The Effects of Connecting Rituals on Tantrums and Physical Conflicts

This study was conducted to determine if creating strong student-teacher relationships through a program called Conscious Discipline decreased the number of physical conflicts and tantrums, therefore increasing self-regulation, in an early childhood classroom. This study took place in an early childhood Montessori classroom. There were 25 participants, mixed genders, ages 2.5 to 6 years old. The researcher taught and practiced connecting rituals from the Conscious Discipline program every day during the normal large group time. The researcher collected data by using tally marks to record every time a physical conflict, individual tantrum, or connecting ritual without adult encouragement took place, for a week before and a week after the intervention. The researcher also conducted interviews with each of the children before and after the intervention to determine if the connecting rituals created stronger relationships and feelings of safety in the classroom. The study determined that the results were not statistically significant, but the number of conflicts and tantrums decreased, and the relationship between the researcher and the students developed more fully and the feelings of safety increased. The data showed that further research is needed to examine if the length of conflicts and tantrums decrease with stronger student-teacher relationships

Vulnerability Assessment of the Gulf of Maine Eastern Oyster Aquaculture Industry to the Projected Impacts of Ocean and Coastal Acidification

Ocean acidification is an emerging global environmental issue with known impacts on calcifying marine and estuarine organisms, including oysters. Anthropogenic climate change increases ocean uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which decreases seawater pH and the availability of crucial calcium carbonate minerals, namely calcite and aragonite. Acidification poses a major threat to the Eastern oyster aquaculture industry in the Gulf of Maine (GOM), which is highly susceptible to acidification and highly economically dependent on the industry’s economic contributions. In this report, I evaluated overall vulnerability of the GOM Eastern oyster aquaculture industry by assessing ecological exposure, social sensitivity, and adaptive capacity to the impacts of acidification. Projections of aragonite saturation, sea-surface temperature, and precipitation under IPCC carbon emissions scenarios demonstrate the region’s high ecological exposure to acidification. Sales revenue, employment, and labor income represent the region’s high economic dependency and thus social sensitivity to changes in the industry. Combined, these make the region highly vulnerable to the impacts of ocean acidification. The issue has already garnered significant attention from agencies and institutions with the capacity to implement initiatives that bolster the industry’s ability to mitigate and adapt to changes, thereby lowering overall vulnerability of the industry to medium-high. To further augment the adaptive capacity of the GOM Eastern oyster aquaculture industry, I recommend implementing community education programs, bolstering the role of oyster hatcheries, incentivizing multi-trophic aquaculture, and conducting site-suitability analyses for future aquaculture locations

Dual-Tree Complex Wavelet Transform in the Frequency Domain and an Application to Signal Classification

We examine Kingsbury's dual-tree complex wavelet transform in the frequency domain, where it can be formulated for standard wavelet filters without special filter design and apply the method to the classification of signals. The obtained transforms achieve low shift sensitivity and better directionality compared to the real discrete wavelet transform while retaining the perfect reconstruction property

Einsatzmöglichkeiten der Balanced Scorecard in mittelständischen (Fertigungs-)Unternehmen

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Thin concrete overlays wit carbon reinforcement on deteriorated concrete pavements

In many countries, concrete pavements are normally built as Jointed Plain Concrete Pavements. Due to a lack of alternatives, repairing deteriorated concrete pavements usually requires the replacement of the complete pavement structure and maintaining the joints, which is labour- and resource-intensive. To increase the durability of repairs and to save resources concrete overlays with carbon reinforcement are developed. By the application of non-corrosive carbon-textile reinforcement cracks might be distributed so fine, that such an overlay can be executed jointless, unlike in previous repair methods. For a durable repair the bond behaviour between the retained concrete and the overlay as well as between the overlay-concrete and the textile reinforcement have to be considered. In this paper, the basic principles and feasibility of such a repair method are examined. On the one hand, the decisive influencing variables and parameters such as bond behaviour and cracking behaviour within the overlay are pointed out and discussed. On the other hand, the performed special lab tests will be presented. These tests include cyclic loadings on large-scale beams with integrated overlays of such types, evaluating the bond behaviour and the durability after a few millions of load cycles. Furthermore, the crack formation in the overlay is determined by means of tensile and flexural tensile strength tests

Feasible Adaptation Criteria for Hybrid Wavelet - Large Margin Classifiers

In the context of signal classification, this paper assembles and compares criteria to easily judge the discrimination quality of a set of feature vectors. The quality measures are based on the assumption that a Support Vector Machine is used for the final classification. Thus, the ultimate criterion is a large margin separating the two classes. We apply the criteria to control the feature extraction process for signal classification. Adaptive features related to the shape of the signals are extracted by wavelet filtering followed by a nonlinear map. To be able to test many features, the criteria are easily computable while still reliably predicting the classification performance. We also present a novel approach for computing the radius of a set of points in feature space. The radius, in relation to the margin, forms the most commonly used error bound for Support Vector Machines. For isotropic kernels, the problem of radius computation can be reduced to a common Support Vector Machine classification problem

Effectively Finding the Optimal Wavelet for Hybrid Wavelet - Large Margin Signal Classification

For hybrid wavelet - large margin classifiers, adapting the wavelet may significantly improve the classification performance. We propose to select the wavelet with respect to a large margin classifier and data to improve class separability and minimise the generalisation error. In this paper, we show that this wavelet adaptation problem can be formulated as an optimisation problem with polynomial objective function and investigate some techniques to solve it. In particular, we propose an adaptive grid search algorithm that efficiently solves the problem compared with standard optimisation techniques

Contrasting motivational orientation and evaluative coding accounts: on the need to differentiate the effectors of approach/avoidance responses

Several emotion theorists suggest that valenced stimuli automatically trigger motivational orientations and thereby facilitate corresponding behavior. Positive stimuli were thought to activate approach motivational circuits which in turn primed approach-related behavioral tendencies whereas negative stimuli were supposed to activate avoidance motivational circuits so that avoidance-related behavioral tendencies were primed (motivational orientation account). However, recent research suggests that typically observed affective stimulus response compatibility phenomena might be entirely explained in terms of theories accounting for mechanisms of general action control instead of assuming motivational orientations to mediate the effects (evaluative coding account). In what follows, we explore to what extent this notion is applicable. We present literature suggesting that evaluative coding mechanisms indeed influence a wide variety of affective stimulus response compatibility phenomena. However, the evaluative coding account does not seem to be sufficient to explain affective S-R compatibility effects. Instead, several studies provide clear evidence in favor of the motivational orientation account that seems to operate independently of evaluative coding mechanisms. Implications for theoretical developments and future research designs are discussed

Strukturelle Untersuchung der Rückhaltung von Actiniden und ihrer Übergangsmetallhomologe an ausgewählte Alumosilikat-Phasen

Die sichere Endlagerung hochradioaktiver Stoffe ist weltweit eine der großen Herausforderungen des 21. Jahrhunderts. Der abgebrannte Kernbrennstoff ist hoch-radiotoxisch und stellt somit eine Gefährdung für Mensch und Umwelt dar. Daher muss der radioaktive Abfall für bis zu einer Million Jahre von der Umwelt isoliert werden. International wird dafür die Endlagerung in tiefengeologischen Formationen favorisiert. Für ein solches Endlager für radioaktive Abfälle kommen in Deutschland Salz-, Ton- und Kristallinformationen in Frage, welche aufgrund der verschiedenen mineralogischen und geochemischen Bedingungen Radionuklide (RN) unterschiedlich stark immobilisieren. Wesentliche Prozesse sind dabei Ausfällung, Einbau in Festphasen und Sorption an Mineraloberflächen. Für eine belastbare Risikobewertung möglicher Endlagerstandorte sind geeignete Transportmodelle notwendig, welche auf umfangreiche thermodynamische Daten angewiesen sind. Hierfür sind insbesondere Studien zu Wechselwirkungen (WW) von RN mit Mineralphasen im Kristallingestein, d.h. Quarz, Feldspäten, Glimmern, nicht ausreichend verfügbar. Die minoren Actinide Am und Cm liegen in wässriger Lösung grundsätzlich im dreiwertigen Oxidationszustand vor. Außerdem werden unter den zu erwarteten reduzierenden Bedingungen in einem Endlager auch Np zu einem geringen und Pu zu einem nennenswerten Teil dreiwertig vorliegen. Daher beschäftigt sich der erste Teil der Arbeit mit den WW dreiwertiger Actiniden (An(III) = Am, Cm) mit Feldspäten. Der zweite Teil der Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit dem Einfluss von Elektrolyten auf die Rückhaltung von Actiniden an Mineraloberflächen. Dabei wurde zum einen der Einfluss des natürlich häufig auftretenden, anorganischen Liganden Sulfat auf die Sorption von An(III) an das Schichtsilikat (Glimmer) Muskovit untersucht, sowie in einem weiteren Beispiel der Einfluss der Elektrolytzusammensetzung auf die Sorption des Actinids Thorium an Muskovit untersucht. Th liegt in wässriger Lösung ausschließlich vierwertig vor und wird stark hydrolysiert, wodurch die Bildung polynuklearer Spezies begünstigt ist. Methodisch kommen in diesem Teil der Arbeit neben Oberflächenröntgenbeugung (SXRD) auch Alphaspektrometrie und Rasterkraftmikroskopie (AFM) zum Einsatz. Die Ergebnisse der Arbeit leisten einen signifikanten Beitrag zur realistischen Abschätzung der Mobilität drei- und vierwertiger Actiniden im Kristallingestein. Die Ergebnisse der Arbeit werden in Zukunft Simulationen des reaktiven Transports und somit die Auswahl eines geeigneten Standorts für ein Endlager für radioaktiven Abfall unterstützen