AICMA Helps Demine Nicaragua’s Gocen District

The Gocen district of the Mateare municipality in Chiltepe Peninsula, 20 km (12 mi) outside of Managua, Nicaragua, was contaminated with explosive remnants of war from the artillery school that operated nearby. With support from Acción Integral Contra las Minas Antipersonal (Comprehensive Action Against Antipersonnel Mines, AICMA), a program of the Organization of American States, a large portion of the contaminated land in Gocen was cleared and released in 2012

A Place Like This: An Environmental Justice History of the Owens Valley - Water in Indigenous, Colonial, and Manzanar Stories

This text provides an environmental justice analysis of the stories of the people who lived in the Owens Valley, who watered its land and cultivated its crops—pine trees, apple trees, and kabocha alike. Telling the personal stories of challenge and resistance that manifested alongside the oppressive forces of military and state domination provides the opportunity to align forcibly relocated, exploited and incarcerated people’s struggles throughout time. This text starts with The Nü’ma Peoples who were the first humans to live in the Owens Valley and continues with the struggle for empire between rival colonial empires of agriculture and distant urban cities. Its final chapters end with an in-depth and personal exploration of the unconstitutional incarceration of 117,000 people of Japanese ancestry in the United States during World War II. All the while it weaves in poetry, art and grassroots stories of resistance. It is a call to action for Environmental Studies and Ethnic Studies Departments to link the critical analysis within their disciplines to tell more accurate histories

Three-Dimensional Graphene Foam Reinforced Epoxy Composites

Three-dimensional graphene foam (3D GrF) is an interconnected, porous structure of graphene sheets with excellent mechanical, electrical and thermal properties, making it a candidate reinforcement for polymer matrices. GrF’s 3D structure eliminates nanoparticle agglomeration and provides seamless pathways for electron travel. The objective of this work is to fabricate low density GrF reinforced epoxy composites with superior mechanical and electrical properties and study the underlying deformation mechanisms. Dip coating and mold casting fabrication methods are employed in order to tailor the microstructure and properties. The composite’s microstructure revealed good interfacial interaction. By adding mere 0.63 wt.% GrF, flexural strength was improved by 56%. The addition of 2 wt.% GrF showed a surge in glass transition temperature (56oC), improvement in damping behavior (150%), and electrical conductivity 11 orders of magnitude higher than pure epoxy. Dip coated and mold casted composites showed a gauge factor of ~2.4 indicating electromechanically robust composite materials

Effects of Response to Intervention on Academic Achievement in High School Literacy and Mathematics

This study examined the effects of a multi-tiered Response to Intervention (RTI) framework on literacy and math in an effort to determine the potential benefits in a secondary setting. Specifically, this study compared literacy and mathematics achievement for 9th, 10th, and 11th grade students, as measured by end-of-course exams, between a secondary school utilizing RTI and a secondary school not using RTI. Furthermore, the disaggregated test scores based on gender and socioeconomic status were analyzed from each school to determine the disparity in academic performance between groups of students, referred to as the “achievement gap”. A quantitative, causal-comparative strategy was used in this 2 X 2 factorial design study. The independent variables for Hypotheses 1 and 3 included participation the RTI (participation versus non-participation) and gender (male versus female). For Hypotheses 2 and 4, the independent variables included participation in RTI and socioeconomic status (Regular versus Low). The dependent variable for Hypotheses 1 and 2 was literacy achievement, and the dependent variable for Hypotheses 3 and 4 was mathematics achievement. vi The findings suggest that the RTI students did not have a statistically significant advantage over the non-RTI students. However, the achievement gap between low socioeconomic and regular students was significantly smaller in the RTI sample than in the non-RTI sample. Given the emphasis that federal legislation places on closing the achievement gap, these findings should be encouraging to districts implementing RTI. In conclusion, the findings support the argument that secondary educators would benefit from additional studies of RTI models actively implemented in secondary schools in order to determine which ones are yielding measurable improvements in student achievement

Helping Occupational Therapy Students Manage Stress on Level II Fieldwork: A Program Evaluation of a Pilot Online Mindfulness Program

Monitoring and addressing student stress has become increasingly important, particularly in health profession academic programs, the doctoral project\u27s objectives were to establish a baseline of occupational therapy student stress levels using readily available stress measures and embed mindfulness-based active learning within online coursework to assist students in addressing their stress during Level II fieldwork. Participants included 20 entry-level masters and 21 entry-level doctorate students enrolled in Samuel Merritt University’s occupational therapy program during summer and fall of 2018. The Stress Profile and Engagement in Meaningful Activities survey were used to establish a baseline; both measures showed that the participating students fell within the mean for appropriate stress levels and engagement in meaningful activities. The majority of students participated in five out of six learning modules and reported gaining benefits from the mindfulness modules. Students also reported using the modules multiple times throughout the week and provided descriptive examples of how they used the mindfulness modules

Communication Attitudes and Job Effectiveness of Debt Collectors

This study investigates the relationship between rhetorical sensitivity attitude sets (rhetorical sensitive (RS), noble self (NS), and rhetorical reflector (RR)), effectiveness and debt collectors. The questions to be answered are: (1) do debt collectors hold predominantly one attitudinal set more than another, and (2) does collector effectiveness correlate with any specific attitudinal set held. The measurement of attitudinal sets was accomplished using the RHETSEN instrument operationalized by Hart, Carlson, and Eadie in 1980. Collector effectiveness was determined by the collectors\u27 manager or supervisor rating them from 1 through 7 on a semantic differential scale (1 labeled Poor and 7 labeled Excellent). The 47 participants in this survey were individuals actively engaged in the collection of delinquent debts. These individuals were predominantly employed by collection agencies and financial institutions. The results of this study showed little correlation between the attitude towards encoding information and the effectiveness ratings given the collectors. It did, however, show that there is a difference in the strength of attitudinal sets held by individuals working for different types of firms

The variation of center of mass excursion within and between innings and its relationship to pitched ball velocity in collegiate softball players

The purpose of this study was to measure the changes to excursions of the COM with pitch count and innings pitched in a collegiate softball game. Additionally, the effect of excursion on pitched ball velocity was investigated. Twenty-six collegiate pitchers were recorded using a high speed video camera. The first three fastballs and the last three fastballs in each inning were used to determine the COM position during the stride foot takeoff, the lead foot touchdown, and the release. Ball velocity was also calculated from the digitization of each video. MatLab and Excel were used to calculate the excursions between the start of the pitch to the lead foot land, the lead foot land and the release and the start of the pitch and the release. The multivariate 2x5 Factorial MANOVA indicated that there was no significant interactions (F(16,532)=0.133, p=0.809) therefore main effects were investigated. There were no significant differences between the performance variables between the beginning and ending of the innings pitched (F(4,130)=0.02, p=0.99). Finally, there were no differences between innings (F(16,532)=0.99, p=0.46). The lack of support was attributed to the complex nature of the pitch with a variety of variables contributing to the execution of the pitch. The small correlation found could possibly be an increase in the arm motion and be an example of one of the many compensating factors that allow a pitcher to maintain pitched ball velocity. Future research for this topic should look at conducting the study during the spring season to reduce the variability of innings pitched, and research a younger population of athletes with the idea that in younger players the changes may be more noticeable throughout a game due to lack of strength and lower skill level

Coeds Come to the Cal Poly Campus: The Return of Female Students to Cal Poly

During the years between 1929 and 1956, women were banned from attending Cal Poly. Women were among the first classes of Cal Poly students, but the crisis that was the Great Depression led to financial strains on higher education; ultimately Cal Poly chose to resolve burdens by eliminating women from the student body. After more than a quarter century of an all-male student population, women were re-admitted in 1956. With such an abrupt reversal in policy, the now coeducational institution faced many challenges. How would the male students respond? What were the expectations of the women students, and did these expectations differ from those of the male students? What courses and majors would the female students study? This paper will investigate these questions and more during this influential time in Cal Poly’s history. Robert E. Kennedy, Learn By Doing: Memoirs of a University President: A Personal Journey with the Seventh President of California Polytechnic State University (San Luis Obispo: California Polytechnic State University, 2001), 3-24; Cal Poly: The First Hundred Years (San Luis Obispo: Robert E. Kennedy Library, California Polytechnic State University, 2001), 7-35

A Study on the Effectiveness of the Neurological Impress Method as a Remedial Reading Technique

There are many students who have quite serious reading problems which are not attributable to below normal intelligence. The task of this research was to determine the effectiveness of the Neurological Impress Method of reading instruction with these kinds of students. The method was evaluated in terms of its effect on the students\u27 reading comprehension and reading vocabulary