Noise Exposure and Hearing Protection in Marching Band Students

The purpose of this research project was to investigate collegiate marching band members’ use of hearing protection during rehearsals and performances. A second purpose was to identify the concerns of marching band members about the use of hearing protection. Finally, the third purpose was to determine if the type of protection used, standard or custom, impacted wearing time. Hearing threshold sensitivity, tympanometry, and use of hearing protection were measured prior to the fitting of the custom earmolds and again at the end of the marching season. Pre-season results indicated that the majority of band members reported they did not wear standard ear protection for practice and performances. The reasons for lack of consistent use of hearing protection with standard plugs were comfort, forgetting to wear hearing protection, perception of volume, and quality of sound. Most participants who did not consistently wear the earmolds stated that fit, comfort, and perception of volume were the main reasons for inconsistent wear. Overall, provision of custom earmolds was associated with increased number of RMB members who wore ear protection as well as increased wearing time overall

War and Women Wielding Power: Lessons from Burundi, Liberia, and Chad

Since 1989, the world has seen civil war replace traditional war as the prevailing paradigm of conflict. Simultaneously, the world’s leading thinkers, international bodies, and aid organizations have encouraged the idea that women’s rights are human rights, and urged that policy issues be considered through a gendered lens. My thesis aims to connect these two concurrent shifts in geopolitics by examining the relationship between civil war and women. How do women experience civil war differently from men? How does the legacy of civil war change women’s lives? Specifically, my thesis examines the effects civil war has on women’s political power. In the existing literature on this topic, two conflicting themes emerge: the idea that civil war increases women’s political participation, and the notion that following civil war, women are confined to roles more traditional and constraining than in the status-quo ante. Additionally, an examination of civil wars occurring after 1989 suggests that countries which have undergone civil conflict often live under an authoritarian government in the post-conflict period, complicating the issue of how women fit into politics post-civil war. In my thesis, I will attempt to answer two questions to reconcile these contradictions. First, under what conditions does civil war assist women’s entrance into formal political bodies? Second, in cases where women do enter these political bodies post-conflict, how does the type of regime influence the ability of those women to make significant legislative and policy contributions

Intimate Partner Violence Screening in Adolescent and Young Adult Females

Abstract Problem Adolescents and young adult females are at risk for experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV). Females aged 16- to 24-years of age experience IPV three times more likely than males. Universal screening for adolescent IPV is considered a gold standard for adolescent anticipatory guidance. The purpose of this quality improvement initiative was to evaluate the impact of an adolescent IPV screening instrument in an urban, Midwestern shelter for pregnant adolescent and young adult females. Methods An observational, descriptive design. All adolescent and young adult females presenting for intake evaluation were screened for IPV using the Healthy Relationship Quiz over a three-month period. Results There were 19 females (N=19) screened. The majority of participants had a documented positive screening (n=18, 95%). A chi-square test of independence analysis between screening and education provided by intake (χ2 = 5.00, df=1, p = .025) and between screening and referral to outside resources (χ2 = 14.00, df=1, p \u3c .001) was found. A high score on the Healthy Relationship Quiz prompted referral to resources with the odds of being referred to resources increasing by approximately 6% per one unit increase in score. Implications For Practice Screening using the Healthy Relationship Quiz identified most adolescent and young adult females living in a shelter experienced IPV. Identifying IPV enabled referral to internal, community, and counseling resources to provide intervention, reduction of future risk, and enhanced personal safety. Ideally, all adolescent and young adult females should receive anticipatory guidance and education for IPV prevention by the agency or healthcare organization

A Case Study of Young Children\u27s Play

This paper explores the playtime of elementary students in two Northwest Arkansas schools. This paper examines the difference in the amount of play students are receiving from preschool to kindergarten. The research question is, “Are the types of and amounts of play in preschool and kindergarten settings appropriate to meet the developmental needs of young learners including cognitive, socio-emotional and physical development?†Data were collected through observations and teacher questionnaires. The results implied that the preschool setting was receiving the adequate time for the developmental types of play to take place, but the kindergarten setting was not receiving the adequate amounts of time for play

Temporal Requirements for Future Landsat Systems for Agricultural Monitoring

Agricultural monitoring is an important application of earth-observing satellite systems, which may be used for stress and disease detection, growth stage monitoring, and yield prediction in crops at a fraction of the time and cost it would take to survey fields manually. Satellites within the Landsat program are frequently used for agricultural monitoring, but they do not always collect imagery often enough to capture rapid changes in vegetation health. To address this limitation, an increase in revisit rate is being considered for future Landsat systems. This research aims to determine the necessary overpass frequency for a future Landsat sensor for agricultural growth stage monitoring and yield prediction. Two experiments were conducted to study the effects of temporal resolution on the accuracy of these tasks. The first experiment investigated the impact of imaging frequency on growth stage monitoring. Image-derived plot-average Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) time-series data collected over a small corn field were used to estimate phenological transition dates. Images were then removed from the original time-series, and dates were recalculated from the resampled data. Using PlanetScope surface reflectance imagery, the average range of estimated dates increased by a day and the average absolute deviation between estimated dates increased by 1/3 of a day for every day of increase in average revisit interval. Using the higher-quality PlanetScope L3H surface reflectance product, these rates of increase were approximately halved. Higher imaging frequency and higher radiometric quality both led to greater precision in estimates. The second experiment investigated the impacts of imaging frequency and time-series end date on yield correlation accuracy. Plot-average Green Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (GNDVI) time-series data collected over a small corn field during two different growing seasons were resampled to different revisit intervals, gap-filled and smoothed using two different methods, and correlated with plot-average yield at each day of the growing season. These experiments were then repeated with images removed from the end of the time-series. All methods tested performed well on time-series ending 65-72 days or more after green-up, and performed poorly for time-series ending prior to the day of peak GNDVI. Mean R-squared values for GNDVI-yield correlations decreased with increasing revisit intervals. This effect was stronger for the more typical 2019 data, as well as for time-series ending earlier in the growing season. The findings of this study, along with cloud contamination statistics, were used to recommend an overpass frequency of 1-4 days for future yield-monitoring satellite systems. The optimal frequency within this range depends on the specific task being attempted

The Place of Art in K-12 Education

Despite the fact that it is the law to include art in education, the arts are often inadequately funded, and/or given minimal attention in U.S. public education. This research project discusses the history of education, provides a review of literature on the benefits of art education, looks at the impact of Gardner\u27s (1993/1983) theory of Multiple Intelligences, and the work of Gardner and his colleagues on the arts, thinking, and creativity. Collectively, all of this information was then formed into a guide called, Have You Had Your Art Today? (Why you should build your school\u27s art programs). This guide\u27s intended audience was educators, administrators, and parents. Three professionals in art and education reviewed this guide and provided feedback in the form of an evaluation. The strengths and weaknesses from their evaluations were reviewed, and areas of further study were provided. This project concludes that schools in the U.S. need to further pursue increasing their arts programs

Thoracic Pressure Does Not Impact CSF Pressure via Compartment Compliance

Space acquired neuro-ocular syndrome (SANS) remains a difficult risk to characterize due to the complex multi-factorial etiology related to physiological responses to the spaceflight environment. Fluid shift and the resultant change on the Cardiovascular (CV) and cerebral spinal fluid systems (CSF) in the absence of gravity continue to be considered a contributing factor to the progression of SANS. In this study, we utilize a computational model of the CSF and CV interface to establish the sensitivity that intracranial pressure, and subsequently the optic nerve sheath pressure, exhibits due to variations in thoracic pressure, assuming the cranial perfusion pressure, i.e. mean arterial pressure (MAP) to central venous pressure (CVP), is known. Methods: The GRC Cross cutting computational modeling project created as model of the CSF and CV interaction within the cranial vault by extending the work of Stevens et al. [1] by modifying the representative anatomy to include a separate venous sinus, jugular veins, secondary veins and extra jugular pathways [2-3] to more adequately represent the vascular drainage pathways from the cranial vault (Figure 1). Assuming the MAP, CVP and thoracic pressure are known, we initiated this enhanced computational model assuming a supine positon and utilized a linear ramp to vary the thoracic pressure from the assumed supine state to the target pressure corresponding to set MAP and CVP values. The model generates the time based CSF pressure values (Figure2). Results and Conclusions: Following this analysis, CSF pressure shows significant independence from thoracic pressure changes (16 mmHg in thoracic pressure produces < 1mmHg change in CSF pressure), being mostly dependent on perfusion pressure. Similarly fluid redistribution is not predicted to be impacted over a level of 1mL. We note that this simulation represents an acute changes (order of 10's of minutes) and does not represent the long term effects

Building phonetic categories: an argument for the role of sleep

The current review provides specific predictions for the role of sleep-mediated memory consolidation in the formation of new speech sound representations. Specifically, this discussion will highlight selected literature on the different ideas concerning category representation in speech, followed by a broad overview of memory consolidation and how it relates to human behavior, as relevant to speech/perceptual learning. In combining behavioral and physiological accounts from animal models with insights from the human consolidation literature on auditory skill/word learning, we are in the early stages of understanding how the transfer of experiential information between brain structures during sleep manifests in changes to online perception. Arriving at the conclusion that this process is crucial in perceptual learning and the formation of novel categories, further speculation yields the adjacent claim that the habitual disruption in this process leads to impoverished quality in the representation of speech sounds