Advancing Ohio's P-16 Agenda: Exit and Entrance Exam

In March of 2005, Ohio's high school sophomores will take the new Ohio Graduation Test (OGT) for the first time - for keeps. For these students (and those who come after) the OGT will be the gateway to a high school diploma, post secondary education, good paying jobs and successful careers. Failure to pass the OGT will leave the limited options of a Graduate Equivalency Diploma (GED) or a complicated appeals process.While a high stakes graduation exam is not new to Ohio, this test is different. By all indications it is far more rigorous than the old Ninth Grade Proficiency Test, there are less opportunities to re-take the test, and it is geared to measure an extensive set of new academic content standards. Tests like the OGT are part of what has become known as the "standardsbased" reform movement in education. Simply put, they allow states to measure whether or not students are learning according to whatever set of standards, benchmarks and indicators are adopted by that state. They also help meet, in part, the reporting requirements of the Federal "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) Act.Such tests, however, are not without problems. Most problematic is their relevancy to what is required by higher education and the workforce. Ohio has a new, evolving, P-16 agenda. Placing 39th among states in four-year college degrees, Ohio must begin to reconsider the entire continuum of education and the workforce to insure its economic future.If educational systems are to be productive, serious questions emerge as to such issues as loss of instructional time due to testing, costs of such tests and whether or not such tests are "productive" from the aspect of improving instruction or promoting access to college and post secondary instruction. What if a single test in Ohio could meet several needs at once? What if a test could not only measure Ohio's K-12 academic standards, but also serve for college admission and (given that the basic skills needed for both college and the workplace are now virtually the same) career entry?The purpose of this study was to see whether or not the ACT test, or a combination of ACT's EPAS System or WorkKeys Assessment could, with some additions, serve this purpose.The major finding of the study is that the ACT assessments (social studies excluded) do an adequate to excellent job of measuring Ohio's academic content standards at the 10th grade and beyond into the 11th and 12th grades. When certain Ohio benchmarks are eliminated, the match becomes even more compelling

Modelling storm responses on a high-energy coastline with XBeach

The XBeach model has been used to simulate the morphological impacts of storms on sandy and gravel beaches. Taking as a case study Rossbeigh Spit located on the high-energy coast of western Ireland, the study reported here tests the capacity of XBeach to reproduce barrier breaching during a storm in December 2008. It demonstrates that predictions of the breaching event agree reasonably well with observations. However, the main focus of the paper is to establish using the model results, site-specific critical wave and water level conditions giving rise to dune erosion, overwashing and breaching. By deriving simple-to-use expressions to define hydrodynamic thresholds the study advances the ability to predict the impacts of infrequent and rarely observed storm events and is considered to provide useful coastal management tool for assessing the vulnerability of sandy barriers to breaching high-energy during storms

The Masculinized Work of Energy Development: Unequal Opportunities and Risks for Women in Pennsylvania Shale Gas Boomtown Communities

The proliferation of unconventional shale gas development has revived scholarly interest in the impacts of rapid industrial development on communities, schools, policies and politics, public health, the environment, and economic growth. However, with few exceptions, close examinations of the gendered structure of opportunity within areas experiencing rapid shale gas development have largely been absent from this literature. This article uses key informant interview data from low income men and women, as well as from social service providers within Pennsylvania communities heavily affected by shale gas development. In contrast to assertions that shale gas development will yield broad-based economic development impacts for the region, the experiences of the participants in this study suggest a more segmented economic opportunity structure coupled with the creation of new gendered economic and social vulnerabilities as class and gender intersect to create decreased economic opportunities and increased social vulnerabilities for low-income women

Sexual behaviour, sexually transmitted infections and attitudes to chlamydia testing among a unique national sample of young Australians: Baseline data from a randomised controlled trial

Background: Chlamydia infection is the most common notifiable sexually transmitted infection (STI) in Australia and mostly affects young people (15 - 25 years). This paper presents baseline data from a randomised controlled trial that aimed to increase chlamydia testing among sexually active young people. The objectives were to identify associations between sexual behaviour, substance use and STI history and explore attitudes to chlamydia testing. Methods: This study was conducted in cyberspace. Study recruitment, allocation, delivery of interventions and baseline and follow up data collection all took place online. Participants were 16 - 25 years old and resided in Australia. Substance use correlates of sexual activity; predictors of history of STIs; barriers to and facilitators of chlamydia testing were analysed. Results: Of 856 participants (79.1% female), 704 had experienced penetrative intercourse. Sexually active participants were more likely to smoke regularly or daily, to drink alcohol, or to have binge drunk or used marijuana or other illicit substances recently. Risk factors for having a history of any STI were 3 or more sexual partners ever, 6 or more partners in the past 12 months, condom non-use and being 20 years or older. Almost all sexually active participants said that they would have a chlamydia test if their doctor recommended it. Conclusions: Sexually active young people are at risk of STIs and may engage in substance use risk behaviours. Where one health risk behaviour is identified, it is important to seek information about others. Chlamydia testing can be facilitated by doctors and nurses recommending it. Primary care providers have a useful role in chlamydia control. © 2014 Kang et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

Growth and evolution of tetracyanoquinodimethane and potassium coadsorption phases on Ag(111)

Alkali-doping is a very efficient way of tuning the electronic properties of active molecular layers in (opto-) electronic devices based on organic semiconductors. In this context, we report on the phase formation and evolution of charge transfer salts formed by 7, 7, 8, 8-tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ) in coadsorption with potassium on a Ag(111) surface. Based on an in-situ study using low energy electron microscopy and diffraction we identify the structural properties of four phases with different stoichiometries, and follow their growth and inter-phase transitions. We label these four phases α to δ, with increasing K content, the last two of which (γ and δ-phases) have not been previously reported. During TCNQ deposition on a K-precovered Ag(111) surface we find a superior stability of δ-phase islands compared to the γ-phase; continued TCNQ deposition leads to a direct transition from the δ to the β-phase when the K : TCNQ ratio corresponding to this phase regime is reached, with no intermediate γ-phase formation. When, instead, K is deposited on a surface precovered with large islands of the low density commensurate (LDC) TCNQ phase that are surrounded by a TCNQ 2D-gas, we observe two different scenarios: on the one hand, in the 2D-gas phase regions, very small α-phase islands are formed (close to the resolution limit of the microscope, 10–15 nm), which transform to β-phase islands of similar size with increasing K deposition. On the other hand, the large (micrometer-sized) TCNQ islands transform directly to similarly large single-domain β-phase islands, the formation of the intermediate α-phase being suppressed. This frustration of the LDC-to-α transition can be lifted by performing the experiment at elevated temperature. In this sense, the morphology of the pure TCNQ submonolayer is conserved during phase transitions

Matching structure and bargaining outcomes in buyer–seller networks

We examine the relationship between the matching structure of a bipartite (buyer-seller) network and the (expected) shares of the unit surplus that each connected pair in this network can create. We show that in different bargaining environments, these shares are closely related to the Gallai-Edmonds Structure Theorem. This theorem characterizes the structure of maximum matchings in an undirected graph. We show that the relationship between the (expected) shares and the tructure Theorem is not an artefact of a particular bargaining mechanism or trade centralization. However, this relationship does not necessarily generalize to non-bipartite networks or to networks with heterogeneous link values

Ordered growth of vanadyl phthalocyanine (VOPc) on an iron phthalocyanine (FePc) monolayer

The growth and characterisation of a non-planar phthalocyanine (Vanadyl Phthalocyanine, VOPc) on a complete monolayer (ML) of a planar phthalocyanine (Iron (II) Phthalocyanine, FePc) on an Au (111) surface, has been investigated using ultra-high vacuum (UHV) scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) and low energy electron diffraction (LEED). The surface mesh of the initial FePc monolayer has been determined and shown to correspond to an incommensurate overlayer, not commensurate as previously reported. Ordered islands of VOPc, with (1x1) epitaxy, grow on the FePc layer at submonolayer coverages. The individual VOPc molecules occupy sites directly atop the underlying FePc molecules, indicating that significant intermolecular bonding must occur. It is proposed that this interaction implies that the V=O points down into the surface, allowing a Fe-O bond to form. The detailed appearance of the STM images of the VOPc molecules is consistent with previous studies in other VOPc growth studies in which this molecular orientation has been proposed