Prevalence of Physical and Psychological Abuse in Adolescent Dating Relationships in a Suburban High School

The purpose of this study is to measure the prevalence of violence in dating relationships in a suburban high school. Although dating violence is commonly considered male to female aggression, the research reviewed in this study indicates that girls are perpetrators more often than boys are. The Revised Conflict Tactics Scale was administered to tenth and twelfth grade students at a suburban high school. There were 126 surveys distributed and 12 were returned. The findings show that 84% of the students admitted to at least one violent incident with their dating partner in the past year. The results of this study indicate a moderate level of dating violence at this high school. Based on these findings, I recommend that further studies be done to determine prevalence rates of adolescent dating violence when more participants can be involved

Closing The Minority Achievement Gap in Georgia Middle Schools: Principals\u27 Perspectives

The purpose of this study was to provide best practices and strategies for middle school principals that have been struggling to close the minority achievement gap in schools. Three Georgia middle school principals considered to be successful in closing the achievement gap were interviewed to determine the strategies and practices that they use to close the minority achievement gap. These practices and strategies were further examined to determine their effectiveness in the areas of reading and mathematics. The researcher used in-depth interviewing procedures through a structured interview format to encourage research participants to speak openly and candidly about the strategies and practices that they use to address the issue of the achievement gap in their schools. The interviews were audio-taped to assure accuracy of data given by the participants. Each participant was asked nine research questions derived from a thorough review of the literature to determine their perspectives of the achievement gap and the practices and strategies that they use to address the issue. The researcher discovered through the findings from the in-depth, structured interviews and an analysis of the data that the practices and strategies used by the selected Georgia middle school principals included a combination of similar, but routine 2 practices such as involving underachieving students in the process of improving their own academic achievement, offer additional assistance in reading and mathematics, incorporate minority students into gifted or honors classes, give common assessments, give teachers time for collaboration and professional learning to plan for student success, and provide differentiated instruction. Most importantly, these principals used data to make strategic decisions concerning the achievement of the students within their schools

Soil carbon and nitrogen erosion in forested catchments: Implications for erosion-induced terrestrial carbon sequestration

Lateral movement of organic matter (OM) due to erosion is now considered an important flux term in terrestrial carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) budgets, yet most published studies on the role of erosion focus on agricultural or grassland ecosystems. To date, little information is available on the rate and nature of OM eroded from forest ecosystems. We present annual sediment composition and yield, for water years 2005-2011, from eight catchments in the southern part of the Sierra Nevada, California. Sediment was compared to soil at three different landform positions from the source slopes to determine if there is selective transport of organic matter or different mineral particle size classes. Sediment export varied from 0.4 to 177 kg ha-1, while export of C in sediment was between 0.025 and 4.2 kg C ha-1 and export of N in sediment was between 0.001 and 0.04 kg N ha-1. Sediment yield and composition showed high interannual variation. In our study catchments, erosion laterally mobilized OM-rich litter material and topsoil, some of which enters streams owing to the catchment topography where steep slopes border stream channels. Annual lateral sediment export was positively and strongly correlated with stream discharge, while C and N concentrations were both negatively correlated with stream discharge; hence, C: N ratios were not strongly correlated to sediment yield. Our results suggest that stream discharge, more than sediment source, is a primary factor controlling the magnitude of C and N export from upland forest catchments. The OM-rich nature of eroded sediment raises important questions about the fate of the eroded OM. If a large fraction of the soil organic matter (SOM) eroded from forest ecosystems is lost during transport or after deposition, the contribution of forest ecosystems to the erosion-induced C sink is likely to be small (compared to croplands and grasslands)

The Mirage of Triangular Arbitrage in the Spot Foreign Exchange Market

We investigate triangular arbitrage within the spot foreign exchange market using high-frequency executable prices. We show that triangular arbitrage opportunities do exist, but that most have short durations and small magnitudes. We find intra-day variations in the number and length of arbitrage opportunities, with larger numbers of opportunities with shorter mean durations occurring during more liquid hours. We demonstrate further that the number of arbitrage opportunities has decreased in recent years, implying a corresponding increase in pricing efficiency. Using trading simulations, we show that a trader would need to beat other market participants to an unfeasibly large proportion of arbitrage prices to profit from triangular arbitrage over a prolonged period of time. Our results suggest that the foreign exchange market is internally self-consistent and provide a limited verification of market efficiency

Temporal Evolution of Financial Market Correlations

We investigate financial market correlations using random matrix theory and principal component analysis. We use random matrix theory to demonstrate that correlation matrices of asset price changes contain structure that is incompatible with uncorrelated random price changes. We then identify the principal components of these correlation matrices and demonstrate that a small number of components accounts for a large proportion of the variability of the markets that we consider. We then characterize the time-evolving relationships between the different assets by investigating the correlations between the asset price time series and principal components. Using this approach, we uncover notable changes that occurred in financial markets and identify the assets that were significantly affected by these changes. We show in particular that there was an increase in the strength of the relationships between several different markets following the 2007--2008 credit and liquidity crisis.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. E. v2 includes additional section

The Influence of Authentic Leadership and Structural Empowerment on Staff Nurse Decisional Involvement and Patient Quality Outcomes

Thesis advisor: Barbara E. WolfePatient quality outcomes in the United States (U.S.) healthcare system are largely stagnant or making minimal improvements, resulting in unnecessary morbidity, mortality, and costs (AHRQ, 2012 National Healthcare Quality Report). As the US implements the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordability Act, there is fiscal pressure to attain and sustain significant improvements to patient quality outcomes. This necessitates an understanding of how the processes and structures of care influence patient quality outcomes (Donabedian, 1966) in a complex care environment. To begin addressing this gap, this investigation examined the influence of unit-level authentic leadership (AL) and structural empowerment (SE) on staff nurse decisional involvement (DI) and patient quality outcomes on general care units in the acute-care hospital setting. This study used a cross-sectional survey design. Participants were staff nurses working on 105 general care units across eleven US hospitals. The surveys measured staff nurse perceptions of AL, SE, and DI at the care unit level. The patient quality outcomes of interest were falls with injury, hospital acquired pressure ulcers and patient satisfaction. Care unit level AL and SE had a significant influence on actual staff nurse DI (p = .002 and < .001, respectively) and the degree of dissonance between actual and preferred DI (p < .001). AL and SE had a significant inverse relationship with patient falls with injury (p = .017 and .028, respectively), yet a positive relationship with HAPU rates (p = .051 and .026, respectively). While AL did not have a significant relationship with any of the three patient satisfaction metrics, a significant positive relationship with SE was found (p = .002, .001, and .002, respectively). There was no support for a relationship between actual staff nurse DI and any of the patient quality outcomes. This study extends previous research in this area in that it is the first to examine actual patient quality outcomes at the care unit level. These findings provide support for the unique contributions to patient quality outcomes at the care unit level, indicating the need to develop AL among front-line nurse managers and SE in nurse work environments.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015.Submitted to: Boston College. Connell School of Nursing.Discipline: Nursing