Improving Parent/Guardian Awareness of Kindergarten Entry Health Requirements

Ensuring students meet health requirements to enter Kindergarten is a time-consuming process. By improving education to parents to help them discern differences between PreK and Kindergarten requirements, the health of students can be optimized and the time burden for administrators and school nurses can be reduced. There is evidence that parents/guardians better respond to non-written material delivered through push notification or email. A 5-minute video presentation was distributed to 24 parents/guardians of PreK students. Project impact was measured through a pre/post survey evaluating levels of confidence in child readiness for Kindergarten. Results identified that parent/guardian confidence was increased after education. Further research is required regarding sample size and population setting. Education delivered in a non-written format may improve parent/guardian knowledge of Kindergarten health entry requirements

Generation of wavelength tunable optical pulses with SMSR exceeding 50 dB by self-seeding a gain-switched source containing two FP lasers

In this letter, we show the generation of shorter pulses (∼20 ps) that exhibit side mode suppression ratios (SMSR's) greater than 50 dB and wider tuning range (48.91 nm). Our technique is based on the self-seeding of a gain-switched source containing two FP lasers

Gardens and birdwatching: recreation, environmental management and human-nature interaction in an everyday location

Private, domestic gardens are important both as sites for leisure and as sites of conservation interest. Birdwatching is an important leisure activity, yet there appear to be no previous studies that combine these two themes of importance to the understanding of managed garden spaces. Semi-structured interviews were held with birdwatchers as part of a larger study of the interactions between local places and birdwatching. Respondents revealed a wide and disparate spectrum of responses to their gardens and to how they made use of their gardens in their normal birdwatching activities. The study raises questions about the extent to which gardens are viewed as sites for interactions with nature and raises challenges about the use of gardens as areas of conservation action

Role of the Digestive Gland in Ink Production in Four Species of Sea Hares: An Ultrastructural Comparison

The ultrastructure of the digestive gland of several sea hare species that produce different colored ink (Aplysia californica produces purple ink, A. juliana white ink, A. parvula both white and purple ink, while Dolabrifera dolabrifera produces no ink at all) was compared to determine the digestive gland’s role in the diet-derived ink production process. Rhodoplast digestive cells and their digestive vacuoles, the site of digestion of red algal chloroplast (i.e., rhodoplast) in A. californica, were present and had a similar ultrastructure in all four species. Rhodoplast digestive cell vacuoles either contained a whole rhodoplast or fragments of one or were empty. These results suggest that the inability to produce colored ink in some sea hare species is not due to either an absence of appropriate digestive machinery, that is, rhodoplast digestive cells, or an apparent failure of rhodoplast digestive cells to function. These results also propose that the digestive gland structure described herein occurred early in sea hare evolution, at least in the common ancestor to the genera Aplysia and Dolabrifera. Our data, however, do not support the hypothesis that the loss of purple inking is a synapomorphy of the white-ink-producing subgenus Aplysia

The Emergence of Gated Communities in Ghana and their Implications on Urban Planning and Management

Over the past few decades, gated communities have emerged as global commodity increasingly gaining patronage. In Sub-Sahara Africa, the city of Accra is fast recording the emergence of these communities. The research therefore examined the implications of the rising phenomenon in urban planning and management. By adopting a mixture of snow ball, simple random and purposive sampling and a face to face interview technique, the research accessed empirical data from planning institutions and households selected from three gated communities in the capital city of Accra. It was found that, gated communities in the capital have relatively good infrastructural facilities and services, the provision of which the real estate developers played a major role. However, a spatial policy gap on gated communities was identified in addition to missing legislative framework and low level of awareness on the part of planning institutions regarding the existence of some gated communities in the capital. In ensuring effective planning and management of gated communities in the urban arena as well as situating their occurrence within a broader spatial and socio-economic development of the country, the research concludes that, formulation of spatial policy and legislative framework and strengthening of planning institutions are requisite. Keywords: gated communities, urban planning, urban managemen

X-Ray fluorescence analysis of feldspars and silicate glass: effects of melting time on fused bead consistency and volatilisation

Reproducible preparation of lithium tetraborate fused beads for XRF analysis of glass and mineral samples is of paramount importance for analytical repeatability. However, as with all glass melting processes, losses due to volatilization must be taken into account and their effects are not negligible. Here the effects of fused bead melting time have been studied for four Certified Reference Materials (CRM’s-three feldspars, one silicate glass), in terms of their effects on analytical variability and volatilization losses arising from fused bead preparation. At melting temperatures of 1065 °C, and for feldspar samples, fused bead melting times shorter than approximately 25 minutes generally gave rise to greater deviation of XRF-analyzed composition from certified composition. This variation might be due to incomplete fusion and / or fused bead inhomogeneity but further research is needed. In contrast, the shortest fused bead melting time for the silicate glass CRM gave an XRF-analyzed composition closer to the certified values than longer melting times. This may suggest a faster rate of glass-in-glass dissolution and homogenization during fused bead preparation. For all samples, longer melting times gave rise to greater volatilization losses (including sulphates and halides) during fusion. This was demonstrated by a linear relationship between SO3 mass loss and time1/2, as predicted by a simple diffusion-based model. Iodine volatilization displays a more complex relationship, suggestive of diffusion plus additional mechanisms. This conclusion may have implications for vitrification of iodine-bearing radioactive wastes. Our research demonstrates that the nature of the sample material impacts on the most appropriate fusion times. For feldspars no less than ~25 min and no more than ~60 min of fusion at 1065 °C, using Li2B4O7 as the fusion medium and in the context of feldspar samples and the automatic fusion equipment used here, strikes an acceptable (albeit non-ideal) balance between the competing factors of fused bead quality, analytical consistency and mitigating volatilization losses. Conversely, for the silicate glass sample, shorter fusion times of less than ~30 minutes under the same conditions provided more accurate analyses whilst limiting volatile losses