From Isolation to Innovation: A Journey from the Past to the Future in a Saskatchewan High School

This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) explores how professional learning can impact the modernization of practice and culture in Sunnybrook High School (SHS, a pseudonym), a small urban high school in Saskatchewan. The Problem of Practice (PoP) highlights the gaps between SHS’s common practice, the predominantly used factory model of education, and the desired practice, a 21st century model of education. Teacher isolation is found to be the determinant factor hindering innovation within SHS and solutions to address the PoP focus on ending this practice to increase effective professional learning through collaboration. Using social constructivism as the foundational theory, the conceptual framework used in this OIP connects the practices of building inclusive 21st century educational capacity and the cultivation of a supportive learning environment. Applying a continuous learning philosophy and Kotter’s Eight Step Process, SHS teachers will engage in teacher-centered collaborative professional learning communities, as innovation and student success are bred through collective efficacy. The solution posed will be monitored through a series of Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) cycles that will take place over several school years. The OIP in its entirety is led by a leadership framework consisting of innovative, compassionate, and teacher leadership. This leadership framework will inspire, support, and empower SHS educators while attending to challenges such as teacher and leadership resistance

What the Milky Way's Dwarfs tell us about the Galactic Center extended excess

The Milky Way's Galactic Center harbors a gamma-ray excess that is a candidate signal of annihilating dark matter. Dwarf galaxies remain predominantly dark in their expected commensurate emission. In this work we quantify the degree of consistency between these two observations through a joint likelihood analysis. In doing so we incorporate Milky Way dark matter halo profile uncertainties, as well as an accounting of diffuse gamma-ray emission uncertainties in dark matter annihilation models for the Galactic Center Extended gamma-ray excess (GCE) detected by the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope. The preferred range of annihilation rates and masses expands when including these unknowns. Even so, using two recent determinations of the Milky Way halo's local density leave the GCE preferred region of single-channel dark matter annihilation models to be in strong tension with annihilation searches in combined dwarf galaxy analyses. A third, higher Milky Way density determination, alleviates this tension. Our joint likelihood analysis allows us to quantify this inconsistency. We provide a set of tools for testing dark matter annihilation models' consistency within this combined dataset. As an example, we test a representative inverse Compton sourced self-interacting dark matter model, which is consistent with both the GCE and dwarfs.Comment: v2, 12 pages, 4 figures, tools online at: https://github.com/rekeeley/GCE_error

Coastal Blue Carbon Opportunity Assessment for Snohomish Estuary: The Climate Benefits of Estuary Restoration

This report presents the findings of a groundbreaking study that confirms the climate mitigation benefits of restoring tidal wetland habitat in the Snohomish Estuary, located within the nation's second largest estuary: Puget Sound. The study, the first of its kind, finds major climate mitigation benefits from wetland restoration and provides a much needed approach for assessing carbon fluxes for historic drained and future restored wetlands which can now be transferred and applied to other geographie

Watershed boundaries and geographic isolation: patterns of diversification in cutthroat trout from western North America

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>For wide-ranging species, intraspecific variation can occur as a result of reproductive isolation from local adaptive differences or from physical barriers to movement. Cutthroat trout (<it>Oncorhynchus clarkii</it>), a widely distributed fish species from North America, has been divided into numerous putative subspecies largely based on its isolation in different watersheds. In this study, we examined mtDNA sequence variation of cutthroat trout to determine the major phylogenetic lineages of this polytypic species. We use these data as a means of testing whether geographic isolation by watershed boundaries can be a primary factor organizing intraspecific diversification.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We collected cutthroat trout from locations spanning almost the entire geographic range of this species and included samples from all major subspecies of cutthroat trout. Based on our analyses, we reveal eight major lineages of cutthroat trout, six of which correspond to subspecific taxonomy commonly used to describe intraspecific variation in this species. The Bonneville cutthroat trout (<it>O. c. utah</it>) and Yellowstone cutthroat trout (<it>O. c. bouvieri</it>) did not form separate monophyletic lineages, but instead formed an intermixed clade. We also document the geographic distribution of a Great Basin lineage of cutthroat trout; a group typically defined as Bonneville cutthroat trout, but it appears more closely related to the Colorado River lineage of cutthroat trout.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our study indicates that watershed boundaries can be an organizing factor isolating genetic diversity in fishes; however, historical connections between watersheds can also influence the template of isolation. Widely distributed species, like cutthroat trout, offer an opportunity to assess where historic watershed connections may have existed, and help explain the current distribution of biological diversity across a landscape.</p

Development of Prognosis in Palliative care Study (PiPS) predictor models to improve prognostication in advanced cancer: prospective cohort study

OBJECTIVE: To develop a novel prognostic indicator for use in patients with advanced cancer that is significantly better than clinicians' estimates of survival. DESIGN: Prospective multicentre observational cohort study. SETTING: 18 palliative care services in the UK (including hospices, hospital support teams, and community teams). PARTICIPANTS: 1018 patients with locally advanced or metastatic cancer, no longer being treated for cancer, and recently referred to palliative care services. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Performance of a composite model to predict whether patients were likely to survive for "days" (0-13 days), "weeks" (14-55 days), or "months+" (>55 days), compared with actual survival and clinicians' predictions. RESULTS: On multivariate analysis, 11 core variables (pulse rate, general health status, mental test score, performance status, presence of anorexia, presence of any site of metastatic disease, presence of liver metastases, C reactive protein, white blood count, platelet count, and urea) independently predicted both two week and two month survival. Four variables had prognostic significance only for two week survival (dyspnoea, dysphagia, bone metastases, and alanine transaminase), and eight variables had prognostic significance only for two month survival (primary breast cancer, male genital cancer, tiredness, loss of weight, lymphocyte count, neutrophil count, alkaline phosphatase, and albumin). Separate prognostic models were created for patients without (PiPS-A) or with (PiPS-B) blood results. The area under the curve for all models varied between 0.79 and 0.86. Absolute agreement between actual survival and PiPS predictions was 57.3% (after correction for over-optimism). The median survival across the PiPS-A categories was 5, 33, and 92 days and survival across PiPS-B categories was 7, 32, and 100.5 days. All models performed as well as, or better than, clinicians' estimates of survival. CONCLUSIONS: In patients with advanced cancer no longer being treated, a combination of clinical and laboratory variables can reliably predict two week and two month survival

Examining the psychometric properties of the ELLECCT: A commentary on Weadman, Serry and Snow (2022)

Domain-specific observational tools that use valid and objectively measurable items are key to supporting improvement and developing understanding of practice in early years classrooms. The ‘Emergent Literacy and Language Early Childhood Checklist for Teachers’ (ELLECCT) aims to address a current gap in the tools that are available to capture behaviours which support language and literacy during book reading activities. We examine the ELLECCT’s utility as a single observational tool for both researchers and educators seeking to capture extratextual oral language and emergent literacy strategies during shared book reading

Professional Reading

Masters of the Art of Comman

Concept definition study for recovery of tumbling satellites. Volume 1: Executive summary, study results

The first assessment is made of the design requirements and conceptual definition of a front end kit to be transported on the currently defined Orbital Maneuvering Vehicle (OMV) and the Space Transportation System Shuttle Orbiter, to conduct remote, teleoperated recovery of disabled and noncontrollable, tumbling satellites. Previous studies did not quantify the dynamic characteristics of a tumbling satellite, nor did they appear to address the full spectrum of Tumbling Satellite Recovery systems requirements. Both of these aspects are investigated with useful results