Supporting and Amplifying Teaching Experience of New College Teachers

This thesis investigates how to amplify and support novice college teacher’s teaching experience. It has been found that a majority of percent novice teachers (55%) could not prepare there are lessons effectively (Fantilli & McDougall, 2009), many of them will spend a lot of time adapting to the educating and academic environment. The main issue is that these beginning teachers cannot recognize what kinds of methods are more effective to enhance their teaching efforts in the short period term. At the meanwhile, how to enhance their class quality as a crucial problem as well. There are several factors affecting the overall situation. First, beginning teachers have different cultural backgrounds, characteristics, and experiences, and they are being confronted with new and different situations. Second, due to the courses having been designed by others, they are unfamiliar with the structure of the classes they are teaching. Third, novice college teachers generally lack of any teaching experience, so it is difficult for them to deal with particular situations. Additionally, the process of preparation is quite difficult for them to master. Two main design approaches have been taken in existing research and projects that aim to help novice teachers. One design approach, which is somewhat limited, is to provide interactive functions between teachers and college students during class time. The other kind of design work concentrates on helping teachers to manage their classes. Based on the results of the literature review, peer-product review, and user studies research, I propose a mobile-based campus application with an external technology device to explore and provide useful educational information to novice teacher corresponding to the following four dimensions: teaching experience cognition, augmented reality, communication, and resources collaboration. The application aims to help novice teachers figure out an effective method for improving the quality of their classes. Additionally, both qualitative and quantitative data were collected via online questionnaires, interviews, and frameworks. As a result, I aim to design a system with an external device to support novice college teachers. The app design will concentrate on how to enhance teaching experience for new teachers. The objective is that design solution will help the beginning teachers adapting to the education environment and explore the most appropriate method to enhance the quality of their classes

Financial Well-being of State and Local Government Retirees in North Carolina

Low and moderate income retirees face considerable changes as they try to maintain their standard of living. Managing their assets and debts are important to the well-being of these households. We analyze how recent low and moderate income retirees utilize retirement savings and provide evidence on their financial fragility using survey data on public employees in North Carolina who retired between 2009 and 2014. Many of these public retirees cannot come up with emergency cash. A quarter of our sample maintain high-interest debt while leaving low-return funds in retirement saving plans. We show that suboptimal debt holding is associated with lower household income and lower financial literacy

Can buccal infiltration of articaine replace traditional inferior alveolar nerve block for the treatment of mandibular molars in pediatric patients?:a systematic review and meta-analysis

It is unclear if buccal articaine infiltration can be used as an alternative to standard inferior alveolar nerve block (IANB) for treating mandibular molars in pediatric patients. Therefore, this study aimed to pool evidence to compare the efficacy of buccal infiltration of articaine vs IANB with lignocaine for pediatric dental procedures. We searched the PubMed, Embase, ScienceDirect, CENTRAL, and Google Scholar databases for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing the two techniques in pediatric patients and reporting the success of anesthesia and/or pain during treatment. PRISMA guidelines were followed. Seven RCTs were included. Pooled analysis of five studies indicated no statistically significant difference in the success rates of the two anesthetic techniques (OR: 1.02; 95% CI: 0.13, 7.96; I2=69%, p=0.98). Meta-analysis of data from the four studies demonstrated no statistically significant difference in pain during the procedure with buccal infiltration of articaine or IANB with lignocaine (SMD: 0.62; 95% CI: -1.37, 0.12; I2=88%, p=0.10). Evidence suggests that buccal infiltration of articaine is a viable alternative to IANB with lignocaine in pediatric patients for treating mandibular molars. Based on the confidence intervals, there may be a tendency of higher success rates with buccal infiltration of articaine

Prediction of Capillary Pressure and Relative Permeability Curves using Conventional Pore-scale Displacements and Artificial Neural Networks

Traditional network models use simplified pore geometries to simulate multiphase flow using semi-analytical correlation-based approaches. In this work, we aim at improving these models by (I) extending the numerical methodologies to account for pore geometries with convex polygon cross sections and (II) utilizing Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) to predict flow-related properties. Specifically, we simulate fluid displacement sequences during a drainage process in bundles of capillary tubes with randomly generated convex polygon cross-sections. In the beginning, we assume that capillary tubes are fully saturated with water and that they are strongly water-wet. Then, oil is injected to displace water during the primary drainage process. The model calculates threshold capillary pressures for all randomly generated geometries using Mayer-Stowe-Princen (MS-P) method and the minimization of Helmholtz free energy for every pore-scale displacement event. Knowing pore fluid occupancies, we calculate saturations, phase conductances, and two-phase capillary pressure and relative permeability curves. These parameters are then used as input to train an ANN. ANN theories and related applications have been significantly promoted due to the fast increasing performance of computer hardware and inheratively complicated nature of some research areas. Various Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications have been developed specifically for the oil and gas industry such as AI assisted history matching, oil field production and development predictions, and reservoir characterization. The objective of this study is to develop an ANN training and predicting workflow that can be integrated with the conventional pore network modeling techniques. This hybrid model is computationally much faster which is beneficial for large-scale simulations in 3D. It could also be used to improve prediction of flow-related properties in similar rock types. Specifically, we are interested in the training of ANNs to predict threshold capillary pressures and multi-phase flowrates as a function of cross-sectional shapes and wettabilities given for each capillary tube of the bundle. To do so, we have generated multi-phase flow properties for two large datasets consisting of 40,000 and 60,000 capillary tubes each. The predictive capability of the ANN is gauged by performing some quality control steps including blind test validations. We present the results primarily by demonstrating the calculated errors and deviations for any randomly generated bundles of capillary tubes from the aforementioned dataset. We show that generating high-quality training dataset is critical to improving model’s predictive capabilities for a wide range of pore geometries, e.g., shape factors and elongations. Additionally, we demonstrate that feature selection and preprocessing of the input data could significantly impact ANN’s predictions. We analyze a wide range of structures for the ANN models. The Multi-layer perceptron (MLP) Neural Network with three hidden layers is adequate for dealing with the complexity and non-linearity of most of our studied cases. This model is approximately an order of magnitude faster than conventional direct calculations using a personal desktop computer with four cores CPU. Such improvement in the speed of calculations becomes extremely important when dealing with larger models, adding more dimensionality, and/or introducing pore connectivity in 3D

Does chlorhexidine improve outcomes in non-surgical management of peri-implant mucositis or peri-implantitis? : a systematic review and meta-analysis

With greater number of implants being placed in clinical practice, incidence of peri-implant diseases are on the rise. It is not known whether chlorhexidine (CHX) improves outcomes in the management of peri-implant diseases. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to evaluate the role of CHX in improving outcomes with non-surgical management of peri-implant mucositis and peri-implantitis. An electronic search of PubMed, Scopus, Embase, and CENTRAL (Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials) databases up to 1st August 2019 was carried out to search for studies evaluating the efficacy of CHX for non-surgical management of peri-implant diseases. Seven studies were included. Four studies evaluated the role of CHX in peri-implant mucositis and three in peri-implantitis. Oral prophylaxis with mechanical cleansing of implant surface prior to CHX use was carried out in all seven studies. Meta-analysis indicated that use of CHX did not improve probing depths in peri-implant mucositis (SMD= 0.11; 95% CI: -0.16 to 0.38; p=0.42, I2= 0%). Similarly, CHX did not significantly reduce probing depths in patients with peri-implantitis (MD= 1.57; 95% CI: -0.88 to 4.0; p=0.21, I2= 98%). Results on the efficacy of CHX in reducing BOP in peri-implantitis are conflicting. Results of our study indicate that adjunctive therapy with CHX may not improve outcomes with non-surgical management of peri-implant mucositis. Conclusions with regards to its role in non-surgical management of peri-implantitis cannot be drawn. There is a need for more homogenous RCTs with large sample size to define the role of CHX in non-surgical management of peri-implant mucositis and peri-implantitis

What Are the Implications of Rising Debt for Older Americans?

The share of older Americans with debt has been on the rise over the last several decades. Having debt, however, does not always signal financial fragility because debt can be used for various purposes. For example, households that take out a low-interest mortgage to buy a home, which typically appreciates in value, are likely making a savvy choice. In contrast, households that carry unpaid credit card balances could see their debt snowball, leading to financial distress. Identifying these distinctions in household debt situations is crucial to understanding the implications of the rise in debt holding among seniors.  This brief, based on a new paper, addresses three key questions: 1) As more older households carry debt in retirement, what share are at "high-risk" and "low-risk" of financial hardship? 2) Is the growth in debt holding driven by the high- or low-risk households? and 3) What are the different types of high-risk households?The answers will help policymakers determine which types of borrowers are most vulnerable and develop tailored solutions for assisting them.   The discussion proceeds as follows. The first section provides background on trends in debt holding among older Americans. The second section sorts households into high-risk and low-risk based on their debt and asset profiles, and it shows that high-risk borrowers are driving the growth in debt. The third section identifies four groups of high-risk borrowers with very different characteristics. Given the diverse situations of high-risk borrowers, the fourth section suggests some potential ways to address each group's specific needs. The final section concludes that the debt burdens of high-risk borrowers are cause for concern, but a one-size-fits-all solution does not exist, so targeted interventions would be most effective.  Click "Download" to access this resource