The Experiences of Teachers Implementing Co-teaching Models: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Study

The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to describe the experiences of secondary teachers implementing co-teaching models in inclusive classrooms at a public school district in northwest Arkansas. For this study, co-teaching is defined as the collaborative approach to instruction in which a general education teacher and a special education teacher work together to co-plan, co-teach, and co-assess a course that includes general education students and students with disabilities. Using Johnson and Johnson’s social interdependence theory as a theoretical framework, this study addressed the central research question: What experiences do teachers have implementing co-teaching models in inclusive classrooms? A purposeful sampling method was utilized and included 10 participants working as secondary co-teachers in inclusive classrooms. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, document artifacts, and journal prompts from participants. Data were analyzed using phenomenological reduction, descriptive coding, and axial coding. Results revealed that teachers lacked the time to develop their collaborative relationship with their co-teachers required for implementing effective co-teaching strategies. Administrators created structures that minimized planning time and changed co-teacher pairings before effective collaborative relationships could develop. Additionally, results revealed that teachers need more training, both pre-service and after their co-teaching assignments, to effectively implement collaborative co-teaching models to meet student needs in inclusive classrooms

Case History — Settlement Mitigation for Mat Foundation Using Lean Concrete Columns

This paper presents a case history of Lean Concrete Column (LCC) design, prediction, installation, and monitoring for a 34-story high-rise condominium tower over a five-level underground parking substructure supported on a mat foundation in San Diego, California. The site constraints and the building configuration imposed unusual design and construction challenges, which resulted in high foundation pressures and eccentric loading for the planned building mat foundation. A geotechnical investigation consisting of deep test borings, Cone Penetrometer Tests (CPT), and laboratory tests indicated that formational soils underlying the site did not provide the necessary bearing capacity to directly support the structure on a conventional mat foundation system within acceptable settlement and structural limitations. Design constraints, economics, and constructability issues dictated solutions requiring an integral waterproofed substructural system supported on a mat foundation. A foundation system incorporating conventional piles structurally tied into the mat was not feasible because of waterproofing constraints. A determined practical solution was to incorporate a ground improvement technique that would be separate from the mat foundation, provide improved mat support, and reduce differential settlement to within tolerable limits. LCCs were found to be a viable method of ground improvement for reducing differential settlement of the mat to acceptable limits

Soil Compaction and Visual Disturbance Following an Integrated Mechanical Forest Fuel Reduction Operation in Southwest Oregon

Most mechanical forest fuel reduction treatments prescribed to extract biomass are performed with existing or modified conventional logging equipment. Treatments that commonly harvest small, non-merchantable trees are often combined with or integrated into commercial thinning operations. Only a limited amount of literature has quantified harvesting system feasibility or environmental effects from such operations. The extra stand travel required to fell and extract small trees may lead to additional soil disturbance. The objective of this study was to assess soil disturbance from an integrated forest harvesting/mechanical forest fuel reduction operation in southwest Oregon, USA. The study was conducted in a fuel reduction thinning of a densely stocked 8.1-hectare (20-acre) mixed conifer stand on gentle terrain. A tracked, swing-boom feller-buncher and two rubber-tired, grapple skidders were used for felling and extracting both non-merchantable and merchantable trees. Visually classified soil disturbance, along with penetration resistance estimates were recorded pre- and post harvesting. Results indicate that the operation did not contribute to either statistically or biologically significant soil disturbance effects, based on an a priori biological reference threshold of 3,000 kPa. A history of multiple harvest entries, low soil moisture, and high initial soil strength conditions contributed to the lack of significant effects. This investigation will aid forest managers in decision making concerning expected soil disturbance effects when prescribing integrated harvesting systems for forest fuel reduction treatments

What is the Role of Annual Human Rights Reviews? Examining Biases in U.S. Department of State’s Country Reports on Human Rights

This paper examines biases in U.S. Department of State’s Country Reports on Human Rights through comparison of country profiles for Cuba, Egypt and Iran by Amnesty International (Amnesty International Report: The State of the World’s Human Rights) and Freedom House (Freedom in the World), especially post-9/11

One Loop Predictions of the Finely Tuned SSM

We study the finely tuned SSM, recently proposed by Arkani-Hamed and Dimopoulos, at the one loop level. The runnings of the four gaugino Yukawa couplings, the mu term, the gaugino masses, and the Higgs quartic coupling are computed. The Higgs mass is found to be 130 - 170 GeV for M_s > 10^6 GeV. If the Yukawa coupling constants are measured at the 1% level, this can determine the SUSY breaking scale to within an order of magnitude. Measuring the relationships between the couplings to this accuracy provides a striking signal for this model.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures; v2: Minor corrections to anomalous dimensions and beta functions. Numerical results are not significantly affected. v3: Minor changes to figures and references, as published in PR

Fine-tuned Sentiment Analysis of COVID-19 Vaccine-Related Social Media Data: Comparative Study

This study investigated and compared public sentiment related to COVID-19 vaccines expressed on two popular social media platforms, Reddit and Twitter, harvested from January 1, 2020, to March 1, 2022. To accomplish this task, we created a fine-tuned DistilRoBERTa model to predict sentiments of approximately 9.5 million Tweets and 70 thousand Reddit comments. To fine-tune our model, our team manually labeled the sentiment of 3600 Tweets and then augmented our dataset by the method of back-translation. Text sentiment for each social media platform was then classified with our fine-tuned model using Python and the Huggingface sentiment analysis pipeline. Our results determined that the average sentiment expressed on Twitter was more negative (52% positive) than positive and the sentiment expressed on Reddit was more positive than negative (53% positive). Though average sentiment was found to vary between these social media platforms, both displayed similar behavior related to sentiment shared at key vaccine-related developments during the pandemic. Considering this similar trend in shared sentiment demonstrated across social media platforms, Twitter and Reddit continue to be valuable data sources that public health officials can utilize to strengthen vaccine confidence and combat misinformation. As the spread of misinformation poses a range of psychological and psychosocial risks (anxiety, fear, etc.), there is an urgency in understanding the public perspective and attitude toward shared falsities. Comprehensive educational delivery systems tailored to the population's expressed sentiments that facilitate digital literacy, health information-seeking behavior, and precision health promotion could aid in clarifying such misinformation.Comment: 11 Pages, 5 Figures, and 1 Tabl

Exploring celebrity influence on public attitude towards the COVID-19 pandemic: social media shared sentiment analysis

The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced new opportunities for health communication, including an increase in the public use of online outlets for health-related emotions. People have turned to social media networks to share sentiments related to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper we examine the role of social messaging shared by Persons in the Public Eye (i.e. athletes, politicians, news personnel) in determining overall public discourse direction. We harvested approximately 13 million tweets ranging from 1 January 2020 to 1 March 2022. The sentiment was calculated for each tweet using a fine-tuned DistilRoBERTa model, which was used to compare COVID-19 vaccine-related Twitter posts (tweets) that co-occurred with mentions of People in the Public Eye. Our findings suggest the presence of consistent patterns of emotional content co-occurring with messaging shared by Persons in the Public Eye for the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic influenced public opinion and largely stimulated online public discourse. We demonstrate that as the pandemic progressed, public sentiment shared on social networks was shaped by risk perceptions, political ideologies and health-protective behaviours shared by Persons in the Public Eye, often in a negative light.Comment: 7 Pages, 4 Figure

Dual-Channel Red/Blue Fluorescence Dosimetry with Broadband Reflectance Spectroscopic Correction Measures Protoporphyrin IX Production during Photodynamic Therapy of Actinic Keratosis

Dosimetry for aminolevulinic acid (ALA)-induced protoporphyrin IX (PpIX) photodynamic therapy of actinic keratosis was examined with an optimized fluorescence dosimeter to measure PpIX during treatment. While insufficient PpIX generation may be an indicator of incomplete response, there exists no standardized method to quantitate PpIX production at depths in the skin during clinical treatments. In this study, a spectrometer-based point probe dosimeter system was used to sample PpIX fluorescence from superficial (blue wavelength excitation) and deeper (red wavelength excitation) tissue layers. Broadband white light spectroscopy (WLS) was used to monitor aspects of vascular physiology and inform a correction of fluorescence for the background optical properties. Measurements in tissue phantoms showed accurate recovery of blood volume fraction and reduced scattering coefficient from WLS, and a linear response of PpIX fluorescence versus concentration down to 1.95 and 250 nM for blue and red excitations, respectively. A pilot clinical study of 19 patients receiving 1-h ALA incubation before treatment showed high intrinsic variance in PpIX fluorescence with a standard deviation/mean ratio of \u3c0.9 . PpIX fluorescence was significantly higher in patients reporting higher pain levels on a visual analog scale. These pilot data suggest that patient-specific PpIX quantitation may predict outcome response