Client Preferences for Counselor Characteristics: Attitudes Towards Handicapped

The objective of this research was to constructively replicate the research of Brabham and Thoreson (1973) and Mitchell and Frederickson (1975) that led to the conclusion that handicapped counselors are preferred. Subjects were 337 male and female volunteers enrolled in psychology 101 which was taught during the Fall Quarter, 1984, at Utah State University. All subjects were asked to indicate their preference when considering 20 hypothetical problem situations for one counselor from among six photographs of handicapped and non-handicapped counselors. The 20 situations consisted of three types (personal, vocational, and educational). Each subject\u27s score was the total number of times that the subject selected a handicapped counselor. T-tests for independent means were conducted to determined whether or not the group had a statistically significant preference for either handicapped or non-handicapped counselor when the subjects were considering all problems together and when subjects were considering specific problem types. Results indicate that subjects have no significant preference for either handicapped or non-handicapped counselor when all problems were considered. For Personal problems subjects preferred handicapped counselors. For vocational problems subjects preferred non-handicapped counselors. For educational problems subjects had no statistical significant preference. Interpretation of the results suggested preference for a handicapped or non-handicapped counselor is differentially affected by the problem type. It was recommended that much research remains to measure the magnitude of these preferences and the influence of these preferences on the process and outcome of therapy

Asylum Essentials:The U.S. Asylum Program Needs More Resources, Not Restrictions

The public debate surrounding passage of the REAL ID Act by the House of Representatives on February 10 has raised the question of whether or not the U.S. asylum system is vulnerable to infiltration by foreign terrorists. Sponsors of the legislation, which now moves to the Senate for consideration, claim the Act would enhance security by making it more difficult for asylum seekers to prove their cases. However, the realities of asylum processing and the impact of reforms to the asylum system over the past decade point to a need for more resources rather than new restrictions. Abuses of the asylum system, including the most notorious cases cited by supporters of the REAL ID Act, have resulted primarily from applicants getting lost in bureaucratic backlogs or from over-worked Asylum Officers not having sufficient time to closely scrutinize the stories and evidence presented by asylum seekers. The integrity of the asylum system is enhanced by sufficient staffing and funding to allow the thorough and timely adjudication of asylum cases, and adequate training of the immigration inspectors who first come into contact with asylum seekers. Current law already denies asylum to individuals who have engaged in terrorist activity, committed serious crimes, or who may pose a danger to national security.1 And asylum applicants already undergo extensive security checks. The critical issue is whether or not the Asylum Officers who are assigned to review asylum claims have the time and resources they need to efficiently and effectively determine who is a legitimate refugee. The provisions of the REAL ID Act that would raise the bar for all asylum applicants do nothin

Exploring Oregon Teacher Retention: Patterns and Reasons for Teachers' Persistence

K-12 teacher retention is an enduring concern in the United States as teachers are vital for educational achievement and change. National trends demonstrate how widespread an issue teacher retention is, yet teacher labor markets remain highly localized and highlight the complexity of teacher retention decisions. We need an improved understanding of conditions closer to home and work to inform improvements in teacher retention. In this dissertation, I present two studies that collectively examine issues related to the retention of Oregon’s teachers. Utilizing both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, the findings from these studies offer novel insights concerning the factors associated with and the stories of teachers’ retention decisions. In the first study, I report descriptive statistics and estimate regression models from 2007-2020 Oregon state-level teacher data to understand patterns in teacher retention for recently-hired and longer-term teachers. Results suggest disaggregating teacher populations offers nuanced areas of struggle and opportunities for improvement within Oregon’s localized education systems. Some factors differentially impact teacher retention across their career trajectory, while some influence teacher retention consistently. Factors affecting Oregon’s teaching population differently than reported elsewhere include race and ethnicity, education level, student-teacher ratio, and geographic locale. In the second study, I relied on semi-structured interviews to examine Oregon teachers’ perceived reasons for staying in their schools, districts, and communities over long periods. In this phenomenological study, I looked for similarities and differences among participants from varying Oregon geographical contexts and districts with varying historical success in retaining teachers. Participants included 24 Oregon teachers from eight school districts. While some themes from this study were explained similarly by teachers across the district and geographic factors, some were described by teachers from only smaller districts and communities or based on their communities’ demographics. Other findings were dependent on participants’ residency status. The job embeddedness framework proved useful in interpreting and organizing results. I look across the two studies to discuss overarching themes that emerged and provide recommendations for stakeholders to support improvements in teacher retention

Rethinking America's Illegal Drug Policy

This paper provides a critical review of the empirical and theoretical literatures on illegal drug policy, including cross-country comparisons, in order to evaluate three drug policy regimes: criminalization, legalization and “depenalization.” Drawing on the experiences of various states, as well as countries such as Portugal and the Netherlands, the paper attempts to identify cost-minimizing policies for marijuana and cocaine by assessing the differing ways in which the various drug regimes would likely change the magnitude and composition of the social costs of each drug. The paper updates and evaluates Jeffrey Miron’s 1999 national time series analysis of drug prohibition spending and the homicide rate, which underscores the lack of a solid empirical base for assessing the theoretically anticipated crime drop that would come from drug legalization. Nonetheless, the authors conclude that given the number of arrests for marijuana possession, and the costs of incarceration and crime systemic to cocaine criminalization, the current regime is unlikely to be cost-minimizing for either marijuana or cocaine.

Cut-sets and Cut-vertices in the Zero-Divisor Graph of ∏Zni

We examine minimal sets of vertices which, when removed from a zero-divisor graph, separate the graph into disconnected subgraphs. We classify these sets for all direct products of Γ ∏Zn

Facilitating Pre-Service Teachers to Engage Emergent Bilinguals in Productive Struggle

This study utilized a multiple case study with qualitative research to examine how Pre-service teachers (PSTs) might engage Emergent Bilinguals (EBs) in productive struggle—grappling to solve problems (Warshauer, 2015). The researchers created a rubric based on Warshauer’s (2015) case study to record the types of questions PSTs asked as they tutored fourth grade EBs. Warshauer (2015) claimed PSTs should allow students more wait time and ask questions. She referred to such questions as affordance and probing guidance, which facilitates productive struggle. In order to discover more about the PSTs’ thinking, the researchers interviewed the PSTs before and after their first, third, and seventh lesson. The researchers’ findings are that the PSTs struggled to incorporate more affordance and probing guidance-based questions as the semester progressed. However, PSTs use of telling based questions decreased during the semester. Another finding was two of the EBs spoke only English at the beginning of the semester, but later used code switching during the lessons. Perhaps the students felt more comfortable with their surroundings, and speaking in Spanish helped facilitate them to engage in productive struggle. Furthermore, PSTs utilized culturally relevant teaching strategies during their lessons and created an environment to encourage positive mindsets for learning mathematics. Implications are teacher educators should teach PSTs how to engage all students in productive struggle

Uncovering the Complexity of STEM Faculty Perceptions About Successful Students, and Their Teaching Strategies that Support Them

Multiple factors are known to influence student success in higher education. Barriers to postsecondary success for underrepresented STEM students are numerous and well documented. We detail an exploratory study of STEM faculty notions of successful students and the instructional practices they employ to cultivate student success. We use a conceptual framework of educators’ perceptions, teaching practices, and student engagement to analyze faculty’s perceptions of their students that may inform and influence their teaching practices. This framework also allowed us to uncover potentially unknown and unintended perceptions, practices, and structures that may implicate larger social structures that result in inequities experienced by many individuals in STEM education. We found faculty perceive a range of characteristics and factors indicative and predictive of student success. Faculty also described a wide range of instructional strategies they perceived as effective. We offer insights into STEM faculty practices and expectations that assume and encourage groups traditionally successful in STEM while also highlighting implicit and hidden faculty expectations that may position women, racial/ethnic, and other underrepresented groups as unsuccessful in STEM. This paper adds to the limited research that explores STEM faculty perceptions of their notions of successful students and the relationship between those perceptions and their teaching practices

An Unsupervised Autoencoder Developed from Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced (DCE)-MRI Datasets for Classification of Acute Tumor Response in an Animal Model

Purpose/Objective(s): Recent studies have shown that vascular parameters of brain tumors derived from DCE-MRI may act as potential biomarkers for radiation-induced acute effects. However, accurate characterization of the spatial regions affected by radiation therapy (RT) remains challenging. Here, we introduce an unsupervised adaptive model for classification and ranking of the RT-affected regions in an animal model of cerebral U-251n tumors. Materials/Methods: Twenty-three immune-compromised-RNU rats were implanted with human U251n cancer cells to form an orthotopic glioma (IACUC #1509). For each rat, 28 days after implantation, two DCE-MRI studies (Dual Gradient Echo, DGE, FOV: 32 × 32 mm2, TR/(TE1-TE2) = 24 ms/(2 ms-4 ms), flip angle = 18°, 400 acquisitions, 1.55 sec interval with Magnevist contrast agent, CA injection at ∼ 24 sec) were performed 24h apart using a 7T MRI scanner. A single 20 Gy stereotactic radiation exposure was performed before the second MRI, which was acquired 1-6.5 hrs after RT. DCE-MRI analysis was done using a model selection technique to distinguish three different brain regions as follows: Normal vasculature (Model 1: No leakage, only plasma volume, vp, is estimated), leaky tumor tissues with no back-flux to the vasculature (Model 2: vp and forward volumetric transfer constant, Ktrans, are estimated), and leaky tumor tissues with back-flux (Model 3: vp, Ktrans, and interstitial volume fraction, ve, are estimated). Normalized time traces of DCE-MRI information (24 pre, and 24 post-RT for each rat, total of 64108 training datasets) of tumors and their soft surrounding normal tissues were extracted from the 3 different model regions. To eliminate high-dimensional data similarity, an unsupervised autoencoder (AE) was trained to map out the model-derived data into a feature space (latent variables, N=10). For each model, the pre and post RT latent variables were compared (by appropriate tests of significance: ANOVA/Welch, CI=95%) to reveal RT-discriminant features. Pearson correlation coefficients were used to compare the decoded data to rank the effect of RT on different models. Results: The time trace of DCE-MRI information of rat brain in normal (Model 1, non-leaky) and highly permeable (Model 3) regions are less impacted by RT (Higher correlation between pre and post RT: r= 0.8518, p\u3c0.0001 and r= 0.9040, p\u3c0.0001 for Model 1 and Model 3, respectively) compared to the peritumoral regions pertaining to Model 2 (r= 0.8077, p\u3c0.0001). Conclusion: This pilot study suggests that among different brain regions, peritumoral zones (infiltrative tumor borders with enhanced rim) are highly affected by RT. Spatial assessment of RT-affected brain regions can play a key role in optimization of treatment planning in cancer patients, but presents a challenging task in conventional DCE-MRI. This study represents an important step toward classification and ranking the RT-affected brain spatial regions according to their vascular response following hypofractionated RT

High-Resolution Mapping of Evolutionary Trajectories in a Phage

Experimental evolution in rapidly reproducing viruses offers a robust means to infer substitution trajectories during evolution. But with conventional approaches, this inference is limited by how many individual genotypes can be sampled from the population at a time. Low-frequency changes are difficult to detect, potentially rendering early stages of adaptation unobservable. Here we circumvent this using short-read sequencing technology in a fine-grained analysis of polymorphism dynamics in the sentinel organism: a single-stranded DNA phage ΦX174. Nucleotide differences were educed from noise with binomial filtering methods that harnessed quality scores and separate data from brief phage amplifications. Remarkably, a significant degree of variation was observed in all samples including those grown in brief 2-h cultures. Sites previously reported as subject to high-frequency polymorphisms over a course of weeks exhibited monotonic increases in polymorphism frequency within hours in this study. Additionally, even with limitations imposed by the short length of sequencing reads, we were able to observe statistically significant linkage among polymorphic sites in evolved lineages. Additional parallels between replicate lineages were apparent in the sharing of polymorphic sites and in correlated polymorphism frequencies. Missense mutations were more likely to occur than silent mutations. This study offers the first glimpse into “real-time” substitution dynamics and offers a robust conceptual framework for future viral resequencing studies