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Food supply ; Farm produce

Leveraging University-School District Research Partnerships: Exploring the Longitudinal Effects of an Early Kindergarten Transition Program

With increasingly tight budgets, many public school districts lack research personnel to evaluate program efficacy or investigate best practices that raise student achievement. We highlight an example of a successful university-district partnership that offers district-driven research support while providing opportunities for practitioner-scholars to learn first-hand how to perform rigorous evaluation work. This article details the Early Kindergarten Transition program evaluation study conducted by a university-district partnership as well as testimony from district leadership on the utility of the research deliverables and long-term benefits of the research collaboration

Managing the implementation of management structure changes at the Eastern Cape Department of Education

The Eastern Cape Department of Education has been in the forefront of the media – mostly for the wrong reasons. The major problems that have been reported range from the mismanagement of the feeding schemes, unpaid service providers, lack of adequate infrastructure, corruption committed by the officials, unfilled posts, poor service delivery and the second lowest matriculation pass rate in the country. Although there are many problems, as stated, this study research is focused on the management of change and its implementation in the organisational structure

Impact of Culturally Responsive Teaching Workshop on Preservice Teachers: How to Teach Columbus from Multiple Perspectives

This qualitative case study examines the impact of a workshop on culturally responsive teaching on preservice elementary teacher candidates’ ability to conceptualize and apply culturally responsive instruction. The Rethinking Columbus workshop teaches students to read critically as text detectives, asking questions such as Whose voices are being heard and whose are not and what are the hidden messages in the text and illustrations Overall it appears that preservice teachers who participated in the workshop were able to generate numerous culturally relevant instructional strategies that directly aligned with the conceptual framework presented in the workshop. Students were also able to extend their learning by creating new and innovative strategies to engage elementary students in learning that were not discussed during the workshop. This paper describes the workshop model for teaching preservice teachers to be culturally responsive educators and includes numerous participant-generated examples of how to teach with a culturally responsive lens

Novel Color Transparency Effect: Scanning the Wave Function of Vector Mesons

We demonstrate how the virtual photoproduction of vector mesons on nuclei scans the wave function of vector mesons from the large non-perturbative transverse size $\rho \sim R_{V}$ down to the small perturbative size $\rho \sim 1/\sqrt{Q^{2}}$. Thee mechanism of scanning is based on color transparency and QCD predicted spatial wave function of quark-antiquark fluctuations of virtual photons. A rich, energy- and $Q^{2}$-dependent, pattern of the nuclear shadowing and antishadowing is predicted, which can be tested at the European Electron Facility and SLAC.Comment: TRI-PP-93-5, LaTeX file, 11 pages + 3 figures (not included, available by fax

metabolic bone disease and osteoporosis in children

To understand the basics of pediatric bone metabolism and mechanisms underlying osteoporosi

METS: Flexibility v. Interoperability

This paper examines whether projects making use of the METS metadata schema do so due to its flexibility or its interoperability. Projects listed in the METS Implementation Registry of the Library of Congress METS Official Web Site, as well as selected case studies are analyzed for the reason METS was used in their projects. Data gathered from these sources is consolidated and further analyzed using cluster analysis in order to answer the research questions: 1) Can it be said that METS is being selected for projects based primarily on one of two criteria: its flexibility or its interoperability?” And if this is the case: 2) Is one of these two attributes (flexibility or interoperability) selected for more than the other? The paper concludes that flexibility has a slight edge over interoperability in terms of the primary reason for using METS in the projects analyzed for the paper

BEHAVIOR/APPLICATION OF SUPERCAPACITORS INTEGRATED WITH A SHIP’S POWER MANAGEMENT SYSTEM DURING VARYING LOAD CONDITIONS

The goal of this research is to study the implementation of supercapacitors (SCs) into the energy storage system of an electric propulsion system (EPS) on a hybrid-powered vessel. A commercial ship EPS can be designed in a similar fashion as the drive system of a hybrid vehicle. The first commercial hybrid vessels are just now coming online, with a traditional hybrid propulsion system (HPS) consisting of only a battery bank and diesel-electric propulsion. This study looks at adding a bank of supercapacitors to work with the EPS. The addition of supercapacitors to an HPS is advantageous in many ways. SCs can be discharged thousands of times more than a high energy density battery, thus extending the life of the SC bank. One unique characteristic of SCs is their ability to discharge a large amount of energy very quickly, making this trait very useful for vessel operations—for example, during the power take-off and the starting of heavy electrical machinery, which draws an enormous load during the first seconds of start-up. However, the main focus of this study is the EPS during normal sea conditions where a vessel will spend the majority of its lifetime. Computer simulations (using MATLAB and Simulink) confirmed that, with the appropriate control and management, SCs reduce the strain on batteries. Also, the fuel efficiency was shown to be improved when comparing a hybrid propulsion system to a non-hybrid propulsion system.http://archive.org/details/behaviorapplicat1094562772Lieutenant, United States Coast GuardApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Landscape-Scale Application of Paired Edna and Field Surveys for the Detection of At-Risk Wetland Amphibians

Amphibians are the most threatened of the vertebrate groups and population declines have been directly influenced by wetland removal, conversion, or alteration. Due to these threats, it is imperative to understand the region-wide distributions of imperiled wetland amphibians and implement effect surveys to inform management actions. Environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling is an emerging survey method that is effective at detecting low-density and patchily distributed amphibians and many eDNA studies have demonstrated high detection probabilities for rare amphibians; however, most of these studies were conducted within a relatively small area, limiting the amount of variation in survey sites. Therefore, eDNA survey methods have room for refinement when understanding eDNA detection success across a wide variety of wetlands while also incorporating this knowledge into survey design. We compared a spatially informed eDNA sampling protocol to field surveys across two seasons (2021 and 2022) to detect the Santa Cruz long-toed salamander (SCLTS), the California tiger salamander (CTS), and the California redlegged frog (CRLF), across freshwater wetlands in the Monterey Bay area, California. We constructed a Bayesian hierarchical multi-species occupancy model to identify environmental and habitat variables that could influence species occupancy and eDNA detections. We found high per sample detection probabilities using our eDNA sampling design for the SCLTS, CTS, and CRLF (0.75, 0.96, and 0.89, respectively) and had non-detections at only 5 sites where the species was detected by field methods. We found that the proportion of inhibited samples at a wetland was negatively associated with SCLTS detection probabilities but did not detect an influence of other environmental factors that are known to degrade eDNA or influence eDNA detection success. Finally, we analyzed habitat variables that could influence sample inhibition in a generalized linear model and found that the proportion of floating vegetation covering a wetland site was positively associated with the probability of sample inhibition. This study demonstrates that this eDNA sampling protocol is ready for field implementation to detect these at-risk amphibians across the variety of wetlands where they occur and is also likely to be highly effective for detecting other wetland species

An assessment of the role of public participation in IDP : the Thulamela Municipality

Thesis (MPA (School of Public Management and Planning))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009.The concept of public participation has gained wider acceptance in government circles as a tool to strengthen the pillars of this government’s democratic structures. Globally, governments’ accountability can be gauged by the extent to which they practise public participation in decision-making in facing up to the challenges of the day. The concept of public participation arrived in South Africa in the 1980s and was supposedly applied to the inception of a true democratic dispensation in 1994. In the South African context, public participation cannot be over-emphasised as it underpins the democracy introduced in 1994. Because of the great importance of public participation, the South African government has enacted a number of statutes such as the Constitution (1996) and the Municipal Structures Act (2000) that give substance to public participation. Even though public participation is applied at national and provincial government levels in South Africa, it is principally in the Local Government field where it is widely applied in order to enable good governance and sustainable service delivery. This study examines the role of ward committees in public participation in Local Government, with specific reference to Thulamela Municipality. The study suggests that the transformation and democratisation of South African Local Government can be achieved through effective implementation of public participation at grassroots level. Apart from passing legislation, more needs to be done to stimulate public participation. The study has furthermore found that even though statutes provide for communities to participate in a range of government-created regulatory structures such as the IDP Representative Forums and Ward Committees, municipalities need to develop strategies for public participation. Not only do municipalities need to develop strategies for public participation, they also need to develop proper mechanisms to encourage the participation of community stakeholders and organisations. The study is primarily based on qualitative data collected from Thulamela Municipality through personal interviews with councillors, officials and ward committee members. Moreover, the study also rests on observations at IDP Representative Forums, IDP and Budget consultative meetings, focus group discussions and a review of local government statutes and literature providing knowledge on the subject under study