Improving our practice as mathematics teacher educators through teaching research

Four mathematics teacher educators from a large, minority-serving university formed a teaching research group in Fall 2016. The goal for this project is to establish a repeated cycle of improving our mathematics content course for pre-service teachers and to contribute a shared knowledge base which rests on foundation of well-defined learning goals in mathematics courses for elementary pre-service teachers. Guide by the continuous improvement framework (Berk & Hiebert, 2009), we utilized a data-driven approach to improving teaching, as well as embedding a discussion of classroom implementation into an investigation of an innovation (or, in our case, a mathematical task). In this paper, we present an example of iterative task design for the topic of Geometric of Similarity, we hope to share this as a model of professional development for mathematics teacher educators that highlights the benefits to our students and to ourselves

Classroom Management Self-Efficacy of Pre-Service Teachers

This quantitative, quasi-experimental design study examined 75 pre-service teachers’ perceptions of their own self-efficacy regarding classroom management. Data was collected at three different intervals throughout the student teaching experience, which was also accompanied by a training seminar focusing on classroom organization and management (Classroom Organization and Management Program). Results showed that pre-service teachers exhibited significantly higher perceptions of self-efficacy at different intervals throughout their student teaching. Data from this study provides Educator Preparation Programs (EPPs) with further data, which will allow them to create program curricula and strategies to better prepare pre-service teachers to become successful and confident classroom teachers

PainDroid: An android-based virtual reality application for pain assessment

Earlier studies in the field of pain research suggest that little efficient intervention currently exists in response to the exponential increase in the prevalence of pain. In this paper, we present an Android application (PainDroid) with multimodal functionality that could be enhanced with Virtual Reality (VR) technology, which has been designed for the purpose of improving the assessment of this notoriously difficult medical concern. Pain- Droid has been evaluated for its usability and acceptability with a pilot group of potential users and clinicians, with initial results suggesting that it can be an effective and usable tool for improving the assessment of pain. Participant experiences indicated that the application was easy to use and the potential of the application was similarly appreciated by the clinicians involved in the evaluation. Our findings may be of considerable interest to healthcare providers, policy makers, and other parties that might be actively involved in the area of pain and VR research

Attitudes and Experiences of Tourism Operators in Northern Australia toward People with Disabilities

ABSTRACT The last decade has seen an increasing interest in disability, access and tourism. This has culminated in the emergence of a body of work on 'accessible tourism'. Disability and access have been the subject of a great deal of government regulation and coordination through building codes, awareness training and, through state-based tourism marketing authorities, and policy engagement. Yet, the supply side perspective of industry responses to this consumer group has been under researched In comparison to decades of the past, tourism operators are now making significant efforts to make their products and services more accessible for people with disability. However, most operators noted that there is still a weak demand from the accessible tourism market and with a low recognition of their existing product offerings

Ybp1 and Gpx3 signaling in Candida albicans govern hydrogen peroxide-induced oxidation of the Cap1 transcription factor and macrophage escape

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

P6: Predictors of compliance with COVID-19 related non- pharmaceutical interventions amongst university students

College campuses have been an area where the novel coronavirus has spread rapidly, thus this study is focused on compliance with COVID-19 related non-pharmaceutical interventions among college students.We surveyed over 600 college students from across the United States and modeled predictors of compliance with non-pharmaceutical interventions. To determine how applicable nationwide modeling might be to individual local campuses we also administered this same survey to nearly 600 students at two large universities in Utah County (Brigham Young University and Utah Valley University). We then ran structural equation modeling (SEM) to determine what factors are related to student compliance with non-pharmaceutical interventions

Association of Over-The-Counter Pharmaceutical Sales with Influenza-Like-Illnesses to Patient Volume in an Urgent Care Setting

We studied the association between OTC pharmaceutical sales and volume of patients with influenza-like-illnesses (ILI) at an urgent care center over one year. OTC pharmaceutical sales explain 36% of the variance in the patient volume, and each standard deviation increase is associated with 4.7 more patient visits to the urgent care center (p<0.0001). Cross-correlation function analysis demonstrated that OTC pharmaceutical sales are significantly associated with patient volume during non-flu season (p<0.0001), but only the sales of cough and cold (p<0.0001) and thermometer (p<0.0001) categories were significant during flu season with a lag of two and one days, respectively. Our study is the first study to demonstrate and measure the relationship between OTC pharmaceutical sales and urgent care center patient volume, and presents strong evidence that OTC sales predict urgent care center patient volume year round. © 2013 Liu et al

Design of a decision support system for multiobjective activity planning and programming using global bacteria optimization

The success of any project lies in a great manner on keeping costs in the estimated values, as well as meeting customer required due date. Therefore, there is a current need of developing an information system that facilitates the creation and managing of projects and their processes, including costing schemes, as well as monitoring an optimizing project’s makespan. In order to address this situation a user-friendly information system (IS) was developed. This IS includes an optimization module that reduces the project’s execution time, thus, minimizing costs and ultimately providing the manager with the right tools for the correct development of the project. Therefore, a better planning of activities in a reduced time is accomplished. In this way, the project manager is equipped with a decision support system (DSS) that allows a better decision making and, thanks to this performance optimization, a cost-effective solution can be delivered to the company. The optimization module is the main innovative component in this IS, considering that addresses the problem as a multiobjective one, considering at the same time makespan and cost. This module is based on global bacteria optimization (GBO). This becomes the most relevant improvement when compared to other ISs in the market