The Relationship Between The Development Of Math Operation Proficiency And Student Confidence

The research question of this study was, What is the relationship between math operation fluency and a student’s confidence and perception of math in general? A multi-faceted intervention was developed to address both students’ multiplication fact proficiency and student confidence, with middle school students in Special Education. Pre and post assessment data was analyzed to determine the effect of this intervention on student fact proficiency and confidence. Findings suggest that students that progressed throughout the intervention period by mastering multiplication fact families also generally had an increase in math confidence. Implications for future work include determining how to improve this intervention for Special Education students with more severe deficits in math, both in terms of improving fact proficiency and confidence

The Impact of China’s Labor Contract Law on Workers

ILRF\u27s report examines the impact of the Labor Contract Law on workplaces in China’s export manufacturing hubs. ILRF argues for various strategies, from a greater emphasis on collective bargaining to community-based legal education, to ensure full implementation of the Labor Contract Law

Opportunities for Food Sovereignty and Urban Agriculture in Lewiston

Although there is heightened attention being paid to the importance of access to good, healthy, and locally produced food, there are many barriers and challenges faced by growers in Lewiston’s food system. Many of these barriers are in the form of federal, state, and municipal regulations surrounding licensing, permitting, zoning, and land use. Two of the biggest tools available to municipalities to increase flexibility and accessibility in food systems are urban agriculture and food sovereignty legislation. Urban agriculture legislation works towards an increase in food accessibility on the zoning and land use while food sovereignty deals with the licencing and permitting end of food systems. In this report we examine food sovereignty and urban agriculture examples from other municipalities in combination with stakeholder interviewers in order to develop a set of recommendations for food sovereignty and urban agricultural reform in Lewiston. In interviews with local stakeholders, including farmers and other producers, we identified baseline barriers they face in their businesses. We then examined food sovereignty ordinances that have been passed in other Maine municipalities in response to Maine’s Food Sovereignty Act. This research informed our drafting of a food sovereignty ordinance for Lewiston by allowing us to identify the vital parts of other municipalities’ ordinances. Additionally, we explored multiple cities’ zoning and land use codes related to urban agriculture from around the country and compared them with Lewiston’s to inspire potential reforms. We identified several large opportunities for increasing the accessibility of zoning codes in Lewiston including increasing the flexibility of density and setback requirements for bees and chickens on residential properties. Additionally, we recommend the addition of the term “market garden” to Lewiston’s zoning codes in order to bridge the barrier between agriculturally zoned areas and residentially zoned areas. We also believe that the creation of an urban agricultural overlay with solid guidelines to limit residents complaints, would allow for agriculture to thrive in this urban setting. The suggestions outlined in this report and in our deliverables are meant to guide the Good Food Council of Lewiston and Auburn and eventually Lewiston city staff towards making improvements in food accessibility, the local agricultural economy, and food security within the city

Resistance, Repression, Responsiveness: Workers and the State in China

This dissertation examines the impact of labor unrest under authoritarianism. It uses evidence from China to explore the possibility that autocracies, especially state socialist and post-socialist ones, are uniquely vulnerable to worker resistance and therefore react to it in a dual manner, at once repressive and responsive. Drawing on an original dataset of strikes, protests, and riots by Chinese workers, I find that increases in unrest are correlated with both increases in public security spending (repression) and pro-labor rulings in formally adjudicated employment disputes (responsiveness). Using a “most similar” case comparison informed by field theory, I then show how in Jiangsu’s portion of the Yangtze River Delta, moderate industrial contention is paired with governance that can be characterized as preemption, caution, and nudging, while in Guangdong’s portion of the Pearl River Delta, high contention is paired with reaction, experimentation, and crackdowns. Thus, consistent with the dissertation’s quantitative analysis, repression and responsiveness are stronger where resistance is more widespread, but governance is also qualitatively different. I argue that, at the level of local governments and local officials, there is a logic to this divergence between the cases: militant workers make a liability of the state’s commitment to stability, thereby threatening the careers of officials, who must, as a consequence, demonstrate grit and creativity. Two issues remain: the role of regional political elites and diffusion between regions. I find that the ideologies of particular local politicians do not alter the protest-policy relationship. However, even as protest tactics diffuse outward from the country’s hotspots of contention, official counter-measures against protests also spread. Worker resistance thus profoundly influences authoritarian rule, but not in a linear manner

On the Transformative Growth of the UOIT Automotive Centre of Excellence (ACE) from Industry Research to Collaborative Industry/Academic Research and Experiential Learning

The Automotive Centre of Excellence (ACE) at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology is a research and development facility that offers chambers and technology for thermal management and aerodynamics including structural durability and life-cycle testing. Facilities include one of the largest and most sophisticated climatic wind tunnels (CWT) on the planet. ACE is a university-owned and operated research and development facility that commenced operations in 2011. Its original mandate was focused on the research and engineering development of automotive systems with an emphasis on Industry partnerships. Over the years ACE has diversified its market sectors and increased its community involvement and education. This paper will present examples of how ACE has interacted with the community and education sector to help transform the educational experience of not only students but the community at whole. It will discuss how revenue generation has been balanced to support educational and training needs. ACE also promotes research projects with the university and its impact and challenges in this area will be presented in the paper

BRASIL. DE LA DEMOCRACIA RACIAL AL ESTATUTO DE LA IGUALDAD RACIAL

La intelectualidad brasileña, con escasas excepciones, se negó sistemáticamente a reconocer que en el país existía un problema de discriminación contra negros e indios. Predominó en cambio la convicción de que, a diferencia de los Estados Unidos de América, Brasil había integrado armoniosamente las diferentes razas que componen el grueso de su población: portugueses, negros e indios. El Estado brasileño reconoció por primera vez públicamente recién en 1995, bajo el gobierno de Fernando Henrique Cardoso, que el país sufría un grave problema de racismo. A partir de ese sinceramiento, apoyado por una abundante cantidad de datos empíricos que demuestran inequívocamente el problema, Brasil se ha embarcado decididamente en el camino de las políticas afirmativas. Este artículo analizará esa radical transformación que va desde la concepción del país como una democracia racial, hacia el Estatuto de la igualdad racial. Esta última es una ley ya aprobada por unanimidad en el senado ⎯falta todavía la aprobación en diputados⎯, que radicalmente cuestiona la concepción histórica anterior y oficialmente define las políticas afirmativas para combatir el racismo

Effects of Thinning on Tradeoffs Between Drought Resistance, Drought Resilience, and Wood Production in mature Douglas-fir in Western Oregon

Recent climate projections predict more frequent and severe drought conditions in western Oregon which is a threat to forest health, productivity, and structure. Land managers are increasingly concerned with how to create forest drought resistance: a tree or stand’s ability to maintain its growth rates during a drought, and resilience: a tree or stand’s ability to return to pre-drought growth rates after the end of a drought. Thinning has been found in several studies to increase drought resistance and resilience but these effects can vary with thinning intensity and over time, and heavy thinning treatments designed to reduce drought stress may reduce stand productivity. This work expands on existing knowledge by examining how thinning intensity, spatial arrangement and time since treatment impact tradeoffs between drought resistance, drought resilience, and timber production. I collected stand data and tree cores on the Mature Forest Study (MFS), a long-term thinning study on Oregon State University’s McDonald-Dunn Research Forest in the eastern foothills of the Oregon Coast Range. The MFS includes four different thinning intensity treatments, in two spatial arrangements (uniform thinning and thinning with gaps) that were implemented in 1993. I used annual growth data from these tree cores to investigate drought responses during and following drought events in 2001 and 2015-2016. I processed tree cores and calculated basal area increment to calculate resistance and resilience scores. My initial hypothesis was that the treatments with the lowest residual densities would have the greatest drought resistance and resilience. During the 2001 drought, both resistance and resilience were significantly higher in the lower density treatments. By the 2015-2016 drought, the only treatment that was significantly different in drought response was the medium density treatment which had higher resistance than all other densities. The spatial arrangement of the trees generally did not have a significant effect on drought resistance and resilience or periodic volume growth. Drought event was by far the biggest influence on tree drought response, with trees showing significantly lower resistance and resilience during the 2015-2016 drought than in the 2001 drought across all density and spatial arrangement combinations. I also calculated two-way tradeoff variables between drought resistance, resilience, periodic annual volume increment, and standing volume. There were no significant tradeoffs associated with stand density or spatial arrangement between drought resistance and resilience or between standing volume and any other variable during either drought event. Density treatment did have a significant effect on the periodic annual volume increment – resistance tradeoff from the second drought, due to higher resistance scores in lower density stands and a nonsignificant trend towards higher volume increments in the higher density treatments. These results imply that in the short to medium term, thinning can have a positive effect on drought resistance and resilience while thinning treatments that maximize drought resistance and resilience appear to have fairly limited tradeoffs with the economic concerns of PAI or standing volume