There is little empirical evidence on the association between household experience with HIV/AIDS and shifts in the use of natural resources in developing countries, where residents of rural regions remain highly dependent on often-declining local supplies of natural resources. This study examines household strategies with regard to fuelwood and water among impoverished rural South African households having experienced a recent adult mortality and those without such mortality experience. Quantitative survey data reveal higher levels of natural resource dependence among mortality-affected households, as well as differences in collection strategies. Qualitative interview data provide insight into subtle and complex adjustments at the household level, revealing that impacts vary by the role of the deceased within the household economy. Resource management and public health implications are explored.

Severe-convective hailstorms are one of the most frequent weather hazards across the United States. However, studies evaluating the ability of various environmental indices to differentiate lower-end severe hail (≤1.25 in, 32 mm) from significant hail (≥2.0 in, 51 mm) prior to storm formation are limited and typically overlap very little with microphysically based research. To bridge this gap, this study builds a database of 520 hail reports that sort into one of four hail-diameter ranges. For each report, various thermodynamic and wind-related fields are then extracted from Rapid Update Cycle (RUC) model analysis to create a parameter-based hail climatology. Analysis of these environmental indices indicates most wind-based parameters display weaker magnitude winds and resultant shear for the smallest hail-size bin compared to the three largest. Further, the three largest hail diameter bins reveal nearly identical parameter values in the lowest 6 km AGL. In contrast, non-traditional shear layers that include winds in the upper portions of a storm (>6 km AGL) display some skill to differentiate larger hail sizes, especially for ≥3.5-in (89-mm) hail. Thermodynamic variables produced mixed results, with variables such as CAPE displaying a slight tendency to increase as binned hail size becomes larger but still with significant overlap. On the other hand, non-traditional parameters such as the hail-growth-zone thickness reveal a relationship toward decreased depth as the binned hail size increases, but with little to no increase in hail-growth-zone CAPE. Finally, evaluation of the significant severe parameter (SSP) and a new index called the large hail parameter (LHP) display mixed results. Skill at delineating ≤1.25-in (32-mm) report from 2.0-3.25-in (51-83-mm) cases for LHP (SSP) is slightly better (worse) than 0-6-km AGL bulk vector shear. However, the LHP displays improved skill over any other parameter to differentiate ≥3.5-in (89 mm) reports from those with less than 2.0-in (51-mm) diameter hail. The LHP formula creates improved skill by including non-traditional environmental parameters typically associated with storm longevity, precipitation efficiency, and hail-growth rates.

This research paper examines formative assessment in engineering design, unpacking the disciplinary substance that instructors must attend to in their teaching. Borrowing the framework of responsive teaching from the math and science education literature, we argue for the importance of closely examining the many moment-to-moment assessments and decisions that engineering teachers encounter. Responsive teaching is an instructional approach in which instructors base their pedagogical moves on what their students are saying and doing. Instead of predetermining what will happen in classrooms, teachers elicit students' ideas, interpret and assess disciplinary aspects of students' reasoning, and respond with pedagogical decisions based on their interpretations.Responsive teaching has the potential to be a particularly useful approach for teaching engineering design: As students adapt to new criteria and constraints when solving ill-defined engineering design problems, teachers need to be responsive to their changing needs. However, most of the work on responsive teaching has occurred in math and science education.In this paper, we follow in the tradition of math and science education researchers who use their own teaching episodes as the basis for scholarly research on responsive teaching. Using microanalytic analysis, we examined two video-recorded cases from our engineering teaching at both the elementary and university level to explore how different yet equally legitimate disciplinary goals can conflict with each other and produce "instructional tensions" for the teacher. We used purposeful sampling to select cases rich in opportunities to unpack student thinking in engineering. We present in-depth analyses of the tensions that emerged between different disciplinary goals in these STEM learning environments. These results point to the need for increased attention on how teachers manage the different disciplinary practices and goals in STEM activities, particularly when incorporating formative assessment strategies or adopting a responsive teaching approach.

is a post doctoral fellow at the University of Michigan. She received her doctorate and masters from Tufts University in mechanical engineering and STEM education respectively. Her current research involves examining different types of homework problems in undergraduate engineering courses, teaching in flexible classroom spaces, active learning, responsive teaching, and developing elementary engineering teachers.

Conceptualizing situation awareness around the metric of system state uncertainty is a valuable way for system designers to understand and predict how reallocations in the operator's visual attention during control mode transitions can produce reallocations in situation awareness of certain states.