The Impact of Non-State Actors in Combating Child Labor: The NATs Case Study

openThis thesis examines the role of Non-State Actors in combating child labor, highlighting their contributions to advocacy, public awareness, and policy reform. It seeks to demonstrate how the involvement of these diverse actors across multiple levels fosters a more effective approach to addressing this complex issue. The analysis begins with an exploration of the phenomenon's characteristics, its cultural dimensions, and its likely causes and consequences.The focus then shifts to specific players, evaluating their strategies and advocacy efforts within a multilevel governance framework and their contribution to the implementation of various legal instruments in the field. Finally, the thesis presents a case study illustrating the involvement of NATs, a group of organized civil society led by children, and their efforts to achieve recognition and regulation of child labor, contrasting with the traditional perspective focused on complete eradication of the practice.This thesis examines the role of Non-State Actors in combating child labor, highlighting their contributions to advocacy, public awareness, and policy reform. It seeks to demonstrate how the involvement of these diverse actors across multiple levels fosters a more effective approach to addressing this complex issue. The analysis begins with an exploration of the phenomenon's characteristics, its cultural dimensions, and its likely causes and consequences.The focus then shifts to specific players, evaluating their strategies and advocacy efforts within a multilevel governance framework and their contribution to the implementation of various legal instruments in the field. Finally, the thesis presents a case study illustrating the involvement of NATs, a group of organized civil society led by children, and their efforts to achieve recognition and regulation of child labor, contrasting with the traditional perspective focused on complete eradication of the practice

Teachers\u27 Experiences Implementing Evidence-Based Interventions With Fidelity for Preschool-Students With Disabilities

Challenging behaviors are common among preschool students with disabilities in educational settings. Evidence-based interventions (EBIs) when implemented with fidelity can be used to support these students. However, many teachers report having limited knowledge of EBIs and are unprepared to use them. The purpose of this exploratory qualitative case study was to observe and interview preschool teachers regarding the methods, procedures, and activities they use to implement EBIs with fidelity for preschool aged students with disabilities in inclusion settings. The conceptual framework was the implementation science framework, which is focused on implementation of EBIs to achieve their intended purpose. A purposeful sampling of 7 general education teachers from preschool inclusion settings in an urban area that includes 2 school districts participated in the study. Data were analyzed using precoding, first cycle coding, and axial coding to determine categories and themes. The key results in this study indicated that general education teachers need professional development training on appropriate use of EBIs with students, teachers need to engage in parent-teacher support/collaborative partnerships, and teachers need to review data regarding students’ behaviors that change as a result of EBI implementation. The results were used to provide recommendations for identifying the methods, procedures, and activities needed to improve preschool teachers’ implementation of EBIs. This study may contribute to positive social change by supporting general education teachers’ efforts to maximize preschool students with disabilities’ social-emotional and academic outcomes through the use of EBIs

The Flowerings Project: A Library in Transformation

This final report from the JMU Libraries and Furious Flower Poetry Center to the Mellon Foundation describes in detail the activities undertaken as part of a 2020-2021 planning grant, “Furious Flowerings: Developing a Partnership Model for Digital Library Support of a Living Center for Black Poetry,” funded by the Mellon Foundation. The grant explored and developed a partnership model for integrated library support of a living, academic center for the arts with archival, scholarly, digital, educational, and performance components. Nine key areas were addressed, including three overarching areas: development of cultural competencies, exploring how an exemplar project can be used to manage organizational and cultural change, and fostering partners\u27 understanding of library processes, systems, expertise, and goals, as well as six domain and application areas: inclusive archival workflows, frameworks for multimedia preservation and performance capture, teaching-and-learning collaborations, and policies and platforms for sustainable digital publications. The report describes model development, activities, findings, recommendations, challenges, lessons learned, future goals, evaluations, publications, and the grant timeline and logistics

Detection of butterfly fractures of long bones through multi-slice computed tomography and micro-computed tomography

: Motor-vehicle accidents often result in lower limb injuries with biosseous fractures. The present study aimed at comparing multi-slice computed tomography (MS-CT), micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) and external fractography for the analyses of experimentally produced biosseus leg fractures. Briefly, 48 human legs amputated for medical reasons were defleshed and then experimentally fractured using a 3-point dynamic bending model (70,6 J of impact energy at the middle of the anterior surface of the tibia) producing 38 biosseous and 10 mono-osseous fractures with a total of 86 fractured bones. External fractography detected 63 (73,2%) "butterfly" fractures (24 (27,9%) complete and 39 (45,3%) incomplete), 14 (16,3%) "oblique" fractures, 6 (7,0%) "comminuted" fractures and 3 (3,5%) "transverse" fractures. Forty-three (43) of the 48 included legs displayed at least one butterfly fracture located at the tibia or fibula. MS-CT correctly detected and classified 16 complete and 20 incomplete butterfly fractures, failing to properly classify 27 fractures; 19 of these misclassifications led to an interpretative error on the trauma direction (i.e., 16 incomplete butterfly fractures classified as oblique fractures and 3 incomplete butterfly fractures classified as transverse). Micro-CT correctly detected and classified 22 complete and 37 incomplete butterfly fractures, failing to properly classify 4 fractures; two of these misclassifications led to an interpretative error on the trauma direction (i.e., two incomplete butterfly fractures classified as oblique fractures). Although further studies evaluating a wider number of fractures and fracture patterns are required to drive any definitive conclusions, this preliminary experimental investigation showed that MS-CT and micro-CT represent useful tools for reconstructing the morphology of leg fractures and could be crucial for trauma analysis in the forensic context. MS-CT could be used as a screening tool, micro-CT as second level analysis and external/internal fractography as third level, confirmatory analysis

Heart and kidney organoids maintain organ-specific function in a microfluidic system

Heart and kidney communicate with one another in an interdependent relationship and they influence each other's behavior reciprocally, as pathological changes in one organ can damage the other. Although independent human in vitro models for heart and kidney exist, they do not capture their dynamic crosstalk. We have developed a microfluidic system which can be used to study heart and kidney interaction in vitro. Cardiac microtissues (cMTs) and kidney organoids (kOs) derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) were generated and loaded into two separated communicating chambers of a perfusion chip. Static culture conditions were compared with dynamic culture under unidirectional flow. Tissue viability was maintained for minimally 72 h under both conditions, as indicated by the presence of sarcomeric structures coupled with beating activity in cMTs and the presence of nephron structures and albumin uptake in kOs. We concluded that this system enables the study of human cardiac and kidney organoid interaction in vitro while controlling parameters like fluidic flow speed and direction. Together, this “cardiorenal-unit” provides a new in vitro model to study the cardiorenal axis and it may be further developed to investigate diseases involving both two organs and their potential treatments

Heart and kidney organoids maintain organ-specific function in a microfluidic system

Heart and kidney communicate with one another in an interdependent relationship and they influence each other's behavior reciprocally, as pathological changes in one organ can damage the other. Although independent human in vitro models for heart and kidney exist, they do not capture their dynamic crosstalk. We have developed a microfluidic system which can be used to study heart and kidney interaction in vitro. Cardiac microtissues (cMTs) and kidney organoids (kOs) derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) were generated and loaded into two separated communicating chambers of a perfusion chip. Static culture conditions were compared with dynamic culture under unidirectional flow. Tissue viability was maintained for minimally 72 h under both conditions, as indicated by the presence of sarcomeric structures coupled with beating activity in cMTs and the presence of nephron structures and albumin uptake in kOs. We concluded that this system enables the study of human cardiac and kidney organoid interaction in vitro while controlling parameters like fluidic flow speed and direction. Together, this “cardiorenal-unit” provides a new in vitro model to study the cardiorenal axis and it may be further developed to investigate diseases involving both two organs and their potential treatments.</p

Heart and kidney organoids maintain organ-specific function in a microfluidic system

Heart and kidney communicate with one another in an interdependent relationship and they influence each other's behavior reciprocally, as pathological changes in one organ can damage the other. Although independent human in vitro models for heart and kidney exist, they do not capture their dynamic crosstalk. We have developed a microfluidic system which can be used to study heart and kidney interaction in vitro. Cardiac microtissues (cMTs) and kidney organoids (kOs) derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) were generated and loaded into two separated communicating chambers of a perfusion chip. Static culture conditions were compared with dynamic culture under unidirectional flow. Tissue viability was maintained for minimally 72 h under both conditions, as indicated by the presence of sarcomeric structures coupled with beating activity in cMTs and the presence of nephron structures and albumin uptake in kOs. We concluded that this system enables the study of human cardiac and kidney organoid interaction in vitro while controlling parameters like fluidic flow speed and direction. Together, this "cardiorenal-unit" provides a new in vitro model to study the cardiorenal axis and it may be further developed to investigate diseases involving both two organs and their potential treatments.Nephrolog