The Impact of Social Play on Young Children

Play is an essential part of child development. Children learn about their world through playing. If children had one job, play would be it. Children are social beings and desire interaction and communication. When children play, they can learn about themselves as well as others. Through play, children are able to learn to regulate their emotions, interact with peers, teachers, and their environment. Play enables children to expand their attention span and to enhance intrinsic motivation. Play is a meaningful part of child development because it allows children to grow in all areas of development. This enhances their ability to reach and surpass milestones of development. Play serves as an outlet for children to discover their true selves and become who they were meant to be. Unfortunately, play is slowly disappearing in schools. Educators should prioritize play, because it is truly how children learn and discover. Play makes a child whole. It is a fundamental part of overall development and makes the child who they are and influences who they become. Keywords: attention span, regulate emotions, interaction, intrinsic motivatio

Factors Affecting Green Turtle Foraging Ecology Across Multiple Spatial Scales

The hierarchical levels at which resource selection occurs can have important consequences for individual and population energy budgets and structure the impacts of a forager on its ecosystem. Assessing factors affecting resource selection of large marine herbivores across scales is important because of their potentially large impacts on seagrass community dynamics and historical and current changes in their population sizes and those of their potential predators. I explored the factors (predation risk, resource abundance, quality and identity) affecting resource use of large marine herbivores (green turtles, Chelonia mydas) from the scale of habitat patches to forage species within patches. I used a combination of in-water surveys, aerial drone video transects, baited camera surveys, and seagrass community and nutrient content analyses to provide insights into resource use by turtles in multiple ecological contexts. In Abaco, The Bahamas I found relatively intact shark populations, including apex predators, relative to other parts of the Caribbean. In the context of healthy predator populations in Abaco, I tested a priori predictions rooted in Ideal Free Distribution (IFD) theory. Green turtles off Abaco deviated from predictions of an IFD determined by the standing stocks of seagrass. Instead, distributions are consistent with predictions of the foraging arena hypothesis with turtles largely restricted to safe habitat patches and selecting locations within these where seagrass N content is relatively high. Marine invasive species can have detrimental effects on coastal ecosystems and economies. Therefore, understanding the effects of, and factors influencing the rate of spread of the invasive seagrass Halophila stipulacea in the Caribbean is important. In the French West Indies (Guadeloupe, Martinique and St. Martin), I investigated foraging preferences for native versus invasive seagrass species and whether green turtles might facilitate or attenuate the invasion through their choice of habitats and feeding patterns. Green turtle distributions were correlated with native seagrass distributions. Also, despite similar nutrient contents, turtles preferred feeding on native seagrasses irrespective of their relative abundance within a patch. These results suggest that, as predicted by the Enemy Release Hypothesis, green turtles likely facilitate the invasion and spread of the invasive seagrass that may reduce energy flow into turtle populations

Perceptions of Disability, Identity, Agency, Goal Attainment, and Young Adult Disability Programs

Youth with disability are oppressed and marginalized by a dominant cultural narrative called ableism (Adams, Reiss, and Serlin, 2015; Campbell, 2015 as cited in Adams et al., 2015). Challenging ableism is a matter of social justice. Without serious attitudinal shifts and the removal of systemic barriers, our youth with disabilities will continue to experience negative outcomes and underdeveloped agency. This study was conducted to provide a more detailed look into how adults with disabilities, who participated in disability advocacy programs as youth, perceive their past involvement with such programs in relation to defining their disability, identity, and capacity for agency. In addition, the study sought to assess the relevance of disability-positive environments based on participants’ perceptions. The study’s primary research question was: How and to what extent do youth with disabilities perceive disability advocacy programs in Pittsburgh as disability-positive environments? The supplemental research question was: How do young professionals with disabilities perceive and describe living with a disability, developing an identity, and maturing as an agent in the context of past participation in a disability advocacy program? Ten participants were included in the study. Participants were young professionals with disabilities recruited through the researcher’s advocacy network. This study collected qualitative data through semi-structured, in-person interviews. Data were organized and analyzed using Template Analysis; contextualized through the parameters of social cognitive theory, the youth-adult partnership model, and principles of disability-positive environments. The following major themes emerged from the interview data: (1) their seminal experiences with disability as children and as young adults; (2) how they cultivated, defined, and internalized their disability-identity; and (3) how their sense of purpose and achievements provided context for future plans. The concept of disability-positivity, social cognitive theory, and the history of youth-adult partnerships were used as frames to organize the findings into a model called, the Path of Advancement for Development of Positive Disability-Identities model. This model captures the four stages the interviewees experienced during their transition from adolescence to young adulthood. The stages cover avoidance of disability, self-defining epiphanic experiences, established individualized goals and roles, and the accumulation of these experiences, perceptions, accomplishments, and action plans are represented by stage four, the actualization of positive disability-identities. This study found that the development of agency was not situated in any particular advocacy program. Rather, the interviewees’ perceptions of agency and their experiences as individuals with disabilities living in an ableist society were woven into an organized narrative that shaped an understanding of disability, identity, and forged a driving sense of purpose that translated into achieving meaningful goals. The dissertation ends with my agenda as an educational leader: to create a cross-disability advocacy collective that will empower, partner, and amplify strong, new disability narratives with the objective of replacing ableism with agency

The Awakening of the Syrian Army: General Husni al-Za'im's Coup and Reign, 1949: Origins of the Syrian Army's Enduring Role in Syrian Politics

"30 March 2011. As I write, the Middle East is in turmoil. Beginning with Tunisia in December 2010 and spreading to Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria, revolutions in the form of popular protests and demonstrations have taken over news headlines and political discussions. In Syria, government forces have reacted with violence and force. As of 29 March 2011, Amnesty International has estimated nearly one hundred people killed.1 Syria is not the only Middle Eastern country to respond to protests with force. But in a different light, Syria certainly stands out. The spirit of protest and revolution that has swept other Arab countries took much longer to stir Syria. Why did Syrians, living in a country notorious for gross human rights abuses, rampant corruption, and political repression, begin protests significant enough to garner a government response, in March, months after most other countries? Although this thesis is not attempting to answer this question, it does seek to provide a background so that one may better understand current events in Syria today.

Employees that want to stay: How relationships with leader and organization interact to predict affective commitment

Previous research has attempted to explain how Leader-member exchange (LMX) is related to subordinate affective commitment to organizations. Since affective commitment is highly related to employee turnover, understanding the effects supervisors have on affective commitment is of great importance for fostering high-quality relationships within the workplace. While previous research has been conducted on this relationship, past conceptualizations have yet to account for both the moderating effects of supervisor’s organizational embodiment (SOE) in conjunction with the mediating effect of perceived organizational support (POS). The current study proposes a comprehensive moderated mediation model, describing a path that accounts for variability due to employee perceptions of supervisors and organizations alike. The main hypothesis for the proposed study is that SOE will serve as a moderating variable such that the relationship between LMX and affective commitment will be stronger at high levels of SOE. Similarly, SOE will also moderate the relationship between LMX and POS. Finally, we hypothesize that POS will partially mediate the relationship between LMX and affective commitment. These hypotheses will be tested using the SPSS macro PROCESS, using bootstrap sampling techniques to estimate these effects. Multiple survey timepoints will be used to collect self-report data, with the intent to reduce the effect of common method bias. The predictor and moderator variables will be collected at time one, followed by the mediator, and finally the outcome of affective commitment. This collection method should enable us to make stronger claims as to the direction of these relationships. Our proposed model aims to direct future research on describing these relationships and organizational efforts to increase employees’ affective commitment to the organization, retaining employees in the long term

Organizational perceptions of I-O interventions: Construction of a diagnostic measure

Despite the fact that Industrial-Organizational (I-O) psychology consultants provide interventions meant to benefit companies, many organizations remain skeptical about the effectiveness of consultants and have concerns about I-O psychologists, their methods, and the results they promise. This skepticism may manifest through resistance towards interventions, resulting in strained client-consultant relationships and a decreased interest in future use of I-O consultant services. Understanding and evading these negative outcomes is highly relevant to the interests of I-O psychology as a whole, but research has yet to quantitatively examine factors contributing to an organization’s decision to pursue I-O consultation. The purpose of the current study is to develop a diagnostic tool to understand perceptions that organizations may have about I-O consultants and to link these to a company’s likeliness to purchase I-O consulting services. The proposed measure is made up of seven individual facets regarding both organizational and consultant entities: readiness for change, duration of project, cost/benefit, depth of intervention, internal/external implementation, faith in I-O expertise, and attitudes towards consultants. Items will be refined through pilot testing, and the measure structure will be analyzed through the use of factor analytic methods. Unique samples will be used to examine the factor structure of the measurement through both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. We hypothesize that the measure will exhibit a seven-factor structure, entailing each dimension as its own factor. We also hypothesize that a two-factor structure will also fit the measure data, including one for organizational factors and one for consultant factors. Additionally, we hypothesize that scores on the measure will positively predict the likelihood to purchase I-O consulting services. Utilization of this measure should enable consultants to quantitatively locate and target specific insecurities and skepticism contributing to organizational resistance toward I-O interventions, potentially increasing the effectiveness of these interventions and boosting consumer confidence in I-O psychologists

N. E. A. 1903

Envelope labelled N. E. A. 1903, containing cards and a second envelope relating to the National Educational Association

Compliance with surgical care improvement project blood glucose--a marker for euglycemia, but does it put our patients at risk?

To improve outcomes in open heart surgery (OHS) patients, the Surgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP) requires 6 am postoperative day (POD) 1 and 2 blood glucose (BG) to be ≤200mg/dL. This study examined risk factors for SCIP noncompliance when using an insulin infusion protocol (IIP) and evaluated this SCIP metric as a surrogate for glycemic control. The authors divided 99 consecutive OHS patients, all subjected to 1 uniform IIP, into 2 groups: Group 1-SCIP compliant (n=79) and Group 2-SCIP noncompliant (n=20). They determined mean BG for the first 48 postoperative hours, percent of total time with hyperglycemia (% time BG \u3e200mg/dL) for each group, and assessed risk of SCIP noncompliance as relates to multiple risk factors including intensity of IIP application, and switching to subcutaneous (SQ) insulin prior to 6 am on POD 2. Group 1 had lower mean BG than Group 2 and percent of total time with hyperglycemia,

Single-Base Resolution Mapping of 5-Hydroxymethylcytosine Modifications in Hippocampus of Alzheimer\u27s Disease Subjects

Epigenetic modifications to cytosine have been shown to regulate transcription in cancer, embryonic development, and recently neurodegeneration. While cytosine methylation studies are now common in neurodegenerative research, hydroxymethylation studies are rare, particularly genome-wide mapping studies. As an initial study to analyze 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5-hmC) in the Alzheimer’s disease (AD) genome, reduced representation hydroxymethylation profiling (RRHP) was used to analyze more than 2 million sites of possible modification in hippocampal DNA of sporadic AD and normal control subjects. Genes with differentially hydroxymethylated regions were filtered based on previously published microarray data for altered gene expression in hippocampal DNA of AD subjects. Our data show significant pathways for altered levels of 5-hmC in the hippocampus of AD subjects compared to age-matched normal controls involved in signaling, energy metabolism, cell function, gene expression, protein degradation, and cell structure and stabilization. Overall, our data suggest a possible role for the dysregulation of epigenetic modifications to cytosine in late stage AD