Community Partnership as a Foundation for Scholarship, Pedagogy, and Research—An Interactive Session

In Good Deeds Good Design, Roberta Feldman states that empowering community design facilitates effective, informed decision-making by “people who have traditionally had minimal say” (Feldman, 2003, 110). Doing this requires designers to consider communities as partners rather than clients and see their work as a collective endeavor rather than a professional gift. At Iowa State University, faculty in multiple departments are using partnership-based outreach methods to generate disciplinary and trans-disciplinary projects engaging studio teaching, research, and scholarship. Critical to these projects is the idea that partnership inverts the traditional power relationship between designers and underserved communities by valuing local knowledge equally with professional design skills. In these relationships, designers and design students bring important abilities to visualize alternatives and synthesize diverse types of knowledge to the table. Community partners bring equally valuable knowledge about history and place that the designers would be unable to access without local partners. This symposium will begin with a PechaKucha-style overview of panelists’ work followed by an interactive session in which panelists and audience members will collaboratively shift relationships to create new knowledge by examining a contemporary issue from multiple points of view. The underlying premise of this session is that spatial design is an instrumental praxis that can shape and potentially transform reality (Allen, 1999, 50). Doing so effectively requires dealing with instrumental tools such as function and materiality and understanding the broader context of social, economic, and political relationships that create place and can effectively only be accessed through local partnerships

Family Orientation and Achievement Goal Orientations Among the Children of Immigrant and Non-Immigrant Families

The current study examined the role of family orientations on the achievement motivations (i.e., achievement goal orientations and intrinsic motivation) of high school youths of different generational status (i.e., from immigrant or non-immigrant families) when their perception of their parents’ goals and classroom goal structures were tested simultaneously as predictors. A total of 331 high school students (ninth grade; ages 13–16, with 96% of the students in the ages of 14 or 15; 141 boys and 187 girls) from one high school in the United States participated in the study, completing a series of assessments with regard to their math classes. The findings show the complex role of the family contexts (parent goals and family orientations) on the adaptive mastery goals for children of immigrant families, going beyond previous studies that reported the relationships between family orientation and performance-approach or less adaptive performance-avoidance goals. This study still found that students’ family orientations strongly predicted their desire to win over their peers with certain levels of internal pressure in order to meet their parents’ expectations, aligned with previous literature. Through examining a context beyond the classroom context, studies should continue to examine the larger family and cultural context in understanding students with diverse backgrounds

Family Orientation and Achievement Goal Orientations Among the Children of Immigrant and Non-Immigrant Families

The current study examined the role of family orientations on the achievement motivations (i.e., achievement goal orientations and intrinsic motivation) of high school youths of different generational status (i.e., from immigrant or non-immigrant families) when their perception of their parents’ goals and classroom goal structures were tested simultaneously as predictors. A total of 331 high school students (ninth grade; ages 13–16, with 96% of the students in the ages of 14 or 15; 141 boys and 187 girls) from one high school in the United States participated in the study, completing a series of assessments with regard to their math classes. The findings show the complex role of the family contexts (parent goals and family orientations) on the adaptive mastery goals for children of immigrant families, going beyond previous studies that reported the relationships between family orientation and performance-approach or less adaptive performance-avoidance goals. This study still found that students’ family orientations strongly predicted their desire to win over their peers with certain levels of internal pressure in order to meet their parents’ expectations, aligned with previous literature. Through examining a context beyond the classroom context, studies should continue to examine the larger family and cultural context in understanding students with diverse backgrounds

Multi-Substituted Quinolines as HIV-1 Integrase Allosteric Inhibitors

Allosteric HIV-1 integrase (IN) inhibitors, or ALLINIs, are a new class of antiviral agents that bind at the dimer interface of the IN, away from the enzymatic catalytic site and block viral replication by triggering an aberrant multimerization of the viral enzyme. To further our understanding of the important binding features of multi-substituted quinoline-based ALLINIs, we have examined the IN multimerization and antiviral properties of substitution patterns at the 6 or 8 position. We found that the binding properties of these ALLINIs are negatively impacted by the presence of bulky substitutions at these positions. In addition, we have observed that the addition of bromine at either the 6 (6-bromo) or 8 (8-bromo) position conferred better antiviral properties. Finally, we found a significant loss of potency with the 6-bromo when tested with the ALLINI-resistant IN A128T mutant virus, while the 8-bromo analog retained full effectiveness

Multi-scale habitat selection of Mus minutoides in the Lowveld of Swaziland

We investigated habitat selection of Mus minutoides in northeastern Swaziland. We used powder tracking to determine how M. minutoides selected habitat at a fine scale and a broader path scale. At the fine scale, we measured percent cover of grass and shrubs, the number of forbs, and visual obstruction at five evenly-spaced points along a mouse’s pathway and at a paired random location. At the path scale, we calculated the relative displacement (RD) of each path as the ratio of the distance from the start to the end point of the path to the total length of the path (values near one indicate less preference). We found that M. minutoides were positively associated with increases in visual obstruction, grass cover, and shrub cover at the fine scale, but not at the path scale. Our results indicate that M. minutoides selection of vegetative features at the path scale are not as important as their fine scale selection of vegetative structure. Additionally, the shrub encroachment on our study site may be directly beneficial to M. minutoides at the fine scale. Our results provide us with an increased understanding of the basic ecology of M. minutoides and information on their response to a changing landscape.http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1365-2028hb2013Mammal Research InstituteZoology and Entomolog

Disability and participation in breast and bowel cancer screening in England: a large prospective study.

BACKGROUND: There is limited information about participation in organised population-wide screening programmes by people with disabilities. METHODS: Data from the National Health Service routine screening programmes in England were linked to information on disability reported by the Million Women Study cohort participants. RESULTS: Of the 473 185 women offered routine breast or bowel cancer screening, 23% reported some disability. Women with disabilities were less likely than other women to participate in breast cancer screening (RR=0.64, 95% CI: 0.62-0.65) and in bowel cancer screening (RR=0.75, 0.73-0.76). Difficulties with self-care or vision were associated with the greatest reduction in screening participation. CONCLUSION: Participation in routine cancer screening programmes in England is reduced in people with disabilities and participation varies by type of disability

Blast Shock Wave Mitigation Using the Hydraulic Energy Redirection and Release Technology

A hydraulic energy redirection and release technology has been developed for mitigating the effects of blast shock waves on protected objects. The technology employs a liquid-filled plastic tubing as a blast overpressure transformer to transfer kinetic energy of blast shock waves into hydraulic energy in the plastic tubings. The hydraulic energy is redirected through the plastic tubings to the openings at the lower ends, and then is quickly released with the liquid flowing out through the openings. The samples of the specifically designed body armor in which the liquid-filled plastic tubings were installed vertically as the outer layer of the body armor were tested. The blast test results demonstrated that blast overpressure behind the body armor samples was remarkably reduced by 97% in 0.2 msec after the liquid flowed out of its appropriate volume through the openings. The results also suggested that a volumetric liquid surge might be created when kinetic energy of blast shock wave was transferred into hydraulic energy to cause a rapid physical movement or displacement of the liquid. The volumetric liquid surge has a strong destructive power, and can cause a noncontact, remote injury in humans (such as blast-induced traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder) if it is created in cardiovascular system. The hydraulic energy redirection and release technology can successfully mitigate blast shock waves from the outer surface of the body armor. It should be further explored as an innovative approach to effectively protect against blast threats to civilian and military personnel

Basic Atomic Physics

Contains reports on five research projects.Joint Services Electronics Program Contract DAAL03-89-C-0001National Science Foundation Grant PHY 87-06560National Science Foundation Contract PHY 86-05893U.S. Army Research Office Contract DAAL03-89-K-0082U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research Contract N00014-89-J-1207U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research Contract N00014-83-K-069