Developmental Effects of Nicotine Exposure in Drosophila Melanogaster

Approximately 12%-20% of pregnant women smoke at some point during pregnancy, and 10% of pregnant women are reported to have smoked during the last 3 months of pregnancy. Smoking during pregnancy leads to developmental health risks for the fetus and child, including increased mortality, low birth weight, and developmental delays. The direct molecular targets of nicotine are nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) due to the similarities in structure between nicotine and acetylcholine. However, in many cases, it remains unclear what molecular events downstream of nAChRs lead to the deleterious effects of nicotine on development. We have established Drosophila melanogaster as a genetic model system to study the developmental effects of nicotine. So far, we have established that nicotine reduces survival and increases development time in a dose-responsive manner. In addition, we have evidence that developmental nicotine exposure may reduce adult body weight, and that ethanol and nicotine act in a non-additive fashion to reduce survival. Finally, we show that nicotine exposure does not appear to affect brain size in developing larvae. Our results show that the effects of nicotine on fly development are similar to those seen in mammals, and establish Drosophila as a model organism for the study of the deleterious effects of nicotine on development

Support Strategies for Asian American Women Leaders in Massachusetts

The election and appointment of Asian American women to positions in Massachusetts and on the federal level suggest that the face of public leadership is changing. Recent successes for Asian American women in electoral politics provide a unique opportunity to build the pipeline of Asian American women in Massachusetts politics. This research project aimed to identify strategies to increase the number of Asian American women elected to political office in Massachusetts

Taiwan, China, and Yang Mu\u27s Alternative to National Narratives

In her paper, Taiwan, China, and Yang Mu\u27s Alternative to National Narratives, Lisa L.M. Wong examines the ways Yang Mu\u27s poetry acts as an echo and a dissent to the mainstream national narratives in Taiwan between the late 1970s and early 1980s. During this decade, identity discourse has developed from othering Westernism to preserve Chinese cultural-national integrity to espousing a native Taiwanese identity against the Chinese one. Each of Yang\u27s poems in Wong\u27s analysis is a field of contention, peopled by different subjects such as the colonizers, the native Taiwanese, the female, and the diasporant, who articulate contested stories of a historical event or a historical site. The lived experiences of the texts\u27 participants rupture the orthodox narratives, whether it is the Dutch imperialist conquest, the Ming glory of national recovery, or the place-based cultural imaginary of Chang-an. If, as John Berger says, fear of the present leads to mystification of the past, perhaps, hope for the future lies in demystification of the past and the present. Yang\u27s poems are attempts of demystification as well as political critique, they are history plays in which disparate histories play against each other, letting open a myriad of alternatives for addressing national-cultural narratives in post-colonial Taiwan and in contemporary China

An empirical study of multidimensional fidelity of COMPASS consultation

Consultation is essential to the daily practice of school psychologists (National Association of School Psychologist, 2010). Successful consultation requires fidelity at both the consultant (implementation) and consultee (intervention) levels. We applied a multidimensional, multilevel conception of fidelity (Dunst, Trivette, & Raab, 2013) to a consultative intervention called the Collaborative Model for Promoting Competence and Success (COMPASS) for students with autism. The study provided 3 main findings. First, multidimensional, multilevel fidelity is a stable construct and increases over time with consultation support. Second, mediation analyses revealed that implementation-level fidelity components had distant, indirect effects on student Individualized Education Program (IEP) outcomes. Third, 3 fidelity components correlated with IEP outcomes: teacher coaching responsiveness at the implementation level, and teacher quality of delivery and student responsiveness at the intervention levels. Implications and future directions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Measuring and Demonstrating Information Literacy Outcomes in a Review Process

"This chapter focuses on measuring and demonstrating information literacy outcomes in a review process. Doing so requires identifying outcomes, selecting methods to assess the outcomes, implementing a plan for ongoing collection and analysis of evidence, and analyzing the evidence to show student learning as well as a process of programmatic improvement. And, of course, the library must also deliver the programs and services that are designed to support student learning! The emphasis in this chapter will be outcomes for formal instruction programs, such as workshops, online tutorials, course-integrated instruction, and credit courses; however, the strategies can be adapted to more informal instruction situations as well. By measuring and demonstrating information literacy outcomes, you will be able to contribute to persuasive self-study documents as part of institutional review efforts as well as develop long-range plans to support future accreditation and program review needs."Ope