Negotiating Authority: Perceptions of Age in the Writing

From 2003 to 2006, I worked as a writing center tutor at a small, private, liberal arts college. I was the "traditional" college student while I worked at the writing center: I was between the ages of 19 and 22 and a middle-class Caucasian woman. During my three years working as a tutor at the Moravian College and Theological Seminary Writing Center, other tutors and I faced our biggest challenges while working with Moravian Seminary students–graduate students at the seminary studying to become affiliated with the Moravian Church. These students were typically many years older than the tutors. As younger tutors, we often felt that these older student-writers did not value our input on their writing.University Writing Cente

New advances in amblyopia therapy I: Binocular therapies and pharmacologic augmentation

Amblyopia therapy options have traditionally been limited to penalisation of the non-amblyopic eye with either patching or pharmaceutical penalisation. Solid evidence, mostly from the Pediatric Eye Disease Investigator Group, has validated both number of hours a day of patching and days per week of atropine use. The use of glasses alone has also been established as a good first-line therapy for both anisometropic and strabismic amblyopia. Unfortunately, visual acuity equalisation or even improvement is not always attainable with these methods. Additionally, non-compliance with prescribed therapies contributes to treatment failures, with data supporting difficulty adhering to full treatment sessions. Interest in alternative therapies for amblyopia treatment has long been a topic of interest among researchers and clinicians alike. Incorporating new technology with an understanding of the biological basis of amblyopia has led to enthusiasm for binocular treatment of amblyopia. Early work on perceptual learning as well as more recent enthusiasm for iPad-based dichoptic training have each generated interesting and promising data for vision improvement in amblyopes. Use of pharmaceutical augmentation of traditional therapies has also been investigated. Several different drugs with unique mechanisms of action are thought to be able to neurosensitise the brain and enhance responsiveness to amblyopia therapy. No new treatment has emerged from currently available evidence as superior to the traditional therapies in common practice today. But ongoing investigation into the use of both new technology and the understanding of the neural basis of amblyopia promises alternate or perhaps better cures in the future.</jats:p

Neuromodulatory control of localized dendritic spiking in critical period cortex.

Sensory experience in early postnatal life, during so-called critical periods, restructures neural circuitry to enhance information processing1. Why the cortex is susceptible to sensory instruction in early life and why this susceptibility wanes with age are unclear. Here we define a developmentally restricted engagement of inhibitory circuitry that shapes localized dendritic activity and is needed for vision to drive the emergence of binocular visual responses in the mouse primary visual cortex. We find that at the peak of the critical period for binocular plasticity, acetylcholine released from the basal forebrain during periods of heightened arousal directly excites somatostatin (SST)-expressing interneurons. Their inhibition of pyramidal cell dendrites and of fast-spiking, parvalbumin-expressing interneurons enhances branch-specific dendritic responses and somatic spike rates within pyramidal cells. By adulthood, this cholinergic sensitivity is lost, and compartmentalized dendritic responses are absent but can be re-instated by optogenetic activation of SST cells. Conversely, suppressing SST cell activity during the critical period prevents the normal development of binocular receptive fields by impairing the maturation of ipsilateral eye inputs. This transient cholinergic modulation of SST cells, therefore, seems to orchestrate two features of neural plasticity-somatic disinhibition and compartmentalized dendritic spiking. Loss of this modulation may contribute to critical period closure

Examination of Nitrogen to Phosphorus Ratio in Nutrient Removal from Wastewater through Chlorella vulgaris

A need for phosphorus removal is becoming increasingly evident as some wastewater treatment plants struggle to meet wastewater effluent nutrient requirements. High nutrient levels in wastewater effluents have also caused ongoing tension between the state of Oklahoma and Arkansas regarding the pollution of the Illinois River. This research seeks to establish the relationship between nitrogen to phosphorus ratio in wastewater and the level of nutrient reduction using Chlorella vulgaris. Seed cultures of Chlorella vulgaris were added into solutions with various ratios of nitrate to phosphate representative of treated domestic wastewater and the removal of nitrogen and phosphorus were measured in this study. Results showed phosphate is the limiting factor for Chlorella vulgaris. The removal of nitrate from phosphate-limited wastewater effluent increased significantly by the growth of Chlorella vulgaris when supplemented with phosphate. This suggests that algal nutrient removal might not be suitable as a tertiary treatment for all wastewater effluent. This study will enhance wastewater treatment plants’ knowledgebase about further nutrient reduction techniques, and in turn, make more informed decisions

The Evolution of the Reference Interview

While the reference interview remains the vehicle whereby librarians are able to understand the information needs of users in order to assist them, the ways in which the reference interview is conducted have changed with time and technology. This chapter provides a brief history of the evolution of the reference interview, from the face-to-face transaction to the current trends of e-mail and chat software mediated reference interviews, and examines application of these current trends in virtual reference services. While the methods of conducting the reference interview have certainly changed, the ultimate goal of meeting the information needs of the user remains constant. Reprinted by permission of the publisher

A Longitudinal Descriptive Study of Service Delivery Employing Collaborative Classroom-based or Pull-out Service Delivery

This study investigated whether there was a difference in SLP behaviors during 40 minutes of speech-language intervention using a collaborative classroom-based model of intervention versus 40 minutes of traditional pull-out intervention. Additionally the study evaluated whether there was a difference in the amount of child practice productions of IEP goal behaviors during 40 minutes of speech-language intervention provided in the classroom versus 40 minutes of intervention provided in the pull-out speech room. One-half of the subjects participated in the collaborative classroom-based model, while the other half participated in the traditional pull-out intervention. Four hours of classroom-based or pull-out treatment were observed over the course of a school year for each of eighteen children with speech or language disorders. Results indicated that overall children with communication impairments received more practice producing IEP objectives during equal amounts of classroom-based and pull-out intervention. Children with language disorders however, received very similar amounts of practice in pull-out and the classroom, while children with articulation disorders produced less than half as many IEP objective productions in the classroom compared to the pull-out setting. Results followed a similar trend for SLP treatment behaviors. Overall, the SLP used more treatment behaviors to target IEP goals in pull-out than classroom-based intervention. The SLP however, used very similar amounts of treatment behaviors for children with language impairments in pull-out and the classroom, whereas she used significantly fewer treatment behaviors in the classroom compared to the pullout setting for children with articulation disorders

THE INFLUENCE OF WIDOWED STATUS AND TASK COMPLEXITY ON DECISION MAKING

Widowhood is a stressful life event that can impact an individual’s everyday life, including her decision making abilities. The complexity of the decision is also likely to influence the decision making abilities of these widows. The purpose of this dissertation was to better understand widows’ decision making processes, their preferences for collaboration when making decisions, and their satisfaction with the decision outcomes. Data analysis consisted of a series of 3 (widowed status) x 2 (task complexity) ANOVAS and ANCOVAS which found that both complexity and widowed status influence decision making processes. Higher complexity led to less overall satisfaction, but none of the other satisfaction variables yielded significant results. In addition, there were no significant findings with regard to preferences for collaboration. Multiple linear regressions were conducted to better understand individual difference variables on decision processing. Restoration orientation coping, loss orientation coping, and task complexity were found to be significant for decision processing and satisfaction measures. Future studies should aim to develop decision aids for this particular population so that they are able to make better decisions