After implementing the Common Core Standards in 2012, local school districts faced additional costs in their annual budgets to train staff how to teach using these standards. One of the problems that faced the school district under study was whether to retain the Common Core Standards and to continue to fund the expense of training teachers . The purpose of this study was to assess the influence of the Common Core Standards on student achievement in a local Pennsylvania school district using scores from the Pennsylvania System of School Assessments (PSSA) for Grades 3 through 8. The research question addressed whether there were differences in the students' learning as measured by the PSSAs for the years before and after implementation of the Common Core Standards. The theoretical framework of the study was based on Piaget's constructivist theory of knowing, which explains how students know what they have learned in the active process of learning. A causal-comparative design was used for this study with extant test data drawn from 2 years before and 2 years after implementation. The total sample size was 27,605. A MANOVA was used for all grades' scale and raw scores to discern if a main effect could detect student achievement measured after the implementation of the Common Core Standards was lower than that reported before implementation and the standards had a mixed influence on student learning. This study has an implication for positive change. If educators have a better understanding of the effect of the Common Core Standards on student learning than they would be able to justify additional training.

The adoption of the Common Core State Standards has necessitated a change in the instructional practices used by many mathematics teachers. The new standards encourage problem solving and the development of conceptual understanding rather than rote memorization of formulas and rules. Researchers have demonstrated that formative assessment is a powerful instructional tool that, when implemented properly, can increase student achievement. The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine how mathematics teachers in Pennsylvania perceive the new standards; how they value and use formative assessment practices including involving students in their work, modeling quality work, providing feedback, and providing opportunities for peer and self-assessment; and how these variables are related to each other. The answers to these research questions could potentially guide future professional development for teachers. This study was guided by the theoretical framework of Bloom, Dewey, and Piaget who each stated that a constructivist approach to learning is necessary for student growth. Likert scale surveys were used and Pearson correlational studies were conducted to analyze the data from the 174 respondents. Results revealed that participants were generally not in favor of the Common Core State Standards, and there were few statistically significant relationships between teachers' value and use of the 4 formative assessment practices and their value of the standards. Participants appeared to have some misconceptions about the standards and the instructional practices that support implementation, suggesting a continued need for professional development. Attention to this professional learning could help to promote student achievement.

Two common use grazing trials were conducted during two summer grazing seasons (1978-1979) on a typical shrubby grassland site on the Kolob Terrace, about 20 miles (32 km) southeas t of Cedar City, Utah, at an elevation of about 8500 feet (2600 m). Two animal units of ewes with lambs, or cows with calves, or both were stocked in each of six, one acre (0.39 ha) pastures. A five to one substitution ratio provided two single-species and one mixed (five ewes with lambs and one cow with calf) livestock treatments replicated twice . The pastures were grazed for nine days during which time two major experiments were performed.

Mechanisms of how red-sided garter snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis parietalis) travel up to 18 km from summer feeding sites to hibernation dens are not understood. In this study, monthly and seasonal trailing behavior were investigated to determine whether red-sided garter snakes prefer to follow trails of snakes from the same den (den-mates) versus trails made by other conspecifics (non-den-mates). Snakes from five different hibernacula in Manitoba, Canada, were involved in the study. Eighteen were adults and 15 were subadults. Subadult red-sided garter snakes do not return to hibernacula until their second year of life, so their trailing behavior was of interest in learning how they might first find hibernation sites.

Power systems will increasingly rely on synchrophasor systems for reliable and high-performance wide area monitoring and control (WAMC). Synchrophasor systems greatly use information communication technologies (ICT) for data exchange which are vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Prior to installation of a synchrophasor system a set of cyber security requirements must be developed and new devices must undergo vulnerability testing to ensure that proper security controls are in place to protect the synchrophasor system from unauthorized access. This dissertation describes vulnerability analysis and testing performed on synchrophasor system components. Two network fuzzing frameworks are proposed; for the I C37.118 protocol and for an energy management system (EMS). While fixing the identified vulnerabilities in information infrastructures is imperative to secure a power system, it is likely that successful intrusions will still occur. The ability to detect intrusions is necessary to mitigate the negative effects from a successful attacks. The emergence of synchrophasor systems provides real-time data with millisecond precision which makes the observation of a sequence of fast events feasible. Different power system scenarios present different patterns in the observed fast event sequences. This dissertation proposes a data mining approach called mining common paths to accurately extract patterns for power system scenarios including disturbances, control and protection actions and cyber-attacks from synchrophasor data and logs of system components. In this dissertation, such a pattern is called a common path, which is represented as a sequence of critical system states in temporal order. The process of automatically discovering common paths and building a state machine for detecting power system scenarios and attacks is introduced. The classification results show that the proposed approach can accurately detect these scenarios even with variation in fault locations and load conditions. This dissertation also describes a hybrid intrusion detection framework that employs the mining common path algorithm to enable a systematic and automatic IDS construction process. An IDS prototype was validated on a 2-line 3-bus power transmission system protected by the distance protection scheme. The result shows the IDS prototype accurately classifies 25 power system scenarios including disturbances, normal control operations, and cyber-attacks.

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I begin by examining Moore's notion of common sense because it is my contention that his work is not neatly separated; rather, his ethical and non-ethical philosophy have common sense as an underlying theme. For Moore, common sense was not reducible to indubitable, cracker-barrel wisdom; it is popularized science, what would be a matter of common sense if we were to take the trouble to learn. Moore's allegiance to science is the cord that connects his ethical and non-ethical work. In Principia Ethica, he attempts to introduce the spirit of scientific investigation into ethics. The 'naturalistic fallacy', to which special attention is given, is shown to be a guide to avoiding the error of essentialism, that is, of presuming that there is a unique good-making property or quality, common to all good things. Essentialism is rejected because it leads away from the open investigation characteristic of science, toward dogmatism. From this perspective, several popular criticisms of Moore's ethics are shown to be misguided. In the last chapter, an interpretation of Moore's non-naturalism based on my understanding of the naturalistic fallacy is given, that is quite different from the one most commonly accepted. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

This paper studies the Swedish Alien’s Act regulations regarding individuals in need of international protection. The purpose of the essay is to examine the differences between the three grounds of protection that are found in the Swedish Alien’s Act. Central questions have been whether the origins of protection statuses granted in this act are national or international, as the UN convention relating to the status of refugees and also the progress of the European Union’s Common European Asylum System both are affecting the Swedish legislation. The international relation’s theoretical perspectives of realism and liberalism have been applied in the analysis of what ideas and international political backgrounds have been found. The resulting conclusion is that only one category out of three is purely a result of the Swedish legislation. The common European asylum system affects and controls a large part of what is called Swedish asylum policy. It is concluded that liberal political-philosophical ideas of human rights are dominating the ideological background, and that liberal ideas of freedom from economical hindrances and also institutionalism has formed the system we have today. An interesting paradox is seen in the European Union’s growing concern of security and external borders, which is more typical in a realist, state-centered perspective.

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Dental caries is the most common oral disease in the world, and in developed nations, it affects almost everyone. Worldwide, large variations in the trends with regard to the prevalence and the severity of dental caries have been reported. In South Africa, numerous studies to determine the caries prevalence and severity of different population groups have been carried out in the past. However, only three studies were conducted on a national scale; Williams in 19842 reported on the dental health status of 12-year-old children representing the whole country, the National Department of Health conducted a National Oral Health Survey in 1988/19893 to determine the oral health status of adults and children in the five major metropolitan areas in South Africa, and the most recent National Oral Health Survey was conducted during the period July 1999 to June 20024 and was restricted to 4- to 5- year-, 6-year-, 12-year and 15-year-old children in South Africa. The aim of this study was to determine the trends in dental caries prevalence and severity amongst South African children over a period of time by comparing the results obtained from the 1982/1983 National Oral Health Survey with results obtained from the 1988/1989 National Oral Health Survey and/or with results obtained from the 1999/2002 National Oral Health Survey. The statistical methods employed, appeared to be useful to determine the trends in dental caries prevalence and severity amongst South African children, over the period 1982 to 2002, in selected (identified) geographical locations and also in terms of age, race and gender. Although it became evident, through this research, that there is a decline in the prevalence of dental caries amongst all the population groups, from 1982 to 2002, Coloured children presented with a relatively higher prevalence and severity of dental caries when compared with Asian, Black and White children in South Africa. The results mainly showed a higher prevalence and severity of dental caries in the primary than permanent dentition amongst 6-year-old children; and there was also a significant increase in the prevalence and severity of dental caries from the 12-year-old to the 15-year-old group. Through this research, it became evident that there is higher dental caries prevalence and severity rates in the coastal regions (Metro Cape, Port Elizabeth and Durban) as compared to an interior region (Bloemfontein). It was also observed that although the severity (dmft/DMFT) of dental caries decreased during the past 20 years; the percentage of untreated caries in 12-year and 15-year-old children increased; however, at the same time the percentage of untreated caries in 6-year-old children decreased. It was found that the number of filled teeth (FT) contributes the most to the caries experience amongst 12-year- and 15-year-old White children. However, more than 70 percent of dental caries, in 6-year-, 12-year- and 15-year-old children, go untreated. These results obtained from this study entitled: Trends in dental caries prevalence and severity in South Africa; can be useful in attempting to design intervention strategies to address dental caries in South Africa. / Dissertation (MSc (Odont))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Community Dentistry / MSc (Odont) / unrestricted