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Mindfulness has recently gained significant attention and momentum in academia and popular culture. There is, however, a paucity of literature on how students make sense of contemplative practices. This paper proposes that mindfulness meditation is not merely a useful tool for stress reduction, but also a metacognitive meaning-making practice.

Academic libraries are taking a closer look at how well they are serving the needs of their users. As a result assessment activities become more important. In this column, the authors will focus on and describe one major tool of assessment—the user survey. © 2016, Published with license by Taylor & Francis.

As librarianship evolves, it is important to examine the changes that have taken place in professional requirements. To provide an understanding of the current market demand for core competencies of librarianship, this article conducts a semi-automatic methodology to analyze job advertisements (ads) posted on the American Library Association (ALA) Joblist from 2009 through 2014. There is evidence that the ability to solve unexpected complex problems and to provide superior customer service gained increasing importance for librarians during those years. The authors contend that the findings in this report question the status quo of core competencies of librarianship in the US job market.

In May of 1746, slaving captain Christiaan Hagerop illegally captured ten Gold Coast canoe paddlers, seven of whom were free Africans from Elmina and Fante. Hagerop subsequently sailed to Suriname, where he sold the paddlers into slavery. To appease the relatives of the captured men and to safeguard its reputation among local Africans, the Dutch West India Company (WIC) launched a search for the kidnapped paddlers. Six of the men were eventually located in Suriname in 1749, the seventh having died in slavery. While the Africans were transported back to the Gold Coast via Amsterdam, the WIC tried to have Hagerop extradited to its Gold Coast possessions to receive punishment for his crime. A legal battle over jurisdictional competence ensued in the Dutch Republic, the outcome of which was that the captain was made to stand trial in Amsterdam, but in the end he received very little punishment. © 2016 Copyright 2016 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Actigraphy has attracted much attention for assessing physical activity in the past decade. Many algorithms have been developed to automate the analysis process, but none has targeted a general model to discover related features for detecting or predicting mobility function, or more specifically, mobility impairment and major mobility disability (MMD). Men (N = 357) and women (N = 778) aged 70-89 years wore a tri-axial accelerometer (Actigraph GT3X) on the right hip during free-living conditions for 8.4 +/- 3.0 d. One-second epoch data were summarized into 67 features. Several machine learning techniques were used to select features from the free-living condition to predict mobility impairment, defined as 400 m walking speed ¡0.80 m s(-1). Selected features were also included in a model to predict the first occurrence of MMD-defined as the loss in the ability to walk 400 m. Each method yielded a similar estimate of 400 m walking speed with a root mean square error of similar to 0.07 m s(-1) and an R-squared values ranging from 0.37-0.41. Sensitivity and specificity of identifying slow walkers was approximately 70% and 80% for all methods, respectively. The top five features, which were related to movement pace and amount (activity counts and steps), length in activity engagement (bout length), accumulation patterns of activity, and movement variability significantly improved the prediction of MMD beyond that found with common covariates (age, diseases, anthropometry, etc). This study identified a subset of actigraphy features collected in free-living conditions that are moderately accurate in identifying persons with clinically-assessed mobility impaired and significantly improve the prediction of MMD. These findings suggest that the combination of features as opposed to a specific feature is important to consider when choosing features and/or combinations of features for prediction of mobility phenotypes in older adults.

Sometimes through a single person's efforts, a new and innovative game is developed and promoted locally. Occasionally, circumstances cause these games to remain on a local level without being adopted by mainstream physical educators and physical activity professionals. Unfortunately, some educators tend to stick to what they know and teach traditional games and sports. This practice has left little room for unique and innovative games such as tchoukball and hocker to contribute to physical education curriculum. This article describes the history of how each of these games was developed and promoted. Rules, equipment and game-play strategies are provided. ©, Copyright Taylor & Francis.

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is a collaborative methodology that uniquely involves stakeholders in all stages of the research process. CBPR has been widely utilized in the field of public health, but not widely employed with college populations. This study utilized CBPR methods within a college community to gain insight into excessive alcohol consumption. Six student researchers planned and carried out a rigorous qualitative study at a public university in the Northeast region of the United States. A total of 48 undergraduate participants were recruited for focus groups that were facilitated by two student researchers, and transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis methods. Students' reasons for drinking alcohol were focused within the themes of inclusion, habitual default, and the student development process. Social media, strict policy/enforcement, and student's desire to avoid responsibility led to increased risk and consequences related to drinking. Students recommended late night transportation and a Good Samaritan policy as strategies to improve student safety. This study led to student advocacy and policy change directed at improving student's health and safety and demonstrated that CBPR methods show promise for engaging students and producing meaningful data.

Three neighborhoods in Lexington, Kentucky, share a common flood history, including property acquisitions, as a means to mitigate against flooding; yet, the interactions of residents with the buyout landscapes vary significantly among the neighborhoods. Although the same institutions and structural controls implemented flood buyout programs in all three neighborhoods, semi-structured interviews illustrate that differing perspectives, personalities, and neighborhood politics shaped unique identities and land uses for the acquired properties in each neighborhood. Varying levels of resident engagement with the buyout landscape resulted in a range of attitudes towards hazard preparation, management, and mitigation, thus leaving some neighborhoods more resilient to future flooding than others. This study explores key residents, termed magnetic agents, who drove neighborhood civic action and land uses on the open space created through floodplain property acquisition. This research indicates magnetic agents can serve as important partners for local governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in building community-based projects aimed at reducing vulnerability to flood events and instituting high utility land uses on floodplain buyout open space.(C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP) is a famous issue in spatial analysis that states the output of a spatial analysis is influenced by the spatial extent of the units used in the analysis. This study demonstrates that the MAUP is accompanied with another intractable spatial issue in spatial modeling; the Modifiable Conceptual Unit Problem (MCUP). The MCUP states that the conceptualization of spatial processes impacts the output of spatial analysis and occurs when a model with one spatial dimension is applied to a spatial model with more than one spatial dimension. This study demonstrates the MCUP by developing three conceptual models of dispersal and showing how they produce different results even when given the same initial dispersal curves and areal units. Three conceptual models of dispersal (sum of curve points model, area of distance range model, and the volume of distance range model) are described and applied to a grid landscape with a single point of dispersal and a grid landscape with multiple points of dispersal. A Geographic Information System (GIS) is used to evaluate how the models differ in their distribution of pollen or seeds across the landscapes. The three models of dispersal are each valid conceptualizations of the dispersal process, but when given the same dispersal curve parameters, they produce different distributions of dispersed items across grid landscapes. The sum of curve points model is the least complicated model because it only uses a few points from the defined dispersal curve. The area of distance range model uses the entire dispersal curve, but is based on a single dimension of space and thus conceptually abstracted from the grid landscape. The volume of distance range model uses the two spatial dimensions present in the grid landscape and thus is the most conceptually sound model of the three. The underlying conceptualization of the dispersal process can impact the results of dispersal models. Applying dispersal curves with one spatial dimension to grids with two spatial dimensions makes inherent assumptions about the conceptualization of dispersal. This study highlights the necessity of researchers to declare their conceptual models of dispersal when applying modeled dispersal curves to grid landscapes. © 2016 The Author.

Purpose - The Federal Emergency Management Agency provides guidelines for the management of open space created through property acquisition (buyouts); however, land use decisions are primarily left to local governments manifesting in a variety of uses. The purpose of this paper is to provide a land use assessment of buyout sites, to describe the changes in those uses that have occurred during a ten-year period from 1990 to 2000, and to offer an assessment of management approaches employed across these sites. Design/methodology/approach - Using a mixed-methods approach consisting of a land use classification survey and a semi-structured questionnaire of floodplain managers, this study explores the land use trends at buyout sites, diverse approaches local governments take in managing the open spaces created through floodplain buyout programs, and the successes and challenges communities face in open space management. Findings - Results indicate strong support from floodplain managers for property acquisition and several cases emerged where communities put their newly acquired public land to creative uses. However, the opportunity to leverage these properties for greater public values is largely being missed, primarily because of limited funding. Practical implications - The analysis indicates strong support among floodplain managers for the buyout approach; however, additional resource-sharing and funding opportunities are needed to increase the utility of buyout properties. Originality/value - By evaluating the long-term management strategies floodplain managers utilize on buyout sites, this study adds to an underrepresented area of scholarship and is of value to practitioners, government officials, and academics.

Here the volume continues its reflections on Hawthorne’s career but turns to his place in the literature of ‘homes and haunts’, taking up the question of how literary geography and its localization of authors helped construct an authorial presence for Americans and a tangible transatlantic literary canon. (It turns out that having a home on the literary itinerary was crucial to nineteenth-century reception.) Baraw demonstrates that the poetics of literary tourism provided Hawthorne with both a means of self-canonization as a tourist attraction and a tool for cultivating the ideal ‘English’ reader for his books. This essay begins a strand of chapters related to literary tourism and the construction of international heritage landscapes.

Scarry's (The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World, Oxford, New York, 1985) broke crucial ground in examining the antagonisms between pain, embodiment and language, and the isolating effects of pain as experience. This paper submits Scarry's claim that extreme pain destroys language, evades mediation, and isolates the subject to critical scrutiny, arguing instead that pain is a semiosomatic force, a form of feeling generated by imperative information about embodiment (real or imaginary) that works to disarticulate and move the subject and the social environment. Pain is not predominantly antagonistic to language; rather, pain insists on signifying, with language being only one of its performative media. What pain resists is representation, not the informational force exerted through language and other semiotic forms. Rather than unmaking language, pain disarticulates and rearticulates subjectivity, refashioning interrelations between the body, subjectivity, others, and culture in ongoing processes of largely aversive impingement, embroiling subjectivity with the imperative directives of embodied vulnerability. © 2016 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.

This longitudinal quantitative study investigates how participation in the Comprehensive College Readiness Access and Success Program (CCRASP) affects underrepresented urban students’ college persistence. Results revealed that CCRASP participation was associated with higher percentages of students enrolling in both 2- and 4-year colleges as sophomore students. As school leaders and policy makers seek to make all urban students college and career ready, these findings further solidify current urgencies to re-visit K–12 student academic and counselling services. It also provides school leaders and educators with practical information and reform ideas to improve underprivileged students’ persistence and success. © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Best practice in curriculum development and implementation requires that discipline-based standards or requirements embody both curricular and programme scopes and sequences. Ensuring these are present and aligned in course/programme content, activities and assessments to support student success requires formalised and systematised review and development processes. These processes are not always in play in higher education, however. Using a descriptive qualitative case study strategy, this article shares how policy outcomes within intermediate and superintendent certification, sixth-year and Ed.D. doctoral courses and programmes at a state university were reviewed, mapped and assessed using an evidence-based curriculum analysis model and tool that mapped standards and outcomes from course syllabus data. Strengths and weaknesses of this approach are discussed and it is suggested that the field might benefit from a curriculum mapping and analysis method that also considers content coverage. A Course-Level Content Scope and Sequence Mapping Tool, developed to map content scope and sequence alongside standards or outcomes mapping, is presented for consideration and testing. The ability to assess and improve curriculum is only as good as the conceptual frameworks, methods and tools available. This critical case study is one effort to advance the field by drawing attention to the importance of curricular content mapping. The study should be of interest to higher education staff, researchers and accreditors concerned with postsecondary programmes and their curricular scope and sequence coherence, quality and improvement. © 2015 UCU.