Asian American We: Civic Engagement among Low-Income Young Adults

This report describes a study of the civic participation of low-income Asian American adults between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five in the Boston area. It is based upon a mail survey with 100 respondents, focus groups, and organization interviews. The study found that over 60% of the study population engaged in some form of civic participation, most commonly through fundraising or volunteer activities. Other activities included arts and culture with a social message, issues work, and electoral involvement. The area of greatest involvement was education. From the survey, civic engagement is correlated with female gender, higher education, and a perception of living in a low-income area. The demographics of the study population reflect a majority who are female, Chinese, attending college and in the labor force. Vietnamese was the second most reported ethnicity, and most were residents of the cities of Boston and Quincy. The study also showed potential for greater civic participation. The cohort indicated an interest in increasing and broadening their current engagement. The important motivators for civic engagement that emerged from the study are community building, awareness of issues, and material incentive. In order to activate individuals in this group to greater civic participation, advocacy and activist organizations should be aware of these factors and allocate appropriate resources to their further development. These organizations can also be more effective by soliciting widely and in diverse ways and being flexible in how they integrate participants

Creating opportunities to learn social skills at school using digital games

Acquiring skills for social and emotional well-being is important for inclusive societies and academic achievement. Studies have demonstrated the beneficial link between prosocial behaviours and improved results in curriculum topics. This paper describes a Prosocial Learning (PSL) process for creation and delivery of digital games for children (7-10 yrs) within educational systems that support learning of prosocial skills. The approach combines prosocial pedagogies with advanced ICT technologies and cloud delivery models to create attractive and exciting learning opportunities for children; produce novel digital game-based pedagogies and simplify deployment.Prosociality is a concept that refers to an individual’s propensity towards positive social behaviours. Individuals with prosocial skills are, for example, able to join in conversations, talk nicely, identifying feelings and emotions in themselves and others, identify someone needs help and ask for help. PSL classifies these skills in terms of Friendship, Feelings and Cooperation. By using interactive digital games supported by additional instructive and reflective activities, PSL allows children to learn social skills that can be generalised to real life situations in the classroom, playground and at home.PSL is implemented through a technology platform offering systematic pedagogical support for prosocial games developed by an ecosystem of teachers and games companies. Capabilities include multi-modal sensors to observe emotional affect, game interaction and decision-making. Information is acquired through standard protocols (e.g. xAPI) and evaluated by learning analytics algorithms to provide real-time feedback on player behaviours that are be used for in-game feedback and adaptation, and by teachers to shape follow-up activities. PSL is validated through short and longitudinal studies at European schools to gather evidence for effectiveness. This paper provides early evidence from short studies that will steer larger pan-European trials to test hypotheses, promote to policy makers and to increase adoption of game-based learning in school

Applying Census Data for Small Area Estimation in Community and Social Service Planning

Small area estimation provides a tool for community analysis. A procedure for accessing, selecting, joining and analyzing US Census data is provided. Skills acquired while completing the procedure include accessing census data, downloading boundary files and displaying themes. Such skills are valuable tools for students to possess as they enter the workforce

Effectiveness of Schema-Based Instruction for Improving Seventh-Grade Students’ Proportional Reasoning: A Randomized Experiment

This study examined the effect of schema-based instruction (SBI) on seventh-grade students’ mathematical problem solving performance. SBI is an instructional intervention that emphasizes the role of mathematical structure in word problems and also provides students with a heuristic to self-monitor and aid problem solving. Using a pretest-intervention-posttest-retention test design, the study compared the learning outcomes for 1,163 students in 42 classrooms who were randomly assigned to treatment (SBI) or control condition. After 6 weeks of instruction, results of multilevel modeling indicated significant differences favoring the SBI condition in proportion problem solving involving ratios/rates and percents on an immediate posttest (g = 1.24) and on a six-week retention test (g = 1.27). No significant difference between conditions was found for a test of transfer. These results demonstrate that SBI was more effective than students’ regular mathematics instruction

Improving Students' Proportional Thinking Using Schema-Based Instruction

This study investigated the effectiveness of an instructional program (schema-based instruction, SBI) designed to teach 7th graders how to comprehend and solve proportion problems involving ratios/rates, scale drawings, and percents. The SBI program emphasized the underlying mathematical structure of problems via schematic diagrams, focused on a 4-step procedure to support and monitor problem solving, and addressed the flexible use of alternative solution strategies based on the problem situation. Blocking by teacher at three middle schools, the authors randomly assigned the 21 classrooms to one of two conditions: SBI and control. Classroom teachers provided the instruction. Results of multilevel modeling used to test for treatment effects after accounting for pretests and other characteristics (gender, ethnicity) revealed the direct effects of SBI on mathematical problem solving at posttest. However, the improved problem solving skills were not maintained a month later when SBI was no longer in effect nor did the skills transfer to solving problems in new domain-level content

Cryo-Electron Tomography Elucidates the Molecular Architecture of Treponema pallidum, the Syphilis Spirochete

Cryo-electron tomography (CET) was used to examine the native cellular organization of Treponema pallidum, the syphilis spirochete. T. pallidum cells appeared to form flat waves, did not contain an outer coat and, except for bulges over the basal bodies and widening in the vicinity of flagellar filaments, displayed a uniform periplasmic space. Although the outer membrane (OM) generally was smooth in contour, OM extrusions and blebs frequently were observed, highlighting the structure’s fluidity and lack of attachment to underlying periplasmic constituents. Cytoplasmic filaments converged from their attachment points opposite the basal bodies to form arrays that ran roughly parallel to the flagellar filaments along the inner surface of the cytoplasmic membrane (CM). Motile treponemes stably attached to rabbit epithelial cells predominantly via their tips. CET revealed that T. pallidum cell ends have a complex morphology and assume at least four distinct morphotypes. Images of dividing treponemes and organisms shedding cell envelope-derived blebs provided evidence for the spirochete’s complex membrane biology. In the regions without flagellar filaments, peptidoglycan (PG) was visualized as a thin layer that divided the periplasmic space into zones of higher and lower electron densities adjacent to the CM and OM, respectively. Flagellar filaments were observed overlying the PG layer, while image modeling placed the PG-basal body contact site in the vicinity of the stator–P-collar junction. Bioinformatics and homology modeling indicated that the MotB proteins of T. pallidum, Treponema denticola, and Borrelia burgdorferi have membrane topologies and PG binding sites highly similar to those of their well-characterized Escherichia coli and Helicobacter pylori orthologs. Collectively, our results help to clarify fundamental differences in cell envelope ultrastructure between spirochetes and gram-negative bacteria. They also confirm that PG stabilizes the flagellar motor and enable us to propose that in most spirochetes motility results from rotation of the flagellar filaments against the PG

Spectroscopy and Electrochemistry of Cytochrome P450 BM3-Surfactant Film Assemblies

We report analyses of electrochemical and spectroscopic measurements on cytochrome P450 BM3 (BM3) in didodecyldimethylammonium bromide (DDAB) surfactant films. Electronic absorption spectra of BM3−DDAB films on silica slides reveal the characteristic low-spin Fe^(III) heme absorption maximum at 418 nm. A prominent peak in the absorption spectrum of BM3 Fe^(II)−CO in a DDAB dispersion is at 448 nm; in spectra of aged samples, a shoulder at ∼420 nm is present. Infrared absorption spectra of the BM3 Fe^(II)−CO complex in DDAB dispersions feature a time-dependent shift of the carbonyl stretching frequency from 1950 to 2080 cm^(-1). Voltammetry of BM3-DDAB films on graphite electrodes gave the following results: Fe^(III/II) E_(1/2) at −260 mV (vs SCE), ∼300 mV positive of the value measured in solution; ΔS°_(rc), ΔS°, and ΔH° values for water-ligated BM3 in DDAB are −98 J mol^(-1) K^(-1), −163 J mol^(-1) K^(-1), and −47 kJ mol^(-1), respectively; values for the imidazole-ligated enzyme are −8 J mol^(-1) K^(-1), −73 J mol^(-1) K^(-1), and −21 kJ mol^(-1). Taken together, the data suggest that BM3 adopts a compact conformation within DDAB that in turn strengthens hydrogen bonding interactions with the heme axial cysteine, producing a P420-like species with decreased electron density around the metal center

Improvements to the APBS biomolecular solvation software suite

The Adaptive Poisson-Boltzmann Solver (APBS) software was developed to solve the equations of continuum electrostatics for large biomolecular assemblages that has provided impact in the study of a broad range of chemical, biological, and biomedical applications. APBS addresses three key technology challenges for understanding solvation and electrostatics in biomedical applications: accurate and efficient models for biomolecular solvation and electrostatics, robust and scalable software for applying those theories to biomolecular systems, and mechanisms for sharing and analyzing biomolecular electrostatics data in the scientific community. To address new research applications and advancing computational capabilities, we have continually updated APBS and its suite of accompanying software since its release in 2001. In this manuscript, we discuss the models and capabilities that have recently been implemented within the APBS software package including: a Poisson-Boltzmann analytical and a semi-analytical solver, an optimized boundary element solver, a geometry-based geometric flow solvation model, a graph theory based algorithm for determining p$K_a$ values, and an improved web-based visualization tool for viewing electrostatics