Kent State University

About: Kent State University is a education organization based out in Kent, Ohio, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Liquid crystal & Population. The organization has 10897 authors who have published 24607 publications receiving 720309 citations. The organization is also known as: Kent State & KSU.

Determining Evidence-Based Practices in Special Education

Abstract: Determining evidence-based practices is a complicated enterprise that requires analyzing the methodological quality and magnitude of the available research supporting specific practices. This article reviews criteria and procedures for identifying what works in the fields of clinical psychology, school psychology, and general education; and it compares these systems with proposed guidelines for determining evidence-based practices in special education. The authors then summarize and analyze the approaches and findings of the 5 reviews presented in this issue. In these reviews, prominent special education scholars applied the proposed quality indicators for high-quality research and standards for evidence-based practice to bodies of empirical literature. The article concludes by synthesizing these scholars' preliminary recommendations for refining the proposed quality indicators and standards for evidence-based practices in special education, as well as the process for applying them.

The Compassion Fatigue Scale: Its Use With Social Workers Following Urban Disaster

Abstract: Objective: The present study has two goals: to assess the difference between secondary trauma and job burnout and to examine the utility of secondary trauma in predicting psychological distress. Method: The data come from a survey of social workers (N = 236) living in New York City 20 months following the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC). Results: Social workers'involvement in WTC recovery efforts is related to secondary trauma but not burnout. Analyses also reveal that both secondary trauma and burnout are related to psychological distress after controlling for other risk factors. Conclusion: This study supports the importance of compassion fatigue as a risk factor for social workers counseling traumatized clients and its association with psychological problems.

The association of exposure, risk, and resiliency factors with PTSD among Jews and Arabs exposed to repeated acts of terrorism in Israel

Abstract: Israel has faced ongoing terrorism since the beginning of the Al Aqsa Intifada in September 2000. The authors examined risk and resiliency factors associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among 1,117 Jews and 394 Arab adult citizens of Israel during August and September 2004 through telephone interviews. Probable PTSD was found among 6.6% of Jews and 18.0% of Arabs. Predictors of probable PTSD in a multivariate model for Jews were refusal to report income, being traditionally religious, economic and psychosocial resource loss, greater traumatic growth, and lower social support. For Arabs, predictors were low education and economic resource loss among those exposed to terrorism. Findings for only those directly exposed to terrorism were similar to those for the overall national sample.

Tridiagonal Toeplitz matrices: properties and novel applications

Abstract: SUMMARY The eigenvalues and eigenvectors of tridiagonal Toeplitz matrices are known in closed form. This property is in the first part of the paper used to investigate the sensitivity of the spectrum. Explicit expressions for the structured distance to the closest normal matrix, the departure from normality, and the ϵ-pseudospectrum are derived. The second part of the paper discusses applications of the theory to inverse eigenvalue problems, the construction of Chebyshev polynomial-based Krylov subspace bases, and Tikhonov regularization. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Talocrural joint in african hominoids implications for australopithecus afarensis

Abstract: Talocrural joints of the African apes, modern humans, and A.L.288-1 are compared in order to investigate ankle function in the Hadar hominids. Comparisons between the hominids and African pongids clearly illustrate the anatomical and mechanical changes that occurred in this joint as a consequence of the evolutionary transition to habitual bipedality. Features which are considered include the obliquity of the distal tibial articular surface, the shape of the talar trochlea, and the location and functional implications of the talocrural axis. In every functionally significant feature examined the A.L.288-1 talocrural joint is fully bipedal. Moreover, the Hadar ankle complex also shows the functional constraints which are necessarily imposed by the adaptation to habitual bipedalism.