An Exploration of Teacher and Student Perceptions of Classroom Assessment

My study explores a teacher’s intentions for and students’ perceptions of formative assessment practices enacted within the classroom. Adopting a constructivist epistemology (Merriam, 2009) to explore how interactions impact the learning environment, I use the relativist ontology (Reason, 1994) to examine how different individuals experience the same assessment interactions differently due to their unique perspectives. A qualitative case study methodology allows me to simultaneously explore varying understandings of, intentions with, reactions to, and perspectives on assessment practices in one teacher’s classroom through the use of a wide range of data collection techniques. Using the story model as my framework, I offer a discussion of Ontario’s current educational context in order to highlight implications for theory, make recommendations for further study, and highlight how findings from this study may be taken into consideration for further curriculum reform

Long-Billed Curlew (\u3ci\u3eNumenius americanus\u3c/i\u3e) Rangewide Survey and Monitoring Guidelines

LBCUs are a species of special concern throughout much of their breeding range in North America, with both the U.S. and Canadian Shorebird Plans listing them as “Highly Imperiled” (Brown et al. 2001). LBCUs are also listed in the U.S. as a Bird of Conservation Concern, at the National level, within FWS Regions 1, 2, 4 and 6, and for many Bird Conservation Regions (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 2002). This level of concern is due to apparent population declines, particularly in the shortgrass and mixed-grass prairie of the western Great Plains (Brown et al. 2001). Threats include habitat loss and fragmentation due to agricultural conversion (cropland and tame pasture), encroachment of woody vegetation, and urban development. For details on LBCU ecology, management, and conservation, refer to Dugger and Dugger (2002)

Genetic Differences in Chicken Splenic Immune Gene Expression in Response to Dietary Immune Modulation

Chickens from broiler, Leghorn, and Fayoumi lines were fed diets with ingredients to affect immune function: β-glucans, ascorbic acid, or corticosterone. Spleens were tested for expression of genes involved in immune response: interleukin-4 (IL-4), IL-6, IL-18, and macrophage inflammatory protein-1β (MIP-1β). Birds from the broiler line did not show any change in splenic gene expression associated with the dietary immunomodulators, perhaps due to the stringent selection of these birds for growth. The corticosterone diet was associated with increased expression of IL-4, indicative of an immune response relying primarily on humoral defenses. The Leghorn and Fayoumi lines showed opposing changes in expression of IL-4, IL-6, and IL-18 in response to the ascorbic acid and β-glucans enhanced diets, suggesting that processing of these immunomodulators and/or immune signaling in these lines are different. Our findings emphasize the need to further evaluate the effects of dietary immunomodulators before applying them in commercial settings

A cross-sectional study of traditional Chinese medicine practitioner’s knowledge, treatment strategies and integration of practice of chronic pelvic pain in women

Background: Chronic pelvic pain (CPP) in women is persistent, intermittent cyclical and non-cyclical lower abdominal pain, lasting for more than 6 months. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is a popular treatment option for women’s health conditions, but little is known about how treatment for CPP is delivered by TCM practitioners. The aim of this survey was to explore practitioners understanding and treatment of women with CPP, and how they integrate their management and care into the health care system. Method: An online cross-sectional survey of registered TCM practitioners in Australia and New Zealand between May and October 2018. Survey domains included treatment characteristics (e.g. frequency), evaluation of treatment efficacy, referral networks, and sources of information that informed clinical decision making. Results: One hundred and twenty-two registered TCM practitioners responded to this survey, 91.7% reported regular treatment of women with CPP. Treatment decisions were most-often guided by a combination of biomedical and TCM diagnosis (77.6%), and once per week was the most common treatment frequency (66.7%) for acupuncture. Meditation (63.7%) and dietary changes (57.8%) were other commonly used approaches to management. The effectiveness of treatment was assessed using multiple approaches, most commonly pain scales, (such as the numeric rating scale) and any change in use of analgesic medications. Limitations to TCM treatment were reported by over three quarters (83.7%) of practitioners, most commonly due to cost (56.5%) and inconvenience (40.2%) rather than safety or lack of efficacy. Sources informing practice were most often Integration within the wider healthcare system was common with over two thirds (67.9%) receiving referrals from health care providers. Conclusion: TCM practitioners seeing women with various CPP symptoms, commonly incorporate both traditional and modern diagnostic methods to inform their treatment plan, monitor treatment progress using commonly accepted approaches and measures and often as a part of multidisciplinary healthcare for women with CPP

High-Contrast Integral Field Spectrograph (HCIFS): multi-spectral wavefront control and reduced-dimensional system identification

Any high-contrast imaging instrument in a future large space-based telescope will include an integral field spectrograph (IFS) for measuring broadband starlight residuals and characterizing the exoplanet's atmospheric spectrum. In this paper, we report the development of a high-contrast integral field spectrograph (HCIFS) at Princeton University and demonstrate its application in multi-spectral wavefront control. Moreover, we propose and experimentally validate a new reduced-dimensional system identification algorithm for an IFS imaging system, which improves the system's wavefront control speed, contrast and computational and data storage efficiency.Comment: This paper has been accepted to Optics Expres

A qualitative and quantitative study of the surgical and rehabilitation response to the earthquake in Haiti, January 2010

AbstractBackground: The disaster response environment in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake represented a complex healthcare challenge. This study was designed to identify challenges during the Haiti disaster response.Methods: Qualitative and quantitative study of injured patients carried out six months after the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti to review the surgical inputs of foreign medical teams.Results: Study findings revealed a need during the response for improved medical records and data gathering for regulation, quality assurance, coordination and resource allocation; wider adherence to standard patient referral mechanisms and protocols linking surgical service provision with appropriate hospital and community based rehabilitation services; a greater recognition of the impact of non-amputation injury, and the need for patients to have a greater say in their management and to be the keepers of their medical records. Key first steps to improving the international response are a minimum dataset and uniform reporting.Conclusion: This study showed that challenges for emergency medical response during the Haiti Earthquake involved issues of accountability, professional ethics, standards-of-care, unmet needs, patient agency and expected outcomes for patients in such settings:</jats:p