Written Corrective Feedback and Its Effects on English Department Students' Writing Drafts

This thesis investigates the teacher's Written Corrective Feedback (WCF) strategies used in the students' writing drafts and the effects analyzed from the comparison between the first and final drafts. It consists of fifty eight students' writing drafts as the source of data limited to language use (LU) and vocabulary. The theories applied were the WCF strategies by Ellis (2009a); the effects of written feedback to students by Hyland (2003), and supported by Ferris (2006). The qualitative approach was used in this study. The finding revealed that the strategies used in the class were Direct CF (430 times), and Indirect CF (329 times). The effects were Error corrected, Incorrect change, No change, and Deleted text. Moreover, it was revealed that LU problem was more noticed by the students to be corrected. In conclusion, WCF can guide the students to be more aware of their mistakes and to improve their writing

Prevalence and Risk Factors for Presumptive Ascending/Descending Myelomalacia in Dogs after Thoracolumbar Intervertebral Disk Herniation

Background: Ascending/descending myelomalacia (ADMM) is a severe complication of thoracolumbar intervertebral disk herniation (TL-IVDH) in dogs. Hypothesis/Objectives: To investigate the prevalence and risk factors for ADMM in nonambulatory dogs with surgically treated TL-IVDH. Animals: Six-hundred and fifty-two client-owned dogs evaluated for TL-IVDH that underwent decompressive spinal surgery. Methods: Retrospective medical record review from February 2007 through December 2015. Results: Thirteen dogs developed ADMM, with an overall prevalence of 2.0%. The prevalence of ADMM was 0% in dogs with neurological signs graded 1 or 2 at admission or before magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or surgical procedures, 0.6% in dogs with neurological signs graded 3, 2.7% in dogs with neurological signs graded 4, and 14.5% in dogs with neu- rological signs graded 5. Age (4.57 were significant risk factors in the univariate analysis for development of ADMM. Conclusions and Clinical Importance: The factors identified in this study may be useful for the prediction of ADMM. Multicenter studies with a higher number of dogs with ADMM are required to confirm these data

Compact Radio Sources within 30" of Sgr A*: Proper Motions, Stellar Winds and the Accretion Rate onto Sgr A*

Recent broad-band 34 and 44 GHz radio continuum observations of the Galactic center have revealed 41 massive stars identified with near-IR counterparts, as well as 44 proplyd candidates within 30" of Sgr A*. Radio observations obtained in 2011 and 2014 have been used to derive proper motions of eight young stars near Sgr A*. The accuracy of proper motion estimates based on near-IR observations by Lu et al. and Paumard et al. have been investigated by using their proper motions to predict the 2014 epoch positions of near-IR stars and comparing the predicted positions with those of radio counterparts in the 2014 radio observations. Predicted positions from Lu et al. show an rms scatter of 6 mas relative to the radio positions, while those from Paumard et al. show rms residuals of 20 mas, which is mainly due to uncertainties in the IR-based proper motions. Under the assumption of homogeneous ionized winds, we also determine the mass-loss rates of 11 radio stars, finding rates that are on average $\sim$2 times smaller than those determined from model atmosphere calculations and near-IR data. Clumpiness of ionized winds would reduce the mass loss rate of WR and O stars by additional factors of 3 and 10, respectively. One important implication of this is a reduction in the expected mass accretion rate onto Sgr A* from stellar winds by nearly an order of magnitude to a value of few$\times10^{-7}$ \msol\ yr$^{-1}$. Finally, we present the positions of 318 compact 34.5 GHz radio sources within 30\arcs\ of Sgr A*. At least 45 of these have stellar counterparts in the near-IR $K_s$ (2.18 $\mu$m) and $L'$ (3.8$\mu$m) bands.Comment: 30 pages, 4 figures, ApJ (in press