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Building on extensive feedback from the field as well as vigorous new research on how best to support infant and toddler development and learning, the authors have revised and updated the widely used "Infant/Toddler Environment Rating Scale." ITERS-3 is the next-generation assessment tool for use in center-based child care programs for infants and toddlers up to 36 months of age. ITERS-3 focuses on the full range of needs of infants and toddlers and provides a framework for improving program quality. Further, the scale assesses both environmental provisions and teacher-child interactions that affect the broad developmental milestones of infants and toddlers, including: language, cognitive, social-emotional and physical development, as well as concern for health and safety. ITERS-3 is appropriate for state- and district-wide QRIS and continuous quality improvement, program evaluation by directors and supervisors, teacher self-evaluation, monitoring by agency staff, and teacher training programs. The established reliability and validity of the scale make it particularly useful for research and program evaluation. While the approach to assessing quality and the scoring process remain the same for the new ITERS-3, users will find the following improvements informed by extensive use of the ITERS in the field and by the most recent research: (1) Enhanced focus on interactions and the role of the teacher; (2) Six new language and literacy Items; (3) A new Item on beginning math experiences; (4) Expanded age range to include children from birth to 36 months; (5) A new approach to scoring based solely on observation of ongoing classroom activity (3-hour time sample); (6) The elimination of the parents/staff subscale and teacher interviews, freeing up time for observing more actual classroom practice; (7) Improved indicator scaling, providing more precise and useful scores for use in professional development and self-improvement; and (8) Reduced emphasis on the number of materials, along with greater emphasis on how materials are used to encourage learning. Suitable for use in inclusive and culturally diverse programs, ITERS-3 subscales evaluate: (1) Space and Furnishings; (2) Personal Care Routines; (3) Language and Books; (4) Activities; (5) Interaction; and (6) Program Structure.

Featuring a new spiral binding, the FCCERS-R is a thorough revision of the widely used program quality assessment instrument, "The Family Day Care Rating Scale." Designed for use in family child care programs, it is suitable for programs serving children from infancy through school-age. Following extensive input from users of the original scale, the authors have made many improvements and innovations that will make this program resource even more effective and easy to use. The revised edition: (1) Accommodates the wider age range often found in family child care programs; (2) Focuses more deeply on sensitivity to cultural and socioeconomic diversity; (3) Adds special needs of exceptional children to the main scale items and indicators; (4) Includes an additional subscale called "Program Structure"; (5) Includes an expanded score sheet that includes space and forms to collect specific information needed for accurate scoring; and (6) Utilizes a new layout, with each item on a separate page along with the Notes for Clarification and Questions.

One of the biggest changes in the lives of children in the United States is the increasing number of infants and toddlers who are cared for outside the home during work hours. This book provides a compilation of information and discussions from a meeting of the National Center for Early Development and Learning, held annually to convene experts around a given topic and generate recommendations for future research, policy, practice, and professional development. The chapters are: (1) "Introduction" (Thelma Harms); (2) "Cognitive Development in Infants: Looking, Listening, and Learning" (Judy S. DeLoache); (3) "Language Development in Early Childhood: The Role of Social Interaction" (Jane R. Katz and Catherine E. Snow); (4) "Social Development, Family, and Attachment Relationships of Infants and Toddlers: Research into Practice" (Carollee Howes); (5) "New Directions for Studying Quality in Programs for Infants and Toddlers" (John M. Love, Helen Raikes, Diane Paulsell, and Ellen Eliason Kisker); (6) "Respiratory Disease in Infants and Toddlers" (Albert M. Collier and Frederick W. Henderson); (7) "Diarrheal Disease in Infants and Toddlers" (Robin B. Churchill and Larry K. Pickering); (8) "The Early Intervention System and Out-of-Home Child Care" (Michael J. Guralnick); (9) "The Cultural Context of Infant and Toddler Care" (Judith K. Bernhard and Janet Gonzalez-Mena); (10) "Supporting Infants and Toddlers: The Nascent Policy Agenda" (Sharon Lynn Kagan and Kathryn Taaffe McLearn); (11) "Supporting Families as Primary Caregivers: The Role of the Workplace" (Ellen Galinsky and James T. Bond); and (12) "The Whole Child: Transdisciplinary Implications for Infant and Toddler Care" (Debby Cryer). Each chapter contains references. (KB)

The ECERS-R is a thorough revision of the widely used program quality assessment instrument, the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS). Designed for use in preschool, kindergarten, and child care classrooms serving children 2-and-a-half through 5 years of age, the ECERS-R can be used by program directors for supervision and program improvement, by teaching staff for self-assessment, by agency staff for monitoring, and in teacher training programs. The ECERS-R has been expanded to 43 items; changes include new interaction items, additional curriculum items such as use of electronic media and promotion of acceptance of diversity, more inclusive and culturally sensitive indicators, and more items focusing on staff needs. Items are arranged in the following categories: (1) space and furnishings; (2) personal care routines; (3) language-reasoning; (4) activities; (5) interaction; (6) program structure; and (7) parents and staff. Each of the 43 items is expressed as a 7-point scale ranging from inadequate to excellent. Notes for clarification and questions are included for selected items. An introductory section gives detailed information about the rationale of the ECERS-R, the process of revision, and the reliability and validity of the scale. Full instructions for administration and scoring, as well as a Score Sheet and Profile that may be photocopied, are included with the scale. (EV)

This book provides useful "how-to" information to help shelters create a safe, healthful, and supportive environment for their youngest residents. The chapters of the book are: (1) "The Effects of Homelessness on Children and Families" (Janice Molnar); (2) "Children and Domestic Violence: Recognizing Effects and Building Programs" (Evelyn Williams, Marie Weil, and Robin Mauney); (3) "Creating Environments for Play" (Thelma Harms); (4) "Choosing and Supporting Shelter Caregivers" (Pam Rolandelli); (5) "Developing Activity Programs for Children in Shelters" (Adele Richardson Ray); (6) "Health Problems of Children in Shelters" (Sandra Botstein and Pam Rolandelli); (7) "Support and Education Programs for Parents" (Tovah Klein and Mary Foster); (8) "Volunteers in Programs for Homeless Children" (Pat Ward); and (9) "Funding" (Rachel Fesmire). Chapter 10 describes several programs for children in shelters: The Vogel Alcove, Dallas, Texas (Beverly A. Mulvihill and Andra McBain); The Ark, Baltimore, Maryland (Pat Gallagher); Homeless Children's Network, Seattle, Washington (Jean Bombardier); and Head Start Demonstration Programs (Adele Richardson Ray and Thelma Harms). The book's appendices include safety checklists, sample job descriptions for volunteers, a discipline policy, and a list of resources for volunteers. Contains a 22-item annotated bibliography. (HTH)

The textbook is intended to be useful to inservice teachers of business subjects, to college and university teachers of methods courses in business, and to students enrolled in methods courses. After two introductory chapters dealing generally with business education, the teacher's role, the learning process, and planning for instruction, four chapters are devoted to specific learning areas: typewriting, shorthand, office practice, and accounting, with all phases of the teaching task, from initial planning through evaluation, presented in detail. Material is presented on learning systems, behavioral objectives, and techniques of evaluation consistent with innovations in education methodology. The user is provided with examples, diagrams, and specific material to aid in the task of teaching. The final four chapters are completely new in this edition, representing teaching methods and procedures in the distributive subjects, the cooperative plan, the project plan, and youth organizations. (Author/AJ)

Chapter 2 has dealt with the structure of highly automated production and logistics systems, in which most consumer goods are manufactured and distributed to customers. These production and material flow systems define the requirements for the drive solutions used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Naturally occurring, regulated resistance mechanisms of bacteria against various heavy metals and metalloids have been used to construct whole-cell living biosensors or bioreporters. Molecular fusions of regulatory circuits with reporter genes encoding easily detectable reporter proteins enable bioreporters to sense metal targets, typically at concentrations in the nanomolar to micromolar range, although more sensitive sensors also exist. The biological components of extant bioreporter constructs and the target ranges and sensitivities of bioreporter constructs are presented. An outlook on developments using novel molecular interactions as triggers of the biological responses and strategies for the improvement of bioreporters is given. Application examples are presented that illustrate the capability of bioreporters to measure bioavailable fractions of the target species rather than total loads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cell motility is now recognized as central to many biological processes. Growth factors, such as those that activate the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), drive biochemically and biologically distinct subsets of migration critical for (neo)organogenesis and tumor invasion. Thus, modulation of these events requires an understanding of the controls of EGFR-mediated motility. Deconstruction of motility into its component events enables this deeper insight. Herein we describe methods that measure the overall motility and its parameters as well as the biophysical processes extension, de-adhesion/ retraction, and contraction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the dialectic theory of Philip Sidney as depicted in his sonnet sequence Astrophil an Stella. According to Sidney's poet-reader dialectic, poetry is a process of invention that links the poet with the reader mentally, with the former opening the latter's mind to the beauties of poetry. Thus, the poet-reader dialectic is a theory of communication that is developed through poetry and its persuasive speaking actions.

Copyright of Biodegradation & Persistance is the property of Springer eBooks and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Target definition and dosimetric evaluation of brachytherapy procedures is crucial in developing proper technique and has prognostic implications. Accurate definition of tumour volume and organs at risk is essential for treatment planing. CT accurately localise sources, but often poorly delineates tumour volume. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has introduced several imaging benefits such as improved soft tissue definition and unrestricted multiplanar and volumetric imaging. However, MRI has not yet seriously challenged CT for brachytherapy planing in most sites. One main reasons for this is the poor imaging of the applicator dummy markers required for detecting the source dwell positions. Therefore a new system generating synthetic image modalities from matched and fused CT and MRI-data has been developed. The system presented consists of five modules serving for viewing, matching, segmentation, fusion and validation. With the presented new system manual or automatic image registration and fusion of CT and MR-images can be done, enabling the use of the imaging advantages of MRI and CT in brachytherapy planing. Tumour structures or source dwell positions could be measured in any plane in one imaging modality and then copied into the other. With synthetic image-based brachytherapy planing a optimisation of target volume covering and dose distribution to treatment volume and structures at risk could be achieved. These preliminary data show that image registration and fusion is feasible for brachytherapy planing. The procedure integrating synthetic images from CT and MRI into brachytherapy planing has the advantage of precise target volume definition and of better determination of dose within this target taking into account the critical dose at structures at risk. Synthetic images may lead to an improved tumour control and reduced side effects by brachytherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile agents are usually expected to execute in open environments. This openness implies that they should be able to dynamically learn how to interact with other agents and services which were not known at development time. The interlocutors therefore have to publish enough information about their functionality, while at the same time they have to restrict access rights in order to preserve their integrity. We describe in this paper a messenger-based framework which proposes run-time generated interfaces to address this duality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, we develop a partial evaluation technique for residuating functional logic programs, which generalize the concurrent computation models for logic programs with delays to functional logic programs. We show how to lift the nondeterministic choices from run time to specialization time. We ascertain the conditions under which the original and the transformed program have the same answer expressions for the considered class of queries as well as the same floundering behavior. All these results are relevant for program optimization in Curry, a functional logic language which is intended to become a standard in this area. Preliminary empirical evaluation of the specialized Curry programs demonstrates that our technique also works well in practice and leads to substantial performance improvements. To our knowledge, this work is the first attempt to formally define and prove correct a general scheme for the partial evaluation of functional logic programs with delays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nuclear spectrum of M 87 covering the Lyα-Hα wavelength range was obtained with the HST Faint Object Spectrograph (FOS) trough a 0″.21 aperture. Contrary to some previous claims, a single power law (Fv ∼ v−α) can not reproduce the observed continuum shape and at least a broken power law is required for a good fit (α=1.75 and 1.41 shortward and longward of the break at ∼4500 Å). We detect a set of broad (FWHM ∼ 400 km s−1) absorption lines arising in the gas associated with M 87. These are only lines from neutral and very low ionization species blueshifted by ∼150 km s−1 relative to the M 87 systemic velocity, indicating a net gas outflow and turbulence. The excitation sensitive emission line ratios suggest that shocks may be the dominant energy supplier. The nuclear source in M 87 is significantly variable. From the FOS target acquisition data, we have established that the flux from the optical nucleus varies by a factor ∼2 on time scales of ∼2.5 months and by as much as 25% over 3 weeks, and remains unchanged (≤ 2.5%) on time scales of ∼ 1 day. These time scales limit the physical size of the emitting region to a few hundred gravitational radii. The variability, combined with other observed spectral properties, strongly suggest that M 87 is intrinsically of BL Lac type but is viewed at an angle too large to reveal the classical BL Lac properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A deep, fully sampled diffraction limited (FWHM ∼ 70 mas) narrowband image of the central region in M 87 was obtained with the Wide Filed and Planetary Camera 2 of the Hubble Space Telescope using the dithering technique. The Hα+[N ii] continuum subtracted image reveals a wealth of details in the gaseous disk structure described earlier by Ford et al. (1994). The disk morphology is dominated by a well defined three-arm spiral pattern. In addition, the major spiral arms contain a large number of small "arclets" covering a range of sizes (0″.1-0″.3=10-30 pc). The overall surface brightness profile inside a radius ∼ 1″.5 (100 pc) is well represented by a power-law I(μ) ∼ μ−1.75, but when the central ∼ 40 pc are excluded it can be equally well fit by an exponential disk. The major axis position angle remains constant at about PAdisk ∼ 6° for the innermost ∼ 1″, implying the disk is oriented nearly perpendicular to the synchrotron jet (PAjet ∼ 291°). At larger radial distances the isophotes twist, reflecting the gas distribution in the filaments connecting to the disk outskirts. The ellipticity within the same radial range is e=0.2 − 0.4, which implies an inclination angle of i ∼ 35°. The sense of rotation combined with the dust obscuration pattern indicate that the spiral arms are trailing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific computing on super-computers has become one of the standard methods of research in physics. This is clearly demonstrated by the articles in this section, which present a selection of projects related to physical re-search currently running at the HLRS. The presented work does not only cover a wide range of physics, it is also dominated by long-term projects which continuously have progressed over several years applying well estab-lished numerical methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the poem "Reel Around the Shadow," by James Harms. First Line: On South Street, above a burning trashcan, a rasta; Last Line: the world prepared at last.

The article presents the poem "The Joy Addict," by James Harms. First Line: Whales fall slowly to the ocean floor; Last Line: for them to move. I want to see them again.

The article presents the poem "As Always," by James Harms. First Line: Now that we're okay, I guess we should finish; Last Line: But I would recognize your heart if I saw it.

The article mentions people that the editor would like to thank for their assistance in the creation of the book Search for Meaning: Critical Essays on Early Modern Literature, 2004.