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The Gene Book: Explorations in the Code of Life is designed to introduce undergraduate college students to foundational concepts in genetics. The text provides in-depth coverage of the essential principles of genetics, from Mendel to molecular gene therapy, and reads like a story, guiding readers through each of these areas in an interesting, engaging, and enlightening way.  Milestone scientific discoveries introduce conceptual topics in each of the 10 chapters. The significance of each genetics paradigm is reinforced by the meaningful research context in which it is placed, whether the focus is single gene inheritance of disorders such as PKU and cystic fibrosis, or more complex genetic phenomena. Chromosomes, cell division, and cytogenetic disorders, including Down Syndrome and leukemia, are presented in a riveting historical context. In addition, the principles of molecular genetics are a major focus of this book. Students learn about the double helix, DNA replication, gene expression, mutation, natural selection, genomics, and the tools of molecular DNA analysis.  Approachable and effective, The Gene Book is a highly readable comprehensive text on genetics principles designed to highlight essential concepts that make up their very core. The text is well suited to undergraduate genetics courses and can also be used as a primer for more advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in medial or molecular genetics.Sarah Adelaide Crawford is professor of genetics at Southern Connecticut State University. Dr. Crawford received a Ph.D. from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, an M.S. degree in biochemistry from Princeton University, and a B.S. degree from Marymount Manhattan College. She is director of the Cancer Biology Research Laboratory and the recently opened the Autism Research Laboratory at the Southern Connecticut State University.

Using Fahrenheit 451 as a model for reading in the age of spectacle, this paper offers a critique of reading curriculum driven by Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects (CCSS-ELA), which divorces reading from dialogue and lived experience.  Drawing on Debord’s (1967/1983) notion of spectacle, the author considers how our current cultural moment may be shaping and shaped by an alienated and alienating curriculum of reading.  By embracing the political implications of reading curriculum, we can reclaim reading as a dialogic activity grounded in the world.

To determine the present situation regarding services provided to mobile users in US urban libraries, the authors surveyed 138 Urban Libraries Council members utilizing a combination of mobile visits, content analysis, and librarian interviews. The results show that nearly 95% of these libraries have at least one mobile website, mobile catalog, or mobile app. The libraries actively applied new approaches to meet each local community’s remote-access needs via new technologies, including app download links, mobile reference services, scan ISBN, location navigation, and mobile printing. Mobile services that libraries provide today are timely, convenient, and universally applicable.

This work examines expressions of personal hostility and animosity toward presidents―even beloved ones―throughout American history and their impact on policymaking, politics, and culture.• Investigates a unique form of expressions of hatred toward American presidents, focusing on the personal rather than the political• Covers every president from Washington to Trump• Includes coverage of personal attacks on First Families• Details how presidents and allies responded to these attacks

Effective leadrship talent management practices are important components of successful organizations. This correlational quantitative study is designed to inform educational leadership training programs in their work to revise their curricula and to utilize the candidates’ perception data to ensure successful program delivery and outcomes. Particularly, the findings of this study aim to inform educational leadership preparation practices on developing talent managers who can recruit, hire, retain, and support the most talented and high qualified teachers, as well as support staff available in the education job market. Results indicate that after completing the first year of educational leadership training only around half of the aspiring school leaders felt performance or impact ready to serve as talent managers, in order to select and develop highly qualified educators to increase the success of all students. The findings also suggest the importance of understanding how various factors predict an individual’s perception of preparedness to perform talent management leadership activities. Therefore, the study results may serve to enrich conversations of educational leadership training programs, guide program evaluation efforts, and help ensure candidates in educational leadership programs are exposed to talent management and strategies in their coursework. This may help future school leaders clearly and purposefully apply their knowledge and skills.

This article contextualizes mindfulness and examines a portion of the literature on mindfulness based interventions in the classroom. Mindfulness or the result of intentional, moment-tomoment awareness in a kind and discerning way can be cultivated with practice. There are many different mindfulness practices which can be utilized in a classroom environment. Some of the popular mindfulness practices are grounded in Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction program which incorporates sitting meditation, mindful yoga, mindful eating and the body scan. Mindfulness practices can be modified to fit the classroom setting and the grade level of students. With a growth in the number of studies involving mindfulness in the classroom this article explores the question of its efficacy with children and seeks to answer the question: is mindfulness in the classroom effective and what are the studies reporting?

Third Culture Kids (TCKs) and their adult counterparts (ATCKs) refer to individuals who spent part of their developmental years abroad and are an important demographic to study in this rapidly globalizing world. To date, the bulk of the research on (A)TCKs has been descriptive and little is known about their developmental trajectories in adulthood. The major objective of this study was to examine the personality traits, dimensions of well-being, and cognitive-affective styles of ATCKs across the adult life span using well-validated psychological measures. A subsidiary goal was to develop a new multidimensional international experiences scale to assess levels of multicultural engagement in ATCKs. The participants in this study (N = 700+; age = 18-80+) were recruited from the Alumni Office of an international school in Japan. Somewhat contrary to how they are often depicted in the news media and in qualitative studies, the ATCKs showed normative changes in personality and well-being in the direction of greater maturity and adjustment during adulthood, with those reporting higher levels of multicultural engagement generally exhibiting a more resilient personality profile, higher levels of well-being, and more adaptive cognitive and affective styles.

Prayer is viewed in modern medicine as a complimentary alternative treatment. However, to many patients, it is a source of hope and comfort. Patients, when facing illness, advanced disease, disability or death, can benefit from prayer. For healthcare providers, comfort with praying with patients can be deemed as unprofessional conduct or blurred therapeutic boundaries, particularly, when prayer is offered to patients' unsolicited by the patient or their family member(s). Therefore, it is imperative that healthcare providers await the request of prayer by the patient before prayer is initiated.

Family business research typically views family firms using the frameworks developed for non-family businesses (e.g., agency theory, institutional theory). Thus, using an evolutionary perspective on family may help address gaps in the family business literature, particularly regarding deviance. In the current study, we use kin selection theory to predict that family members receive preferential treatment and this history of privileges can create entitlement and lead genetically-related employees to misuse company resources. Using an experimental vignette methodology and data from 161 people recruited from an online panel, we found that the participants' purported genetic relatedness to the owner of a business increased their theft intentions and decreased their expected severity of sanctions and likelihood of being reported. Biological sex moderated the relationships between genetic relatedness and theft intentions, as well as between expectations of punishment and theft intentions. Specifically, when females expected higher severity of sanctions or likelihood of whistleblowing, they were less likely to report theft intentions, compared to males. The results of this study suggest that family business owners should protect against theft by all employees, including genetic relatives. Future research using field samples would help provide context for these findings. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The purpose of this commentary was to describe the barriers and facilitators to mental health screening efforts for children between age 5 and 18 years within three primary care clinics in poverty-impacted communities as part of an integrated care model. Three screeners, two women and one male, participated in a screening effort between September and December 2015. Screeners were interviewed about their perceptions of barriers and facilitators to screening. Organizational, family, and screener-level factors were found to influence delivery of screenings to children. Given the benefits of screening in primary care settings, identifying barriers to these initiatives and ways to address them pre-emptively could potentially alter the developmental trajectory and outcomes of children at risk for serious mental health conditions. © 2018, © 2018 Taylor & Francis.

A metallicity, chemical composition, and kinematic survey has been conducted for a sample of 340 candidate field red horizontal-branch (RHB) stars. Spectra with high resolution and high signal-to-noise ratio were gathered with the McDonald Observatory 2.7 m Tull and the Hobby-Eberly Telescope echelle spectrographs, and were used to determine effective temperatures, surface gravities, microturbulent velocities, [Fe/H] metallicities, and abundance ratios [X/Fe] for seven α and Fe-group species. The derived temperatures and gravities confirm that at least half of the candidates are true RHB stars, with (average) parameters T eff ∼ 5000 K and log g ∼ 2.5. From the α abundances alone, the thin and thick Galactic populations are apparent in our sample. Space motions for 90% of the program stars were computed from Hipparcos and Gaia parallaxes and proper motions. Correlations between chemical compositions and Galactic kinematics clearly indicate the existence of both thin-disk and thick-disk RHB stars. © 2018. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved..

The results of speckle interferometric observations at the 4.1 m Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope in 2016 and 2017 are given, totaling 2483 measurements of 1570 resolved pairs and 609 non-resolutions. We describe briefly recent changes in the instrument and observing method and quantify the accuracy of the pixel scale and position angle calibration. Comments are given on 44 pairs resolved here for the first time. The orbital motion of the newly resolved subsystem BU 83 Aa,Ab roughly agrees with its 36-year astrometric orbit proposed by J. Dommanget. Most Tycho binaries examined here turned out to be spurious. © 2018. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved..

Human activities have generated large quantities of microplastics that can be consumed by filter-feeding organisms as potential food sources. As a result, organisms may experience marked reductions in growth and/or health. To date there has been no investigations connecting microplastics (MPs) with the critically important ribbed mussel Geukensia demissa. Here we examined MP abundances within a bed of G. demissa in New Jersey. Results indicate that MP densities ranged between 11,000-50,000pieces/m2. The abundance of larger MPs (5mm>=1mm) did not vary among sampling sites while the smaller MPs (<1mm) abundances did vary between sampling sites. These smaller MPs also accounted for 79% of MPs recovered from these sites. Based on the higher abundance of smaller MPs, we also investigated MP ingestion/rejection in a laboratory setting. These results confirmed that ribbed mussels can ingest MPs with negative consequences for the buoyancy of plastics rejected in feces and pseudofeces. Copyright © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

A new speckle and wide-field imaging instrument for the WIYN telescope called NN-EXPLORE Exoplanet Stellar Speckle Imager (NESSI) is described. NESSI offers simultaneous two-color diffraction-limited imaging and wide-field traditional imaging for validation and characterization of transit and precision RV exoplanet studies. Many exoplanet targets will come from the NASA K2 and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) missions. NESSI is capable of resolving close binaries at sub-arcsecond separations down to the diffraction limit and >6 mag contrast difference in the visible band on targets as faint as 14th mag. Preliminary results from the instrument commissioning at WIYN and demonstrations of the instrument’s capabilities are presented. © 2018. The Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Printed in the U.S.A.

The transversity distribution, which describes transversely polarized quarks in transversely polarized nucleons, is a fundamental component of the spin structure of the nucleon, and is only loosely constrained by global fits to existing semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering (SIDIS) data. In transversely polarized p↑+p collisions it can be accessed using transverse polarization dependent fragmentation functions which give rise to azimuthal correlations between the polarization of the struck parton and the final state scalar mesons. This letter reports on spin dependent di-hadron correlations measured by the STAR experiment. The new dataset corresponds to 25 pb−1 integrated luminosity of p↑+p collisions at s=500 GeV, an increase of more than a factor of ten compared to our previous measurement at s=200 GeV. Non-zero asymmetries sensitive to transversity are observed at a Q2 of several hundred GeV and are found to be consistent with the former measurement and a model calculation. We expect that these data will enable an extraction of transversity with comparable precision to current SIDIS datasets but at much higher momentum transfers where subleading effects are suppressed. © 2018 The Author(s)

An improved measurement of the HΛ3 lifetime is presented. In this paper, the mesonic decay modes HΛ3→He3 + π- and HΛ3→d+p+π- are used to reconstruct the HΛ3 from Au+Au collision data collected by the STAR collaboration at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). A minimum χ2 estimation is used to determine the lifetime of τ=142-21+24(stat.)±29(syst.) ps. This lifetime is about 50% shorter than the lifetime τ=263±2 ps of a free Λ, indicating strong hyperon-nucleon interaction in the hypernucleus system. The branching ratios of the mesonic decay channels are also determined to satisfy B.R.(He3+π-)/(B.R.(He3+π-)+B.R.(d+p+π-))=0.32±0.05(stat.)±0.08(syst.). Our ratio result favors the assignment J(HΛ3)=12 over J(HΛ3)=32. These measurements will help to constrain models of hyperon-baryon interactions. © 2018 American Physical Society.