There is a growing trend within civics education within the United States to adopt the USCIS naturalization civics exam (commonly referred to as the ‘citizenship test’), which consists of 100 multiple choice questions, to determine the civic readiness of students. This study explores civics education within eight US states that have adopted the ‘citizenship test’ model through the lens of citizenship conceptualizations evidenced within their high school civics state standards. Utilizing a directed content analysis, the researcher located more than 230 standards within three citizenship discourse categories: civic republican, liberal, and reconstructionist. Citizenship within the examined state standards, was largely conceptualized as civic republican in orientation (96%) and nested within untroubled assumptions of US society and desires for a common American identity that often crowded out attention to diversity and conflict and in doing so, mirrored exclusionary practices common to standardized, high-stakes assessments including the USCIS naturalization civics exam.

The role-play is a valued experiential tool used by university sales programs to engage students and better prepare them for a potential career in sales. However, in-class role-play activities have the potential to create scheduling dilemmas. Mandatory, internal role-play competitions are proposed as a solution to these logistical issues while providing additional professional development benefits to all participants. Results of a repeated-measures study also support that a role-play is more than a tool to refine sales presentation skills, but when administered as an internal competition it not only improves in-class logistics but also positively influence students’ intent to pursue a sales career.

I studied and became an accordion teacher in the Jyväskylä Conservatory, in Finland. When I qualified, I was the 9th accordion teacher in Finland. Then at the same time I studied at the University of Jyväskylä Musicology, Educational science, Philosophy and Art education. Then, the Jyväskylä University started educating music subject teachers, and I started my studies at that time. I was the first music teacher in Finland who qualified outside the Sibelius Academy. Today, music teachers are educated in the Sibelius Academy, at Jyväskylä University and Oulu University in Finland. After completing my studies, I became a senior lecturer of music education in the University of Joensuu, which in 2011 became a part of the University of Eastern Finland when it merged with Kuopio University. I conducted my doctoral dissertation in 2000 on the topic of music orientation. Then, in 2011 I became a professor in Education, focusing particularly on the pedagogy of Arts and Skills. All the while I have been playing bass in different bands. I have been involved in much studio work and recordings, played in theater band in various musicals and the like. I have been involved in thousands of restaurant gigs and public performances. Now from the beginning of 2019, I was nominated as professor in Creativity education in the University of Eastern Finland for 5 years.

This paper discusses how visualization and machine learning models can be effectively used to track and forecast trap counts of Culex Tarsalis, female mosquitoes responsible for spreading the West Nile Virus (WNV). This paper applies four different machine learning models namely, Support vector machines (SVM), Regression tree (RT), Partial Least Square Regression (PLSR), and a hybrid combination of SVM-PLSR to multi-year WNV data sets. Precisely, historical data sets ranging from 2005-2015 was used to predict trap counts for 2016. This paper also discusses a tree-based data visualization technique for displaying historical trap counts. The visualization model is designed to focus on identifying trends in the behavior of Culex tarsalis by tracking parameters such as meteorological data, dead birds, WNV cases, human cases, and deaths. The preliminary results indicate that SVM model outperforms interms of accuracy than other machine learning models. Keywords: Culex Tarsalis, Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR), Support Vector Machines(SVM), SVM-PLSR, West Nile Virus (WNV), Vector Control.

© 2019 American Meteorological Society. For information regarding reuse of this content and general copyright information, consult the AMS Copyright Policy (www.ametsoc.org/PUBSReuseLicenses).CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: Melissa Wagner, mawagner@asu.edu

Objectives: To update the epidemiology and susceptibility of hospital-acquired (HA) and community-acquired (CA), as well as intensive care unit (ICU) vs non-ICU-derived intra-abdominal infection (IAI) and urinary tract infection (UTI) pathogens in Chinese hospitals. Methods: A total of 2,546 Gram-negative isolates from IAIs and 1,947 isolates from UTIs collected in 16 hospitals and 7 regions of China from 2016 to 2017 were analyzed. Results: E. coli and K. pneumoniae were the most common pathogens identified in HA (40.7%, 21.9%) and CA (49.2%, 21.3%) IAIs and in HA (59.0%, 17.3%) and CA (64.3%, 12.7%) UTIs, respectively. The overall rates of extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL)-positive strains were 48.2% for E. coli and 26.4% for K. pneumoniae. The rates of ESBL-positive E. coli and K. pneumoniae strains were significantly higher in HA than in CA IAIs (51.7% vs 42.4%, P=0.016 and 22.0% vs 20.6%, P<0.001). IAI E. coli ESBL-producing isolates were most susceptible to IPM (97.2%) and AMK (93.9%), and UTI-associated E. coli ESBL-producers were 94.74% susceptible to amikacin (AMK), 97.02% to imipenem (IPM), and 91.4% to ertapenem (ETP). IAI K. pneumoniae ESBL-producing isolates were most susceptible to AMK (84.43%) and IPM (82.79%), and UTI-associated K. pneumoniae ESBL-producers were 88.39% susceptible to AMK, 87.5% to IPM, and 82.14% to ETP. Overall, percentages of susceptible strains to ETP, IPM, AMK, and Piperacillin-Tazobactam (TZP) were in the range of 82.0% to 96.4%, to 5 cephalosporins in the range of 31.4%-69.6% and to 2 fluoroquinolones in the range of 37.8%-45.5% for E. coli and 65.5%-90.7%, 37.7%-75.3%, and 43.9%-73.2% for K. pneumoniae, respectively. Conclusion: E. coli and K. pneumoniae continued to be the main pathogens in Chinese UTIs and IAIs with high ESBL-positive rates between 2016 and 2017. Carbapenem- or amikacin-based therapies were the most effective to combat IAI and UTI pathogens.

Background: To explore the susceptibility trends of antimicrobials and resistance increase to antibiotics of Enterobacteriaceae isolated from patients in China with intra-abdominal infections (IAI) from 2011 to 2015. Methods: MIC90 and MIC50 values of 12 commonly used antibiotics from Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae isolated from IAI samples were determined. Results: A total of 8,477 Gram-negative bacterial pathogens were collected from 21 medical centers in China. The majority of IAI isolate-derived pathogens were E. coli (3,854, 45.5%) and K. pneumoniae (1,670, 19.7%) of which 1,990 (23.5%) were consecutively collected from community acquired (CA) and 6,186 (73.0%) from hospital acquired (HA) IAIs. The drugs with the highest efficacy against E. coli and K. pneumoniae isolates derived from IAI samples were imipenem, ertapenem, amikacin and piperacillin-tazobactam. MIC90 values for piperacillin-tazobactam were 64 mu g/mL in 2015 with fluctuations from 16-64 mu g/mL through the years for E. coli, but were stable at >= 64 mu g/mL from 2011 to 2015 for K. pneumoniae isolates. Susceptibilities to ertapenem, imipenem and amikacin were high for E. coli isolates throughout the study, but K. pneumoniae isolated from abscesses, colon and peritoneal fluid collected from medical and surgical ICUs showed an increasing trend of carbapenem resistance in 2015. Conclusion: In 2015 there was a trend of enhanced carbapenem resistance, particularly for K. pneumoniae isolated from IAI samples obtained from patients in ICUs.

Counseling clients who have experienced an open or closed head injury can be quite problematic and present challenges in different realms. This paper explores some of these disparate realms and offers some insights as to counseling strategies that may need to be explored and examined. Realistic goals and objectives are needed and attention to specific areas of concern are examined.

Category: Other Introduction/Purpose: The arch has been referred to as the core of the foot. The arch’s structure, movement, and integrity during running gait largely depends on the function of intrinsic and extrinsic foot muscles. There are many injuries that can be associated with a dysfunctional medial longitudinal arch. Improving the strength of the foot muscles could help improve arch function during running. The purpose of this study was to compare changes in arch deformation after eight weeks in a foot strengthening exercise group (FS), a group walking in minimalist shoes (MSW), and a control group (C). Methods: 24 healthy runners (average of 15-30 miles/week, no experience with minimalist footwear) were randomly assigned to FS (n=9), MSW (n=7) or C (n=8). FS subjects followed a series of progressive exercises designed to strengthen the intrinsic and extrinsic foot muscles. MSW subjects walked in minimal footwear, increasing from 2,500 to 7,000 steps/day over an 8 wk period. All runners maintained their pre-study mileage in conventional running shoes throughout the 8-week study Three-dimensional motion analysis data was collected at the beginning of the study and after week 8. Passive-reflective markers were placed according to the Oxford Foot Model. Subjects ran at a self-selected pace on a treadmill while data were collected for at least 10 strides. Peak midfoot angles were extracted and averaged within each trial. Group means at week 0 and week 8 were compared using paired t-tests with alpha set at 0.05. Results: While all groups experienced a decrease in midfoot angle, only the FS group experienced a significant change (see table). These results suggest that the foot exercise intervention resulted in more arch control during running than the progressive walking in minimal shoes. Greater changes may have been found if the subjects progressively ran in the minimal shoes which would have placed greater demands on the arch musculature. Conclusion: Based on these data, it seems possible for patients to reduce the amount of arch deformation during running by using targeted foot exercises. This could help with patients who have overuse injuries associated with increased arch deformation. These results also suggest that foot strengthening may be an effective way to prepare for minimal footwear running.

Psychological momentum in sports is a series of high or low human performances that seem to defy statistical randomness, and instead is often attributed to a positive feedback system in the athlete’s physiology and psyche. Quantitative approaches have found some evidence of psychological momentum. We measured the throw speeds and accuracy of adult males throwing baseballs while subjecting them to verbal criticism (positive or negative). Our study of short-term momentum suggested evidence of psychological momentum only in top-performing university baseball players, and not in the lower-performing players or in nonathletes.

This research investigated aggressive driver–bicyclist interactions. Individuals who identified themselves as both a driver and a bicyclist were asked about their behavior when they encountered a bicyclist on the road while they were driving a car. Open-ended survey responses were analyzed from individuals who reported a propensity for driving too closely to a bicyclist who they felt was not staying to the side of the road. The data were drawn from a snowball-sampled, online survey specifically targeted to elicit responses about rare (i.e., deviant or illegal) behaviors. Little research exists on why individuals would choose to intimidate a bicyclist while they were driving. Applicable theories from sociology and behavioral economics (i.e., theories of crime as social control and as altruistic punishment) were drawn on in this study to help understand why individuals might do so. This paper argues that aggressive driving behavior directed at bicyclists in the sample population could be characterized with two general themes: “teaching them a lesson” and “they had it coming.” In both cases, individuals deflected the blame for their aggressive behavior away from themselves. Instead, they cast themselves as serving a social good by teaching bicyclists how they should behave or by punishing bicyclists for behaving in ways with which the drivers disagreed. The study reported here was an initial step in an effort to identify testable hypotheses through qualitative methods to explain such behaviors and eventually to mitigate them. The intent is to inform actionable directions to address dangerous on-street interactions that act as barriers to a safe transportation system that accommodates all users.

Nearly everyone has jaywalked, rolled through a stop sign, or driven a few miles per hour over the speed limit, but most such offenses face no legal consequences. Society also tends to see these relatively minor infractions that almost all people make-though they are unmistakably illegal-as normal and even rational. Bicyclists who break the law, however, seem to attract a higher level of scorn and scrutiny. While the academic literature has exhaustively covered unlawful driving behaviors, there remains little research on bicyclists who break the rules of the road. This paper examines rule-breaking bicyclists and the factors associated with such behaviors. We also explore the question: are bicyclists making rational, albeit illegal, choices-similar to most drivers and pedestrians-or are bicyclists reckless and dangerous? Because it's proven effective for reaching hard-to-reach populations, we employed a snowball-sampling framework and an online, scenario-based survey completed by nearly 18,000 respondents. Via multi-level statistical analyses, our results suggest that younger people and males tend to exhibit higher levels of illegal bicycling behavior, but even when combining high-risk factors, the overwhelming majority of bicyclists are not reckless. Controlling for the context and social norms of the city where one lives tends to outweigh individual bicyclist characteristics such as race/ethnicity and income. Unlawful drivers and pedestrians tend to rationalize their behaviors as time saving; bicyclists similarly rationalize their illegal behaviors but were more inclined to cite increasing their own personal safety and/or saving energy. Most bicyclists can generally be described as rational individuals trying to function safely and efficiently given the context and norms of where they live and the transportation system put in front of them.

This study examines the presence of behavioral norms while riding a bicycle in mixed traffic conditions. We assess car and bicycle on-street interactions by asking bicyclists to consider how they would respond when driving a car and encountering a bicyclist behaving in ways that might be perceived as reckless, rude, and/or illegal. We hypothesize that individuals have preconceived notions of what constitutes appropriate bicycling established, in part, by their own experiences as bicyclists. These experiences as bicyclists themselves inform what they deem acceptable behavioral norms by other bicyclists, and in turn, the nature of their response (e.g. aggressive or benevolent) towards other bicyclists.We use data drawn from an online survey that posed hypothetical, mixed-traffic scenarios to those that bicycle and also drive. Reactions to various scenarios are operationalized as dependent variables in logistic regression models. Independent variables include socio-demographic factors, general perceptions of bicycling, and measures of specific bicycling behaviors. Regression results indicate that as an individual's own bicycling experience increases, their likelihood of an aggressive response to bicyclists in a mixed-traffic encounter is reduced. Additionally, we find that increasingly aggressive responses to other bicyclists may be evidence of altruistic punishment, wherein bicyclists ascribe and seek to enforce their own behavioral norms regarding appropriate bicycling behavior in mixed traffic. Such norms, however, reflect personal experience rather than existing traffic laws. Multi-modal education, infrastructure, and revised traffic laws are needed to clearly ascribe appropriate travel behavior by all modes and facilitate safe, efficient, multi-modal interactions. Published by Elsevier Ltd.