An Evaluation of the Impact of a One-Week Summer Camp Experience on Participants\u27 Social Skill Development

Social skill development is emerging as an important issue for educators and practitioners in their work with adolescent youth. Within the summer camp industry, youth development researchers are beginning to focus more intentionally on the ability of summer camp programming to develop social skill capacity among its participants (Thurber, Scanlin, Scheuler, & Henderson, 2007). While research in camp settings has been occurring for several decades, much of the inquiry has been descriptive in nature (Henderson, Thurber, Scanlin, & Bialeschki, 2007) or focused on individual psychological traits such as self-esteem and self-concept.(Gillis & Speelman, 2007). More recently, however, social skill development has received more focused attention in both in and out-of-school settings, namely from researchers investigating the emerging theory of social and emotional learning (SEL), with the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) foremost in this process (Durlak & Weissberg, 2007; Rimm-Kauffman & Chiu, 2007; Rimm-Kauffman, Fan, Chiu, & You, 2007; Zins, Bloodworth, Weissberg, & Walberg, . 2004 ). Encouraged by this trend, researchers within the camping industry have called for a more intentional focus on promoting social skill development in their respective programming (Jordan, 1994; Nicholson, Collins, & Holmer, 2004). In the youth development literature social skills are critical to the educational process of adolescent students and have been shown to be a fundamental asset for healthy psychosocial development and (Moote Jr & Wodarski, 1997; Scales, Benson, Leffert, & Blyth, 2000). Additionally, social skills serve as a preventative tool for future issues such as misbehavior in school, criminal conduct, dropping out of school, unhealthy stress, and violent behavior (Mahoney, Stattin, & Magnusson, 2001; Marsh & Kleitman, 2002). While acting as a deterrent to these problems, social skill development has also been shown to be a significant factor in current and future academic functioning and achievement (Eccles, Barber, Stone, & Hunt, 2003; Malecki & Elliot, 2002). Within the camping and outdoor education literature, research findings are mixed regarding the impact of adventure-based programming on social skill development. A small number of studies have found no significant change in the social skill development of participants in adventure­-based programs (Dickey, 1996; Michalski, Mishna, Worthington, & Cummings, 2003). However, other studies have shown positive gains in social development through such programming (Boyle, 2002; Guettal & Potter, 2000; Reefe, 2005), with more recent studies utilizing considerably larger sample sizes to enhance the significance of their findings (Henderson, et al., 2007; Thurber, et al., 2007). Given the increased focus on the relationship between camp programming and social skill development, this study aims to provide additional insight into this topic

Decoding development inXenopus tropicalis

Xenopus tropicalis is rapidly being adopted as a model organism for developmental biology research and has enormous potential for increasing our understanding of how embryonic development is controlled. In recent years there has been a well-organized initiative within the Xenopus community, funded largely through the support of the National Institutes of Health in the US, to develop X. tropicalis as a new genetic model system with the potential to impact diverse fields of research. Concerted efforts have been made both to adapt established methodologies for use in X. tropicalis and to develop new techniques. A key resource to come out of these efforts is the genome sequence, produced by the US Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute and made freely available to the community in draft form for the past three years. In this review, we focus on how advances in X. tropicalis genetics coupled with the sequencing of its genome are likely to form a foundation from which we can build a better understanding of the genetic control of vertebrate development and why, when we already have other vertebrate genetic models, we should want to develop genetic analysis in the frog

T-box genes in early embryogenesis

The T-box gene family, encoding related DNA-binding transcriptional regulators, plays an essential role in controlling many aspects of embryogenesis in a wide variety of organisms. The T-box genes exhibit diverse patterns of spatial and temporal expression in the developing embryo, and both genetic and molecular embryological studies have demonstrated their importance in regulating cell fate decisions that establish the early body plan, and in later processes underlying organogenesis. Despite these studies, little is known of either the regulation of the T-box genes or the identities of their transcriptional targets. The aim of this review is to examine the diverse yet conserved roles of several T-box genes in regulating early patterning in chordates and to discuss possible mechanisms through which this functional diversity might arise

Developmental expression patterns ofTbx1,Tbx2,Tbx5, andTbx20 inXenopus tropicalis

T-box genes have diverse functions during embryogenesis and are implicated in several human congenital disorders. Here, we report the identification, sequence analysis, and developmental expression patterns of four members of the T-box gene family in the diploid frog Xenopus tropicalis. These four genes—Tbx1, Tbx2, Tbx5, and Tbx20—have been shown to influence cardiac development in a variety of organisms, in addition to their individual roles in regulating other aspects of embryonic development. Our results highlight the high degree of evolutionary conservation between orthologs of these genes in X. tropicalis and other vertebrates, both at the molecular level and in their developmental expression patterns, and also identify novel features of their expression. Thus, X. tropicalis represents a potentially valuable vertebrate model in which to further investigate the functions of these genes through genetic approaches

Genome Sequence of Verrucomicrobium sp. Strain GAS474, a Novel Bacterium Isolated from Soil

Verrucomicrobium sp. strain GAS474 was isolated from the mineral soil of a temperate deciduous forest in central Massachusetts. Here, we present the complete genome sequence of this phylogenetically novel organism, which consists of a total of 3,763,444 bp on a single scaffold, with a 65.8% GC content and 3,273 predicted open reading frames

Xenopus: An emerging model for studying congenital heart disease

Congenital heart defects affect nearly 1% of all newborns and are a significant cause of infant death. Clinical studies have identified a number of congenital heart syndromes associated with mutations in genes that are involved in the complex process of cardiogenesis. The African clawed frog, Xenopus, has been instrumental in studies of vertebrate heart development and provides a valuable tool to investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying human congenital heart diseases. In this review, we discuss the methodologies that make Xenopus an ideal model system to investigate heart development and disease. We also outline congenital heart conditions linked to cardiac genes that have been well-studied in Xenopus and describe some emerging technologies that will further aid in the study of these complex syndromes