The Child Silenced by Social Anxiety

This meta-synthesis explores the subject of selective mutism across multiple age groups. Selective mutism is present in a very small percentage of students. Given the small number of students that have this disorder there is limited resources and professional collaboration options available for teachers. The low incident rate of selective mutism often leads to students being forgotten about in the classroom setting. Teachers do not know how to help them overcome their disorder and the students are not able to ask for the help they need. This exploration into selective mutism reviewed 30 articles on the topic and attempted to provide identifying characteristics of the disorder as well as interventions for educators to implement while working with students selective mutism

Anticaking methods for pharmaceutical grade salt : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Technology in BioProcess Engineering at Massey University

This is an investigation into the causes of caking in the pharmaceutical grade salt produced by Dominion Salt Limited. It was found that the caking mechanism that occurs in sodium chloride is humidity caking. A moisture audit of the Dominion Salt plant showed that the primary factors causing caking are the initial water activity of the salt and the temperature gradient that the salt is exposed to during packing and storage. Experiments were conducted to determine the physical properties of the salt: the bulk density, the thermal conductivity, the particle size distribution and the moisture sorption isotherm. Using these properties, a mathematical model was modified to predict whether caking would occur in a salt bed subjected to specific temperature and moisture conditions. Model validation experiments were performed, where caking was produced by exposure to a temperature gradient. The mathematical model was compared to experimental data and altered until it accurately simulated observed results. The model was then used to predict the circumstances that will induce significant caking in a salt bed and a chart of the results collated to show when caking will occur. Given the salt temperature, the ambient temperature and the initial water activity, the chart can be used to determine whether caking will occur in the bagged salt

Accuracy, independence, and impartiality: how legacy media and digital natives approach standards in the digital age

In the digital age, one of the most complex challenges for media outlets is how to re-shape the editorial responsibilities of journalism itself. Which journalistic standards, many devised last century, still fit in this new age? And which standards form the basis of a new type of journalism being pioneered by hybrid news sites that have come of age in the digital era? Kellie Riordan, a one-term journalist fellow from the ABC in Australia, has written a path-breaking and comprehensive paper which tackles these questions head on.  In it she focuses on the three key editorial standards of accuracy, independence, and impartiality,  and examines how these three principles are approached in the digital era. The paper focuses specifically on three legacy organisations (the Guardian, the New York Times, and the BBC) and three digital outlets (Quartz, BuzzFeed, and Vice News). Based on interviews with a wide range of industry experts, scholars and representatives of traditional and new media, Kellie asks two key questions: what can legacy organisations with hundreds of years of history learn from digital natives?  And which traditional journalistic standards held by legacy organisations should be more firmly adopted by newcomers? Amongst Kellie’s many conclusions is her observation that a third form of journalism is emerging; one that combines the best of legacy standards and the new approaches of digital natives. Such a hybrid form, she argues, requires a more streamlined set of editorial standards that fit the internet era

Wormhole geometries in fourth-order conformal Weyl gravity

We present an analysis of the classic wormhole geometries based on conformal Weyl gravity, rather than standard general relativity. The main characteristics of the resulting traversable wormholes remain the same as in the seminal study by Morris and Thorne, namely, that effective super-luminal motion is a viable consequence of the metric. Improving on previous work on the subject, we show that for particular choices of the shape and redshift functions the wormhole metric in the context of conformal gravity does not violate the main energy conditions at or near the wormhole throat. Some exotic matter might still be needed at the junction between our solutions and flat spacetime, but we demonstrate that the averaged null energy condition (as evaluated along radial null geodesics) is satisfied for a particular set of wormhole geometries. Therefore, if fourth-order conformal Weyl gravity is a correct extension of general relativity, traversable wormholes might become a realistic solution for interstellar travel.Comment: Minor changes and one equation added, 22 pages, including 4 figures, published in Int. J. Mod. Phys. D, Online Ready: 12 April 201