2015 Alaska's Construction Spending Forecast

OVERVIEW The total value of construction spending “on the street” in Alaska in 2015 will be $8.5 billion, down 3Wage and salary employment in the construction industry, which increased an estimated 6 percent last year, to about 17,600, will decline slightly in 2015.4 Oil and gas sector spending will fall 2$3.8 billion from its record level of $3.9 billion last year. Other spending will be$4.7 billion, a decline from $4.9 billion last year. Private spending, excluding oil and gas, will be about$1.7 billion, down from $2.0 billion last year—while public spending will increase from$2.9 to $3.0 billion. Construction spending in Alaska in 2015 is expected to be strong in spite of the drop in the price of oil from more than$100 per barrel in the summer of 2014 to between $45 and$50 today. However, the longer the price stays low, the greater the risk that some projects will be cancelled or postponed. It is impossible to predict what will happen to the oil price, because world supply has outstripped demand. The price will stabilize, and perhaps begin to increase, only when the low price stimulates more demand and eliminates high cost production, a process that could take more than a year. A further complication is the unpredictability of the role of OPEC in determining oil supply. In particular Saudi Arabia, the largest producer, could decide to restrict supply for political or strategic reasons. Because of the drop in the price of oil, the state is facing a general fund budget deficit of about $3 billion for the current fiscal year (FY2015) and is projected to have a similar deficit in FY2016 (which begins July 1 of this year). However, this will not have a large negative impact on state government construction spending this year for several reasons.Northrim Bank. Construction Industry Progress Fund. The Associated General Contractors of Alaska

2017 Alaska's Construction Spending Forecast

The total value of construction spending “on the street” in Alaska in 2017 will be $6.5 billion, down 10$2.4 billion, from $2.9 billion last year. All other construction spending will be$4.0 billion, a decline of 7% from $4.3 billion last year. Private spending, excluding oil and gas, will be about$1.6 billion, up 2% from last year—while public spending will decline 12% to $2.5 billion. Wage and salary employment in the construction industry, which dropped by 8.5% in 2016 to 16.2 thousand, will drop another 7.4% in 2017 to 15 thousand, the lowest level in more than a decade.n 2016 the Alaska economy slipped into a recession that is expected to continue at least through 2017. Total wage and salary employment fell in 2016 by 6.8 thousand, about 2%. This year it is anticipated the decline will be 7.5 thousand, or 2.3%, which will return the economy to the 2010 level.5. Weakness in the economy is also reflected in a net outmigration of population over the last four years.Construction Industry Progress Fund Associated General Contractors of Alask

Student Attitude to Audio Versus Written Feedback

First year Biology at the University of Glasgow consists of two courses, 1A and 1B, with an annual intake of 750-800 students. Both courses consist of lectures, practical lab sessions, tutorials and discussion groups. With such large numbers of students, teaching methods and delivery continually change and develop to ensure best delivery of the course content. As such, assessment and feedback systems also need to remain current and accessible to all. Timely, instructive and developmental feedback on student work is arguably the most powerful single influence on a student’s ability to learn. As part of the transition from school into university, feedback is a recognised method of maximising student potential (Hattie and Timperley, 2007). Research shows that increasing student numbers and associated rise in marking workloads, means that feedback can be slow in returning to the student and lacking quality/detail (Glover and Brown, 2006). From the markers perspective there is some evidence that students fail to engage with, misinterpret or ignore written feedback. We have carried out a pilot study to apply, and attempt to build upon, principles of good feedback practice to the assessment of coursework. To do this, an essay assignment was submitted online by Biology 1A students, marked and written feedback provided to all. A randomly selected group of students (10% of the cohort) also received audio feedback (electronic audio files were imbedded into the student work and returned to them by e-mail) on their submitted work. All students then completed an anonymous ‘Feedback’ questionnaire detailing their experiences with the feedback they received, with additional questions that were answered solely by the ‘audio group’ asking more specific questions about the effectiveness of the audio feedback. To carry out this study, new technologies were utilised and these will be demonstrated at the meeting along with the study conclusions. Hattie, J. and Timperley, H. (2007) The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77, 81–112 Glover, C. and Brown, E. (2006). Written Feedback for Students: too much, too detailed or too incomprehensible to be effective? Bioscience Education, 7

The gift impossible: Representations of child removal in Australian children's literature, 1841-1941

Many in the twenty-first century have become aware of, and incensed at, the childremoval policies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yet child removal in Australia has been practised from the time of colonisation, using policies that were brought to Australia from England and modified for colonial society. What is less understood is that child removal has become normalised due, in no small way, to its perpetuation in the social consciousness through the pages of children’s books. Australian authors have inducted their young readership into an adult ideology informed by the beliefs and practices of their own childhood, including their childhood reading. This thesis explores the use of the child-removal theme in one hundred years of Australian children’s literature from its inception in 1841 and the role of children’s literature in promoting the acceptance, or non-questioning, of removal. This will be done by first reviewing Australia’s child-removal practices and how they were influenced by English child-rescue organisations, then analysing representations of ideal parenting models implicit in the literature and the way in which failure to reach such ideals led to, and justified, child removal. Finally, an analysis of literary instances of removal will be undertaken. Child removal in the literature knew no racial barriers and was presented as being inherent in Australian society, be it white or Indigenous. It will be argued that the way in which children’s literature dealt with Indigenous issues created an environment in which Indigenous parenting was devalued, making child removal a logical conclusion. A broad range of Australian children’s literature will be examined, from that produced by Englishborn colonists, to the quickly developing oeuvre produced by (white) Australian-born writers

Nursing Leaders’ Ethical Decision-Making About Professional Boundaries and Nurse-Patient Relationships: A Mixed Methods Explanatory Sequential Design

The purpose of this mixed methods explanatory sequential design study was to ascertain nursing leaders’ knowledge and skill in ethical decision-making when evaluating and managing professional nurse-patient relationship boundaries. It was also the purpose of this study to better understand nursing leaders’ perception of moral, cognitive, and organizational factors influencing their ethical decision-making in evaluating and managing professional nurse-patient relationships, with the intent of generating a theory grounded in the views of the participants as a final outcome of the study. The two theories, virtue ethics and self-efficacy comprise the ethicality construct of the conceptual framework explaining the nurse leaders’ beliefs about themselves and their ability to conduct ethical decision-making. The professional boundaries construct of the conceptual framework delineates the attributes and expectations of nursing as a profession, thus further explaining the nurse leaders’ role in ascertaining ethical professional boundaries among nurses and patients. Participants in the quantitative phase of this study included 28 female and 13 male nurse leaders selected by a convenience sampling approach from San Antonio Military Medical Center, Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, Texas. The participants were asked to complete a researcher designed Ethical Decision-Making Survey Instrument consisting of two scenario based vignettes with six Likert questions per vignette and a demographic questionnaire. The Ethical Decision-Making Survey Instrument was designed to assess nurse leader’s ethical decision-making about nurse-patient relationships and professional boundaries. Data analysis revealed by 48 bivariate Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients that the greater the number of years of work experience as an RN and the greater the number of years of work experience as a nurse manager, the more comfortable a nurse manager felt speaking with a nurse about his/her behavior regarding nurse-patient professional boundary transgressions. Additionally, the greater number of years of work experience as a nurse manager, the more knowledge she/he believed she/he had to appropriately manage nurse-patient professional boundary transgressions. Calculating six paired-samples t-tests revealed significantly greater mean scores for a nurse leader’s belief that nurses violate boundaries and exhibit unethical behavior in the scenario depicting a nurse involved in a personal relationship with a patient than a flirtatious relationship. Calculating 48 mixed between-within subjects ANOVAs revealed substantial main effects for nurse manager’s ethical decision-making in determining violations of nurse-patient professional boundary breaches and the unethicality of the behavior revealing higher scores on the scenario depicting a nurse involved in a personal relationship with a patient than a nurse involved in a flirtatious relationship with a patient. The qualitative phase was designed to further explain the results of the quantitative analysis. Participants in the qualitative phase of this study included seven female and zero male nurse leaders initially selected through purposeful sampling followed by a snowball sampling approach from San Antonio Military Medical Center, Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, Texas. The participants were interviewed utilizing 12 guided open-ended questions with the aim of assessing moral, cognitive, and organizational factors influencing ethical decision-making about nurse-patient relationships and professional boundaries. Thematic analysis revealed the following themes: (a) ascribing conscience, (b) codifying knowledge repertoire, (c) summoning support systems, and (d) weighing elements affecting judgment. Each theme is discussed in depth and supported by exact participant quotations. The study culminates in a grounded theory. The study concludes with implications for nursing leadership, health care organizations, and nursing academia. As a result of the study findings, recommendations are highlighted that may promote a skill set conducive to improving nursing leader’s ethical decision-making about nurse-patient relationships and professional boundaries

Sharing Responsibility for the Learning of Students: A Case Study

The educational gap in student achievement is steadily broadening among the various disaggregated groups throughout our nation’s public schools. School administrators, teachers, politicians, and other stakeholders are scampering about trying to find a solution to this ever-growing problem. Unfortunately, they are looking for the answer in all the wrong places. In fact, the answer to this crisis in America’s public school system lies in a series of questions. School administrators and teachers need only to address the following in order to effectively provide students with a quality education: What do race and ethnicity have to do with students’ ability to read and write? How does gender factor into students academic potential? How can an interest in the same-sex prevent a student from learning? What is the educational relevance of labeling students as economically disadvantaged? With the advancement in technology and a plethora of available resources, how is it possible to allow language barriers to stifle student achievement? Does such categorization cast these students into the proverbial corner of low achievers before they have a chance to prove otherwise? Instead of allowing pre-assessments and diagnostic exams to inform them of students’ academic strengths and weaknesses, principals and teachers have allowed these biases to cripple the learning process in America’s public school system. In essence, one can succinctly summarize the aforementioned questions into one answer: Is it diversity that adversely impacts student achievement or the discriminatory beliefs of school administrators and teachers that serve as monumental stumbling blocks to the right of every American student to be afforded a quality, public education that is culturally, mentally, emotionally, socially, and physically inclusive

Aryne Acyl-Alkylation in the General and Convergent Synthesis of Benzannulated Macrolactone Natural Products: An Enantioselective Synthesis of (−)-Curvularin

A general approach for the synthesis of benzannulated macrolactone natural products utilizing an aryne acyl-alkylation reaction is described. Toward this end, the total syntheses of the natural products (−)-curvularin, curvulin, and (−)-diplodialide C are reported. Furthermore, the aryne insertion technology has enabled the rapid conversion of simple diplodialide natural products to curvularin, thereby connecting these two biosynthetically distinct classes of compounds via synthetic methods

Understanding and Managing Change: A Leadership Perspective

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From Verification to Guided-Inquiry: What Happens When a Chemistry Laboratory Curriculum Changes?

How does the degree or level of inquiry-based laboratory instruction impact student performance and student perseverance in the laboratory portion of a first-semester general chemistry course? In 2008, a two-year community college sought to answer this question by replacing the traditional verification laboratory curriculum with a guided-inquiry laboratory curriculum. This change provided a case study of the \u27new\u27 guided-inquiry curriculum vs. the \u27old\u27 traditional verification cuniculum. Researchers used a modified for college instruction version of The Continuum of Scientific Inquiry Rubric (Fay, Grove, Towns, & Bretz, 2007) to assess both laboratory curricula, to determine the level of inquiry incorporated into each laboratory experiment as well as the inquiry levels of both laboratory curricula overall. Student performance was evaluated via laboratory report average final grades and individual laboratory report scores, while student perseverance was measured by comparing overall completion rates of laboratory reports and student withdrawal rates for each laboratory curriculum to determine if any relationships exist between level( s) of inquiry and student performance and student perseverance

Forward Thinking: Changing World, Changing Times, Changing Schools

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