Online Coursework as Related to Graduation Rates of At-Risk Students in a Rural Public High School in Bedford County, Tennessee

The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a significant relationship between the academic achievement, disciplinary referrals, and attendance of at-risk students in rural Bedford County, TN, prior to and after participation in online coursework. The independent variables were the academic achievement towards successful course completions, disciplinary referrals, and attendance rates of at-risk students. The dependent variable was the participation in online coursework in Bedford County Schools (BCS) Online On-track (OLOT) program. A series of ttests and a chi-square analyses was performed to examine the differences in the mean course completion rates, discipline referrals, attendance rates, and postsecondary plans of graduates. There was a significant difference in disciplinary referral rates and attendance rates prior to and after participation. Based on these findings there was a positive impact on discipline rates and inversely a negative impact on the attendance rate. Additionally, there was a negative impact on academic achievement rates prior to and after participation in online coursework in the BCS OLOT program. Also, the difference in the proportions of graduates continuing their education and other plans was significantly different from the responses given by all graduates in Tennessee

Dental cementum increment analysis and estimating season at death in humans

Dental cementum is a mineralized tissue that coats the root of a tooth and anchors it into the alveolar socket via the periodontal ligament. Cementum is continuously deposited and mineralized throughout the life of a tooth, preserving the complex developmental processes of root formation in optically distinct histologic layers (Hillson, 1996; 2005). Analysis of these features has several anthropological applications, specifically the analysis of cementum increments and their utility in estimating age and season at death in humans for establishing a more specific post-mortem interval (PMI). Wedel (2007) conducted a pilot study to determine whether dental cementum increment analysis can be used to establish season of death in humans. Wedel (2007) hypothesized that by identifying the timing of the transition between the bands of arrested development and the bands of increased deposition, dental cementum increment analysis can be used to identify the season at death in humans. It was demonstrated that cementum increment analysis is 99% accurate in estimating whether an individual died in either a fall/winter or spring/summer season. The purpose of the present study was to estimate whether cementum bands could accurately be assigned to fall/winter, spring/summer seasons based on their optical properties as being light or dark. A total of 143 teeth of known age and known extraction date drawn from the Boston University Collection and the Antioquia Modern Skeletal Reference Collection in Medellín, Colombia were analyzed using recent protocols for preparation, sectioning, and observing increment lines in cementum. Dental cementum increment analysis was found to be between 61.54% and 71.15% successful in accurately correlating the nature of the last cementum increment to season at death using a combination of image evaluation and through focus evaluation methods on two distinct geographic samples. A through focus evaluation was found to be more successful at identifying the last band formed and is recommended for microscopic analyses estimating season at death using dental cementum increments. Geographic origin did not have a significant influence over the accuracy of the method to estimate season at death, however the results of this study suggest that teeth extracted from cadavers versus living individuals may have some influence on the accuracy of cementum increments to estimate season at death. No significant influence of sex, age, or tooth type on the identification and correlation of the last band formed were detected in this study. An interobserver analysis using digital images of a randomly selected sample of 45 sections found that interobserver agreement on the nature of the last band formed occurred in only 28.8% of the sample. Inconsistencies in the nature of the last band formed between multiple sections prepared from the same tooth were observed, which calls into question the validity of using cementum increments to estimate season at death. The potential limitations for the reliability of using dental cementum increment analysis to determine season at death in humans include the lack of a standardized method for preparing adequate sections for viewing cementum increments, and the subjectivity of identifying the last band in a given section. It is concluded that if the validity and reliability of dental cementum increment analysis as a method for age estimation can be established and configured to meet the criteria of the Daubert Standard, specifically in the adoption of a standardized protocol of analysis, then the validity of using this method for estimating season at death can be further considered

The influence of depressed mood on alcohol-related self-control processes: the moderational role of drinking motives

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you.Among college students, severity of depressive symptoms is associated with more alcohol-related problems. Mood states may contribute to problematic alcohol use by influencing appetitive responses to alcohol through activation of alcohol-specific motivational schema. Once activated by relevant cues, these positive and negative reinforcement schema may automatically influence alcohol-seeking behavior. The current study sought to examine whether the influence of depressed mood on alcohol-related action tendencies would be moderated by the strength of negative (coping) and positive (enhancement) reinforcement motives. One hundred and sixty-nine college drinkers participated in a between-groups experiment in which they were exposed to a neutral or depressed mood induction followed by a computerized measure of alcohol-specific action tendencies, the Approach Avoidance Task (AAT) (Wiers et al., 2009). It was hypothesized that depressed mood would increase alcohol-related approach tendencies only for those students with stronger coping motives. The moderational influence of enhancement motives was also explored with the hypothesis that depressed mood would students with stronger enhancement motives due to an incongruence between mood cue and motivational schema. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted for each hypothesis separately. For the analyses, gender and AAT order were entered as covariates followed by specific motive score and mood condition in the second step and the motivemood condition interaction term in the third step. Mood did not influence AAT performance, nor was there evidence of an interaction with coping motives. In contrast, there was a significant interaction between mood condition and enhancement motives, such that depressed mood was associated with lower alcohol-approach responses among those with higher enhancement motives. These results suggest that depressed mood may produce devaluation of alcohol for students who tend to drink to enhance positive experiences. More broadly, these findings suggest that contextual cues such as mood may activate or inhibit appetitive responses to alcohol depending on individual differences in drinking motives

Development of a Decision Support System for the Department of Energy\u27s Selection of Waste Site Remediation Technologies

The Department of Energy is faced with the complex decision of selecting technologies for waste site remediation. This research focused on developing a decision support system to aid the decision maker in selecting the best strategy of remediation technologies. A decision analysis model was developed which incorporates life cycle cost data, risk information, and user input, to analyze the technology choices. The research outlined the use of multiple attribute utility theory using exponential attribute utility functions with a simple additive objective function. The best available data was used to demonstrate the capabilities of the model. The model provides the decision maker with estimates of the cost and time distributions, and the associated utility. Cumulative and frequency distributions illustrate the dominance of technology choices and the variance in the results. Cost and time plots allow the decision maker to see the trade-offs inherent in the utility functions. The model also allows for sensitivity analysis in the form of rainbow and tornado diagrams to display the effects of changes in the values of the input variables. Overall, the model provides a generic technology selection tool that can be used to make better informed decisions and can be easily manipulated to reflect changes in the remediation process

Preventing post-disaster PTSD: Watch for autonomic signs

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The Impact of Chinese Wheat Imports on World Prices and Trade

A.E. Res. 83.2

THE WHEAT AND STOCKER CATTLE ANALYZER: A MICROCOMPUTER DECISION AID FOR EVALUATING WHEAT PRODUCTION AND STOCKER CATTLE GRAZING DECISIONS

The Wheat and Stocker Cattle Analyzer is a microcomputer decision aid for evaluating interrelated wheat production and stocker cattle grazing decisions under yield, weight gain, and price uncertainty. An important feature of the model is that wheat commodity program provisions are incorporated into the analysis. A wide range of alternatives including wheat production for grain only, owned stocker cattle grazing, and wheat pasture leasing can be evaluated by the program.Crop Production/Industries, Livestock Production/Industries,

Hadron Helicity Violation in Exclusive Processes: Quantitative Calculations in Leading Order QCD

We study a new mechanism for hadronic helicity flip in high energy hard exclusive reactions. The mechanism proceeds in the limit of perfect chiral symmetry, namely without any need to flip a quark helicity. The fundamental feature of the new mechanism is the breaking of rotational symmetry of the hard collision by a scattering plane in processes involving independent quark scattering. We show that in the impulse approximation there is no evidence for of the helicity violating process as the energy or momentum transfer $Q^2$ is increased over the region 1 GeV^2 < Q^2 < 100 GeV^2. In the asymptotic region Q^2> 1000 GeV^2, a saddle point approximation with doubly logarithmic accuracy yields suppression by a fraction of power of Q^2. ``Chirally--odd" exclusive wave functions which carry non--zero orbital angular momentum and yet are leading order in the high energy limit, play an important role.Comment: uuencoded LaTeX file (21 pages) and PostScript figure

Analysis Tools for Discovering Strong Parity Violation at Hadron Colliders

Several arguments suggest parity violation may be observable in high energy strong interactions. We introduce new analysis tools for describing the azimuthal dependence of multi-particle distributions, or "azimuthal flow." Analysis uses the representations of the orthogonal group O(2) and dihedral groups $D_{N}$ necessary to define parity correctly in two dimensions. Classification finds that collective angles used in event-by-event statistics represent inequivalent tensor observables that cannot generally be represented by a single "reaction plane". Many new parity-violating observables exist that have never been measured, while many new parity-conserving observables formerly lumped together are now distinguished. We use the concept of "event shape sorting" to suggest separating right- and left-handed events, and we discuss the effects of transverse and longitudinal spin. The analysis tools are statistically robust, and can be applied equally to low or high multiplicity events at the Tevatron, $RHIC$ or $RHIC\, Spin$, and the $LHC$.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figures. Final version, accepted for publication in PRD. Updated references. Modified presentation and discussion of previous wor