Symposium: The Americans with Disabilities Act - Introductory Comments

Each of the articles included in this symposium summarizes the ADA and details the particular provisions of the Act which pertain to its thesis. Therefore, I will only briefly outline the Act\u27s major provisions and implications for the purposes of this introductory discussion

Symposium: The Americans with Disabilities Act - Introductory Comments

Each of the articles included in this symposium summarizes the ADA and details the particular provisions of the Act which pertain to its thesis. Therefore, I will only briefly outline the Act\u27s major provisions and implications for the purposes of this introductory discussion

"Born out of Crisis": an analysis of moorland management agreements on Exmoor; final report

The designation of Exmoor National Park in 1954 recognised the importance of the open character of much of the area and, in particular, its moorland to that natural heritage of the UK. However, the moorland that the park was charged with maintaining and enhancing was soon under threat and the following years saw extensive moorland loss and the fragmentation of remaining moorland (Lowe et al, 1986). The ensuing moorland conflict and debate eventually lead Exmoor NPA, in collaboration with farmers, land owners, the CLA and NFU to pioneer a new system of moorland management agreements. Indeed, for a short time, Exmoor was the only location operating wholly voluntary management agreements (Brotherton, 1990). Only two agreements now remain and in the twenty-five years since their inception much has changed. Once castigated for their "theft of the countryside" (Shoard, 1980), many farmers now work in partnership with statutory and non-statutory organisations as 'stewards' of the countryside. The purpose of this chapter is to review the policy and economic changes affecting farming over this time and to review the development of Exmoor moorland management agreements.Land Economics/Use, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Professional Development-Key to Retention of Rural Principals?

Building principals wear many hats, not the least of which is instructional leader. Leading curriculum, instruction and school improvement efforts can be overwhelming to leaders who must also tend to the management and operational demands of the job. Rural leaders are often expected to assume even greater responsibilities with considerably less support. Although expected to design and provide professional development for others, insufficient time and funding often prevent the leader from engaging in his/her own learning and growth.This article describes the efforts of one university to provide relevant, low-or-no-costprofessional development opportunities as a service to building leaders and the schools they serve, to provide networking opportunities to reduce isolation and burnout among rural leaders, and to provide a structure for school and district teams to collaborate with one another about best practices for school improvement

A Model for Star Formation, Gas Flows and Chemical Evolution in Galaxies at High Redshifts

Motivated by the increasing use of the Kennicutt-Schmidt (K-S) star formation law to interpret observations of high redshift galaxies, the importance of gas accretion to galaxy formation, and the recent observations of chemical abundances in galaxies at z~2-3, I use simple analytical models to assess the consistency of these processes of galaxy evolution with observations and with each other. I derive the time dependence of star formation implied by the K-S law, and show that the sustained high star formation rates observed in galaxies at z~2-3 require the accretion of additional gas. A model in which the gas accretion rate is approximately equal to the combined star formation and outflow rates broadly reproduces the observed trends of star formation rate with galaxy age. Using an analytical description of chemical evolution, I also show that this model, further constrained to have an outflow rate roughly equal to the star formation rate, reproduces the observed mass-metallicity relation at z~2.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap

Bias in culture-independent assessments of microbial biodiversity in the global ocean

On the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequencing, the SAR11 clade of marine bacteria has almost universal distribution, being detected as abundant sequences in all marine provinces. Yet SAR11 sequences are rarely detected in fosmid libraries, suggesting that the widespread abundance may be an artefact of PCR cloning and that SAR 11 has a relatively low abundance. Here the relative abundance of SAR11 is explored in both a fosmid library and a metagenomic sequence data set from the same biological community taken from fjord surface water from Bergen, Norway. Pyrosequenced data and 16S clone data confirmed an 11-15% relative abundance of SAR11 within the community. In contrast not a single SAR11 fosmid was identified in a pooled shotgun sequenced data set of 100 fosmid clones. This under-representation was evidenced by comparative abundances of SAR11 sequences assessed by taxonomic annotation; functional metabolic profiling and fragment recruitment. Analysis revealed a similar under-representation of low-GC Flavobacteriaceae. We speculate that the fosmid bias may be due to DNA fragmentation during preparation due to the low GC content of SAR11 sequences and other underrepresented taxa. This study suggests that while fosmid libraries can be extremely useful, caution must be used when directly inferring community composition from metagenomic fosmid libraries

Fidelity in complex behaviour change interventions : a standardised approach to evaluate intervention integrity

Objectives: The aim of this study was to (1) demonstrate the development and testing of tools and procedures designed to monitor and assess the integrity of a complex intervention for chronic pain (COping with persistent Pain, Effectiveness Research into Self-management (COPERS) course); and (2) make recommendations based on our experiences. Design: Fidelity assessment of a two-arm randomised controlled trial intervention, assessing the adherence and competence of the facilitators delivering the intervention. Setting: The intervention was delivered in the community in two centres in the UK: one inner city and one a mix of rural and urban locations. Participants: 403 people with chronic musculoskeletal pain were enrolled in the intervention arm and 300 attended the self-management course. Thirty lay and healthcare professionals were trained and 24 delivered the courses (2 per course). We ran 31 courses for up to 16 people per course and all were audio recorded. Interventions: The course was run over three and a half days; facilitators delivered a semistructured manualised course. Outcomes: We designed three measures to evaluate fidelity assessing adherence to the manual, competence and overall impression. Results: We evaluated a random sample of four components from each course (n=122). The evaluation forms were reliable and had good face validity. There were high levels of adherence in the delivery: overall adherence was two (maximum 2, IQR 1.67–2.00), facilitator competence exhibited more variability, and overall competence was 1.5 (maximum 2, IQR 1.25–2.00). Overall impression was three (maximum 4, IQR 2.00–3.00). Conclusions: Monitoring and assessing adherence and competence at the point of intervention delivery can be realised most efficiently by embedding the principles of fidelity measurement within the design stage of complex interventions and the training and assessment of those delivering the intervention. More work is necessary to ensure that more robust systems of fidelity evaluation accompany the growth of complex interventions