PERFORMANCE OF STORM WATER STAGE AND QUALITY MEASURING INSTRUEMTNATION OF A SMALL WATERSHED USING A REMOTE MONITORING STATION

ABSTRACT As economic development proceeds special care must be taken to preserve and sustain our water resources. Monitoring the storm water from a watershed during a rainfall event can help quantify any changes in water quantity and quality. An accurate means of measuring flow is necessary for all watershed monitoring projects. This study was conducted to analyze the performance of stage, turbidity, and temperature measuring devices in a laboratory setting as well as on Honeycutt Creek in Clemson, South Carolina. The stage measuring devices under study include: a radar level sensor, ultrasonic transmitter, pressure transducer, and a bubbler module. A remote small watershed monitoring station gathered weather, stage, turbidity, and temperature data at Honeycutt Creek. An analysis of the performance of the stage measuring devices and water quality sensors in the field would be conducted. The analyses of the stage measuring devices were conducted in a controlled laboratory setting using regulated water levels in a tank. In Honeycutt Creek the water level was recorded by hand and compared to the output of the devices. Water quality trends of turbidity and temperature were analyzed based on stage. Results concluded that laboratory analyses proved the pressure transducer to be the most accurate method of measuring stage. The bubbler module had field results that were more accurate and had the best correlation to the accurate. Given the chaotic nature of the bubbler field data, the recommended stage measuring device for field applications is the pressure transducer

The Effects of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) On African-American Christian Females

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to communicate the experiences of African American Christian females with intimate partner violence (IPV). The central phenomenon of the study aimed to research religious effects on African American Christian females\u27 decision-making regarding IPV in the state of Georgia. The theory guiding this study was social constructivism, introduced by two sociologists, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckman. The study\u27s goal was to depend as much as possible on the stories of the members being examined. Data will be collected using two methods: interviews and oral history. A critical case sampling was used to collect specific information about the problem, providing access and ease in collecting data. Themes were generated from the analysis of significant statements provided by participants. The data from research questions were used to highlight significant statements, sentences, or quotes that explained how the participants experienced the phenomenon. Interviews were semi-structured and consisted of open-ended questions to allow the participants to speak freely about their lived IPV experiences

Discourse analysis of naturally occurring data: the relational development of mindfulness

Discourse analysis allows qualitative researchers to investigate the ways people relationally construct realities through language use, especially through speaking and writing. To understand talk and text as relational practices, we pay close attention to the active dimensions of discourse: its construction, function and variation in specific social and historical contexts. The data used in this exemplar is provided by Dr Steven Stanley from Cardiff University and Dr Rebecca Crane from the Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice at Bangor University and is taken from a project investigating the social construction of mindfulness within Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). The project received ethical clearance from the research ethics and governance committee of the School of Psychology at Bangor University and the North Wales Research Ethics Committee. The project contributes findings to developing traditions of mindfulness research, training of mindfulness teachers, and qualitative research on education, training, health, medicine and psychotherapy. The data comprises a transcription of institutional interaction between a MBCT teacher and her students. In this session there are just three participants present – the other three course members are absent due to illness. The course is held in an outpatient oncology unit. The students meet weekly for 2-hour sessions. MBCT is an eight-week psychoeducational course and our data is an extract taken from week two of a course for people with cancer. Six people are enrolled on the course and three female participants are present during this class. The exemplar will help you to analyse naturally occurring interaction, think about power dynamics and teacher dilemmas in pedagogy, and the possible functions of psychological terms in interaction such as ‘mind’

The Mindfulness-Based Interventions:Teaching Assessment Criteria (MBI:TAC): reflections on implementation and development

The Mindfulness-Based Interventions: Teaching Assessment Criteria (MBI:TAC) is a tool for supporting good practice in mindfulness-based teaching, training supervision and research contexts. It has been taken up in practice in teacher training organizations worldwide. The MBI:TAC sits within the wider consideration within research contexts of building methodological rigor by developing robust systems for ensuring intervention integrity. Research on the tool is at an early stage and needs development. The process of implementation needs careful attention to ensure reliability and good practice. Future research is needed on the tool’s reliability, validity and sensitivity to change, and on the relationships between mindfulness-based teaching, participant outcomes and key contextual factors, including the influence of participant population, culture and context. </p

Introducing the Mindfulness-Based Interventions: Teaching and Learning Companion (The TLC)

Background: Reflective practice is a key skill which can enable the development of teaching competence among Mindfulness-Based Program (MBP) teachers. Purpose: In this article, the Mindfulness-Based Interventions: Teaching and Learning Companion (TLC) is introduced. This new tool is based upon the established teaching competence assessment tool, the Mindfulness-Based Interventions: Teaching Assessment Criteria (MBI:TAC). The MBI:TAC has enabled benchmarking of international standards of MBP teaching which helps ensure high fidelity to MBP curricula and contributes to the overall integrity of the field. This in turn, underpins the potential of MBPs to be effective interventions for the enhancement of participants’ mental health and wellbeing. Conclusions: The TLC aims to facilitate MBP teachers’ development by enabling active reflection focused on the key features of MBP teaching skills

Intervention Integrity in Mindfulness-Based Research

Assessing program or intervention fidelity/integrity is an important methodological consideration in clinical and educational research. These critical variables influence the degree to which outcomes can be attributed to the program and the success of the transition from research to practice and back again. Research in the Mindfulness-Based Program (MBP) field has been expanding rapidly over the last 20 years, but little attention has been given to how to assess intervention integrity within research and practice settings. The proliferation of different program forms, inconsistency in adhering to published curriculum guides, and variability of training levels and competency of trial teachers all pose grave risks to the sustainable development of the science of MBPs going forward. Three tools for assessing intervention integrity in the MBP field have been developed and researched to assess adherence and/or teaching competence: the Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy-Adherence Scale (MBCT-AS), the Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention-Adherence and Competence Scale (MBRP-AC), and the Mindfulness-Based Interventions: Teaching Assessment Criteria (MBI:TAC). Further research is needed on these tools to better define their inter-rater reliability and their ability to measure elements of teaching competence that are important for participant outcomes. Research going forward needs to include systematic and consistent methods for demonstrating and verifying that the MBP was delivered as intended, both to ensure the rigor of individual studies and to enable different studies of the same MBP to be fairly and validly compared with each other. The critical variable of the teaching also needs direct investigation in future research. We recommend the use of the "Template for Intervention Description and Replication" (TIDieR) guidelines for addressing and reporting on intervention integrity during the various phases of the conduct of research and provide specific suggestions about how to implement these guidelines when reporting studies of mindfulness-based programs