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The purpose of this single intrinsic case study was to describe the experiences of using multiple forms of non-verbal interventions to decrease physical aggression and self-injurious behaviors for special education staff members in self-contained classrooms in Behaviorville ISD. The theory guiding this study was B. F. Skinner’s theory on behaviorism. It explains how non-verbal interventions affect an individual’s environment, how reinforcers influence their behaviors, and how all actions are interconnected. Participants were 10 people who are full-time employees of BISD and have worked with or volunteered with non-verbal/minimally verbal secondary special education students with physical aggression, self-injurious behaviors, and autism spectrum disorder. Data collection methods were online surveys, individual interviews, and focus group discussions. Data analysis procedures included collecting, organizing, and reviewing the data, developing and assigning codes to the themes and patterns that develop, analyzing the coded data, and then reporting on the findings and implications of the data analysis. The findings indicated that by using multiple forms of non-verbal interventions simultaneously, decreased crisis behaviors in NV/MV secondary special education students with ASD, whose target behaviors are physical aggression and SIB towards self and others in a self-contained classroom.

Methodologies were developed and utilized to assess effects of zinc and mercury (singly and in combination) on the white shrimp, Penaeus setiferus. The importance of modifying variables (such as temperature, weight, molting, sex, and season) were assessed in bioassay techniques which utilized measurements of locomotor activity, mortality, and oxygen consumption. Four-day mortality results (the number or percentage dead) allowed reasonable conclusions concerning zinc and mercury toxicity, but other methods of expressing data yielded additional information. Expressing mortality (time to death for individuals) as the independent variable in a regression equation was the preferred technique. Several positive interaction effects (synergism) were statistically significant: zinc x mercury, temperature x zinc, temperature x season of the year, temperature x zinc x season of the year. Mortality rates of large animals exceeded those of small animals in bioassays utilizing low zinc and mercury concentrations (2.03 ppm Zn and 37 ppb Hg). No significant weight effect was found in acute bioassays employing up to 40.6 ppm Zn and 148 ppb Hg. Mortality rates were greater at 30°C than at 22°C, and the process of molting significantly affected death rates of shrimp exposed to a range of zinc and mercury concentrations. Shrimp detected and responded (by increased locomotor activity) to zinc and mercury concentrations that were well below acutely toxic levels. The effects of zinc and mercury were less than additive when assessed by the locomotor response. Isolation of the effect of locomotor activity on oxygen consumption permitted the respiratory effects of zinc and mercury to be investigated. Average oxygen consumption rates decreased (10%) in mercury-treated shrimp and increased (25%) in zinc-treated shrimp after a three-week exposure to 37 ppb Hg and 2.03 ppm Zn. However, the individual responses were quite variable and the changes in oxygen consumption rates were not statistically significant. The relationship between oxygen consumption and weight in P. setiferus was found to be similar to that reported in the literature for other shrimps

The pituitary-thyroid relationship has been studied in vitro in the stingray, Dasyatis sabina. The addition of mammalian TSH failed to stimulate incubated stingray thyroid glands, but mammalian TSH did stimulate teleost thyroids in parallel experiments. Homogenates of whole D. sabina pituitary significantly increased the release of thyroxine from the stingray thyroid, while homogenates of whole teleost pituitary had no effect. The greatest thyroid stimulating activity was found in the ventral lobe of the pars distalis. No seasonal or sexual differences were observed in the relationship between thyroid weight and animal weight. The ratio of total iodine to thyroxine iodine did not vary between sexes or between stimulated and unstimulated glands in vitro. It was concluded that the thyroid is associated with reproduction because (1) thyrotropic activity was located in the region known to contain gonadotrophic activity, and (2) the spontaneous rate of thyroxine release from incubated thyroid glands increased in females at the time of sexual maturation (release rates of juvenile males, adult males, and adult females were similar). There were no changes in the spontaneous rates of thyroxine release that could be correlated with seasonal changes in environmental salinity or temperature or with migratory movements