The construction and evaluation of tests to determine the ability of fifth and sixth grade pupils to select relevant materials in the social studies

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit

Spatial Variation of False Map Turtle (Graptemys pseudogeographica) Bacterial Microbiota in the Lower Missouri River, United States

Turtle populations around the world are continually confronted with changing environments that affect their ecology and conservation status. Among freshwater turtles, population dynamics are thought to be mediated by complex yet often cryptic causes. One recent direction of focus in addressing these causes is the turtle-associated microbiota. In turtles, the gut- associated microbiota is of exceptional interest due to its continual association with host species under changing conditions. Diet-based fluctuations and changes in microbial diversity may correspond to varying external environments at both the individual and population level. Environmental responses are of particular interest due to the anthropogenic changes that may underlie them. Pollutants, disruption of climatic patterns, and habitat fragmentation all have the potential to affect turtle-associated microbiota and subsequent population and species conservation. To better understand potential human-induced changes, the diversity of turtle-associated microbiota over local spatial gradients must be better understood. We examined microbial community alpha- and beta-diversity among 30 adult False Map Turtles (Graptemys pseudogeographica) at three sites within the lower Missouri River, United States. Our results indicate significant microbial community centroid differences among sites (beta-diversity), which are likely mediated by various local environmental factors. Such factors will have to be carefully considered in any future attribution of anthropogenic determinants on turtle-associated microbiota as it relates to turtle population dynamics

Coupled Cluster Externally Corrected by Adaptive Configuration Interaction

An externally corrected coupled cluster (CC) method, where an adaptive configuration interaction (ACI) wave function provides the external cluster amplitudes, named ACI-CC, is presented. By exploiting the connection between configuration interaction and coupled cluster through cluster analysis, the higher-order T3 and T4 terms obtained from ACI are used to augment the T1 and T2 amplitude equations from traditional coupled cluster. These higher-order contributions are kept frozen during the coupled cluster iterations and do not contribute to an increased cost with respect to CCSD. We have benchmarked this method on three closed-shell systems: beryllium dimer, carbonyl oxide, and cyclobutadiene, with good results compared to other corrected coupled cluster methods. In all cases, the inclusion of these external corrections improved upon the "gold standard" CCSD(T) results, indicating that ACI-CCSD(T) can be used to assess strong correlation effects in a system and as an inexpensive starting point for more complex external corrections

The Experiences of Children on Sri Lanka\u27s Tea Plantations: Labor and Sexual Exploitation, Violence, and Inadequate Education

This article explores the difficulties faced by children living in Sri Lanka’s tea plantation areas. Data from 150 children reveal high rates of poverty, violence, and school dropout. Children in tea plantation schools report bullying and stigma from teachers and students. Many children do not envision completing school due to inadequate resources, family income pressures, and the need to work. Children who drop out of school face abusive labor conditions and poor pay. Over 30% of all children report experiencing sexual abuse, often in their own homes. Those working face discrimination, physical abuse, and wage theft. Initiatives are needed to improve family incomes, reform schools, provide affordable childcare, enforce child labor laws, and raise awareness of safety and rights. Governmental financial support is required to improve housing, expand agriculture production to generate family income for schooling expenses, and provide training for teachers. Government interventions and creating coordination between agencies, NGOs, and tea industry stakeholders are vital to alleviate the hardships faced by Sri Lanka’s tea plantation children and create opportunities for them to realize their full potential

Our Space: Being a Responsible Citizen of the Digital World

Our Space is a set of curricular materials designed to encourage high school students to reflect on the ethical dimensions of their participation in new media environments. Through role-playing activities and reflective exercises, students are asked to consider the ethical responsibilities of other people, and whether and how they behave ethically themselves online. These issues are raised in relation to five core themes that are highly relevant online: identity, privacy, authorship and ownership, credibility, and participation.Our Space was co-developed by The Good Play Project and Project New Media Literacies (established at MIT and now housed at University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism). The Our Space collaboration grew out of a shared interest in fostering ethical thinking and conduct among young people when exercising new media skills

Characterizing Long COVID: Deep Phenotype of a Complex Condition.

BACKGROUND: Numerous publications describe the clinical manifestations of post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (PASC or long COVID ), but they are difficult to integrate because of heterogeneous methods and the lack of a standard for denoting the many phenotypic manifestations. Patient-led studies are of particular importance for understanding the natural history of COVID-19, but integration is hampered because they often use different terms to describe the same symptom or condition. This significant disparity in patient versus clinical characterization motivated the proposed ontological approach to specifying manifestations, which will improve capture and integration of future long COVID studies. METHODS: The Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO) is a widely used standard for exchange and analysis of phenotypic abnormalities in human disease but has not yet been applied to the analysis of COVID-19. FINDINGS: We identified 303 articles published before April 29, 2021, curated 59 relevant manuscripts that described clinical manifestations in 81 cohorts three weeks or more following acute COVID-19, and mapped 287 unique clinical findings to HPO terms. We present layperson synonyms and definitions that can be used to link patient self-report questionnaires to standard medical terminology. Long COVID clinical manifestations are not assessed consistently across studies, and most manifestations have been reported with a wide range of synonyms by different authors. Across at least 10 cohorts, authors reported 31 unique clinical features corresponding to HPO terms; the most commonly reported feature was Fatigue (median 45.1%) and the least commonly reported was Nausea (median 3.9%), but the reported percentages varied widely between studies. INTERPRETATION: Translating long COVID manifestations into computable HPO terms will improve analysis, data capture, and classification of long COVID patients. If researchers, clinicians, and patients share a common language, then studies can be compared/pooled more effectively. Furthermore, mapping lay terminology to HPO will help patients assist clinicians and researchers in creating phenotypic characterizations that are computationally accessible, thereby improving the stratification, diagnosis, and treatment of long COVID. FUNDING: U24TR002306; UL1TR001439; P30AG024832; GBMF4552; R01HG010067; UL1TR002535; K23HL128909; UL1TR002389; K99GM145411

Serious maternal complications after early preterm delivery (24-33 weeks’ gestation)

To describe the prevalence of serious maternal complications following early preterm birth by gestational age (GA), delivery route and type of cesarean incision

Preterm neonatal morbidity and mortality by gestational age: a contemporary cohort

Although preterm birth less than 37 weeks gestation is the leading cause of neonatal morbidity and mortality in the United States, the majority of data regarding preterm neonatal outcomes come from older studies, and many reports have been limited to only very preterm neonates. Delineation of neonatal outcomes by delivery gestational age is needed to further clarify the continuum of mortality and morbidity frequencies among preterm neonates

Contribution of copy number variants to schizophrenia from a genome-wide study of 41,321 subjects

Copy number variants (CNVs) have been strongly implicated in the genetic etiology of schizophrenia (SCZ). However, genome-wide investigation of the contribution of CNV to risk has been hampered by limited sample sizes. We sought to address this obstacle by applying a centralized analysis pipeline to a SCZ cohort of 21,094 cases and 20,227 controls. A global enrichment of CNV burden was observed in cases (OR=1.11, P=5.7×10−15), which persisted after excluding loci implicated in previous studies (OR=1.07, P=1.7 ×10−6). CNV burden was enriched for genes associated with synaptic function (OR = 1.68, P = 2.8 ×10−11) and neurobehavioral phenotypes in mouse (OR = 1.18, P= 7.3 ×10−5). Genome-wide significant evidence was obtained for eight loci, including 1q21.1, 2p16.3 (NRXN1), 3q29, 7q11.2, 15q13.3, distal 16p11.2, proximal 16p11.2 and 22q11.2. Suggestive support was found for eight additional candidate susceptibility and protective loci, which consisted predominantly of CNVs mediated by non-allelic homologous recombination

No Reliable Association between Runs of Homozygosity and Schizophrenia in a Well-Powered Replication Study

It is well known that inbreeding increases the risk of recessive monogenic diseases, but it is less certain whether it contributes to the etiology of complex diseases such as schizophrenia. One way to estimate the effects of inbreeding is to examine the association between disease diagnosis and genome-wide autozygosity estimated using runs of homozygosity (ROH) in genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism arrays. Using data for schizophrenia from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (n = 21,868), Keller et al. (2012) estimated that the odds of developing schizophrenia increased by approximately 17% for every additional percent of the genome that is autozygous (β = 16.1, CI(β) = [6.93, 25.7], Z = 3.44, p = 0.0006). Here we describe replication results from 22 independent schizophrenia case-control datasets from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (n = 39,830). Using the same ROH calling thresholds and procedures as Keller et al. (2012), we were unable to replicate the significant association between ROH burden and schizophrenia in the independent PGC phase II data, although the effect was in the predicted direction, and the combined (original + replication) dataset yielded an attenuated but significant relationship between Froh and schizophrenia (β = 4.86,CI(β) = [0.90,8.83],Z = 2.40,p = 0.02). Since Keller et al. (2012), several studies reported inconsistent association of ROH burden with complex traits, particularly in case-control data. These conflicting results might suggest that the effects of autozygosity are confounded by various factors, such as socioeconomic status, education, urbanicity, and religiosity, which may be associated with both real inbreeding and the outcome measures of interest