Life Among the Stars

Dr. James Webb, professor of physics at Florida International University, lectures on the humanities view of the universe.Lecture held on March 5, 2014 at the Green Library, Modesto Maidique Campus, Florida International University.

Phonics Instruction using Pseudowords for Success in Phonetic Decoding

This study examined a Pseudoword Phonics Curriculum to determine if this form of instruction would increase students’ decoding skills compared to typical real-word phonics instruction. In typical phonics instruction, children learn to decode familiar words which allow them to draw on their prior knowledge of how to pronounce the word and may detract from learning decoding skills. By using pseudowords during phonics instruction, students may learn more decoding skills because they are unfamiliar with the “words” and therefore cannot draw on memory for how to pronounce the word. It was hypothesized that students who learn phonics with pseudowords will learn more decoding skills and perform higher on a real-word assessment compared to students who learn phonics with real words. Students from two kindergarten classes participated in this study. An author-created word decoding assessment was used to determine the students’ ability to decode words. The study was broken into three phases, each lasting one month. During Phase 1, both groups received phonics instruction using real words, which allowed for the exploration of baseline student growth trajectories and potential teacher effects. During Phase 2, the experimental group received pseudoword phonics instruction while the control group continued real-word phonics instruction. During Phase 3, both groups were taught with real-word phonics instruction. Students were assessed on their decoding skills before and after each phase. Results from multiple regression and multi-level model analyses revealed a greater increase in decoding skills during the second and third phases of the study for students who received the pseudoword phonics instruction compared to students who received the real-word phonics instruction. This suggests that pseudoword phonics instruction improves decoding skills quicker than real-word phonics instruction. This also suggests that teaching decoding with pseudowords for one month can continue to improve decoding skills when children return to real-word phonics instruction. Teacher feedback suggests that confidence with reading increased for students who learned with pseudowords because they were less intimidated by the approach and viewed pseudoword phonics as a game that involved reading “silly” words. Implications of these results, limitations of this study, and areas for future research are discussed.

Navigation and meteorological data during campaign TARA_20100214Z of the Tara Oceans expedition 2009-2013

The Tara Oceans Expedition (2009-2013) sampled the world oceans on board a 36 m long schooner, collecting environmental data and organisms from viruses to planktonic metazoans for later analyses using modern sequencing and state-of-the-art imaging technologies. Tara Oceans Data are particularly suited to study the genetic, morphological and functional diversity of plankton. The present dataset contains navigation and meteorological data measured during one campaign of the Tara Oceans Expedition. Latitude and Longitude were obtained from TSG data.

Costs and effects of new professional roles : Evidence from a literature review

“The authors wish to thank the European Commission for funding this research programme ‘Health Care Reform: The iMpact on practice, oUtcomes and cost of New ROles for health profeSsionals (MUNROS), under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7 HEALTH-2012-INNOVATION-1) grant agreement number HEALTH-F3-2012-305467EC. The authors also wish to thank all those who supported and guided this work both within the MUNROS research project team and as external associates. In particular we would like to thank Mathijs Kelder for his valuable contribution in the review process. The authors also wish to thank all the MUNROS research and project partners for their continuing collaboration in this research”.

Costs and effects of new professional roles : Evidence from a literature review

“The authors wish to thank the European Commission for funding this research programme ‘Health Care Reform: The iMpact on practice, oUtcomes and cost of New ROles for health profeSsionals (MUNROS), under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7 HEALTH-2012-INNOVATION-1) grant agreement number HEALTH-F3-2012-305467EC. The authors also wish to thank all those who supported and guided this work both within the MUNROS research project team and as external associates. In particular we would like to thank Mathijs Kelder for his valuable contribution in the review process. The authors also wish to thank all the MUNROS research and project partners for their continuing collaboration in this research”.

Costs and effects of new professional roles : Evidence from a literature review

“The authors wish to thank the European Commission for funding this research programme ‘Health Care Reform: The iMpact on practice, oUtcomes and cost of New ROles for health profeSsionals (MUNROS), under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7 HEALTH-2012-INNOVATION-1) grant agreement number HEALTH-F3-2012-305467EC. The authors also wish to thank all those who supported and guided this work both within the MUNROS research project team and as external associates. In particular we would like to thank Mathijs Kelder for his valuable contribution in the review process. The authors also wish to thank all the MUNROS research and project partners for their continuing collaboration in this research”.

Outpatient Mental Health Services in Mozambique: Use and Treatments.

To describe current outpatient mental health service use and treatments in Mozambique, the authors reviewed registry entries for 2,071 outpatient psychiatric visits at the Beira Central Hospital in Sofala Province from January 2012 to September 2014. Service use was most common for schizophrenia, followed by epilepsy, delirium, and organic behavioral disorders. Only 3% of consultations for schizophrenia were first-visit patients. Treatment seeking among women was more likely for mood and neurotic disorders and less likely for substance use disorders and epilepsy. First-generation antipsychotics, most often paired with promethazine, dominated treatment regimens. Evidence-based reforms are needed to improve identification of mood disorders and broaden care beyond severe mental disorders.

Behavioral Ecology of the Western Atlantic Short-finned Pilot Whale (Globicephala macrorhynchus)

Social structure is a key determinant of population biology and is central to the way animals exploit their environment. The risk of predation is often invoked as an important factor influencing the evolution of social structure in cetaceans and other mammals, but little direct information is available about how cetaceans actually respond to predators or other perceived threats. The playback of sounds to an animal is a powerful tool for assessing behavioral responses to predators, but quantifying behavioral responses to playback experiments requires baseline knowledge of normal behavioral patterns and variation. The central goal of my dissertation is to describe baseline foraging behavior for the western Atlantic short-finnned pilot whales (Globicephala macrohynchus) and examine the role of social organization in their response to predators. To accomplish this I used multi-sensor digital acoustic tags (DTAGs), satellite-linked time-depth recorders (SLTDR), and playback experiments to study foraging behavior and behavioral response to predators in pilot whales. Fine scale foraging strategies and population level patterns were identified by estimating the body size and examining the location and movement around feeding events using data collected with DTAGs deployed on 40 pilot whales in summers of 2008-2014 off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Pilot whales were found to forage throughout the water column and performed feeding buzzes at depths ranging from 29-1176 meters. The results indicated potential habitat segregation in foraging depth in short-finned pilot whales with larger individuals foraging on average at deeper depths. Calculated aerobic dive limit for large adult males was approximately 6 minutes longer than that of females and likely facilitated the difference in foraging depth. Furthermore, the buzz frequency and speed around feeding attempts indicate this population pilot whales are likely targeting multiple small prey items. Using these results, I built decision trees to inform foraging dive classification in coarse, long-term dive data collected with SLTDRs deployed on 6 pilot whales in the summers of 2014 and 2015 in the same area off the coast of North Carolina. I used these long term foraging records to compare diurnal foraging rates and depths, as well as classify bouts with a maximum likelihood method, and evaluate behavioral aerobic dive limits (ADLB) through examination of dive durations and inter-dive intervals. Dive duration was the best predictor of foraging, with dives >400.6 seconds classified as foraging, and a 96% classification accuracy. There were no diurnal patterns in foraging depth or rates and average duration of bouts was 2.94 hours with maximum bout durations lasting up to 14 hours. The results indicated that pilot whales forage in relatively long bouts and the ADLB indicate that pilot whales rarely, if ever exceed their aerobic limits. To evaluate the response to predators I used controlled playback experiments to examine the behavioral responses of 10 of the tagged short-finned pilot whales off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina and 4 Risso’s dolphins (Grampus griseus) off Southern California to the calls of mammal-eating killer whales (MEK). Both species responded to a subset of MEK calls with increased movement, swim speed and increased cohesion of the focal groups, but the two species exhibited different directional movement and vocal responses. Pilot whales increased their call rate and approached the sound source, but Risso’s dolphins exhibited no change in their vocal behavior and moved in a rapid, directed manner away from the source. Thus, at least to a sub-set of mammal-eating killer whale calls, these two study species reacted in a manner that is consistent with their patterns of social organization. Pilot whales, which live in relatively permanent groups bound by strong social bonds, responded in a manner that built on their high levels of social cohesion. In contrast, Risso’s dolphins exhibited an exaggerated flight response and moved rapidly away from the sound source. The fact that both species responded strongly to a select number of MEK calls, suggests that structural features of signals play critical contextual roles in the probability of response to potential threats in odontocete cetaceans.

Vegetation near the autosampler at TS/Ph-2, Taylor Slough

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation through the Florida Coastal Everglades Long-Term Ecological Research program under Cooperative Agreements #DBI-0620409 and #DEB-9910514. This image is made available for non-commercial or educational use only.

(Table T1) Carbon contents, alkenone concentrations, alkenone unsaturation index, and SST in sediments of ODP Leg 190 sites

We have preliminarily generated the downcore records of total organic carbon (TOC) content, total alkenone concentration, alkenone unsaturation index, and the estimated sea-surface temperature (SST) in the northern three sites (Sites 1175, 1176, and 1178) of the Muroto Transect, Nankai Trough. The TOC content will be used for the evaluation of the burial of organic matter, which plays a role in the generation of natural gas and the formation of gas hydrate in this region. The downcore records of alkenone SST will benefit studies for the paleoceanography of the northwestern Pacific. Because those sites are located in the main path of the Kuroshio Current, the records provide the temperature change of the Kuroshio water, which is an end-member water mass in the northwestern Pacific.