Subsurface Fish Handling to Limit Decompression Effects on Deepwater Species

A method of handling hooked fish at intermediate depth was developed for species which occur deeper than conventional scuba depths. Juvenile pink snappers, Pristipomoides filamentosus, were hauled from 65-100 m to a depth of only 30 m, where the ambient pressure change was a fraction of that produced by hauling fish to the sea surface. This method afforded a unique opportunity to acoustically tag deepwater, physoclistous fish without the need to alter the fish's original swim bladder volume and without the high risk of further injury associated with surface handling. Tagged P. filamentosus survived and behaved well and were tracked successfully. This basic method could be applied to a variety of deepwater species in a number of research approaches, including tagging and dietary studies

The Teach for Florida Project: A Case Study of Alternative Route Certification Policy

This study examined the policy implementation of the Teach for Florida Project, which was conducted as a grant program in 2003. The project was designed to help alleviate a critical shortage of teachers brought about in part by the passage in the fall of 2002 of Florida Constitutional Amendment 9, a referendum setting specific limits on the number of students who could be taught by one teacher. The project was created and run on a tight timeline, allowing only 6 months from initiation of the request for proposals to placement of new alternatively prepared teachers in their classrooms. Despite the short notice, 23 institutions submitted proposals, of which 19 were considered worthy of funding and 7 were selected. Of the institutions selected, three represented the State University System, three the State Community College System, and one was a consortium of independent private colleges and universities in Florida. Although each institution created its own plan, the programs demonstrated two divergent paradigms. The schools all proposed some form of classroom education methodology, while the consortium created an online training system. The potential to examine in detail the outcomes of the two approaches was lost because, as the literature review points out, there was no requirement in the request for proposals to maintain the data necessary to conduct such an investigation. The Teach for Florida Project was effective in creating alternative programs for teacher certification but could have provided greater insight into the alternative preparation process had evaluation planning been part of the implementation

Criteria used by social workers in assessing movement in groups

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit