THE CLERK'S TALE: CIVIC WRITING IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY LONDON

This is the author accepted manuscript. It is currently under an indefinite embargo pending publication by Oxford University Press

Currency, Conversation, and Control: Political Discourse and the Coinage in Mid-Tudor England

In 1542, Henry VIII authorised the first of a series of debasements of the English silver coinage which would collectively come to be known as the ‘great debasement’ of the mid-sixteenth century. The debasement was accompanied by a period of inflation and political change, and for contemporary observers these phenomena were inextricably linked. The coinage became the subject of a growing critical discourse, and governors feared that popular discontent threatened to spill over into riot and disorder—and perhaps even the subversion of the commonwealth. Moving away from the details of mint policy and quantitative assessments of the circulating medium that have previously occupied historians, this article explores the coinage as a topic of political discourse in the mid-Tudor period. As a matter of state, the coinage was a topic on which ordinary subjects were supposed to be silent and even Crown agents had to be circumspect, as criticising the coinage could be classed as sedition and mishandling it was a treasonous offence. But because of its status as common currency, the coinage was always in the public sphere, and was subject to the vagaries of popular opinion. This article recovers a range of contemporary perceptions and discussions of the coinage, from royal proclamations, government documents, and formal treatises, to correspondence, diary entries, court cases, and rumours. In so doing, it shows that the Crown’s efforts to control the coinage were consonant with its attempts to control political discourse and the discussion of matters of state in the mid-sixteenth century

School climate and state standards: A study of the relationships between middle school organizational climate and student achievement on the Virginia Standards of Learning Tests

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between organizational school climate and middle school student achievement on state assessments. The author also sought to determine the relative weight of each of the factors of school organizational climate (collegial leadership, teacher professionalism, academic press and community engagement) in relation to student achievement. Finally, this study examined the relative effects of organizational climate and the socio-economic status (SES) of participating schools on student achievement.;Suburban, rural and urban middle schools in Virginia participated in this study. The study explored middle school teachers\u27 perceptions regarding organizational school climate in terms of collegial leadership, teacher professionalism, academic press, and community engagement. The School Climate Index (SCI) was used to survey 696 teachers\u27 perceptions of these factors in 49 middle schools in Virginia. The eighth grade Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) Tests in the areas of math and English were the measurement tools for student achievement in the study.;It was concluded that there was a significant relationship between organizational climate and student achievement for both English and math. When the sub-scales of school climate (collegial leadership, teacher professionalism, academic press and community engagement) were analyzed separately, multiple regression indicated that only community engagement had a significant independent effect on student achievement on the math SOL test. Both academic press and community engagement had independent effects on student achievement on the English SOL test. Further analysis indicated that SES had a significant independent effect on student achievement in English, while both school climate and SES had independent effects on student achievement on the math SOL test. School climate and SES explained much of the variance in student achievement

Emerging Adult Development in the College Context: A Longitudinal Study of Role Balance and Academic Success in the Transition to College

During the transition to college, emerging adults face a number of developmental challenges. These two studies explore the developmental task of role balance, its relationship to other key variables (e.g., overall college adjustment, depressive symptoms), and its impact on first semester college achievement. Hierarchal linear regression and cross-lagged panel correlation analysis are employed

The Individual and Relational Role Balance Scale (IRRBS): A Preliminary Scale Development and Validation Study

During emerging adulthood, young people begin the process of balancing individual and relational role commitments. Whereas development within specific domains, primarily career and relationship (work and love), have been explored separately, it is important to understand how emerging adults divide their attention across multiple individual (i.e. education, employment, athletics, organizational membership) and relational (i.e. friendship, family relationship, romantic partnership) domains during this period and how perceived balance impacts psychosocial functioning in terms of life satisfaction, well-being, and mental health. This study reports on the preliminary scale validation of the Individual and Relational Role Balance Scale (IRRBS) using a college student sample (N = 299). This scale re-conceptualizes the work-family balance dichotomy appropriate to adulthood as role balance between the multiple and often fluid individual and relational roles emerging adults inhabit. The full IRRBS and three subscales, Global Balance, Individual Role Compatibility with Relational Roles, and Relational Role Compatibility with Individual Roles, were reliable at α \u3e .80 and no group differences in IRRBS scores were found on the basis of age, gender, racial/ethnic background, relationship status, or employment status. Construct validity was achieved with significant correlations in the directions hypothesized between individual and relational role balance and the related constructs of life satisfaction, well-being, and endorsement of mental health symptoms of anxiety and depression and overall psychological distress. Implications for future research and applied applications of the IRRBS are discussed

Grounded School Choice in Uganda: Community Building from the Bottom to the Top

The non-profit organization, From the Bottom to the Top, has been working with the people of west-central Uganda to rebuild the education system, develop increased access to sustainable schools, and promote community involvement in school decisions. This study aimed to explore the perceptions and experiences of students, parents, teachers, and community members related to their choice of specific schools in a rural area of Uganda, which have been working in cooperation with From the Bottom to the Top. Interviews focused on students and families’ motivations to choose the school their children attend and observations of sustainable development efforts in their communities. Results suggest that a bottom-up approach to rebuilding well-managed, self-reliant, sustainable schools plays a strong role in school choice decisions. Thematic analysis of the interviews resulted in themes related to gender equality, healthcare, and infrastructure. Empowering schools to be self-sustaining and supporting initiatives related to feminine hygiene products, sustainable potable water systems, and other community needs allows local education systems to thrive

RAD54 family translocases counter genotoxic effects of RAD51 in human tumor cells.

The RAD54 family DNA translocases have several biochemical activities. One activity, demonstrated previously for the budding yeast translocases, is ATPase-dependent disruption of RAD51-dsDNA binding. This activity is thought to promote dissociation of RAD51 from heteroduplex DNA following strand exchange during homologous recombination. In addition, previous experiments in budding yeast have shown that the same activity of Rad54 removes Rad51 from undamaged sites on chromosomes; mutants lacking Rad54 accumulate nonrepair-associated complexes that can block growth and lead to chromosome loss. Here, we show that human RAD54 also promotes the dissociation of RAD51 from dsDNA and not ssDNA. We also show that translocase depletion in tumor cell lines leads to the accumulation of RAD51 on chromosomes, forming complexes that are not associated with markers of DNA damage. We further show that combined depletion of RAD54L and RAD54B and/or artificial induction of RAD51 overexpression blocks replication and promotes chromosome segregation defects. These results support a model in which RAD54L and RAD54B counteract genome-destabilizing effects of direct binding of RAD51 to dsDNA in human tumor cells. Thus, in addition to having genome-stabilizing DNA repair activity, human RAD51 has genome-destabilizing activity when expressed at high levels, as is the case in many human tumors

LongDocFACTScore: Evaluating the Factuality of Long Document Abstractive Summarisation

Maintaining factual consistency is a critical issue in abstractive text summarisation, however, it cannot be assessed by traditional automatic metrics used for evaluating text summarisation, such as ROUGE scoring. Recent efforts have been devoted to developing improved metrics for measuring factual consistency using pre-trained language models, but these metrics have restrictive token limits, and are therefore not suitable for evaluating long document text summarisation. Moreover, there is limited research evaluating whether existing automatic evaluation metrics are fit for purpose when applied to long document data sets. In this work, we evaluate the efficacy of automatic metrics at assessing factual consistency in long document text summarisation and propose a new evaluation framework LongDocFACTScore. This framework allows metrics to be extended to any length document. This framework outperforms existing state-of-the-art metrics in its ability to correlate with human measures of factuality when used to evaluate long document summarisation data sets. Furthermore, we show LongDocFACTScore has performance comparable to state-of-the-art metrics when evaluated against human measures of factual consistency on short document data sets. We make our code and annotated data publicly available: https://github.com/jbshp/LongDocFACTScore.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure

What Makes Stephen F. Austin State University Students Happy?

When we began our research we believed most people would be happier owning a pet, attending church, or exercising. However, we determined this was not the case, instead concluded students have different things that make them happy. In addition, after reviewing our results we were surprised that holding all else constant, having a hobby, owning a pet, attending church, and exercising will increase a student’s level of happiness