Teacher Evaluator Training & Certification: Lessons Learned From the Measures of Effective Teaching Project

Makes recommendations for the design and implementation of programs to train and certify principals in conducting teacher evaluations, including content, format, and length of training, scoring practice, and criteria for certification tests

Parent-infant interactions during acute painful procedures

Despite the current recognition of infant procedural pain and distress, there is a dearth of research, both in the assessment and treatment literature, of infant procedural distress. This study examined how specific parent behaviors relate to infant procedural distress and whether this relation is mediated by birth order. Results indicated that females were rated as more distressed than were males, and that birth order did not prove to be a distinguishing factor in infant distress. Finally, while some behaviors appear to have a similar influence on both preschoolers\u27 and infants\u27 behaviors, parents\u27 behavior during infants\u27 distressing procedures were found to be dissimilar to those of parents\u27 behavior during preschoolers\u27 distressing procedures

Family Functioning in Children with Chronic Illness Compared with Healthy Controls: A Critical Review

The impact of chronic illnesses upon children and their families can range from minimal disruptions to severe distress and functional limitations. Advances in medical care and technology have increased the lifespan of children with chronic illness as well as decreased the frequency of readily observable disease impacts on this population. To enhance our understanding of the more subtle, but equally important, impacts of pediatric chronic illnesses, researchers have expanded the domains assessed to include measurement of child adjustment and family functioning. Understanding the nature and development of the deficits in family functioning is key to the formulation of interventions designed minimize the impact of childhood chronic illness on family functioning. Additionally, exploring the role of chronic illness on family functioning will clarify the role of the mechanisms that lead to shifts in family functioning

Assessing Medical Room Behavior During Infants’ Painful Medical Procedures: The Measure of Adult and Infant Soothing and Distress (MAISD)

This study evaluated the Measure of Adult and Infant Soothing and Distress (MAISD) for examining infant, parent, and nurse behavior during infants’ immunizations. Videotapes of 62 infants, parents, and nurses during immunizations were coded. Concurrent validity and reliability for the MAISD were demonstrated. The scale revealed that infants displayed predominately distress, and adults exhibited primarily reassurance. Parents’ and nurses’ distractions were positively related to infants’ engaging in distraction, and parents’ and nurses’ reassurance was positively associated with infant distress. There appear to be avenues in which to intervene to teach parents and nurses how to best behave to help infants during their painful medical events

Downregulation of barley ferulate 5-hydroxylase dramatically alters straw lignin structure without impact on mechanical properties

Barley is a major cereal crop for temperate climates, and a diploid genetic model for polyploid wheat. Cereal straw biomass is an attractive source of feedstock for green technologies but lignin, a key determinant of feedstock recalcitrance, complicates bio-conversion processes. However, manipulating lignin content to improve the conversion process could negatively affect agronomic traits. An alternative approach is to manipulate lignin composition which influences the physical and chemical properties of straw. This study validates the function of a barley ferulate 5-hydroxylase gene and demonstrates that its downregulation using the RNA-interference approach substantially impacts lignin composition. We identified five barley genes having putative ferulate 5-hydroxylase activity. Downregulation of HvF5H1 substantially reduced the lignin syringyl/guaiacyl (S/G) ratio in straw while the lignin content, straw mechanical properties, plant growth habit, and grain characteristics all remained unaffected. Metabolic profiling revealed significant changes in the abundance of 173 features in the HvF5H1-RNAi lines. The drastic changes in the lignin polymer of transgenic lines highlight the plasticity of barley lignification processes and the associated potential for manipulating and improving lignocellulosic biomass as a feedstock for green technologies. On the other hand, our results highlight some differences between the lignin biosynthetic pathway in barley, a temperate climate grass, and the warm climate grass, rice, and underscore potential diversity in the lignin biosynthetic pathways in grasses

RNAi-suppression of barley caffeic acid O-methyltransferase modifies lignin despite redundancy in the gene family

Caffeic acid O-methyltransferase (COMT), the lignin biosynthesis gene modified in many brown-midrib high-digestibility mutants of maize and sorghum, was targeted for downregulation in the small grain temperate cereal, barley (Hordeum vulgare), to improve straw properties. Phylogenetic and expression analyses identified the barley COMT orthologue(s) expressed in stems, defining a larger gene family than in brachypodium or rice with three COMT genes expressed in lignifying tissues. RNAi significantly reduced stem COMT protein and enzyme activity, and modestly reduced stem lignin content while dramatically changing lignin structure. Lignin syringyl-to-guaiacyl ratio was reduced by ~50%, the 5-hydroxyguaiacyl (5-OH-G) unit incorporated into lignin at 10--15-fold higher levels than normal, and the amount of p-coumaric acid ester-linked to cell walls was reduced by ~50%. No brown-midrib phenotype was observed in any RNAi line despite significant COMT suppression and altered lignin. The novel COMT gene family structure in barley highlights the dynamic nature of grass genomes. Redundancy in barley COMTs may explain the absence of brown-midrib mutants in barley and wheat. The barley COMT RNAi lines nevertheless have the potential to be exploited for bioenergy applications and as animal feed

Understanding the Distribution of Marine Megafauna in the English Channel Region: Identifying Key Habitats for Conservation within the Busiest Seaway on Earth

The temperate waters of the North-Eastern Atlantic have a long history of maritime resource richness and, as a result, the European Union is endeavouring to maintain regional productivity and biodiversity. At the intersection of these aims lies potential conflict, signalling the need for integrated, cross-border management approaches. This paper focuses on the marine megafauna of the region. This guild of consumers was formerly abundant, but is now depleted and protected under various national and international legislative structures. We present a meta-analysis of available megafauna datasets using presence-only distribution models to characterise suitable habitat and identify spatially-important regions within the English Channel and southern bight of the North Sea. The integration of studies from dedicated and opportunistic observer programmes in the United Kingdom and France provide a valuable perspective on the spatial and seasonal distribution of various taxonomic groups, including large pelagic fishes and sharks, marine mammals, seabirds and marine turtles. The Western English Channel emerged as a hotspot of biodiversity for megafauna, while species richness was low in the Eastern English Channel. Spatial conservation planning is complicated by the highly mobile nature of marine megafauna, however they are important components of the marine environment and understanding their distribution is a first crucial step toward their inclusion into marine ecosystem management

Modeling and mapping isotopic patterns in the Northwest Atlantic derived from loggerhead sea turtles

Stable isotope analysis can be used to infer geospatial linkages of highly migratory species. Identifying foraging grounds of marine organisms from their isotopic signatures is becoming de rigueur as it has been with terrestrial organisms. Sea turtles are being increasingly studied using a combination of satellite telemetry and stable isotope analysis; these studies along with those from other charismatic, highly vagile, and widely distributed species (e.g., tuna, billfish, sharks, dolphins, whales) have the potential to yield large datasets to develop methodologies to decipher migratory pathways in the marine realm. We collected tissue samples (epidermis and red blood cells) for carbon (delta C-13) and nitrogen (delta N-15) stable isotope analysis from 214 individual loggerheads (Caretta caretta) in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean (NWA). We used discriminant function analysis (DFA) to examine how well delta C-13 and delta N-15 classify loggerhead foraging areas. The DFA model was derived from isotopic signatures of 58 loggerheads equipped with satellite tags to identify foraging locations. We assessed model accuracy with the remaining 156 untracked loggerheads that were captured at their foraging locations. The DFA model correctly identified the foraging ground of 93.0% of individuals with a probability greater than 66.7%. The results of the external validation (1) confirm that assignment models based on tracked loggerheads in the NWA are robust and (2) provide the first independent evidence supporting the use of these models for migratory marine organisms. Additionally, we used these data to generate loggerhead-specific delta C-13 and delta N-15 isoscapes, the first for a predator in the Atlantic Ocean. We found a latitudinal trend of delta C-13 values with higher values in the southern region (20-25 degrees N) and a more complex pattern with delta N-15, with intermediate latitudes (30-35 degrees N) near large coastal estuaries having higher delta N-15-enrichment. These results indicate that this method with further refinement may provide a viable, more spatially-explicit option for identifying loggerhead foraging grounds

Downregulation of barley ferulate 5-hydroxylase dramatically alters straw lignin structure without impact on mechanical properties

Barley is a major cereal crop for temperate climates, and a diploid genetic model for polyploid wheat. Cereal straw biomass is an attractive source of feedstock for green technologies but lignin, a key determinant of feedstock recalcitrance, complicates bio-conversion processes. However, manipulating lignin content to improve the conversion process could negatively affect agronomic traits. An alternative approach is to manipulate lignin composition which influences the physical and chemical properties of straw. This study validates the function of a barley ferulate 5-hydroxylase gene and demonstrates that its downregulation using the RNA-interference approach substantially impacts lignin composition. We identified five barley genes having putative ferulate 5-hydroxylase activity. Downregulation of HvF5H1 substantially reduced the lignin syringyl/guaiacyl (S/G) ratio in straw while the lignin content, straw mechanical properties, plant growth habit, and grain characteristics all remained unaffected. Metabolic profiling revealed significant changes in the abundance of 173 features in the HvF5H1-RNAi lines. The drastic changes in the lignin polymer of transgenic lines highlight the plasticity of barley lignification processes and the associated potential for manipulating and improving lignocellulosic biomass as a feedstock for green technologies. On the other hand, our results highlight some differences between the lignin biosynthetic pathway in barley, a temperate climate grass, and the warm climate grass, rice, and underscore potential diversity in the lignin biosynthetic pathways in grasses