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2020 Faculty Accomplishments Reception
No full texthttps://scholarship.richmond.edu/far-photos-2020/1009/thumbnail.jp
What’s in Your Gifted Education Online Teacher Professional Development? Incorporating Theory- and Practice-Based Elements of Instructional Learning Design
Get PDFThis paper examined six theory- and practice-based elements of instructional learning design in online teacher professional development (oTPD), how these elements were implemented into Edinger’s (2017) PACKaGE model of gifted education oTPD, and how teachers evaluated each element. Elements were based on Berge’s (1995) instructor roles model theory and gifted education research. Each element was evaluated by teachers (N=184) who completed oTPD designed from the PACKaGE model. Self-report survey findings suggest that teachers considered most elements, such as asynchronous discussion board and article review assignments, to be useful to a great extent to their gifted education learning and pedagogy. However, teachers reported less usefulness for the online group project element. This finding directly contrasts with researchers’ suggestions for oTPD. These findings may encourage teachers to choose theory- and research-based oTPD. PD designers can investigate and implement oTPD elements that satisfy instructional design model needs for optimal teacher learning and gifted education pedagogy
Grievability, COVID-19, and the Modernists’ Pandemic
No full textFor the past five years, I have been immersed in research on the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic and the unexpected ways it weaves its way into modernism. My book on the topic came out last October, about two months before a worrisome new illness began to emerge in Wuhan, China.[1] We all want our research to be relevant, to be able to articulate the critical “so what” question we struggle to answer in grant requests and cover letters. But the sudden thrust into an actual version of the sensory and affective climate I’ve been studying for so long has been surreal and unsettling, like a B movie where an author awakes to find her work has come to life. Even as we expose troubling elisions and injustices within the works we analyze, we may still use theory as a buffer between us and the world, and the past as a shield against our present realities. When a radio program recently approached me about an interview on Viral Modernism, they said that their listeners had been overwhelmed by COVID-19 coverage and would find it comforting to hear about a pandemic safely in the distance. I understood what they meant, even if patterns of viral and human behavior threaten to make the past the present
The Passion Bug: How and When Do Leaders Inspire Work Passion?
Get PDFDrawing from signaling theory, we propose a work passion transfer model where leaders\u27 passion is transmitted to employees through the former\u27s leadership style and is contingent on employees\u27 perceived importance of performance to self-esteem (IPSE). Data from 201 supervisor–employee dyads from the health-care industry show that leaders\u27 harmonious passion led to employees\u27 harmonious passion through charismatic leadership, whereas contingent reward leadership accounted for the transfer of obsessive passion; IPSE did not play a moderating role for either form of passion. Results from a supplementary study further reveal that the link between leadership and employee passion operated through employees\u27 perception of leader passion and that employees\u27 IPSE accentuated for the relationship between perceived leader obsessive passion and employees\u27 obsessive passion. This study advances research in work passion, leadership, and signaling theory and provides important implications for managerial practice
Making Energy Metrics Relevant to Service Firms: From Energy Conservation to Energy Productivity
Get PDFAlthough energy conservation and reduction in environmental impact are on the international and most national agendas, service firms rarely include energy consumption metrics in their strategic decision-making. One reason for the omission is that for service industries, firm level energy utilization is most commonly measured in kilowatt hours per square meter of office space where changes often related to the space rather than the firm performance. The measure also presents several problems for firms in service industries. First, energy conservation and reduction may be counterproductive for service firms that are growing and require energy to sustain that growth. Second, it may not relate to national and international goals which are often focused on the amount of carbon dioxide produced generating energy than the total amount of energy consumed. Third, it treats energy as a utility rather than a resource in firms’ value creation. Results from a field study focused on service firms in Sweden suggests that focusing on energy productivity overcomes the limitations of existing measures and produces positive results. By conceptualizing energy productivity as output per unit of energy, we create a conservation metric that enables service firms to measure their contributions to energy consumption relative to national economic growth. As a result, energy productivity aligns the interests of service organizations with those of policy makers and conservationists
Environmental drivers of surface activity in a population of the Eastern red-backed salamander (Plethodon cinereus)
No full textUnderstanding the influence of spatiotemporal variation in environmental factors on phenology is crucial for determining the effects of climate change on amphibian populations. Here we quantify the relative influence of temperature and precipitation on surface activity of a terrestrial salamander, the Eastern Red-Backed Salamander (Plethodon cinereus) in Richmond, Virginia, USA. Specifically, we used spatial capture-recapture methods to test the influence of different metrics for temperature and precipitation on baseline detection probability. We found that soil temperature, particularly at 30 cm below the surface, is a better predictor of detection than air temperature or cumulative precipitation; however, greater cumulative precipitation resulted in a higher detection probability. We also show that a quadratic effect was favored in all scenarios suggesting this species has an optimal soil temperature and cumulative precipitation for surface activity during a particular year. The highest detection probability was associated with 12.6º C at 30-cm below the surface and 0.75 cm of cumulative precipitation during the 2-d period prior to the survey occasion. In addition to contributing knowledge on the specific environmental metrics that best predict surface activity for P. cinereus, this work illustrates the importance of incorporating soil temperature measurements in capture-mark-recapture studies of terrestrial salamanders. For projects with limited resources, our work indicates which fine-scale environmental measurements associated with terrestrial salamander activity in the southern portion of the range are best
Ancient DNA Evidence from China Reveals the Expansion of Pacific Dogs
No full textThe ancestral homeland of Australian dingoes and Pacific dogs is proposed to be in South China. However, the location and timing of their dispersal and relationship to dog domestication is unclear. Here, we sequenced 7,000- to 2,000-year-old complete mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genomes of 27 ancient canids (one gray wolf and 26 domestic dogs) from the Yellow River and Yangtze River basins (YYRB). These are the first complete ancient mtDNA of Chinese dogs from the cradle of early Chinese civilization. We found that most ancient dogs (18/26) belong to the haplogroup A1b lineage that is found in high frequency in present-day Australian dingoes and precolonial Pacific Island dogs but low frequency in present-day China. Particularly, a 7,000-year-old dog from the Tianluoshan site in Zhejiang province possesses a haplotype basal to the entire haplogroup A1b lineage. We propose that A1b lineage dogs were once widely distributed in the YYRB area. Following their dispersal to South China, and then into Southeast Asia, New Guinea and remote Oceania, they were largely replaced by dogs belonging to other lineages in the last 2,000 years in present-day China, especially North China
Ancient DNA indicates human population shifts and admixture in northern and southern China
No full textHuman genetic history in East Asia is poorly understood. To clarify population relationships, we obtained genome-wide data from 26 ancient individuals from northern and southern East Asia spanning 9500 to 300 years ago. Genetic differentiation in this region was higher in the past than the present, which reflects a major episode of admixture involving northern East Asian ancestry spreading across southern East Asia after the Neolithic, thereby transforming the genetic ancestry of southern China. Mainland southern East Asian and Taiwan Strait island samples from the Neolithic show clear connections with modern and ancient individuals with Austronesian-related ancestry, which supports an origin in southern China for proto-Austronesians. Connections among Neolithic coastal groups from Siberia and Japan to Vietnam indicate that migration and gene flow played an important role in the prehistory of coastal Asia
Score Following with Hidden Tempo Using a Switching State-Space Model
Get PDFA score-following program traces the notes in a musical score during a performance. This capability is essential to many meaningful applications that synchronize audio with a score in an on-line fashion. Existing algorithms often stumble on certain difficult cases, one of which is piano music. This paper presents a new method to tackle such cases. The method treats tempo as a variable rather than a constant (with constraints), allowing the program to adapt to live performance variations. This is first expressed by a Kalman filter model at the note level, and then by an almost equivalent switching state-space model at the audio frame level. The latter contains both discrete and continuous hidden variables, and is computationally intractable. We show how certain reasonable approximations make the computation manageable. This new method is tested on a dataset of 50 piano excerpts. Compared with a previously established state-of-the-art algorithm, the new method shows more stable and accurate results: it reduces fatal score-following errors, and improves accuracy from 65.0% to 69.1%
Debt Covenant Condition and the Relative Use of Operating Lease and Long-term Debt
Get PDFPurpose: We investigate the relationship between off-balance-sheet (OBS) operating leases and long-term debt by analyzing firms’ debt risk profiles measured by the constraints on firms in the financial ratios in their debt covenants.
Design/methodology/approach: We determine debt risk profiles using three measures: the ex- ante probability of covenant violation (Demerjian and Owens, 2016), firms in violation of debt covenants, and firms close to covenant violations.
Findings: High-risk firms according to all three measures, on average, have a significantly lower level of operating leases, indicating that these firms use OBS leases as a substitute for long-term debt. More interesting, for firms operating in industries in which leases are widely available, firms with a high probability of covenant violation have a significantly higher level of operating leases, indicating that these firms use OBS leases as a complement to long-term debt. Further analysis indicates that lease financing is less costly than debt financing is for these firms.
Research limitations/implications: Overall, our evidence indicates that firms facing financial constraints may attempt to lease more of their assets, but the availability of leasing is constrained by their debt covenant obligations and the strength of the leasing market in its industry.
Originality/value: We identify states in which risky firms may treat leases as either complements or substitutes for long-term debt, implying that the leasing decision relates to the availability of an active leasing market for a firm’s assets and the firm’s financial constraints. Our findings support recent research showing that debt and leases are complementary in the presence of counterparty risk providing insight into the paradoxical relationship identified in prior research between leases and long-term debt