZE-irradiated plants, at 1.5 h after irradiation, exhibited an additional and very extensive transcriptional response, shared with plants experiencing "extended night." This response was not apparent in gamma-irradiated plants

POLICY DEVELOPMENTS IN UNITED STATES AGRICULTURE SINCE 1986

Agricultural and Food Policy,

Spatially distributed water-balance and meteorological data from the Wolverton catchment, Sequoia National Park, California

Accurate water-balance measurements in the seasonal, snow-dominated Sierra Nevada are important for forest and downstream water management. However, few sites in the southern Sierra offer detailed records of the spatial and temporal patterns of snowpack and soil-water storage and the fluxes affecting them, i.e., precipitation as rain and snow, snowmelt, evapotranspiration, and runoff. To explore these stores and fluxes we instrumented the Wolverton basin (2180-2750 m) in Sequoia National Park with distributed, continuous sensors. This 2006-2016 record of snow depth, soil moisture and soil temperature, and meteorological data quantifies the hydrologic inputs and storage in a mostly undeveloped catchment. Clustered sensors record lateral differences with regards to aspect and canopy cover at approximately 2250 and 2625 m in elevation, where two meteorological stations are installed. Meteorological stations record air temperature, relative humidity, radiation, precipitation, wind speed and direction, and snow depth. Data are available at hourly intervals by water year (1 October-30 September) in non-proprietary formats from online data repositories (https://doi.org/10.6071/M3S94T)