Prospective Impact of Responsibility Center Budgeting on Communication and Theatre Programs: View From a State Supported University

This article examines the impact of responsibility center budgeting (RCB) on communication and theatre programs in a state supported university. While some operational differences exist, it generally can be said that, in RCB, part or all tuition and sponsored research revenues are returned to a unit in direct proportion to what is earned. The unit controls its own pricing policy and is responsible for payment of all, or nearly all, of its costs. Surpluses remain with the unit; deficits must be made up by the unit in succeeding periods. The incentive to efficient production of what the market demands is obvious. The philosophy behind the system is that there will be a centralized, coordinated university mission, which higher academic administration can oversee in cooperation with the responsibility center managers

Historical Forest Landscape Changes in the Buffalo River Sub-Basin in Arkansas

Forested areas in the United States have been altered since the time of European settlement. For this reason, research interests have increased in comparing present day vegetation with that of the preEuroamerican era to see what changes, if any, have occurred in some of our more outstanding natural areas. Such studies have been conducted in other parts of the United States but limited research has been done in Arkansas. The General Land Office (GLO) surveys of Arkansas were originally conducted between approximately 1815 and 1850 shortly after Arkansas was acquired from France by means of the Louisiana Purchase and provides the only systematic on-ground survey in Arkansas that predates most formal botanical investigations. The GLO surveys used witness trees to define the location of section corners and lines. Descriptions of witness trees included tree species and diameter along with distance and direction to the section corner or line. This historical GLO data was compared to United States Forest Service (USFS) Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data, which represent present vegetation conditions for 62 townships in the Buffalo River Sub-basin. Comparisons indicated that eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) increased from 0.7% to 7.8% of the total forest species in the sub-basin, hickory (Carya spp.) increased from 8.2% to 14.3%, while oak (Quercus spp.) species decreased from 43.0% to 30.1%. Based on this study it appears that postEuroamerican settlement fire suppression and agricultural practices in addition to other human activities has caused vegetation changes in this area

A Speech Communication Program in Malaysia: Case Study in the Conundrums of Teaching Abroad

This article deals with a study which aims to discover directly the unique elements of the culture of the Institut Teknologi MARA/Midwest Universities Consortium for International Activities (ITM/MUCIA) students that affect their speech communication. There are multiple influences on student behaviors and no generalizations can he made to fit all students at MUCIA. But, there were some characteristics that were extremely common. A survey of the ITM/MUCIA faculty and staff, from a wide cross-section of Americans and Malaysians, revealed near unanimity on strengths and weaknesses of Malaysian students, reflecting the nature of their earlier learning styles. The substance of classroom speechmaking was greatly affected by a lack of freedom of speech in Malaysia. Malaysian students had great emotional attachment to their pasts, relatives, friends, and leaders. They shared strong involvement in the Islamic faith and a singular view of government

Oral English Proficiency Requirements for ITAs in U. S. Colleges and Universities: An Issue in Speech Communication

This article explores the nature and extent of oral English proficiency training that international teaching assistants (ITA) need for their faculty and staff roles in U.S. colleges and universities. In surveys of campuses in the Illinois system, the most frequent single complaint among undergraduates was that the ITA had language problems which interfered with the students\u27 comprehension of classroom material. The Test of English As a Foreign Language (TOEFL) has been in existence since 1964, assessing the English usage of English-as-a-second-language students applying for admission to colleges and universities. The Test of Spoken Language, designed by the Educational Testing Service, can be administered within a half hour at TOEFL Test Centers. The instrument tests the linguistic mastery of the examinee, with scoring on comprehensibility, pronunciation, grammar and fluency

A bilingual advantage in controlling language interference during sentence comprehension

This study compared the comprehension of syntactically simple with more complex sentences in Italian–English adult bilinguals and monolingual controls in the presence or absence of sentence-level interference. The task was to identify the agent of the sentence and we primarily examined the accuracy of response. The target sentence was signalled by the gender of the speaker, either a male or a female, and this varied over trials, where the target was spoken in a male voice the distractor was spoken in a female voice and vice versa. In contrast to other work showing a bilingual disadvantage in sentence comprehension under conditions of noise, we show that in this task, where voice permits selection of the target, adult bilingual speakers are in fact better able than their monolingual Italian peers to resist sentence-level interference when comprehension demands are high. Within bilingual speakers we also found that degree of proficiency in English correlated with the ability to resist interference for complex sentences both when the target and distractor were in Italian and when the target was in English and the distractor in Italian

Trends in Pediatric Patient-Ventilator Asynchrony During Invasive Mechanical Ventilation

OBJECTIVES: To explore the level and time course of patient-ventilator asynchrony in mechanically ventilated children and the effects on duration of mechanical ventilation, PICU stay, and Comfort Behavior Score as indicator for patient comfort.DESIGN: Secondary analysis of physiology data from mechanically ventilated children.SETTING: Mixed medical-surgical tertiary PICU in a university hospital.PATIENTS: Mechanically ventilated children 0-18 years old were eligible for inclusion. Excluded were patients who were unable to initiate and maintain spontaneous breathing from any cause.MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Twenty-nine patients were studied with a total duration of 109 days. Twenty-two study days (20%) were excluded because patients were on neuromuscular blockade or high-frequency oscillatory ventilation, yielding 87 days (80%) for analysis. Patient-ventilator asynchrony was detected through analysis of daily recorded ventilator airway pressure, flow, and volume versus time scalars. Approximately one of every three breaths was asynchronous. The percentage of asynchronous breaths significantly increased over time, with the highest prevalence on the day of extubation. There was no correlation with the Comfort Behavior score. The percentage of asynchronous breaths during the first 24 hours was inversely correlated with the duration of mechanical ventilation. Patients with severe patient-ventilator asynchrony (asynchrony index &gt; 10% or &gt; 75th percentile of the calculated asynchrony index) did not have a prolonged duration of ventilation.CONCLUSIONS: The level of patient-ventilator asynchrony increased over time was not related to patient discomfort and inversely related to the duration of mechanical ventilation.</p

Possible function of the protein bound to nuclear complementary RNA

It was demonstrated that individual renal endothelial dilatory function of the healthy rat predicts susceptibility to subsequent renal damage induced by 5/6 nephrectomy. In addition, it is reported that myocardial infarction (MI) that was performed upon unilateral nephrectomy (UNx) induced highly variable renal damage. Therefore, whether the variability in renal damage after MI could be explained by the variation in individual renal endothelial function before the induction of injury was studied. Endothelium-dependent relaxation to acetylcholine was investigated in vitro in small arteries that were isolated from the extirpated kidney at UNx. MI was induced 1 wk after UNx by ligation of the left coronary artery. Proteinuria and systolic BP were evaluated weekly for 16 wk thereafter using metabolic cages and the tail-cuff method, respectively. Upon termination of the study, focal glomerulosclerosis was evaluated by histology as an additional marker of renal damage. After MI, nephrectomized male Wistar rats (n = 15) gradually developed variable proteinuria, ranging from 20 to 507 mg/24 h at week 16, with an average systolic BP of 131 +/- 7 mmHg. The individual renal endothelial function of the healthy rats predicted the extent of renal damage in terms of proteinuria (r = -0.62, P = 0.008) and focal glomerulosclerosis (r = -0.70, P = 0.003). The individual level of renal endothelial function in the healthy rat is able to predict the severity of renal damage that is induced by MI. Further exploration of the underlying mechanisms may lead to discovery of preventive renoprotective therapies

The distribution and characterization of HNK-1 antigens in the developing avian heart

The heart originates from splanchnic mesoderm and to a lesser extent from neural crest cells. The HNK-1 monoclonal antibody is a marker for early migrating neural crest cells, but reacts also with structures which are not derived from the neural crest. We investigated whether heart structures are HNK-1 positive before neural crest cells colonize these target tissues. To that end, we determined the HNK-1 antigen expression in the developing avian heart on immunohistochemical sections and on Western blots. The HNK-1 immunoreactivity in the developing chick heart is compared with data from literature cm the localization of neural crest cells in chick/quail chimeras. Structures with neural crest contribution, including parts of the early outflow tract and the related endocardial cushions, the primordia of the semilunar valve leaflets and the aorticopulmonary septum were HNK-1 positive. Furthermore, other structures were HNK-1 positive, such as the atrioventricular cushions, the wall of the sinus venosus at stage HH 15 through 21, parts of the endocardium at E3, parts of the myocardium at E6, and the extracellular matrix in the myocardial base of the semilunar valves at E14. HNK-1 expression was particularly observed in morphologically dynamic regions such as the developing valves, the outflow tract cushion, the developing conduction system and the autonomie nervous system of the heart. We observed that atrioventricular endocardial cushions are HNK-1 positive. We conclude that: a HNK-1 immunoreactivity does not always coincide with the presence of neural crest cells or their derivatives; (2) the outflow tract cushions and atrioventricular endocardial cushions are HNK-1 positive before neural crest cells are expected (stage HH 19) to enter the endocardial cushions of the outflow tract; (3) the observed spatio-temporal HNK-1 patterns observed in the developing heart correspond with various HNK-1 antigens. Apart from a constant pattern of HNK-1 antigens during development, stage-dependent HNK-1 antigens were also found