Building Professional Dispositions in Pre-Service Special Educators: Assessment and Instructional Tactics

Teacher preparation programs, in part due to national accreditation mandates, are beginning to examine assessment and instruction of teacher trainees’ professional behavior and dispositions more carefully than in the past. The faculty at University of South Florida St. Petersburg developed the Professional Behavior Assessment tool (PBA) for rating levels of competence within six professional behavior domains; punctuality, reaction to supervision, collaboration with colleagues, effort, enthusiasm, and ethical professionalism. Four pre-service teachers (PST) were taught the characteristics of the six domains employing written scenarios and rubrics of the PBA. Initially, the pre-service teachers held very different perceptions than faculty regarding behavior expected within each domain. After instruction the PST’s were able to use the PBA to rate scenarios similarly to faculty. Following training, PST’s reported better understanding regarding the level of expected professional behavior in the schools. As the semester progressed, faculty noted improvement in pre-service professional behavior in field settings

Effects of Warming and Altered Precipitation on Plant and Nutrient Dynamics of a New England Salt Marsh.

Salt marsh structure and function, and consequently ability to support a range of species and to provide ecosystem services, may be affected by climate change. To better understand how salt marshes will respond to warming and associated shifts in precipitation, we conducted a manipulative experiment in a tidal salt marsh in Massachusetts, USA. We exposed two plant communities (one dominated by Spartina patens–Distichlis spicata and one dominated by short form Spartina alterniflora) to five climate manipulations: warming via passive open-topped chambers, doubled precipitation, warming and doubled precipitation, extreme drought via rainout shelter, and ambient conditions. Modest daytime warming increased total aboveground biomass of the S. alterniflora community (24%), but not the S. patens–D. spicata community. Warming also increased maximum stem heights of S. alterniflora (8%), S. patens (8%), and D. spicata (15%). Decomposition was marginally accelerated by warming in the S. alterniflora community. Drought markedly increased total biomass of the S. alterniflora community (53%) and live S. patens (69%), perhaps by alleviating waterlogging of sediments. Decomposition was accelerated by increased precipitation and slowed by drought, particularly in the S. patens–D. spicata community. Flowering phenology responded minimally to the treatments, and pore water salinity, sulfide, ammonium, and phosphate concentrations showed no treatment effects in either plant community. Our results suggest that these salt marsh communities may be resilient to modest amounts of warming and large changes in precipitation. If production increases under climate change, marshes will have a greater ability to keep pace with sea-level rise, although an increase in decomposition could offset this. As long as marshes are not inundated by flooding due to sea-level rise, increases in aboveground biomass and stem heights suggest that marshes may continue to export carbon and nutrients to coastal waters and may be able to increase their carbon storage capability by increasing plant growth under future climate conditions

On Knuth’s generalization of Banach’s Matchbox problem

We revisit a simply stated problem by Knuth. Previous approaches rely on the Bernoulli nature of the underlying stochastic process to recover the systems mean behaviour. We show that limiting results hold for a wide range of stochastic processes. A Large Deviation Principle (LDP) is proved, allowing estimates to be made for the probability of rare-events. From the LDP, a weak law of large numbers is deduced

The Effect of Handwashing with Antiseptic Soap and Water on Reducing Hospital-Acquired Infections

Nurses predominantly use antiseptic hand sanitizer in place of general hand washing. However, hand sanitizers are not always the best method for controlling the spread of bacteria especially among children. Our research question states, in the pediatric units, what is the effect of hand washing with antiseptic soap on reducing health acquired infections? The use of proper hand washing techniques of healthcare workers in pediatric units are not compliant. We conducted a systematic review of the literature to answer our research question. We created a practice protocol to promote compliance of proper hand washing. This practice could help hospital reduce costs by decreasing hospital-acquired infections

Ectopy on a single 12‐lead ECG, incident cardiac myopathy, and death in the community

BackgroundAtrial fibrillation and heart failure are 2 of the most common diseases, yet ready means to identify individuals at risk are lacking. The 12-lead ECG is one of the most accessible tests in medicine. Our objective was to determine whether a premature atrial contraction observed on a standard 12-lead ECG would predict atrial fibrillation and mortality and whether a premature ventricular contraction would predict heart failure and mortality.Methods and resultsWe utilized the CHS (Cardiovascular Health) Study, which followed 5577 participants for a median of 12 years, as the primary cohort. The ARIC (Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study), the replication cohort, captured data from 15 792 participants over a median of 22 years. In the CHS, multivariable analyses revealed that a baseline 12-lead ECG premature atrial contraction predicted a 60% increased risk of atrial fibrillation (hazard ratio, 1.6; 95% CI, 1.3-2.0; P<0.001) and a premature ventricular contraction predicted a 30% increased risk of heart failure (hazard ratio, 1.3; 95% CI, 1.0-1.6; P=0.021). In the negative control analyses, neither predicted incident myocardial infarction. A premature atrial contraction was associated with a 30% increased risk of death (hazard ratio, 1.3; 95% CI, 1.1-1.5; P=0.008) and a premature ventricular contraction was associated with a 20% increased risk of death (hazard ratio, 1.2; 95% CI, 1.0-1.3; P=0.044). Similarly statistically significant results for each analysis were also observed in ARIC.ConclusionsBased on a single standard ECG, a premature atrial contraction predicted incident atrial fibrillation and death and a premature ventricular contraction predicted incident heart failure and death, suggesting that this commonly used test may predict future disease