Analysis of retention of skills gained through two methods of teaching word parts in junior high school

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Building Extension Capacity through Internal Grants: Evaluation of a Mini-Grant Program

Acquiring external grants can seem out of reach for Extension professionals, especially early-career professionals. While Cooperative Extension provides opportunities to assist professionals in the grant writing process, Utah State University (USU) Extension facilitates an internal mini grant program to build professionals’ capacity to apply for external funds. Using survey data from USU Extension professionals, our study sought to evaluate the processes and outcomes of the internal mini grant program. Our results provided recommendations to improve the program. Our study provides insights that can assist other institutions seeking to implement their own internal mini grant program

Vibrational Signatures in the THz Spectrum of 1,3-DNB: A First-Principles and Experimental Study

Understanding the fundamental processes of light-matter interaction is important for detection of explosives and other energetic materials, which are active in the infrared and terahertz (THz) region. We report a comprehensive study on electronic and vibrational lattice properties of structurally similar 1,3-dinitrobenzene (1,3- DNB) crystals through first-principles electronic structure calculations and THz spectroscopy measurements on polycrystalline samples. Starting from reported x-ray crystal structures, we use density-functional theory (DFT) with periodic boundary conditions to optimize the structures and perform linear response calculations of the vibrational properties at zero phonon momentum. The theoretically identified normal modes agree qualitatively with those obtained experimentally in a frequency range up to 2.5 THz and quantitatively at much higher frequencies. The latter frequencies are set by intra-molecular forces. Our results suggest that van der Waals dispersion forces need to be included to improve the agreement between theory and experiment in the THz region, which is dominated by intermolecular modes and sensitive to details in the DFT calculation. An improved comparison is needed to assess and distinguish between intra- and intermolecular vibrational modes characteristic of energetic materials.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

A grounded theory study exploring healthcare professionals' experiences of decision making when managing the care of patients diagnosed with end stage heart failure

Background End of life care has been a topic which has been debated, discussed and strategized over the last ten years as part of the government initiative to improve care for those patients with long term conditions requiring palliative and end of life care. (DH 2008, DH 2010). Studies show that despite these government and local recommendations’ heart failure patients are still not being given the opportunity to access individualised end of life care and the services they require to support themselves and their families at the end of life. Aim The aim of this study was to explore the decision-making process between healthcare professionals and patients in an acute medical setting when it came to making end of life decisions. Method A constructivist grounded theory was conducted over a 12-month period in a District General Hospital in the North West of England. A purposeful sample of 15 nurses, 11 doctors and 16 patients were recruited from the acute medical setting. Data was collected using semi structured interviews and focus groups. The interviews were recorded and transcribed and data was analysed using the constant comparison and QSR NVivo. Findings Four theoretical categories emerged from the data to explain how healthcare professionals and patients negotiated the process of decision making when considering end of life care. These four categories; signposting symptoms, organising care, being informed and recognising dying were found to revolve around a core category ‘vicious cycle of care’ which was fast paced, turbulent and time limited. This cycle was found to disable the process of decision making between the healthcare professional and patient resulting in missed opportunity for the patient to transition to palliative care. Conclusion The emerging theory ‘vicious cycle of care’ offers an explanation as to why decisions were not made by healthcare professionals to transition patients with end stage heart failure to palliative care. Further work needs to be undertaken with healthcare professionals and patients to map out a ‘cycle of care’ which identifies key stages in the terminal stage of heart failure and correctly signposts the patient to the right healthcare care professional for intervention. Further research is required with General Practitioners to further explore the barriers to providing end of life care for heart failure patients

Parity lifetime of bound states in a proximitized semiconductor nanowire

Quasiparticle excitations can compromise the performance of superconducting devices, causing high frequency dissipation, decoherence in Josephson qubits, and braiding errors in proposed Majorana-based topological quantum computers. Quasiparticle dynamics have been studied in detail in metallic superconductors but remain relatively unexplored in semiconductor-superconductor structures, which are now being intensely pursued in the context of topological superconductivity. To this end, we introduce a new physical system comprised of a gate-confined semiconductor nanowire with an epitaxially grown superconductor layer, yielding an isolated, proximitized nanowire segment. We identify Andreev-like bound states in the semiconductor via bias spectroscopy, determine the characteristic temperatures and magnetic fields for quasiparticle excitations, and extract a parity lifetime (poisoning time) of the bound state in the semiconductor exceeding 10 ms.Comment: text and supplementary information combine