Testing a student generated hypothesis using student data

We describe an activity that allows students to experience the full process of a statistical investigation, from generating the research question, to collecting data and testing a hypothesis. Implementation of the activity is described both with and without use of clickers, handheld remotes that allow instant data collection.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/91094/1/j.1467-9639.2010.00452.x.pd

NS1 of H5N1 Interacts with SAP-97 in a PDZ-dependent Manner to Disrupt Epithelial Barrier Integrity

The ability of influenza A virus to cause global pandemics has been a great concern throughout history and poses a serious health risk worldwide. Pandemic outbreaks throughout history, such as the Spanish flu of 1918, have claimed the lives of millions of people worldwide. The current outbreak of avian influenza (H5N1) that began in 1997 is still claiming lives, and therefore efforts to understand the mechanisms of pathogenesis in this highly virulent virus are of the utmost importance. According to the World Health Organization, there have been 447 reported H5N1 human cases, resulting in 263 deaths. The pathology of H5N1 infection includes pulmonary edema and diarrhea. Large scale sequencing of influenza A viruses revealed that nonstructural protein 1 (NS1) contains a class I PDZ motif. The NS1 proteins of avian origin contain the PDZ motif ESEV, which has been found to bind several cellular PDZ domain proteins. The interaction of NS1 and host proteins via the PDZ motif is a determinant in the virulence of influenza viruses of avian origin. Consistent with the clinical symptoms, this study is the first to show that the NS1 protein of A/chicken/Vietnam/C58/04 binds synapse-associated protein-97 (SAP-97), an adherens junction protein, in a PDZ motif-dependent manner. In H5N1 infected tissues, the SAP-97 distribution is reorganized. Functionally, the interaction of NS1 and SAP-97 results in the loss of epithelial barrier function. This mechanism helps to explain why the two disease states, pulmonary edema and diarrhea, in which epithelial barrier is compromised, are both common in human H5N1 infection

The relationship between Counseling Psychology and Positive Psychology

The aim of this chapter is to explore the relation between the professional specialty of counseling psychology and positive psychology. Following a brief historical overview of counseling psychology, we explore its theoretical convergence with positive psychology and examine how the ideas from positive psychology have been received by counseling psychologists. We argue that although counseling psychology has its roots in ideas that are consistent with positive psychology, the profession has developed a broad practice range in recent decades accommodating a diversity of ways of working, many of which prioritize working with distress and its origins over seeking to enhance and build on existing strengths. As such, the positive psychology movement can offer a new impetus for the profession of counseling psychology to reexamine its fundamental assumptions and reflect on its training curriculum. Based on this overview, we conclude that further bridges need to be built between positive psychology and counseling psychology. Our goal is to encourage counseling psychologists to engage more fully with the ideas and research of positive psychology

Complete Work- Teacher Training in Measurement and Assessment Skills

Complete Work Digital Edition Copyright © 2012 Buros Center for Testing This book may be downloaded, saved, and printed by an individual for their own use. No part of this book may be re-published, re-posted, or redistributed without written permission of the holder of copyright. Copyright © 1993 by Buros Institute of Mental Measurements All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any fo rm, by photostat, microfilm, retrieval system, or any other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Buras-Nebraska Symposium on Measurement and Testing, 1989 Are Our School Teachers Adequately Trained in Measurement and Assessment Skills? ISBN 0-910674-36-1 Printed in the United States of Americ

The development of the idea of aesthetic value in the novels of Henry James

James's lifelong preoccupation with different forms of aesthetic experience was a powerful shaping force in his fiction, conditioning technique as well as subject matter. His intense feeling for art makes the idea of aesthetic value a pervasive element in his novels. This idea remains materially unchanged throughout his career, though its field of application is steadily extended as it finds different modes of expression in successive novels. I am concerned to trace the development of this idea and the way it is embodied in his fiction by selecting one novel for detailed examination from the beginning, the middle and the end of his career. The study of Roderick Hudson and The Tragic Muse is designed to elicit James's basic convictions about art and the artist, and to show ways in which these ideas have influenced the form of the novels. In the earlier novel this involves detailed consideration of the view Rowland Mallet takes of Roderick Hudson, both as he relates to himself and to others. The first of the two chapters on The Tragic Muse examines James's change of stance in relation to his subject; his presentation of the dilemma in which art places the artist, a dilemma which is seen to test most strenuously the moral qualities of his three protagonists. The second deals with the way James's ultimate concern with the meaning of art, with the implications of artistic commitment, is mediated dramatically in the novel through Gabriel Nash; it looks too at the marks which imperfect assimilation of these ideas has left on the novel. Though The Ambassadors is not explicitly a novel about art, it exemplifies James's concern with the aesthetic adventure and offers a chance to examine closely his presentation of the response to aesthetic experience, particularly as a factor in the development of moral vision.<p

Differential item functioning in the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test - Third Edition: partial correlation versus expert judgment

This study had three purposes: (1) to identify differential item functioning (DIF) on the PPVT-III (Forms A & B) using a partial correlation method, (2) to find a consistent pattern in items identified as underestimating ability in each ethnic minority group, and (3) to compare findings from an expert judgment method and a partial correlation method. Hispanic, African American, and white subjects for the study were provided by American Guidance Service (AGS) from the standardization sample of the PPVT-III; English language learners (ELL) of Mexican descent were recruited from school districts in Central and South Texas. Content raters were all self-selected volunteers, each had advanced degrees, a career in education, and no special expertise of ELL or ethnic minorities. Two groups of teachers participated as judges for this study. The "expert" group was selected because of their special knowledge of ELL students of Mexican descent. The control group was all regular education teachers with limited exposure to ELL. Using the partial correlation method, DIF was detected within each group comparison. In all cases except with the ELL on form A of the PPVT-III, there were no significant differences in numbers of items found to have significant positive correlations versus significant negative correlations. On form A, the ELL group comparison indicated more items with negative correlation than positive correlation [χ2 (1) = 5.538; p=.019]. Among the items flagged as underestimating ability of the ELL group, no consistent trend could be detected. Also, it was found that none of the expert judges could adequately predict those items that would underestimate ability for the ELL group, despite expertise. Discussion includes possible consequences of item placement and recommendations regarding further research and use of the PPVT-III

Characteristics of effective psychological treatments of depression: A metaregression analysis.

Although many meta-analyses have shown that psychological therapies are effective in the treatment of depression, no comprehensive metaregression analysis has been conducted to examine which characteristics of the intervention, target population, and study design are related to the effects. The authors conducted such a metaregression analysis with 83 studies (135 comparisons) in which a psychological treatment was compared with a control condition. The mean effect size of all comparisons was 0.69 (95% confidence interval = 0.60-0.79). In multivariate analyses, several variables were significant: Studies using problem-solving interventions and those aimed at women with postpartum depression or specific populations had higher effect sizes, whereas studies with students as therapists, those in which participants were recruited from clinical populations and through systematic screening, and those using care-as-usual or placebo control groups had lower effect sizes

Glucose transport by epithelia prepared from harvested enterocytes

Transformed and cultured cell lines have significant shortcomings for investigating the characteristics and responses of native villus enterocytes in situ. Interpretations of results from intact tissues are complicated by the presence of underlying tissues and the crypt compartment. We describe a simple, novel, and reproducible method for preparing functional epithelia using differentiated enterocytes harvested from the small intestine upper villus of adult mice and preterm pigs with and without necrotizing enterocolitis. Concentrative, rheogenic glucose uptake was used as an indicator of epithelial function and was demonstrated by cellular accumulation of tracer 14C d-glucose and Ussing chamber based short-circuit currents. Assessment of the epithelia by light and immunofluorescent microscopy revealed the harvested enterocytes remain differentiated and establish cell–cell connections to form polarized epithelia with distinct apical and basolateral domains. As with intact tissues, the epithelia exhibit glucose induced short-circuit currents that are increased by exposure to adenosine and adenosine 5′-monophosphate (AMP) and decreased by phloridzin to inhibit the apical glucose transporter SGLT-1. Similarly, accumulation of 14C d-glucose by the epithelia was inhibited by phloridzin, but not phloretin, and was stimulated by pre-exposure to AMP and adenosine, apparently by a microtubule-based mechanism that is disrupted by nocodazole, with the magnitudes of responses to adenosine, forskolin, and health status exceeding those we have measured using intact tissues. Our findings indicate that epithelia prepared from harvested enterocytes provide an alternative approach for comparative studies of the characteristics of nutrient transport by the upper villus epithelium and the responses to different conditions and stimuli

Psychological essentialism and cultural variation: children's beliefs about aggression in the United States and South Africa

The present study compared indigenous South African versus African-American schoolchildren's beliefs about aggression. Eighty 7–9 year olds (40 from each country) participated in interviews in which they were asked to make inferences about the stability, malleability, and causal origins of aggressive behaviour. Although a minority of participants from both countries endorsed essentialist beliefs about aggression, South African children were more likely than American children to do so. Results also revealed some degree of coherence in children's patterns of beliefs about aggression, such that children responded across superficially different measures in ways that appear theoretically consistent. The authors consider these findings in light of debates concerning the role of cultural forces in shaping person perception. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/58579/1/537_ftp.pd

Observing Change Over Time in Strength-Based Parenting and Subjective Wellbeing for Pre-teens and Teens

The focus of this study was on adolescent mental health. More specifically, the relationship between strength-based parenting (SBP) and subjective wellbeing (SWB) during adolescence was examined at three time points over 14 months (N = 202, Mage = 12.97, SDage = 0.91, 48% female). SBP was positively related to life satisfaction and positive affect at each of the three time points, and was negatively related to negative affect. SBP and SWB both declined significantly over time. When examining the causal relationships between SBP and SWB, two different statistical models were applied: latent growth-curve models (LGM) and random-intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPM). The LGM revealed a strong positive relationship between changes in SBP and SWB. Specifically, this model showed that SBP at one time point predicted adolescent SWB at future time points. However, when the more stringent statistical test was completed through RI-CLPMs, no cross-lagged paths reached significance. Thus, while parenting is a significant predictor of wellbeing for pre-teens and teens in real time, it is not predictive of wellbeing at future time points. Parents, thus, cannot assume that their current levels of SBP are ‘banked’ by their children to support future wellbeing. Instead, SBP needs to be an ongoing, contemporary parenting practice. Furthermore, the fact that perceptions of SBP decline in this age bracket suggest that SBP interventions may be helpful in supporting adolescent mental health