My Days at Fisher

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay\u27s first paragraph. I began my Fisher journey in the fall of 1987. I was a transfer student from SUNY Potsdam. I worked full time at St. John Fisher’s child care center and took classes before work, on my lunch hour, and at night. I had a job at the child care center that was supposed to be a summer job, but turned full time at the end of the summer. I was very lucky to have a boss who was flexible with my hours. I taught the three year old class, ran the after school program, and supervised work study students. I loved working at the child care center because it was such a warm caring environment for both children and employees. I learned a lot from the director Sally Zepecki and all of the staff really. They were all women with families and I was just barely twenty years old. I still can’t believe they trusted me to drive a Fisher van full of six through ten year olds around all summer on field trips. At the end of the summer those same school aged kids would come to my house for a camp out

‘What do we do in the meantime?’ (Ferris 2004): Language errors and scaffolded intervention strategies in the writing of distance education students

The ongoing theoretical debates on the value of error correction and the attention that should be accorded to language accuracy have overlooked the needs of teachers ‘at the chalkface’. Yet, effective teaching strategies are vital in multi-lingual South Africa, particularly given the under-performance of South African students evidenced in international comparative studies. Based on a Master’s dissertation entitled ‘A critical review of the language errors in the writing of distance education students’ (Ward-Cox, 2012), this article interrogates linguistic competence and investigates the language ‘errors’ made by a heterogeneous group of 100 entry-level distance education university students with the aim of improving academic writing. The research follows a process of error identification and statistical analysis and reviews intervention strategies. The implications of the bimodal pattern of distribution in the review findings and its link to school background are discussed. Scaffolded intervention strategies are presented in response to Ferris’s (2004) question to teachers: “… what do we do in the meantime [while the academic debate rages]?”Keywords: language errors, error correction, distance education, academic writing skills, intervention strategies, scaffoldin

The Digital House of Care: information solutions for integrated care

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a digital tool in an English county striving towards a vision of integrated information that is used to underpin an increasingly integrated future of health and social care delivery. Design/methodology/approach – It discusses the policy context nationally, the origins and implementation of the initiative, the authors’ experiences and viewpoint highlighting key challenges and learning, as well as examples of new work undertaken. Findings – In all, 12 health and care organisations have participated in this project. The ability for local commissioners and providers of services to now understand “flow” both between and within services at a granular level is unique. Costs are modest, and the opportunities for refining and better targeting as well as validating services are significant, thus demonstrating a return on investment. Key learning includes how organisational development was equally as important as the implementation of innovative new software, that change management from grass roots to strategic leaders is vital, and that the whole system is greater than the sum of its otherwise in-silo parts. Practical implications – Data linkage initiatives, whether local, regional or national in scale, need to be programme managed. A robust governance and accountability framework must be in place to realise the benefits of such as a solution, and IT infrastructure is paramount. Social implications – Organisational development, collaborative as well as distributed leadership, and managing a change in culture towards health and care information is critical in order to create a supportive environment that fosters learning across organisational boundaries. Originality/value – This paper draws on the recent experience of achieving large-scale data integration across the boundaries of health and social care, to help plan and commission services more effectively. This rich, multi-agency intelligence has already begun to change the way in which the system considers service planning, and learning from this county’s approach may assist others considering similar initiatives.N/

Novel Cold-Adapted Lipase from Marine Plankton, Salpa thompsoni

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Graphene formation on SiC substrates

Graphene layers were created on both C and Si faces of semi-insulating, on-axis, 4H- and 6H-SiC substrates. The process was performed under high vacuum (<10-4 mbar) in a commercial chemical vapor deposition SiC reactor. A method for H2 etching the on-axis sub-strates was developed to produce surface steps with heights of 0.5 nm on the Si-face and 1.0 to 1.5 nm on the C-face for each polytype. A process was developed to form graphene on the substrates immediately after H2 etching and Raman spectroscopy of these samples confirmed the formation of graphene. The morphology of the graphene is described. For both faces, the underlying substrate morphology was significantly modified during graphene formation; sur-face steps were up to 15 nm high and the uniform step morphology was sometimes lost. Mo-bilities and sheet carrier concentrations derived from Hall Effect measurements on large area (16 mm square) and small area (2 and 10 um square) samples are presented and shown to compare favorably to recent reports.Comment: European Conference on Silicon Carbide and Related Materials 2008 (ECSCRM '08), 4 pages, 4 figure

An Unbiased Survey of 500 Nearby Stars for Debris Disks: A JCMT Legacy Program

We present the scientific motivation and observing plan for an upcoming detection survey for debris disks using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. The SCUBA-2 Unbiased Nearby Stars (SUNS) Survey will observe 500 nearby main sequence and sub-giant stars (100 of each of the A, F, G, K and M spectral classes) to the 850 micron extragalactic confusion limit to search for evidence of submillimeter excess, an indication of circumstellar material. The survey distance boundaries are 8.6, 16.5, 22, 25 and 45 pc for M, K, G, F and A stars, respectively, and all targets lie between the declinations of -40 deg to 80 deg. In this survey, no star will be rejected based on its inherent properties: binarity, presence of planetary companions, spectral type or age. This will be the first unbiased survey for debris disks since IRAS. We expect to detect ~125 debris disks, including ~50 cold disks not detectable in current shorter wavelength surveys. A substantial amount of complementary data will be required to constrain the temperatures and masses of discovered disks. High resolution studies will likely be required to resolve many of the disks. Therefore, these systems will be the focus of future observational studies using a variety of observatories to characterize their physical properties. For non-detected systems, this survey will set constraints (upper limits) on the amount of circumstellar dust, of typically 200 times the Kuiper Belt mass, but as low as 10 times the Kuiper Belt mass for the nearest stars in the sample (approximately 2 pc).Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures (3 color), accepted by the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacifi

Prognostic factors for changes in the timed 4-stair climb in patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and implications for measuring drug efficacy: A multi-institutional collaboration

The timed 4-stair climb (4SC) assessment has been used to measure function in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) practice and research. We sought to identify prognostic factors for changes in 4SC, assess their consistency across data sources, and the extent to which prognostic scores could be useful in DMD clinical trial design and analysis. Data from patients with DMD in the placebo arm of a phase 3 trial (Tadalafil DMD trial) and two real-world sources (Universitaire Ziekenhuizen, Leuven, Belgium [Leuven] and Cincinnati Children\u27s Hospital Medical Center [CCHMC]) were analyzed. One-year changes in 4SC completion time and velocity (stairs/second) were analyzed. Prognostic models included age, height, weight, steroid use, and multiple timed function tests and were developed using multivariable regression, separately in each data source. Simulations were used to quantify impacts on trial sample size requirements. Data on 1-year changes in 4SC were available from the Tadalafil DMD trial (n = 92) Leuven (n = 67), and CCHMC (n = 212). Models incorporating multiple timed function tests, height, and weight significantly improved prognostic accuracy for 1-year change in 4SC (R2: 29%-36% for 4SC velocity, and 29%-34% for 4SC time) compared to models including only age, baseline 4SC and steroid duration (R2:8%-17% for 4SC velocity and 2%-13% for 4SC time). Measures of walking and rising ability contributed important prognostic information for changes in 4SC. In a randomized trial with equal allocation to treatment and placebo, adjustment for such a prognostic score would enable detection (at 80% power) of a treatment effect of 0.25 stairs/second with 100-120 patients, compared to 170-190 patients without prognostic score adjustment. Combining measures of ambulatory function doubled prognostic accuracy for 1-year changes in 4SC completion time and velocity. Randomized clinical trials incorporating a validated prognostic score could reduce sample size requirements by approximately 40%. Knowledge of important prognostic factors can also inform adjusted comparisons to external controls

Improvement of Morphology and Free Carrier Mobility through Argon-Assisted Growth of Epitaxial Graphene on Silicon Carbide

Graphene was epitaxially grown on both the C- and Si-faces of 4H- and 6H-SiC(0001) under an argon atmosphere and under high vacuum conditions. Following growth, samples were imaged with Nomarski interference contrast and atomic force microscopies and it was found that growth under argon led to improved morphologies on the C-face films but the Si-face films were not significantly affected. Free carrier transport studies were conducted through Hall effect measurements, and carrier mobilities were found to increase and sheet carrier densities were found to decrease for those films grown under argon as compared to high vacuum conditions. The improved mobilities and concurrent decreases in sheet carrier densities suggest a decrease in scattering in the films grown under argon.Comment: 215th Meeting of the Electrochemical Society (ECS 215), 14 pages, 6 figure