Patterns of Chatter: An Empirical Case Study of Participation in an Online Health Community

This research-in-progress is an in-depth case study of the patterns of interactions between participants in a virtual community. The study will examine the stability of the community membership, posting behavior of the members over time, the existence of clusters or groups of users, especially a core group, and the possible classification of members based upon participation. Social network analysis diagrams showing who is talking to whom will be produced, revealing the social structure of the community. All 16,112 messages posted by 1,670 users of a medical virtual community were gathered over the course of one year. Preliminary results are given and future analysis of the data is proposed

Through the eyes of volunteers

The motivation behind this paper is showing that the long-term survival of nonprofit organizations depends on the recruitment and retention of today’s young adults. Determining what motivates young adult’s verses what holds them back and how organizations can meet student’s interest seems to be still unknown. Looking within the St. John Fisher community through an emailed survey can help pinpoint some of those unanswered questions for nonprofits. With help of the data we can see SJFC student’s volunteer history, influence for volunteering and influences for not volunteering, which organizations they volunteered for and pinpoint why as a volunteer they would become a repeat volunteer. Out of 190 responses 130 females and 60 males responded helping shed light on the female’s motivation factors for volunteering such as helping the community, skill building and mission statement being the top three. Secondly we looked at the service focus of volunteer organizations to see within the college community what volunteer organizations seemed to be volunteered most frequently. Looking at these results can help organizations meet student interests and motivations seeing as young adults are a vital part of the nonprofit world today

PEDANT: parallel texts in Göteborg

The article presents the status of the PEDANT project with parallel corpora at the Language Bank at Göteborg University. The solutions for access to the corpus data are presented. Access is provided by way of the internet and standard applications and SGML-aware programming tools. The SGML format for encoding translation pairs is outlined together. The methods allow working with everything from plain text to texts densely encoded with linguistic information. Keywords: sgml, parallel corpora, morphosyntactic encoding, lemmatization, multiword units, compound words, internet acces

Effects of Breathing Cool Air during Cycling Exercise in the Heat

INTRODUCTION: The purpose of this study was to establish the ability of the Core Cooler device to prevent rises in physiological heat strain of trained male cyclists during cycling exercise in the heat. METHODS: 15 healthy male cyclists cycled at 50-70% VO2max for 75 minutes in a heat chamber of 31°C & 55% RH while breathing through the Core Cooler device under three different conditions: 1:4 ratio without ice termed control (CN), 1:4 ratio with ice termed low intermittent (LI), and at 1:1 ratio with ice termed high intermittent (HI). Data collected every 15 minutes assessing intestinal temperature (TGI), heart rate (HR), physiological strain index (PSI), blood pressure (BP), mean skin temperature (TSK), and perception of thirst, thermal sensation, and rate of perceived exertion, inspired air temperature, ambient temperature and relative humidity in all trials. VO2 workload and respiratory rates (RR) recorded three times at evenly spaced time points (12.30, 42.30, 1.12.30), during all trials respectively. Statistical significance was set at a p value of 0.05 and measured using repeated measures ANOVA and post hoc t-test. RESULTS: No statistically significant differences in diet, USG, temperature, %RH, VO2 workload, or RR were found between any trial. Inspired air temperature averaged significantly different between CNvsLI & CN¬vsHI (p\u3c0.01, CN 30.92±0.35°C, LI 19.81±0.44°C, & HI 19.28±0.72°C), but not between LIvsHI (p=1.000). Physiological responses between trials found insignificant differences. TGI produced significant interactions between trials (p = 0.033) averaging CN 37.86±0.02°C, LI 37.91±0.10°C, & HI 37.80±0.07°C, but post hoc analysis provided no difference between any time or trial (p\u3e0.05). HR (p=0.103), systolic BP (n=11, p = 0.102), diastolic BP (n=11, p = 0.190), TSK (n=5, p=0.464), thirst (p=0.773), thermal sensation (p=0.709), and RPE (p=0.669) were not significantly different between trials. CONCLUSION: Modifications to the Core Cooler device are needed providing greater inhalation capabilities of cool air during exercise in the heat for significant attenuation of physiological heat strain. The Core Cooler in its current form will not provide an adequate prevention to heat illness, prolong endurance capabilities, or enhanced performance to a significant degree. This research was funded by Core Cooler Company, LLC

The Lived Experiences of Educators Using Co-Teaching to Meet the Needs of Students with Disabilities in a Virtual Environment

Virtual education in the United States continues to be a popular option for K-12 students. The enrollment in full-time virtual schools not only represents typical learners but a growing number of students with disabilities, including low-incidence disabilities. In some states, this population exceeds the state-wide average percentage of students with disabilities enrolled in public education and is compelling virtual schools to focus their attention on the legal expectations of serving individual needs. A pilot study, Virtual K-12 Teachers’ Perspectives on the Provision of Inclusive Online Environments (Ridings, 2016), investigated the types of inclusive strategies used by teachers in the virtual classroom and indicated a steady use of six of the seven strategies surveyed. Among those reported, the co-teaching strategy ranked the lowest, yet open commentary about co-teaching was positive. Thus, this study utilized transcendental phenomenology to gain more information about the use of co-teaching as a strategy to support the education of students with disabilities in the virtual general education classroom. Sixteen co-teachers participated in questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups. Four research questions related to the implementation, roles and relationships, school culture, and successes and failures in co-teaching guided the collection and analysis of data to obtain the true essence of co-teaching. Indications of this study show that despite the significant differences in model and delivery, the body of research pertaining to co-teaching in traditional, face-to-face schools is still highly relevant. Research provides prescriptive practices such as the use of application-based training both prior to strategy implementation and as an on-going approach as well as the need for improving the value of co-teaching roles and expertise of co-teaching partners. Findings also uncovered factors of co-teaching specific to virtual schools, including unique challenges to relationship building, greater emphasis on the value of content knowledge, the development of triad and team configurations, and the challenging impacts of a culture of change in virtual schools. Based on these findings, the study’s implications emphasized the need to address the training of general and special educators as well as the necessity for virtual schools to investigate the structure and roles of teachers as they deliver inclusive services to students with disabilities

Postcard: Wall Full of Pictures

This black and white photographic postcard features an interior wall covered with photographs. The left side of the wall portrays postcard size photographs. The right side of the wall features portraits of people. Wallpaper is on the bottom half of the wall and a bed frame is in the foreground. Damage to the card is along the right side of the card. Handwriting is on the back of the card.https://scholars.fhsu.edu/tj_postcards/1989/thumbnail.jp

Applying TAM to a Paralell Systems Conversion Strategy

According to the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) user perceptions of usefulness and ease of use are major determinants of IT adoption. Extensive research dealing with direct cut over implementation of new IT in field settings support this assertion. In today’s market, however, new IT are often deployed using a parallel systems strategy: new IT are implemented while existing IT are retained so that both IT work in parallel for some time. This study suggests and supports a model showing that user preference for using the new IT depends on user assessment of the usefulness of both the old IT and the new IT. Survey data from a large telecommunications organization that was in the process of adopting a new customer service system while continuing to run the older system in parallel, shows that the respondents?overall preference to use the new IT was, as hypothesized, affected by user perceptions of both IT: perceived usefulness of the new IT increased user preference to adopt the new IT, while perceived usefulness of the old IT decreased it. The perceived usefulness of each system was, as suggested by TAM, increased by the perception of its ease of use. Implications are discussed

Marshall University Music Department Presents a Music Alive Chamber Series, Guest Artists Concert, Double Play, presents, Baroque, Broadway and Beyond!, featuring, Amy Ridings, flute, Patrick Scianella, tuba

https://mds.marshall.edu/music_perf/1544/thumbnail.jp

Online discussion group sustainability: Investigating the interplay between structural dynamics and social dynamics over time

Online discussion groups have become an increasingly popular way to create social networks where individuals congregate electronically to share advice and ideas. In order to better understand sustainability, we propose that research needs to go beyond examining quantitative changes in the structural dynamics of online discussion groups (such as membership size and message volume) and include investigation of the social dynamics characterizing the underlying qualities of the interactions among members. We take a mixed-methods approach to provide qualitative and empirical support for our theory by investigating the dynamics of one successful online discussion group over a five-year period. Our data set includes all 150,267 messages posted to 27,743 threads by 9,042 unique individuals over a five year period in a group that is focused on sharing advice about a medical topic (back pain). We find support for our hypotheses that 1) shifts in the structural and social dynamics underlying resource availability lead to changes in communication activities, but in unexpected ways: Fewer members contributed significantly more message volume. In turn, 2) shifts in the structural and social dynamics underlying communication activities lead to changes in coping strategies: As message volume increased and became more social, members increased their efforts and were less likely to defect. Finally, 3) shifts in the structural and social dynamics underlying coping strategies lead to changes in attraction and retention: as individual efforts increased, more individuals were retained; however, fewer new members were attracted to join the group. Our main thesis is that each online discussion group is a product of its structural and social dynamics in combination, and the influence of these factors on sustainability is best understood when they are examined in relation to each other over time