Title I federal funds are provided to schools with high percentages of children from low-income families to help ensure that all students meet academic standards. Despite this and other efforts by the federal government to assist low-income families with the problems associated with poverty, the minimum proficiency levels required by the No Child Left Behind Act have not been met by all students. Little research has been conducted to assess performance of South Dakota schools receiving federal funding under Title 1 to alleviate these deficits in academic achievement. The purpose of this study was to determine whether Title 1 had an effect on low socioeconomic schools by determining if Schoolwide Title 1 elementary schools in South Dakota demonstrated significant student gains in math and reading as measured by state standardized assessments. This nonexperimental quantitative study, guided by Bourdieu's theory of social and cultural reproduction, used archived school report card data to examine standardized testing results in math and reading during the school years of 2008-2009 through 2012-2013 for the 48 elementary Schoolwide Title 1 schools in South Dakota having complete data for these years. The results of the one-way repeated measures ANOVA followed by a Bonferroni post hoc test indicated no significant difference over time on standardized test scores in Schoolwide Title 1 elementary schools for reading, but there was a significant increase for math. The positive social change implications include providing data to inform school and state administrators of the effect of Title 1 of the ESEA on student achievement, and the need to reevaluate Title 1 programs to improve student achievement.

Dropout rates among American Indian students have not shown significant improvement since the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001. While extensive research exists on the dropout phenomenon, no studies were found that addressed why some Navajo girls leave school and the role education narratives play in their decision. Accordingly, this study examined the narratives shaping federal and Navajo education policies in order to understand how these influence school programs. The research questions dealt with three elements that could induce Navajo girls to leave school, the institutions and programs offered by federal and tribal government entities, and the dichotomies between school and home environments. The narrative policy analysis, grounded in social construction theory, included provisional and secondary coding of the NCLB of 2001 and the Navajo Sovereignty in Education Act of 2005. Interviews with administrators from the Department of Diné Education, and a young Navajo woman who had left school, supplemented the documentary analysis. The data were triangulated and a modified network analysis conducted to glean areas of convergence and discrepancy between federal and Navajo policy constructs, based on problem statements and proposed solutions. Results indicated that school programs aligned with federal imperatives might not engage or interest many Navajo girls, leading them to abandon their studies early. The implications for social change include the need to develop programs that increase self-direction and engagement among Navajo girls, and granting indigenous peoples autonomy in deciding which educational approaches most closely align with their cultural norms and long-term objectives.

Title I federal regulations provide funding to school districts to support Supplemental Educational Service (SES) tutoring services to qualified economically disadvantaged K-12 students and that these services should be monitored by school districts to determine its effectiveness. However, a school district in Southern California that is the focus of this convergent parallel design study has not provided sufficient oversight of the SES tutoring program resulting in ambiguity about policy implementation effectiveness. Using a theoretical framework of policy implementation as the foundation, the purpose of this study was to explore the role that quality of service played when administrators implemented the No Child Left Behind Act to evaluate tutoring services supplied by SES providers. Data were collected through a series of interviews with 10 school district administrators who also completed the EDUSERV survey. Data from the interviews were inductively coded and subjected to thematic analysis and descriptive information from the survey were calculated. Findings indicate that SES providers work diligently to support student learning improvement, but the inconsistent oversight by the school district has resulted in disparity in performance scores in educational attainment. The positive social change implications of this study include recommendations to school district leadership to engage in consistent training for leadership in oversight of the SES program as well as improvements in oversight of SES performance in order to enhance outcomes for economically marginalized students

Peptidomimetics are synthetic foldamers that expected more resistant to proteolytic degradation and enormous chemodiversity when compared with peptides. To date, the functional peptidomimetics such as β-peptides, peptoids, oligoureas, etc have been developed in many science fields. In order to explore the unnatural foldameric architectures, it’s necessary to discover the novel frameworks and molecular scaffolds. γ-AApeptides were reported to be a new class of peptidomimetics that showed its potential applications in drug discovery and chemical biology. However, a wide function and property of γ-AApeptides need to be further explored. To expand the potential application of γ-AApeptides in biochemistry, I have been focusing on the development of bioactive peptidomimetics, such as exploring the antibacterial activity of helical 1:1 α-sulfono-γ-AA heterogeneous peptides, developing the helical peptidomimetic as the inhibitor of the protein Ras_Raf interaction, identifying the protein/peptide ligands by the novel one-bead-two compound macrocyclic γ-AApeptide screening library, and elucidating the de novo dragon-boat-shaped synthetic foldamers.

No description available.

The nature of the human brain has preoccupied philosophers and scientists for centuries. As early as the 4th Century BCE, Greek philosophers speculated that the anatomically distinct hemispheres of the brain implied specialisation of function. It was not until the "splitbrain" operations of the 1950s, however, that the precise specialisation of each hemisphere could be demonstrated. The right hemisphere apparently assumed responsibility for spacial, holistic processes, while the left hemisphere processed analytical, sequential tasks. During that same decade, educational psychologists observed two markedly different ways in which individuals perceive and relate to the world. It was later observed that these "cognitive styles" seemed directly related to the bi-polar functions of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. This implied a genetic basis for cognitive style. Subsequent research suggested that cognitive style is to a considerable extent a result of the environment of socialisation, and therefore, different cultures would demonstrate different cognitive styles. Such cultural differences in learning expectations might have serious implications for both teachers and learners in the field of export education. The literature review in this study identified physical, environmental, and experiential factors which appear to influence cognitive style. This information formed the basis of the biographical section of a questionnaire which elicited the learning style preferences of pre-tertiary students from Australia (native speakers), Indonesia and Japan. The study posed the negative hypothesis: There are no significant differences in patterns of cognitive styles between cultures. The results of the field study contradicted the negative hypothesis, identifying significant differences in patterns of cognitive styles between the three cultural groups.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of History, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

Assessment of left ventricular (LV) function is one of the most common requests made to cardiac imaging services. This demand stems from a large body of evidence that shows abnormal LV systolic and, more recently, diastolic function has important prognostic and treatment related implications for patients with a wide range of cardiovascular diseases. The vast majority of information supporting the use of conventional measures of LV function, such as ejection fraction, originates from population studies and large clinical trials. However, the application of these measurements to individual patients is far less defined, especially when used for serial evaluation. Central to these concerns is the relative paucity of data surrounding the test-retest reliability of conventional measures in clinical settings. Newer measures of LV function have been developed over recent years, with several techniques becoming widely used in clinical practice (i.e. tissue Doppler imaging) and others remaining largely research tools (i.e. 3D echocardiography, tissue strain/strain rate). Possible benefits of new technologies include improved identification and early detection of myocardial disease, improved reliability for monitoring progression of disease, and the development of novel methods to assess response to therapy. Despite this potential, the application and clinical utility of these techniques above and beyond more conventional measures remains in many cases to be adequately characterized. This thesis addresses several of these issues: from variability of novel and conventional measures of LV function in clinical practice, to new applications of novel functional measures in clinical settings.

<p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p><p>The main</p><p>objective of this thesis is to study the polarization effects of the beetle <em>Cetonia aurata </em>using Mueller-matrix ellipsometry. The outer shell of the beetle consists of complex microstructures which control the polarization of the reflected light. It has metallic appearance which originates from helicoidal structures. When these microstructures are exposed to polarized or unpolarized light, only left-handed circularly polarized light is reflected. Moreover, the exo-skeleton of the beetle absorbs right-handed polarized light. Multichannel Mueller-matrix ellipsometer or dual rotating compensator ellipsometer, called RC2, from J.A.Woollam is used to measure the polarization caused by different parts of beetle’s body. The 16 Mueller matrix elements are measured in the spectral range 400-800 nm at multiple angles of incidencein the range 40⁰-70⁰. An Optical model is developed to help us understand the nature and type of microstructure which only reflects the green colour circularly polarized light. With the help of multiparametric modeling, we were able to find optical properties and structural parameters. The parameters are: the number of layers, the numbers of sub-layers, their thicknesses, and the orientation with respect to optical axes. This optical model describes the nanostructures which provide the reflection properties similar to the nanostructure found in the beetle <em>Cetonia aurata. </em>The model is also useful for analysis of the optical response data of different materials with multilayer structures.</p></p><p> </p>

<p>Left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) and the insulin resistance syndrome are common conditions associated with a markedly increased cardiovascular risk. In a fairly large prospective longitudinal study of men from the general population, we found that an unfavorable serum fatty acid profile and components of the insulin resistance syndrome such as dyslipidemia, obesity and hypertension at age 50 predicted the prevalence of LVH at age 70. In cross-sectional analyses at age 70, several components of the insulin resistancesyndrome were significantly related to left ventricular relative wall thickness and concentric remodeling, but less to LVH. Left ventricular relative wall thickness was inversely related to insulin sensitivity in skeletal muscle and borderline significantly directly related to insulin sensitivity in the myocardium in a healthy, normotensive sample of the cohort investigated with positron emission tomography, whereas left ventricular mass index was not related to myocardial or skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity. At age 70, echocardiographic LVH was related to a variety of common electrocardiographic diagnoses. In a prospective mortality analysis with baseline at age 70 and a median follow-up time of five years, echocardiographic and electrocardiographic LVH predicted mortality independently of each other and of other cardiovascular risk factors, implying that echocardiographic and electrocardiographic LVH in part carry different prognostic information.</p><p>In summary, components of the insulin resistance syndrome predicted LVH twenty years later, but were cross-sectionally more related to increased left ventricular relative wall thickness and concentric remodeling. Echocardiographic and electrocardiographic LVH predicted mortality independently of each other and of components of the insulin resistance syndrome.</p>