93 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
The parenting children course study: a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of a church based parenting intervention in the community
Introduction. Evidence based parenting programmes have been shown to improve parenting competence and reduce child behaviour problems. More rigorous evaluations of such programmes are needed. This study provides such an evaluation of The Parenting Children Course run by Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) church in London. The course runs Live, on DVD and in inner city settings with small groups. Quantitative methods were used to evaluate the first two versions and qualitative methods for the latter.
Method. 84 parents participated in the Live course and 141 in the DVD courses (n=225). Five parents were interviewed from the inner city courses. Live and DVD formats were evaluated for Parental disciplinary skills using the APQ (The Short Alabama Parenting Questionnaire; Elgar, Waschbusch, Dadds & Sigvaldason, 2007); Self-efficacy using the TOPSE (Tool Of Parental Self Efficacy; Kendall & Bloomfield, 2005); Child behaviour, using the ECBI (Eyberg Child Behaviour Inventor; Eyberg, 1999); General family functioning, using the General Functioning Scale of the FAD (McMaster Family Assessment Device; Epstein, Baldwin & Bishop, 1983). The impact of changing leaders for the Live course and duration of the DVD course from five to ten weeks was also addressed. The study used 2x2 and 2x3 mixed factor ANOVAs to examine changes in parental scores between the start and end of the course and 3 months later. Semi-structured interviewing and Thematic analysis were used for the inner city version.
Results. Parents improved in confidence, decreased negative parenting skills, reported better child behaviour and family functioning. Positive parenting skills were not impacted. The Live and DVD versions were equally effective. Neither changing the leader of the Live course nor the length of the DVD course affected change. Qualitative analysis revealed the leader, environment and group support wereimportant to parents. Other important elements were viewing themselves as being able to change and increasing their understanding of themselves and their children. Strengths and limitations of the study, implications for clinical practice and directions for future research were discussed
A new assessment of graph construction competency for undergraduate biology students
With an increasing emphasis on teaching the skills and processes of science in the undergraduate biology classroom, working with and interpreting data has become an important part of the curriculum. Visual representations are a key tool when examining data, especially graphs. Undergraduate biology students notoriously have trouble both making good graphs and interpreting graphs. Yet, although there is an extensive literature on graph interpretation challenges amongst students, there has been much less work on the confusions students exhibit when constructing graphs.
On the path to creating tools to help teach graphing to biology students, we have been building a new performance-based assessment of graph construction competence. The assessment presents students a research question and asks them to make graphs to test a hypothesis drawn from that question. The graphs are auto-scored for a number of practices associated with making good graphs. The digital nature and auto-scoring has allowed us to provide this assessment and analyze results at larger scales than previous assessments, gathering data that will help focus teaching tools on the areas of highest need.
In this workshop, each participant will take one version of the graphing assessment themselves (about 20–30 minutes) and then we will discuss the experience. After talking about how well the assessment lines up to the graphing practices you look for in your students, the presenter will show data on where we find biology students struggle, drawn from students in a diverse set of classes and institutions. Bring your laptop (Mac or Windows only).Note: the creative commons license below is for the abstract and talk only, not the software
Are megaquakes clustered?
We study statistical properties of the number of large earthquakes over the
past century. We analyze the cumulative distribution of the number of
earthquakes with magnitude larger than threshold M in time interval T, and
quantify the statistical significance of these results by simulating a large
number of synthetic random catalogs. We find that in general, the earthquake
record cannot be distinguished from a process that is random in time. This
conclusion holds whether aftershocks are removed or not, except at magnitudes
below M = 7.3. At long time intervals (T = 2-5 years), we find that
statistically significant clustering is present in the catalog for lower
magnitude thresholds (M = 7-7.2). However, this clustering is due to a large
number of earthquakes on record in the early part of the 20th century, when
magnitudes are less certain.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
Ariel - Volume 10 Number 3
Executive Editors
Madalyn Schaefgen
David Reich
Business Manager
David Reich
News Editors
Medical College
Edward Zurad
CAHS
John Guardiani
World
Mark Zwanger
Features Editors
Meg Trexler
Jim O\u27Brien
Editorials Editor
Jeffrey Banyas
Photography and Sports Editor
Stuart Singer
Commons Editor
Brenda Peterso
A New Era in Extragalactic Background Light Measurements: The Cosmic History of Accretion, Nucleosynthesis and Reionization
(Brief Summary) What is the total radiative content of the Universe since the
epoch of recombination? The extragalactic background light (EBL) spectrum
captures the redshifted energy released from the first stellar objects,
protogalaxies, and galaxies throughout cosmic history. Yet, we have not
determined the brightness of the extragalactic sky from UV/optical to
far-infrared wavelengths with sufficient accuracy to establish the radiative
content of the Universe to better than an order of magnitude. Among many
science topics, an accurate measurement of the EBL spectrum from optical to
far-IR wavelengths, will address: What is the total energy released by stellar
nucleosynthesis over cosmic history? Was significant energy released by
non-stellar processes? Is there a diffuse component to the EBL anywhere from
optical to sub-millimeter? When did first stars appear and how luminous was the
reionization epoch? Absolute optical to mid-IR EBL spectrum to an
astrophysically interesting accuracy can be established by wide field imagingat
a distance of 5 AU or above the ecliptic plane where the zodiacal foreground is
reduced by more than two orders of magnitude.Comment: 7 pages; Science White Paper for the US Astro 2010-2020 Decadal
Survey. If interested in further community-wide efforts on this topic please
contact the first autho
Physical Fitness and Telomere Length in Patients with Coronary Heart Disease: Findings from the Heart and Soul Study
Background: Short telomere length (TL) is an independent predictor of mortality in patients with coronary heart disease (CHD). However, the relationship between physical fitness and TL has not been explored in these patients. Methods: In a cross sectional study of 944 outpatients with stable CHD, we performed exercise treadmill testing, assessed self-reported physical activity, and measured leukocyte TL using a quantitative PCR assay. We used generalized linear models to calculate mean TL (T/S ratio), and logistic regression models to compare the proportion of patients with short TL (defined as the lowest quartile), among participants with low, medium and high physical fitness, based on metabolic equivalent tasks achieved (METs). Results: 229 participants had low physical fitness (,5 METS), 334 had moderate physical fitness (5–7 METS), and 381 had high physical fitness (.7 METS). Mean6 T/S ratio ranged from 0.8660.21 (534963781 base pairs) in those with low physical fitness to 0.9560.23 (556663829 base pairs) in those with high physical fitness (p,.001). This association remained strong after adjustment for numerous patient characteristics, including measures of cardiac disease severity and physical inactivity (p = 0.005). Compared with participants with high physical fitness, those with low physical fitness had 2-fold greater odds o
Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences
The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported
by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on
18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based
researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016
Two eyes in action
Do relative binocular disparities guide our movements in depth? In order to find out we asked subjects to move a 'cursor' to a target within a simulated horizontal plane at eye height. They did so by moving a computer mouse. We determined how quickly subjects responded to the target jumping in depth. We found that it took subjects about 200 ms to respond to changes in binocular disparity. Subjects responded just as quickly if the cursor was temporarily only visible to one eye near the time that the target jumped in depth, and less vigorously, though just as quickly, if the cursor jumped rather than the target, so the fastest binocular responses cannot be based directly on the relative retinal disparity between the target and the cursor. Subjects reacted faster to changes in the target's height in the visual field than to changes in binocular disparity, but did not react faster to changes in image size. These results suggest that binocular vision mainly improves people's everyday movements by giving them a better sense of the distances of relevant objects, rather than by relative retinal disparities being used to directly guide the movement. We propose that relative disparities only guide parts of very slow movements that require extreme precision. © Springer-Verlag 2005
The James Webb Space Telescope Mission
Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies,
expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling
for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least .
With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000
people realized that vision as the James Webb Space Telescope. A
generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of
the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the
scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000
team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image
quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief
history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing
program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite
detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space
Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure
- …