Socio-Communicative Behaviors Involving Minimally Speaking Autistic Preschoolers and Their Typically Developing Peers: Effects of an Augmentative and Alternative Communication Intervention Package.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) intervention package consisting of systematic instruction and aided AAC modeling with speech-output technology on the acquisition, maintenance, and generalization of socio-communicative behaviors in four minimally speaking, preschool-aged, autistic children.

Method: A multiple-probe design across behaviors (i.e.

Effects of an Augmentative and Alternative Communication Intervention Package on Socio-Communicative Behaviors Between Minimally Speaking Autistic Children and Their Peers.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) intervention package consisting of systematic instruction and aided modeling with speech-output technologies on the acquisition, maintenance, and generalization of socio-communicative behaviors-initiating a request for a turn, answering questions, and commenting-in four, minimally speaking (MS) autistic children between the ages of 6 and 9 years.

Method: A multiple-probe design across behaviors replicated across participants was implemented to evaluate the effects of systematic instruction and aided modeling on initiating requests for a turn, answering questions, and commenting behaviors. Additionally, a pre- and posttreatment multiple-generalization-probes design was used to assess generalization across peers.

COVID-19 pandemic impacts on conservation research, management, and public engagement in US national parks.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the timing and substance of conservation research, management, and public engagement in protected areas around the world. This disruption is evident in US national parks, which play a key role in protecting natural and cultural resources and providing outdoor experiences for the public. Collectively, US national parks protect 34 million ha, host more than 300 million visits annually, and serve as one of the world's largest informal education organizations.

Full Closed-Loop Tests for the Relay Feedback Autotuning of Stable, Integrating, and Unstable Processes.

The relay (on-off) controller can stabilize wide ranges of processes including open-loop stable, integrating, and unstable processes, producing sustained oscillations. For improved proportional-integral-derivative controller tunings, methods to find process models with mixed closed-loop tests of relay feedback and proportional-derivative (PD) controllers are proposed. For unknown processes with arbitrary initial states, relay feedback tests are first applied and, after cyclic steady states are obtained, PD controllers or other relay feedback tests with set point changes are followed.

"I Want to Walk with My Moko." The Application of Social Cognitive Theory in the Creation of a Diabetes Prevention Documentary with New Zealand Māori.

Type 2 diabetes is almost three times more prevalent in the indigenous people of New Zealand (Māori) than non-Māori. Despite the high rate of diabetes there is a low level of diabetes knowledge and awareness in the Māori community. Several studies of Māori health identify a need for new health communication approaches to diabetes prevention in order to reduce the gap between Māori and non-Māori disease rates.