Slow the Fashion: Teaching Handcraft Techniques in Fashion and Textile Design in Higher Education

It has been found that textile and fashion industry is among the leading resource-consuming and polluting industries especially with the advent of fast fashion. Under the high pressure from increasing environmental problems in the world, a movement of slow fashion is gaining increasing attention. It is challenging fast fashion’s obsession with mass-production and globalized style and becoming a guardian of diversity and indigenous handcraft. Studies show that handcrafted items can evoke positive emotional bond between consumer and maker hence increase the value of a garment, which adds to the sustainability of the item through extended wear. For designers, handcrafting nurtures their creativity as hands are subtle, sensitive, probing and closely connected to the mind. Since designers have a lot control of products that are introduced, it is significant to ensure that fashion design students are aware of the importance of sustainable fashion, and get training on sustainable design techniques for further application. Although more and more fashion schools in the world are providing sustainability education in fashion and textile design, few have introduced sustainable design techniques such as handcrafting in class. To address this gap, a learning unit of handcraft manipulation of yarns and fabrics was developed and implemented in an undergraduate creative design studio class

A Complex Interaction Between Reduced Reelin Expression and Prenatal Organophosphate Exposure Alters Neuronal Cell Morphology.

Genetic and environmental factors are both likely to contribute to neurodevelopmental disorders including schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorders, and major depressive disorders. Prior studies from our laboratory and others have demonstrated that the combinatorial effect of two factors-reduced expression of reelin protein and prenatal exposure to the organophosphate pesticide chlorpyrifos oxon-gives rise to acute biochemical effects and to morphological and behavioral phenotypes in adolescent and young adult mice. In the current study, we examine the consequences of these factors on reelin protein expression and neuronal cell morphology in adult mice. While the cell populations that express reelin in the adult brain appear unchanged in location and distribution, the levels of full length and cleaved reelin protein show persistent reductions following prenatal exposure to chlorpyrifos oxon. Cell positioning and organization in the hippocampus and cerebellum are largely normal in animals with either reduced reelin expression or prenatal exposure to chlorpyrifos oxon, but cellular complexity and dendritic spine organization is altered, with a skewed distribution of immature dendritic spines in adult animals. Paradoxically, combinatorial exposure to both factors appears to generate a rescue of the dendritic spine phenotypes, similar to the mitigation of behavioral and morphological changes observed in our prior study. Together, our observations support an interaction between reelin expression and chlorpyrifos oxon exposure that is not simply additive, suggesting a complex interplay between genetic and environmental factors in regulating brain morphology

Effects of Noise, Reverberation and Foreign Accent on Native and Non-Native Listeners’ Performance of English Speech Comprehension

A large number of non-native English speakers may be found in American classrooms, both as listeners and talkers. Little is known about how this population comprehends speech in realistic adverse acoustical conditions. A study was conducted to investigate the effects of background noise level (BNL), reverberation time (RT), and talker foreign accent on native and non-native listeners\u27 speech comprehension, while controlling for English language abilities. A total of 115 adult listeners completed comprehension tasks under 15 acoustic conditions: three BNLs (RC-30, RC-40, and RC-50) and five RTs (from 0.4 to 1.2 s). Fifty-six listeners were tested with speech from native English-speaking talkers and 59 with native Mandarin-Chinese-speaking talkers. Results show that, while higher BNLs were generally more detrimental to listeners with lower English proficiency, all listeners experienced significant comprehension deficits above RC-40 with native English talkers. This limit was lower (i.e., above RC-30), however, with Chinese talkers. For reverberation, non-native listeners as a group performed best with RT up to 0.6 s, while native listeners performed equally well up to 1.2 s. A matched foreign accent benefit has also been identified, where the negative impact of higher reverberation does not exist for non-native listeners who share the talker\u27s native language

An Analysis of the Effects of Children Achieving on Student Achievement in Philadelphia Elementary Schools

Philadelphia’s Children Achieving was a sweeping systemic reform initiative. Systemic reform eschews a school-byschool approach to reform and relies on coherent policy, improved coordination of resources and services, content and performance standards, decentralization of decision-making, and accountability mechanisms to transform entire school systems. Led by a dynamic superintendent and central office personnel, Children Achieving was the first attempt by an urban district to test systemic reform in practice. In 1996, the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) at the University of Pennsylvania and its partner, Research for Action (RFA), were charged by the Children Achieving Challenge with the evaluation of Children Achieving. Between the 1995- 1996 and 2000-2001 school years, CPRE and RFA researchers interviewed hundreds of teachers, principals, parents, students, District officials, and civic leaders; sat in on meetings where the plan was designed, debated, and revised; observed its implementation in classrooms and schools; conducted two systemwide surveys of teachers; and carried out independent analyses of the District’s test results and other indicators of system performance. An outline of the research methods used by CPRE and RFA is included in this report

Life in the Fast Lane: Modeling the Fate of Glass Sponge Larvae in the Gulf Stream

Effective conservation management of deep-sea sponges, including design of appropriate marine protected areas, requires an understanding of the connectivity between populations throughout a species’ distribution. We provide the first consideration of larval connectivity among deep-sea sponge populations along the southeastern coast of North America, illustrate the influence of the Gulf Stream on dispersal, and complement published distribution models by evaluating colonization potential. Connectivity among known populations of the hexactinellid sponge Vazella pourtalesii was simulated using a 3-D biophysical dispersal model throughout its distribution from Florida, United States to Nova Scotia, Canada. We found no exchange with an estimated pelagic larval duration of 2 weeks between populations north and south of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina at surface, mid-water and seabed release depths, irrespective of month of release or application of a horizontal diffusion constant specific to cross-Gulf Stream diffusivity. The population north of Cape Hatteras and south of Cape Cod was isolated. There was some evidence that Gulf Stream eddies formed near Cape Hatteras could travel to the northwest, connecting the populations in the two sub-regions, however that would require a much longer pelagic duration than what is currently known. More likely almost all larval settlement will be in the immediate area of the adults. At sub-regional scales, connectivity was found from the Strait of Florida through to the Blake Plateau, southeastern United States, with the latter area showing potential for recruitment from more than one source population. The influence of the Charleston Bump, a shallow feature rising from the Blake Plateau, was substantial. Particles seeded just north of the Bump were transported greater distances than those seeded to the south, some of which were caught in an associated gyre, promoting retention at the seabed. To the north on the Scotian Shelf, despite weaker currents and greater distances between known occurrences, unidirectional transport was detected from Emerald Basin to the Northeast Channel between Georges and Browns Banks. These major conclusions remained consistent through simulations run with different averaging periods for the currents (decades to daily) and using two ocean model products (BNAM and GLORYS12V1)