An Intervention Study on Mindfulness Meditation and Mindfulness, Stress, Flourishing, and Academic Achievement in a First-Year Experience Seminar

This study investigated the two research questions, 1) what are the relationships among the pretest latent variables mindfulness, stress, and flourishing and the manifest variables GPA and retention in first-year college students in a first-year experience seminar and 2) will there be differences in mindfulness, stress, flourishing, GPA, and retention between groups of students in a first-year experience seminar who received a brief mindfulness intervention and those who did not? To answer these questions, the author analyzed secondary data collected from 373 first-year college students at a large public research university who took Introduction to the University (UNIV 101). The study was a repeated-measures quasi-experimental nonequivalent control groups design. Eighteen instructors across 35 class sections volunteered to provide the intervention in their class, 248 first-year students (66%) made up the mindfulness group, and 125 first-year students (35%) made up the comparison group. Women made up 70% (n = 261) of the sample and males made up 30% (n = 112). Pretests and posttests included demographics, the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS), the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), the Flourishing Scale (FS), and questions asking about prior mindfulness experience (pretest) and current and potential future practices (posttest). Chi-squared tests and t-tests evaluated variances between groups in demographics and outcome variables. Only gender varied significantly. Bivariate Pearson’s correlations of the latent variables showed 1) a significant positive relationship between mindfulness and flourishing and 2) significant negative relationships between stress and both mindfulness and flourishing. Simple regression analyses for the pretest latent variables with GPA showed a significant positive predictive relationship only between pretest flourishing and Spring GPA. The same tests run with the posttest latent variables showed 1) significant positive predictive relationships between GPA and both mindfulness and flourishing and 2) significant negative predictive relationships between stress and GPA. Only posttest flourishing positively predicted retention. For question two, a multilevel model controlling for class sections and gender showed no significant differences in any outcome variable between either group. A post hoc analysis showed that all students had significant decreases in mindfulness and flourishing at the end of the semester and a significant increase in stress

Project C.O.R.E.: Coaching Opportunities with Real Experiences

Retention and graduation rates of VCU men of color (MOC) is significantly lower than white men and women of color. Due to demonstrated significant attrition occurring after the sophomore year, Project C.O.R.E. (Coaching Opportunities with Real Experiences) is proposed as a sophomore-focused program that builds upon an existing freshman course on professional development for MOC. While the first-year course introduces students to a VCU support network, Project C.O.R.E. aims to increase university retention by expanding the student support network to members of the local community. Students are paired with community coaches, predominantly VCU alumni, to enhance their career and life-skills development. This program provides continued community, guidance, and support to encourage MOC to continue on the path to graduation

Sensor Web Interoperability Testbed Results Incorporating Earth Observation Satellites

This paper describes an Earth Observation Sensor Web scenario based on the Open Geospatial Consortium s Sensor Web Enablement and Web Services interoperability standards. The scenario demonstrates the application of standards in describing, discovering, accessing and tasking satellites and groundbased sensor installations in a sequence of analysis activities that deliver information required by decision makers in response to national, regional or local emergencies

Geo-Ontology Tools – the missing link

Numerous authors have presented ontology building tools that have all been developed as part of academic projects and that are usually adaptations of more generic tools for geo-spatial applications. While we trust that these tools do their job for the special purpose they have been built, the GIScience user community is still a long way away from off-the-shelf ontology builders that can be used by GIS project managers. In this article, we present a comparative study of ontology building tools described in some twenty peer-reviewed GIScience journal articles. We analyze them from the perspective of two application domains, crime analysis and transportation/land use. For the latter, we developed a database schema, which is substantially different from the three main templates commonly used. The crime analysis application uses a rule base for an agent-based model that had no precursor. In both cases, the currently available set of tools cannot replace manual coding of ontologies for use with ESRI-based application software. Based on these experiences, we outline a requirements list of what the tools described in the first part of the article are missing to make them practical from an applications perspective. The result is an R&D agenda for this important aspect of GIScience

Keynote Address for 6th International Symposium on Digital Earth

NASA is committed to collaborating with not only our National Partners but also with our International Partners to help make our world a better place. We do this through the sharing of our discoveries and working together so that we can address uncertainties in predictions and forecasts that impact how we live on our home planet. NASA is committed to a Digital Earth as it enables our research to focus on cross disciplinary analysis. The mainstream Information Technologies along with the Digital Earth concepts have allowed this interdisciplinary research that is so critical to societal benefits. The technologies have been discovered and in many cases implemented, but we must forge ahead together to continue to advance all that is possible to fully extend our earth observations for the sake of humankind

Yang et al, 2006, Journal of Geographic Information Sciences, 12(1):38-43 Spatial Web Portal for Building Spatial Data Infrastructure

Abstract: The past decades have witnessed the rapid growth of heterogeneous geospatial information systems. An important way to share these valuable assets is a spatial data infrastructure (SDI). Recent developments in Web Services and distributed geospatial information services 1 provide a practical approach, Web Portals, to building a SDI. This article describes research, development, and challenges related to Web Portals for SDI

Spatiotemporal event detection: a review

The advancements of sensing technologies, including remote sensing, in situ sensing, social sensing, and health sensing, have tremendously improved our capability to observe and record natural and social phenomena, such as natural disasters, presidential elections, and infectious diseases. The observations have provided an unprecedented opportunity to better understand and respond to the spatiotemporal dynamics of the environment, urban settings, health and disease propagation, business decisions, and crisis and crime. Spatiotemporal event detection serves as a gateway to enable a better understanding by detecting events that represent the abnormal status of relevant phenomena. This paper reviews the literature for different sensing capabilities, spatiotemporal event extraction methods, and categories of applications for the detected events. The novelty of this review is to revisit the definition and requirements of event detection and to layout the overall workflow (from sensing and event extraction methods to the operations and decision-supporting processes based on the extracted events) as an agenda for future event detection research. Guidance is presented on the current challenges to this research agenda, and future directions are discussed for conducting spatiotemporal event detection in the era of big data, advanced sensing, and artificial intelligence

Planetary Defense Mitigation Gateway: A One-Stop Gateway for Pertinent PD-Related Contents

Planetary Defense (PD) has become a critical effort of protecting our home planet by discovering potentially hazardous objects (PHOs), simulating the potential impact, and mitigating the threats. Due to the lack of structured architecture and framework, pertinent information about detecting and mitigating near earth object (NEO) threats are still dispersed throughout numerous organizations. Scattered and unorganized information can have a significant impact at the time of crisis, resulting in inefficient processes, and decisions made on incomplete data. This PD Mitigation Gateway (pd.cloud.gmu.edu) is developed and embedded within a framework to integrate the dispersed, diverse information residing at different organizations across the world. The gateway offers a home to pertinent PD-related contents and knowledge produced by the NEO mitigation team and the community through (1) a state-of-the-art smart-search discovery engine based on PD knowledge base; (2) a document archiving and understanding mechanism for managing and utilizing the results produced by the PD science community; (3) an evolving PD knowledge base accumulated from existing literature, using natural language processing and machine learning; and (4) a 4D visualization tool that allows the viewers to analyze near-Earth approaches in a three-dimensional environment using dynamic, adjustable PHO parameters to mimic point-of-impact asteroid deflections via space vehicles and particle system simulations. Along with the benefit of accessing dispersed data from a single port, this framework is built to advance discovery, collaboration, innovation, and education across the PD field-of-study, and ultimately decision support