Information technology and school libraries: a social justice perspective

This research takes an emergent approach to data analysis (Charmaz, 2008) through the use of an emic/etic data coding process, and proposes a typology for understanding the connection between social justice principles and the provision of information technology services in school libraries. The study used data from seven school libraries in the state of New Jersey, obtained from focus groups consisting of forty-eight teachers, eighteen librarians, ten department supervisors, eleven principals/assistant principals, four district directors, and three librarian-teachers. The emergent process and typology employed in this research can aid school libraries in assessing how particular factors of the school/school library environment influence the provision of IT services to school library users. This study confirmed that school librarians and teachers rely on several social justice principles, such as distributive justice, utilitarianism, and egalitarianism, in making decisions regarding how to provide information technology services within the school environment. In particular, it was found that the type of social justice principle used in the school environment depended on the school librarians’ and teachers’ perceptions of the information competencies of their constituents and the availability of resources within the school environment. This research contributes to the study of social justice in the library and information science (LIS) professions in the following ways: first, by expanding ideas of “social justice” in LIS beyond traditional notions of “disenfranchised groups”—such as people having lower socioeconomic status, racial/ethnic or sexual minorities, and individuals with physical or mental disabilities—to include any group that may experience injustice in the context of information, such as school teachers, librarians and students; second, by portraying how social justice principles are enacted as strategies in school librarianship and pedagogy that advance student information-seeking and learning objectives; third, by highlighting the value of social justice to both practice and scholarly research in school and school library environments; and fourth, by proposing a methodology for studying social justice in a library environment.published or submitted for publicatio

Development of a Curriculum to Teach the “Soft Skills” Necessary for the Future Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Laboratory Technician Workforce

There is often a particular void in the education of deaf and hard-of-hearing students who intend to become competent working laboratory technicians. Inasmuch as certain basic professional skills (“soft skills”, in this case) are not generally taught in traditional science courses, a new curriculum has been developed in order to enforce these skills. The “soft skills” of focus in this study are safety awareness, technical writing, and teamwork/conflict resolution. The development of the pedagogical tools used to teach these specific “soft skills” are discussed, as well as an assessment of the augmentation in student understanding in each skill area. By incorporating an interdisciplinary approach that enforces “soft skills”, students should find greater success while on co-operative work experiences and have more prominent career opportunities. This curriculum was produced for the Chemical Technology-like program, Laboratory Science Technology, at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf- one of the eight colleges of the Rochester Institute of Technology, but the concepts are transferable to other technical-based programs

A Program Like Any Other…Like None Other: Sustaining a Laboratory Science Technology Program for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students

A goal of the Laboratory Science Technology program at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, a college of Rochester Institute of Technology, is to produce graduates with strong foundations in applied science, hands-on laboratory applications, and “soft skills” necessary for competitive employment as laboratory technicians. Graduates of the program earn Associate degrees, and if qualified, transition to related baccalaureate programs. Those who finish either an Associates of Occupational Science or Associates of Applied Science degree programs tend to go to work in the chemical, biological, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, environmental, forensic, industrial, and food analysis fields. At first glance, the LST program appears to be a typical chemical technology program similar to many others. However, it is the only one of its kind in the world. In order to achieve its successes it had to overcome unique challenges because it serves a large and unique population of deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Program challenges include enrollment, staffing and funding, and students/graduates finding cooperative works experiences/jobs. Still, through the use of outreach to future students, industrial alliances, curricular modifications, and other unique features, the program in now sustainable and growing

Gambling Behavior in Controlled Laboratory Experiments

We designed a slot machine interface to study gambling behavior over real monetary amounts in a controlled laboratory environment. The interface allowed us to study the effect of multiple playlines compared to single playlines, the use of abstract tokens instead of allowing the gambler to see expenditures and payoffs in a natural currency, the effect of “near miss” displays on subjective beliefs about the chances of winning, and the effect of “wins disguised as losses” on gambling behavior. We measured the risk preferences of each subject, allowing for probability weighting and loss aversion, as well as the evolution of subjective beliefs of expected winnings for some subjects. Every subject also completed popular survey screens for disordered gambling, allowing an evaluation of their predictive accuracy with respect to gambling over real stakes up to $1,500. All experiments were implemented for real rewards, so that responses were incentivized

Use of Scientific Argumentation by Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing Students in Environmental Science Topics

Deaf/hard-of-hearing (Deaf and hard-of-hearing) postsecondary students may have some misconceptions surrounding scientific concepts that might be partially ascribed to a lack of access to culturally-responsive forms of pedagogy. The Deaf and hard-of-hearing community is diverse in communication modes, including those who use American Sign Language as their primary language, and therefore, some students from this population may display characteristics similar to English Language Learners. Through classroom discourse analyses and interviews, we found a general lack of persuasion characteristics used by most students in an environmental science unit, and that the lack of higher-level scientific argumentation skills seemed to be related to students not having prior exposure to persuasive strategies. With the goal of improving Deaf and hard-of-hearing students’ equitable access to quality science education, strategies should be considered in teaching approaches, and results suggest the need to include scientific argumentation tasks within sociocultural learning contexts. Ultimately, the goal is to work toward educating and engaging Deaf and hard-of-hearing students in science inquiry and improving the environmental scientific literacy of this underrepresented group

UV Imaging Polarimetry of the Seyfert 2 Galaxy Mrk 3

We present UV imaging polarimetry data of the Seyfert 2 galaxy Mrk 3 taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The polarized flux is found to be extended to ~1 kpc from the nucleus, and the position angles of polarization are centrosymmetric, confirming that the polarization is caused by scattering. We determine the location of the hidden nucleus as the center of this centrosymmetric pattern. From the polarization images taken in two broad bands, we have obtained the color distribution of the polarized flux. Some regions have blue polarized flux, consistent with optically-thin dust scattering, but some bright knots have a color similar to that of Seyfert 1 nucleus. Also, the recent Chandra X-ray observation suggests that the ratio of scattered UV flux to scattered X-ray flux is rather similar to the intrinsic UV/X-ray ratio in a Seyfert 1 nucleus, if the observed extended X-ray continuum is scattered light. While the scattered X-ray would be essentially from electron scattering, the UV slope and UV/X-ray ratio both being similar to Seyfert 1's would lead to two possibilities as to the nature of the UV scatterers. One is that the UV may also be scattered by electrons, in which case the scattering gas is somehow dust-free. The other is that the UV is scattered by dust grains, but the wavelength-independent UV scattering with low efficiency indicated by the UV slope and UV/X-ray ratio would suggest that the grains reside in UV-opaque clouds, or the dust might be mainly composed of large grains and lacks small-grain population.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures (plus 2 color versions of grayscale figures), To appear in ApJ; minor corrections for the proofs of the manuscrip

Developing an evidence-based program sustainability training curriculum: A group randomized, multi-phase approach

Abstract Background The emergence of dissemination and implementation (D&I) science has driven a rapid increase in studies of how new scientific discoveries are translated and developed into evidence-based programs and policies. However, D&I science has paid much less attention to what happens to programs once they have been implemented. Public health programs can only deliver benefits if they reach maturity and sustain activities over time. In order to achieve the full benefits of significant investment in public health research and program development, there must be an understanding of the factors that relate to sustainability to inform development of tools and trainings to support strategic long-term program sustainability. Tobacco control programs, specifically, vary in their abilities to support and sustain themselves over time. As of 2018, most states still do not meet the CDC-recommended level for funding their TC program, allowing tobacco use to remain the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the USA. The purpose of this study is to empirically develop, test, and disseminate training programs to improve the sustainability of evidence-based state tobacco control programs and thus, tobacco-related health outcomes. Methods This paper describes the methods of a group randomized, multi-phase study that evaluates the empirically developed “Program Sustainability Action Planning Training” and technical assistance in US state-level tobacco control programs. Phase 1 includes developing the sustainability action planning training curriculum and technical assistance protocol and developing measures to assess long-term program sustainability. Phase 2 includes a group randomized trial to test the effectiveness of the training and technical assistance in improving sustainability outcomes in 24 state tobacco control programs (12 intervention, 12 comparison). Phase 3 includes the active dissemination of final training curricula materials to a broader public health audience. Discussion Empirical evidence has established that program sustainability can improve through training and technical assistance; however, to our knowledge, no evidence-based sustainability training curriculum program exists. Therefore, systematic methods are needed to develop, test, and disseminate a training that improves the sustainability of evidence-based programs. Trial registration NCT03598114. Registered 25 July 2018—retrospectively registered

Baraminological Analysis of Jurassic and Cretaceous Avialae

The baraminic status of Jurassic and Cretaceous Avialae was evaluated using statistical baraminology. Baraminic distance correlation (BDC) and three dimensional multidimensional scaling (MDS) was applied to six previously published character matrices. The results reveal discontinuities between most Avialae and the Deinonychosauria (Troodontidae + Dromaeosauridae) and little evidence of continuity between modern birds and dinosaurs, suggesting that recent claims that statistical baraminology supports the evolution of birds from dinosaurs are misplaced. Nevertheless, we did find positive BDC and MDS clustering of some Avialae and deinonychosaurs in four of our analyses, suggesting that at least some Jurassic and Cretaceous Avialae may be clustered with dinosaurs. This observation raises the interesting philosophical question: what is a bird

Student preconceptions and reality: A survey exercise to teach wealth inequality

This paper presents a way to enhance student interest and learning when teaching economic inequality. The approach draws on a well-known survey conducted by Norton and Ariely (2011). The approach involves surveying students, asking them to estimate the current level of wealth inequality in the US, and asking them to state their ideal level of wealth inequality. As in Norton and Ariely\u27s survey of a representative sample of Americans, our students underestimated actual wealth inequality and preferred a distribution of wealth for the US that was more equal than any country\u27s distribution. We suggest ways the student survey results can be presented and discussed. We also provide Stata code and an Excel workbook to ease effective classroom presentation of the survey results. This approach to beginning the study of inequality piqued our students\u27 interest and helped them understand how inequality is measured

Solving the primitive equations on a spherical geodesic grid: a technical report to a new class of dynamical cores

November 1998.Includes bibliographical references.This report documents the development and testing of a new type of dynamical core. Toe· model uses the invariant form of the primitive equations, solving the vorticity and divergence equations in place of the momentum equation. In the horizontal directions the model is discretized on a geodesic grid which is nearly uniform over the entire globe. In the vertical direction the model can use a variety of coordinate systems, including the generalized sigma coordinate of Suarez et al. (1983) and the Phillips (1957) sigma coordinate. By integrating the vorticity and divergence equations, terms related to gravity wave propagation are isolated and an efficient semi-implicit time stepping scheme is implemented. The model is tested using the idealized forcing proposed by Held and Suarez (1994). Results are presented for a variety of vertical coordinate systems with horizontal resolutions using 2562 polygons (approximately 4.5° x 4.5°) and using 10242 polygons (approximately 2.25° x 2.25° ). The results are compared to standard spectral model simulations truncated at T30 and T63. In terms of averages and variances of state variables, e geodesic grid model results using 2562 polygons are comparable to those of a spectral model truncated at slightly less than TIO, while a simulation with 10242 polygons is comparable to a spectral model simulation truncated at slightly less than T63. In terms of computational efficiency, further development of this geodesic grid model is required. Model timings completed on an SGI Origin 2000 indicate that the geodesic grid model with 10242 polygons is 2.7 times slower than the spectral model truncated at T63. At these resolutions, the MFlop rate of the geodesic grid model is 15% faster than the spectral model, so the differences in model speed are due to differences in the number of floating point operations required per day of simulation. The geodesic grid model is more competitive at higher resolution than at lower resolution, so further optimization and future trends toward higher resolution should benefit the geodesic grid model.Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy DE-FG03-98ER62611 and DE-FG03-94ER61929