The Relationship between Music Participation and Mathematics Achievement in Middle School Students

A comparative analysis was used to study the results from a descriptive survey of selected middle school students in Grades 6, 7, and 8. Student responses to the survey tool was used to compare multiple variables of music participation and duration of various musical activities, such as singing and performing on instruments, to the mathematics results from Georgia Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (Georgia Department of Education, 2011. The results were analyzed with the use of the Pearson r correlation coefficient. The intensity of relationships was assessed with analysis of variance (ANOVA). A final t-test of means was conducted to compare the mathematics achievement of students, who reported that they participated in musical activities vs. students, who reported no participation in musical activities. It was found that there was a positive correlation between students\u27 participation in music and their achievement in mathematics. In addition, there was a positive correlation between the variables of participation in vocal music and brass music, respectively, and mathematics achievement. The greatest correlation was between years of vocal music participation and mathematics achievement. The results from the ANOVA indicated that, when students participated in music for 3 years or more, there was a significant increase in mathematics scores. A final t-test of means indicated that there was no significant difference in the means of mathematics scores between students who had participated in musical activities in comparison to students who did not participate in musical activities

Cultural Differences in Body Image Shame Between Mainland American and Indigenous Hawaiian Children

The present study investigated the level of body image shame in Mainland United States 4th and 5th grade children to indigenous Hawaiian 4th and 5th grade children using two cards (1 and 6) from the Thurston-Cradock Test of Shame. The hypotheses of this study were: I. The mainland sample would score higher on overall shame than the Hawaiian sample. 2. The Hawaiian sample responses would reflect a neutral and/or effective resolution of shame and body image in their stories, whereas the mainland sample would present stories demonstrating higher shame themes with less effective resolution. 3. Hawaiian males/females would have lower levels of overall shame vs. mainland males/females. 4. Mainland males/females would demonstrate more unresolved shame vs. Hawaiian males/females. 5. Mainland males would express shame through more aggression vs. Hawaiian males. 6. Mainland females would exhibit shaming content through more deflation than Hawaiian females. While none of the hypotheses were found to be fully supported, there were some interesting trends discussed. The results of the study indicate that no one hypothesis was fully supported. However, while many of the results yielded no significant differences as assessed by inferential statistics, there are some interesting effect sizes, suggesting that with an increase in sample size there would likely be obvious group differences. Hypothesis 1 had a moderate effect size, however, the results are in the opposite direction than was predicted. Hypothesis 2 and hypothesis 4 suggested Mainlanders and Hawaiians responded more to cards 6 than l, but there were no significant group and/or gender differences found. In regard to Hypothesis 5, again, contradictory results were found. Specifically, Hawaiian females actually exhibiting higher levels of aggression than any other group, followed by Hawaiian males. Hypothesis 6, results were not significant for gender differences, but significant for differences among groups. These results are discussed with regard to cultural differences and areas of further research

Extraversion and oral proficiency in ESL

Extraversion has been proposed as an influence on the success of a second language learner, although studies in this area have produced mixed results (Dewaele & Furnham, 1999; Marin-Marin, 2005; Wakamoto, 2007). Through a narrative retell task, the current study investigated the effects of extraversion on the spoken English performance of 25 native speakers of Spanish. Extraversion was measured with a Spanish version of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire or EPQ (1975). Narratives were elicited using the wordless picture story Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969). Drawing on the work of Dewaele (1998), Dewaele and Pavlenko (2002), and Oya, Manalo, and Greenwood (2004), the researcher analyzed the narratives in terms of complexity, verbal accuracy, clausal accuracy, and emotion word quantity. Native speakers of English rated each narrative on a holistic global impression scale. Extraversion was found to correlate negatively with verbal accuracy (r = -.438, p \u3c .028). However, the sample tested at an unusually high level of extraversion (M = 17.12, SD = 3.72). Only one subject’s extraversion score was lower than eleven. When this outlier was removed, all correlations between extraversion and the variables involved proved to be non-significant

Aerodynamic Interactions of Reaction Control System Jets on Mars Entry Aeroshells

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/97062/1/AIAA2012-1013.pd

Interactions of Single-Nozzle Supersonic Propulsive Deceleration Jets on Mars Entry Aeroshells

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90635/1/AIAA-2011-138-807.pd

Learning from Power Signals: An Automated Approach to Electrical Disturbance Identification Within a Power Transmission System

As power quality becomes a higher priority in the electric utility industry, the amount of disturbance event data continues to grow. Utilities do not have the required personnel to analyze each event by hand. This work presents an automated approach for analyzing power quality events recorded by digital fault recorders and power quality monitors operating within a power transmission system. The automated approach leverages rule-based analytics to examine the time and frequency domain characteristics of the voltage and current signals. Customizable thresholds are set to categorize each disturbance event. The events analyzed within this work include various faults, motor starting, and incipient instrument transformer failure. Analytics for fourteen different event types have been developed. The analytics were tested on 160 signal files and yielded an accuracy of ninety-nine percent. Continuous, nominal signal data analysis is performed using an approach coined as the cyclic histogram. The cyclic histogram process will be integrated into the digital fault recorders themselves to facilitate the detection of subtle signal variations that are too small to trigger a disturbance event and that can occur over hours or days. In addition to reducing memory requirements by a factor of 320, it is anticipated that cyclic histogram processing will aid in identifying incipient events and identifiers. This project is expected to save engineers time by automating the classification of disturbance events and increase the reliability of the transmission system by providing near real time detection and identification of disturbances as well as prevention of problems before they occur.Comment: 18 page

Planar Laser-Induced Fluorescence Velocity Measurements of Retropropulsion Jets in a Mach 12 Freestream

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106464/1/AIAA2013-2810.pd

Investigations of Peripheral Propulsive Deceleration Jets on a Mars Science Laboratory Aeroshell

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/140658/1/1.a32456.pd

The reliability and heritability of cortical folds and their genetic correlations across hemispheres

Cortical folds help drive the parcellation of the human cortex into functionally specific regions. Variations in the length, depth, width, and surface area of these sulcal landmarks have been associated with disease, and may be genetically mediated. Before estimating the heritability of sulcal variation, the extent to which these metrics can be reliably extracted from in-vivo MRI must be established. Using four independent test-retest datasets, we found high reliability across the brain (intraclass correlation interquartile range: 0.65–0.85). Heritability estimates were derived for three family-based cohorts using variance components analysis and pooled (total N \u3e 3000); the overall sulcal heritability pattern was correlated to that derived for a large population cohort (N \u3e 9000) calculated using genomic complex trait analysis. Overall, sulcal width was the most heritable metric, and earlier forming sulci showed higher heritability. The inter-hemispheric genetic correlations were high, yet select sulci showed incomplete pleiotropy, suggesting hemisphere-specific genetic influences