Negotiating the Baptist Influence in East Texas: Examining ‘Multiple Reflections’ to Disrupt the Local Sociopolitical Stage

The purpose of this paper is to examine multiple reflections (Ronai, 1995) of a White, southern male navigating through and of the influence of the Missionary Baptist church in rural East Texas. While East Texas continues to engage in social struggle through economics and identity politics, the author desires to examine the role of the Missionary Baptist church in maintaining certain power structures and borders (Anzaldúa, 2012). The author critically reflects on intersections of culture, religion, and power to engage in naming (Freire, 1970) covert means that influence the sociopolitical complex (Conquergood, 2002). Themes across autoethnographic reflections are identified and further critically analyzed to provide responses for conditions of social equity in a context that is marred by discrimination across race, class, gender, sexuality, and other sociocultural variables

Socioeconomic Status and Mathematics: A Critical Examination of Mathematics Performance in Grades Three through Eight by Mathematical Objective

This quantitative research study examined TAKS mathematics performance data across socioeconomic identifiers and found statistically significant differences were observable in grade three across all objectives between students’ not identified as economically disadvantaged and students’ receiving free meals. The highest number of quantifiable differences occurred between the mean scores of students’ identified as not economically disadvantaged scoring significantly higher on objective means than students’ receiving free meals or identified as other economically disadvantaged. After students’ move beyond the third grade, the number of statistically significant differences drastically reduces. By the eighth grade, statistical differences are difficult to locate. An examination of within group data did not identify any statistical significance

Schooling in Rural East Texas: Contextualizing and Responding to the Needs of African American Students

This critical analysis contextualizes and responds to the current state of education for persons of African descent in rural East Texas, specifically Region VII. The researchers analyzed assessment data, attendance data, demographic data, and discipline data from the Texas Education Agency. Selected data provided a pathway to explore variables that directly impact students’ academic performance and identities. Findings from this study highlight concerns that range from discrepancies in out-of-school suspensions, disproportionate representation of faculty with the student populations, and challenges faced by East Texas schools and school districts to meet state and federal policies and accountability standards. The authors recommend that students, families, teachers, administrators within these communities must work together to create an environment that all parties are valued

Integrating Writing in the Middle-Level Mathematics Classroom: An Action Research Study

Discourse in mathematics refers to the written and oral communication that occurs in the mathematics classroom. Yet, in many classrooms in the United States, writing is often taught remotely in the classroom of a language arts teacher. In this action research project, our focus was on improving students’ written expressions and explanations in the middle-level mathematics classroom. The purpose of this action research was to examine and evaluate the effect writing has on students’ mathematical thinking processes and skills. Over the course of eight weeks, students were presented with various writing assignments in mathematics. Students were given approximately 20 minutes to brainstorm, reflect, and complete their journal prompts each day. Math journaling during the mathematical workshop appeared to have a positive effect on student motivation as well as to increase conceptual understanding. Based on the results of this study implications are provided for future research and classroom practice

We Would If We Could: Examining Culturally Responsive Teaching Self-Efficacy in a Middle School Mathematics Methods Course

Despite mounting evidence of the pedagogical importance of culturally responsive teaching, many teachers do not implement culturally responsive practices in their classrooms. The purpose of this study was to investigate pre-service mathematics teachers’ culturally responsive teaching and outcome expectancy in order to inform teacher preparation in mathematics methods courses. Participants completed the Culturally Responsive Teaching Self-efficacy Scale (CRTSE) and the Culturally Response Teaching Outcome Expectancy (CRTOE) Scale. Results suggest that middle school mathematics teachers were only moderately efficacious in their ability to implement culturally responsive teaching practices, despite strong beliefs in the instructional utility of culturally responsive teaching practices

In-Pile Thermal Conductivity Measurement Method for Nuclear Fuels

Thermophysical properties of advanced nuclear fuels and materials during irradiation must be known prior to their use in existing, advanced, or next generation reactors. Thermal conductivity is one of the most important properties for predicting fuel and material performance. A joint Utah State University (USU) / Idaho National Laboratory (INL) project, which is being conducted with assistance from the Institute for Energy Technology at the Norway Halden Reactor Project, is investigating in-pile fuel thermal conductivity measurement methods. This paper focuses on one of these methods – a multiple thermocouple method. This two-thermocouple method uses a surrogate fuel rod with Joule heating to simulate volumetric heat generation to gain insights about in-pile detection of thermal conductivity. Preliminary results indicated that this method can measure thermal conductivity over a specific temperature range. This paper reports the thermal conductivity values obtained by this technique and compares these values with thermal property data obtained from standard thermal property measurement techniques available at INL’s High Test Temperature Laboratory. Experimental results and material properties data are also compared to finite element analysis results

DEVELOPMENT OF AN IN-PILE TECHNIQUE FOR THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY MEASUREMENT

Thermophysical properties of advanced fuels and materials during irradiation must be known prior to their use in existing, advanced, or next generation reactors. Fuel thermal conductivity is one of the most important properties for predicting fuel performance and reactor safety. This paper discusses a joint Utah State University (USU)/Idaho National Laboratory (INL) project to investigate an in-pile fuel thermal conductivity measurement technique using a surrogate fuel rod. The method used a surrogate fuel rod with Joule heating to simulate volumetric heat generation as a proof-of-concept test in-pile application. Carbon structural foam, CFOAM®, a product of Touchtone Research Laboratory was chosen as the surrogate material because of the variable electrical and thermal properties upon fabrication. To stay within the surrogate fuel rod requirements, electrical and thermal properties were tailored by Touchtone Research Laboratory to match required values. This paper describes are the techniques used for quantifying thermal conductivity. A description of the test setup and preliminary results are presented. Two thermocouples are inserted into a 1-inch diameter, 6-inch long rod of CFOAM® at known locations. Knowing the applied volumetric heat to the rod by electrical resistance heating, the thermal conductivity can be calculated. Sensitivities of this measurement can also found by analysis and testing of different configurations of the sample setup. Verification of thermal conductivity is found by measuring the thermal properties of the CFOAM® using different methods. Thermal properties including thermal conductivity, specific heat capacity, and expansion coefficient of two types of CFOAM®, CFOAM20 and CFOAM25, were characterized using standard measurement techniques, such as laser flash, differential scanning calorimetry, and pushrod dilatometry

The Berkeley Sample of Stripped-Envelope Supernovae

We present the complete sample of stripped-envelope supernova (SN) spectra observed by the Lick Observatory Supernova Search (LOSS) collaboration over the last three decades: 888 spectra of 302 SNe, 652 published here for the first time, with 384 spectra (of 92 SNe) having photometrically-determined phases. After correcting for redshift and Milky Way dust reddening and reevaluating the spectroscopic classifications for each SN, we construct mean spectra of the three major spectral subtypes (Types IIb, Ib, and Ic) binned by phase. We compare measures of line strengths and widths made from this sample to the results of previous efforts, confirming that O I {\lambda}7774 absorption is stronger and found at higher velocity in Type Ic SNe than in Types Ib or IIb SNe in the first 30 days after peak brightness, though the widths of nebular emission lines are consistent across subtypes. We also highlight newly available observations for a few rare subpopulations of interest.Comment: 13 pages; 14 figures; 3 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Blood transcriptomic discrimination of bacterial and viral infections in the emergency department: a multi-cohort observational validation study

Background: There is an urgent need to develop biomarkers that stratify risk of bacterial infection in order to support antimicrobial stewardship in emergency hospital admissions. / Methods: We used computational machine learning to derive a rule-out blood transcriptomic signature of bacterial infection (SeptiCyte™ TRIAGE) from eight published case-control studies. We then validated this signature by itself in independent case-control data from more than 1500 samples in total, and in combination with our previously published signature for viral infections (SeptiCyte™ VIRUS) using pooled data from a further 1088 samples. Finally, we tested the performance of these signatures in a prospective observational cohort of emergency department (ED) patients with fever, and we used the combined SeptiCyte™ signature in a mixture modelling approach to estimate the prevalence of bacterial and viral infections in febrile ED patients without microbiological diagnoses. / Results: The combination of SeptiCyte™ TRIAGE with our published signature for viral infections (SeptiCyte™ VIRUS) discriminated bacterial and viral infections in febrile ED patients, with a receiver operating characteristic area under the curve of 0.95 (95% confidence interval 0.90–1), compared to 0.79 (0.68–0.91) for WCC and 0.73 (0.61–0.86) for CRP. At pre-test probabilities 0.35 and 0.72, the combined SeptiCyte™ score achieved a negative predictive value for bacterial infection of 0.97 (0.90–0.99) and 0.86 (0.64–0.96), compared to 0.90 (0.80–0.94) and 0.66 (0.48–0.79) for WCC and 0.88 (0.69–0.95) and 0.60 (0.31–0.72) for CRP. In a mixture modelling approach, the combined SeptiCyte™ score estimated that 24% of febrile ED cases receiving antibacterials without a microbiological diagnosis were due to viral infections. Our analysis also suggested that a proportion of patients with bacterial infection recovered without antibacterials. / Conclusions: Blood transcriptional biomarkers offer exciting opportunities to support precision antibacterial prescribing in ED and improve diagnostic classification of patients without microbiologically confirmed infections