A Study of the Public School Problem: “Where Does Policy Making End and Administration Begin?”

Local school board members and administrators are the people who have the greatest impact on their local school programs, yet few citizens understand the responsibilities and boundaries of these positions. In this paper, the author asserts that a school’s future is not determined by state/federal educational policy as much as it is by the attitudes its board members have toward one another, as well as toward their administrators. The author attempts to understand the divide between Brockport Central School board members and school administrators during the formulation and execution of existing school policy. The researcher obtained initial data by creating and distributing surveys to eight past/present Monroe County school administrators and seven past/present Brockport school board members. Six administrators and five board members replied, however their individual replies were kept separate from their identifying information, rendering their replies anonymous. Results showed that administrators felt that policy making was the responsibility of the board, not the administrators, and that policies should be in a constant state of review. Board members, however, perceived that while the board is the primary policy-making group, administrative input is essential. Respondents reported encountering restrictive thinking, biases about “pet” ideas, and a general lack of understanding about the difference between policy making and administration among board members and administrators. The author concludes the paper by reaffirming that education success relies on the strength of the relationship between a schools’ board and administrators, and asserts that a strong public relation program is likely to solve almost any school issue

Metal-organic frameworks for the recovery of critical metals for batteries

Lithium mining is a much sought after metal that is essential in many green technologies, especially battery technology. With the rising pressure on the planet’s climate a shift to greener alternatives is growing and with it demand for lithium. The current mining of lithium is however inefficient and resource intensive in regards to water and land areal. To address this challenge a new method for extracting lithium utilising adsorbents is being explored. A shortcoming of many adsorbents used in the treatment of water is low porosity (and lack of selectivity). Prospects in regards to adsorption will likely involve synthetic crystalline materials called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). MOFs combine inorganic and organic building units, metal ions/clusters and linkers respectively. These materials have been shown to possess much greater porosity and inner surface area. So far most research activities have focused on gas adsorption using MOFs as most are unstable in water. Water stability has been a challenge, fortunately, a large number of MOF structures have been discovered, and, opportunely from the University of Oslo in Norway a series of water-stable zirconium-based MOFs have been reported [7]. This thesis work will use the opportune Zr-cluster based MOFs with carboxylate functional groups that could be sites of ion exchange interaction. In particular two MOFs with 1,2,4-Benzenetricarboxylic acid (BDC-COOH) and 1,2,4,5-Benezenetetracarboxylic acid (BDC-(COOH)2) are explored in this thesis. MOF characteristics have been determined using powder x-ray diffraction, thermogravimetric analysis, nitrogen adsorption, scanning electron microscope with energy dispersive x-ray spectrometry, and infrared spectroscopy. Furthermore, MOF samples synthesised are used to carry out batch adsorption experiments to find whether they are applicative for metal ion uptake in water solution. Two studies were set up, where five vials of different metal ion concentration, one with lithium chloride and the other with magnesium chloride, had MOF samples added to them and were left to adsorb overnight. UiO-66-BDC-COOH and Zr-BDC-(COOH)2 were both successfully synthesised and employed in metal adsorption studies. Samples JA01 and JA04 were chosen as adsorbents since they showed the strongest results after characterisation analysis. JA01 and JA04 syntheses were upscaled (JA09 and JA10 respectively) to have enough quantity for batch adsorption. JA09 proved not to be chemically stable in water. JA10 did not show any sign of significant metal ion uptake. Likely the problem was the low pH value. Solutions after adsorption experiment turned out to be much more acidic, and showed greater conducitivity than before adsorption

The Role of Maternal Emotional Validation and Invalidation on Children’s Emotional Awareness

Emotional awareness—that is, accurate emotional self-report—has been linked to positive well-being and mental health. However, it is still unclear how emotional awareness is socialized in young children. This observational study examined how a particular parenting communicative style—emotional validation versus emotional invalidation—was linked to children’s (age 4–7 years) emotional awareness. Emotional validation was defined as accurately and nonjudgmentally referring to the emotion or the emotional perspective of the child. The relationship between maternal emotional validation/invalidation and children’s awareness of their negative emotions was examined in 65 mother–child pairs while playing a game. In a multiple regression, significant predictors of children’s emotional awareness were their mother’s degree of emotional validation, the child’s gender (girls more aware than boys), and their mother’s degree of invalidation (negative predictor). These results suggest that children’s accurate attention to their own emotion states—that is, their emotional awareness—may be shaped by their mother’s use of emotional validation/invalidation

Mechanical Mouse Lure for Brown Treesnakes

The importance of prey movement for stimulating feeding behavior of Brown Treesnakes was tested by using a mechanical mouse model in combination with and without prey odor. Prey movement was found to be important in stimulating brown treesnake feeding behavior. Prey movement combined with prey odor was not significantly different than prey movement alone. In the development of simple artificial lures based on the stimulus of live mice, visual lures lacking movement are likely to be ineffective. Lures that combine a visual moving stimulus with prey odor are likely to be the most effective artificial lure for trapping brown treesnakes

The Ursinus Weekly, April 26, 1948

Juniors re-elect Reid class president; Arvanitis is chosen to edit 1949 Ruby • Ray Warner named editor of Weekly; Johnson, Leeming, Shumaker promoted • Student poll to reveal presidential favorite • Able chorus supports excellent principals as Mikado registers hit • Practice underway for 52 participants in annual pageant • Name committees for thespians\u27 spring play • Dr. Weygandt here tonight • Men choose Kimes as YMCA president • Frosh hop Friday evening to feature rhythms of Woody Leigh\u27s orchestra • Rev. Wallick gives charge to Y officers at vespers • New constitution approved • College nurse is speaker at honor society\u27s dinner • Spanish Club holds dinner with Penn prof. as guest • Marsteller elected FTA president; Kuntz, Faust, Heist get posts • Debaters top Princeton, Temple; face Haverford in final contest • French Club banquet Wednesday • Bearettes rout Beaver in lopsided tilt, 20-1 • Dickinson registers 3-1 triumph over bruin baseball club • Bears halt four-game Drexel win skein, mangle Engineers, 18-2, behind Landes • Bruin chessmen tie town club; team still seeking new recruits • Girls\u27 golf team to oppose Swarthmore on Thursday • Class delegates to WAA, WSGA chosen • Lorimer to head pre-legal group • Vadner, Daniels, Ballantyne win as belles lose tennis match, 3-2 • Charles Kuhn takes top honors in chemistry research contest • Shakespeare excerpts scheduled for production tomorrow nighthttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/weekly/1637/thumbnail.jp

Mechanical Mouse Lure for Brown Treesnakes

The importance of prey movement for stimulating feeding behavior of Brown Treesnakes was tested by using a mechanical mouse model in combination with and without prey odor. Prey movement was found to be important in stimulating brown treesnake feeding behavior. Prey movement combined with prey odor was not significantly different than prey movement alone. In the development of simple artificial lures based on the stimulus of live mice, visual lures lacking movement are likely to be ineffective. Lures that combine a visual moving stimulus with prey odor are likely to be the most effective artificial lure for trapping brown treesnakes

The agrodiversity experiment

Intensively managed grasslands are globally prominent ecosystems. We investigated whether experimental increases in plant diversity in intensively managed grassland communities can increase their resource use efficiency. This work consisted of a coordinated, continental-scale 33-site experiment. The core design was 30 plots, representing 15 grassland communities at two seeding densities. The 15 communities comprised four monocultures (two grasses and two legumes) and 11 four-species mixtures that varied in the relative abundance of the four species at sowing. There were 1028 plots in the core experiment, with another 572 plots sown for additional treatments. Sites followed a protocol and employed the same experimental methods with certain plot management factors, such as seeding rates and number of cuts, determined by local practice. The four species used at a site depended on geographical location, but the species were chosen according to four functional traits: a fast-establishing grass, a slow-establishing persistent grass, a fast-establishing legume, and a slow-establishing persistent legume. As the objective was to maximize yield for intensive grassland production, the species chosen were all highyielding agronomic species. The data set contains species-specific biomass measurements (yield per species and of weeds) for all harvests for up to four years at 33 sites. Samples of harvested vegetation were also analyzed for forage quality at 26 sites. These data should be of interest to ecologists studying relationships between diversity and ecosystem function and to agronomists interested in sustainable intensification. The large spatial scale of the sites provides opportunity for analyses across spatial (and temporal) scales. The database can also complement existing databases and meta-analyses on biodiversity– ecosystem function relationships in natural communities by focusing on those same relationships within intensively managed agricultural grasslands

Notes

Notes by John E. Lindberg, Lawrence S. May, Clifford A. Goodrich, William T. Huston, Louis Albert Hafner, Robert A. Stewart, Benedict R. Danko, and James D. Matthews

V-Dem Comparisons and Contrasts with Other Measurement Projects

For policymakers, activists, academics, and citizens around the world the conceptualization and measurement of democracy matters. The needs of democracy promoters and social scientists are convergent. We all need better ways to measure democracy. In the first section of this document we critically review the field of democracy indices. It is important to emphasize that problems identified with extant indices are not easily solved, and some of the issues we raise vis-à-vis other projects might also be raised in the context of the V-Dem project. Measuring an abstract and contested concept such as democracy is hard and some problems of conceptualization and measurement may never be solved definitively. In the second section we discuss in general terms how the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project differs from extant indices and how the novel approach taken by V-Dem might assist the work of activists, professionals, and scholars.This research project was supported by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Grant M13-0559:1, PI: Staffan I. Lindberg, V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; by Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation to Wallenberg Academy Fellow Staffan I. Lindberg, Grant 2013.0166, V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; as well as by internal grants from the Vice-Chancellor’s office, the Dean of the College of Social Sciences, and the Department of Political Science at University of Gothenburg. We performed simulations and other computational tasks using resources provided by the Notre Dame Center for Research Computing (CRC) through the High Performance Computing section and the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) at the National Supercomputer Centre in Sweden, SNIC 2016/1-382 and 2017/1-68. We specifically acknowledge the assistance of In-Saeng Suh at CRC and Johan Raber at SNIC in facilitating our use of their respective systems