Examination of the effectiveness of a one-week camp on social interaction for youth with an Autism Spectrum Disorder

Background. Persons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) each have unique abilities and limitations, but all experience challenges interacting with others. Most studies examining intervention approaches to improve social interaction for children with ASD occur in artificial contexts and for short sessions over an extended period of time. Furthermore, effectiveness of intervention typically measures a child’s social competence by parent report (Reichow, Steiner & Volkmar, 2013; Case-Smith & Arbesman, 2008). Purpose. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an intense one-week, natural camp designed to promote the quality of social interaction for 15 children with ASD. Methods. I measured change using the Evaluation of Social Interaction (ESI) (Fisher & Griswold, 2014), an objective measure of social interaction, based on observation in natural context before and after the camp. During camp, I observed activities and counselor strategies to support social interaction. Participants were observed twice before camp, to establish a baseline, and once after camp. Once all data was collected, I compared the ESI measures to the standard error for each evaluation to compare the change in quality of social interaction for each participant (Harvill, 1991). I also compared the difference of the means for the three times using t-tests. Results. There was no significant change between time 1 and 2 for any participants (t = .000; df 14; p≤ 1.000), establishing a baseline, but there was a significant difference between times 2 and 3 (t =-4.121, df = 14; p≤ = .001). Furthermore, participants with lower functioning ASD, demonstrated no difference between times 2 and 3 (t=-.752, df= 5, p≤ .486) while campers with higher functioning ASD did demonstrate a significant improvement between times 2 and 3 (t= -10.000, df = 8, p≤ .000). Camp activities and counselor strategies are presented as descriptive data, and modeling and cueing were strategies used predominately. Implications. The results of this study support the value of occupation-based intervention in a short period of time to influence the quality of social interaction in a natural context post intervention

Nurses Alumni Association Bulletin, Fall 1984

Alumni Calendar 2 Officers and Committee Chairmen The President\u27s Message Treasurer\u27s Report Nurses\u27 Relief Fund Scholarship Fund By-Laws Letter Computer Education : Teaching Students the New Way Life of Service Twenty Ways to Kill an Organization Keeping the Jeff Spirit Alive Do You Remember? Fiftieth Anniversary The Best Medicine Happy Birthday Down Memory Lane On the Lighter Side Pavilion Renovations are Complete Resume of Minutes of Alumni Association Meetings Committee Reports Social Scholarship Sick & Welfare Satellite Alumni Office News Finance Marguerite Barnett Memorial Student Loan Fund In Memoriam, Names of Deceased Graduates Luncheon Photos Class Notes History of the Jefferson Cap Alumni Special Award Goes to Doris Bowman Caps, Pins, Transcripts, Class Address Lists Change of Address Form Relief Fund Application Scholarship Fund Application Notice, Alumni Luncheo

LEAF (Learning from and Engaging with Assessment and Feedback) Final project report

The LEAF (Learning from and Engaging with Assessment and Feedback) project was funded under the Teaching Fellowship in TU Dublin, city campus for 18 months beginning in January 2018. The project team comprised 18 academics from across the TU Dublin - City Campus and there are representatives from all colleges. Also included were two further members who represented the student voice: the Director of Student Affairs and the Students’ Union Education Officer. This project sought to address a key issue in third level Teaching and Learning, that of assessment and assessment feedback. Assessment strategies have been shown to have a large impact on shaping how students learn and how they develop key employability skills. Learning from best practice nationally and internationally, and research from staff, students and quality documents, this project has developed a set of recommendations which will enhance practices in, and experiences of, assessments and feedback in TU Dublin

DSM-5 insomnia disorder in pregnancy: associations with depression, suicidal ideation, and cognitive and somatic arousal, and identifying clinical cutoffs for detection

STUDY OBJECTIVES: The study had three primary goals. First, we estimated survey-assessed DSM-5 insomnia disorder rates in pregnancy, and described associated sociodemographics, and sleep-wake and mental health symptoms. Second, we derived cutoffs for detecting DSM-5 insomnia disorder using common self-report measures of sleep symptoms. Third, we identified clinically relevant cut-points on measures of nocturnal cognitive and somatic arousal. METHODS: Ninety-nine women (85.9% in the 2nd trimester) completed online surveys including DSM-5 insomnia disorder criteria, the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), Presleep Arousal Scale’s Cognitive (PSASC) and Somatic (PSASS) factors, and Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale. RESULTS: DSM-5 insomnia disorder rate was 19.2%. Insomnia was associated with depression, suicidality, nocturnal cognitive and somatic arousal, and daytime sleepiness. An ISI scoring method that aligns with DSM-5 criteria yielded excellent metrics for detecting insomnia disorder and good sleep. Regarding quantitative cutoffs, ISI ≥ 10 and ISI ≥ 11 (but not ISI ≥ 15) were supported for detecting DSM-5 insomnia, whereas ISI ≤ 7 and ISI ≤ 9 performed well for detecting good sleep. PSQI cutoff of 5 was supported for detecting insomnia and good sleep. The optimal cutoff for nocturnal cognitive arousal was PSASC ≥ 18, whereas the optimal cutoff for somatic arousal was PSASS ≥ 13. CONCLUSIONS: Insomnia disorder affects a large segment of pregnant women. Empirically derived cutoffs for insomnia, good sleep, cognitive arousal, and somatic arousal may inform case identification and future perinatal sleep research methodology

Global Carbon Budget 2022

Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO$_2$) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere in a changing climate is critical to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the development of climate policies, and project future climate change. Here we describe and synthesize data sets and methodologies to quantify the five major components of the global carbon budget and their uncertainties. Fossil CO$_2$ emissions (E$_{FOS}$) are based on energy statistics and cement production data, while emissions from land-use change (E$_{LUC}$), mainly deforestation, are based on land use and land-use change data and bookkeeping models. Atmospheric CO$_2$ concentration is measured directly, and its growth rate (G$_{ATM}$) is computed from the annual changes in concentration. The ocean CO$_2$ sink (S$_{OCEAN}$) is estimated with global ocean biogeochemistry models and observation-based data products. The terrestrial CO$_2$ sink (S$_{LAND}$) is estimated with dynamic global vegetation models. The resulting carbon budget imbalance (B$_{IM}$), the difference between the estimated total emissions and the estimated changes in the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere, is a measure of imperfect data and understanding of the contemporary carbon cycle. All uncertainties are reported as ±1σ. For the year 2021, E$_{FOS}$ increased by 5.1 % relative to 2020, with fossil emissions at 10.1 ± 0.5 GtC yr$^{−1}$ (9.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr$^{−1}$ when the cement carbonation sink is included), and E$_{LUC}$ was 1.1 ± 0.7 GtC yr$^{−1}$, for a total anthropogenic CO$_2$ emission (including the cement carbonation sink) of 10.9 ± 0.8 GtC yr$^{−1}$ (40.0 ± 2.9 GtCO$_2$). Also, for 2021, G$_{ATM}$ was 5.2 ± 0.2 GtC yr$^{−1}$ (2.5 ± 0.1 ppm yr$^{−1}$), S$_{OCEAN}$ was 2.9  ± 0.4 GtC yr$^{−1}$, and S$_{LAND}$ was 3.5 ± 0.9 GtC yr$^{−1}$, with a B$_{IM}$ of −0.6 GtC yr$^{−1}$ (i.e. the total estimated sources were too low or sinks were too high). The global atmospheric CO$_2$ concentration averaged over 2021 reached 414.71 ± 0.1 ppm. Preliminary data for 2022 suggest an increase in E$_{FOS}$ relative to 2021 of +1.0 % (0.1 % to 1.9 %) globally and atmospheric CO$_2$ concentration reaching 417.2 ppm, more than 50 % above pre-industrial levels (around 278 ppm). Overall, the mean and trend in the components of the global carbon budget are consistently estimated over the period 1959–2021, but discrepancies of up to 1 GtC yr$^{−1}$ persist for the representation of annual to semi-decadal variability in CO$_2$ fluxes. Comparison of estimates from multiple approaches and observations shows (1) a persistent large uncertainty in the estimate of land-use change emissions, (2) a low agreement between the different methods on the magnitude of the land CO$_2$ flux in the northern extratropics, and (3) a discrepancy between the different methods on the strength of the ocean sink over the last decade. This living data update documents changes in the methods and data sets used in this new global carbon budget and the progress in understanding of the global carbon cycle compared with previous publications of this data set. The data presented in this work are available at https://doi.org/10.18160/GCP-2022 (Friedlingstein et al., 2022b)

Crime and the criminal poetics of the Victorian Era

From the notorious working-class crime ballads to the innovative dramatic monologues of high poetry, Victorian poets developed aesthetic strategies for voicing crime. Poets, ranging from anonymous balladeers to established male poets to a growing cadre of women poets, built a poetics of crime upon the aesthetic and cultural resonance of violence and transgression. This project analyzes the criminal narratives and voices of specific poems as textual experiments which exploit and interrogate the nineteenth century\u27s growing discourse of criminology in its legal, scientific, and popular manifestations. Such an approach to Victorian poetry responds to recent calls to investigate the cultural politics of Victorian poetry while moving explorations of transgression, so popular in novel studies, into poetic studies. At the same time, the examination of low and high, men\u27s and women\u27s, and canonical and non-canonical verse reveals hitherto unacknowledged political and poetic dialogue between authors of various backgrounds. Chapters explore the voices of witnesses, criminal, and victims in order to trace the formal and political innovations which developed out of poetry\u27s interest in crime. This criminal poetics allowed poets to interrogate Victorian criminal politics while expanding the realm of poetic vision to the crimes and guilt of modern society and transforming poetry itself into a domain of transgression.