Give Me a Break: A Study of the Gap Year

The Gap Year is a period of time taken away from formal education to pursue experiential learning and self discovery. The present study sought to investigate and understand how the Gap Year fits in to the American high school and university contexts. High school counselors and university students were interviewed and surveyed in order to understand if the Gap Year is part of the post high school plan discourse. Results indicated that counselors and students had a positive attitude towards the Gap Year; however, academic discussions of it remained limited. Implications of this study suggest that a Gap year may be a worthy post -high school option to discuss, and it is perhaps an indication of a new life stage, Emerging Adulthood. Further research including longitudinal and case study data was proposed

The Devil in the Boardroom: Corporate Psychopaths and Their Impact on Business

While most research focuses on the incarcerated psychopath, there is a limited body of work that centers on the non-criminal psychopaths that might even appear successful in their careers. The aim of this review was to compare and contrast research on non-incarcerated, “Corporate Psychopaths” to distinguish who they are and where they are most likely to be found. It was discovered that Corporate Psychopaths, while retaining a higher executive functioning than their incarcerated counterparts, displayed many psychopathic traits that relate back to disruptive behavior in the business world. Based on a review of the literature we have concluded that these individuals mainly reside in higher management, high power roles in companies, and that this information is of particular use for human resource hiring and promoting personnel in order to maintain a healthy business that abides by accepted ethical standard

Improving Reading Comprehension: An Investigation of Two Intervention Procedures and the Social Validity of the Ask-Read-Tell Reading Strategy

The first chapter of this dissertation reports the results of a review of the practice and application of social validity assessments in SCD studies within the field of school psychology. Adopting similar procedures described in the Snodgrass et al. (2018) analysis, this review systematically investigated the extent to which social validity was evaluated in school psychology SCD studies, the characteristics of social validity assessments, the prevalence of assessing total construct social validity (i.e., goals, procedures, and outcomes), and the extent to which social validity findings were integrated with visual analyses to form conclusions about interventions. Although the content analysis revealed several encouraging aspects of the current state of social validity assessment, the majority of the findings suggested that there was still much to be done to advance the rigor of social validity practice. The second chapter reports the findings of a mixed-method study that utilized an alternating treatments design to investigate the effects of McCallum and colleagues\u27 (2011) Ask-Read-Tell (ART) procedure on the reading comprehension of three fourth-graders with a learning disability in reading. Three conditions were used as the independent variable: (1) Control (baseline) condition in which students did not use any prescribed strategies while reading, (2) ART Condition: Students used the three-step ART procedure, and (3) ART + PD (Peer Discussion) Condition: Students used the ART sequence followed by a discussion of text with peers. Dependent variables included students’ reading comprehension level (%C) and rate (%C/M) as measured by students’ comprehension performances on 400-word expository passages. Both interventions had positive effects on reading performance as compared to the baseline for all three participants. Results indicated that ART+PD led to the greatest gains in rate and level for two participants, while ART resulted in greater gains for the third participant who presented with significant inattention and distractibility. Finally, quantitative KIP and qualitative social validity data indicated that participants perceived the interventions as enjoyable, effective in improving their understanding of text, beneficial when doing schoolwork, and relevant in helping them achieve reading goals. By situating students as the primary respondents, the researcher hoped to underscore the importance of considering students’ voices in determining the social validation of intervention effects

The formation of high-field magnetic white dwarfs from common envelopes

The origin of highly-magnetized white dwarfs has remained a mystery since their initial discovery. Recent observations indicate that the formation of high-field magnetic white dwarfs is intimately related to strong binary interactions during post-main-sequence phases of stellar evolution. If a low-mass companion, such as a planet, brown dwarf, or low-mass star is engulfed by a post-main-sequence giant, the hydrodynamic drag in the envelope of the giant leads to a reduction of the companion's orbit. Sufficiently low-mass companions in-spiral until they are shredded by the strong gravitational tides near the white dwarf core. Subsequent formation of a super-Eddington accretion disk from the disrupted companion inside a common envelope can dramatically amplify magnetic fields via a dynamo. Here, we show that these disk-generated fields are sufficiently strong to explain the observed range of magnetic field strengths for isolated, high-field magnetic white dwarfs. A higher-mass binary analogue may also contribute to the origin of magnetar fields.Comment: Accepted to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Under PNAS embargo until time of publicatio

Thermal Characteristics of Douglas-Fir Bark Fiber—25 C to 250 C

To determine if extractives control the thermal properties of Douglas-fir [Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco] bark fiber at lower temperatures and limit its utility for reinforcing plastic, fiber and its extractives were subjected to differential scanning calorimetry and thermogravimetric analyses. In addition, the amount and composition of volatiles were measured as a function of temperature and fiber recovery process.Heating bark fiber to 250 C yielded water and carbon dioxide as the major volatiles, the amounts increasing disproportionately as the extractive content of the fiber increased. Because the extractives were thermally less stable than the fiber wall, recovering bark fiber of low extractive content by pressurized refining reduced volatilization more than fiber recovery by atmospheric refining or alkali extraction

Task-Demand Effects on Self-reported Stress State

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