Motivational Strategies for Correctional Practitioners

The purpose of this paper is to examine the significance of motivational strategies on offender participation in learning. Education is an effective tool to assist offenders to become productive citizens in society. Therefore, the correctional practitioners must have effective motivational methods to impact the educational development of offenders.

Measuring Hotel Service Quality: Tools for Gaining the Competitive Edge

As the hotel industry grows more competitive, quality guest service becomes an increasingly important part of managers' responsibility measuring the quality of service delivery is facilitated when managers know what types of assessment methods are available to them. The authors present and discuss the following available measurement techniques and describe the situations where they best meet the needs of hotel managers: management observation, employee feedback programs, comment cards, mailed surveys, personal and telephone interviews, focus groups, and mystery shopping.

Summertime Influences of Tidal Energy Advection on the Surface Energy Balance in a Mangrove Forest

Mangrove forests are ecosystems susceptible to changing water levels and temperatures due to climate change as well as perturbations resulting from tropical storms. Numerical models can be used to project mangrove forest responses to regional and global environmental changes, and the reliability of these models depends on surface energy balance closure. However, for tidal ecosystems, the surface energy balance is complex because the energy transport associated with tidal activity remains poorly understood. This study aimed to quantify impacts of tidal flows on energy dynamics within a mangrove ecosystem. To address the research objective, an intensive 10-day study was conducted in a mangrove forest located along the Shark River in the Everglades National Park, FL, USA. Forest–atmosphere turbulent exchanges of energy were quantified with an eddy covariance system installed on a 30-m-tall flux tower. Energy transport associated with tidal activity was calculated based on a coupled mass and energy balance approach. The mass balance included tidal flows and accumulation of water on the forest floor. The energy balance included temporal changes in enthalpy, resulting from tidal flows and temperature changes in the water column. By serving as a net sink or a source of available energy, flood waters reduced the impact of high radiational loads on the mangrove forest. Also, the regression slope of available energy versus sink terms increased from 0.730 to 0.754 and from 0.798 to 0.857, including total enthalpy change in the water column in the surface energy balance for 30-min periods and daily daytime sums, respectively. Results indicated that tidal inundation provides an important mechanism for heat removal and that tidal exchange should be considered in surface energy budgets of coastal ecosystems. Results also demonstrated the importance of including tidal energy advection in mangrove biophysical models that are used for predicting ecosystem response to changing climate and regional freshwater management practices.

The Beacon, January 21, 2009

Vol. 21, Issue 57, 8 pages

FIU in 2020

Computer-generated video that presents a vision for Florida International University's appearance in the year 2020.

Developing brownfields ranking models using decision analytic methods

The redevelopment of Brownfields has taken off in the 1990s, supported by federal and state incentives, and largely accomplished by local initiatives. Brownfields redevelopment has several associated benefits. These include the revitalization of inner-city neighborhoods, creation of jobs, stimulation of tax revenues, greater protection of public health and natural resources, the renewal and reuse existing civil infrastructure and Greenfields protection. While these benefits are numerous, the obstacles to Brownfields redevelopment are also very much alive. Redevelopment issues typically embrace a host of financial and legal liability concerns, technical and economic constraints, competing objectives, and uncertainties arising from inadequate site information. Because the resources for Brownfields redevelopment are usually limited, local programs will require creativity in addressing these existing obstacles in a manner that extends their limited resources for returning Brownfields to productive uses. Such programs may benefit from a structured and defensible decision framework to prioritize sites for redevelopment: one that incorporates the desired objectives, corresponding variables and uncertainties associated with Brownfields redevelopment. This thesis demonstrates the use of a decision analytic tool, Bayesian Influence Diagrams, and related decision analytic tools in developing quantitative decision models to evaluate and rank Brownfields sites on the basis of their redevelopment potential.

Sagittaria lancifolia

http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/fce_lter_photos/1277/thumbnail.jpg

Epibenthic foraminiferal d13C in the Recent deep Arctic Ocean

Low planktic and benthic d18O and d13C values in sediments from the Nordic seas of cold stadials of the last glaciation have been attributed to brines, formed similar to modern ones in the Arctic Ocean. To expand on the carbon isotopes of this hypothesis I investigated benthic d13C from the modern Arctic Ocean. I show that mean d13C values of live epibenthic foraminifera from the deep Arctic basins are higher than mean d13C values of upper slope epibenthic foraminifera. This agrees with mean high d13C values of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) in Arctic Bottom Water (ABW), which are higher than mean d13CDIC values from shallower water masses of mainly Atlantic origin. However, adjustments for oceanic 13C-Suess depletion raise subsurface and intermediate water d13CDIC values over ABW d13CDIC ones. Accordingly, during preindustrial Holocene times, the d13CDIC of ABW was as high or higher than today, but lower than the d13CDIC of younger subsurface and intermediate water. If brine-enriched water significantly ventilated ABW, brines should have had high d13CDIC values. Analogously, high-d13CDIC brines may have been formed in the Nordic seas during warm interstadials. During cold stadials, when most of the Arctic Ocean was perennially sea-ice covered, a cessation of high-d13CDIC brine rejection may have lowered d13CDIC values of ABW, and ultimately the d13CDIC in Nordic seas intermediate and deep water. So, in contrast to the idea of enhanced brine formation during cold stadials, the results of this investigation imply that a cessation of brine rejection would be more likely.

Annotated record of the detailed examination of Mn deposits from ARA Islas Orcadas Cruise 12 core stations

The purpose of this volume, the ninth in a series of similar publications (Goodell, 1964, 1965, 1968; Frakes 1971, 1973 ; Cassidy et al., 1977), is to continue a presentation to the research community of sediment core descriptions and attendant data of cored and otherwise obtained sediments retrieved in waters of the Southern Ocean aboard the research vessel, ARA Islas Orcadas (formerly, USNS Eltanin), as a part of the circumpolar survey begun by Eltanin in 1962 (see issue of Antarctic Journal of the United States, Vol. 8, No. 3, 1973). The data presented herein are concerned with the results of coring activities aboard cruise 1277 of Islas Orcadas, the third marine geology coring cruise of this vessel under the terms of the present United States-Argentine agreement. The core descriptions are organised as follows: 1) a brief summary of the coring objectives of the cruise, together with a discussion of core recovery; 2) a table and map of station location data for materials retrieved; 3) a table of tentative age-dates for each piston core; 4) an explanation of the laboratory procedures and descriptive criteria used in the description of the sediments, and 5) lithologic descriptions of the piston and trigger cores, and the piston and trigger core bag samples.

An Audit and Feedback Intervention for Reducing Antibiotic Prescribing in General Dental Practice : The RAPiD Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial

Funding: This study was conducted as part of the TRiaDS programme of implementation research which is funded by NHS Education for Scotland (NES). The Health Services Research Unit which is funded by the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government Health and Social Care Directorates supported the study. The funder had no influence over the design, conduct, analysis and write up of the study.

Ley Federal de Educación - Ley de Educación Nacional : Un análisis desde la Educación Ambiental

En esta tesina se estudian dos leyes educativas de incidencia nacional, sancionadas en contextos históricos y políticos diferentes: la Ley Federal de Educación (1993) y la Ley de Educación Nacional (2006), con un marco de análisis particular: el campo de la educación ambiental. A partir de los diferentes discursos y corrientes presentes en dicho campo, que leemos en clave de intereses en pugna en la disputa por un capital simbólico específico, buscamos indagar en ambas leyes, qué posturas aparecen como hegemónicas respecto de la cuestión ambiental en nuestro país. Así, nos basamos en la perspectiva de Bourdieu (1976) (a partir de la noción de campo), en el estudio de Martínez Alier (2004) sobre las tres grandes posturas en Ecología y el trabajo de Sauvé (2004, 2010) sobre las corrientes en Educación Ambiental, junto con un marco de análisis de políticas públicas, que señalamos como complementario de lo anterior. El articulado de cada ley es analizado desde nuestro marco teórico, considerando el contexto histórico de sanción de cada norma, así como el estado de relación de fuerzas en el campo de la Educación Ambiental, que examinamos tanto en el Estado de la Cuestión como en el encuadre teórico. Encontramos que mientras en la Ley de Educación Federal predomina una concepción conservacionista (conservación y preservación de la naturaleza), en la Ley de Educación Nacional, prevalece una concepción eco-eficientista

Ley Federal de Educación - Ley de Educación Nacional : Un análisis desde la Educación Ambiental

En esta tesina se estudian dos leyes educativas de incidencia nacional, sancionadas en contextos históricos y políticos diferentes: la Ley Federal de Educación (1993) y la Ley de Educación Nacional (2006), con un marco de análisis particular: el campo de la educación ambiental. A partir de los diferentes discursos y corrientes presentes en dicho campo, que leemos en clave de intereses en pugna en la disputa por un capital simbólico específico, buscamos indagar en ambas leyes, qué posturas aparecen como hegemónicas respecto de la cuestión ambiental en nuestro país. Así, nos basamos en la perspectiva de Bourdieu (1976) (a partir de la noción de campo), en el estudio de Martínez Alier (2004) sobre las tres grandes posturas en Ecología y el trabajo de Sauvé (2004, 2010) sobre las corrientes en Educación Ambiental, junto con un marco de análisis de políticas públicas, que señalamos como complementario de lo anterior. El articulado de cada ley es analizado desde nuestro marco teórico, considerando el contexto histórico de sanción de cada norma, así como el estado de relación de fuerzas en el campo de la Educación Ambiental, que examinamos tanto en el Estado de la Cuestión como en el encuadre teórico. Encontramos que mientras en la Ley de Educación Federal predomina una concepción conservacionista (conservación y preservación de la naturaleza), en la Ley de Educación Nacional, prevalece una concepción eco-eficientista

Ley Federal de Educación - Ley de Educación Nacional : Un análisis desde la Educación Ambiental

En esta tesina se estudian dos leyes educativas de incidencia nacional, sancionadas en contextos históricos y políticos diferentes: la Ley Federal de Educación (1993) y la Ley de Educación Nacional (2006), con un marco de análisis particular: el campo de la educación ambiental. A partir de los diferentes discursos y corrientes presentes en dicho campo, que leemos en clave de intereses en pugna en la disputa por un capital simbólico específico, buscamos indagar en ambas leyes, qué posturas aparecen como hegemónicas respecto de la cuestión ambiental en nuestro país. Así, nos basamos en la perspectiva de Bourdieu (1976) (a partir de la noción de campo), en el estudio de Martínez Alier (2004) sobre las tres grandes posturas en Ecología y el trabajo de Sauvé (2004, 2010) sobre las corrientes en Educación Ambiental, junto con un marco de análisis de políticas públicas, que señalamos como complementario de lo anterior. El articulado de cada ley es analizado desde nuestro marco teórico, considerando el contexto histórico de sanción de cada norma, así como el estado de relación de fuerzas en el campo de la Educación Ambiental, que examinamos tanto en el Estado de la Cuestión como en el encuadre teórico. Encontramos que mientras en la Ley de Educación Federal predomina una concepción conservacionista (conservación y preservación de la naturaleza), en la Ley de Educación Nacional, prevalece una concepción eco-eficientista