The relationship between parental involvement and the reading achievement of third grade students

The purpose of this study was to determine whether there was a correlation between parental involvement and the reading achievement of third grade students. The subjects in this study were 22 third grade students attending an elementary school in southern New Jersey. The elementary school was located in an urban area. Each of the subjects was given a parental involvement survey to take home to their parents. It questioned parents about daily reading habits at home with their child. The survey was scored on a scale of 1-4, with a four indicating the highest degree of involvement. The researcher then collected the reading scores of the students. The scores were then combined to find an average for the first, second, and third marking periods. A Pearson R correlational analysis was used as a method to analyze the relationship between parental involvement and the reading of achievement of third grade students. A significant correlation was found between parental involvement and reading achievement(r=.71). Therefore, the hypothesis was supported

Effectiveness and longevity of fuel treatments in coniferous forests across California

Longevity of fuel treatment effectiveness to alter potential fire behavior is a critical question for managers preparing plans for fuel hazard reduction, prescribed burning, fire management, forest thinning, and other land management activities. Results from this study will help to reduce uncertainty associated with plan prioritization and maintenance activities. From 2001 to 2006, permanent plots were established in areas planned for hazardous fuel reduction treatments across 14 National Forests in California. Treatments included prescribed fire and mechanical methods (i.e., thinning of various sizes and intensities followed by a surface fuel treatment). After treatment, plots were re-measured at various intervals up to 10 years post-treatment. Very few empirically based studies exist with data beyond the first couple of years past treatment, and none span the breadth of California’s coniferous forests. With the data gathered, this research aimed to meet three main objectives: Objective 1) Determine the length of time that fuel treatments are effective at maintaining goals of reduced fire behavior, by a) measuring effects of treatments on canopy characteristics and surface fuel loads over time, and b) modeling potential fire behavior with custom fuel models. Objective 2) Quantify the uncertainty associated with the use of standard and custom fuel models. Objective 3) Assess prescribed fire effects on carbon stocks and validate modeled outputs. Results have shown initial reductions in surface fuels from prescribed fire treatments recover to pre-treatment levels by 10 yr post-treatment. Mechanical treatments continue to have variable effects on surface fuels. With the exception of mechanical treatments in red fir, both treatment types resulted in increased live understory vegetation by 8 yr post-treatment relative to pre-treatment. Mechanical treatment effects on stand structure remains fairly consistent through 8 yr post-treatment. Fire-induced delayed mortality contributes to slight decreases in canopy cover and canopy bulk density over time. For both treatment types, overall canopy base height decreases in later years due to in-growth of smaller trees, but it remains higher than pre-treatment. The changes in fuel loads and stand structure are reflected in fire behavior simulations via custom fuel modeling. Surface fire flame lengths were initially reduced as a result of prescribed fire, but by 10 yr post-treatment they exceeded the pre-treatment lengths. Though a low proportion of type of fire, initial reductions in potential crown fire returned to pre-treatment levels by 8 yr post-treatment; passive crown fire remained reduced relative to pre-treatment for the duration. Mechanical treatments showed variable and minimal effects on surface fire flame length over time; however the incidence of active crown fire was nearly halved from this treatment for the duration. The Fire and Fuels Extension to the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FFE-FVS) was used to model potential fire behavior for plots treated with prescribed fire to determine the differences in modeled fire behavior using standard and custom fuel models. In general predicted fire behavior from custom versus standard fuel models were similar with mean surface fire flame lengths slightly higher using standard fuel models for all time steps until the 8 yr post treatment. Similarly, custom fuel models predicted a higher instance of surface fire than standard fuel models with the exception of 8 yr post-treatment. To better understand the impact of prescribed fire on carbon stocks, we estimated aboveground and belowground (roots) carbon stocks using field measurements in FFE-FVS, and simulated wildfire emissions, before treatment and up to 8 yr post-prescribed fire. Prescribed fire treatments reduced total carbon by 13%, with the largest reduction in the forest floor (litter and duff) pool and the smallest the live tree pool. Combined carbon recovery and reduced wildfire emissions allowed the initial carbon source from wildfire and treatment to become a sink by 8 yr post-treatment relative to pre-treatment if both were to burn in a wildfire. In a comparison of field-derived versus FFE-FVS simulated carbon stocks, we found the total, tree, and belowground live carbon pools to be highly correlated. However, the variability within the other carbon pools compared was high (up to 212%)

The evolution of ependymin-related proteins

This research was funded by Australian Research Council grants to BMD and SFC (DP130102543). IMLS gratefully acknowledges start-up funding for her lab from MASTS (Marine Alliance for Science and Technology Scotland) and seedcorn funding through the Wellcome Trust ISSF3 grant number 204821/Z/16/Z.Background: Ependymins were originally defined as fish-specific secreted glycoproteins involved in central nervous system plasticity and memory formation. Subsequent research revealed that these proteins represent a fish-specific lineage of a larger ependymin-related protein family (EPDRs). EPDRs have now been identified in a number of bilaterian animals and have been implicated in diverse non-neural functions. The recent discoveries of putative EPDRs in unicellular holozoans and an expanded EPDR family with potential roles in conspecific communication in crown-of-thorns starfish suggest that the distribution and diversity of EPDRs is significantly broader than currently understood. Results :We undertook a systematic survey to determine the distribution and evolution of EPDRs in eukaryotes. In addition to Bilateria, EPDR genes were identified in Cnidaria, Placozoa, Porifera, Choanoflagellatea, Filasterea, Apusozoa, Amoebozoa, Charophyta and Percolozoa, and tentatively in Cercozoa and the orphan group Malawimonadidae. EPDRs appear to be absent from prokaryotes and many eukaryote groups including ecdysozoans, fungi, stramenopiles, alveolates, haptistans and cryptistans. The EPDR family can be divided into two major clades and has undergone lineage-specific expansions in a number of metazoan lineages, including in poriferans, molluscs and cephalochordates. Variation in a core set of conserved residues in EPDRs reveals the presence of three distinct protein types; however, 3D modelling predicts overall protein structures to be similar. Conclusions:  Our results reveal an early eukaryotic origin of the EPDR gene family and a dynamic pattern of gene duplication and gene loss in animals. This research provides a phylogenetic framework for the analysis of the functional evolution of this gene family.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

THE ROLE OF INTERDEPENDENCE IN THE MICRO-FOUNDATIONS OF ORGANIZATION DESIGN: TASK, GOAL, AND KNOWLEDGE INTERDEPENDENCE

Interdependence is a core concept in organization design, yet one that has remained consistently understudied. Current notions of interdependence remain rooted in seminal works, produced at a time when managers’ near-perfect understanding of the task at hand drove the organization design process. In this context, task interdependence was rightly assumed to be exogenously determined by characteristics of the work and the technology. We no longer live in that world, yet our view of interdependence has remained exceedingly task-centric and our treatment of interdependence overly deterministic. As organizations face increasingly unpredictable workstreams and workers co-design the organization alongside managers, our field requires a more comprehensive toolbox that incorporates aspects of agent-based interdependence. In this paper, we synthesize research in organization design, organizational behavior, and other related literatures to examine three types of interdependence that characterize organizations’ workflows: task, goal, and knowledge interdependence. We offer clear definitions for each construct, analyze how each arises endogenously in the design process, explore their interrelations, and pose questions to guide future research

Differences in Efficacy and Safety of Pharmaceutical Treatments between Men and Women: An Umbrella Review

Being male or female is an important determinant of risks for certain diseases, patterns of illness and life expectancy. Although differences in risks for and prognoses of several diseases have been well documented, sex-based differences in responses to pharmaceutical treatments and accompanying risks of adverse events are less clear. The objective of this umbrella review was to determine whether clinically relevant differences in efficacy and safety of commonly prescribed medications exist between men and women. We retrieved all available systematic reviews of the Oregon Drug Effectiveness Review Project published before January 2010. Two persons independently reviewed each report to identify relevant studies. We dually abstracted data from the original publications into standardized forms. We synthesized the available evidence for each drug class and rated its quality applying the GRADE (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation) approach. Findings, based on 59 studies and data of more than 250,000 patients suggested that for the majority of drugs no substantial differences in efficacy and safety exist between men and women. Some clinically important exceptions, however, were apparent: women experienced substantially lower response rates with newer antiemetics than men (45% vs. 58%; relative risk 1.49, 95% confidence interval 1.35–1.64); men had higher rates of sexual dysfunction than women while on paroxetine for major depressive disorder; women discontinued lovastatin more frequently than men because of adverse events. Overall, for the majority of drugs sex does not appear to be a factor that has to be taken into consideration when choosing a drug treatment. The available body of evidence, however, was limited in quality and quantity, confining the range and certainty of our conclusions

Neonatal-Onset Multisystem Inflammatory Disease Responsive to Interleukin-1β Inhibition

Neonatal-onset multisystem inflammatory disease is characterized by fever, urticarial rash, aseptic meningitis, deforming arthropathy, hearing loss, and mental retardation. Many patients have mutations in the cold-induced autoinflammatory syndrome 1 (CIAS1) gene, encoding cryopyrin, a protein that regulates inflammation

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

Community Review of Police Conduct: An Intergroup Perspective

Law enforcement continually walks a fine-line between the protection and the violation of individual rights. It derives its power from the community it serves, and it is accountable to that community. To ensure the latter, some cities have implemented community review systems that monitor police conduct. These systems are intended to be impartial evaluators of law enforcement, in particular, complaints against law enforcement. We analyze the various structures and characteristics of community review systems, as well as the empirical research attending them. In doing so, we situate the problems associated with community review systems from a social psychological perspective, arguing that their shortcomings may be remedied through a consideration of intergroup processes which focus on shared identity and the role of power differentiation between police and community. Finally, we suggest improvements and further research

Community Review of Police Conduct: An Intergroup Perspective

Law enforcement continually walks a fine-line between the protection and the violation of individual rights. It derives its power from the community it serves, and it is accountable to that community. To ensure the latter, some cities have implemented community review systems that monitor police conduct. These systems are intended to be impartial evaluators of law enforcement, in particular, complaints against law enforcement. We analyze the various structures and characteristics of community review systems, as well as the empirical research attending them. In doing so, we situate the problems associated with community review systems from a social psychological perspective, arguing that their shortcomings may be remedied through a consideration of intergroup processes which focus on shared identity and the role of power differentiation between police and community. Finally, we suggest improvements and further research