Student Outcomes in Traditional, Hybrid, and Online Courses in Community College Career and Technical Education Programs

The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine whether differences in student course outcomes as defined by final course grades existed between three content delivery methods in career and technical education courses: Traditional (face to face), hybrid, and online. Final course grades in career and technical education courses at one community college for the Fall 2011 through the Fall 2015 semesters were used in this study to compare the success of students in courses employing the three content delivery methods. The outcomes for male and female students and the outcomes for traditional and nontraditional students in career and technical education programs were compared as well. The method of delivery was found to have an impact. Withdrawal rates for career and technical education courses were also impacted by course delivery method. Seven research questions were included in this study, and the data was analyzed using one-sample chi-square tests for the seven research questions in the study. Results indicated that students had significantly higher student learning outcomes in traditional courses in career and technical education programs than in either hybrid or online courses. Withdrawal rates were higher for hybrid and online courses than traditional courses. Student gender and age were related to student final course outcomes with both male and female students more likely to earn transferable final course grades in traditional courses than in hybrid or online courses. Traditional age and nontraditional age students were also more likely to earn transferable final course grades in traditional courses than in hybrid or online courses. Nontraditional age students were significantly more likely than traditional age students to earn a transferable final course grade regardless of delivery method. Overall findings suggest that delivery method may impact student outcomes in career and technical education courses. The study is significant in that it provides insight into specific differences in student outcomes by the three different delivery methods currently used in higher education and may be used for comparison with other institutions’ student outcomes

Cakes That Bake Cakes: Dynamic Computation in CakeML

We have extended the verified CakeML compiler with a new language primitive, Eval, which permits evaluation of new CakeML syntax at runtime. This new implementation supports an ambitious form of compilation at runtime and dynamic execution, where the original and dynamically added code can share (higher-order) values and recursively call each other. This is, to our knowledge, the first verified run-Time environment capable of supporting a standard LCF-style theorem prover design. Modifying the modern CakeML compiler pipeline and proofs to support a dynamic computation semantics was an extensive project. We review the design decisions, proof techniques, and proof engineering lessons from the project, and highlight some unexpected complications

Palaeoecological and genetic evidence for Neanderthal power locomotion as an adaptation to a woodland environment

The prevailing explanation for Neanderthal body form is the cold (glacial) adaptation hypothesis. However, palaeoecological associations appear to indicate a less cold woodland environment. Under such conditions, encounter and ambush (rather than pursuit) hunting e and thus muscular power and sprint (rather than endurance) capacity e would have been favoured. We hypothesise that the highly muscular Neanderthal body form reflects an adaptation to hunting conditions rather than cold, and here both review the palaeoecological evidence that they inhabited a mainly woodland environment, and present preliminary genetic analyses in support of this new hypothesis

First Results for Solar Soft X-ray Irradiance Measurements from the Third Generation Miniature X-Ray Solar Spectrometer

Three generations of the Miniature X-ray Solar Spectrometer (MinXSS) have flown on small satellites with the goal "to explore the energy distribution of soft X-ray (SXR) emissions from the quiescent Sun, active regions, and during solar flares, and to model the impact on Earth's ionosphere and thermosphere". The primary science instrument is the Amptek X123 X-ray spectrometer that has improved with each generation of the MinXSS experiment. This third generation MinXSS-3 has higher energy resolution and larger effective area than its predecessors and is also known as the Dual-zone Aperture X-ray Solar Spectrometer (DAXSS). It was launched on the INSPIRESat-1 satellite on 2022 February 14, and INSPIRESat-1 has successfully completed its 6-month prime mission. The INSPIRESat-1 is in a dawn-dusk, Sun-Synchronous Orbit (SSO) and therefore has 24-hour coverage of the Sun during most of its mission so far. The rise of Solar Cycle 25 (SC-25) has been observed by DAXSS. This paper introduces the INSPIRESat-1 DAXSS solar SXR observations, and we focus the science results here on a solar occultation experiment and multiple flares on 2022 April 24. One key flare result is that the reduction of elemental abundances is greatest during the flare impulsive phase and thus highlighting the important role of chromospheric evaporation during flares to inject warmer plasma into the coronal loops. Furthermore, these results are suggestive that the amount of chromospheric evaporation is related to flare temperature and intensity.Comment: 43 pages including 19-page Appendix A, 8 figures, 7 table

Book reviews

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44490/1/10745_2005_Article_BF01531428.pd

Explaining disappearances as a tool of political terror

Despite the widespread use of disappearances as a central tool of terror in recent decades, little is known about the emergence of the phenomenon or its underlying rationale. We argue that growing international accountability norms, coupled with the improved quality of reporting human rights abuses, paradoxically reshaped the repressive strategies of certain regimes and pushed them to deploy more clandestine and extrajudicial forms of repression, predominantly disappearances. We also explore the timing of disappearances: when a state decides to deploy a particular instrument of terror can greatly benefit our understanding of why it was used. We show that repressive regimes tend to use disappearances in the first period after a coup, taking advantage of the general confusion and opacity to secure strategic benefits and protect the regime from external scrutiny and future accountability. Our findings contribute to the growing literature on human rights and political repression by highlighting an ‘unintended consequence’ of international accountability norms: repressive regimes turn to clandestine crimes

Factors associated with educational aspirations among adolescents: cues to counteract socioeconomic differences?

Background: Our study aims to follow this effort and to explore the association between health, socioeconomic background, school-related factors, social support and adolescents' sense of coherence and educational aspirations among adolescents from different educational tracks and to contribute to the existing body of knowledge on the role of educational aspirations in the social reproduction of health inequalities. We expect that socioeconomic background will contribute to the development of educational aspirations, but this association will be modified by available social and individual resources, which may be particularly favourable for the group of adolescents who are on lower educational tracks, since for them such resources may lead to gaining a higher educational level. Methods: We collected data on the socioeconomic background (mother's and father's education and employment status, doubts about affordability of future study), school-related factors (school atmosphere, school conditions, attitudes towards school), perceived social support, sense of coherence (manageability, comprehensibility, meaningfulness) and the self-rated health of a national sample of Slovak adolescents (n = 1992, 53.5% females, mean age 16.9 years). We assessed the association of these factors with educational aspirations, overall and by educational tracks (grammar schools, specialised secondary schools, vocational schools). Results: We found statistically significant associations with educational aspirations for the factors parental educational level, father's unemployment, doubts about the affordability of future study, school atmosphere, attitude towards school, social support from the father and a sense of coherence. Social support from the mother and friends was not associated with educational aspiration, nor was self-rated health. Besides affinity towards school, the determinants of educational aspirations differed among adolescents on different educational tracks. Educational aspirations of grammar school students were associated with father's education, while the aspirations of their peers on lower educational tracks had a stronger association with mother's education and perceived social support from father and friends. Moreover, a sense of coherence contributes to the reporting of educational aspiration by students on different educational tracks. Conclusions: Characteristics of the school environment, the family and the individual adolescent are all associated with the level of educational aspiration, but in a different way for different educational tracks. Interventions aimed at reducing socioeconomic inequalities in health via the educational system should, therefore, take this variation and the rather pivotal role of the father into account

UNDERSTANDING HOW FARMERS LEARN

SUMMARY Changing the behaviour of people is challenging; changing farmer behaviour is possibly even more so. The evidence presented here suggests that a number of widely-used farmer communication methods are poorly thought of by farmers. Information received by farmers from other farmers was regarded as useful, and this information was regarded as being more useful than that from a number of rural professionals. Those wishing to change farmer behaviour need to: invest time to gain trust; involve farmers in the process of learning; use multiple methods to teach and encourage farmers to talk with each other and scientists in a learning community. INTRODUCTION The current New Zealand Government expects the New Zealand scientific community to improve the rate of uptake of new knowledge by businesses and thereby improve the New Zealand economy. Similarly, Centres of Research Excellence funded by the Tertiary Education Commission are expected to show how they will translate new knowledge into improved community benefit, and the recent Primary Growth Partnership granted to Beef + Lamb New Zealand (the farmer-owned industry organisation representing New Zealand's sheep and beef farmers) aims to improve access to information by farmers. However, the rate at which behaviour change by business owners is driven through the provision of new scientific evidence is variable and this is particularly so in the agricultural sector. Indeed, This paper reports on a pilot farmer learning project and a survey of New Zealand sheep farmer opinion with the intent to show how farmers go about learning new technologies, including how they like to receive information and who farmers perceive as providing useful information

Effects of a penthiopyrad and picoxystrobin fungicide mixtureon phoma stem canker (Leptosphaeria spp.) on UK winteroilseed rape

© Koninklijke Nederlandse Planteziektenkundige Vereniging 2016. This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in European Journal of Plant Pathology following peer review. The final publication [Sewell, T.R., Moloney, S., Ashworth, M. et al., European Journal of Plant Pathology (2016) 145: 675-685, first published online April 5, 2016] is available at Springer via doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10658-016-0916-8In the UK, fungicides are often used to controlphoma stem canker on winter oilseed rape. Field trialswere established near Boxworth, Cambridgeshire for fourcropping seasons (2011/2012, 2012/2013, 2013/2014 and2014/15) to test the efficacy of a new fungicide mixtureRefinzar® (penthiopyrad + picoxystrobin) by comparisonto an existing fungicide Proline 275® (prothioconazole)against phoma stem canker (Leptosphaeria spp.) andthe effect on winter oilseed rape (cv. Catana) yield. Ineach season, weather data were collected from a weatherstation at Boxworth and the release of ascospores wasmonitored using a nearby Burkard spore sampler. Thepatterns of ascospore release differed between seasonsand related to weather conditions. Fungicidespenthiopyrad + picoxystrobin and prothioconazole wereapplied in October/November when 10 % of plants hadphoma leaf spotting (T1, early), 4/8 weeks after T1 (T2,late) or at both T1 and T2 (combined). When phoma leafspot symptoms were assessed in autumn/winter,penthiopyrad + picoxystrobin and prothioconazole bothdecreased numbers of phoma leaf spots caused byL. maculans; there were few leaf spots caused byL. biglobosa. Penthiopyrad + picoxystrobin andprothioconazole both reduced phoma stem canker severitybefore harvest compared to the untreated control butdid not increase yield in these seasons when epidemicswere not severe. In 2013/2014, the presence ofL. maculans and L. biglobosa in upper stem lesions orstem base cankers was determined by species-specificPCR. The proportions of stems with L. maculans DNAwere much greater than those with L. biglobosa DNA forboth upper stem lesions and basal stem cankers. Theseresults suggest that both penthiopyrad + picoxystrobinand prothioconazole can decrease phoma stem cankerseverity on winter oilseed rape in severe disease seasons.Peer reviewe