The LAIR at East Texas A&M
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Teaching Narrative Interviewing: Reflecting, Narrating, and Becoming-In-Action
No full textQualitative inquiry teachers often seek powerful pedagogies to improve their students’ understandings. Using our experience leading a doctoral workshop, we share our method for teaching narrative interviewing using Schön’s (1983) “reflection-in-action,” meaning teachers and students reflect in the moment. We also root our pedagogy in Jerome Bruner’s (1986, 1990) narrative as a mode of thinking and a mode of being, a philosophy exploring the ways learners story their own and others’ lives. Describing our doctoral workshop, we highlight Laura, a recent graduate, narrating and becoming a qualitative inquirer. We conclude with a sample teaching lesson, designed to enhance students’ reflective research practices
The Association Between COVID-19 Preventive Behaviors and Mental Health Conditions
No full textOur findings highlight that individuals with mental health conditions reported more psychological distress. Specifically, feeling depressed, anxious, lonely, and hopeless were triggered and exacerbated as a result of the pandemic and may have long-term effects on general well-being and productivity. Therefore, our findings have important implications on the need to include mental health promotion as part of pandemic response efforts. This includes developing policies and allocating funding so as to ensure sustainable mental health interventions and support, public and provider education on the importance of screening for mental health issues
Survey of Biogeography and Community Ecology Surrounding Etheostoma radiosum in Northeast Texas and Southeast Oklahoma
No full textThe orange-bellied darter, Etheostoma radiosum, is a small benthic fish found in the Red River system in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas. Populations in Texas serve as the functional southern edge of the species geographic range and are rare in the region. Surveys were done to determine spatial occupancy patterns for E. radiosum in Texas and to examine specific habitat and community associations of occupied sites. Streams in Texas were also compared with streams in Oklahoma to assess potential niche shifts. Forty-six streams (thirty-four in Texas; twelve in Oklahoma) were sampled for fish communities and stream environmental characteristics in 2021 and 2022. E. radiosum was rare in Texas sites, occurring in five out of the thirty-four streams. This species was more common in Oklahoma (ten out of twelve locations). Community patterns were assessed with non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) and analysis of similarities (ANOSIM). There were three significantly different community groups in the data: Oklahoma present, Texas present, and absent (R = 0.361, p \u3c 0.00001). Environmental variable data was fitted onto the NMDS ordination with the envfit function of the R package vegan, to determine which environmental variables significantly relate to the observed patterns of community differences. The analysis identified nine significant environmental variables, and E. radiosum present sites specifically had less mud, more coarse substrates, higher dissolved oxygen, higher slope, more riffles, and more annual flow stability. The Texas present sites were intermediate between the other two groups in the ordination, indicating that the sites in Texas are suboptimal in gradient conditions compared with their core distribution in Oklahoma. Flow stability and coarse substrates with riffles were the main drivers of E. radiosum presence in the data, and specifically periodic drought (less stable flows) and rarity of coarse substrates in Texas tributaries likely combine to limit the occupancy patterns for this species in the state
Analysis of Gene Flow Between Geographically Separated Populations of Etheostoma radiosum in Northeastern Texas and Southeastern Oklahoma
No full textThe genus Etheostoma has been found to be one of the most cryptic groups in North America today. Many darter species are habitat specialists that have limited dispersal in drainages across unsuitable conditions. Etheostoma radiosum is found in the Red River system of Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas, where it is more common in upland tributaries with gravel, indicating that the muddier main stem of the Red River may restrict gene flow patterns between systems. The purpose of this study is to use molecular markers to determine genetic population structure of this species in Texas populations and potential barriers and genetic isolation. We sampled five populations in Texas tributaries and three populations in Oklahoma in different tributary systems in 2022. Captured individuals had caudal fin clips taken in the field, followed by DNA extraction and amplification at six microsatellite loci. Pairwise FST values, observed and expected heterozygosity, STRUCTURE analyses, isolation by distance, and discriminant analysis of principal components were done to determine population genetic patterns in the region. Results indicate the existence of three distinct genetic clusters in the region
CNN Based Object Classification Using Image and Poisson Vector Field Features
No full textConvolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have great applications in image and video object recognition, classification and segmentation. In the literature on CNN models, their efficiency and efficacy are determined by their classification metrics, speed and computational cost. This thesis aims to improve the classification metrics accuracy of a CNN model by fusing vector fields’ features with image features. The vector field features of importance are the singular points and separatrices. These features are embedded in the training and testing images to increase the latter set’s classification metrics. This study applies particular vector fields developed on the solution of a specific form of the Poisson equations. These vector fields have both real and complex singularities. Then the vector fields are embedded into an image database to create a fusion of the vector fields’ features and the image databases’ features. The main novelty of the thesis is the development of a new CNN optimized to efficiently classify image databases with embedded vector field features. The goal is to validate that the embedding in question brings the advantage of increasing the classification statistics. The conducted experiments with the public skin lesions database ISIC 2020 successfully confirmed the claim
The Principal Hiring Process: A Study of the Use of Fit to Select Leaders for Low-Achieving Campuses
No full textEvery person in leadership sees themselves as the conduit between the success and failure of an institution or business. This most likely comes from the idea that “everything rises and falls on leadership” (Covey & Maxwell, 2007, p. 7). Educational campus administrators, also known as principals and lead learners, are responsible for ensuring that all students learn in the classrooms in which they’re placed (Clifford et al., 2012). Campuses that struggle with student learning risk being identified as low performing should the phenomenon become cyclical. This study investigates the perceptions of district-level and campus-based leadership related to fit. This study addresses the use of the fit protocol to select principals to lead campuses that are already low-performing or in an improvement-required status. Human Resource Offices utilize specific fit themes to view candidates. These themes include person-job fit, person-group fit, person-supervisor fit, and person-organization fit. This qualitative interpretive study used virtual interviews, focus group question vetting, theme identification using MAXQDA and NVivo process, and longitudinal data from academic achievement derived from the Texas Academic Progress Report (TAPR)
Firefighter: 24/48 Versus 48/96; Sleep, Strain, and Recovery
No full textFirefighters provide important safety services for a 24-hour society. Sleep is very important to the human body. Without sleep a person can experience both short- and long-term side effects. These side effects not only put the sleep deprived person in danger but can also put the public in danger as well. There are many different shift schedules that fire departments can run on. While on duty firefighters must be ready to respond to any emergency call, they receive no matter the time. This can impact the amount of sleep they get while on duty. The current study used biometric straps to evaluate sleep, strain, and recovery of 24/48 firefighters n = 28 and 48/96 firefighters n = 26 shift rotations. The data was evaluated using ANOVA and Pearson r Correlations. Sleep and recovery scores for 24/48, on both on duty and rest day 1, was greater than 48/96 scores. Additionally, a strong positive correlation exists between sleep and recovery score, regardless of shift rotation type. Lastly, recovery scores continue to increase for 48/96 whereas recovery for 24/48 remains consistent
Effects of Actin-Destabilizing Drugs on Motor Function in Drosophila melanogaster
No full textActin dynamics influence many cellular processes including neural connectivity and function. One way to better understand and study the regulation of these dynamics is to manipulate actin dynamics and observe the effects in motor function as a proxy to changes on the neuromuscular junctions in developing neural tissue. On that line, this investigation hypothesized that changing the actin dynamics during development via drug manipulation results in observable effects in locomotion. One of the common actin regulatory drugs used throughout the literature includes Latrunculin A, which was used in this study. Methods included applying this actin destabilizing drug on developing wildtype Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies) and observing locomotion of larvae in established paradigms. This type of investigation can lead to a better understanding of how actin dynamics affect neural development and what components of these dynamics play the most crucial part in remodeling neural connectivity. Also, it further opens questions regarding if such drugs can be used to manipulate neural connectivity in the case of pathophysiology, especially in motor disorders