Prosodic Structure in SiSwati

Work on this paper was supported by an NSF Graduate Student Fellowship

Syntactically-Governed Accentuation in Balinese

In Balinese there is a consistency of alignment between F0 peaks and particular syntactic positions such as "final syllable of the head of the phrase" or "final syllable of the phrase." This becomes apparent from F0 measurements taken from sentences recorded from a Balinese speaker which include measurements from sentences with different syntactic constructions and different length words in each syntactic position. Thus, the placement of F0 peaks in Balinese is not distinctive and in fact, there is no word-level accentuation in Balinese. Rather, placement of F0 peaks occurs at the phrasal level and hence serves a delimitative function.Funding for this project was provided by an NSF Graduate Student Fellowship Research Allowance

Strengthening Community Foundations - Redefining the Opportunities

Commissioned by the Council on Foundations and released in October 2003, this white paper details the findings and the implications of our study of costs and revenues at nine community foundations. Offering a new perspective for community foundation sustainability, the white paper proposes that community foundations examine their strategy and operations on a product-by-product basis, taking into account their mission-driven priorities, internal costs, customer preferences and the competing donor alternatives for each type of product or service they offer

Drivers and Mechanisms of Historical Sahel Precipitation Variability

The semiarid region between the North African Savanna and Sahara Desert, known as the Sahel, experienced dramatic multidecadal precipitation variability in the 20th century that was unparalleled in the rest of the world, including devastating droughts and famine in the early 1970s and 80s. Accurate predictions of this region’s hydroclimate future are essential to avoid future disasters of this kind, yet simulations from state of the art general circulation models (GCMs) do a poor job of simulating past Sahel rainfall variability, and don’t even agree on whether future precipitation will increase or decrease under global warming. Furthermore, climate scientists are still not in agreement about whether anthropogenic emissions played an important role relative to natural variability in dictating past Sahel rainfall change. Because the climate system is complex and coupled, it is difficult to determine which processes should be considered causal drivers of circulation changes and which should be considered part of the climate response, and therefore many theories for monsoon rainfall variability coexist in the literature. It is difficult to evaluate these competing theories because observational studies generally cannot be interpreted causally, but simulated experiments may not represent the dynamics of the real world. The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) provides a wealth of data in which GCMs maintained at research institutions worldwide perform similar experiments, allowing the researcher to reach conclusions that are robust to differences in parameterization between GCMs. The scientific community has been using a wide range of statistical techniques to analyze this data, and each has notable limitations. This dissertation explores two statistical techniques for leveraging CMIP to explore the drivers and mechanisms of historical Sahel rainfall variability: analysis of ensemble-mean responses to prescribed variables, and causal inference. In ‎Chapter 1, we give an overview of the climatology and variability of Sahel rainfall and present relevant physical theory. In ‎Chapter 2, we examine the roles of various types of anthropogenic forcing in observations and coupled simulations, using a 3-tiered multi-model mean (MMM) to extract robust climate signals from CMIP phase 5 (CMIP5). We examine “20th century” historical and single-forcing simulations—which separate the influence of anthropogenic aerosols, greenhouse gases (GHG), and natural radiative forcing on global coupled ocean-atmosphere system, and were specifically designed for attribution studies—as well as pre-Industrial control simulations, which only contain unforced internal climate variability, to investigate the drivers of simulated Sahel precipitation variability. The comparison of single-forcing and historical simulations highlights the importance of anthropogenic and volcanic aerosols over GHG in generating forced Sahel rainfall variability that reinforces the observed pattern, with anthropogenic aerosols alone responsible for the low-frequency component of simulated variability. However, the forced MMM only accounts for a small fraction of observed variance. A residual consistency test shows that simulated internal variability cannot explain the residual observed multidecadal variability, and points to model deficiency in simulating multidecadal variability in the forced response, internal variability, or both. In ‎Chapter 3, we investigate the causes for discrepancies in low-frequency Sahel precipitation variability between these ensembles and for model deficiency in reproducing observations. In the most recent version of CMIP – phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) – the differences between observed and simulated variability are amplified rather than reduced: CMIP6 still grossly underestimates the magnitude of low-frequency variability in Sahel rainfall, but unlike CMIP5, historical mean precipitation in CMIP6 does not even correlate with observed multi-decadal variability. We continue to use a MMM to extract robust climate signals from simulations, but now additionally include sea surface temperature (SST) as a mediating variable in order to test the proposed physical processes. This partitions all influences on Sahel precipitation variability into five components: (1) teleconnections to SST; (2) atmospheric and (3) oceanic variability internal to the climate system; (4) the SST response to external radiative forcing; and (5) the “fast” (not mediated by SST) precipitation response to forcing. Though the coupled simulations perform quite poorly, in a vast improvement from previous ensembles, the CMIP6 atmosphere-only ensemble is able to reproduce the full magnitude of observed low-frequency Sahel precipitation variance when observed SST is prescribed. The high performance is due entirely to the atmospheric response to observed global SST – the fast response to forcing has a relatively small impact on Sahel rainfall, and only lowers the performance of the ensemble when it is included. Using the previously-established North Atlantic Relative Index (NARI) to approximate the role of global SST, we estimate that the strength of simulated teleconnections is consistent with observations. Applying the lessons of the atmosphere-only ensemble to coupled settings, we infer that both coupled CMIP ensembles fail to explain low-frequency historical Sahel rainfall variability mostly because they cannot explain the observed combination of forced and internal variability in SST. Though the fast response is small relative to the simulated response to observed SST variability, it is influential relative to simulated SST variability, and differences between CMIP5 and CMIP6 in the simulation of Sahel precipitation and its correlation with observations can be traced to differences in the simulated fast response to forcing or the role of other unexamined SST patterns. In this chapter, we use NARI to approximate the role of global SST because it is considered by some to be the best single index for estimating teleconnections to the Sahel. However, we show that NARI is only able to explain half of the high-performing simulated low-frequency Sahel precipitation variability in the atmospheric simulations with prescribed global SST. Statistical techniques commonly applied in the literature cannot distinguish between correlation and causality, so we cannot analyze the response of Sahel rainfall to global SST in more depth without atmospheric CMIP simulations targeted at every ocean basin of interest or a new method. In ‎Chapter 4, we turn to a novel technique called causal inference to qualify the notion that NARI can adequately represent the role of global SST in determining Sahel rainfall. We apply a causal discovery algorithm to CMIP6 pre-Industrial control simulations to determine which ocean basins influence Sahel rainfall in individual GCMs. Though we find that state of the art causal discovery algorithms for time series still struggle with data that isn’t generated specifically for algorithm evaluation, we robustly find that NARI does not mediate the full effect of global SST variability on Sahel rainfall in any of the climate simulations. This chapter lays the foundation for future work to fully-characterize the dependence of Sahel precipitation on individual ocean basins using the non-targeted simulations already available in CMIP – an approach which can be validated by comparing the composite results to the interventional historical simulations that are available. Furthermore, we hope this chapter will guide algorithm improvement efforts that are needed to increase the performance and usefulness of time series causal discovery algorithms on climate data

School Leadership Interventions Under the Every Student Succeeds Act: Evidence Review - Updated and Expanded

This RAND analysis offers guidance to states and districts on how they can choose to use the Every Student Succeeds Act to help achieve their school improvement goals by supporting principals and other school leaders

It’s not a virus! Reconceptualizing and de-pathologizing music performance anxiety

Music Performance Anxiety (MPA) is one of the most widespread and debilitating challenges facing musicians, affecting significant numbers of performers in terms of both their personal and professional functioning. Although numerous interventions exist to target MPA, its prevalence remains unchanged since the first large-scale studies of the 1980s, indicating that available interventions are having limited impact. This review synthesizes and critiques existing literature in order to investigate possible reasons for the limited efficacy of current approaches to managing MPA. Key concepts discussed include conceptual and methodological challenges surrounding defining MPA, theoretical perspectives on MPA’s etiology and manifestation, and the coping strategies and interventions used to manage MPA. MPA has predominantly been investigated pathologically and defined as a negative construct manifesting in unwanted symptoms. Based on this conceptualization, interventions largely seek to manage MPA through ameliorating symptoms. This review discusses possible reasons why this approach has broadly not proved successful, including the issue of relaxation being both unrealistic and counterproductive for peak performance, issues associated with intentionally changing one’s state creating resistance thus exacerbating anxiety, and focusing on the presence of, rather than response to, symptoms. Despite 50 years of research, MPA remains an unsolved enigma and continues to adversely impact musicians both on and off the stage. Reconceptualizing MPA as a normal and adaptive response to the pressures of performance may offer a new perspective on it, in terms of its definition, assessment and management, with practical as well as theoretical implications

A Collaborative Distance Approach Using the Evidence to Build a Model for Medical Education Mentorship

Background/Purpose: Medical education scholarship (MES) is meaningful work that not only benefits the faculty but also the learners and their institutions. Clinical teaching faculty who engage in Medical Education Research can ensure that their scholarship is directly applied to practice.3 While clinical research skills may be taught directly the adaptation of clinical research skills to MES is limited, lacking in fundamental skills related to terminology, measurement, and literature.1, 2 Inevitably, success depends on good mentorship. Negotiating the terrain of medical education scholarship requires consistent and effective mentorship.3 Unfortunately, effective mentorship for medical education scholarship is lacking.3 Our aim was to conduct a systematized review of the literature as the first part of an award funded by the NEGEA designed to identify the elements of a model for effective MES mentorship. What is unique about this process is that we conducted this review by collaboration among 6 different medical institutions and 9 individuals. Methods: To develop and further refine an interview protocol that will be used with medical education mentors and mentees, we identified, with the assistance of the two reference librarians on our team, articles focused on basic and clinical science research mentorship in medicine. All meetings were held via conference call. Technologies used included EndNote, Dropbox, Excel, and Qualtrics. Article inclusion criteria were: 1) English language articles published between 1990 and the present, and 2) articles focused on mentorship for scholarship in medicine. Studies were excluded if they focus on other mentorship domains (clinical leadership, career development not related to scholarship). We planned to include research studies, reviews, and opinion pieces/perspectives. Results/Educational Outcomes: In the initial meeting, team members were asked to identify relevant terms and phrases, such as mentoring, mentorship, role modeling, research, scholarship, medicine, medical education). The librarians used the suggested terms to identify additional synonyms and categories and created a table of possible search terms. The table prompted a rich discussion at the next team meeting, which included both a common definition of mentorship, and a narrowing of the focus of the literature search. As a result, the team revised the criteria to exclude articles about biomedical research. The librarians developed search strategies for PubMed, PsycINFO, ERIC, CINAHL, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. Next the librarians assigned sets of articles to pairs of researchers to review based on titles, or on titles and abstracts when necessary. All articles deemed relevant by the pairs were retained and groups were assigned of articles for identification of factors that mentors and mentees use to positively impact mentorship in scholarship/research. These key factors will then be used to modify the interview protocol for mentor and mentee interviews. Conclusions/Strength of Innovation: This process was successful in using an evidence based process for developing the mentorship in medical education scholarship themes which will be further validated as the project continues. Elements of the process that were critical to the success of a geographically 31 dispersed interdisciplinary team included regularly scheduled phone meetings with agenda items sent well in advance of the meetings, minutes and action items sent following the meeting, discussion time at each meeting to resolve questions, raise new issues, good use of technology available at participating institutions, common understanding of the goals of the project. Having a diverse group of professionals (clinicians, librarians, and medical educators) brought forth the complementary skill sets to the process with different experts leading the process as needed. Issues arose largely regarding understanding and agreement of terminology, including, what is considered “scholarship” and “mentorship.” References: 1. Scott K, Caldwell P, Schuwirth L. Ten steps to conducting health professional education research. Clin Teach. 2015; 12:272-276. 2. Blanchard RD, Artino AR, Visintainer PF. Applying clinical research skills to education research: Important recommendations for success. J Grad Med Educ. 2014;6(4):619-622. 3. Blanchard RD, Visintainer PF, La Rochelle J. Cultivating medical education research mentorship as a pathway towards high quality medical education research. JGIM. 2015; 30(9): 1359-62

Emotional Tone Coding Using an Abbreviated Rating Scale

Paper submitted to the University of Kansas School of Nursing in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Nursing Honors Program.Introduction: The Emotional Tone Rating Scale (ETRS) is used to evaluate nursing communication with older adults in dimensions of care, respect, and control. Psychometric analysis of the original scale indicates that several of the 12 items overlap and that two, instead of three factors are indicated (control and person-centered). A scale was reduced to 8 items to diminish redundancy and reduce burden for raters. Background: This Pilot Study is part of a larger research study entitled Changing Talk to Reduce Resistiveness to Dementia Care. The specific aim of the larger study is to improve staff communication with nursing home residents who have dementia to reduce resistiveness to care (RTC). The intervention is a three-session staff training program on communication skills associated with avoiding RTC. The ETRS is used to evaluate the communication skills. Purpose: This study was conducted to evaluate whether the 8 and 12 item scales measure the same factors. Theoretical Framework: The ETRS is designed to measure nursing communication based on concepts and theories of person-centered care for older adults. Methodology: Twenty raters each listened to 20, 1 minute audio recordings of nursing home care, presented in a powerpoint presentation. These clips were previously rated using the 12-item scale. They rated the nurse's communication on the ETRS. Factor analysis was used to compare similarities of the original and abbreviated scales. Findings: Factor analysis revealed that the 12-item scale data and the 8-item scale data resulted in highly comparable negative correlations between person-centered and controlling scales. Factor analyses of the original 12-item scale and the 8-item scale produce similar solutions. Discussion: The two factors person-centered communication and controlling communication are similar with the shortened 8-item tool as with the previous 12-item scale the shortened version and will be used for future use. This shortened scale will help to reduce redundancies and rater burden.The University of Kansas School of Nursing Bachelor of Science Nursing Honors Progra