Development of a bedrest muscle stress apparatus

In attempting further to define the deleterious effects of spaceflight on the human body, measurement systems and techniques were devised to determine the loss of skeletal muscle strength and tone as a result of spaceflight exposure. In order to determine how the muscle degradation process progresses with time during nonuse, a system for measuring muscle stress during bedrest was developed. The Bedrest Muscle Stress Apparatus is configured to slip snugly over the foot board of a standard hospital bed. Data collected with this device correlated well with pre- and post-bedrest data collected with the original skeletal muscle stress apparatus

Cloning and expression of a human kinesin heavy chain gene: interaction of the COOH-terminal domain with cytoplasmic microtubules in transfected CV-1 cells.

To understand the interactions between the microtubule-based motor protein kinesin and intracellular components, we have expressed the kinesin heavy chain and its different domains in CV-1 monkey kidney epithelial cells and examined their distributions by immunofluorescence microscopy. For this study, we cloned and sequenced cDNAs encoding a kinesin heavy chain from a human placental library. The human kinesin heavy chain exhibits a high level of sequence identity to the previously cloned invertebrate kinesin heavy chains; homologies between the COOH-terminal domain of human and invertebrate kinesins and the nonmotor domain of the Aspergillus kinesin-like protein bimC were also found. The gene encoding the human kinesin heavy chain also contains a small upstream open reading frame in a G-C rich 5' untranslated region, features that are associated with translational regulation in certain mRNAs. After transient expression in CV-1 cells, the kinesin heavy chain showed both a diffuse distribution and a filamentous staining pattern that coaligned with microtubules but not vimentin intermediate filaments. Altering the number and distribution of microtubules with taxol or nocodazole produced corresponding changes in the localization of the expressed kinesin heavy chain. The expressed NH2-terminal motor and the COOH-terminal tail domains, but not the alpha-helical coiled coil rod domain, also colocalized with microtubules. The finding that both the kinesin motor and tail domains can interact with cytoplasmic microtubules raises the possibility that kinesin could crossbridge and induce sliding between microtubules under certain circumstances

Does Gaming the System Affect Students' Academic Achievement?

A growing body of evidence suggests that schools use test exemption to game educational accountability systems. However, it is not known whether test exemption affects students' academic progress. Analyzing data from an urban school district in Texas, the authors find that special education students make larger achievement gains when they are tested. Using their most conservative estimates, the effect of being tested is approximately .40 standard deviations in reading and .28 standard deviations in math for grades 3-8. Because special education students are more likely to be minority and poor students and these students are more likely to be exempted than their white and non-poor special education counterparts, the exemption of special education students contributes to the growth of black-white, Hispanic-white, and high-low socioeconomic status achievement gaps

Strategies for megaregion governance: Collaborative dialogue, networks and self organization

Metropolitan areas in the U.S. are increasingly growing together into megaregions with many linkages and interdependencies in their economies, infrastructure, and natural resources, but they are not linked well in terms of governance. Hundreds of jurisdictions, federal and state sectoral agencies, and regulatory bodies make independent and conflicting decisions with no entity focusing on the region's overall welfare. The Purpose of the research is to investigate potential governance strategies for such megaregions. As we have noted elsewhere, collaborative and networked processes can do many of the needed tasks for regional governance, as they fill gaps where government fails to operate, cross jurisdictional and functional boundaries, engage public and private sector actors on common tasks, and focus on the collective welfare of a region. Our goal is to identify strategies that allowed such processes to have some success in planning and managing resources, in adapting to unique conditions, and in mobilizing key players in joint action. We rely on our own in-depth research in California on two major water planning cases, CALFED and the Sacramento Water Forum, and on two cases of regional civic voluntary organizations known as Collaborative Regional Initiatives. We use two interrelated analytical perspectives, complexity theory and network analysis, to develop our findings. These largely successful cases shared the following features: diverse, interdependent players; collaborative dialogue; joint knowledge development; creation of networks and social and political capital; and boundary spanning. They were largely self organizing, building capacity and altering norms and practices to focus on questions beyond the parochial interests of players. They created new and often long term working relationships and a collective ability to respond constructively to changes and stresses on the system. Planners have important roles to play in megaregion governance in designing processes, creating, supporting and managing networks, creating arenas for strategy formation, nourishing strategic understanding and a vigorous public realm. Some can be visionaries, others advocates, providers of technical assistance, or skilled facilitators. Without the potential for traditional hierarchical government planners, cannot hope to control outcomes, but they can help to create self-organizing sustainability. The biggest challenge will be to design institutional settings where planners can do these tasks

Teacher Effects on Academic and Social Outcomes in Elementary School

Numerous studies conclude that teacher effects on academic achievement are substantial in size. Education is about more than academic achievement, and we know very little about teachers' effectiveness in promoting students' social development. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS- K), we estimate teacher effects on social as well as academic outcomes. We find that teacher effects on social development are sizeable, and are approximately twice as large as teacher effects on academic development. We further determine that teachers who produce better than average academic results are not the same teachers who produce better than average social results. However, we find that observable characteristics of teachers and the instructional approaches utilized in their classrooms are weak predictors of teacher effects. Finally, we show that the development of social skills has a positive effect on the growth of academic skills, and therefore teachers who are good at teaching social skills provide an additional indirect boost to academic skills in addition to their direct teaching of academic skills. We conclude that current policy debates over what it means to be a "highly qualified teacher" should also take social development into account

Geographic spread of Vollenhovia emeryi (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

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