Inver Hills Community College

The purpose of this article is twofold: (a) to explore the career development needs and issues that are unique to Black sub‐Saharan African immigrants, with an emphasis on college students, and (b) to discuss how career development professionals can implement strategies to better serve these students. The number of Black immigrants from sub‐Saharan African countries has increased recently. Many immigrants are confronted with complex life decisions. Career counselors are in a unique position to assist. Theoretical approaches, with a focus on contextual factors, are discussed. Six strategies for career counseling practice, suggestions for their application, and implications for practice are highlighted.

Dentists are being inundated with outrageous email and print claims regarding dental sleep medicine education. Examples of claims that have hit my inbox include: " join the membersproducing over $70, 000 a month in oral appliances" "reduce overhead" " the only course that establishes the dentist as primary treatment providers" " get started immediately after one weekend" And if you believe these claims, I have a bridge to sell you.

Imaging laser radar (ladar) systems have been developed for automatic target identification in surveillance systems. Ladar uses the range value at the target pixels to estimate the target's 3-D shape and identify the target. For targets in clutter and partially hidden targets, there are ambiguities in determining which pixels are on target that lead to uncertainties in determining the target's 3-D shape. An improvement is to use the polarization components of the reflected light. We describe the operation and preliminary evaluation of a polarization diverse imaging ladar system. Using a combination of intensity, range, and degree of polarization, we are better able to identify and distinguish the target from other objects of the same class.

The manufacturing industry currently employs a wide variety of welding processes. The main technological process applied in the production of weldments is fusion welding. Presenting the latest research on the topic, Surface Phenomena in Fusion Welding Processes is a cutting-edge and comprehensive book that details the various courses of action that

The authors contend that two of the most important contributions of Alfred Adler to the behavioral sciences were the projective use of early recollections and the role of birth order as they both affect one's personality. One purpose of this article is to provide an overview of several developmental issues that arise within the broader context of a family systems approach and its implications on various individuals. Another purpose is to present an empirical case for statistically significant studies showing birth order differences. The article is divided into the following topics: an introduction and overview of background issues, birth order research and research issues, recommendations for future research, and clinical implications for behavioral scientists.

Automatic detection and recognition of targets by means of passive IR sensors suffer from limitations due to lack of sufficient contrast between the targets and, their backgrounds and among the facets of a target. A set of novel algorithms is designed and tested that uses the target and background Stokes parameters for detection, segmentation, and classification of targets, In these algorithms, it is assumed that for each pixel in the image data three of the four Stokes parameters are provided. This assumption is justified because we have developed a custom designed Polarimetric IR (PIR) imaging sensor that generates three of the Stokes parameters at each pixel location, in real-time. The empirical performance of the above algorithms, in terms of the probabilities of detection, false alarm rate, segmentation accuracy, and recognition probabilities are computed. The comparison of these results with the results associated with intensity-only imaging sensor (nonpolarimetric IR sensory data) shows that use of polarimetric information can noticeably improve the performance.

Because the lifestyles of college students can often lead to unhealthy consequences, campus wellness programs can be instrumental in encouraging students to improve their health behaviors. The purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence and characteristics of campus wellness programs and centers. A web-based survey was developed and emailed to wellness representatives at 241 colleges and universities in the nine states that make up the Central District Association of the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance (CDA-AAHPERD). Findings indicated that 64.7% of two-year institutions and 78.9% of four-year institutions had a wellness program. In addition, 68.6% of two-year institutions and 84.0% of four-year reported having a wellness center. The type of institution had no significant difference to the prevalence of wellness programs or centers. The prevalence of wellness centers may be increasing on college campuses. Respondents reported that they will be expanding or building new wellness facilities in the next five years. Twenty-seven percent of two-year institutions and 33.3% of four-year institutions will be expanding their wellness centers in the next five years. Building wellness centers also appears to be a development on college campuses as 16.7% of two-year institutions and 22.2% of four-year institutions reported that they have plans for new wellness centers within the next five years. Two-year institutions were compared with four-year institutions concerning the services, associations, and activities provided by wellness programs. Chi-square analysis and Fisher's exact test were performed and found more similarities than differences.

OBJECTIVES: The National Standard Curriculum-Paramedic (NSC-P) is the accepted curriculum for paramedic programs across the country. The purpose of this study was to examine the completion of the NSC-P clinical internship recommendations by paramedic students. METHODS: Paramedic student internship experience data from 2001 to 2005 was retrospectively reviewed from FISDAPtrade mark. Student records that met the following inclusion criteria were analyzed: 1) student provided consent for research, 2) data verified by a preceptor, and 3) student successfully graduated from their paramedic program. The data were descriptively evaluated to determine the number of students who completed 100% of the NSC-P recommendations, to determine what percentage of students were completing each category, and to determine the average number of tasks completed by students for each recommendation. RESULTS: Of the 1,817 student records that met the inclusion criteria, 140 (7.7%) completed 100% of the NSC-P recommended goals in each category. Students met or exceeded the recommended number of tasks most often for 15 medication administrations (92%), 25 successful IV accesses (88%), 30 geriatric assessments (63.7%), 5 live endotracheal intubations (63.5%), and 50 adult assessments (63.2%). A majority of PS are completing less than 50% of the NCS-P recommendations for 20 ventilations on an un-intubated patient, 20 psychiatric patient assessments, 8 pediatric respiratory distress assessments, and 10 obstetric patient assessments. CONCLUSION: A vast majority of paramedic students are not completing all of the NSC-P recommendations. The reasons for this shortcoming are likely multifaceted and require further research.

AbstractCommunity colleges face struggles in helping students meet their academic, career, and personal goals. Student affairs practitioners can be innovators by creating initiatives to engage students. Practitioners can act as a bridge between student and academic affairs. This article explores how a group of counselors redefined their roles by designing a first-year experience effort. A program implemented at Inver Hills Community College focused on student success is highlighted. Features, outcomes, and lessons learned are outlined.

This study utilized a constructive-developmental approach to accomplish 3 purposes: to create a developmental stage profile for a population of students attending a single community college, to analyze variations within and between subpopulations, and to explore the implications for administrators and planners seeking to provide supportive environments for different populations of students. The resulting profile indicated a wide range of variation within the overall population and significant variations between traditional and non-traditional age students. Implications for educational programming and supportive services were identified by using a constructive-developmental approach as an interpretive framework.

BACKGROUND: A worldwide campaign has been initiated to improve the in-hospital care of mothers and babies through increased breastfeeding. The four objectives of the current investigation were to determine the in-hospital breastfeeding rate for Minnesota hospitals, to analyze the relationship between the in-hospital breastfeeding rates and selected hospital demographic characteristics, to determine the rate of adherence to each of the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) Ten Steps, and to analyze the relationship between the adherence rates for each of the Ten Steps and selected demographic characteristics. METHODS: A descriptive survey was conducted and analyzed for the year of 1994 from 79 (83%) Minnesota hospitals. Respondents were directors of nursing, nursing managers, or other staff familiar with their hospital's breastfeeding policies and practices. RESULTS: The average breastfeeding initiation rate was 59 percent. Four of the Ten Steps were implemented with a low adherence rate (0-49%), five were implemented with a moderate rate (50-89%), and none was implemented with a high rate (90-100%). Breastfeeding initiation rates and adherence to the Ten Steps varied with the size of the city and the number of births per year. CONCLUSIONS: Improvements in breastfeeding policies, practices, and staff education are needed if Minnesota hospitals are to provide care consistent with the Ten Steps of the BFHI. The results provide baseline information to guide institutional change that could promote successful breastfeeding experiences for postpartum families. This survey instrument could be used easily by researchers in other sites to assess nine of the Ten Steps.

In this study, we investigated perceptions of cyberbullying within higher education among 1,587 professionals from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Regardless of country or professional role, participants presented essentially the same bleak picture. Almost half of all participants observed cyberbullying between students within the last year, about one in every five intervened in an incident, and only 10% felt completely prepared to do so. Likewise, 85% of participants perceived their institution to be less than completely prepared to handle cyberbullying, with fewer than 50% even aware whether their school had a cyberbullying policy and fewer than 25% having a policy that specifically addresses cyberbullying. The majority of participants perceived cyberbullying as negative; however, approximately 10% dissented from this view. Finally, a group-serving bias was replicated; cyberbullying was perceived as more problematic at other institutions than their own. This research calls for evidence-based, systematic policy development and implementation, including how to train those who see cyberbullying as a positive phenomenon.

PREMISE OF THE STUDY: Although our awareness of ploidy diversity has expanded with the application of flow cytometry, we still know little about the extent to which cytotypes within mixed-ploidy populations are genetically differentiated across environmental gradients. METHODS: To address this issue, we reared 14 populations of Solidago altissima spanning the prairie-forest ecotone in Minnesota in a common garden with a watering treatment. We assessed ploidy frequencies and measured survival, flowering phenology, and plant architectural traits for 4 years. KEY RESULTS: All populations harbored multiple cytotypes; prairie populations were dominated by tetraploids, forest populations by hexaploids. Diploids and polyploids differed significantly for 84% of the traits. Beyond average differences, the slope of trait values covaried with latitude and longitude, but this relationship was stronger for diploids than the other two polyploid cytotypes as indicated by numerous ploidy × latitude and ploidy × longitude interactions. For example, the timing of flowering of the cytotypes overlapped in populations sampled from the northeastern hemiboreal forest but differed significantly between cytotypes sampled from populations in the southwestern prairie. The watering treatments had weak effects, and there were no ploidy differences for phenotypic plasticity. CONCLUSIONS: Our data show that diploids have diverged genetically to a greater extent than polyploids along the environmental clines sampled in this study. Moreover, different environments favor phenotypic convergence over divergence among cytotypes for some traits. Differences in ploidy frequency and phenotypic divergence among cytotypes across gradients of temperature and precipitation are important considerations for restoration in an age of climate change.

BACKGROUND: With the aging global population and the rising burden of Alzheimer disease and related dementias (ADRDs), there is a growing focus on identifying mild cognitive impairment (MCI) to enable timely interventions that could potentially slow down the onset of clinical dementia. The production of speech by an individual is a cognitively complex task that engages various cognitive domains. The ease of audio data collection highlights the potential cost-effectiveness and noninvasive nature of using human speech as a tool for cognitive assessment. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to construct a machine learning pipeline that incorporates speaker diarization, feature extraction, feature selection, and classification to identify a set of acoustic features derived from voice recordings that exhibit strong MCI detection capability. METHODS: The study included 100 MCI cases and 100 cognitively normal controls matched for age, sex, and education from the Framingham Heart Study. Participants' spoken responses on neuropsychological tests were recorded, and the recorded audio was processed to identify segments of each participant's voice from recordings that included voices of both testers and participants. A comprehensive set of 6385 acoustic features was then extracted from these voice segments using OpenSMILE and Praat software. Subsequently, a random forest model was constructed to classify cognitive status using the features that exhibited significant differences between the MCI and cognitively normal groups. The MCI detection performance of various audio lengths was further examined. RESULTS: An optimal subset of 29 features was identified that resulted in an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.87, with a 95% CI of 0.81-0.94. The most important acoustic feature for MCI classification was the number of filled pauses (importance score=0.09, P=3.10E-08). There was no substantial difference in the performance of the model trained on the acoustic features derived from different lengths of voice recordings. CONCLUSIONS: This study showcases the potential of monitoring changes to nonsemantic and acoustic features of speech as a way of early ADRD detection and motivates future opportunities for using human speech as a measure of brain health.

The authors contend that many undergraduate students lack the ability to deftly articulate the value of their college degree, including the competencies they acquire through classroom learning and extracurricular activities. Despite the positive impact of experiential education opportunities such as service learning and internships, there is a significant gap between what students have learned and how well they are able to articulate the meaning of these experiences. Advocating for a collaborative campus effort to address the problem, the authors offer their own perspectives based on their experiences as faculty members and student affairs practitioners.

Merten EC, Hemstad NA, Eggert SL, Johnson LB, Kolka RK, Newman RM, Vondracek B. Relations between fish abundances, summer temperatures, and forest harvest in a northern Minnesota stream system from 1997 to 2007. Ecology of Freshwater Fish 2010: 19: 63–73. 2009 John Wiley & Sons A/S Abstract – Short‐term effects of forest harvest on fish habitat have been well documented, including sediment inputs, leaf litter reductions, and stream warming. However, few studies have considered changes in local climate when examining postlogging changes in fish communities. To address this need, we examined fish abundances between 1997 and 2007 in a basin in a northern hardwood forest. Streams in the basin were subjected to experimental riparian forest harvest in fall 1997. We noted a significant decrease for fish index of biotic integrity and abundance of Salvelinus fontinalis and Phoxinus eos over the study period. However, for P. eos and Culaea inconstans , the temporal patterns in abundances were related more to summer air temperatures than to fine sediment or spring precipitation when examined using multiple regressions. Univariate regressions suggested that summer air temperatures influenced temporal patterns in fish communities more than fine sediment or spring precipitation.

This study explored the relationship between perceived stress and perceived need for social support among doctoral psychology students attending a distance education university. Although small sample size conceivably prevented identification of a direct correlation between these two factors, female doctoral students perceiving greater levels of stress demonstrated less affiliative and more aggressive needs. Perceived stress did not correlate with counseling readiness among the student sample. These findings suggest that female doctoral students engaged in online study may resemble their traditional campus peers.

BACKGROUND: Paramedic students are exposed to numerous patient contacts during their required internship experience. There is no current research examining paramedic student internship experience in relation to performance on the written portion of the National Registry Exam (NRE-W). METHODS. A retrospective review from 2001 to 2006 of student records from FISDAP was completed. Three hundred ninety-six students met the inclusion criteria: 1) graduate of a paramedic program, 2) consent to access data, 3) internship data previously verified, and 4) NRE-W results available. Pearson correlation coefficients were used to determine if the number of advanced life support (ALS) runs (run with an i.v. and ECG, or one medication administered), hospital patient contacts (PCs), field PCs, total PCs (hospital PCs + field PCs), student team lead runs (TLs), in-hospital clinical hours, field internship hours, or total hours (in-hospital clinical hours + field internship hours) were associated with passing the NRE-W. Logistic regression was used to determine predictors of success on the NRE-W. RESULTS: The number of ALS runs and total PCs were the only variables associated with passing the NRE-W (p=0.003, 95% CI 0.05-0.24; p=0.047, 95% CI=0.00-0.20, respectively). These variables were also predictors for passing the NRE-W (OR = 1.015, 95% CI 1.005-1.025; OR=0.003, 95% CI 1.000-1.006, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: In this sample, the number of ALS runs students completed was the strongest clinical and field internship predictor of passing the NRE-W. The number of ALS runs and total PCs paramedic students complete need to be evaluated by paramedic programs.

Abstract The infrared optical properties of silicon reported by different workers disagree by far more than the precision of the measurements. Further, their extrapolations conflict with THz measurements. These inconsistencies are commonly attributed to crystal defects or impurities, but lack of reliable intrinsic silicon values hampers separation of host and defect effects. We have developed tests based on linear‐response theory to address this. Tests include requiring that the refractive index is an even function of photon energy, and comparing the coefficients of a Taylor expansion of the IR index with the moments of the electronic absorption above the band gap. The latter is sufficiently well known for silicon that predictions for the intercept, slope, and curvature, of the index may be used to test infrared measurements for consistency. Thus, we identified the sources of conflict as: (i) A physically inconsistent assumption for index parity commonly made in analysis of channel‐spectra. (ii) Defect and free‐carrier absorption. Eliminating data sets with these shortcomings resolved the conflict between measurements and allowed us to develop a composite set of IR optical constants for silicon that is a best fit to reliable measurements from microwaves to the visible.

In a relationship rating system, a pair of lovers regularly graph their conduct to better their bonding. The graph shows the couple’s dynamics—interaction, emotion, expression, clarity (understanding), and contact (feeling of connection). Based on the graph, lovers each pledge behaviors that raise or lower their ratings on each dynamic to achieve balance in their ratings on the five dimensions and thus achieve and maintain the fitness effect in their relation.