Democracy in action for God

A recent graduate reflects on becoming involved in a socially aware and progressive profession. This involvement leads to a conclusion that Christian librarians can share professional activities despite having distinct motivations

A Service-Learning Initiative “Service-learning to build a better future, one caring student at a time”

Our goal is to assist schools, administrators, and teachers with developing their own service- learning initiatives. Service-learning is such a great way to foster authentic learning experiences directed towards making the world a better place. Service builds compassion for others in need of assistance. Service contributes to the development of quality leaders who can think beyond themselves. The service of one can make a positive change, and the service of a community can have a profound impact. With service-learning in mind, we have designed, developed, and completed a pilot study with pre-service teachers. We hope you will be inspired to implement our service-learning initiative in your own setting

Children's Social Competence across the Transition to Kindergarten: A Latent Growth Curve Analysis

This research examined children's social competence trajectories across the transition to kindergarten for three racial groups using a sample of children in the National Center for Early Development and Learning's Multi-State Study of Pre-Kindergarten. The analytic sample contained 939 children attending public pre-kindergarten programs in six states, with data collected in both the children's pre-kindergarten and kindergarten years. Children's social competence was modeled as a function of an underlying trajectory, defined by initial status at pre-kindergarten entry but not a linear or non-linear slope. Poverty status, gender, and math achievement were used to predict trajectory intercepts while classroom emotional climate, teacher race, and teacher experience were used to explain deviations from anticipated trajectories. Model parameters were constrained to equality across groups to investigate the possibility of moderation by race. Key findings from the analysis indicated that children possessed flat social competence trajectories across the transition, which were influenced positively by math achievement and negatively by poverty and male status. Classroom emotional climate did not predict substantively significant deviations from trajectories in pre-kindergarten or kindergarten.Doctor of Philosoph

Dynamics of bigeye (Thunnus obesus) and yellowfin (T. albacares) tuna in Hawaii’s pelagic fisheries: analysis of tagging data with a bulk transfer model incorporating size-specific attrition

Tag release and recapture data of bigeye (Thunnus obesus) and yellowfin tuna (T. albacares) from the Hawaii Tuna Tagging Project (HTTP) were analyzed with a bulk transfer model incorporating size-specific attrition to infer population dynamics and transfer rates between various fishery components. For both species, the transfer rate estimates from the offshore handline fishery areas to the longline fishery area were higher than the estimates of transfer from those same areas into the inshore fishery areas. Natural and fishing mortality rates were estimated over three size classes: yellowfin 20–45, 46–55, and ≥56 cm and bigeye 29–55, 56–70, and ≥71 cm. For both species, the estimates of natural mortality were highest in the smallest size class. For bigeye tuna, the estimates decreased with increasing size and for yellowfin tuna there was a slight increase in the largest size class. In the Cross Seamount fishery, the fishing mortality rate of bigeye tuna was similar for all three size classes and represented roughly 12% of the gross attrition rate (includes fishing and natural mortality and emigration rates). For yellowfin tuna, fishing mortality ranged between 7% and 30%, the highest being in the medium size class. For both species, the overall attrition rate from the entire fishery area was nearly the same. However, in the specific case of the Cross Seamount fishery, the attrition rate for yellowfin tuna was roughly twice that for bigeye. This result indicates that bigeye tuna are more resident at the Seamount than yellowfin tuna, and larger bigeye tunas tend to reside longer than smaller individuals. This may result in larger fish being more vulnerable to capture in the Seamount fishery. The relatively low level of exchange between the Sea-mount and the inshore and longline fisheries suggests that the fishing activity at the Seamount need not be of great management concern for either species. However, given that the current exploitation rates are considered moderate (10–30%), and that Seamount aggregations of yellowfin and bigeye tuna are highly vulnerable to low-cost gear types, it is recommended that further increases in fishing effort for these species be monitored at Cross Seamount

Learning through personal connections: Cogenerative dialogues in synchronous virtual spaces

This study describes the role of cogenerative dialogues in a synchronous virtual classroom. Cogenerative dialogues are a way for students and instructors to reflect upon in-class events and work collaboratively during the course to optimize teaching and learning. In the present study, cogen has been found to be a tool for enhancing connections among graduate students in the class leading to a reported increase of motivation and engagement. Cogenerative dialogues were essential in shifting responsibilities so that students took a more active role in their own learning while supporting each other

Runaway GC evolution in gerbil genomes

Recombination increases the local GC-content in genomic regions through GC-biased gene conversion (gBGC). The recent discovery of a large genomic region with extreme GC-content in the fat sand rat Psammomys obesus provides a model to study the effects of gBGC on chromosome evolution. Here, we compare the GC-content and GC-to-AT substitution patterns across protein-coding genes of four gerbil species and two murine rodents (mouse and rat). We find that the known high-GC region is present in all the gerbils, and is characterised by high substitution rates for all mutational categories (AT-to-GC, GC-to-AT and GC-conservative) both at synonymous and nonsynonymous sites. A higher AT-to-GC than GC-to-AT rate is consistent with the high GC-content. Additionally, we find more than 300 genes outside the known region with outlying values of AT-to-GC synonymous substitution rates in gerbils. Of these, over 30% are organised into at least 17 large clusters observable at the megabase-scale. The unusual GC-skewed substitution pattern suggests the evolution of genomic regions with very high recombination rates in the gerbil lineage, which can lead to a runaway increase in GC-content. Our results imply that rapid evolution of GC-content is possible in mammals, with gerbil species providing a powerful model to study the mechanisms of gBGC

"Community has got a hell of a lot weaker" : Working class and precariat men's search for wellbeing through social prescribing

Despite the growing interest in social prescribing in recent years, both in policy and research, little is known on the experiences of men who are referred to it. Even though recent evidence suggests that men are referred less to social prescribing, there is very little coverage in the literature on social prescribing that specifically focuses on men; this thesis therefore provides a much-needed and timely exploration into men’s journey through the policy. Through semi-structured interviews with working class and precariat men (n=14) who have been referred to and used social prescribing in the North of England, and link workers (n=11), the thesis explores men’s experiences and perceptions of social prescribing. In so doing, it aims to explore claims that social prescribing can tackle health inequalities and connect people to what matters to them. As a result, this thesis examines if and how social prescribing connects with working class and precariat men, enquiring as to whether it provides men with experiences, access to social capital, resources and relationships that contribute to health and wellbeing. The thesis concludes that men’s engagement with social prescribing has mixed success in connecting men to the relationships, resources and activities associated with health and wellbeing

Rotation of the Milky Way and the formation of the Magellanic Stream

We studied the impact of the revisited values for the LSR circular velocity of the Milky Way (Reid et al. 2004) on the formation of the Magellanic Stream. The LSR circular velocity was varied within its observational uncertainties as a free parameter of the interaction between the Large (LMC) and the Small (SMC) Magellanic Clouds and the Galaxy. We have shown that the large-scale morphology and kinematics of the Magellanic Stream may be reproduced as tidal features, assuming the recent values of the proper motions of the Magellanic Clouds (Kallivayalil et al. 2006). Automated exploration of the entire parameter space for the interaction was performed to identify all parameter combinations that allow for modeling the Magellanic Stream. Satisfactory models exist for the dynamical mass of the Milky Way within a wide range of 0.6*10^12Msun to 3.0*10^12Msun and over the entire 1-sigma errors of the proper motions of the Clouds. However, the successful models share a common interaction scenario. The Magellanic Clouds are satellites of the Milky Way, and in all cases two close LMC-SMC encounters occurred within the last 4Gyr at t<-2.5Gyr and t approx. -150Myr, triggering the formation of the Stream and of the Magellanic Bridge, respectively. The latter encounter is encoded in the observed proper motions and inevitable in any model of the interaction. We conclude that the tidal origin of the Magellanic Stream implies the previously introduced LMC/SMC orbital history, unless the parameters of the interaction are revised substantially.Comment: 40 pages, 17 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in ApJ, minor corrections, 3 figures replace