Interaction Effects of Socioeconomic Status on Emerging Literacy and Literacy Skills among Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten Children: A Comparison Study

Socioeconomic differences in children’s reading and educational outcomes have been thoroughly documented throughout literature. Bobalik, Scarber, and Toon (2017) examined the link between socioeconomic status (SES) and classroom instruction on emerging literacy skills in pre-kindergarten children. The results supported the theory that children identified as belonging to a low socioeconomic status enter school with lower emerging literacy skills and benefit most from academic instruction; these children’s literacy skills substantially increased throughout the academic year, growing closer to those of their peers who were identified with a high socioeconomic status. The aim of the present study was to expand our understanding of the interaction effects of socioeconomic status and curriculum on emerging literacy and literacy skills by continuing the research into kindergarten. This study examined whether 1) differences in groups continued to grow closer to the mean or 2) the differences in groups became greater with the introduction of reading skills in kindergarten. Children (N=33) were recruited from a private school and a public school. The children from the public school who qualified for the Federal Poverty Guidelines for free/reduced lunch were assigned as having a low socioeconomic status, and children from the private school were assigned as having a high socioeconomic status. The Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening – K (PALS-K) was used to measure the literacy skills in the kindergarten children. Results of the study indicated that literacy scores between the socioeconomic groups were not significantly different at the kindergarten level, however differences between the mean scores of the pre-kindergarten and kindergarten groups were found to be significant

Influence of springtime phenology on the ratio of soil respiration to total ecosystem respiration in a mixed temperate forest

Total ecosystem (Reco) and soil (Rs) respiration are important CO2 fluxes in the carbon balance of forests. Typically Rs accounts for between 30-80% of Reco, although variation in this ratio has been shown to occur, particularly at seasonal time scales. The objective of this study was to relate changes in Rs/Reco ratio to changing springtime phenological conditions in forest ecosystems. We used one year (2003) of automated and twelve years (1995-2006) of manual chamber-based measurements of Rs. Reco was determined using tower-based eddy covariance measurements for an oak-dominated mixed temperate forest at Harvard Forest, Petersham, MA, USA. Phenological data were obtained from field observations and the JRC fAPAR remote sensing product. The automated and eddy covariance data showed that springtime phenological events do influence the ratio of soil to total ecosystem respiration. During canopy development, Reco rose strongly, mainly the aboveground component, due to the formation of an increasing amount of respiring leaf tissue. An increase in Rs was observed after most of the canopy development, which is probably the consequence of a shift in allocation of photosynthate products from above- to belowground. This hypothesized allocation shift was also confirmed by the results of the twelve year manual chamber-based measurements

Structure and age-dependent development of the turkey liver: a comparative study of a highly selected meat-type and a wild-type turkey line

In this study the macroscopic and microscopic structure of the liver of a fast growing, meat-type turkey line (British United turkeys BUT Big 6, n = 25) and a wild-type turkey line (Wild Canadian turkey, n = 48) were compared at the age of 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20 wk. Because the growth plates of long bones were still detectable in the 20-week-old wild-type turkeys, indicating immaturity, a group of 8 wild-type turkeys at the age of 24 wk was included in the original scope of the study. Over the term of the study, the body and liver weights of birds from the meat-type turkey line increased at a faster rate than those of the wild-type turkey line. However, the relative liver weight of the meat-type turkeys declined (from 2.7 to 0.9%) to a greater extent than that of the wild-type turkeys (from 2.8 to 1.9%), suggesting a mismatch in development between muscle weights and liver weights of the meat-type turkeys. Signs of high levels of fat storage in the liver were detected in both lines but were greater in the wild-type turkey line, suggesting a better feed conversion by the extreme-genotype birds i.e., meat-type birds. For the first time, this study presents morphologic data on the structure and arrangement of the lymphatic tissue within the healthy turkey liver, describing two different types of lymphatic aggregations within the liver parenchyma, i.e., aggregations with and without fibrous capsules. Despite differences during development, both adult meat-type and adult wild-type turkeys had similar numbers of lymphatic aggregations

The Cooperation Link: Power and Context Moderate Verbal Mimicry

Drawing on theories of mimicry as a schema-driven process, we tested whether the degree of verbal mimicry is dependent on the congruence between interactants’ power dynamic (symmetric vs. asymmetric), task type (cooperative vs. competitive) and interaction context (negotiation vs. social). Experiment 1 found higher verbal mimicry amongst dyads who successfully completed a cooperative problem-solving task compared to those who did not, but only under conditions of symmetric, not asymmetric, power. Experiment 2 had dyads complete either a cooperative or a competitive negotiation task, under conditions of symmetric vs. asymmetric power. Verbal mimicry was associated with improved negotiation outcomes under conditions of cooperation and symmetry, and competition and asymmetry. Experiment 3 completes this picture by separating cooperative-competitive orientation from the interaction context. Consistent with Experiment 2, verbal mimicry was associated with task success during a negotiation context with asymmetric power, and during a social interaction context with symmetric power. Our results point to the contextual link between verbal mimicry and task outcome

Engineering of Glasses for Advanced Optical Fiber Applications

Advanced optical applications (such as fiber optics)demand the engineering of innovative materialswhich provide the requisite optical performance in aform with specific functionality necessary for thedesired application. We will report on recent effortsto engineer new non-oxide glasses with tailoredphoto-sensitive response, and multi-component oxideglasses optimized for use in next generation Ramanamplification applications. The ultimate performanceof such glasses relies on control of the formation andstability of defective and/or metastable structuralconfigurations and their impact on physical as well aslinear and nonlinear optical properties. Direct laserwriting has drawn considerable attention since thedevelopment of femtosecond lasers and therecognition that such systems possess the requisiteintensity to modify, reversibly or irreversibly thephysical properties of optical materials. Such“structuring” has emerged as one of several possibleroutes for the fabrication of waveguides and otherphoto-induced structures

Multi-Institution Team Teaching (MITT): A Novel Approach to Highly Specialized Graduate Education

As engineering becomes more and more specialized, both the faculty resources and number of interested students become limited. Consequently, very frequently highly specialized graduate courses are not offered, especially in disciplines like Materials with small faculty and enrollment. NSF\u27s International Materials Institute for New Functionality in Glass (IMI-NFG) has successfully addressed this problem by successfully introducing the concept of multi-institution team teaching (MITT). It brings together via internet both the expert professors and students from many universities. By pooling the talent of various instructors, the courses become technically stronger and students learn advanced topics that would be available otherwise. As an example, a recent MITT course included instructors from 10 US institutions, and students from many more US and international universities. Software such as ‘Adobe Connect’ is used for the live delivery of lectures, wherein students can see the instructor and Power Point slides as in a normal classroom. The students may ask questions any time during the lecture, and the instructor would respond immediately. They register and pay tuition at their home institution, so that no exchange of funds is involved between universities. Survey results support that a majority of the enrolled students liked the format and delivery of the course, and more than 75% students felt that multiple instructors, who “taught information of their expertise”, made the course stronger. In conclusion, the concept of MITT has been successfully demonstrated for teaching highly specialized graduate courses

On-chip infrared sensors: redefining the benefits of scaling

Infrared (IR) spectroscopy is widely recognized as a gold standard technique for chemical and biological analysis. Traditional IR spectroscopy relies on fragile bench-top instruments located in dedicated laboratory settings, and is thus not suitable for emerging field-deployed applications such as in-line industrial process control, environmental monitoring, and point-of-care diagnosis. Recent strides in photonic integration technologies provide a promising route towards enabling miniaturized, rugged platforms for IR spectroscopic analysis. It is therefore attempting to simply replace the bulky discrete optical elements used in conventional IR spectroscopy with their on-chip counterparts. This size down-scaling approach, however, cripples the system performance as both the sensitivity of spectroscopic sensors and spectral resolution of spectrometers scale with optical path length. In light of this challenge, we will discuss two novel photonic device designs uniquely capable of reaping performance benefits from microphotonic scaling. We leverage strong optical and thermal confinement in judiciously designed micro-cavities to circumvent the thermal diffusion and optical diffraction limits in conventional photothermal sensors and achieve a record 104 photothermal sensitivity enhancement. In the second example, an on-chip spectrometer design with the Fellgett's advantage is analyzed. The design enables sub-nm spectral resolution on a millimeter-sized, fully packaged chip without moving parts.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award 1506605)United States. Department of Energy (Grant DE-NA0002509

Substrate-blind photonic integration based on high-index glass materials

Conventional photonic integration technologies are inevitably substrate-dependent, as different substrate platforms stipulate vastly different device fabrication methods and processing compatibility requirements. Here we capitalize on the unique monolithic integration capacity of composition-engineered non-silicate glass materials (amorphous chalcogenides and transition metal oxides) to enable multifunctional, multi-layer photonic integration on virtually any technically important substrate platforms. We show that high-index glass film deposition and device fabrication can be performed at low temperatures ( < 250 °C) without compromising their low loss characteristics, and is thus fully compatible with monolithic integration on a broad range of substrates including semiconductors, plastics, textiles, and metals. Application of the technology is highlighted through three examples: demonstration of high-performance mid-IR photonic sensors on fluoride crystals, direct fabrication of photonic structures on graphene, and 3-D photonic integration on flexible plastic substrates.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award 1200406