Bostonia. Volume 14

Founded in 1900, Bostonia magazine is Boston University's main alumni publication, which covers alumni and student life, as well as university activities, events, and programs

Addressing the Disproportionate Representation of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students in Special Education

This is the published version, also found here: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/143/269In this article, we present a conceptual framework for addressing the disproportionate representation of culturally and linguistically diverse students in special education. The cornerstone of our approach to addressing disproportionate representation is through the creation of culturally responsive educational systems. Our goal is to assist practitioners, researchers, and policy makers in coalescing around culturally responsive, evidence-based interventions and strategic improvements in practice and policy to improve students’ educational opportunities in general education and reduce inappropriate referrals to and placement in special education. We envision this work as cutting across three interrelated domains: policies, practices, and people. Policies include those guidelines enacted at federal, state, district, and school levels that influence funding, resource allocation, accountability, and other key aspects of schooling. We use the notion of practice in two ways, in the instrumental sense of daily practices that all cultural beings engage in to navigate and survive their worlds, and also in a technical sense to describe the procedures and strategies devised for the purpose of maximizing students’ learning outcomes. People include all those in the broad educational system: administrators, teacher educators, teachers, community members, families, and the children whose opportunities we wish to improve. Keywords: special education; disproportionate representation; culturally responsive education; cultural diversity; linguistic diversity

An algorithmic and information-theoretic approach to multimetric index construction

The use of multimetric indices (MMIs), such as the widely used index of biological integrity (IBI), to measure, track, summarize and infer the overall impact of human disturbance on biological communities has been steadily growing in recent years. Initially, MMIs were developed for aquatic communities using preselected biological metrics as indicators of system integrity. As interest in these bioassessment tools has grown, so have the types of biological systems to which they are applied. For many ecosystem types the appropriate biological metrics to use as measures of biological integrity are not known a priori. As a result, a variety of ad hoc protocols for selecting metrics empirically has developed. However, the assumptions made by proposed protocols have not be explicitly described or justified, causing many investigators to call for a clear, repeatable methodology for developing empirically derived metrics and indices that can be applied to any biological system. An issue of particular importance that has not been sufficiently addressed is the way that individual metrics combine to produce an MMI that is a sensitive composite indicator of human disturbance. In this paper, we present and demonstrate an algorithm for constructing MMIs given a set of candidate metrics and a measure of human disturbance. The algorithm uses each metric to inform a candidate MMI, and then uses information-theoretic principles to select MMIs that capture the information in the multidimensional system response from among possible MMIs. Such an approach can be used to create purely empirical (data-based) MMIs or can, optionally, be influenced by expert opinion or biological theory through the use of a weighting vector to create value-weighted MMIs. We demonstrate the algorithm with simulated data to demonstrate the predictive capacity of the final MMIs and with real data from wetlands from Acadia and Rocky Mountain National Parks. For the Acadia wetland data, the algorithm identified 4 metrics that combined to produce a −0.88 correlation with the human disturbance index. When compared to other methods, we find this algorithmic approach resulted in MMIs that were more predictive and comprise fewer metrics

A Scoping Review Protocol to Elucidate Outcomes Following Abiraterone Versus Enzalutamide for Prostate Cancer

INTRODUCTION: Abiraterone acetate and enzalutamide are commonly employed in prostate cancer therapy in an interchangeable manner. These drugs are highly efficacious in androgen antagonism to improve patient outcomes, but they also carry noteworthy risk of adverse effects. Common toxicities vary amongst the two drugs and may have differential interactions with patient co-morbidities, but these patterns are unclear as co-morbidities typically serve as exclusion criteria in clinical trials. Hence, there is no existing guidance on how clinicians may tailor treatment based on patient-specific factors. Analysis of differential patient outcomes between these two drugs can inform future systematic reviews, new clinical studies, and clinical decision making. METHOD AND ANALYSIS: The framework for this methodology was informed by the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for scoping reviews. Title and abstract screening will be performed by two independent researchers to create an initial study inventory. This will be followed by full-text screening for study inclusion. Population-based studies describing patient outcomes, common toxicities, and associations with patient co-morbidities following abiraterone or enzalutamide therapy will be included. After data is extracted, it will be summarized for presentation. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The findings of this scoping review will be published in a peer-reviewed journal. The results will be used to inform future studies on patient-specific factors informing treatment choice between abiraterone and enzalutamide for castration-resistant prostate cancer. All data are from published openly accessible sources, and therefore, no ethical clearance is necessary. The protocol is also registered at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19149227

Penguin biogeography along the West Antarctic Peninsula: Testing the canyon hypothesis with Palmer LTER observations

The West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) is home to large breeding colonies of the ice-dependent Antarctic Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae). Although the entire inner continental shelf is highly productive, with abundant phytoplankton and krill populations, penguin colonies are distributed heterogeneously along the WAP (Ducklow et al., 2013, in this issue). This ecological conundrum targets a long-standing question of interest: what environmental factors structure the locations of Adélie penguin "hot spots" throughout the WAP

Contamination and Surface Preparation Effects on Composite Bonding

Results presented here demonstrate the effect of several prebond surface contaminants (hydrocarbon, machining fluid, latex, silicone, peel ply residue, release film) on bond quality, as measured by fracture toughness and failure modes of carbon fiber reinforced epoxy substrates bonded in secondary and co-bond configurations with paste and film adhesives. Additionally, the capability of various prebond surface property measurement tools to detect contaminants and potentially predict subsequent bond performance of three different adhesives is also shown. Surface measurement methods included water contact angle, Dyne solution wettability, optically stimulated electron emission spectroscopy, surface free energy, inverse gas chromatography, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy with chemometrics analysis. Information will also be provided on the effectiveness of mechanical and energetic surface treatments to recover a bondable surface after contamination. The benefits and drawbacks of the various surface analysis tools to detect contaminants and evaluate prebond surfaces after surface treatment were assessed as well as their ability to correlate to bond performance. Surface analysis tools were also evaluated for their potential use as in-line quality control of adhesive bonding parameters in the manufacturing environment

Sleep During Pregnancy: The nuMoM2b Pregnancy and Sleep Duration and Continuity Study

Study Objectives: To characterize sleep duration, timing and continuity measures in pregnancy and their association with key demographic variables. Methods: Multisite prospective cohort study. Women enrolled in the nuMoM2b study (nulliparous women with a singleton gestation) were recruited at the second study visit (16-21 weeks of gestation) to participate in the Sleep Duration and Continuity substudy. Women <18 years of age or with pregestational diabetes or chronic hypertension were excluded from participation. Women wore a wrist activity monitor and completed a sleep log for 7 consecutive days. Time in bed, sleep duration, fragmentation index, sleep efficiency, wake after sleep onset, and sleep midpoint were averaged across valid primary sleep periods for each participant. Results: Valid data were available from 782 women with mean age of 27.3 (5.5) years. Median sleep duration was 7.4 hours. Approximately 27.9% of women had a sleep duration of 9 hours. In multivariable models including age, race/ethnicity, body mass index, insurance status, and recent smoking history, sleep duration was significantly associated with race/ethnicity and insurance status, while time in bed was only associated with insurance status. Sleep continuity measures and sleep midpoint were significantly associated with all covariates in the model, with the exception of age for fragmentation index and smoking for wake after sleep onset. Conclusions: Our results demonstrate the relationship between sleep and important demographic characteristics during pregnancy