A Book Club\u27s Impact on Parent Support of Adolescent Reading

Purpose The purpose of this study, then, is to investigate, both before and after intervention, parents\u27 perceptions of their abilities to impact their children\u27s literacy attitudes and activities. The intervention will take the form of a book club conducted by the researcher with parents. This book club will include discussions on current authors and books for adolescents, as well as demonstrations of literacy activities parents can incorporate into their daily lives. The following research questions will be addressed. First, how do parents perceive their abilities to support their sixth grade students in the area of reading? Second, what happens to these perceptions when parents participate in a parent book club and how does this effect home literacy activities? Procedures I will design each meeting\u27s discussions and demonstrations based on parent reports of student interest, and current literature and research regarding appropriate literacy activities for adolescent students. Parents and I will meet once per week for five weeks. Each meeting will be approximately one hour long. During this time parents will participate in direct instruction, open discussion, role playing opportunities, and exploration of book recommendations. In order to assess my research questions, I will administer a qualitative survey at two points during the book club; one at the beginning, and one at the midpoint. I will also administer a phone interview one week after the end of the book club. Throughout this process, I plan to keep a teacher journal in which I will record any observations during book club meetings. Through this study, I hope to arm parents with information about activities, authors, and books that will help them support their adolescent readers. I hope to share my findings with my school colleagues, administrators, and other parents

Material characterisation, testing, and modelling of finite element analysis of impact structures

Formula One race cars have to pass rigorous safety tests before they are allowed on track. This type of testing has been in place for years but the requirements for testing are continually increasing in order to reduce the amount of risk to the drivers’ safety during a race. The number of structures that need to be made and tested can quickly make this process an expensive one. Additionally, it is necessary to pass the mandated tests within a reasonable amount of time so as not to have an impact on the development on the rest of the car. There is a desire to reduce the number of structures needed for testing through finite element analysis (FEA), and as such, to reduce the time needed to pass the safety tests. FEA of laminated composites can be complex and is a balance between accuracy and the time it takes to find a solution. The current project looks into increasing understanding of the requirements for material characterisation, experimental impact testing, and explicit simulation of a carbon fibre fabric pre-impregnated with epoxy resin. Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix (MGP) Formula One Team has provided a pre-preg material for evaluation. Material experiments were performed per the American Society for Materials and Testing (ASTM) in order to find the tensile modulus, tensile strength, Poisson’s ratio, compressive strength, shear modulus, and shear strength of the material. Nine tubes were manufactured at MGP and tested in the drop tower at the Cranfield Impact Centre (CIC) ... [cont.]

Why is That Girl Scared?: Infants' Understanding of Older Children's Emotions

In the wake of growing interest in the development of very young children's intention, desire, and emotion understanding, the issue of children's competencies in their peer interactions has been largely ignored. Social referencing studies have suggested that by 12 months of age infants have the ability to use emotion-laden information provided by an adult to modify their behavior toward a strange or novel object. In this study, a social referencing paradigm was employed to examine whether 12- , 18-, and 24-month-old children can use an older child's positive and negative expressions towards one toy (but not toward a distracter toy) to direct their own behavior toward or away from that toy. Results indicated that when presented with an older child's affect towards a novel toy 12-month-old children performed randomly while 18-month-old children reduced their touch to the target toy in the negative condition only. Twenty-four-month-old children increased their touch to both toys regardless of the direction of the affect that they viewed. The results suggest that the developmental course of understanding and utilizing older children's emotions differs substantially from the ability to glean and use emotion information provided by adults

Circulation Changes in the Arctic Ocean and Subarctic Seas and Their Connections to the Global Ocean and Climate

Salinity and freshwater fluxes are important tools for monitoring the amount of freshwater entering and exiting the Arctic Ocean. Satellite-derived salinity provides a way to study surface advective freshwater fluxes; however, sea ice contamination, among others, remains an obstacle in the accuracy and reliability of these measurements. In this study, salinity and surface freshwater fluxes are calculated using NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) and the ESA’s Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS), Argo, and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast’s Ocean Reanalysis version 4 (ORAS4). ORAS4 compares well to Argo in the subarctic seas and is used for comparison to the satellites in the Bering Strait and Barents Sea Opening (BSO). There is agreement between satellites and ORAS4 on average and variability of freshwater fluxes in the Bering Strait, demonstrating the potential satellites have to study these fluxes in lower latitude subarctic regions with high freshwater variability. In the BSO, however, the satellites were not able to capture similar fluxes as ORAS4, indicating the need to improve satellitederived salinity in polar regions. This finding is increasingly important as the Arctic changes and more accurate, widespread data are needed. Satellites and models are used to examine decadal changes in the Arctic Ocean and subarctic seas. Salinity has undergone one of the most significant changes, as there is a juxtaposition of trends, with the Canada Basin freshening, and many other seas undergoing salinification. This is caused by decreasing sea ice, and a shift toward an anticyclonic atmospheric circulation regime over the Arctic, which alters riverine flow, freshwater output, and Beaufort Gyre strength. Increasing ocean temperatures across the Arctic Ocean and most significantly, the subarctic Atlantic region, are also found. This likely contributed to thermal expansion which, in addition to ice sheet loss, has caused increasing sea level anomalies across the Arctic and subarctic regions. The warming and salinification in the subarctic Atlantic and Barents Sea may be due to an increased proportion of Atlantic waters in the region, owing to the shift to a more anticyclonic circulation regime in the late 1990s

The Power Of Play In Early Childhood Education

This literature review synthesizes research on how early childhood classrooms use play as a learning tool for students. The review of literature examines different types of play and how children develop in relation to play. Play in the classroom is often viewed as a reward for completing schoolwork, but in preschool classrooms and beyond, play offers a wide variety of learning opportunities and aids in the development of new skills. This literature review uses scholarly articles and journals to examine the different types of early childhood play in the classroom and how children develop in relation to being able to play. Research published within the last ten years on the topic of play in the classroom reveals evidence that children are in fact learning while participating in play

Does Emotional Intelligence have a “Dark” Side? A Review of the Literature

Emotional intelligence (EI) was once touted as the ‘panacea’ for a satisfying and successful life. Consequently, there has been much emphasis on developing interventions to promote this personal resource in applied settings. Despite this, a growing body of research has begun to identify particular contexts when EI does not appear helpful and may even be deleterious to a person, or those they have contact with, suggesting a ‘dark’ side to the construct. This paper provides a review of emergent literature to examine when, why and how trait and ability EI may contribute to negative intrapersonal (psychological ill-health; stress reactivity) and interpersonal outcomes (emotional manipulation; antisocial behaviour). Negative effects were found to operate across multiple contexts (health, academic, occupational) however these were often indirect, suggesting that outcomes depend on pre-existing qualities of the person. Literature also points to the possibility of ‘optimal’ levels of EI – both within and across EI constructs. Uneven profiles of self-perceptions (trait facets) or actual emotional skills contribute to poorer outcomes, particularly emotional awareness and management. Moreover, individuals who possess high levels of skill but have lower self-perceptions of their abilities fare worse that those with more balanced profiles. Future research must now improve methodological and statistical practices to better capture EI in context and the negative corollary associated with high levels

The best wildflowers for wild bees

Governmental agri-environment schemes (AES) aim to improve pollinator abundance and diversity on farmland by sowing wildflower seed mixes. These often contain high proportions of Fabaceae, particularly Trifolium (clovers), which are attractive to some bumblebee species, but not to most of the ~ 240 solitary bee species in the UK. Here we identify wildflowers that are attractive to a greater range of wild bee species. Forty-five wildflower species being farmed for commercial seed production on a single farm were surveyed for native bees. Bee walks were conducted through discrete wildflower areas from April until August in 2018. The results indicate that including a range of Apiaceae, Asteraceae, and Geraniaceae in seed mixes would cater for a wide diversity of bee species. A total of 14 wildflower species across nine families attracted 37 out of the 40 bee species recorded on the farm, and accounted for 99.7% of all visitations. Only two of these 14 species are included in current AES pollinator mixes. Unexpectedly, few visits were made by bumblebees to Trifolium spp. (0.5%), despite their being considered an important food source for bumblebees, while Anthyllis vulneraria and Geranium pratense were highly attractive. For solitary bees, Crepis capillaris, Sinapsis arvensis, Convolvulus arvensis and Chaerophyllum temulum were amongst the best performing species, none of which are usually included in sown flower mixes. We suggest that the standard ‘pollinator’ mixes used in AES might be updated to include some of these wildflower species, and trialled as seed mixes on farmland

Comparison of Deer Repellents Applied to Azaleas and Pansies

The effectiveness of commercially-available repellents in reducing browse by white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) was assessed on two varieties of azaleas (Rhododendron spp.)and one variety of pansies (Viola tricolor var. hortensis). Repellents examined included Plantskydd™ (liquid, granular), Deer Stopper™, Milorganite™, and Repels-All™. Evergreen azaleas in 15-gallon containers were observed during 3 trial seasons in October –May, 2012 –2015. During each trial, individual plants were treated with the maximum recommended level of each repellent, or no repellent, or no repellent with a wire cage to serve as a positive control. At the end of each trial, leaves were stripped from azaleas, dried and weighed to determine level of browsing. While differences (P \u3c .05) in leaf weight were evident across seasons, no differences (P \u3e.05) could be attributed to any repellent. Repellents (except Milorganite™) were tested on pansies from November –December 2018. Percentage of browsing of plants was determined by visual observation every 7 to 10 days. The control and some treated plants were browsed initially. Virtually all plants, treated or not treated, were extensively damaged by deer browsing within 40 days. Thus, no repellent was found to be100% effective at reducing deer browsing damage in this study

Can novel seed mixes provide a more diverse, abundant, earlier, and longer-lasting floral resource for bees than current mixes?

Several agri-environment schemes aim to improve pollinator diversity and abundance, including the sowing of wildflower areas. These seed mixes are often either low in floral diversity and target few pollinator species (mainly social bees), or high in floral diversity but with limited evidence of good establishment of the component species. In order to support a greater diversity of wild bees in farmland, we need more diverse seed mixes, containing species shown to support a wide diversity of insect pollinators, with good establishment and long flowering periods. Here we trialled two typical seed mixes, a low-diversity Fabaceae-heavy mix (FAB) and a more diverse wildflower mix (WF), against two novel wildflower mixes, one based on literature sources (LT), and one based on first-hand surveys of pollinator attraction to flowers growing on a wildflower farm (WB). Both new mixes were focussed on plants attractive to wild bee species. Replicated field plots were set up on two farms and monitored over three years. Our novel wildflower mixes had higher floral diversity and abundance than the FAB mix, and began flowering earlier, reaching their floral peak before the FAB mix, potentially providing forage for a broader range of pollinators or those with earlier flight seasons. The high floral abundance in LT and WB was driven by annuals in the first year, and then multiple perennials in the second and third year. We identified five perennials from four families (Daucus carota, Leucanthemum vulgare, Geranium pyrenaicum, Lotus corniculatus and Trifolium hybridum) that established well on both farms, are known to be attractive to a diversity of bee species, and thus could be considered as providing a more taxonomically diverse base for creating future mixes. However, the mixes provided few floral resources in April (needed by early-flying wild bees), and more research is required in this area