The purpose of this study was to identify existing relationships between the perceptions of novice teachers regarding their teacher preparation programs, the support given to teachers from their schools, and the purpose of school. The study took place in Northeast Tennessee. Seventeen teachers from three different school systems participated in individual qualitative interviews, which lasted about one hour each. The finding corroborated the theory analyzed for this study and revealed areas for improvement in all levels of the education system. Teachers suggested meaningful changes to teacher preparation programs, including changes to general prerequisites and reorganizing education programs around meaningful field experience connected with adequate theory. Teachers suggested school districts to refine some programs they already have in place and improve their support. When prompted about the purpose of school, most teachers found a lack of connection between the expectations of school from state level and the purpose of school. The suggestions given by teachers matched the suggestions given by research regarding what needs to change to achieve the purpose of school.

The world's water resources face unsustainable pressure from population growth, changes in consumption patterns, pollution, and overexploitation. Water resources managers have developed holistic approaches such as IWRM (Integrated Water Resources Management) and, more recently, the WEEF (Water-Energy-Environment-Food) nexus to address the situation. However, their application in day-to-day water resources management is still challenging due to the of little knowledge, data, and tools. One area where that challenge needs practical solutions is reservoir operation. The current study aims to improve the reservoir module in the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) so that operation rules that aim to meet various water, food, and electricity objectives can be simulated. The improved SWAT model is used to simulate the management of the Sélingué reservoir in Mali, West Africa. The reservoir operation was simulated under three different operation rules: 1) priority to monthly hydropower production (HPP) target (rule 1); 2) respect of predefined monthly target storage (rule 2); 3) priority to downstream environmental flow, irrigation, and municipal water demands (rule 3). Results show that when priority is given to the HPP target (rule 1), 98.3% of the electricity demand is met. At the same time, the dam can supply 81.72% of the water demand to maintain environmental flow and sustain irrigation and municipal water consumption. It also ensures water availability with an annual target storage deviation estimated at 1.8%. When rule 2 is implemented, a gap of 8.5% between electricity production and electricity demand is observed. Rule 2 also failed to sustain environmental flow and supply flow for irrigation and municipal consumption as a gap of 15.39% between the supply and the demand was observed. Similarly to rule 1, It ensures water availability with an annual target storage deviation estimated at 1.25%. When rule 3 is enforced (i.e., the priority is given to environmental flow, irrigation, and municipal water demands) the reservoir can maintain the environmental flow and maintain irrigation, and municipal water requirements with a gap of 17.7% between the supply and the demands. However, HPP production decreases with a gap of 12.56% between the electricity supply and demand. Its capacity to supply water in the long term is low as it has the highest target storage deviation with a value of 18%. These results indicate that rule 1 offers more guarantees considering the food and electricity security and environmental challenges. Note that the simulations are done assuming that these rules are systematically followed. In practice, decision-makers can deviate from a rule in exceptional circumstances to maximize benefits or avert unwanted consequences. Finally, a decision support system (DSS) was developed to assist decision-makers in selecting efficient reservoir operation policies for multipurpose reservoirs combining HPP and irrigation.

To re-purpose an abandoned wine cooperative into a set of workshops and studios with a focus on re-interpreting the role of the ‘crafts apprentice’ in a contemporary setting. The project hopes to upsurge society’s interest in the cultural value that such skills and products hold today, as a way of ceasing the decrasing number of dissapearing crafts and craftmen and women. Simultaneously and above all, the main effect that the interventions to this building and the activities taking place is hoping to have, is to add a transcendental societal, communal and sociological value for our community.

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Indigenous poultry breeds represent an important animal genetic resource. However, their characteristics in respect of performance, product quality, and integument condition are often poorly investigated. Therefore, the local breeds Saxonian chickens (SaChi) and German Langshan bantam chickens (GLB) of different plumage colors were characterized. The high-performing hybrid strain of Lohmann brown chickens (LB) served as the control group. For each group, 60 hens and 6 roosters were studied in an extensive free-range system from 21 to 80 wk of life. The plumage and foot pad quality were scored on 9 distinct observation dates and the measurements of the egg quality were performed at 7 different time periods. The number of eggs per hen housed in the first laying year was significantly lower in the SaChi (146.4 ± 30.8) and the GLB chickens (107.8 ± 20.4) when compared to the LB chickens (295.0 ± 16.8) (P < 0.001). Regarding laying performance, we detected effects of plumage color within both local breeds (P < 0.001). Within 4/7 plumage colors, effects of the breeder were also found (P ≤ 0.037). The eggs of the local chicken breeds showed lower egg weights (P < 0.001), shell breaking strength (P ≤ 0.041), albumen consistency (P < 0.001), and a lower egg shape index (P < 0.001), but higher proportions of yolk (P < 0.001) when compared to the eggs of the LB chickens. The logistic regression models for the plumage and footpad condition demonstrated that the SaChi and GLB hens underwent less plumage loss and footpad swelling than the LB hens (P < 0.001). Overall, this study shows that the laying performance of the local breeds was significantly lower, but there were noticeable advantages in terms of egg composition and animal welfare indicators when compared to a high-performing hybrid strain. In further studies and the use in extensive production systems, the observed performance differences between plumage colors and breeders should be taken into account.

This study investigates the effects of including a recipient in writing instructions on the quality of writing produced by L2 English students. To evaluate the effect of the recipient, writing performances are first assessed in texts written in response to instructions that do not explicitly specify a recipient. They are subsequently compared to writing performances by the same students in texts produced for similar instructions but this time with an explicitly stated recipient. The results of the main experiment are complemented with test-taker surveys that capture the students’ own perceptions about the differences between the two tasks. The participating pupils are from two classes at an inner-city municipal Upper Secondary school in Sweden, one at level ENG05 and the other at level ENG07. The study is inspired by communicative language teaching where the writer’s adaptation to the recipient is central. The study tests for the recipient effect along a broad spectrum of linguistic and communicative measures. The results show that students in both classes performed at a higher level with an explicit recipient across all four communicative measures and two out of four linguistic measures. The study also identified a generally stronger recipient effect in ENG05 than in ENG07 and a mixed pattern when comparing students with differing abilities in English. The main finding of the test-taker survey is that students prefer doing tasks with a specified recipient but are slightly more familiar with tasks without a recipient. They also report that they rarely imagine an English-speaking recipient when writing a task and that they often write with the teacher in mind.