Proventing Intimate Partner Violence-Related Attitudes Through Arts-Based Peace Education: A Sequential Explanatory Study of Dancing Classrooms Alumni

Research links intimate partner violence (IPV) to socialized, and often gendered, power-over attitudes that view abuse, control, and physical violence against, or by, an intimate partner as acceptable and appropriate in various contexts. While many IPV prevention programs emphasize education for reducing intimate partner violence-related attitudes (IPVA), most programs respond after violence has occurred and are often ineffective. Presenting an innovative form of proactive prevention, or “provention”, this dissertation combines arts-based peace education, youth IPV prevention, and intergroup contact theory (ICT) to outline how youth-focused social dance may effectively provent IPVA risk factors by teaching young people collaborative, power-with social skills in a safe and structured environment. This approach is demonstrated by examining how Dancing Classrooms, a New York based social dance program, affects the development of social and emotional learning (SEL) skills and IPVA risk factors through its 10-week school-based program. Further, ICT is applied to Dancing Classrooms’ pedagogy, the Dulaine Method, to assess how its design contributes to positive relationship building among participants. Combining analyses of 275 alumni survey responses with interviews and focus groups including eight alumni, seven Teaching Artists, and four Executive Program Directors, this mixed methods study finds Dancing Classrooms effectively teaches prosocial, power-with behaviors and promotes positive relationships among participants. Findings reveal most alumni perceive Dancing Classrooms positively affected their SEL skills, with higher SEL scoring significantly predicting lower physical violence-related IPVA. Results also show the Dulaine Method pedagogy fulfills all five ICT conditions for positive relationship building, with emphasis on the positive support of Teaching Artists and positive peer interactions. This study contributes to peace education and IPV research by demonstrating how teaching social dance within ICT conditions can subvert harmful interpersonal attitudes by promoting positive social skills and relationships. Future interdisciplinary research is needed to understand how and when arts-based peace education, including but not limited to social dance, may effectively provent violence by teaching collaborative, power-with social skills and promoting positive, interpersonal relationships

Influence of Initial Severity of Depression on the Effectiveness of a Multimodal Therapy on Depressive Score, Heart Rate Variability, and Hemodynamic Parameters.

Depression is a major cause of disability among populations worldwide. Apart from primary symptoms, depressed patients often have a higher cardiovascular risk profile. Multimodal therapy concepts, including exercise, have emerged as promising approaches that not only improve depressive symptoms but also have a positive impact on cardiovascular risk profile. However, controversies have arisen concerning the influence of baseline severity on the effects of therapy concepts for this demographic. This study assessed whether pretreatment severity moderates psychological and physiological treatment outcomes of a multimodal therapy. A total of 16 patients diagnosed with mild depression (MD) and 14 patients diagnosed with severe depression (SD) took part in a 3-month outpatient multimodal treatment therapy. Before and after the treatment, depression score (Beck Depression Inventory (BDI)), peripheral systolic (pSBP) and diastolic (pDBP) blood pressure, central systolic (cSBP) and diastolic (cDBP) blood pressure, pulse wave velocity (PWV), heart rate (HR), and parasympathetic parameters of heart rate variability (RMSSD) were assessed. Significant time effects were detected for BDI (-20.0 ± 11.6, p > 0.001, η2 = 0.871), pSBP (-4.7 ± 6.8 mmHg, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.322), pDBP (-3.5 ± 6.9 mmHg, p = 0.01, η2 = 0.209), cSBP (-4.8 ± 6.5 mmHg, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.355), cDBP (-3.6 ± 6.8 mmHg, p = 0.008, η2 = 0.226), PWV (-0.13 ± 0.23 m/s, p = 0.008, η2 = 0.229), HR (4.3 ± 8.8 min-1, p = 0.015, η2 = 0.193), RMSSD (-12.2 ± 23.9 ms, p = 0.017, η2 = 0.251), and and SDNN (10.5 ± 17.8 ms, p = 0.005, η2 = 0.330). Significant time × group interaction could be revealed for BDI (p < 0.001, η2 = 0.543), with patients suffering from SD showing stronger reductions. Pretreatment severity of depression has an impact on the effectiveness of a multimodal therapy regarding psychological but not physiological outcomes

Phenyl 2,3-O-isopropyl­idene-1-thio-α-d-rhamnopyran­oside

In the title compound, C15H20O4S, a dioxolane ring is fused to the pyran ring of the sugar which carries a thio­phenyl substituent on the anomeric C atom. The dioxolane ring adopts an envelope conformation and the pyran ring system a distorted 4 C 1 chair. The structure is stabilized by O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, forming centrosymmetric dimers that generate an R 2 2(10) ring motif. Additional C—H⋯O inter­actions form an extended network. Two C atoms of the phenyl ring are disordered over two positions; the site occupancy factors are ca. 0.7 and 0.3

Comparing Driving Behavior for Manuel, Conventional and Automated Cruise Control Driving in Car-Following by Scenarios Based on an Advanced Driver Performance Map

Every year more than six million crashes occur in the USA, killing over 40.000 people and causing more than three millions of injuries [1]. A major part of thes crashes are rear-end collisions. Therefore the U.S. Department of Transportation has put a lot of effort in fostering the development of rear-end collision avoidance systems by funding governmental, academic and industrial research groups in the last ten to fifteen years. The intelligent criuse control field operational test (ICC FOT) [2, 3] represents an important milestone in thise line of research. With its various findings and its big amount of recorded data it is a valuable means for evaluating the impact of automated cruise control systems (ACC) on driver performance. This paper addresses the safety-enhancing potential of the ACC system in the ICC FOT. For the comparison of manual, conventional cruise control (CCC), and ACC driving behavior in car-following scenarios during the ICC FOT a novel performance map [4, 5] was applied. This map associates the exposed driving behavior with four driving states: low risk, conflict state and between the conflict and near crash state are based on the driver´s braking and steering respones in last-second evasive maneuvers of test track trials [6]. For a complete evaluation, a theoretical baoundary between the near crash and crash imminent state drived from vehicle dynamics will be introduced. Subsequently, by the means of this advanced driver performance map, an evaluation of the safe driving performance of different driver groups with and without ACC and CCC deployment will be shown. An analysis of the findings concludes this paper

Systematic Design Of A Protective Controller In Process Industries By Means Of The Boolean Differential Calculus

Protective controllers prevent the occurrence of forbidden states in chemical processes. In this paper we present a new and systematic approach to design a protective controller with respect to the standardized concept in process industries `Safety of Process Plants Using Process Control Systems' [1]. The plant is modelled by means of finite automata. For an efficient solution of the controller synthesis task the system is described in the formalism of the Boolean Differential Calculus. An algorithm for the synthesis of the protective controller is proposed. As an example it is applied to a simple subsystem of a chemical process. 1 Introduction Protective controllers in chemical processes guarantee the safety of the plant and the product quality. Despite of their relevance to plant safety protective controllers are usually designed at a "round table", with a very weak methodical base concerning the theory of Discrete Event Systems (DES). In this paper a new approach for a methodical d..

Synthese einer Anfahrregelung für eine Destillationskolonne auf der Grundlage einer ereignisdiskreten Approximation der kontinuierlichen Dynamik

Der Beitrag beschreibt die Synthese einer ereignisdiskreten Regelung für den Anfahrvorgang einer Destillationskolonne. Der Ansatz basiert auf Methoden der hybriden und ereignisdiskreten Systemtheorie: Im ersten Schritt erfolgt die ereignisdiskrete Modellierung des Prozesses durch Approximation eines detaillierten kontinuierlichen Prozeßmodells; die resultierende ereignisdiskrete Beschreibung ist ein endlicher Moore-Automat. Der Entwurf der Regelung erfolgt dann als formaler Syntheseschritt auf der Grundlage des abstrakten Automatenmodells. Kennzeichen der Vorgehensweise ist, dass das Verhalten des Automaten per Konstruktion eine übermenge des Verhaltens des detaillierten Prozemodells ist. Aus diesem Grund garantiert die entworfene Regelung die Erfülllung der Spezifikation auch für das kontinuierliche Prozeßmodell