Physicochemical Properties of Brown Rice as Influenced by Gamma-Irradiation, Variety and Storage.

Effects of gamma-irradiation, variety and storage on physicochemical properties of brown rice from three Louisiana rice varieties: Mars, a medium grain variety, Lemont and Tebonnet, long grain varieties, were determined. Cooking time was significantly reduced in Mars and Lemont at doses of 200 and 300 Krads. Irradiation increased cooking rate, water uptake at 80\sp\circC, water uptake ratios, total solids content in residual cooking liquid and starch damage from 100 to 300 Krad samples. Water uptake at 96\sp\circC generally decreased with increasing dose levels. Evidence indicated alterations in the rice grain structure and composition. The component drastically affected by gamma-irradiation was starch as shown by reduced cooking time, increased water uptake, increased amounts of starch and protein in residual cooking liquid, reduced volume expansion, increased damaged starch and changes in amylographic pasting characteristics. Scanning electron microscopy showed more simple starch granules in irradiated samples than in nonirradiated samples. Structural changes in the bran layer due to gamma-irradiation were not evident from electron micrographs. Amylose, moisture, fat and protein content were not significantly affected by gamma-irradiation. Total color difference values indicated that brown rice darkened on irradiation and, became lighter on storage. Some changes in irradiated samples on storage were similar to those in nonirradiated samples but the degree of these changes was dependent upon dose. Fat acidity values for irradiated Mars and Lemont samples were generally lower than nonirradiated samples. 100 Krad samples of Tebonnet were higher than that of 0 and 200 Krad samples. Fat acidity values of nonirradiated and irradiated samples of Mars, and nonirradiated samples of Lemont increased on storage while irradiated samples were not significantly affected. Values for Tebonnet were not significantly affected by storage. TBA values for Lemont decreased from that at 0 to 100 Krads and then increased at 200 Krads. There was no definite trend in TBA values for Mars. Dose effects on TBA values were insignificant for Tebonnet. On storage, irradiated samples of Lemont and Tebonnet had lower values than nonirradiated samples. Stored irradiated samples of Mars tended to have higher values than nonirradiated samples

The DMAP-Catalyzed Acylation of Alcohol -- A Mechanistic Study

The mechanistic studies of Acylation of Alcohols catalyzed by 4-(N,N- Dimethyl-amino)-pyridine (DMAP) has been heavily studied in the literature. This reaction has attracted considerable interest from the synthetic and mechanistic points of view in recent years. In this research, the acylation of alcohols is prepared from cyclohexanol and acetic anhydride that is catalyzed by DMAP using triethyl amine (NEt3) as the auxiliary base and dichloromethane (DCM) as solvent. The reaction and final product will be analyzed by using gas chromatography (GC) and reaction progress kinetic analysis (RPKA). The mechanistic insights obtained in the present study should be useful for understanding the acylation of alcohols, and hence, provide valuable information

The Road to Doctoral Success and Beyond

The purpose of this study is to gain an understanding of the experiences of women that lead them to pursue a Ph.D in Counseling, as well a study of their experiences in their doctoral program. The goal of this study is to identify those factors related to women’s academic success. This study applies the resiliency and emotional intelligence (EI) framework to analyze the subjects\u27 experiences. Another construct related to EI and resilience, Antonovsky’s (1987) theory of coherence, is employed to explain the way in which the subjects converted negative external factors into achievement motivation. A three and a half hour focus group, facilitated by an open-ended questionnaire, was audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed independently by the four researchers. The results found two overarching themes, consistent with previous research by Amini et al. (2008): (a) attributes, attitudes, and motivation and (b) extrinsic supportive factors. Another theme uncovered in this study was the impact of (c) negative external factors. The paper concludes with a discussion of these findings, suggestions for future research, and ideas for ways in which doctoral programs and faculty can promote the success of female doctoral students

Do American Psychological Association (APA) or Council for Accreditation of Counseling & Related Educational Programs (CACREP) Accreditations Make a Difference? A Look at GLB Competency Among Faculty and Graduate Students

A lack of knowledge and training on the topic of gay, lesbian, and bisexual persons (GLB) in mental health graduate programs can lead to a culture of ignorance and ineffective treatment for a subset of the population. Multicultural competency is defined as having self-awareness of one\u27s own values and biases, knowledge, and skills to work with a given population; and it is important in order to ensure appropriate mental healthcare. The purpose of the current study was to identify if there is a difference in GLB competency among graduate students and faculty (dependent variables) from mental health programs that are accredited by organizations like the APA and CACREP versus those from nonaccredited programs (independent variables). The key theoretical foundation that grounded this study was Multicultural Counseling and Therapy Theory (MCT). The research questions explored herein center on whether GLB competency differs between graduate students and faculty from accredited programs versus those from nonaccredited programs. Results of this quantitative comparative research design study were derived via a multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) procedure in order to compare mean scores among the four groups. Results identified a significant difference between the groups in skills and knowledge; however, mean averages for graduate students from accredited programs (Skills M = 2.54, Knowledge M = 3.83) were below four, indicating little to no skills/knowledge. In order to optimize mental health treatment for the GLB community, graduate students in mental health programs must be exposed to GLB counseling training curriculum. The implications for social change focus on policy and accreditation standards set forth by APA and CACREP accrediting bodies

Comparison of two species distribution modeling approaches for the conservation of marine species in Colombia

Species distribution models (SDMs) are valuable tools used in biogeography, ecology, evolutionary biology, and conservation. They can estimate the potential distribution of a species using occurrence data and environmental variables. Historically, development of marine SDM methods has been delayed compared to the terrestrial realm because of limited environmental and other data availability. With environmental datasets newly available for the marine realm, research and development of SDMs are starting to grow. This study focused on two novel SDM approaches, Wallace and voluModel. Studies to model marine species using these tools are limited. Additionally, few studies have modeled species distribution of marine fishes in Colombia. I performed a comparative study to determine the distribution of marine fish species in Colombia and to assess the performance of each tool by using three model performance metrics: area under the curve (AUC), Akaike information criterion (AIC), and omission error (OR), along with expert feedback. This project is part of a collaborative effort led by Colombia's Institute of Marine and Coastal Research (INVEMAR) and the BioModelos team from the Humboldt Research Institute to map the species distribution of Colombia’s biodiversity. This effort is related to Colombia’s compromise to adopt the Global Biodiversity Framework established at COP15 in 2023. One of the 23 targets of this framework includes increasing the number of global ecosystems and species under management and conservation to 30% in both land and sea by 2030. For this reason, there is an urgent need to scale up knowledge of marine fish distributions to inform a new edition of The Red Book of Marine Fish in Colombia by the end of 2023. This study will inform the choice of software used by INVEMAR and BioModelos to model the ecological distribution of marine fishes in Colombia. Keywords: Biogeography, Ecology, Conservation, R (Programming language), Marine fish, Species distribution model, Environmental niche model, Wallace EcoMod, voluMode

When Great Powers Invade: An Analysis on the Motives and Justifications of Foreign Military Intervention. A Comparative Case Study Between Crises in Eastern Europe and the Greater Middle East.

The Cold War was marked by a period of competition between two seemingly different ideological, political, and economic rivals. The Soviet Union and the United States. The end of the Cold War, as well as the dissolution of the Soviet Union, brought these rivals to mediating tables where cooperation that once seemed impossible was suddenly the new normal in the field of international relations. Nevertheless, the conclusion of this era brought a new one with it after two hugely important events. The September 11th terrorist attacks in the United States and Vladimir Putin’s rise to power in Russia. Between 2001 and 2023, both powers, who for years seemed to be in diplomatic terms, conducted several foreign military interventions. However, interventions in the Greater Middle East at the hand of the Americans, and in Eastern Europe at the hand of the Russians, marked a new way in which these two states conducted foreign policy. In this thesis, I argue that great powers, more specifically Russia and the United States, have conducted military interventions with very different motives to the official statements they make behind why they decided to conduct a foreign military intervention. In other words, I argue that what states say, greatly varies from what they do. By looking at official speeches, legislative bills, and UN statements, and comparing them to what scholars, reporters, analysts, and official government reports are saying I find the following: the reason why they conduct these interventions lies in the betterment of states at the system, state, and individual level at the expense of the states on the receiving end.Bachelor of Art

Incidental Learning of Novel Words in Adult Spanish Speaking Learners of English as a Second Language: Measures of Lexical Configuration and Lexical Engagement and the Effects of Learners’ Individual Differences

Studies on second language (L2) incidental vocabulary learning through reading have mainly focused on learning and testing factual static knowledge of recently learned words, that is, their form and meaning, often in isolation. Thus, little research has explored how through incidental reading newly learned words lexically engage (or interact) with other lexical levels (e.g. semantic and syntactic) and items in the bilingual mental lexicon. Moreover, the effects of learners’ individual differences in incidental vocabulary learning and lexical engagement remain unexplored. The present work, therefore, aimed to contribute to the existing literature by examining the extent of L2 incidental vocabulary learning, not only through measures of lexical configuration (e.g. recognition and recall) but also via measures of lexical engagement (e.g. predicting upcoming linguistic material, making lexical decisions following semantic priming, and parsing temporarily ambiguous (garden-path) sentences) in adult Spanish speaking learners of English in comparison to a monolingual English speaking control group. The effects of phonological working memory (PWM), language aptitude, vocabulary size, and verbal fluency on lexical configuration and lexical engagement of recently learned pseudowords were also explored. Two offline studies on lexical configuration knowledge (e.g. recognition and recall vocabulary post-tests), and three online studies on lexical engagement of spoken form (e.g. visual-world eye-tracking paradigm), meaning (e.g. lexical decision task with priming), and grammatical use (e.g. eye-tracking study with text) of recently learned pseudowords were designed. A training/learning phase preceded the studies where participants read meaningful English sentences containing the target items. The results confirmed that L2 incidental vocabulary learning from reading reaches lexical engagement of form, meaning, and use in recently learned pseudowords. In addition, it corroborated that learners’ individual differences have an effect on lexical configuration and lexical engagement of novel words. The findings contribute to existing theories on L2 vocabulary learning by demonstrating that incidental learning from reading can lead to lexical engagement, and thus to deeper understanding of word knowledge beyond factual memory

Habilidades sociales para el clima escolar en estudiantes de la Institución Educativa N°10178 “Divino Maestro” - Olmos

En la Institución Educativa “Divino Maestro – Olmos”, se ha determinado que no existe un adecuado clima escolar, mediante el cual los estudiantes no desarrollan sus habilidades sociales, por ello, el presente trabajo de investigación tuvo como objetivo: Proponer un programa de habilidades sociales, para mejorar el clima escolar en estudiantes de la institución educativa N° 10178 “Divino Maestro”- Olmos, su estudio fue de tipo básico, propositiva con diseño no experimental; se trabajó con una muestra de 31 estudiantes de cuarto grado sección única, utilizando como técnica de recolección de datos la encuesta. Tuvo como resultados que, en la tabla N° 05, el 61,3% presenta un clima de conveniencia escolar mínimo, así como el 29% es regular, sin embargo, el 9,7% presentaron un clima de comodidad buena, por otro lado, el 61,3% tienen una deficiente satisfacción y cumplimiento de expectativas en su institución, así como el 29% es regular en esta dimensión. El estado actual del clima escolar tiene un nivel inadecuado por los comportamientos negativos que demuestran en situaciones de interacción social, lo cual implica que no se desarrollan adecuadamente las habilidades sociales; motivo que justifica la aplicación de la propuesta del programa, en cuanto sea posible

Understanding Perceived Differences Between Successful and Struggling First-Year Mexican American College Students: An Exploratory Study

In this exploratory study, we conducted in-depth interviews with university seminar instructors to discover perceived differences between successful and struggling first-year Latina/o college students. Several factors emerged from interviews to differentiate successful and struggling Latina/o college students. These factors include assimilation, motivation to pursue goals, family knowledge and resources, family social class, different preparation for postsecondary education, and different levels of support and encouragement in high school. We provide recommendations for high school counselors and researchers