Understanding The Relationship Between Cultural Wellness And Academic Achievement On Standing Rock Reservation

Academic achievement concerns are common among reservation schools in North and South Dakota and elicit numerous questions regarding how to address these concerns to improve educational outcomes for Native American students. This study examined the relationship between cultural wellness integration, based on the Medicine Wheel model, and the following academic achievement measures: standardized achievement tests, attendance, graduation rates, and behavioral disciplinary referrals. The specific research questions that guided this study are: 1) Using a Medicine Wheel model, how are schools on Standing Rock Reservation integrating cultural wellness? 2) How do cultural wellness integration practices relate to academic achievement in schools on Standing Rock Reservation? 3) What are common cultural wellness related concerns hindering academic achievement among students on Standing Rock Reservation, and how can school staffs address those concerns? This study utilized a mixed methods design comparing quantitative with qualitative data to determine how cultural wellness correlates with academic achievement measures. Data consisted of 65 surveys from seven school districts on Standing Rock Reservation with 10 interviews from staff including administrators, teachers, and paraprofessionals. In alignment with Indigenous methodology, this study examined cultural wellness integration by using the four directions/domains of the Medicine Wheel: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. The quantitative survey analysis revealed a significant relationship between mental familiarity and emotional wellness integration. In-School Suspension (ISS) was assessed using survey data analyzing the frequency of emotional wellness responses by including negative emotional wellness questions documenting the frequency teachers reported sending students to ISS. The data indicated mental familiarity (the level of understanding for the following terms): boarding schools, forced assimilation, historical trauma, intergenerational trauma, and Adverse Childhood Experiences corresponded with emotional wellness responses by 17%; meaning, on average, a one-unit increase of emotional wellness increased the value of mental familiarity by 0.33 units. With an increase in mental familiarity, there was a decrease in negative emotional wellness responses (ISS). The quantitative data aligned with the qualitative data; the themes generated from the qualitative interviews reported the importance of understanding “where the students are coming from” and the importance of building relationships between school staff and students to influence academic achievement and address behavioral concerns for students on Standing Rock Reservation. Other findings from the qualitative data reported Historical Trauma and low self-esteem as common cultural wellness concerns impacting educational outcomes and increasing classroom student behavioral concerns

An exploration of factors influencing health managers' acceptance of eHealth services in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is a country with one of the largest land masses and difficult geographical terrain in the Middle East. The accessibility of advanced health services, especially for people in rural areas, has been considered one of the main health challenges. Health services across the country are accessible through three categories of providers. The Ministry of Health (MOH) which is the dominant health provider responsible for 60% of all health services and facilities. Private health sector and other government run health authorities are the providers for the remaining 40%. Many initiatives to embrace technology in healthcare were launched by the MOH to advance the level of acceptance. One of the initiatives was the ambitious eHealth national strategy which was launched in 2011 to govern eHealth projects across the country and set consistent standards, policies, and procedures for the practice activities. This study is sponsored by the MOH as part of a bigger plan to involve stakeholders in the digital transformation

Properties of short channel ballistic carbon nanotube transistors with ohmic contacts

We present self-consistent, non-equilibrium Green's function calculations of the characteristics of short channel carbon nanotube transistors, focusing on the regime of ballistic transport with ohmic contacts. We first establish that the band lineup at the contacts is renormalized by charge transfer, leading to Schottky contacts for small diameter nanotubes and ohmic contacts for large diameter nanotubes, in agreement with recent experiments. For short channel ohmic contact devices, source-drain tunneling and drain-induced barrier lowering significantly impact the current-voltage characteristics. Furthermore, the ON state conductance shows a temperature dependence, even in the absence of phonon scattering or Schottky barriers. This last result also agrees with recently reported experimental measurements.Comment: Nanotechnology, in pres

Phonon transmission through defects in carbon nanotubes from first principles

The original published version of this article may be found on the Physical Review B website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.77.033418 Copyright (2008) American Physical SocietyWe compute the effect of different isolated defects on the phonon transmission through carbon nanotubes, using an ab initio density functional approach. The problem of translational and rotational invariance fulfillment in the nonperiodic system is solved via a Lagrange-multiplier symmetrization technique. The need for an ab initio approach is illustrated for the case of phonon transmission through a nitrogen substitutional impurity, for which no reliable empirical interatomic potentials exist. This opens an avenue for the accurate parameterfree study of phonon transport through general systems with arbitrary composition and structure, without any need for semiempirical potential descriptions

Ab-initio investigation of phonon dispersion and anomalies in palladium

In recent years, palladium has proven to be a crucial component for devices ranging from nanotube field effect transistors to advanced hydrogen storage devices. In this work, I examine the phonon dispersion of fcc Pd using first principle calculations based on density functional perturbation theory. While several groups in the past have studied the acoustic properties of palladium, this is the first study to reproduce the phonon dispersion and associated anomaly with high accuracy and no adjustable parameters. In particular, I focus on the Kohn anomaly in the [110] direction.Comment: 19 pages, preprint format, 7 figures, added new figures and discussio

Environmental and genetic factors associated with Solanesol accumulation in potato leaves

Solanesol is a high value 45-carbon, unsaturated, all-trans-nonaprenol isoprenoid. Recently solanesol has received particular attention because of its utility, both in its own right and as a precursor in the production of numerous compounds used in the treatment of disease states. Solanesol is found mainly in solanaceous crops such as potato, tomato, tobacco and pepper where it accumulates in the foliage. There is considerable potential to explore the extraction of solanesol from these sources as a valuable co-product. In this study we have characterised the genetic variation in leaf solanesol content in a biparental, segregating diploid potato population. We demonstrate that potato leaf solanesol content is genetically controlled and identify several quantitative trait loci associated with leaf solanesol content. Transient over-expression of genes from the methylerythritol 4-phosphate (MEP) and mevalonic acid (MVA) pathways, either singly or in combination, resulted in enhanced accumulation of solanesol in leaves of Nicotiana benthamiana, providing insights for genetically engineering the pathway. We also demonstrate that in potato, leaf solanesol content is enhanced by up to six-fold on exposure to moderately elevated temperature and show corresponding changes in expression patterns of MEP and MVA genes. Our combined approaches offer new insights into solanesol accumulation and strategies for developing a bio-refinery approach to potato production

The Covalent Interaction between Dihydrogen and Gold: a Rotational Spectroscopic Study of H₂-AuCl

The pure rotational transitions of H2-AuCl have been measured using a pulsed-jet cavity Fourier transform microwave spectrometer equipped with a laser ablation source. The structure was found to be T-shaped, with the H-H bond interacting with the gold atom. Both 35Cl and 37Cl isotopologues have been measured for both ortho and para states of H2. Rotational constants, quartic centrifugal distortion constants, and nuclear quadrupole coupling constants for gold and chlorine have been determined. The use of the nuclear spin-nuclear spin interaction terms Daa, Dbb, and Dcc for H2 were required to fit the ortho state of hydrogen, as well as a nuclear-spin rotation constant Caa. The values of the nuclear quadrupole coupling constant of gold are Xaa=-817.9929(35) MHz, Xbb=504.0(27) MHz, and Xcc=314.0(27). This is large compared to the eQq of AuCl, 9.63 312(13) MHz, which indicates a strong, covalent interaction between gold and dihydrogen

Quantitative trait loci associated with different polar metabolites in perennial ryegrass - providing scope for breeding towards increasing certain polar metabolites

peer-reviewedBackground Recent advances in the mapping of biochemical traits have been reported in Lolium perenne. Although the mapped traits, including individual sugars and fatty acids, contribute greatly towards ruminant productivity, organic acids and amino acids have been largely understudied despite their influence on the ruminal microbiome. Results In this study, we used a targeted gas-chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS) approach to profile the levels of 25 polar metabolites from different classes (sugars, amino acids, phenolic acids, organic acids and other nitrogen-containing compounds) present in a L. perenne F2 population consisting of 325 individuals. A quantitative trait (QTL) mapping approach was applied and successfully identified QTLs regulating seven of those polar metabolites (L-serine, L-leucine, glucose, fructose, myo-inositol, citric acid and 2, 3-hydroxypropanoic acid).Two QTL mapping approaches were carried out using SNP markers on about half of the population only and an imputation approach using SNP and DArT markers on the entire population. The imputation approach confirmed the four QTLs found in the SNP-only analysis and identified a further seven QTLs. Conclusions These results highlight the potential of utilising molecular assisted breeding in perennial ryegrass to modulate a range of biochemical quality traits with downstream effects in livestock productivity and ruminal digestion.This study was financed through a Research Stimulus Fund Grant by the Irish Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Marine (RSF 06–346). AF, CH and DS acknowledge support from The Scottish Government’s Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division