Finding a New Way: Leveraging Teacher Leadership to Meet Unprecedented Demands

High-performing organizations are dogged about nurturing talent and leveraging it to drive organizational improvement. The organizations that are particularly good at this carefully track both high potential employees and high-performing ones. They think intentionally about the career progression of these employees and incentivize them to both grow their skills and apply them in response to organizational needs. Managers are assessed based on their ability to develop and retain talent, and employees know that if they perform well, they will have opportunities to advance their careers. The American public education system does almost none of these things, at its peril. To meet the unprecedented demands facing public education, school systems must strategically pursue teacher leadership as a critical lever. This requires first establishing a vision for what teacher leadership can make possible in the system and how it can address identified needs. Having established clarity of purpose, the work then lies in establishing criteria for teacher leaders, defining the roles available (and how they relate to further differentiation of teaching roles), creating time for teachers to lead (and be led by others), and designing a financial model that is viable long term. It also lies in creating the structures, systems, and culture needed at the school and system level to support teacher leadership, and building a strategy that both encourages innovation in teacher leadership and builds incremental systemic change needed to sustain teacher leadership in the long term. There is not a single, right approach. What matters is that systems get started and that they pursue the work intentionally and strategically, learning from their early work (and that of others), guided by an inspiring vision that reaches beyond current roles and responsibilities for teachers

Factors Influencing Relocation Success of Utah Prairie Dog (Cynomys parvidens)

Utah prairie dogs (Cynomys parvidens) have been extirpated in 90% of their historical range. Because most of the population occurs on private land, this threatened species is continually in conflict with landowners. The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources has been relocating prairie dogs from private to public land since the 1970s, but relocations have been largely unsuccessful due to high mortality. Prairie dogs are highly social animals, but they are usually relocated without regard to their family group (coterie). I hypothesized that relocating Utah prairie dogs with their social structure intact may positively affect their survival rates and behavior. Utah prairie dogs were relocated from the golf course in Cedar City, Utah to two prepared sites near Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah in 2010 and 2011. Trapped animals were individually marked, and released at the new sites. Prairie dogs were relocated as coteries, or in a control group as randomly trapped individuals. To compare the two sites, vegetation transects were established at each site to document differences in composition and structure. Two months after relocation, traps were set to recapture released animals. Activity budgets were collected prior to, and following, relocation. Activity data were also collected on wild prairie dog populations for comparison. The best predictor of survival and recapture rate was the animal’s weight at initial capture. Larger animals had higher survival, but lower recapture rates. More research is needed to determine if this is due to better body condition, older animals having more experience, or both. Analysis showed no evidence of an advantage to relocating Utah prairie dogs by coteries. There was no benefit to survival, and no difference in behavior between coterie and control relocation strategies. Relocated animals behaved differently from non-relocated prairie dogs. While still significantly different, relocated individuals behaved more like wild prairie dogs than the animals at the urban source population. The vegetation at the two sites was significantly different. One site had significantly less grass cover, more invasive plant cover, and rockier soils. The sites also had different soil structures, which affect burrowing, and long-term retention rates. More research is needed to determine how site selection influences long-term success of a relocation site

Preparing: A Wrong Turn, a Dangerous River, and an Absent Partner

A woman whose partner is home with a debilitating illness goes hiking in the Pemigewassett Wilderness, takes a wrong turn, and must cross a dangerous river

Sex trafficking: How the media portrays victims and reflects legislation

Sex trafficking is a pervasive problem in the United States and around the world. For most of its history in the United States, the issue of sex trafficking has been hidden from the public and pushed into the back of peoples\u27 minds. It has been a problem that people are sympathetic to, but made to believe is not happening in our country. Recently, though, light has been shed on this problem through increased public awareness, primarily through the news media. Using a content analysis, I investigated the content of news media articles that have been used to describe the people involved in sex trafficking. Looking at these articles through a symbolic interactionism lens was deemed the most appropriate framework for this study. Morality, ethics, values, and even reality are created through our interactions (Ritzer and Goodman 2004). By using newspaper articles as a medium for which people are interacting with and receiving information, I can gain an understanding of the meanings that are being attached to sex trafficking victims. Historically, those that have been sex trafficked have been criminalized as prostitutes, even when they were victims. With the passage of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act in 2000, however, the US implemented a critical legislative tool for identifying sex trafficking victims and prosecuting the traffickers, rather than the trafficked. This act has trickled down to the state level where some states have developed their own legislation to reflect the TVPA. In the current study, I examined how representations of sex trafficking victims in major newspapers differs between states which have high or low quality legislation on this issue, as determined by recently published state report cards on the effectiveness of all U.S. states\u27 sex trafficking legislation, by the Protected Innocence Initiative (2011)

Ecoepidemiology of Trypanosoma cruzi in Texas

This dissertation focused on elucidating factors affecting Trypanosoma cruzi transmission in the southern US, using triatomine, canine, and wildlife samples. Collection of triatomine vectors from 2012-2015 included standard entomological sampling, as well as submissions through a citizen science program. The insects were identified to species, dissected, and tested for T. cruzi infection. T. gerstaeckeri and T. sanguisuga were the most abundant species in the collection. Kissing bugs were captured primarily April-October, and peak activity varied by species. A T. cruzi infection prevalence of 58.9% was found in 1,226 triatomines of 6 species, and infection prevalence varied by species. Amplification and sequencing of the TcSC5D gene revealed Triatoma gerstaeckeri was approximately equally infected with TcI and TcIV, and 10 individuals showed mixed TcI/TcIV infections. In contrast, Triatoma sanguisuga was more frequently found infected with TcIV than TcI. Relative abundance of parasite DTUs varied spatially, with both TcI and TcIV co-circulating nearly equally in vectors in central Texas, while TcIV predominated in northern Texas. A study of T. cruzi infection in dogs in south central Texas using paired IFA and Chagas Stat-Pak serological testing showed a seroprevalence of 57.6%. The odds of being seropositive were greater for dogs older than 6 years of age than dogs less than 2 years of age. PCR analyses of blood revealed 26.7% of dogs, including both seronegative and seropositive dogs, harbored parasite DNA in their blood. Sequencing of the TcSC5D gene from blood and tissue samples showed TcI and TcIV were present, including a co-occurrence of both DTUs in an individual dog. Cardiac tissue and blood were collected from wildlife—including raccoons (Procyon lotor), coyotes (Canis latrans), gray foxes (Urocyon cinereoargenteus), and bobcats (Lynx rufus)—from central Texas. PCR analyses found 2 bobcats (14.3%), 12 coyotes (14.3%), 8 foxes (13.8%), and 49 raccoons (70.0%) were positive for T. cruzi in at least one sample (right ventricle, apex, and/or blood clot). Strain typing revealed raccoons infected with DTU TcIV, and a single raccoon with TcI/TcI

On the Feasibility and Impact of Standardising Sparse-secret LWE Parameter Sets for Homomorphic Encryption

In November 2018, the HomomorphicEncryption.org consortium published the Homomorphic Encryption Security Standard. The Standard recommends several sets of Learning with Errors (LWE) parameters that can be selected by application developers to achieve a target security level $\lambda \in \{128,192,256\}$. These parameter sets all involve a power-of-two dimension $n \leq 2^{15}$, an error distribution of standard deviation $\sigma \approx 3.19$, and a secret whose coefficients are either chosen uniformly in $Z_q$, chosen according to the error distribution, or chosen uniformly in $\{ -1, 0, 1\}$. These parameter sets do not necessarily reflect implementation choices in the most commonly used homomorphic encryption libraries. For example, several libraries support dimensions that are not a power of two. Moreover, all known implementations for bootstrapping for the CKKS, BFV and BGV schemes use a sparse secret and a large ring dimension such as $n \in \{ 2^{16}, 2^{17} \}$, and advanced applications such as logistic regression have used equally large dimensions. This motivates the community to consider widening the recommended parameter sets, and the purpose of this paper is to investigate such possible extensions. We explore the security of possible sparse-secret LWE parameter sets, taking into account hybrid attacks, which are often the most competitive in the sparse-secret regime. We present a conservative analysis of the hybrid decoding and hybrid dual attacks for parameter sets of varying sparsity, with the goal of balancing security requirements with bootstrapping efficiency. We also show how the methodology in the Standard can be easily adapted to support parameter sets with power-of-two dimension $n \geq 2^{16}$. We conclude with a number of discussion points to motivate future improvements to the Standard

Can Instagram be used to deliver an evidence-based exercise program for young women A process evaluation

Background Instagram provides an opportunity to deliver low cost, accessible and appealing physical activity content. This study evaluated the feasibility of delivering an exercise program for young women using Instagram. Methods A single-group pre- and post-intervention trial examined the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a 12-week Instagram-delivered program with young inactive women (n = 16; M = 23 years), which prescribed running and body weight exercises to complete three times per week. Daily Instagram posts delivered the exercises, video demonstrations and motivational content. Feasibility was evaluated by examining exposure (Instagram posts viewed per week), engagement (likes, comments and tags on Instagram posts; number of exercise sessions completed per week; retention, defined as completion of the online survey at weeks 6 and 12), and acceptability [whether the program increased participants’ motivation to exercise (1 = strongly disagree-5 = strongly agree); satisfaction with the program (1 = not satisfied-5 = very satisfied)]. Preliminary efficacy was evaluated by comparing baseline and 12-week self-reported physical activity (IPAQ short-form) and fitness (cardiorespiratory and muscle strength; 1 = very poor-5 = very good, International Fitness Scale) using the Exact sign test. Results On average, participants reported seeing six posts in their Instagram feed per week. Posts received an average of five likes (IQR = 3–6). A total of four comments and one tag were observed across all posts. On average, participants reported completing two exercise sessions per week. Retention was 88% at 6 weeks but dropped to 56% at 12 weeks. Participants reported increased motivation to exercise (Mdn = 4, IQR = 3–4) and were satisfied with the program (Mdn = 4, IQR = 3–4). Only self-reported cardiorespiratory fitness showed a meaningful, though nonsignificant, improvement (MdnΔ = 1, IQR = 0–1, p = .06). Conclusions Although Instagram has the potential to deliver a low cost, convenient exercise program for young women, additional research is needed to identify methods of improving engagement (interaction with the Instagram content, exercise sessions completed, and retention in the program). Future research could examine the use of behaviour change theory and provide information that enables participants to tailor the exercises to their interests and needs. Additionally, the use of objective assessments of physical activity and fitness among a larger participants sample is needed