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The article discusses how educators are addressing student learning loss caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the importance of using assessments to reduce these gaps in the U.S. with reference to an assessment strategy implemented by Fulton County Schools in Georgia. it highlights the schools' provision of job-embedded professional learning to support context-specific assessment development, data analysis, and instructional planning to improve teacher capacity.

Looking for and finding romance online has advantages and pitfalls. '"The upside is, you can get to know someone without the awkwardness of that first meeting," said Chuck Scroggins, a […]

Congress declared the 1990s the "Decade of the Brain" promoting treatment, research, and development for any brain-related injury, disorder or disability. As the decade comes to a close, that research […]

The 17 sustainable development goals and their 169 targets comprise a comprehensive list of prerequisites for human and planetary well-being, but they also implicitly invoke many of the very trade-offs, synergies, and parallelisms that drive global crises. Decision-makers are familiar with these internal conflicts, and there is no shortage of frameworks, blueprints, and roadmaps to accelerate sustainability. However, thus far, inevitable trade-offs among competing priorities for sustainability are not catalyzing the types of transformations called for, indeed, demanded, by the SDGs. Habitual technocratic approaches, which the SDG lend themselves to, will report on indicators and targets, but will not adequately represent the ambitions of the goals themselves. Addressing these habitual tendencies, this paper therefore considers the inner dimensions of transformation, including emotions and meaning-making. Music offers a rich source of metaphor to reimagine interconnections and communicates affectively the feelings and embodied dimensions of intellectual thought and creativity. We draw on Western musical composition and history to offer insights on an intellectual path-dependency leading up to the current disembodied indicator-based management and regulation of global environmental and societal crises, and on potential alternatives. As metaphors, we consider what the SDGs might ‘sound like’ as either 12-tone, contrapuntal, or improvisational expression. We suggest that for the SDGs to release their transformative potential, ‘sustainability improvisers’ with a handle on both the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of transformation are needed: harnessed with deep understanding of SDG indicators and targets, but with an ability to listen deeply and invite others to co-create transformative pathways.

In the last issue of ACCENT, Amanda Lynch wrote an article on the latest SCI research being conducted. This is a sensitive subject - as it should be. Following are […]

Shorefast sea ice comprises only about 12% of global sea-ice cover, yet it has outsized importance for Arctic societies and ecosystems. Relatively little is known, however, about the dominant drivers of its breakup or how it will respond to climate warming. Here, we use 19 years of near-daily satellite imagery to document the timing of shorefast ice breakup in 28 communities in northern Canada and western Greenland that rely on shorefast ice for transportation and traditional subsistence activities. Breakup timing is strongly correlated with springtime air temperature, but the sensitivity of the relationship varies substantially among communities. We combine these observations with future warming scenarios to estimate an annual reduction of 5–44 days in the length of the springtime shorefast ice season by 2100. Paradoxically, the coldest communities are projected to experience the largest reductions in springtime ice season duration. Our results emphasize the local nature of climate change and its varied impacts on Arctic communities.

The interruption of essential water services in Cape Town, foreshadowed as 'Day Zero,' is one of several recent examples of urban water scarcity connected to the language of urgent climate change. Johannesburg, with its larger and growing population and deeply enmeshed water and power infrastructures, is currently regarded as one drought away from disaster. As a result, the lessons to be learned from Cape Town are under active debate in South Africa. We used Q method to examine the structure of perspectives on urban water scarcity among South African water management practitioners. Our results illustrate distinct viewpoints differentiated by focus on corruption and politics, supply and demand systems, and social justice concerns as well as a distinct cohort of pragmatic optimists. Our analysis underscores the significance of public trust and institutional effectiveness, regardless of otherwise sound policy or infrastructure tools. As practitioners explicitly connect domains of competency to solvable and critical problems, integrated systems approaches will require deliberate interventions. Furthermore, urban water crises exacerbate and are exacerbated by existing experiences of racial and economic inequality, but this effect is masked by focus on demand management of average per capita water consumption and characterization of water scarcity as 'the new normal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of 'Indigenous cultural water' has emerged in Australia's Murray–Darling Basin in the context of sweeping reforms to provide environmental water allocations for ecosystem conservation. We discuss the concept of cultural water, its origins, and its function as a means of representing and advancing Indigenous interests in a fully allocated and heavily developed river system. Cultural water remains a contested and ambiguous frame for policy, providing ample scope for conflict over appropriate goals, standards, and efficacy. We used Q methodology to elucidate the structure and content of perspectives on Indigenous cultural water as a prospective frame for policy. Our results illustrate distinct views on cultural water relative to distributive justice and restitution, the role of science and technical experts, and prospects for collaborative management. They also illustrate nuanced perspectives on the relation between cultural and environmental water management. Clarifying goals and reconciling divergent expectations around cultural water is likely to be an ongoing challenge. We note that uncertainty surrounding the concept may ultimately function to open discursive spaces to alternative perspectives and innovations, and this would be supported by contextual approaches, grounded in place-based prototyping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background:Dietary and weight monitoring are effective strategies for weight loss among individuals using dietary and lifestyle weight management techniques. This study aimed to (1) examine self-monitoring behaviors in bariatric surgery patients, (2) identify the effect of self-monitoring behaviors on postsurgery weight loss, and (3) describe patients' explanations for performing self-monitoring behaviors.Methods:Thirty participants (24 women, 6 men) scheduled for either gastric bypass (n= 11) or sleeve gastrectomy (n= 19) were recruited to participate in a year-long, observational study of dietary and weight management behaviors. Twenty-nine completed self-monitoring questionnaires presurgery; 22 participants were available at the 6- and 23 were available at the 12-month follow-up.Results:Baseline dietary and weight monitoring behaviors positively correlated with performance of those behaviors at 12 months (p< 0.05). Dietary monitoring behaviors at 12 months were positively correlated to total weight lost and percent excess weight loss at 12 months (p< 0.05). Weight monitoring was not related to weight outcomes. Participants' explanations for monitoring behaviors included accountability, keeping track of food or nutrient intake, and monitoring weight loss or preventing weight gain.Conclusion:Dietary monitoring may be a useful weight loss strategy following bariatric surgery. Further research is needed to examine the long-term benefits of dietary and weight monitoring behaviors.

Tackling our environmental issues and moving society toward more sustainable ways of riving require more responsive forms of governance. Amanda H. Lynch explains how adaptive governance leads to new policy. [...]

Letter to the Editor

Limited research exists regarding peer-assisted help-seeking for mental health problems. This study assesses the relationship between stigma and an individual's willingness to help a friend with mental illness. Results indicated that students were somewhat confident they could help a friend experiencing a mental health disorder. Significant differences in confidence were found based on sex, grade, holding stigma-related attitudes and outcome expectations. Findings from this study may be used by mental health professionals working with college students.

by Stephen H. Schneider (HarperCollins, 1997), ISBN 0-465-07279-8, 174 pages, price: $20 USA, $28.50 Canada. One closes Laboratory Earth with an overwhelming feeling of an opportunity lost. Schneider, an internationally [...]

The threats of climate change and the trade-offs between extractions and flows are examined for the Colorado, the Murray, the Orange and the Yellow Rivers. In all four basins, and over a long period of time, outflows have greatly reduced as a direct result of increased water extractions. Although climate change will aggravate hydrological impacts on river systems, currently high levels of water extractions remain the principal contributor to reduced system flows. Changes in governance, including sharing the variability between the environment and consumers, are urgently required if the health of these rivers is to be maintained.

AbstractAn Arctic region climate system model has been developed to simulate coupled interactions among the atmosphere, sea ice, ocean, and land surface of the western Arctic. The atmospheric formulation is based upon the NCAR regional climate model RegCM2, and includes the NCAR Community Climate Model Version 2 radiation scheme and the Biosphere–Atmosphere Transfer Scheme. The dynamic–thermodynamic sea ice model includes the Hibler–Flato cavitating fluid formulation and the Parkinson–Washington thermodynamic scheme linked to a mixed-layer ocean.Arctic winter and summer simulations have been performed at a 63 km resolution, driven at the boundaries by analyses compiled at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. While the general spatial patterns are consistent with observations, the model shows biases when the results are examined in detail. These biases appear to be consequences in part of the lack of parameterizations of ice dynamics and the ice phase in atmospheric moist processes in winter, but appear to have other causes in summer.The inclusion of sea ice dynamics has substantial impacts on the model results for winter. Locally, the fluxes of sensible and latent heat increase by over 100 W m−2in regions where offshore winds evacuate sea ice. Averaged over the entire domain, these effects result in root-mean-square differences of sensible heat flux and temperatures of 15 W m−2and 2°C. Other monthly simulations have addressed the model sensitivity to the subgrid-scale moisture treatment, to ice-phase physics in the explicit moisture parameterization, and to changes in the relative humidity threshold for the autoconversion of cloud water to rainwater. The results suggest that the winter simulation is most sensitive to the inclusion of ice phase physics, which results in an increase of precipitation of approximately 50 and in a cooling of several degrees over large portions of the domain. The summer simulation shows little sensitivity to the ice phase and much stronger sensitivity to the convective parameterization, as expected.

The St. Lawrence Island polynya (SLIP) is a commonly occurring winter phenomenon in the Bering Sea, in which dense saline water produced during new ice formation is thought to flow northward through the Bering Strait to help maintain the Arctic Ocean halocline. Winter darkness and inclement weather conditions have made continuous in situ and remote observation of this polynya difficult. However, imagery acquired from the European Space Agency ERS-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) has allowed observation of the St. Lawrence Island polynya using both the imagery and derived ice displacement products. With the development of ARCSyM, a high resolution regional model of the Arctic atmosphere/sea ice system, simulation of the SLIP in a climate model is now possible. Intercomparisons between remotely sensed products and simulations can lead to additional insight into the SLIP formation process. Low resolution SAR, SSM/I and AVHRR infrared imagery for the St. Lawrence Island region are compared with the results of a model simulation for the period of 24—27 February 1992. The imagery illustrates a polynya event (polynya opening). With the northerly winds strong and consistent over several days, the coupled model captures the SLIP event with moderate accuracy. However, the introduction of a stability dependent atmosphere-ice drag coefficient, which allows feedbacks between atmospheric stability, open water, and air-ice drag, produces a more accurate simulation of the SLIP in comparison to satellite imagery. Model experiments show that the polynya event is forced primarily by changes in atmospheric circulation followed by persistent favorable conditions: ocean surface currents are found to have a small but positive impact on the simulation which is enhanced when wind forcing is weak or variable.