An Evaluation of the Pilot Appraisal System Adopted by the Omaha Public Schools

Currently, teacher evaluation is a dominant educational concern. Articles dealing with the problems and solutions to the evaluation of teaching reveal the extensiveness of the problem. There are complaints from teachers regarding the specifics of evaluation such as: too many administrative visits, too few administrative visits, insufficient feedback after the evaluation, lack of administrative understanding of the curriculum, lack of time for the teacher to correct the problems identified and of opportunity for teacher improvement. There are also complaints from administrators. These complaints include the lack of time to make observations, lack of understanding of the teacher\u27s goals and lack of opportunity to gather needed data to justify a competency hearing

Facilitation, competition and parasitic facilitation amongst invasive and native liana seedlings and a native tree seedling

Lianas are prevalent in gaps and edges of forests where they compete intensely with trees, reducing growth and recruitment. Invasive lianas have the potential to be particularly harmful as the competitive advantage of the liana life history may be coupled with the more competitive qualities of invasiveness. However, in early stages of growth of lianas and native tree seedlings, facilitatory interactions or competitive interactions associated with soil nutrients may be more prevalent. We investigated interactions at the early stages of growth between native and invasive lianas with a common rainforest tree of temperate Australian rainforests under different light conditions. Invasive lianas, as a group, were not more competitive than native lianas in reducing growth of a native rainforest seedling. At this stage in the life cycle most lianas were as competitive as a conspecific seedling. However, one invasive liana, Anredera cordifolia, was particularly competitive and reduced biomass of tree seedlings. Light had little effect on growth of lianas nor on the impact of competition, however, specific leaf area differed between low and medium light conditions. Moderate light did improve growth in the rainforest tree seedling. When lianas were grown with a rainforest tree, three liana species overyielded, while one species was unaffected by growing with the tree seedling. Overyielding suggests a strong positive interaction with the neighbouring plant, mediated through belowground processes. We discuss the potential for these interactions to be facilitative, parasitic or competitive. We therefore show that interactions early in the life of rainforest species can be complex mixtures of interactions which are likely to influence the ability of lianas to dominate rainforests

Randomized Trial of Antibiotics in Addition to Tocolytic Therapy to Treat Preterm Labor

Objective: The objective of this study was to assess whether antibiotic therapy plus tocolysis given to women in preterm labor would prolong pregnancy compared with tocolysis alone

Improving Outpatient Diabetes Care

More than 20% of patients in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) have diabetes; therefore, disseminating “best practices” in outpatient diabetes care is paramount. The authors’ goal was to identify such practices and the factors associated with their development. First, a national VHA diabetes registry with 2008 data identified clinical performance based on the percentage of patients with an A1c \u3e9%. Facilities (n = 140) and community-based outpatient clinics (n = 582) were included and stratified into high, mid, and low performers. Semistructured telephone interviews (31) and site visits (5) were conducted. Low performers cited lack of teamwork between physicians and nurses and inadequate time to prepare. Better performing sites reported supportive clinical teams sharing work, time for non-face-to-face care, and innovative practices to address local needs. A knowledge management model informed our process. Notable differences between performance levels exist. “Best practices” will be disseminated across the VHA as the VHA Patient-Centered Medical Home model is implemented

Measuring the neutron star equation of state using X-ray timing

One of the primary science goals of the next generation of hard X-ray timing instruments is to determine the equation of state of the matter at supranuclear densities inside neutron stars, by measuring the radius of neutron stars with different masses to accuracies of a few percent. Three main techniques can be used to achieve this goal. The first involves waveform modelling. The flux we observe from a hotspot on the neutron star surface offset from the rotational pole will be modulated by the star's rotation, giving rise to a pulsation. Information about mass and radius is encoded into the pulse profile via relativistic effects, and tight constraints on mass and radius can be obtained. The second technique involves characterising the spin distribution of accreting neutron stars. The most rapidly rotating stars provide a very clean constraint, since the mass-shedding limit is a function of mass and radius. However the overall spin distribution also provides a guide to the torque mechanisms in operation and the moment of inertia, both of which can depend sensitively on dense matter physics. The third technique is to search for quasi-periodic oscillations in X-ray flux associated with global seismic vibrations of magnetars (the most highly magnetized neutron stars), triggered by magnetic explosions. The vibrational frequencies depend on stellar parameters including the dense matter equation of state. We illustrate how these complementary X-ray timing techniques can be used to constrain the dense matter equation of state, and discuss the results that might be expected from a 10m$^2$ instrument. We also discuss how the results from such a facility would compare to other astronomical investigations of neutron star properties. [Modified for arXiv]Comment: To appear in Reviews of Modern Physics as a Colloquium, 23 pages, 9 figure

Atmospheric Effects on Neutron Star Parameter Constraints with NICER

We present an analysis of the effects of uncertainties in the atmosphere models on the radius, mass, and other neutron star parameter constraints for the NICER observations of rotation-powered millisecond pulsars. To date, NICER has applied the X-ray pulse profile modeling technique to two millisecond-period pulsars: PSR J0030+0451 and the high-mass pulsar PSR J0740+6620. These studies have commonly assumed a deep-heated fully-ionized hydrogen atmosphere model, although they have explored the effects of partial-ionization and helium composition in some cases. Here we extend that exploration and also include new models with partially ionized carbon composition, externally heated hydrogen, and an empirical atmospheric beaming parametrization to explore deviations in the expected anisotropy of the emitted radiation. None of the studied atmosphere cases have any significant influence on the inferred radius of PSR J0740+6620, possibly due to its X-ray faintness, tighter external constraints, and/or viewing geometry. In the case of PSR J0030+0451 both the composition and ionization state could significantly alter the inferred radius. However, based on the evidence (prior predictive probability of the data), partially ionized hydrogen and carbon atmospheres are disfavored. The difference in the evidence for ionized hydrogen and helium atmospheres is too small to be decisive for most cases, but the inferred radius for helium models trends to larger sizes around or above 14-15 km. External heating or deviations in the beaming that are less than $5\,\%$ at emission angles smaller than 60 degrees, on the other hand, have no significant effect on the inferred radius.Comment: 26 pages, 12 figures (2 of which are figure sets), 3 tables. Accepted for publication in Ap