Improving Parent and Daycare Staff Confidence in Monitoring Developmental Milestones Through Education of Pediatric Development

The most effective approach to identifying developmental delays involves a combination of developmental monitoring by all caregivers involved in the child’s life, ongoing communication among caregivers, and the administration of formal developmental screenings. This quality improvement capstone project focused on enhancing the education and resources available to daycare teachers regarding developmental milestones, recognizing red flags in development, communicating with parents, and determining appropriate next steps if milestones are missed or therapy services are required. A resource binder was created for each daycare classroom alongside a presentation given to educate staff on developmental topics by age. Evaluation of daycare staff perception revealed high satisfaction with the provided education and resources, recognition of the material\u27s value, and an overall improvement in knowledge and confidence in identifying and addressing developmental delays

The first world war on the periphery: the effect of the environment on British soldiers in German East Africa, 1914–1918

The First World War in German East Africa was significantly different than the war in Europe. More so than just the geographical difference and that Europe still stands at the forefront of popular memory, the environment of equatorial Africa played an equally significant role as an enemy to the British Army as did the German Army. Rather than just a collection of assorted stories, it is the aim of this article to examine the interaction between the British Army and the environment of German East Africa from 1914-1918 and demonstrate that three environmental factors – climate, disease, and terrain – significantly affected the war and the soldiers that fought in it in a variety of ways, both in terms of military operations and on the human level.Keywords: First World War, British Empire, German East Africa, the war in East Africa, Jan C. Smuts, environmental history, military histor

Parallel algorithm and architecture for the control of kinematically redundant manipulators, A

Includes bibliographical references (pages 413-414).Kinematically redundant manipulators are inherently capable of more dexterous manipulation due to their additional degrees of freedom. To achieve this dexterity, however, one must be able to efficiently calculate the most desirable configuration from the infinite number of possible configurations that satisfy the end-effector constraint. It has been previously shown that the singular value decomposition (SVD) plays a crucial role in doing such calculations. In this work, a parallel algorithm for calculating the SVD is incorporated into a computational scheme for solving the equations of motion for kinematically redundant systems. This algorithm, which generalizes the damped least squares formulation to include solutions that utilize null-space projections and task prioritization as well as augmented or extended Jacobians, is then implemented on a simple linear array of processing elements. By taking advantage of the error bounds on the perturbation of the SVD, it is shown that an array of only four AT&T DSP chips can result in control cycle times of less than 3 ms for a seven degree-of-freedom manipulator

A new filtration of the Magnus kernel

For a oriented genus g surface with one boundary component, S_g, the Torelli group is the group of orientation preserving homeomorphisms of S_g that induce the identity on homology. The Magnus representation of the Torelli group represents the action on F/F'' where F=π_1(S_g) and F'' is the second term of the derived series. I show that the kernel of the Magnus representation, Mag(S_g), is highly non-trivial and has a rich structure as a group. Specifically, I define an infinite filtration of Mag(S_g) by subgroups, called the higher order Magnus subgroups, M_k(S_g). I develop methods for generating nontrivial mapping classes in M_k(S_g) for all k and g≥2. I show that for each k the quotient M_k(S_g)/M_{k+1}(S_g) contains a subgroup isomorphic to a lower central series quotient of free groups E(g-1)_k/E(g-1)_{k+1}. Finally I show that for g≥3 the quotient M_k(S_g)/M_{k+1}(S_g) surjects onto an infinite rank torsion free abelian group. To do this, I define a Johnson-type homomorphism on each higher order Magnus subgroup quotient and show it has a highly non-trivial image

North Carolina, Claude Kitchin, and the Great War, 1869-1923

This dissertation investigates the state of North Carolina in the years before American intervention in the Great War by focusing on the actions, speeches, and writings of House Majority Leader Claude Kitchin. Despite his importance to such a pivotal decade in American history, Kitchin is a largely forgotten figure today. He worked to prevent the United States from entering the war but ultimately failed in this task. Other prominent figures are usually given credit as the loudest and most influential voices of opposition, but Kitchin excelled in this role. From his not so humble origins, he emerged as a leader of an anti-war preparedness movement at a time when so many Americans were pushing the country closer to the war. Kitchin worked around the clock to convince his own constituents, as well as Americans from around the country, that the United States was already well-prepared to face the challenges of a world at war. President Wilson called for a national campaign of war preparedness years before the United States was even at war. And because the Atlantic Ocean proved to be such a good barrier between the Old and New Worlds many of Kitchin’s contemporaries argued for tremendous increases in naval expenditures. Kitchin took particular issue with these demands for a dramatic naval build up and consistently reminded the nation that the United States already had the best navy in the world, behind Great Britain’s. “We are already prepared,” he often said. When it became clear that Kitchin was on the losing side of the fight, he stuck to his convictions and delivered an inspiring speech on the House floor hours before the vote for war. He knew this vote might signal the death knell of his political career but could only vote how his conscience allowed. After the declaration, he worked to protect the American people from overpaying for the war. He determined that if big businesses would profit from it, then they should pay for it. And he followed this policy until the war ended. After peace was declared and the Republicans took back Congress, he quietly faded out of the public view but never stopped working

A Survey of Local Group Galaxies Currently Forming Stars: III. A Search for Luminous Blue Variables and Other H-alpha Emission-Lined Stars

We describe a search for H-alpha emission-lined stars in M31, M33, and seven dwarfs in or near the Local Group (IC 10, NGC 6822, WLM, Sextans B, Sextans A, Pegasus and the Phoenix dwarf) using interference filter imaging with the KPNO and CTIO 4-m telescope and Mosaic cameras. The survey is aimed primarily at identifying new Luminous Blue Variables (LBVs) from their spectroscopic similarity to known LBVs, avoiding the bias towards photometric variability, which may require centuries to manifest itself if LBVs go through long quiescent periods. Followup spectroscopy with WIYN confirms that our survey detected a wealth of stars whose spectra are similar to the known LBVs. We "classify" the spectra of known LBVs, and compare these to the spectra of the new LBV candidates. We demonstrate spectacular spectral variability for several of the new LBV candidates, such as AM2, previously classified as a Wolf-Rayet star, which now shows FeI, FeII and Balmer emission lines but neither the NIII 4634,42 nor HeII 4686 emission that it did in 1982. Profound spectral changes are also noted for other suspected and known LBVs. Several of the LBV candidates also show >0.5 mag changes in V over the past 10-20 years. The number of known or suspected LBVs is now 24 in M31, 37 in M33, 1 in NGC 6822, and 3 in IC 10. We estimate that the total number of LBVs in M31 and M33 may be several hundred, in contrast to the 8 known historically through large-scale photometric variability. This has significant implications for the time scale of the LBV phase. We also identify a few new WRs and peculiar emission-lined objects.Comment: Accepted by the Astronomical Journal. Version with higher quality figures may be downloaded from http://www.lowell.edu/users/massey/has.pdf.g

Last resort or key resource? Women workers from the Nazi-occupied Soviet territories, the Reich labour administration and the German war effort

Foreign labour was an essential resource for the Nazi war economy: by September 1944, around six million civilian labourers from across Europe were working in the Reich. Any initial readiness on the part of the peoples of Nazi-occupied Europe to volunteer for work in the Reich had quickly dissipated as the harsh and often vicious treatment of foreign workers became known. The abuse and exploitation of foreign forced labourers by the Nazi regime is well documented. Less well understood is why women formed such a substantial proportion of the labour recruited or forcibly deported from occupied eastern Europe: in September 1944, a third of Polish forced labourers and just over over half of Soviet civilian forced labourers were women. This article explores the factors influencing the demand for and the supply of female labour from the Nazi-occupied territories of the Soviet Union, particularly after the appointment of Fritz Sauckel as Plenipotentiary for Labour in March 1942. It explores the attitudes of labour officials towards these women workers and shows how Nazi gender politics and the Nazi hierarchy of race intersected in the way they were treated