Nurturing Young Students' Writing Knowledge, Self-Regulation, Attitudes, and Self-Efficacy: The Effects of Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of implementing the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) model of instruction (Graham & Harris, 2005; Harris & Graham, 1996) on the writing skills and writing self-regulation, attitudes, self-efficacy, and knowledge of 6 first grade students. A multiple-baseline design across participants with multiple probes (Kazdin, 2010) was used to test the effectiveness of the SRSD instructional intervention. Each participant was taught an SRSD story writing strategy as well as self-regulation strategies. All students wrote stories in response to picture prompts during the baseline, instruction, independent performance, and maintenance phases. Stories were assessed for essential story components, length, and overall quality. All participants also completed a writing attitude scale, a writing self-efficacy scale, and participated in brief interviews during the baseline and independent performance phases. Results indicated that SRSD can be beneficial for average first grade writers. Participants wrote stories that contained more essential components, were longer, and of better quality after SRSD instruction. Participants also showed some improvement in writing self-efficacy from pre- to post-instruction. All of the students maintained positive writing attitudes throughout the study.

Assessment of Texas Medical Providers Concerning Rabies Vaccines

Rabies is an important zoonotic disease in Texas and thousands of people each year either request or require rabies prophylaxis because they have ‘high risk’ jobs or are exposed to the disease. After experiencing difficulty in receiving rabies prophylaxis from physicians, we conducted a survey of Texas medical providers to assess their knowledge of rabies vaccine procedures and their experience with rabies vaccines. Most providers in Texas (>95% of 297) rarely saw patients for rabies prophylaxis; therefore, providers have minimal, if any, experience with the procedures of acquiring and administering the vaccine. Providers varied greatly in their responses to our questions of where to acquire the vaccine, how and where to administer the vaccine, and where to acquire information about the vaccine. State and local health departments should target medical clinics and physician associations as outlets to disseminate information regarding rabies, rabies prophylaxis, and treatment.

THE ROLE OF INDUSTRY IN DEVELOPING NEW MATERIALS FOR VERTEBRATE PEST CONTROL

In the first paper presented to you today by Dr. Spencer, an expert in the Animal Biology field and an official authority at the same time, you heard about the requirements imposed on a chemical in order to pass the different official hurdles before it ever will be accepted as a proven tool in wildlife management. Many characteristics have to be known and highly sophisticated tests have to be run. In many instances the governmental agency maintains its own screening, testing or analytical programs according to standard procedures. It would be impossible, however, for economic and time reasons to work out all the data necessary for themselves. They, therefore, depend largely on the information furnished by the individual industry which naturally has to be established as conscientiously as possible. This, among other things, Dr. Spencer has made very clear; and this is also what makes quite a few headaches for the individual industry, but I am certainly not speaking only for myself in saying that Industry fully realizes this important role in developing materials for vertebrate control and the responsibilities lying in this. This type of work - better to say cooperative work with the official institutions - is, however, only one part and for the most of it, the smallest part of work which Industry pays to the development of compounds for pest control. It actually refers only to those very few compounds which are known to be effective. But how to get to know about their properties in the first place? How does Industry make the selection from the many thousands of compounds synthesized each year? This, by far, creates the biggest problems, at least from the scientific and technical standpoint. Let us rest here for a short while and think about the possible ways of screening and selecting effective compounds. Basically there are two different ways. One is the empirical way of screening as big a number of compounds as possible under the supposition that with the number of incidences the chances for a "hit" increase, too. You can also call this type of approach the statistical or the analytical one, the mass screening of new, mostly unknown candidate materials. This type of testing can only be performed by a producer of many new materials,that means by big industries. It requires a tremendous investment in personnel, time and equipment and is based on highly simplified but indicative test methods, the results of which would have to be reliable and representative for practical purposes. The other extreme is the intellectual way of theorizing effective chemical configurations. Defenders of this method claim to now or later be able to predict biological effectiveness on the basis of the chemical structure or certain groups in it. Certain pre-experience should be necessary, that means knowledge of the importance of certain molecular requirements, then the detection of new and effective complete molecules is a matter of coordination to be performed by smart people or computers. You can also call this method the synthetical or coordinative method.

Rehabilitative treatment of cleft lip and palate: experience of the Hospital for Rehabilitation of Craniofacial Anomalies/USP (HRAC/USP) - Part 1: overall aspects

C left lip and palate is the most common among craniofacial malformations and causes several esthetic and functional implications that require rehabilitation. This paper aims to generally describe the several aspects related to this complex pathology and the treatment protocol used by the Hospital for Rehabilitation of Craniofacial Anomalies, University of So Paulo (HRAC-USP) along 40 years of experience in the treatment of individuals with cleft lip and palate.

Evaluation of facial esthetics in rehabilitated adults with complete unilateral cleft lip and palate

Objectives. The aim of this study was to evaluate the facial esthetics of White-Brazilian adults with complete unilateral cleft lip and palate (UCLP) rehabilitated at a single center. Design. 30 patients (13 females; 17 males; mean age of 24.0 years), rehabilitated at a single center, were photographed and evaluated by 25 examiners, 5 orthodontists, and 5 plastic surgeons dealing with oral clefts, 5 orthodontists and 5 plastic surgeons with no experience in the cleft treatment, and 5 laymen. Their facial profiles were classified into esthetically unpleasant, esthetically acceptable, and esthetically pleasant. Results. Orthodontists dealing with oral clefts classified the majority of the sample as esthetically pleasant. Plastic surgeons dealing with oral cleft, orthodontists, and plastic surgeons without experience with oral clefts classified most of the sample as esthetically acceptable. Laymen evaluation also considered the majority of the sample as esthetically acceptable. Conclusions. The facial profiles of rehabilitated adults with UCLP were classified mostly as esthetically acceptable, with variations among the categories of examiners. The examiners dealing with oral clefts gave higher scores to the facial esthetics when compared to professionals without experience in oral clefts and laypersons, probably due to their knowledge of the limitations involved in the rehabilitation process

Human Abuses of Coral Reefs- Adaptive Responses and Regime Transitions

During the last few decades, coral reefs have become a disappearing feature of tropical marine environments, and those reefs that do remain are severely threatened. It is understood that humans have greately altered the environment under which these ecosystems previously have thrived and evoloved. Overharvesting of fish stocks, global warming and pollution are some of the most prominent threats, acting on coral reefs at several spatial and temporal scales. Presently, it is common that coral reefs have been degraded into alternative ecosystem regimes, such as macroalgae-dominated or sea urchin-barren. Although these ecosystems could potentially return to coral dominance in a long-term perspective, when considdering current conditions, it seems likely that they will persist in their degraded states. Thus, recovery of coral reefs cannot be taken for granted on a human timescale. Multiple stressors and disturbances, which are increasingly characteristic of coral reef environments today, are believed to act synergistically and produce ecological surprises. However, current knowledge of effects of compounded disturbances and stress is limited. Based on five papers, this thesis investigates the sublethal response of multiple stressors on coral physiology, as well as the effects of compounded stress and disturbance on coral reef structure and function. Adaptive responses to stress and disturbance in relation to prior experience are highlighted. The thesis further explores how inherent characteristics (traits) of corals and macroalgae may influence regime expression when faced with altered disturbance regimes, in particular overfishing, eutrophication, elevated temperature, and enhanced substrate availability. Finally, possibilities of affecting the resilience of macroalgae-dominaed reefs and shifting the community composition towards a coral-dominated regime are explored.

Quali-quantitative study of the phenolic and polyphenolic compounds and their antioxidant capacity in vegetal matrix processed with different technologies

Food technologies today mean reducing agricultural food waste, improvement of food security, enhancement of food sensory properties, enlargement of food market and food economies. Food technologists must be high-skilled technicians with good scientific knowledge of food hygiene, food chemistry, industrial technologies and food engineering, sensory evaluation experience and analytical chemistry. Their role is to apply the modern vision of science in the field of human nutrition, rising up knowledge in food science. The present PhD project starts with the aim of studying and improving frozen fruits quality. Freezing process in very powerful in preserve initial raw material characteristics, but pre-treatment before the freezing process are necessary to improve quality, in particular to improve texture and enzymatic activity of frozen foods. Osmotic Dehydration (OD) and Vacuum Impregnation (VI), are useful techniques to modify fruits and vegetables composition and prepare them to freezing process. These techniques permit to introduce cryo-protective agent into the food matrices, without significant changes of the original structure, but cause a slight leaching of important intrinsic compounds. Phenolic and polyphenolic compounds for example in apples and nectarines treated with hypertonic solutions are slightly decreased, but the effect of concentration due to water removal driven out from the osmotic gradient, cause a final content of phenolic compounds similar to that of the raw material. In many experiment, a very important change in fruit composition regard the aroma profile. This occur in strawberries osmo-dehydrated under vacuum condition or under atmospheric pressure condition. The increment of some volatiles, probably due to fermentative metabolism induced by the osmotic stress of hypertonic treatment, induce a sensory profile modification of frozen fruits, that in some way result in a better acceptability of consumer, that prefer treated frozen fruits to untreated frozen fruits. Among different processes used, a very interesting result was obtained with the application of a osmotic pre-treatment driven out at refrigerated temperature for long time. The final quality of frozen strawberries was very high and a peculiar increment of phenolic profile was detected. This interesting phenomenon was probably due to induction of phenolic biological synthesis (for example as reaction to osmotic stress), or to hydrolysis of polymeric phenolic compounds. Aside this investigation in the cryo-stabilization and dehydrofreezing of fruits, deeper investigation in VI techniques were carried out, as studies of changes in vacuum impregnated prickly pear texture, and in use of VI and ultrasound (US) in aroma enrichment of fruit pieces. Moreover, to develop sensory evaluation tools and analytical chemistry determination (of volatiles and phenolic compounds), some researches were bring off and published in these fields. Specifically dealing with off-flavour development during storage of boiled potato, and capillary zonal electrophoresis (CZE) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) determination of phenolic compounds.

Effect of Laser Shock Peening on Fatigue Crack Propagation of Aeronautical Structures

Laser Shock Peening (LSP) is a surface enhancement treatment which induces a significant layer of beneficial compressive residual stresses up to several mm underneath the surface of metal components in order to improve the detrimental effects of crack growth behavior rate in it. The aim of this thesis is to predict the crack growth behavior of thin Aluminum specimens with one or more LSP stripes defining a compressive residual stress area. The LSP treatment has been applied as crack retardation stripes perpendicular to the crack growing direction, with the objective of slowing down the crack when approaching the LSP patterns. Different finite element approaches have been implemented to predict the residual stress field left by the laser treatment, mostly by means of the commercial software Abaqus/Explicit. The Afgrow software has been used to predict the crack growth behavior of the component following the laser peening treatment and to detect the improvement in fatigue life comparing to the specimen baseline. Furthermore, an analytical model has been implemented on the Matlab software to make more accurate predictions on fatigue life of the treated components. An educational internship at the Research and Technologies Germany- Hamburg department of Airbus helped to achieve knowledge and experience to write this thesis. The main tasks of the thesis are the following: -To up to date Literature Survey related to laser shock peening in metallic structures -To validate the FE models developed against experimental measurements at coupon level -To develop design of crack growth slow down in centered and edge cracked tension specimens based on residual stress engineering approach using laser peened patterns transversal to the crack path -To predict crack growth behavior of thin aluminum panels -To validate numerical and analytical results by means of experimental tests.

Influence of examiner's clinical experience on the reproducibility and accuracy of radiographic examination in detecting occlusal caries

The aim of this in vitro study was to assess the influence of varying examiner's clinical experience on the reproducibility and accuracy of radiographic examination for occlusal caries detection. Standardized bitewing radiographs were obtained from 166 permanent molars. Radiographic examination was performed by final-year dental students from two universities (A, n = 5; B, n = 5) and by dentists with 5 to 7 years of experience who work in two different countries (C, n = 5; D, n = 5). All examinations were repeated after 1-week interval. The teeth were histologically prepared and assessed for caries extension. For intraexaminer reproducibility, the unweighted kappa values were: A (0.11-0.40), B (0.12-0.33), C (0.47-0.58), and D (0.42-0.71). Interexaminer reproducibility statistics were computed based on means ± SD of unweighted kappa values: A (0.07 ± 0.05), B (0.12 ± 0.09), C (0.24 ± 0.08), and D (0.33 ± 0.10). Sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy were calculated at D(1) and D(3) thresholds and compared by performing McNemar test (p = 0.05). D(1) sensitivity ranged between 0.29 and 0.75 and specificity between 0.24 and 0.85. D(3) specificity was moderate to high (between 0.62 and 0.95) for all groups, with statistically significant difference between the dentists groups (C and D). Sensitivity was low to moderate (between 0.21 and 0.57) with statistically significant difference for groups B and D. Accuracy was similar for all groups (0.55). Spearman's correlations were: A (0.12), B (0.24), C (0.30), and D (0.38). In conclusion, the reproducibility of radiographic examination was influenced by the examiner's clinical experience, training, and dental education as well as the accuracy in detecting occlusal caries.

Role of complement and perspectives for intervention in ischemia-reperfusion damage

Reperfusion of an organ following prolonged ischemia instigates the pro-inflammatory and pro-coagulant response of ischemia / reperfusion (IR) injury. IR injury is a wide-spread pathology, observed in many clinically relevant situations, including myocardial infarction, stroke, organ transplantation, sepsis and shock, and cardiovascular surgery on cardiopulmonary bypass. Activation of the classical, alternative, and lectin complement pathways and the generation of the anaphylatoxins C3a and C5a lead to recruitment of polymorphonuclear leukocytes, generation of radical oxygen species, up-regulation of adhesion molecules on the endothelium and platelets, and induction of cytokine release. Generalized or pathway-specific complement inhibition using protein-based drugs or low-molecular-weight inhibitors has been shown to significantly reduce tissue injury and improve outcome in numerous in-vitro, ex-vivo, and in-vivo models. Despite the obvious benefits in experimental research, only few complement inhibitors, including C1-esterase inhibitor, anti-C5 antibody, and soluble complement receptor 1, have made it into clinical trials of IR injury. The results are mixed, and the next objectives should be to combine knowledge and experience obtained in the past from animal models and channel future work to translate this into clinical trials in surgical and interventional reperfusion therapy as well as organ transplantation.

The effectiveness of ERC advanced life support (ALS) provider courses for the retention of ALS knowledge

Out-of-hospital emergency physicians in Austria need mandatory emergency physician training, followed by biennial refresher courses. Currently, both standardized ERC advanced life support (ALS) provider courses and conventional refresher courses are offered. This study aimed to compare the retention of ALS-knowledge of out-of-hospital emergency physicians depending on whether they had or had not participated in an ERC-ALS provider course since 2005.

Webinar Training: an acceptable, feasible and effective approach for multi-site medical record abstraction: the BOWII experience

Background Abstractor training is a key element in creating valid and reliable data collection procedures. The choice between in-person vs. remote or simultaneous vs. sequential abstractor training has considerable consequences for time and resource utilization. We conducted a web-based (webinar) abstractor training session to standardize training across six individual Cancer Research Network (CRN) sites for a study of breast cancer treatment effects in older women (BOWII). The goals of this manuscript are to describe the training session, its participants and participants' evaluation of webinar technology for abstraction training. Findings A webinar was held for all six sites with the primary purpose of simultaneously training staff and ensuring consistent abstraction across sites. The training session involved sequential review of over 600 data elements outlined in the coding manual in conjunction with the display of data entry fields in the study's electronic data collection system. Post-training evaluation was conducted via Survey Monkey©. Inter-rater reliability measures for abstractors within each site were conducted three months after the commencement of data collection. Ten of the 16 people who participated in the training completed the online survey. Almost all (90%) of the 10 trainees had previous medical record abstraction experience and nearly two-thirds reported over 10 years of experience. Half of the respondents had previously participated in a webinar, among which three had participated in a webinar for training purposes. All rated the knowledge and information delivered through the webinar as useful and reported it adequately prepared them for data collection. Moreover, all participants would recommend this platform for multi-site abstraction training. Consistent with participant-reported training effectiveness, results of data collection inter-rater agreement within sites ranged from 89 to 98%, with a weighted average of 95% agreement across sites. Conclusions Conducting training via web-based technology was an acceptable and effective approach to standardizing medical record review across multiple sites for this group of experienced abstractors. Given the substantial time and cost savings achieved with the webinar, coupled with participants' positive evaluation of the training session, researchers should consider this instructional method as part of training efforts to ensure high quality data collection in multi-site studies.

A Robust Parser of Czech

Mr. Kubon's project was inspired by the growing need for an automatic, syntactic analyser (parser) of Czech, which could be used in the syntactic processing of large amounts of texts. Mr. Kubon notes that such a tool would be very useful, especially in the field of corpus linguistics, where creating a large-scale "tree bank" (a collection of syntactic representations of natural language sentences) is a very important step towards the investigation of the properties of a given language. The work involved in syntactically parsing a whole corpus in order to get a representative set of syntactic structures would be almost inconceivable without the help of some kind of robust (semi)automatic parser. The need for the automatic natural language parser to be robust increases with the size of the linguistic data in the corpus or in any other kind of text which is going to be parsed. Practical experience shows that apart from syntactically correct sentences, there are many sentences which contain a "real" grammatical error. These sentences may be corrected in small-scale texts, but not generally in the whole corpus. In order to be able to complete the overall project, it was necessary to address a number of smaller problems. These were; 1. the adaptation of a suitable formalism able to describe the formal grammar of the system; 2. the definition of the structure of the system's dictionary containing all relevant lexico-syntactic information, and the development of a formal grammar able to robustly parse Czech sentences from the test suite; 3. filling the syntactic dictionary with sample data allowing the system to be tested and debugged during its development (about 1000 words); 4. the development of a set of sample sentences containing a reasonable amount of grammatical and ungrammatical phenomena covering some of the most typical syntactic constructions being used in Czech. Number 3, building a formal grammar, was the main task of the project. The grammar is of course far from complete (Mr. Kubon notes that it is debatable whether any formal grammar describing a natural language may ever be complete), but it covers the most frequent syntactic phenomena, allowing for the representation of a syntactic structure of simple clauses and also the structure of certain types of complex sentences. The stress was not so much on building a wide coverage grammar, but on the description and demonstration of a method. This method uses a similar approach as that of grammar-based grammar checking. The problem of reconstructing the "correct" form of the syntactic representation of a sentence is closely related to the problem of localisation and identification of syntactic errors. Without a precise knowledge of the nature and location of syntactic errors it is not possible to build a reliable estimation of a "correct" syntactic tree. The incremental way of building the grammar used in this project is also an important methodological issue. Experience from previous projects showed that building a grammar by creating a huge block of metarules is more complicated than the incremental method, which begins with the metarules covering most common syntactic phenomena first, and adds less important ones later, especially from the point of view of testing and debugging the grammar. The sample of the syntactic dictionary containing lexico-syntactical information (task 4) now has slightly more than 1000 lexical items representing all classes of words. During the creation of the dictionary it turned out that the task of assigning complete and correct lexico-syntactic information to verbs is a very complicated and time-consuming process which would itself be worth a separate project. The final task undertaken in this project was the development of a method allowing effective testing and debugging of the grammar during the process of its development. The problem of the consistency of new and modified rules of the formal grammar with the rules already existing is one of the crucial problems of every project aiming at the development of a large-scale formal grammar of a natural language. This method allows for the detection of any discrepancy or inconsistency of the grammar with respect to a test-bed of sentences containing all syntactic phenomena covered by the grammar. This is not only the first robust parser of Czech, but also one of the first robust parsers of a Slavic language. Since Slavic languages display a wide range of common features, it is reasonable to claim that this system may serve as a pattern for similar systems in other languages. To transfer the system into any other language it is only necessary to revise the grammar and to change the data contained in the dictionary (but not necessarily the structure of primary lexico-syntactic information). The formalism and methods used in this project can be used in other Slavic languages without substantial changes.

"What is the Value of Youth Work?" Symposium Booklet

As a group of experienced and novice youth workers, we believe that youth work is fundamentally about building trust-filled, mutually respectful relationships with young people. We create safe environments for young people to connect with other supportive adults and peers and to avoid violence in their neighborhoods and their homes. We guide those harmed by oppressive community conditions such as racism, sexism, agism, homophobia, and classism through a process of healing. As we get to know more about young people’s interests, we help them develop knowledge and skills in a variety of areas including: academic, athletic, leadership/civic, the arts, health and wellbeing, and career exploration. In short, we create transformative experiences for young people. In spite of the critical roles we play, we have largely been overlooked in youth development research, policy, and as a professional workforce. We face challenges ‘moving up’ in our careers. We get frustrated by how little money we earn. We are discouraged that despite our knowledge and experience we are not invited to the tables where youth funding, programming, and policy decisions are made. It is true—many of us do not have formal training or degrees in youth work—a reality which at times we regret. Yet, as our colleague communicates in the accompanying passage (see below), we resent that formal education is required for us to get ahead, particularly because we question whether we need it to do our jobs more effectively. Through the “What is the Value of Youth Work?” symposium, we hope to address these concerns through a dialogue about youth work with the following objectives: • Increase awareness of the knowledge, skills, contributions, and professionalism of youth workers; • Advance a youth worker professional development model that integrates a dilemma-focused approach with principles of social justice youth development; • Launch an ongoing Worcester area Youth Worker network. This booklet provides a brief overview of the challenges in ‘professionalizing’ youth work and an alternative approach that we are advancing that puts the knowledge and expertise of youth workers at the center of professional development.

[Needs and expectations of Tamil women attending an antenatal care department at a Swiss university hospital]

It has been noted that immigrant women often initiate prenatal care late in their pregnancy and thus may be inadequately prepared for their birth experience. This leads to poorer maternal outcomes and higher morbidity statistics compared to Swiss women. Tamil women of Sri Lanka represent the largest group of immigrant women being seen at the antenatal care clinic of a Swiss University Hospital. To get a deeper understanding of their needs and expectations relative to their antenatal care, a qualitative study was undertaken. Problem centred interviews were conducted with seven Tamil women before and after delivery. An interpreter was consulting. Data were analyzed using content analysis methods as described by Mayring. Four main themes emerged, demonstrating the need of the women and their resulting expectation: 1) to receive esteem--to show respect and attention; 2) to consult with somebody--to ensure communication; 3) to alleviate worries and fear--to give a sense of security and be in charge; and 4) to make up for lack of experience and knowledge--to pass on experience and knowledge. The quality of the relationships to caregivers is viewed as pivotal and seems to influence Tamil women's satisfaction and their motivation to receive prenatal care.