Case study of public engagement at Ontario nature

Successful public engagement is crucial for environmental nonprofits that rely on the public for donations, volunteer work, and advocacy. Organizations need to carefully select and administer engagement methods in order to develop enduring relationships with their publics, while balancing their costs both in time and money. This study examines the current and past practices of Ontario Nature, a thriving environmental charity, to gain insight into the complexity and ramifications of building public engagement. Relationship management theory is used as a theoretical framework for understanding the overall effectiveness of the engagement methods. The study concludes that Ontario Nature (ON) has a history of choosing its engagement methods strategically, taking expense and measured effectiveness into consideration. They have used an adaptive approach to public engagement and deliberately evolved their methods to keep pace with changing technologies. Although ON’s engagement techniques are specific to their organization and mission, smaller nonprofits could learn from their example and adopt similar techniques. Of particular note are: i) ON’s timely move to social media technologies to increase their visibility and attract new generations of community members; and ii) ON’s ongoing willingness to abandon older engagement methods that have lost some of their effectiveness in favour of newer, more germane approaches

Stoll, Amish and Old Order Mennonite Schools: A Concise History

No abstract available

Psychology Doctoral Students’ Perspectives on Addressing Spirituality and Religion with Clients: Associations with Personal Preferences and Training

Students (n = 543) in doctoral clinical and counseling psychology programs were surveyed about training experiences with regard to addressing the spiritual and religious beliefs and practices (SRBP) of their patients. About one fourth of the respondents indicated they had received no training related to patients’ SRBP. Another half had only read material on their own or discussed such issues with a supervisor. Nonetheless, respondents almost universally endorsed the idea that patients should be asked about spirituality and religiousness. Participants also rated the appropriateness of spiritual and religious queries that might be asked of patients. As expected, queries about the relevance of SRBP were rated as the most appropriate, whereas queries that implied a disrespectful or challenging tone were rated as the least appropriate. Participants’ personal SRBP and training that was specific to patients’ SRBP were weakly but significantly associated with appropriateness ratings. The results suggest that students are formulating ideas about how to ask patients about their spiritual and religious issues despite potentially inadequate formal instruction

Strongly non embeddable metric spaces

Enflo constructed a countable metric space that may not be uniformly embedded into any metric space of positive generalized roundness. Dranishnikov, Gong, Lafforgue and Yu modified Enflo's example to construct a locally finite metric space that may not be coarsely embedded into any Hilbert space. In this paper we meld these two examples into one simpler construction. The outcome is a locally finite metric space $(\mathfrak{Z}, \zeta)$ which is strongly non embeddable in the sense that it may not be embedded uniformly or coarsely into any metric space of non zero generalized roundness. Moreover, we show that both types of embedding may be obstructed by a common recursive principle. It follows from our construction that any metric space which is Lipschitz universal for all locally finite metric spaces may not be embedded uniformly or coarsely into any metric space of non zero generalized roundness. Our construction is then adapted to show that the group $\mathbb{Z}_\omega=\bigoplus_{\aleph_0}\mathbb{Z}$ admits a Cayley graph which may not be coarsely embedded into any metric space of non zero generalized roundness. Finally, for each $p \geq 0$ and each locally finite metric space $(Z,d)$, we prove the existence of a Lipschitz injection $f : Z \to \ell_{p}$.Comment: 10 page

Top-down modulation and memory deficits: Neural enhancement in the context of aging

Top-down modulation from a broader perspective suggests that some effortful control over posterior brain regions occurs. This study examined the extent to which age-related differences in top-down modulation could explain age-related memory decline. The theory of top-down modulation suggests that neural transmission during encoding requires the enhancement of relevant information and suppression of irrelevant information for efficacious neural function. Enhancement of attention to stimuli should be greater under higher task demands. In this study, we compared cortical modulation in a less effortful facial encoding task to cortical modulation in a more effortful facial encoding task. One-hundred-thirty older adults (mean age = 66.43 yrs) and 30 younger adults (mean age = 24.13 yrs) completed 2 tasks of facial encoding using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, and a computer administered test of facial recognition outside the scanning environment. Activity in the fusiform face area was extracted when participants were told to view faces in the first encoding task and remember faces in the second encoding task. An enhancement index reflected the change in neural activity in the fusiform face area moving from the view faces task to the remember faces task. As predicted, levels of neural enhancement in the fusiform face area significantly predicted older and younger adult participants’ ability to correctly discriminate between faces they had and had not previously seen. Against predictions, the level of fusiform face area enhancement did not differ between younger and older adults. Thus, differences in enhancement levels are not driving age-related differences in facial recognition discrimination ability. In functional connectivity analysis, the idea that connections between the “top” and “bottom” components of the memory encoding network were examined. Consistent with predictions, the functional connection between right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and the fusiform face area related with recognition. Taken together these data suggest that sensory enhancement is a critical component of efficacious memory encoding processes, but top-down enhancement of sensory activity does not adequately explain age-related decrement in memory performance

Chemical and sensory characterization of oat bran from experimental oat lines with varying amounts of total beta-glucan

Oat bran from experimental oat lines (Avena sativa) with increased beta-glucan content, N979-5-2-4 and IA95111, had a greater amount of total beta-glucan, water absorption and water solubility indices than bran from public oat cultivars, \u27Paul\u27 and \u27Jim,\u27 or retail oat products, Oat Bran and Old Fashioned Quick Oats (both, Quaker Oats Company); with positive correlations between total beta-glucan and water absorption index (r = 0.853), and water solubility index (r = 0.820). N979 and IA95 brans bound 99% of bile acids, and had the greatest Rapid Visco Analyser values for peak viscosity, final viscosity, trough, and breakdown. Jim produced the most gas and short-chain fatty-acids, but had the lowest pH during fermentation. By sensory evaluation, N979 and IA95 brans: (1) had larger particle sizes, less creaminess and mouth-coating in porridge; and (2) were more crumbly and gritty, but less moist and cohesive, in muffins than public cultivars

SOCIAL INCLUSION AND SPECIAL OLYMPIC UNIFIED PROGRAMMING AND THE EFFECTS ON SCHOOL CLIMATE

The purpose of this literature review is to examine how programming related to social inclusion impacts school climate. This chapter is organized into two major sections: studies that talk about inclusion interventions through programs like Special Olympics and Unified Champion Schools and the effects on students and staff within the school climate. Research in each of the two areas is chronologically ordered from older studies to more recent ones

Reliability of Auditory-Perceptual Ratings of Dysarthric Speech: Hypokinetic Dysarthria Secondary to Parkinson\u27s Disease

Perceptual judgment has been the gold standard in clinical practice, especially regarding differential diagnosis and treatment of dysarthria. Thus, it is critical to establish the reliability of perceptual ratings of the speech characteristics associated with different types of dysarthria. Despite its importance, the reliability and sensitivity of perceptual ratings of speech disturbance have been somewhat questioned. The purpose of this study was to examine the interrater reliability of ratings of perceptual characteristics and the saliency of these characteristics as related to hypokinetic dysarthria. Due to the feasibility issue, the scope of the study was limited to hypokinetic dysarthria associated with Parkinson’s disease. Eight subjects with hypokinetic dysarthia and three healthy controls were selected from a large dysarthria speech database for the study. All dysarthia subjects were diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and dysarthria. Recordings of a standard reading passage were played to 148 raters who were inexperienced undergraduate students majoring in communication sciences and disorders at Louisiana State University. Raters’ results were statistically analyzed to determine interrater reliability across 37 dimensions. The mean score value of each dimension was also calculated for the control and Parkinson group and statistically compared to determine the most salient dimensions. Results demonstrated relatively low intra-rater reliability with 52 listeners of 148 demonstrating reliability above 0.60. Interrater reliability for dimensions ranged from 0.007 to 0.730. Twenty-four dimensions were identified as salient for hypokinetic dysarthria, all of which were statistically different between the control speaker group and the PD speaker group

The Construction and Testing of a System for Flash Photochemical Studies of Organotransition Metal Compounds

The main objective of my research efforts was to construct a flash photolysis system which would enable one to carry out time-resolved studies of photoinitiated reactions of organometallic hydrides. Such a development involved two major tasks. First, it required establishing a functioning vacuum line. Organometallic complexes are extremely sensitive to oxygen and water. Therefore these contaminants must be removed if one is to have any success in studying their reactions. A vacuum line is the most efficient means for degassing both solvent and solute Second, it involved modifying our flash photolysis apparatus. Changes in the flash rig included upgrading the micropulser from 100 to 400 joules, modifying the design of the flash housing and incorporating an amplifier circuit into the detector system. Before embarking on original research, we felt it was necessary to test the effectiveness of our newly modified equipment. Therefore, we sought to reproduce the findings of other flash photolysis investigations. Replication of the literature would be a good indication of a properly functioning system