No description available.

One of the Swedish preschools many tasks is to identify the needs of a child and to shape an activity suited to their needs. This identification means a lot of times that a child is weighed and valued despite that the curriculum clearly states that no assessment is to be done in the Swedish preschool. To develop a preschool able to face all children regardless of their individual needs it’s necessary to change focus from child assessment to instead look at the work and environment in the whole preschool. A development of the activity might be seen as a work in progress whose primary goal is to improve the quality of work in preschool. This study is a case study with the purpose of going into the depth and finding the unique of preschool assessment. This study is based on interviews with preschool teachers with the purpose of creating knowledge about the background to individual children’s prerequisites being valued, how to counter this, and instead evolve the work in preschool to be able to face all children no matter their needs. The result indicates there being a norm in preschool for what a child should be able to do and know, towards that, many children are assessed and valued. When a child’s behavior and/or development is perceived to fall outside this norm the child is described as a child in special needs. Respondents point out that by working with attitudes, ability to supervision by special educator, and small groups of children, would together contribute to individual assessment turned towards activities assessment. The resultsin this study puts focus on the head of preschool as a key person by creating possibilities for teachers to progress their work.

No description available.

No description available.

While many organizational actors, including firms, governments, universities, and non-profit organizations may have an impact on the innovative capacity of the firms with which they engage, we have little knowledge of their relative importance. The literature on innovation intermediaries reports on the impact of specific types of organizations, but has not considered the relative importance of different types of organizations. While the studies using Community Innovation Survey (CIS) data are able to consider relative effects, data on the nature of those effects are limited. In the interests of a better understanding of the relative nature and degree of the innovation enabling contributions of a range of organizational actors, I conduct a comparative examination of the contributions of firms, governments, universities, industry associations, and research institutes. Using survey data from a sample of 499 firms, I identify the actors that are most strongly associated with each of ten innovation intermediation activities.

School-based extracurricular activity participation has been linked to positive behavioral and academic outcomes; however, little is known about the participation and outcomes of participation of Hispanic students, a group that is historically at high risk for school failure. As such, extracurricular activity participation characteristics and outcomes of a diverse group of middle school students were examined in this two journal article dissertation. First, participation differences between students based on student racial group membership and student sex were examined. Logistic regression was used to examine participation status differences (yes or no). Analysis of variance was used to examine participation intensity between student groups. Additionally, the effects of participation on outcomes related to adolescent peer groups, belongingness, and school membership were examined. Multiple regression models were utilized for this analysis, and consideration was given to interaction effects that would indicate whether groups of students (i.e. sex and race) benefited differentially from participation. Results indicated that, during the 7th grade, Hispanic students were significantly less likely to participate in sports-related extracurricular activities as compared to their Caucasian peers. However, no group differences in sex or race were found for participation intensity. Furthermore, participation in sports-related extracurricular activities was related to higher feelings of school membership for Hispanic and Black, but not White, students. In addition, participation in sports was related to Black students identifying a higher percentage of their friends as displaying prosocial behavior. Overall, the results suggested that while Hispanic students may have benefited more so than their White peers from participation, they participated at lower levels as a group. This highlights a currently under-tapped potential for intervention.

Fungi have been an important source for producing a wide range of secondary metabolites of widely differing chemical structures, as well as biological activities. Many of their metabolites now play a major role in pharmaceutical and agricultural industries. A number of fungi were isolated from soil and leaf litter collected from Arthur’s Pass, West Coast and Kaituna Valley using a particle filtration technique. Fungi were selected based on their unusual morphology or observed cytotoxicity and antimicrobial activity for large scale culture and extraction. A pale yellow compound was isolated from cytotoxic extracts from the culture of Aspergillus versicolor. This compound was identified as sterigmatocystin and the identity confirmed by UV profile and mass spectrometry. Five compounds were isolated from extracts prepared from two different species of Penicillium of which three were active against P388 cells (mycophenolic acid, cycloaspeptide A and mevastatin), one was active against dermatophytes (griseofulvin) and one was not active (3,4,6,8-tetrahydroxy-3-methyl-3,4-dihydroisocoumarin). Two compounds were isolated from extracts prepared from two different species of Phoma. A dark red compound was found to be novel and showed activity against P388 cells and Bacillus subtilis. A second compound also showing cytotoxicity was identified as the known compound phomenone. A further new compound was isolated from extracts of an identified dematiaceous fungus. This alkyl glucoside, however, was not bioactive.

Diss. Uppsala : Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, 2005.

Thesis (M.A.)--Kent State University, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Apr. 8, 2009). Advisor: William Sledzik. Includes bibliographical references (p. 77-83).

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Regis University, Denver, Colo., 2008. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Feb. 02, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.