Improving Academic Experiences of K-12 Students Through Trauma-Informed Practices

Adverse childhood experiences, also known as ACEs are being identified in K-12 schools. ACEs can be described as abuse, neglect, and trauma that negatively affects the child. It has been shown that ACEs can lead to mental and physical health impairments and can physically change the brain. This can cause barriers to learning and academic achievement. In my master’s project, I address this problem. I also provide literature that supports the benefits of educators being trauma informed, with Cognitive Behavioral Theory and Gestalt Theory as a guide. Finally, I created a professional development presentation for educators to become aware of trauma and its effects on students. The purpose of my project is to show the relevance of identifying children with adverse childhood experiences. In schools all over the world there are children who are dealing with, or have dealt with trauma. I chose this topic because of my personal experiences working in K-12 education and the role that I have currently that can help students facing this issue

Camp Providence Quick Step

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-ps/3313/thumbnail.jp

Multi-scale topography assessment for site-specific drought management in Sweden

Globally, as well as in Sweden, the occurrence of droughts is expected to increase due to global warming. The drought summer of 2018 revealed the vulnerability of Sweden’s agriculture – with cereal yield losses of up to 50 %. Subsequently, the development of more resilience crop production systems to mitigate future droughts is required. Precision agriculture practices (PAP), widely applied in Sweden, are promising to base such developments upon. Hence, the aim of this study was to investigate the potential usage of topography for site-specific decision support, to extend PAP for advanced drought management in Sweden. Therefore, the drought effect along the study period (between crop development stages DC31-DC75) on crop growth development and related to field topography was assessed in a dry year (2018) and compared to a non-dry year (2019). Two common cereals i.e., Winter wheat and spring barely were selected to conduct this study. The study area was in the south-eastern region of Skåne in Sweden. The scale varied from the whole study area to within the field. Crop growth development was monitored using different vegetation and drought indices i.e., normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), normalized difference red-edge index (NDRE), normalized difference water index (NDWI) and the normalized difference drought index (NDDI). Topography was analysed at and within the field using different topographic indices i.e., slope, relative height (RE) and the topographic wetness index (TWI). The data required to conduct this study was publicly available and consisted of a highresolution digital elevation model, Sentinel-2 remote sensing data, weather data, field polygon as well as soil texture data. Overall, the results clearly showed an average NDVI, NDRE and NDWI reduction over the study period in 2018 compared to 2019 for both cereals; this reduction was about 25 %, 32 % and 58 % for winter wheat and about 36 %, 43 % and 69 % for spring barley. Topographic related within-field crop growth variations were prominent under dry conditions in 2018 and not present under non-dry conditions in 2019. Within-field crop growth variation increased with an increase in average field slope under dry conditions. The TWI was the most promising index explaining within-field crop growth development. Further studies should include other sitespecific field characteristics besides topography to better delineate within-field drought management zones for PAP

Anomalous diffusion of a particle in an aging medium

We report new results about the anomalous diffusion of a particle in an aging medium. For each given age, the quasi-stationary particle velocity is governed by a generalized Langevin equation with a frequency-dependent friction coefficient proportional to $|\omega|^{\delta-1}$ at small frequencies, with $0<\delta<2$. The aging properties of the medium are encoded in a frequency dependent effective temperature $T_{\rm eff.}(\omega)$. The latter is modelized by a function proportional to $|\omega|^\alpha$ at small frequencies, with $\alpha<0$, thus allowing for the medium to have a density of slow modes proportionally larger than in a thermal bath. Using asymptotic Fourier analysis, we obtain the behaviour at large times of the velocity correlation function and of the mean square displacement. As a result, the anomalous diffusion exponent in the aging medium appears to be linked, not only to $\delta$ as it would be the case in a thermal bath, but also to the exponent $\alpha$ characterizing the density of slow modes

Coupling between aging and convective motion in a colloidal glass of Laponite

We study thermal convection in a colloidal glass of Laponite in formation. Low concentration preparation are submitted to destabilizing vertical temperature gradient, and present a gradual transition from a turbulent convective state to a steady conductive state as their viscosity increases. The time spent under convection is found to depend strongly on sample concentration, decreasing exponentially with mass fraction of colloidal particles. Moreover, at fixed concentration, it also depends slightly on the pattern selected by the Rayleigh B\'{e}nard instability: more rolls maintain the convection state longer. This behavior can be interpreted with recent theoretical approaches of soft glassy material rheology.Comment: Eur. Phys. J. B 55, 101-107 (2007) The original publication is available at http://www.springerlink.co

Shearing a Glassy Material: Numerical Tests of Nonequilibrium Mode-Coupling Approaches and Experimental Proposals

The predictions of a nonequilibrium schematic mode-coupling theory developed to describe the nonlinear rheology of soft glassy materials have been numerically challenged in a sheared binary Lennard-Jones mixture. The theory gives an excellent description of the stress/temperature `jamming phase diagram' of the system. In the present paper, we focus on the issue of an effective temperature Teff for the slow modes of the fluid, as defined from a generalized fluctuation-dissipation theorem. As predicted theoretically, many different observables are found to lead to the same value of Teff, suggesting several experimental procedures to measure Teff. New, simple experimental protocols to access Teff from a generalized equipartition theorem are also proposed, and one such experiment is numerically performed. These results give strong support to the thermodynamic interpretation of Teff and make it experimentally accessible in a very direct way.Comment: Version accepted for publication - Physical Review Letter

Contact dynamics in a gently vibrated granular pile

We use multi-speckle diffusive wave spectroscopy (MSDWS) to probe the micron-scale dynamics of a granular pile submitted to discrete gentle taps. The typical time-scale between plastic events is found to increase dramatically with the number of applied taps. Furthermore, this microscopic dynamics weakly depends on the solid fraction of the sample. This process is strongly analogous to the aging phenomenon observed in thermal glassy systems. We propose a heuristic model where this slowing down mechanism is associated with a slow evolution of the distribution of the contact forces between particles. This model accounts for the main features of the observed dynamics.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Direct visualization of aging in colloidal glasses

We use confocal microscopy to directly visualize the dynamics of aging colloidal glasses. We prepare a colloidal suspension at high density, a simple model system which shares many properties with other glasses, and initiate experiments by stirring the sample. We follow the motion of several thousand colloidal particles after the stirring and observe that their motion significantly slows as the sample ages. The aging is both spatially and temporally heterogeneous. Furthermore, while the characteristic relaxation time scale grows with the age of the sample, nontrivial particle motions continue to occur on all time scales.Comment: submitted to proceedings for Liquid Matter Conference 200