The purpose of this study was to determine the relative effectiveness of the use of an individualized reading approach, a combination basal-SRA approach, and a basal reader approach, when taught to third grade Negro children.

Faculty of Humanities School of Education 8802108f / Phenomenography is an area of research which focuses on identifying and describing the qualitatively different ways in which people understand phenomena in the world around them. In this research, a group of first-year chemical engineering students at the University of the Witwatersrand were interviewed in order to explore their perceptions of certain aspects of the learning context of their compulsory engineering course, Introduction to Process and Materials Engineering. The findings comprise descriptions of their different perceptions concerning the organization, content, teaching and assessment practices in the course as well as their perceptions of certain aspects of constructivism on which the course is based. Students’ perceptions which influence their approach to learning are categorized according to whether or not they encourage a deep approach to learning. Finally, the implications of these findings for future course development are discussed.

Sometimes it feels as though everybody has an opinion on how you should bring up your child – and no two people seem to agree on how it should be done for the best! Parenting with Reason cuts through the masses of confusing and often contradictory advice about parenting by providing hard evidence to back up the tough decisions all parents face. Unlike many self-help guides to parenting which are based on the opinion of one author, this book is based on many findings from scientific research, giving you a trustworthy, ‘evidence-based’ guide to help see your way through parenting dilemmas. Written by a clinical psychologist, a developmental psychologist and a doctor of family medicine, the book looks at pressing questions such as: 'What should I do when my child acts up?', 'How can I get my baby to sleep through the night?' and 'How do I begin to toilet-train my child?' The authors, who are also parents themselves, debunk common myths about parenting, such as the notion that a healthy baby needs to be able to breastfeed at will throughout the night, or the idea that children who are adopted need specialized counselling. They also cover issues such as how children might be affected by seeing violence on television, how a parent’s psychological health can affect their child, what the scientific evidence is for and against circumcision, and how divorce and adoption affect a child’s development. The end of each chapter gives you 'The Bottom Line', a handy summary of the key points of each issue. This book is ideal for new or prospective parents, and paediatricians, family health providers and anyone who works with children and their parents will also find the book’s objective, scientific approach useful in their work. / https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1208/thumbnail.jpg

This research presents the processes and findings of an interdisciplinary study of mothers’ and daughters’ shared relations to film stars. Principally grounded within the cultural studies tradition of investigating the role of media in everyday life, the research explores the intergenerational transmission of film star tastes and preferences between mothers and daughters, building upon existing literature from the fields of star studies, family sociology, memory studies and audience research. It also takes a new perspective on the study of audiences for stars from the work of art anthropologist Alfred Gell, who posited the notion that the study of art should concern its ‘practical mediatory role’ within social interactions. The research was conducted by means of an empirical audience study of paired mother-daughter dyads of varying ages, class backgrounds and social circumstances, and was carried out in two phases: a preliminary online survey which recruited 92 mother-daughter pairs; and 16 follow-up telephone interviews with selected mothers and daughters. The first phase utilized quali-quantitative methods of analysis to explore various models of mother-daughter-star relations, while the second phase used a combined analytical approach that coupled an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis approach with elements of memory studies to further investigate those identified dyadic models. An overarching finding of the thesis is that film stars perform varying, but also evolving, functions within mother-daughter relationships depending upon the socio-demographic make-up of the dyad. Other more specific findings include: that class identifications are a key determinant in mother-daughter shared gender preferences in regard of admired stars, and that in mother-daughter relationships where there is a greater distance in their age gap, mothers specifically carve out shared times between the pair, using film stars as a common resource which provides a communicative coinage within their relations.

Modular approaches are widely used methods in AI and engineering. This approach reduces the difficulty of solving a complex problem by subdividing the problem into several smaller parts, i.e. modules, and tackle each independently. In this dissertation, we show how modular approaches can simplify grasping and manipulation problems of service robots. We use the modular approach to tame the difficulties in solving three main research problems in this field: grasp planning, object manipulation and reach motion planning. Different from industrial controlled environments, service robots have to handle abrupt changes and uncertainties occurring in dynamic and cluttered human centered environments. Planning behaviours in such an environment needs to be fast and adaptive to changing context. Programming robot with adaptive behaviours usually is a difficult task and takes a long time. By adopting modular approaches, the task difficulty is reduced as well as the programming time. The proposed approach is based on the method of imitation learning, sometimes referred to as the Programming by Demonstration (PbD). In this framework, we first let human or robot demonstrates possible solutions of the problem. After collecting the demonstrations, we extract multiple modules from the data. Each module represents a part of the system and their corresponding demonstrations are modeled with a statistical method. According to the environment condition, a set of appropriate modules are chosen to provide the final solution. In this dissertation, we present three different modular approaches in tackling three subareas in robot grasping and manipulation: grasp planning, object manipulation adaptive control and planning reaching motions. In Chapter 3, we propose a fast method for computing grasps for known objects and extend this method by a modular approach to work with novel objects. We implemented this method with two different robot hands: the Barrett hand and the iCub hand, and show that the computation time is always in the millisecond scale. In Chapter 4, we present our modular approach in extracting adaptive control strategies using human demonstrations of object manipulation tasks. We successfully implement this method to teach a robot an manipulation tasks: opening bottle caps. In Chapter 5, we present a method to model reaching motion primitives that would allow humans to modulate robot motions by verbal commands. This method is implemented to perform a bimanual lifting task. We show that the method can generate new motions to lift boxes with different sizes and at different locations. These three studies show that robot grasping and manipulation problems can indeed be divided into modules, the solutions of which can be combined to provide a whole solution to the original problems. With modular approaches, new solutions for novel scenarios can be integrated to the original solution without difficulty. This approach allows robots to accumulate their skills. In summary, we contribute three modular and learning hybrid methods in this dissertation: (1) a fast method for grasp planning; (2) a method to extract human manipulation skills from demonstrations for object manipulation; (3) a method to recognize motions and generate motions according to human commands.

O design social é um tema que a literatura do design trata desde a década de 60, contudo até hoje existem lacunas teóricas e metodológicas que afetam a prática profissional e o ensino do design, reduzindo o seu impacto social. Neste trabalho o design social é entendido como uma área maior que engloba o projeto de produtos e serviços e, portanto, tem contribuição direta para o bem-estar e a qualidade de vida das pessoas, através da resolução de problemas sociais. O trabalho se sustenta em dois grandes grupos de dados: as abordagens de design social, reunidas a partir de levantamento bibliográfico; e os kits de ferramentas voltados ao tema, reunidos através de pesquisa documental. A partir de uma revisão de literatura sistemática e integradora destes grupos, o trabalho se propõe a reunir e organizar o conhecimento destas áreas a fim de gerar um quadro teórico que colabore para o incentivo à pesquisa e ao ensino do design, mais adequado à realidade de crises humanitárias, políticas e econômicas com a qual se convive em nível global. / Social design is a theme that the design literature talks from the 60s, but until today are theoretical and methodological gaps that affect professional practice and teaching of design, reducing their social impact. In this work the social design is understood as a larger area that includes the design of products and services and therefore has direct contribution to people’s well-being and quality of life, by solving social problems. The work is grounded on two groups of data: the social design approaches, gathered from bibliographic research; and the toolkits geared to the theme, gathered through documental research. From a systematic and integrating literature review of these groups, the study aims to gather and organize the knowledge of these areas in order to generate a theoretical framework to collaborate to encourage the research and education in this field, as well the professional practice, more suited to the reality of humanitarian, political and economic crises with which we live globally.

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No description available.

Fretting fatigue occurs when there is a small amplitude oscillatory movement between two contacting surfaces while the bodies are undergoing fatigue loading. Fretting fatigue conditions can substantially reduce the fatigue life of a component. Many engineering components such as Ti-6Al-4V gas turbine engine disks in military aircraft commonly experience fretting fatigue conditions that can potentially lead to catastrophic failure of critical components. The aim of this study is to characterize the behavior of Ti-6Al-4V under fretting fatigue conditions. Experiments are performed to analyze the influence of stress amplitude, stress ratio, and contact geometry. The effect of surface treatments such as low plasticity burnishing on the fretting fatigue life is also explored. The experimental results are being used to validate a proposed crack nucleation life prediction model. The proposed model utilizes a crack nucleation parameter H that is based on the strength of the singular stress field at the contact boundary. An advantage of this singular parameter is that neither a coefficient of friction nor the location of the stick/slip boundary needs to be determined. These two parameters are often difficult to define with certainty a priori. H is also independent of geometry making it well suited for use as a design parameter for designing structural joints and other fitted connections between components.

Avian influenza virus (AIV) is a type A virus of the family Orthomyxoviridae and its outbreaks not only cause economic losses in poultry, but also are worldwide threats to human health. The phenotypic changes in host cells induced by pathogens are always accompanied by remarkable changes in gene expression. Therefore understanding the gene expression profile of infected cells at the global level is important to get insights into interactions between hosts and viruses. Different genomic approaches have been utilized in the current study to investigate the host-AIV interactions in chickens. The Ser to Asn mutation on position 631 in the chicken Mx1 protein was reported to result in a positive antiviral function in vitro. With AIV infection, the Mx1 mRNA expression levels in heterozygous birds were significantly up-regulated. Additional mutations on the chicken Mx1 coding region were identified by sequencing. The results showed that most identified mutations were co-segregated with S631N mutation except one insertion in the position of 1544bp in the heterozygous birds. We speculate this insertion might be related to the up-regulation of mRNA expression of heterozygous birds with AIV infection. The miRNAs play critical roles in biological processes and are important effectors in host-pathogen interactions. The miRNA deep sequencing was used to profile miRNAs in AIV infected or non-infected chickens. Differentially expressed miRNAs identified have expanded our knowledge in the functions of these potential immune related chicken miRNAs regulating host response to AIV infection. Both microarray and transcriptome analysis by RNA-Seq were used in the current study to investigate the global gene expression of host response to AIV infection. Through the comprehensive analysis, a list of strong candidate miRNAs such as miR-32 and their host target genes including Mx1 were identified for further elucidating the regulatory mechanism of host-AIV interaction. In summary, we have identified many important candidate host genes and miRNAs which play important roles in the modulation of host response to AIV infection using genomic approaches. Further investigation of underline regulatory mechanisms of these genes, miRNAs or related pathways, followed by functional analysis, could lay solid foundation for understanding cellular and molecular mechanisms of the host-AIV interactions, thereby, pave a way for the development of novel protective strategies against AIV infection in chickens.