| Journal Publications |
Practicing Teachers' Advice to Pre-Service Teachers on Technology Skills Needed in the Classroom
(Bettie
Hall)
While many research efforts focus on the integration of technologies into teacher classroom instruction, few by comparison portray technology use from practicing teachers’ standpoints. Therefore, questions remain about what technologies teachers say are commonly found in their classrooms, how these technologies are being utilized for instructional purposes, and what would help pre-service teachers better anticipate classroom realities. This paper presents findings obtained from a study of middle- and secondary school teachers in a Midwestern urban school community. Skills and capabilities these teachers advised for pre-service teachers ranged from office productivity applications to storyboarding digital projects and are summarized in a table. The insights offered by these teachers into the skills and capabilities they advise pre-service teachers to develop offer fresh perspectives that can help teacher education and professional development programs better prepare pre-service teachers to deal with the technologies and issues they can expect to face in their future classrooms.
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Temperament, family environment, and behavior problems in children with new-onset seizures
(Katherine
Baum)
Children with epilepsy, even those with new-onset seizures, exhibit relatively high rates of behavior problems. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships among early temperament, family adaptive resources, and behavior problems in children with new-onset seizures. Our major goal was to test whether family adaptive resources moderated the relationship between early temperament dimensions and current behavior problems in 287 children with new-onset seizures. Two of the three temperament dimensions (difficultness and resistance to control) were positively correlated with total, internalizing, and externalizing behavior problems (all p < 0.0001). The third temperament dimension, unadaptability, was positively correlated with total and internalizing problems (p < 0.01). Family adaptive resources moderated the relationships between temperament and internalizing and externalizing behavior problems at school. Children with a difficult early temperament who live in a family environment with low family mastery are at the greatest risk for behavior problems.
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Mandolin
(Laureen
Mahoney)
poem
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La escritura exasperada de Rodrigo Lira
(Marcelo
Rioseco)
.
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Activity-Adjusted 24-Hour Ambulatory Blood Pressure and Cardiac Remodeling in Children with Sleep Disordered Breathing
(Matthew
Fenchel)
Questions remain as to whether pediatric sleep disordered breathing increases the risk for elevated blood
pressure and blood pressure– dependent cardiac remodeling. We tested the hypothesis that activity-adjusted morning
blood pressure surge, blood pressure load, and diurnal and nocturnal blood pressure are significantly higher in children
with sleep disordered breathing than in healthy controls and that these blood pressure parameters relate to left ventricular
remodeling. 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure parameters were compared between groups. The associations between
blood pressure and left ventricular relative wall thickness and mass were measured. 140 children met the inclusion
criteria. In children with apnea hypopnea index 5 per hour, a significant difference from controls was the morning
blood surge. Significant increases in blood pressure surge, blood pressure load, and in 24-hour ambulatory blood
pressure were evident in those whom the apnea hypopnea index exceeded 5 per hour. Sleep disordered breathing and
body mass index had similar effect on blood pressure parameters except for nocturnal diastolic blood pressure, where
sleep disordered breathing had a significantly greater effect than body mass index. Diurnal and nocturnal systolic blood
pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and mean arterial blood pressure predicted the changes in left ventricular relative wall
thickness. Therefore, sleep disordered breathing in children who are otherwise healthy is independently associated with
an increase in morning blood pressure surge, blood pressure load, and 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure. The
association between left ventricular remodeling and 24-hour blood pressure highlights the role of sleep disordered
breathing in increasing cardiovascular morbidity.
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Growth Velocity Predicts Recurrence of Sleep-disordered Breathing 1 Year after Adenotonsillectomy
(Matthew
Fenchel)
Rationale: Adenotonsillectomy, the first line of treatment of sleep-disordered breathing (SDB), is the most commonly performed pediatric surgery. Predictors of the recurrence of SDB after adenotonsillectomy and its impact on cardiovascular risk factors have not been identified.
Objectives: Demonstrate that gain velocity in body mass index (BMI) defined as unit increase in BMI/year confers an independent risk for the recurrence of SDB 1 year after adenotonsillectomy.
Methods: Children with SDB and hypertrophy of the tonsils and a comparison group of healthy children were followed prospectively for 1 year.
Measurements and Main Results: Serial polysomnographies, BMI, and blood pressure were obtained before adenotonsillectomy and 6 weeks, 6 months, and 1 year postoperatively. Gain velocity in BMI, BMI and being African American (odds ratios, 4–6/unit change/yr; 1.4/unit and 15, respectively) provided equal amounts of predictive power to the risk of recurrence of SDB. In the group that experienced recurrence, systolic blood pressure at 1 year was higher than at baseline and higher than in children who did not experience recurrence.
Conclusions: Three clinical parameters confer independent increased risk for high recurrence of SDB after adenotonsillectomy: gain velocity in BMI, obesity, and being African American. A long-term follow-up of children with SDB and monitoring of gain velocity in BMI are essential to identifying children at risk for recurrence of SDB and in turn at risk for hypertension.
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Book Review - Nuclear Deterrence in Southern Asia: China, India and Pakistan. (Rajain Arpit)
(Anil
Pillai)
This book examines the triangular relationship of China, India and Pakistan through the prism of nuclear deterrence. It highlights the interplay and role of strategic culture, nuclear weaponisation and deployment, command and control, arms control, non-state actors and foreign policy issues which affect relations between the three countries.
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Infinite coupling duals of N=2 gauge theories and new rank 1 superconformal field theories
(John
Wittig)
We show that a proposed duality between in?nitely coupled gauge theories and superconformal ?eld theories (SCFTs) with weakly gauged ?avor groups predicts the existence of new rank 1 SCFTs. These superconformal ?xed point theories have the same
Coulomb branch singularities as the rank 1 E6 , E7 , and E8 SCFTs, but have smaller ?avor symmetry algebras and di?erent central charges. Gauging various subalgebras of the ?avor algebras of these rank 1 SCFTs provides many examples of in?nite-coupling dualities, satisfying an intricate set of consistency checks. They also provide examples of N = 2 conformal theories with marginal couplings but no weak-coupling limits.
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Protein-Aptamer Binding Studies Using Microchip Affinity Capillary Electrophoresis
(Irena
Nikcevic)
The use of traditional CE to detect weak binding complexes is problematic due to the fast-off rate resulting in the dissociation of the complex during the separation process. Additionally, proteins involved in binding interactions often nonspecifically stick to the bare-silica capillary walls, which further complicates the binding analysis. Microchip CE allows flexibly positioning the detector along the separation channel and conveniently adjusting the separation length. A short separation length plus a high electric field enables rapid separations thus reducing both the dissociation of the complex and the amount of protein loss due to nonspecific adsorption during the separation process. Thrombin and a selective thrombin-binding aptamer were used to demonstrate the capability of microchip CE for the study of relatively weak binding systems that have inherent limitations when using the migration shift method or other CE methods. The rapid separation of the thrombin–aptamer complex from the free aptamer was achieved in less than 10 s on a single-cross glass microchip with a relatively short detection length (1.0 cm) and a high electric field (670 V/cm). The dissociation constant was determined to be 43 nM, consistent with reported results. In addition, aptamer probes were used for the quantitation of standard thrombin samples by constructing a calibration curve, which showed good linearity over two orders of magnitude with an LOD for thrombin of 5 nM at a three-fold S/N.
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Characterization and Performance Reproducibility of Injection Molded Poly(methylmethacrylate) Microchips for Capillary Electrophoresis
(Irena
Nikcevic)
Injection molded poly(methylmethacrylate) (IM-PMMA), chips were evaluated as potential candidates for capillary electrophoresis disposable chip applications. Mass production and usage of plastic microchips depends on chip-to-chip reproducibility and on analysis accuracy. Several important properties of IM-PMMA chips were considered: fabrication quality evaluated by environmental scanning electron microscope imaging, surface quality measurements, selected thermal/electrical properties as indicated by measurement of the current versus applied voltage (I–V) characteristic and the influence of channel surface treatments. Electroosmotic flow was also evaluated for untreated and O2 reactive ion etching (RIE) treated surface microchips. The performance characteristics of single lane plastic microchip capillary electrophoresis (MCE) separations were evaluated using a mixture of two dyes—fluorescein (FL) and fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC). To overcome non-wettability of the native IM-PMMA surface, a modifier, polyethylene oxide was added to the buffer as a dynamic coating. Chip performance reproducibility was studied for chips with and without surface modification via the process of RIE with O2 and by varying the hole position for the reservoir in the cover plate or on the pattern side of the chip. Additionally, the importance of reconditioning steps to achieve optimal performance reproducibility was also examined. It was found that more reproducible quantitative results were obtained when normalized values of migration time, peak area and peak height of FL and FITC were used instead of actual measured parameters.
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