Perceptions of Georgia School Counselors on the Implementation of a Comprehensive Guidance and Counseling Program and Accountability

In the era of accountability, school counselors are under pressure to accurately determine their role. No Child Left Behind has created standards that are tied to and driven by accountability and academic standards. School counselors\u27 roles and responsibilities vary from district to district and from school to school. School counselors are often asked to perform duties that are not congruent with the curriculum they are asked to implement. The Georgia Curriculum for counselors has outlined tasks, duties, and responsibilities for school counselors. The task dimensions are aligned with the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) model and defines roles and tasks that are appropriate and inappropriate for school counselors. The purpose of this study was to determine to what extent school counselors in Georgia are implementing the state Guidance Curriculum. Georgia school counselors who are members of ASCA were sent surveys via email and were asked to click on a link that directed them to a site for them to respond to the survey. The number of actual delivered emails was 328 and the return rate was 33.84%. School counselors were asked a series of questions that asked them to respond to items that listed a variety of tasks and duties that are listed as part of the state guidance 2 curriculum. Included in the survey were tasks and duties that, according to ASCA are deemed inappropriate for counselors to perform. Counselors\u27 response to the survey items determined their beliefs regarding the tasks they perform on a daily/weekly basis and if they believe specific tasks they perform have an impact on student achievement. The findings of this study indicated that the majority of Georgia school counselors who responded to the survey are implementing the Georgia curriculum. The results also indicated that counselors believe that many of the tasks and duties they perform have an impact on student achievement. In addition to these findings, it was determined by counselor report that Georgia school counselors are still performing some inappropriate clerical and administrative tasks

Emotion Displays in Media: A Comparison Between Mexican, Hispanic-American, and European-American Children’s Storybooks

Cultures differ in emotions not only in the emotion display rules (Matsumoto et al., 2008), i.e., how, when, and to whom emotions are appropriate to be expressed, but also in preferences for certain type of emotions (e.g., De Leersnyder, Kim, & Mesquita, 2015; Eid & Diener, 2011). Young children acquire these culture-specific emotion norms not only through their parents’ emotion socialization strategies (Friedlmeier, Corapci, & Cole, 2011), but also through exposure to cultural artifacts such as children’s storybooks (Tsai, 2007; VanderWege et al., 2014). The goal of this study was to compare emotion displays in European-American, Mexican, and Hispanic-American storybooks to infer cultural differences in emotion norms with a particular emphasis on acculturation effects of Hispanic-American books. Cultural variations of emotion norms are partly explained by general cultural syndromes like individualism-collectivism (van Hemert, Poortinga, & van de Vijver, 2007) and differences in self-construal (Kitayama, Markus, & Kurokawa, 2000), and we expected differences between Mexican and European-American storybooks regarding intensity of expression, type of emotion, and impact of ingroup/outgroup on emotion display

Potentiation and allosteric agonist activation of α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors: binding sites and hypotheses

Considerable progress has been made in recent years towards the identification and characterisation of novel subtype-selective modulators of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs). In particular, this has focussed on modulators of α7 nAChRs, a nAChR subtype that has been identified as a target for drug discovery in connection with a range of potential therapeutic applications. This review focusses upon α7-selective modulators that bind to receptor sites other than the extracellular 'orthosteric' agonist binding site for the endogenous agonist acetylcholine (ACh). Such compounds include those that are able to potentiate responses evoked by orthosteric agonists such as ACh (positive allosteric modulators; PAMs) and those that are able to activate α7 nAChRs by direct allosteric activation in the absence of an orthosteric agonist (allosteric agonists or 'ago-PAMs'). There has been considerable debate about the mechanism of action of α7-selective PAMs and allosteric agonists, much of which has centred around identifying the location of their binding sites on α7 nAChRs. Based on a variety of experimental evidence, including recent structural data, there is now clear evidence indicating that at least some α7-selective PAMs bind to an inter-subunit site located in the transmembrane domain. In contrast, there are differing hypotheses about the site or sites at which allosteric agonists bind to α7 nAChRs. It will be argued that the available evidence supports the conclusion that direct allosteric activation by allosteric agonists/ago-PAMs occurs via the same inter-subunit transmembrane site that has been identified for several α7-selective PAMs

Computational Serendipity and Tensor Product Finite Element Differential Forms

Many conforming finite elements on squares and cubes are elegantly classified into families by the language of finite element exterior calculus and presented in the Periodic Table of the Finite Elements. Use of these elements varies, based principally on the ease or difficulty in finding a "computational basis" of shape functions for element families. The tensor product family, $Q^-_r\Lambda^k$, is most commonly used because computational basis functions are easy to state and implement. The trimmed and non-trimmed serendipity families, $S^-_r\Lambda^k$ and $S_r\Lambda^k$ respectively, are used less frequently because they are newer to the community and, until now, lacked a straightforward technique for computational basis construction. This represents a missed opportunity for computational efficiency as the serendipity elements in general have fewer degrees of freedom than elements of equivalent accuracy from the tensor product family. Accordingly, in pursuit of easy adoption of the serendipity families, we present complete lists of computational bases for both serendipity families, for any order $r\geq 1$ and for any differential form order $0\leq k\leq n$, for problems in dimension $n=2$ or $3$. The bases are defined via shared subspace structures, allowing easy comparison of elements across families. We use and include code in SageMath to find, list, and verify these computational basis functions.Comment: 19 page manuscript; 8 page appendix. Code available at http://math.arizona.edu/~agillette/research/computationalBases

Transformative Design: A Tale of Arabian Nights

This thesis is a description of the process of creating the scene design for the Theatre VCU production of Arabian Nights. It was directed by Gabriel Barre and the production ran April 11th – 27th, 2014. It follows the preproduction, build and a final evaluation of the design and the process used in creating it

Emotion Norms in Media: Acculturation in Hispanic Children\u27s Storybooks Compared to Heritage and Mainstream Cultures

Cultural artifacts such as children’s storybooks may serve to facilitate learning of emotion display norms. We compared emotion displays in European American and Mexican books to infer cultural differences between the mainstream and a heritage culture to ultimately explore acculturation orientation in Hispanic storybooks. Totally, 1,059 images were coded from 10 popular storybooks from each cultural group. We focused on emotion type (positive, negative socially engaging, and disengaging) and intensity of expression. Context variables such as social partners and gender were also compared. Positive emotions were dominant in all groups, occurring most in Hispanic storybooks; Mexican and Hispanic storybooks displayed negative socially disengaging emotions less than negative socially engaging emotions. Hispanic storybooks displayed lowest intensity of expression, especially for female characters. Results indicated that Hispanic storybooks showed similarities to the mainstream culture in general features and similarities to the heritage culture in emotion-type display. However, some emotion norms deviated from both groups, indicating minority effects of Hispanic culture

Stoichiometry-Selective Antagonism of α4β2 Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptors by Fluoroquinolone Antibiotics

Quinolone antibiotics disrupt bacterial DNA synthesis by interacting with DNA gyrase and topoisomerase IV. However, in addition, they have been shown to act as inhibitors of pentameric ligand-gated ion channels such as GABAA receptors and the α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR). In the present study, we have examined the effects of quinolone antibiotics on the human α4β2 nAChR, an important subtype that is widely expressed in the central nervous system. A key feature of α4β2 nAChRs is their ability to coassemble into two distinct stoichiometries, (α4)_{2}(β2)_{3} and (α4)_{3}(β2)_{2}, which results in differing affinities for acetylcholine. The effects of nine quinolone antibiotics were examined on both stoichiometries of the α4β2 receptor by two-electrode voltage-clamp recording. All compounds exhibited significant inhibition of α4β2 nAChRs. However, all of the fluoroquinolone antibiotics examined (ciprofloxacin, enoxacin, enrofloxacin, difloxacin, norfloxacin, pefloxacin, and sparfloxacin) were significantly more potent inhibitors of (α4)_{2}(β2)_{3} nAChRs than of (α4)_{3}(β2)_{2} nAChRs. This stoichiometry-selective effect was most pronounced with pefloxacin, which inhibited (α4)_{2}(β2)_{3} nAChRs with an IC_{50} of 26.4 ± 3.4 μM but displayed no significant inhibition of (α4)_{3}(β2)_{2} nAChRs. In contrast, two nonfluorinated quinolone antibiotics (cinoxacin and oxolinic acid) exhibited no selectivity in their inhibition of the two stoichiometries of α4β2. Computational docking studies suggest that pefloxacin interacts selectively with an allosteric transmembrane site at the β2(+)/β2(−) subunit interface, which is consistent with its selective inhibition of (α4)_{2}(β2)_{3}. These findings concerning the antagonist effects of fluoroquinolones provide further evidence that differences in the subunit stoichiometry of heteromeric nAChRs can result in substantial differences in pharmacological properties

Acceptability and feasibility of peer assisted supervision and support for intervention practitioners: a Q-methodology evaluation

Evidence-based interventions often include quality improvement methods to support fidelity and improve client outcomes. Clinical supervision is promoted as an effective way of developing practitioner confidence and competence in delivery; however, supervision is often inconsistent and embedded in hierarchical line management structures that may limit the opportunity for reflective learning. The Peer Assisted Supervision and Support (PASS) supervision model uses peer relationships to promote the self-regulatory capacity of practitioners to improve intervention delivery. The aim of the present study was to assess the acceptability and feasibility of PASS amongst parenting intervention practitioners. A Q-methodology approach was used to generate data and 30 practitioners volunteered to participate in the study. Data were analyzed and interpreted using standard Q-methodology procedures and by-person factor analysis yielded three factors. There was consensus that PASS was acceptable. Participants shared the view that PASS facilitated an environment of support where negative aspects of interpersonal relationships that might develop in supervision were not evident. Two factors represented the viewpoint that PASS was also a feasible model of supervision. However, the third factor was comprised of practitioners who reported that PASS could be time consuming and difficult to fit into existing work demands. There were differences across the three factors in the extent to which practitioners considered PASS impacted on their intervention delivery. The findings highlight the importance of organizational mechanisms that support practitioner engagement in supervision