Teaching Language to Students with Autism

This meta-synthesis of the literature on methods of instruction to students with ASD examines the various methods of teaching language to students with ASD. While each student learns language at his or her own pace, the author has found that certain methods yield results quicker, and these methods need to be examined critically for any literature on their reliability, efficacy, and scientific research. If a student with autism can be taught language quickly, therefore mitigating any further delays in academic development relative to peers, then this methodology should be made accessible to all teachers of such students

The use of \u3ci\u3efuck\u3c/i\u3e: A sociolinguistic approach to the usage of \u3ci\u3efuck\u3c/i\u3e in the BNC and blog authorship corpus

The present study is a corpus-based approach using both the British National Corpus (BNC) and the Blog Authorship Corpus (BAC) to identify variance in spoken use of fuck between genders, age groups, and social classes. The resulting analysis shows that there is little variance in use between male and female speakers, while use is most prevalent during the teens and early 20s. This study offers further support of the idea that there are two distinct meanings of fuck that can be separated into two distinct words, fuck1 and fuck2, by showing that a non-referential definition of fuck (fuck2) is the dominant use between all genders, ages, and social classes

Analogues of Nitrofuran Antibiotics are Potent GroEL/ES Pro-drug Inhibitors with Efficacy against Enterococcus Faecium, Staphylococcus Aureus, and Escherichia Coli

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI

Performing ‘Dubya’: George W. Bush Narratives on the Political and Theatrical Stages

This dissertation examines how theatrical performance might offer the political left a model for responding to the communication strategies of the political right through a case study of responses to the George W. Bush administration. I conduct this exploration through a two-part study. In the first part, I establish a theoretical framework by looking to the work of Francis Fukuyama, Bruce McConachie, Brian Boyd and others to identify the common evolutionary and cognitive roots of storytelling and political order. Based on that understanding, I examine the historical development of presidential storytelling and create a rubric for analyzing contemporary presidential performance. The second part of this dissertation is comprised of three chapters, each of which focuses on a particular narrative strategy used by the George W. Bush administration to engender public support for the president and administration policies. I introduce and examine three narrative frameworks: the dynasty narrative, the redemption narrative, and the rescue narrative. In each chapter, I conduct a focused examination of the narrative strategy and how the president performed it. I then identify ways in which the theatrical performances in the case study expose, reject or replace the narratives crafted by Bush’s presidential performance. I conclude each chapter by comparing the theatrical responses to those provided by late night television performances of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert

A 10-Month Physical Activity Intervention Improves Body Composition in Young Black Boys

Objective. To determine if a 10-month after-school physical activity (PA) intervention could prevent deleterious changes in body composition and cardiovascular (CV) fitness in young black boys. Methods. Following baseline measures, 106 boys (8–12 yrs) were randomized to either a control group or an intervention group, further divided into attenders (ATT) and nonattenders (NATT), participating in ≥60% or <60% of the intervention, respectively. The daily intervention consisted of skills development (25 min), vigorous PA (VPA, 35 min), and strengthening/stretching (20 min) components. Body composition was measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. Results. Following the intervention, the ATT exhibited an increase in moderate-to-vigorous PA and a significant reduction in BMI, fat mass, and %BF compared to the control group. A significant association among the intervention energy expenditure and changes in body composition and CV fitness was observed only in the ATT group. Conclusion. An after-school PA program of sufficient length and intensity can promote healthy changes in body composition and fitness levels in black boys who attend at least 3 days/week

Vermont Healthy Kids\u27 Meals: Parents\u27 Perspectives

Introduction. Childhood obesity has increased for decades. Options on kids’ menus in restaurants typically involve unhealthy choices such as fries, chicken fingers, and grilled cheese, with soda as the drink. When healthy options are the default choice, children are more likely to eat them. Though initially skeptical of modifications, restaurants will enact changes to maintain customer satisfaction and profits, and there is no significant difference in price of healthier kids’ meals.Methods. 187 paper and electronic surveys were administered throughout Vermont to explore attitudes towards availability, cost, and importance of healthy kids’ meals, as well as income, education, and children in the household. Open-ended questions sought parental opinions.Results. 69% of parents believe healthier food options at restaurants would cost more; however, 95% were willing to pay more. 89% of parents reported feeling concerned or highly concerned about sugary drinks, and 62% of parents were very likely to choose the healthier food option at a restaurant. The majority of parents who reported difficulty in finding healthy meals felt the amount of fruits/vegetables was the most important nutritional factor. Low income Vermonters were most concerned about cost.Conclusions. The majority of parents are concerned about kids’ meal nutrition and are likely to purchase healthier options, even at increased prices. If restaurants enact changes to kids’ menus, prices should remain the same to ensure families of all socioeconomic classes will be able to purchase healthier meals. Priority modifications to meals should include increased amounts of fruits/vegetables and elimination of added sugar.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1236/thumbnail.jp

Demonstrating microbial co-occurrence pattern analyses within and between ecosystems

Co-occurrence patterns are used in ecology to explore interactions between organisms and environmental effects on coexistence within biological communities. Analysis of co-occurrence patterns among microbial communities has ranged from simple pairwise comparisons between all community members to direct hypothesis testing between focal species. However, co-occurrence patterns are rarely studied across multiple ecosystems or multiple scales of biological organization within the same study. Here we outline an approach to produce co-occurrence analyses that are focused at three different scales: co-occurrence patterns between ecosystems at the community scale, modules of co-occurring microorganisms within communities, and co-occurring pairs within modules that are nested within microbial communities. To demonstrate our co-occurrence analysis approach, we gathered publicly available 16S rRNA amplicon datasets to compare and contrast microbial co-occurrence at different taxonomic levels across different ecosystems. We found differences in community composition and co-occurrence that reflect environmental filtering at the community scale and consistent pairwise occurrences that may be used to infer ecological traits about poorly understood microbial taxa. However, we also found that conclusions derived from applying network statistics to microbial relationships can vary depending on the taxonomic level chosen and criteria used to build co-occurrence networks. We present our statistical analysis and code for public use in analysis of co-occurrence patterns across microbial communities.This article is from Frontiers in Microbiology 5 (2014): 358, doi:10.3389/fmicb.2014.00358. Posted with permission.</p

Fibre Bundles and Generalised Dimensional Reduction

We study some geometrical and topological aspects of the generalised dimensional reduction of supergravities in D=11 and D=10 dimensions, which give rise to massive theories in lower dimensions. In these reductions, a global symmetry is used in order to allow some of the fields to have a non-trivial dependence on the compactifying coordinates. Global consistency in the internal space imposes topological restrictions on the parameters of the compactification as well as the structure of the space itself. Examples that we consider include the generalised reduction of the type IIA and type IIB theories on a circle, and also the massive ten-dimensional theory obtained by the generalised reduction of D=11 supergravity.Comment: 23 pages, Late

Comparing predictive abilities of longitudinal child growth models

© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Healthy Birth, Growth and Development knowledge integration project aims to improve the overall health and well-being of children across the world. The project aims to integrate information from multiple child growth studies to allow health professionals and policy makers to make informed decisions about interventions in lower and middle income countries. To achieve this goal, we must first understand the conditions that impact on the growth and development of children, and this requires sensible models for characterising different growth patterns. The contribution of this paper is to provide a quantitative comparison of the predictive abilities of various statistical growth modelling techniques based on a novel leave-one-out validation approach. The majority of existing studies have used raw growth data for modelling, but we show that fitting models to standardised data provide more accurate estimation and prediction. Our work is illustrated with an example from a study into child development in a middle income country in South America

(Discrete) Almansi Type Decompositions: An umbral calculus framework based on osp(1∣2)\mathfrak{osp}(1|2) symmetries

We introduce the umbral calculus formalism for hypercomplex variables starting from the fact that the algebra of multivariate polynomials \BR[\underline{x}] shall be described in terms of the generators of the Weyl-Heisenberg algebra. The extension of \BR[\underline{x}] to the algebra of Clifford-valued polynomials $\mathcal{P}$ gives rise to an algebra of Clifford-valued operators whose canonical generators are isomorphic to the orthosymplectic Lie algebra $\mathfrak{osp}(1|2)$. This extension provides an effective framework in continuity and discreteness that allow us to establish an alternative formulation of Almansi decomposition in Clifford analysis (c.f. \cite{Ryan90,MR02,MAGU}) that corresponds to a meaningful generalization of Fischer decomposition for the subspaces $\ker (D')^k$. We will discuss afterwards how the symmetries of \mathfrak{sl}_2(\BR) (even part of $\mathfrak{osp}(1|2)$) are ubiquitous on the recent approach of \textsc{Render} (c.f. \cite{Render08}), showing that they can be interpreted in terms of the method of separation of variables for the Hamiltonian operator in quantum mechanics.Comment: Improved version of the Technical Report arXiv:0901.4691v1; accepted for publication @ Math. Meth. Appl. Sci http://www.mat.uc.pt/preprints/ps/p1054.pdf (Preliminary Report December 2010