Conscientiousness and Academic Performance: A Mediational Analysis

Previous research has established that a relationship exists between the personality trait of conscientiousness and academic achievement. The current study extends prior research by using a path analysis model to explore various proximal traits that may mediate this relationship in a sample of two hundred and twenty three undergraduate university students. Consistent with previous research, a strong positive relationship was found between conscientiousness and academic performance as measured by final grades. Of greater importance, two factors were found to mediate this relationship: Academic Self-Efficacy and Test Anxiety. The current study illustrates the complex nature of the relation between personality traits and academic achievement and indicates that personality likely has a distal effect on academic performance through more proximal characteristics

Civil liability for negligent police investigation: Canadian developments

Publisher's version/PDFIn October of 2007, the Supreme Court of Canada issued its ruling in Hill v. Hamilton-Wentworth Regional Police Services Board, a case in which the Court addressed the legitimacy of a tort for negligent police investigation. The holding by a majority of six Justices recognized the tort of negligent police investigation at Canadian law. As such, Canada is now one of the only common law countries to have recognized such a tort. This paper summarizes the case and addresses its implications for the Canadian law enforcement community

How small are contemporary small claims?: an evaluation of the Nova Scotia Small Claims Court

Publisher's version/PDFAs the form of justice most likely to be encountered by the general public, small claims courts serve a special role in terms of formulating public trust and confidence in the legal system at large. Nova Scotia recently increased the dollar amount allowable in the Small Claims Court to $25,000, placing it among the highest-capped jurisdictions in North America. This paper presents a two-phase evaluation of the Nova Scotia Small Claims Court. Phase I consisted of interviews with key stakeholders. Phase II was a survey of 254 litigants in the Nova Scotia Small Claims Court. The data illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of the Nova Scotia Small Claims Court. Results are discussed in the context of the broader civil justice system. Future research should test whether raising caps on allowable small claims will inhibit citizens` access to justice

Pilot Testing the Daily Activities List for Inmates (DALI): Item Evaluation and Content Validity

Scheduling enjoyable daily activities is a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy intervention used in the treatment of depression and substance abuse disorders that are prevalent disorders among inmates. To effectively use this intervention with inmates, an activities list with items ecologically sensitive to the correctional setting needs to be created. The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate items; thus, establishing a content valid Daily Activities List for Inmates (DALI). Fifteen corrections professionals representing a wide range of disciplines and managerial backgrounds served as subject matter experts (SMEs). Each SME evaluated 403 daily activity items that were aggregated from 4 separate lists. Each item was evaluated in relation to appropriateness for corrections, availability to inmates, need for editing, and where the activity could take place (in cell, out of cell, or both) then analyzed for removal following a criteria-driven, stage-based approach. The final daily activity list consisted of a total 227 items with the majority of the items developed by inmates in a correctional environment enduring through each stage. The majority of all 227 final DALI items were also considered to be used as both in and out of cell activities. An additional 22 items were created through SME suggestions or edits and were reserved for possible future use. With an ecologically sensitive daily activities list for inmates developed, implications for using the DALI to deliver psychological services to inmates are discussed

Visualization of a Capsule Entry Vehicle Reaction-Control System (RCS) Thruster

Planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) was used to visualize the reaction control system (RCS) jet flow emanating from the aft-body of an Apollo-geometry capsule test article in the NASA Langley Research Center 31-Inch Mach 10 Air wind tunnel. The RCS jet was oriented normal to the aft surface of the model and had a nominal Mach number of 2.94. The composition of the jet gas by mass was 95% nitrogen (N2) and 5% nitric oxide (NO). The RCS jet flowrate varied between zero and 0.5 standard liters per minute and the angle of attack and tunnel stagnation pressure were also varied. PLIF was used to excite the NO molecules for flow visualization. These flow visualization images were processed to determine the trajectory and to quantify the flapping of the RCS jet. The spatial resolution of the jet trajectory measurement was about 1 mm and the single-shot precision of the measurement was estimated to be 0.02 mm in the far field of the jet plume. The jet flapping, measured by the standard deviation of the jet centerline position was as large as 0.9 mm, while the jet was 1.5-4 mm in diameter (full width at half maximum). Schlieren flow visualization images were obtained for comparison with the PLIF. Surface pressures were also measured and presented. Virtual Diagnostics Interface (VIDI) technology developed at NASA Langley was used to superimpose and visualize the data sets. The measurements demonstrate some of the capabilities of the PLIF method while providing a test case for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) validation

Accounting for genomic pre-selection in national BLUP evaluations in dairy cattle

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In future Best Linear Unbiased Prediction (BLUP) evaluations of dairy cattle, genomic selection of young sires will cause evaluation biases and loss of accuracy once the selected ones get progeny.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>To avoid such bias in the estimation of breeding values, we propose to include information on all genotyped bulls, including the culled ones, in BLUP evaluations. Estimated breeding values based on genomic information were converted into genomic pseudo-performances and then analyzed simultaneously with actual performances. Using simulations based on actual data from the French Holstein population, bias and accuracy of BLUP evaluations were computed for young sires undergoing progeny testing or genomic pre-selection. For bulls pre-selected based on their genomic profile, three different types of information can be included in the BLUP evaluations: (1) data from pre-selected genotyped candidate bulls with actual performances on their daughters, (2) data from bulls with both actual and genomic pseudo-performances, or (3) data from all the genotyped candidates with genomic pseudo-performances. The effects of different levels of heritability, genomic pre-selection intensity and accuracy of genomic evaluation were considered.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Including information from all the genotyped candidates, i.e. genomic pseudo-performances for both selected and culled candidates, removed bias from genetic evaluation and increased accuracy. This approach was effective regardless of the magnitude of the initial bias and as long as the accuracy of the genomic evaluations was sufficiently high.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The proposed method can be easily and quickly implemented in BLUP evaluations at the national level, although some improvement is necessary to more accurately propagate genomic information from genotyped to non-genotyped animals. In addition, it is a convenient method to combine direct genomic, phenotypic and pedigree-based information in a multiple-step procedure.</p

Extending the "one strain many compounds" (OSMAC) principle to marine microorganisms

Genomic data often highlights an inconsistency between the number of gene clusters identified using bioinformatic approaches as potentially producing secondary metabolites and the actual number of chemically characterized secondary metabolites produced by any given microorganism. Such gene clusters are generally considered as "silent", meaning that they are not expressed under laboratory conditions. Triggering expression of these "silent" clusters could result in unlocking the chemical diversity they control, allowing the discovery of novel molecules of both medical and biotechnological interest. Therefore, both genetic and cultivation-based techniques have been developed aimed at stimulating expression of these "silent" genes. The principles behind the cultivation based approaches have been conceptualized in the "one strain many compounds" (OSMAC) framework, which underlines how a single strain can produce different molecules when grown under different environmental conditions. Parameters such as, nutrient content, temperature, and rate of aeration can be easily changed, altering the global physiology of a microbial strain and in turn significantly affecting its secondary metabolism. As a direct extension of such approaches, co-cultivation strategies and the addition of chemical elicitors have also been used as cues to activate "silent" clusters. In this review, we aim to provide a focused and comprehensive overview of these strategies as they pertain to marine microbes. Moreover, we underline how changes in some parameters which have provided important results in terrestrial microbes, but which have rarely been considered in marine microorganisms, may represent additional strategies to awaken "silent" gene clusters in marine microbes. Unfortunately, the empirical nature of the OSMAC approach forces scientists to perform extensive laboratory experiments. Nevertheless, we believe that some computation and experimental based techniques which are used in other disciplines, and which we discuss; could be effectively employed to help streamline the OSMAC based approaches. We believe that natural products discovery in marine microorganisms would be greatly aided through the integration of basic microbiological approaches, computational methods, and technological innovations, thereby helping unearth much of the as yet untapped potential of these microorganisms

Establishing the validity of the Personality Assessment Inventory drug and alcohol scales in a corrections sample

Abstract Although not originally designed for implementation in correctional settings, researchers and clinicians have begun to use the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) to assess offenders. A relatively small number of studies have made attempts to validate the alcohol and drug abuse scales of the PAI, and only a very few studies have validated those scales in nonclinical correctional samples. The current study examined evidence of convergent and discriminant validity for the substance abuse scales on the PAI in a large, nonclinical sample of offenders. The net sample for the current study consisted of 1,120 federal inmates. Both the drug abuse and alcohol scales showed good convergent validity through high correlations with relevant proximal and distal indicators of substance use across multiple measures from several data sources. Discriminant validity was established as neither scale showed any &quot;erroneous&quot; correlations after controlling for the other scale. Implications for future research and practice are discussed