A Quantitative Examination of Title I and Non-Title I Elementary Schools in East Tennessee Using Fourth-Grade Math and Reading Standardized Test Scores.

In January 2002, President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind legislation into law. The law established new standards of accountability for individual students, schools, and school systems. Because of No Child Left Behind, the penalties for schools with poor academic performance in our country are the loss of reputation, student enrollment, and financial support. The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a difference in standardized test scores in reading and math between fourth-grade students in Title I schools and those in NonTitle I schools. The study focused on the following subgroups: gender, economically disadvantaged students, and students with disabilities. The data were gathered from an analysis of standardized test scores in reading and math of fourth-grade students in 172 elementary schools located in 21 East Tennessee school systems. The data were collected from the 2002-2003 Terra Nova Standardized Assessment Test scores. The Terra Nova test is a standardized test used to evaluate academic progress in the state of Tennessee. In summary, there were some differences between Title I and NonTitle I fourth-grade students in the subject areas of reading and math. Significant differences were noted within the subcategory of gender in both reading and math. Significant differences were also noted within the subcategory of students with disabilities in the content area of math. No significant differences were found in reading for students with disabilities. There were no significant differences between Title I and NonTitle I schools in reading and math within the subcategory of economically disadvantaged students

Are male orangutans a threat to infants? Evidence of mother-offspring counter strategies to infanticide in Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii)

Sexually selected infanticide by males is widespread in primates. Female primates employ a variety of strategies to reduce infanticide risk. While infanticide has never been directly observed in wild orangutans (Pongo spp.), their slow life history makes infants vulnerable to infanticide. The mating strategies of female orangutans include polyandrous and postconceptive mating that may serve to increase paternity confusion, an infanticide avoidance strategy. Here, we investigate whether female orangutans alter their social interactions with males as another infanticide avoidance strategy. We hypothesize that females with younger offspring avoid males and that the distance between mother and offspring decreases in the presence of males. We use long-term behavioral data collected between 1994 and 2016 from Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii) in Gunung Palung National Park, Indonesia, to test whether the sexual selection hypothesis for infanticide helps explain aspects of orangutan social behavior. We found that mothers with offspring 6 yr. old and females without offspring. In addition, the distance between a mother–offspring dyad showed a statistically significant decrease in the presence of males, but not females. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that female orangutans employ strategies to reduce infanticide risk in their social interactions. Because orangutans have a high fission–fusion dynamic, they have flexibility in manipulating social interactions as a counter-infanticide strategy. Our results suggest that infanticide by males is a selective pressure shaping female orangutan social behavior.Accepted manuscrip

Possible male infanticide in wild orangutans and a re-evaluation of infanticide risk

Infanticide as a male reproductive tactic is widespread across mammals, and is particularly prevalent in catarrhine primates. While it has never been observed in wild orangutans, infanticide by non-sire males has been predicted to occur due to their extremely long inter-birth intervals, semi-solitary social structure, and the presence of female counter-tactics to infanticide. Here, we report on the disappearance of a healthy four-month-old infant, along with a serious foot injury suffered by the primiparous mother. No other cases of infant mortality have been observed at this site in 30 years of study. Using photographic measurements of the injury, and information on the behavior and bite size of potential predators, we evaluate the possible causes of this injury. The context, including the behavior of the female and the presence of a new male at the time of the injury, lead us to conclude that the most likely cause of the infant loss and maternal injury was male infanticide. We suggest that in orangutans, and other species where nulliparous females are not preferred mates, these females may be less successful at using paternity confusion as an infanticide avoidance tactic, thus increasing the likelihood of infanticide of their first-born infants.Published versio

Injustice perceptions about pain: parent–child discordance is associated with worse functional outcomes

Pain is experienced within and influenced by social environments. For children with chronic pain, the child–parent relationship and parental beliefs about pain are particularly important and may influence pain outcomes. Pain-related injustice perceptions have recently been identified as an important cognitive–emotional factor for children with pain. The current study aimed to better understand the pain-related injustice perceptions of children with chronic pain and their parents. The sample consisted of 253 pediatric chronic pain patients (mean age = 14.1 years, 74% female) presenting to a tertiary pain clinic. Patients completed measures of pain intensity, pain-related injustice perceptions, stress, functional disability, and quality of life. Parents completed a measure of pain-related injustice perceptions about their child's pain. Child–parent dyads were categorized into 1 of 4 categories based on the degree of concordance or discordance between their scores on the injustice measures. One-way analysis of variances examined differences in pain intensity, stress, functional disability, and quality of life across the 4 dyad categories. Our findings indicated that both the degree (concordant vs discordant) and direction (discordant low child–high parent vs discordant high child–low parent) of similarity between child and parent injustice perceptions were associated with child-reported pain intensity, stress, functional disability, and quality of life. The poorest outcomes were reported when children considered their pain as highly unjust, but their parents did not. These findings highlight the important role of parents in the context of pain-related injustice perceptions in pediatric chronic pain

Probing the Gamma-Ray Burst Rate with Trigger Simulations of the Swift Burst Alert Telescope

The long gamma-ray burst (GRB) rate is essential for revealing the connection between GRBs, supernovae and stellar evolution. Additionally, the GRB rate at high redshift provides a strong probe of star formation history in the early universe. While hundreds of GRBs are observed by Swift, it remains difficult to determine the intrinsic GRB rate due to the complex trigger algorithm of Swift. Current studies usually approximate the Swift trigger algorithm by a single detection threshold. However, unlike the previously flown GRB instruments, Swift has over 500 trigger criteria based on photon count rate and additional image threshold for localization. To investigate possible systematic biases and explore the intrinsic GRB properties, we developed a program that is capable of simulating all the rate trigger criteria and mimicking the image trigger threshold. We use this program to search for the intrinsic GRB rate. Our simulations show that adopting the complex trigger algorithm of Swift increases the detection rate of dim bursts. As a result, we find that either the GRB rate is much higher than previously expected at large redshift, or the luminosity evolution is non-negligible. We will discuss the best results of the GRB rate in our search, and their impact on the star-formation history.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, 7th Huntsville Gamma-Ray Burst Symposium, GRB 2013: paper 35 in eConf Proceedings C130414

Probing the Cosmic Gamma-Ray Burst Rate with Trigger Simulations of the Swift Burst Alert Telescope

The gamma-ray burst (GRB) rate is essential for revealing the connection between GRBs, supernovae and stellar evolution. Additionally, the GRB rate at high redshift provides a strong probe of star formation history in the early universe. While hundreds of GRBs are observed by Swift, it remains difficult to determine the intrinsic GRB rate due to the complex trigger algorithm of Swift. Current studies of the GRB rate usually approximate the Swift trigger algorithm by a single detection threshold. However, unlike the previously flown GRB instruments, Swift has over 500 trigger criteria based on photon count rate and additional image threshold for localization. To investigate possible systematic biases and explore the intrinsic GRB properties, we develop a program that is capable of simulating all the rate trigger criteria and mimicking the image threshold. Our simulations show that adopting the complex trigger algorithm of Swift increases the detection rate of dim bursts. As a result, our simulations suggest bursts need to be dimmer than previously expected to avoid over-producing the number of detections and to match with Swift observations. Moreover, our results indicate that these dim bursts are more likely to be high redshift events than low-luminosity GRBs. This would imply an even higher cosmic GRB rate at large redshifts than previous expectations based on star-formation rate measurements, unless other factors, such as the luminosity evolution, are taken into account. The GRB rate from our best result gives a total number of 4571^{+829}_{-1584} GRBs per year that are beamed toward us in the whole universe. SPECIAL NOTE (2015.05.16): This new version incorporates an erratum. All the GRB rate normalizations ($R_{\rm GRB}(z=0)$) should be a factor of 2 smaller than previously reported. Please refer to the Appendix for more details. We sincerely apologize for the mistake.Comment: 52 pages, 17 figures, published in ApJ 783, 24L (2014). An erratum is included. A typo in Eq. 8 is fixed in this versio

Powering the Planet: The Role Chemistry Plays in Solar Energy Technology

Global energy demands are projected to double by 2050, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, and solar energy has the greatest potential as the most benign, universal resource for generating electricity. However, harnessing the solar energy efficiently and converting it towards useful forms of power that are compatible with our current infrastructure remains an elusive goal. Today’s solar energy utilization relies on silicon-based photovoltaic (PV) technology, which converts photon energy to electrical energy. The efficiency of these devices remains low (\u3c 30%) and the cost of processing silicon and installing solar panels in homes makes PV uneconomical compared to the current price of electricity. Research efforts towards developing new inorganic and organic materials for thin film PV to replace silicon are currently underway. Organic materials are particularly interesting from the standpoint of developing simple, cheap materials that can be easily tailored for future PV devices. The future of solar energy utilization relies on developing solar paints for vehicles, solar shingles for rooftops, and spray-on solar ink for small device applications, but continued fundamental research is needed for decreasing cost and improving efficiency for next generation devices

Object-Centered Shifts of Receptive Field Positions in Monkey Primary Visual Cortex

SummaryStimuli that project the same retinal visual angle can appear to occupy very different proportions of the visual field if they are perceived to be at different distances [1–8]. Previous research shows that perceived angular size alters the spatial distribution of activity in early retinotopic visual cortex [7, 9–11]. For example, a sphere superimposed on the far end of a corridor scene appears to occupy a larger visual angle and activates a larger region of primary visual cortex (V1) compared with the same sphere superimposed on the near end of the corridor [7]. These previous results, however, were obtained from human subjects using psychophysics and fMRI, a fact that fundamentally limits our understanding of the underlying neuronal mechanisms. Here, we present an animal model that allows for a finer examination of size perception at the level of single neurons. We first show that macaque monkeys perceive a size-distance illusion similarly to humans. Then, using extracellular recordings, we test the specific hypothesis [12] that neurons in V1 shift the position of their receptive fields (RFs) in response to complex monocular depth cues. Consistent with this hypothesis, we found that when ring-shaped stimuli appeared at the back of the corridor, RFs of V1 neurons shifted toward the center of the rings. When the same stimuli appeared at the front of the corridor, RFs shifted outward. Thus, our results show for the first time that V1 RFs can shift, potentially serving as the neural basis for the perception of angular size

Effects of Performance Feedback on High School Teachers’ Use of Opportunities to Respond and Positive Feedback: Considering Efficiency in High Need Schools

The transition into high school presents new challenges for adolescents and performance in ninth grade is highly predictive of success throughout the remainder of high school. However, focus on teacher performance has great promise for increasing student engagement in the classroom and raising student achievement. Unfortunately, many of these practices typically are not implemented within classrooms where students are at highest risk for failure. Two studies were implemented to examine the effect of simple performance feedback strategies as a means of increasing teachers’ provision of opportunities for student responses and positive feedback during instruction. Results showed no effect in teacher behavior as a result of performance feedback. A discussion considers the implications of high need schools, efficiency, and the necessary and sufficient strategies for changing teacher behavior