Extended Learning Time

Abstract Research suggests that regular participation in programs that provide academic and social activities contribute positively to children’s academic and social development (National Education Association, 2004). However, existing literature on teachers’ and parents’ views on extended learning time is limited. A lot of emphasis has been placed on after-school programs for three primary reasons. First, attendance in after-school programs can provide children with supervision during a time when many might be exposed to and engage in more anti-social and destructive behaviors. Second, after-school programs can provide enriching experiences that broaden children’s perspectives and improve their socialization. Third, after-school programs may help to improve the academic achievement of students who are not achieving as well as they need to during regular school hours. Many children, especially those from poor and minority families, are placed at risk by school practices that are based on a sorting paradigm, in which some students receive high-expectation instruction while the rest are relegated to lower quality education. The role of home-based or neighborhood-based activities for children under the supervision of parents has declined, and the role of structured, school-based activities under the supervision of professionals has increased. A large part of this can be explained by the growth in single-parent households and families in which both parents work full time. For children who face academic and/or behavioral issues that hinder their success during regular school hours, the after-school hours can be a time to attempt to eliminate these barriers, improve education, and expose them to new experiences they would otherwise never had been exposed to. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore middle school teachers’ and parents’ perceptions of extended learning time. This case study employs a semi-structured interview as the main tool for data collection from the participants. Utilizing a case study approach brings a humanistic point of view to the field of education, one that is not simply bound in numbers and statistics. Krathwohl (1998) describes semi-structured interviews as having prepared open-ended questions and a predetermined order. The interview questions were designed to allow participants a means as well as a tool to express their opinions and beliefs on extended learning time. This study employs a purposeful sampling procedure. Krathwohl (1998) states that purposive sampling is a common and important tool in which individuals are chosen to fulfill a purpose and is “most often used in qualitative research to select individuals or behaviors that will better inform the researcher regarding the current focus of the [case study]” (p. 172). In this case, subjects were selected based on the grade levels that were preselected by the principal to participate in extended learning time. If you must be vague, you are only given license to do so when you can talk about orders-of-magnitude improvement. There is a tension here in that you should not provide numbers that can be easily misinterpreted, but on the other hand, you do not have room for all the caveats. Principals should have the opportunity to tailor the extended learning time to meet the needs of the students. No longer are community schools housing local students and families; now with the Newark One, where students are being bused from near and far, principals face a challenge in how to better equip the teachers with the necessary tools to educate students. Policy and educational leaders are promoting and funding opportunities for expanded learning time as a key strategy to address opportunity gaps that torment high-poverty schools (National Center on Time and Learning, 2013). If school leaders want to implement extended learning time, then it needs to be clear across the board, with parents, teachers, and community stakeholders being made aware of the policy and held accountable. The U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate adopted bills calling for National Extended Learning Time. Schools adopting extended learning time expand the amount of time students spend in school by lengthening the school day and/or year. Through the extended learning time initiative, schools agree to increase learning time for their students by at least 30% in exchange for an increase in their state per-pupil funding. According to Ricci (2000), providing curriculum-related, real-life opportunities for students that allow them to apply their skills can be challenging. Warren (1999) and Moores (1999) state that working with community volunteers provides students with positive role models, but also gives them the chance to see themselves as productive citizens. This provides students a chance to dive into their community as more than just observers and gives them more control over their experience and learning. When students feel in control, they are less likely to give up that control to other environmental hazards. As Moores (1999) states, it enables the [students] to develop confidence in their abilities to be successful

GUIDER: a GUI for semiautomatic, physiologically driven EEG feature selection for a rehabilitation BCI

GUIDER is a graphical user interface developed in MATLAB software environment to identify electroencephalography (EEG)-based brain computer interface (BCI) control features for a rehabilitation application (i.e. post-stroke motor imagery training). In this context, GUIDER aims to combine physiological and machine learning approaches. Indeed, GUIDER allows therapists to set parameters and constraints according to the rehabilitation principles (e.g. affected hemisphere, sensorimotor relevant frequencies) and foresees an automatic method to select the features among the defined subset. As a proof of concept, we compared offline performances between manual, just based on operator’s expertise and experience, and GUIDER semiautomatic features selection on BCI data collected from stroke patients during BCI-supported motor imagery training. Preliminary results suggest that this semiautomatic approach could be successfully applied to support the human selection reducing operator dependent variability in view of future multi-centric clinical trials

The effect of cultural origin on COVID-19 infection rates

We examine whether a community’s cultural origin affects COVID-19 infection rates by exploiting cultural differences in the bilingual province of South Tyrol in Northern Italy. We find lower infection rates in municipalities with a relatively higher proportion of German speakers, even after controlling for widely used measures of social and civic capital. Our findings can be explained by a more future-oriented behaviour of German speakers in comparison with Italian speakers

Spatially variable rate herbicide application on durum wheat in Sicily

Using the conventional farming system, durum wheat requires high rates of herbicide spraying. Herbicide residues can cause pollution of soil and ground water and, therefore, of the entire environment. In order to minimise the environmental impact of herbicides, a home made system for spatially variable rate crop input application was designed, developed and set up by the Department of Engineering and Technologies in Agriculture and Forestry (I.T.A.F.). This system consists of a DGPS, a portable computer, a specifically developed software and a device for applying rates proportionally related to the machine forward speed (DPA). Tests of spatially variable rate herbicide application were carried out in inland Sicily, on a field of 8.4 ha (where a three-year crop rotation, broad bean/vetch - durum wheat - durum wheat, was practised), using a sprayer modified for applying variable rates and equipped with the above mentioned system. The results are promising. The spatially variable rate herbicide application allowed an almost even grain yield over the entire field and a saving of 29% of herbicides with respect to the amounts normally used with the conventional farming system

Hydroseeding application on degraded slopes in the southern Mediterranean area (Sicily).

Hydroseeding is a technique increasingly used to establish vegetation on degraded areas in order to provide environmental protection. The objective of this article was to evaluate the effectiveness of four different hydroseeding methods (bonded fiber matrix hydroseeding, thick hydroseeding, reinforced hydroseeding plus water retention, and reinforced hydroseeding) on a degraded artificial slope in the southern Mediterranean area determining total vegetation cover, hydroseeding vegetation cover, hydroseeding success index (HSI), natural and hydroseeded vegetation height. The test area does not allow the use of any operating machinery for soil and vegetation management, and the only applicable technique is therefore hydroseeding. After hydroseeding was applied (in December 2010), 21 checks were carried out every 15 days (from January 2011-December 2011) to verify the occurrence and development of the hydroseeded species in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the different hydroseeding techniques in the study area. The results of the first experimentation performed in Sicily show that hydroseeding has good prospects of application on degraded areas in semiarid Mediterranean environments. In our study HSI > 0.8 was obtained only in test 2 (thick hydroseeding, period February-June 2011) where there was the simultaneous presence of earthworm humus and mulch

Causality estimates among brain cortical areas by Partial Directed Coherence: simulations and application to real data

The problem of the definition and evaluation of brain connectivity has become a central one in neuroscience during the latest years, as a way to understand the organization and interaction of cortical areas during the execution of cognitive or motor tasks. Among various methods established during the years, the Partial Directed Coherence (PDC) is a frequency-domain approach to this problem, based on a multivariate autoregressive modeling of time series and on the concept of Granger causality. In this paper we propose the use of the PDC method on cortical signals estimated from high resolution EEG recordings, a non invasive method which exhibits a higher spatial resolution than conventional cerebral electromagnetic measures. The principle contributions of this work are the results of a simulation study, testing the performances of PDC, and a statistical analysis (via the ANOVA, analysis of variance) of the influence of different levels of Signal to Noise Ratio and temporal length, as they have been systematically imposed on simulated signals. An application to high resolution EEG recordings during a foot movement is also presented

Influence of O2 on extra virgin olive oil fatty acids composition during malaxation

Many variables are related to extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) quality and, therefore, to its polyphenols content and fatty acids composition including the steps that lead to EVOO extraction, considering that it is mainly contained in the vacuoles of the fruit mesocarp. The main steps of EVOO production are: harvest, crushing, malaxation, centrifugation, storage and filtration. Considering the olive oil extraction procedures, many studies have been conducted in recent years on oil mill plant and processes for improving EVOO quality. Malaxer is the most studied machine among all; it is responsible for malaxation, which represents a very important and critical step in the EVOO extraction process. Many studies focus on the control of oxygen in the malaxer headspace, with the aim of determining its influence on EVOO quality evaluating volatile and phenolic components. Considering these factors, the main objective of the present study was to evaluate the influence of the malaxer headspace oxygen concentration on EVOO fatty acids composition from cv. Nocellara del Belice olives. The results show that oxygen content in the malaxer headspace, in different time-points and concentrations during the process, influences EVOO fatty acids composition

Potential production of biogas from prinkly pear (opuntia ficus-indica L.) in sicilian uncultivated areas

The aim of this work is to evaluate the potential production of biogas and, indirectly, biomethane or electric and thermal energy, from prinkly pear (Opuntia ficus-indica L.), to be grown in a part of Sicilian uncultivated areas and co-digested together with the available livestock manure and slurry. In order to increase the Renewable Energy Sources (RES) and reduce the dependency from fossil ones, the conversion of biomass into biogas through Anaerobic Digestion (AD) process is paramount for producing biomethane, to be used as fuel for means of transport and agricultural machines or heating, or electric and thermal energy through Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plants. Moreover, the digestate produced through AD process can be applied to soils as organic fertiliser in the place of chemical ones. Prinkly pear was supposed to be grown, by mechanising the harvest of cladods (modified stems), in a part of the Sicilian Used Agricultural Area that is currently uncultivated (totally 600, 000 ha ca.), identified by means of a GIS software. Thus it was possible to compute the potential production of biogas and, indirectly, biomethane or electric and thermal energy. The results show that the Sicilian potential production of biogas is 612, 115 103m3, from which 342, 784 103m3of biomethane could be extracted or 67, 038 MWh of electric energy and 70, 390 MWh MWh of thermal energy could be generated. Moreover the obtained digestate would be used as biofertiliser, within both conventional and organic farming. This work demonstrates that the production of RES, such as biogas from prinkly pear, represents a very profitable way of using the uncultivated areas: the income of the farmer would include not only that deriving from the sale of biomethane or electric and thermal energy but also the saving for replacing chemical fertilisers with digestate and the subsidy for producing biomethane as fuel for means of transport or electric and thermal energy from biogas

Sicilian potential biogas production from Citrus industry by-product

In Europe, Italy is the second nation after Spain in Citrus production and 49% ca. of national fruit production is located in Sicily. The by-product obtained from the industrial processing of Citrus fruits into juice and essential oils is called \u201cpastazzo\u201d or Citrus Waste (CW). This study is aimed at evaluating the Sicilian potential biogas and energy production from the above \u201cpastazzo\u201d and verifying the possibility of using this by-product for Anaerobic Digestion (AD) process within 30 km from processing plants. The areas cultivated with Citrus species in Sicily and their distribution in the various municipal districts were mapped and analysed by means of QGIS software, together with the main Citrus processing plants and the three existing AD plants. The statistical data about the amounts of the by-product of Citrus processing industry were evaluated, in order to compute the Sicilian potential biogas and energy production. In Sicily it is possible to obtain, through the use of \u201cpastazzo\u201d, a yearly production of 12,916,800 m3 ca. of biogas, equal to 24,250,930 kWh of electric energy and 25,463,477 kWh of thermal energy or 6,200,064 m3 of biomethane. This high potential biogas and energy production is not be currently used in a sustainable way from the energetic and economic points of view, because the existing AD plants are farer than 30 km from Citrus processing plants. The CW produced in Sicily could be used inside a bio-reactor, together with other raw materials (e.g. pomace and wastewater from olive oil mills, cereal straw, poultry manure and Italian sainfoin or Hedysarum coronarium), for AD process

Using the Neuroadaptagen KB200z to Ameliorate Terrifying, Lucid Nightmares in RDS Patients: the Role of Enhanced, Brain-Reward, Functional Connectivity and Dopaminergic Homeostasis.

BACKGROUND: Lucid Dreams are a form of dream life, during which the dreamer may be aware that he/she is dreaming, can stop/re-start the dreams, depending on the pleasantness or unpleasant nature of the dream, and experiences the dream as if he/she were fully awake. Depending on their content, they may be pleasant, un-pleasant or terrifying, at least in the context of patients, who also exhibit characteristics of Reward Deficiency Syndrome (RDS) and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). CASE SERIES: We present eight clinical cases, with known substance abuse, childhood abuse and diagnosed PTSD/RDS. The administration of a putative dopamine agonist, KB200Z, was associated with the elimination of unpleasant and/or terrifying, lucid dreams in 87.5% of the cases presented, whereas one very heavy cocaine abuser showed a minimal response. These results required the continuous use of this nutraceutical. The lucid dreams themselves were distinguishable from typical, PTSD nightmares insofar as their content did not appear to reflect a symbolic rendition of an originally-experienced, historical trauma. Each of the cases was diagnosed with a form of RDS, i.e., ADHD, ADD, and/or Tourette's syndrome. They all also suffered from some form of Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder (PTSD) and other psychiatric diagnoses as well. CONCLUSION: The reduction or elimination of terrifying Lucid Dreams seemed to be dependent on KB220Z, whereby voluntary stopping of the agent results in reinstatement of the terrifying non-pleasant nature of the dreams. Following more required research on a much larger population we anticipate confirmation of these seemingly interesting observations. If these results in a small number of patients are indeed confirmed we may have found a frontline solution to a very perplexing and complicated symptom known as lucid dreams