We investigate gradient descent training of wide neural networks and the corresponding implicit bias in function space. For univariate regression, we show that the solution of training a width-$n$ shallow ReLU network is within $n^{- 1/2}$ of the function which fits the training data and whose difference from the initial function has the smallest 2-norm of the second derivative weighted by a curvature penalty that depends on the probability distribution that is used to initialize the network parameters. We compute the curvature penalty function explicitly for various common initialization procedures. For instance, asymmetric initialization with a uniform distribution yields a constant curvature penalty, and thence the solution function is the natural cubic spline interpolation of the training data. \hj{For stochastic gradient descent we obtain the same implicit bias result.} We obtain a similar result for different activation functions. For multivariate regression we show an analogous result, whereby the second derivative is replaced by the Radon transform of a fractional Laplacian. For initialization schemes that yield a constant penalty function, the solutions are polyharmonic splines. Moreover, we show that the training trajectories are captured by trajectories of smoothing splines with decreasing regularization strength.


Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have demonstrated the spingalvanic effect, which allows for the conversion of non-equilibrium spin density into a charge current. Here, by combining graphene with a topological insulator, the authors realize a gate-tunable spingalvanic effect at room temperature. The findings were published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.


Abstract Background: Nearly half of the heart failure (HF) patients have been classified as HF with preserved left ventricular ejection fraction (HFpEF) and the prevalence has been increasing over time. The subject of this study is to assess the clinical effectiveness and safety of Baduanjin exercise (BDJE), as a kind of traditional Chinese exercises, for HFpEF patients. Methods: A systematic literature search for articles up to September 2020 will be performed in following electronic databases: PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Library, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Chinese Scientific Journals Database (VIP) Database, Chinese Biomedical Database (CBM), Chinese Biomedical Literature Service System (SinoMed) and Wanfang Database. Inclusion criteria are randomized controlled trials of BDJE applied on HFpEF patients. The primary outcome measures will be exercise capacity (cardiopulmonary exercise test or 6-minute walking test) and quality of life. The secondary outcomes will be as the following: blood pressure, heart rate, echocardiography, endothelial function, arterial stiffness and hypersensitive C-reactive protein and N-Terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide. The safety outcome measures will be adverse events, liver and kidney function. RevMan 5.3 software will be used for data synthesis, sensitivity analysis, subgroup analysis and risk of bias assessment. A funnel plot will be developed to evaluate reporting bias. Stata 12.0 will be used for meta-regression and Egger tests. We will use the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) system to assess the quality of evidence. Conclusion: The study will give an explicit evidence to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of BDJE for HFpEF patients. Ethics and dissemination: This systematic review does not require ethics approval and will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal. Trial registration number: PROSPERO CRD42020200324.


Links to books held by the Social Sciences Faculty Library have been removed due to the LOVISA catalog upgrade. The guide is currently being updated. For now, use LOVISA to find the titles stated in this guide. Links to ebooks are unaffected.


CD45 is a receptor-type protein tyrosine phosphatase that positively regulates T cell antigen receptor signaling. It is thought that dimerization inhibits CD45 activity, although a regulatory ligand for CD45 has remained elusive. Xu and Weiss offer one possible explanation for this. Dimerization may be determined by the CD45 isoform present at the cell surface. Alternative splicing of three consecutive exons generates isoforms that vary in their degree of glycosylation. Isoform expression is highly regulated and switches from the most highly glycosylated to the least glycosylated isoform during T cell activation. The authors show that the least glycosylated isoform dimerizes most efficiently in primary and transfected T cells. Expression of the least glysocylated isoform correlated with decreased TCR signaling. The authors propose that TCR signaling may induce the expression of splicing factors that cause a switch in isoform expression. This could serve as part of a negative feedback loop to terminate an immune response. Z. Xu, A. Weiss, Negative regulation of CD45 by differential homodimerization of the alternatively spliced isoforms. Nat. Immunology 3, 764-771 (2002). [Online Journal]


Injuries to the hallux metatarsophalangeal joint are not uncommon, particularly in the running athlete. One of the more common causes of hallux injuries is the product of a hyperextension force on a foot fixed to the ground. When the resultant injury is ligamentous, it has been termed "turf toe." Unfortunately, nearly any sprain of this joint, regardless of mechanism or severity has been given this label. Furthermore, trainers and physicians may fail to recognize the potential dysfunction of this injury, thus providing inadequate care and protection from further injury. Long-term sequelae include FHL tendon tear, hallux valgus or varus, cock-up deformity with IP joint contracture, and degenerative joint disease. While the majority of these injuries can be treated nonoperatively, those with significant instability need to be recognized and surgically managed to allow for restoration of the anatomy and the opportunity for return to full function.


Lightning flashes in convective tropical clusters of the eastern North Pacific Ocean are detected by the Long-Range Lightning Detection Network and are analyzed for temporal patterns in electrical activity. The rates of lightning flash discharge in the 2006 season are analyzed for both tropical cyclones and nondeveloping cloud clusters to 1) determine if there is a difference in the convective activity of these two populations and 2) find a level of electrical activity that constitutes development in a particular system. Convective activity is associated with tropical cyclogenesis and thus we use the rate of electrical discharge as a proxy for convection associated with the likelihood of organization of individual cloud clusters into a tropical depression strength system. On the basis of the rates of lightning flashes in the cloud clusters, four levels of development are defined, ranging from non- and partially developing to fully developing cloud clusters. The levels of development are further supported by the analysis of other remotely sensed observations, such as surface scatterometer winds, that allow for the description of the mesoscale and large-scale circulation patterns in which the cloud clusters are embedded. It is found that lightning flash rates distinguish those cloud clusters that do not fully develop into tropical depressions from those that do. Receiver operating characteristic curves for these groupings are calculated, and a level of flash rate can be chosen that gives a probability of detection of 67% for a false-alarm rate of 24%.


Abstract Bangladesh's emergence, as a new nation at the height of the Cold War, in 1971, re-drew political borders in the Indian subcontinent. It was one of the most significant geopolitical events of the latter half of the 20th century. India's ties with Bangladesh have taken great strides in the last decade in comparison to the first 40 years, expanding and strengthening across a wide template of sectors. This article examines and analyses the drivers that have strengthened bilateral ties and also unresolved issues that remain on the menu as well as developments that have the potential to undermine these growing ties.


The main themes of this book, human rights and migration, are both controversial
and in combination even more contested. Migration between
nation-states – or transnational migration – has been restricted by increasingly
complex regulations in many places where people move across borders,
but especially where this occurs from generally poorer to, on average, richer
countries. These restrictions have dramatic impacts on the accessibility of
many of the human rights of migrants, yet they are in themselves also a
direct interference with the two most basic rights of migrants: the freedom to
move and the right to have rights. These are not simply interesting theoretical
discussions. Annually many migrants die on their way to their destinations
(Carling, 2007; Nevins, 2007; Hinkes, 2008) or in destitution without safe
access to adequate healthcare (Khosravi, Chapter 3 in this volume). While
working on a European-wide project on trafficking for forced labour the contributors
to this book realized the importance of the wider context of human
rights and migration for the understanding of the exploitation of migrants.
This became apparent in several ways. In multidisciplinary workshops we
problematized the common distinction between 'deserving' victims of trafficking
and 'undeserving' 'illegal' migrants – positioned as having committed
migration crimes. As the Refugee Convention 1951 does not capture all
circumstances under which people are compelled to leave their homes and,
moreover, no human being is illegal, these distinctions do not stand up
against ethical scrutiny. From research on smuggling it became clear, too, that
the distinction between smuggling and trafficking as practices where either
the migrant was 'guilty' or the migrant was a 'victim' did not coincide
with the stories people told. Instead, many situations were a complex mixture
of decision-making by the migrant and constraints provided by circumstances,
for example openings in migration regimes, law enforcement officials discovering
routes, or the barriers put by other actors in the 'migration industry',
such as prices for destinations, violence along the way and connections between facilitators of travel and agents of employment (Khosravi, 2010;
Van Liempt, 2007). Many migrants are grateful to their facilitators, even if
the circumstances on arrival are hard. In most cases trafficked persons do not
at first see themselves as such due to feelings of guilt and responsibility for
decisions made to pursue a risky migration strategy (van den Anker, 2007).
Of course in some cases, especially in trafficking of minors, there may not be
such agency. Interviews with migrants who had their human rights violated
showed that in some cases all three elements of the trafficking definition
were present; that is, recruitment and transportation, force or deception,
and exploitation at the point of arrival. Yet other cases of forced labour and
exploitation where there was no clear link between recruiters and exploiters
were no less unjust (MRCI, 2007). These findings motivated us to attempt
in this book to grasp the complexity of human rights violations of migrants
beyond the niche of narrow conceptions of trafficking.
In the exchange of work at joint workshops and in panels at larger conferences
we further discovered that steps towards increased codification of
migrant rights, better enforcement and more activist claiming of migrant
rights were all limited by the lack of understanding of the barriers to accessibility
of human rights for migrants. The condition of deportability, the xenophobic
environment and the lack of awareness of their rights among migrants
require rethinking of the values underpinning approaches to making migrant
rights accessible. In this book we do this by engaging with migration regimes,
labour rights, human rights, global citizenship and hospitality as arenas of
contest for social change. In the remainder of this introduction we will discuss
the development of the wider debate around trafficking and migrant exploitation
and list the main argument of each chapter.


The pesticide risk in agriculture in developing countries has not been adequately studied due to the extent and fate of pesti cides in the environment often being unknown. South Africa is a country that has significant pressure on its freshwater and agricultural resources, which increases the possibility of pesticide effects. Thus, the aim of this study was to evaluate the use of the PRIMET (Pesticide Risks in the Tropics to Man, Environment and Trade) and PERPEST (Predicting the Ecological Risk of PESTicides) models to predict pesticide exposure and effects on aquatic ecosystems due to spray drift. Vaalharts Irrigation Scheme is situated in the Northern Cape Province and receives water from the Vaal River for 43 000 ha of agricultural land. Crops in the area mostly consist of wheat, maize and groundnuts. Data gathered through household surveys with farmers were used in PRIMET as a first-tier estimate of the potential risk of the pesticides. The Predicted Effect Concentrations (PEC) calculated for the pesticides indicating a possible to definite risk were then used as input for PERPEST. PERPEST is a higher-tier model that predicts the potential effects of a pesticide on various grouped endpoints in the aquatic environment. The PRIMET results indicated most pesticides posed no risk to the environment, except the pyrethroid, deltamethrin. The ETR for deltamethrin indicated a possible to definite risk to the aquatic environment. The PERPEST results for deltamethrin indicated a high probability of clear effects on insects, micro- and macro-crustacean communities, with a lower probability for rotifers, algae, macrophytes and fish. PRIMET and PERPEST provided valid estimates of risk for pesticides and could be used effectively in South Africa.


A standard incomplete-information war of attrition is extended to incorporate experimentation and private learning. We obtain a characterization of all equilibria in this extended setup and use this setup to illuminate a tradeoff between short-run and long-run gains of experimentation. The extension yields qualitative impacts on the strategic nature of the problem. The option value of experimentation serves as a credible commitment device to stay in the game, which is instrumental in inducing the other player to concede earlier. As a direct consequence, there may be an equilibrium in which the strictly less efficient player can get the better end of the deal, implying that slow learning can be a blessing in this type of competition. Our analysis gives insight into why an apparently inferior technology often survives in many standards competitions and more broadly offers implications for technology adoption and industry dynamics. We also show that there is a non-degenerate set of parameters that can support the Pareto-efficient allocation as an equilibrium outcome whereas it is never possible in the standard setup. JEL Classification Number: D82, D83


This paper covers the whole process of developing an Augmented Reality Stereoscopig Render Engine for the Oculus Rift. To capture the real world in form of a camera stream, two cameras with fish-eye lenses had to be installed on the Oculus Rift DK1 hardware. The idea was inspired by Steptoe \cite{steptoe2014presence}. After the introduction, a theoretical part covers all the most neccessary elements to achieve an AR System for the Oculus Rift, following the implementation part where the code from the AR Stereo Engine is explained in more detail. A short conclusion section shows some results, reflects some experiences and in the final chapter some future works will be discussed. The project can be accessed via the git repository this https URL


The landscape of β-cinnamic acid is explored by an extension of the previously reported fluorosubstitution protocol. Solid solutions of mono- and difluorocinnamic acids allow for the generation of a large number of experimental data points, which in conjunction with computational crystal structure prediction results can be used to profile the structural landscape of β-cinnamic acid. The variation in structure types may be caused by geometrical factors, namely shape-size equivalences, and chemical factors through the intermediacy of weak C–H⋯F hydrogen bonds in the solid solutions.


Abstract The DAT is performed for the detection of antibody or complement on the surface of RBCs. Our institution previously performed DATs on all chronically transfused thalassemia patients before each transfusion episode to detect early alloimmunization. The medical records of all thalassemia patients treated at our institution from 2004 to 2007 were reviewed to determine the significance of the high rate of positive DATs (52.5% of 80 patients). The majority of IgG-reactive DATs were associated with a nonreactive eluate (65.4% of 286 eluates performed). A positive DAT was significantly associated with splenectomy (χ2 = 15.4; p < 0.001), elevated IgG levels (χ2 = 26.8; p < 0.001), HCV (χ2 = 20.7; p < 0.001), and warm autoantibody (χ2 = 5.87; p = 0.03). Multivariate analysis revealed that only HCV (OR, 5.0; p = 0.037) and elevated IgG levels (OR, 9.0; p = 0.001) were independently associated with a positive DAT. Alloimmunized thalassemic patients were more likely to have a positive DAT than nonalloimmunized patients, but this association was not significant (OR, 2.2; p = 0.11). A positive DAT did not correlate with decreased response to transfusion, RBC survival, hemolysis, or increased transfusion requirements. Only two cases of early alloimmunization were detected by DAT among 288 DAT-positive samples studied during 4 years. This study demonstrated that the routine performance of DATs on pretransfusion specimens in thalassemic patients has limited clinical utility, and the elimination of this test will improve turnaround time and decrease costs. Immunohematology 2010;26:87–91.


The governance of central banks has two dimensions: corporate governance and public governance. Public governance is an institutional framework whereby the general public governs a central bank by and through the legislative and executive bodies in a country. This paper argues that the literature of new institutional economics sheds new light on the public governance of central banks. First, Williamson's theory of "governance as integrity" (probity) is applied to the internal management of central banks. Moe's theory of "public bureaucracy" is applied to the concept of central bank independence. Second, we apply agency theory to the issues associated with central bank independence and accountability. Third, public choice theory is applied to central bank independence.


Abstract. As one of the important research directions in the spatial data mining, spatial co-location pattern mining aimed at finding the spatial features whose the instances are frequent co-locate in neighbouring domain. With the introduction of fuzzy sets into traditional spatial co-location pattern mining, the research on fuzzy spatial co-location pattern mining has been deepened continuously, which extends traditional spatial co-location pattern mining to deal with fuzzy spatial objects and discover their laws of spatial symbiosis. In this paper, the operation principle of a classical join-based algorithm for mining spatial co-location patterns is briefly described firstly. Then, combining with the definition of classical participation rate and participation degree, a novel hesitant fuzzy spatial co-location pattern mining algorithm is proposed based on the establishment of the hesitant fuzzy participation rate and hesitant fuzzy participation formula according to the characteristics in fusion of hesitant fuzzy set theory, the score function and spatial co-location pattern mining. Finally, the proposed algorithm is written and implemented based on Python language, which uses a NumPy system to the expansion of the open source numerical calculation. The Python program of the proposed algorithm includes the method of computing hesitant fuzzy membership based on score function, the implementation of generating k-order candidate patterns, k-order frequent patterns and k-order table instances. A hesitant fuzzy spatial co-location pattern mining experiment is carried out and the experimental results show that the proposed and implemented algorithm is effective and feasible.


We establish a murine lung-on-chip infection model and use time-lapse imaging to reveal the dynamics of host-Mycobacterium tuberculosis interactions at an air-liquid interface with a spatiotemporal resolution unattainable in animal models and to probe the direct role of pulmonary surfactant in early infection. Surfactant deficiency results in rapid and uncontrolled bacterial growth in both macrophages and alveolar epithelial cells. In contrast, under normal surfactant levels, a significant fraction of intracellular bacteria are non-growing. The surfactant-deficient phenotype is rescued by exogenous addition of surfactant replacement formulations, which have no effect on bacterial viability in the absence of host cells. Surfactant partially removes virulence-associated lipids and proteins from the bacterial cell surface. Consistent with this mechanism, the attenuation of bacteria lacking the ESX-1 secretion system is independent of surfactant levels. These findings may partly explain why smokers and elderly persons with compromised surfactant function are at increased risk of developing active tuberculosis.


Ronald Ross is a brilliant and polyvalent mind. When orientated towards medicine he took the training amateurishly and ended up with a limited qualification. After 2 years as a ship doctor, he attended the compulsory complementary training in order to be admissible in the IMS, the garrison life left him with plenty of time to engage in his hobby's: painting for a short while, writing, poetry and mathematics. By the end of his first term he questioned the sense of his medical activities and decided, with a view to his career, to acquire a Public Health diploma and some complementary bacteriology. During his second term the malaria problem drew his attention. As he was unable to detect the parasite of Laveran in the blood of patients with malarial fevers he concluded that the parasite had been some lucky microscopic finding without any value and turned this parasite into ridicule. During his leave in 1894 he met Manson, who showed him the technique to put the parasite in evidence and convinced him to search for its vector which, to his opinion, should be a mosquito. Ross decided to follow this lead. With his minimal parasitological knowledge and an entomological background limited to the external appearance of mosquitoes he endeavoured to establish the life cycle of the malarial parasites. Notwithstanding some service bounded transfers, he followed the fate of the filaments of the crescents and discovered the parasite on the stomachwall of dapled-winged mosquitoes. During his special mission in Calcutta and in the absence of suitable malaria infections in man he shifted to bird proteosoma (now P. relictum) with a grey mosquito (culex) as vector. He demonstrated the complete life-cycle ending in the salivary glands of the mosquitoes and succeeded in transmitting this infection by mosquito-bites in healthy birds. This climax in his research was crowned by the attribution in 1902 of the Nobel Prize for Medicine. In the mean time he resigned from the IMS and was appointed as "Lecturer on Tropical Diseases" at the Liverpool School. He reoriented his activities to the prevention of malaria by control of the vector in its aquatic larval stage, which he tried out and promoted during his journeys to the West African Coast and other countries. His current were variegated but without salient details. Through the survey of the parasite index and the assessment of the spleen rate in children he founded the malariometry as a epidemiological tool, focussed attention on the relation of malaria and the community and on the complexity of the transmission dynamics. By handing in his resignation at the Liverpool School and moving to London he hampered further his scientific productivity. The tardy foundation of the Ross Institute did not stimulate a new impetus. He suffered a stroke which left him partially crippled an he died in his Institute.


This article analyzes the amendments to the norms of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Lithuania that has raised the minimum and maximum amounts of the fines to be imposed, assessing these changes according to the criteria of proportionality, purpose of punishment and practical applicability. The article also examines the possible negative consequences of these changes. In the last twelve years the criminal legislature has repeatedly raised the amount of the fines to be imposed. According to the author, these decisions, based on the illusory view of the effectiveness of severe pecuniary sanctions, are apparently contrary to the principles of proportionality and reasonableness, and have the negative side-effect of reducing the applicability of the fine. In the absence of proper individualization as well as comprehension that inadequate fines are not recoverable, it is predictable that the case law will prioritize other punishments including imprisonment. In order to give the fine a greater perspective in case law, the author proposes to exempt this punishment from the general rule contained in the Criminal Code which requires that the size of punishment is calculated from an average of minimum and maximum sizes.


Poor diet and physical inactivity contribute to excessive weight and related diseases in the United States. Given the increasing rates of adult overweight and obesity among Americans, there is a need to develop and implement effective prevention and treatment strategies to decrease the public health burden of obesity-related chronic diseases. Faith-based organizations (FBOs) provide a unique setting and partnership opportunity for delivering evidence-based programs into communities that can be sustained. The federally funded Virginia Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed) delivered through Virginia Tech's Cooperative Extension and Family Nutrition Program, utilizes evidence-based programs to promote healthy eating and physical activity among limited income populations. The Virginia SNAP-Ed Volunteer Led Nutrition Education Initiative uses SNAP-Ed agents and educators to reach limited income populations by training and coordinating volunteers from communities to deliver nutrition education programs. However, these partnerships and training initiatives have been underutilized in FBOs across Virginia. This dissertation research describes four studies conducted to better understand how to facilitate collaborative partnerships and health-promotion programming initiatives between academic/extension educators and FBOs to build capacity and inform future initiatives within VCE. Study one conducted a literature review to examine FBO characteristics and multi-level strategies used to implement nutrition and physical activity interventions. Study two examined VCE SNAP-Ed agents' perspectives on FBO partnerships to deliver health programming. Study three assessed three FBOs and their member health needs to identify policies, systems and environments to support healthy lifestyles. Study four examined the acceptability of Faithful Families, a faith-based nutrition and physical activity program delivered in a rural church, and explored ways to build capacity for program sustainability through input from stakeholder partners. Results across studies yielded information which helped to identify and prioritize strategies for promoting FBO partnerships within VCE and helped to generate questions that merit further investigation to identify specific culturally relevant strategies for promoting health in FBOs. This exploratory body of research contributes to the field by describing relevant opportunities for academic sectors to partner with FBOs using participatory approaches to increase partnership readiness and build capacity to carry out and sustain health programs within faith settings. Exploration of Facilitators, Barriers and Opportunities for Faith-Based Organizations to Implement Nutrition and Physical Activity Programs and Partner with Virginia's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education


The mechanical properties of tissues play a critical role in their normal and pathophysiological functions such as tissue development, aging, injury, and disease. Understanding tissue mechanics is important not only for designing realistic biomimetic materials for tissue engineering and drug testing but also for developing novel diagnostic techniques and medical interventions. Tissues are heterogeneous materials consisting of cells confined within extracellular matrices (ECMs), both of which derive their structural integrity, at least in part, from networks of biopolymers. However, the rheology of purified reconstituted biopolymer networks fails to explain many key aspects of tissue mechanics. Notably, purified networks typically soften under applied compression, whereas many soft tissues like liver, fat, and brain instead stiffen when compressed. While continuum models can readily capture this compression-stiffening behavior, the underlying mechanism is not fully understood. In this perspective paper, we discuss several recently proposed microscopic mechanisms that may explain compression stiffening of soft tissues. These mechanisms include (I) interactions between the ECM and volume-preserving inclusions that promote extension-dominated stiffening of fibrous ECMs when subject to uniform compression, (II) ECM interactions with rigid inclusions under non-uniform compression, (III) other internal physical constraints that cause compression stiffening of cells and ECMs, and (IV) propagation of compressive forces through jammed, compression-stiffening cells. We further identify a few of the many open problems in understanding the structure–function relationship of soft-tissue mechanics.


Three genes encoding chitinase A (chiA), B (chiB), and C (chiC) were amplified from a bacterium that was isolated from a naturally dead Helicoverpa armigera larva and identified as Serratia marcescens based on 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis (KF823633 accession number). The open reading frames (ORFs) were identified as 1692, 1500, and 1443 base pairs for chiA, chiB, and chiC genes, respectively. These sequences were submitted to the GenBank with accession numbers KF823630 (chiA), KF823631 (chiB), and KF823632 (chiC). Comparison of the deduced amino acid sequences with those of other bacterial chitinases revealed that the 3 chitinases contain the catalytic domain. Furthermore, all 3 chitinases showed 99% similarity to the S. marcescens WW4 strain at the amino acid level. The chitinases were overexpressed in Escherichia coli. Expressed proteins were purified and their activities were tested using colloidal chitin as substrate. Reasonable pH and temperature ranges were also determined as 7-11 and 33-37 °C, respectively. Insecticidal activities of these proteins were tested on the larvae of Malacosoma neustria and H. armigera. Test results showed that 1000 U/mL ChiA, ChiB, and ChiC have 47%, 50%, and 66% insecticidal activities on M. neustria, and 80%, 45%, and 50% insecticidal activities on H. armigera larvae within 10 days, respectively.


This study analyses the techniques and procedures that were developed and the changes that took place in the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the Autonomous University of Puebla (BUAP), both in Mexico, and the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD), in the United States of America. To face the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, librarians in these institutions improved their Information Literacy (IL) and Media Information Literacy (MIL) programmes.
Design / methodology / approach
This study has a mixed methodology with a comparative analysis. For this purpose, data shows the universities' contexts: the communities of students, teachers, researchers, and librarians, and the e-learning strategies of IL and MIL programmes.
Findings
As part of the results of the crowdsourcing collaboration between the UMD, UNAM and BUAP, the study shows the different online learning communities and their innovations.
Originality
Although there is theoretical knowledge about IL and MIL in Mexican universities and University of Minnesota Duluth, the e-learning strategies used by their librarians in this document sought to provide technical solutions and other options for a virtual work scheme that responded to the specific problems presented by COVID-19. In this case, the framework for creating online library services was designed by their librarians for their communities in the context of the current crisis, even when online services had already been established for more than ten years.
Research limitations / implications
The technological infrastructure, the professionalisation of the library staff and a lack of knowledge of the new virtual teaching-learning needs.
Practical implications
Analysis of tools for virtual teaching-learning services, description of strategies used by library staff, results and feedback.
Social implications
IL and MIL strategies created in a variety of contexts can be enhanced by library collaboration in a fully virtual setting. Libraries with better technological infrastructure play a decisive role.


Young people engaged as peer educators are increasingly important in sex and relationship education (SRE) programmes in a variety of settings and are particularly valued in the APAUSE programme (Rees et al., 1997). The increase in popularity of peer education raises a need to value the inputs of young people and to give formal recognition to peers. An assessment process focusing on aspects of performance including communication, teamwork and relationships skills has been developed to assess volunteer peer educators on the APAUSE programme that aims to reconcile the typical tension in assessment of showing public recognition of competence and the ability to motivate learners. This paper reports initial findings from a pilot of this assessment process in 28 schools, involving 484 peer educators across England. Initial data suggest this has been extremely well received by teachers and peers. Experience of the process provides teachers with a method of feedback, which, by sharing the language of assessment with peers, enables the young people to be clearer about their tasks, making them more effective as peers and better able to articulate their experiences. These data are used to describe the contributions that an assessment process, focused on assessing performance in authentic situations, can make to SRE.


The hedgehog signaling pathway is a key regulator of neural development, affecting both proliferation and differentiation of neural progenitors. Sonic hedgehog (Shh) is a mitogenic factor for retinal progenitors in vitro. To determine whether this signaling system is important in vivo for regulating retinal progenitor proliferation, we analyzed mice with a single functional allele of the Shh receptor patched (ptc). We found that ptc+/- mice had increased numbers of neural progenitors at every stage of retinal development that we examined. In addition, these mice had persistent progenitors at the retinal margin for up to 3 months of age, reminiscent of the ciliary marginal zone of lower vertebrates. To test whether the progenitors at the retinal margin of ptc+/- mice could be induced to regenerate retinal neurons in response to damage, we bred ptc+/- mice onto a retinal degeneration background (pro23his rhodopsin transgenic) and labeled newly generated cells with combined immunohistochemistry for bromodeoxyuridine and retinal neuron and photoreceptor-specific markers. We found newly generated neurons and photoreceptors at the retinal margin in ptc+/-;pro23his mice. We propose that the Shh pathway may act as a regulator of both prenatal and postnatal retinal growth.


An analytical procedure is developed to design and predict the behavior of a pressure vessel. If a pressure vessel contains hydrogen, it is difficult to predict what will happen in the future. In this study, this is accounted for and the stress intensity factor for mode-Ι is calculated because the main factor controlling mass diffusion, as a driving force, is related to the stress in this mode. Also, it is known that the stress intensity factor depends upon concentration. The main challenge in hydrogen embrittlement is the prediction of crack growth and the estimation of lifetime for a pressure vessel. This paper investigates the effect of hydrogen diffusion upon crack in a pressure vessel by using numerical finite-element simulations. The fracture behavior of the alloy as related to hydrogen embrittlement was also studied. The computational simulations involved sequentially-coupled stress and mass-diffusion concentrations at the crack tip. Although there have been various previous works in this area, most of them have been experimental estimates of hydrogen diffusion. In this paper, we calculate the stress intensity factor by using the finite-element method (FEM) and use mathematical analysis simultaneously. The analytical method alone could not be used because the mass diffusion has special characteristics. That is, the treatment of diffusion is different at each step. We conducted finite-element modeling simulations of the intergranular fracture of alloy X-750 due to hydrogen embrittlement. Sequentially coupled stress and mass diffusion determinations were carried out in order to determine crack tip stresses and hydrogen diffusivity in the crack-tip region. Good qualitative agreement between the FEM modeling and the analysis was observed.


The aim of the present paper is to examine the formulation and practice of puericulture, within the context of eugenic ideas developed in France between the late 19 th century and the middle of the next century. Through a phase of depopulation during this period, coupled with the spread of so-called social plagues (tuberculosis, venereal diseases, and alcoholism), which would lead to a "biological degradation", the French government took a series of measures, known collectively as "social hygiene". This is the context in which Adolphe Pinard (1844-1934) improved the studies devoted to maternal health care, child care ("cultivation of childrenʺ), with the aim of encouraging repopulation in quantitative and qualitative terms.


This volume contains the proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Quantum Physics and Logic (QPL X), which was held July 17-19, 2013 at ICFO in Castelldefels (Barcelona), Spain. The goal of this workshop series is to bring together researchers working on mathematical foundations of quantum physics, quantum computing and spatio-temporal causal structures, and in particular those that use logical tools, ordered algebraic and category-theoretic structures, formal languages, semantic methods and other computer science methods for the study of physical behavior in general. Over the past few years, there has been growing activity in these foundational approaches, together with a renewed interest in the foundations of quantum theory, which complement the more mainstream research in quantum computation.


Traditionally tissues for in situ hybridization of viral nucleic acid have been small pieces obtained from laboratory rodents, and fixatives that are designed for electron microscopy, such as periodate-lysine-paraformaldehyde (PLP) can handle them adequately. However, these fixatives have limited penetrating ability and may produce no appreciable hardening, so alternative fixation methods were evaluated. The intention was to determine whether fixatives adequate for bulky tissues such as whole or halved pig and cow brains would also be compatible with in situ hybridization. Various fixatives were evaluated using a system of intracranial inoculation of BALB/c mice with pseudorabies virus (PRV) followed by in situ hybridization of brain tissue sections with a 35S-labeled PRV DNA probe. Loss of tissue sections was a major problem, particularly with PLP and formalin, but positive results were obtained with five fixatives tested. Cellular morphology was especially good with PLP and with a modification of Carnoy's fluid, MOCA fixative. An incidental but important observation was that formalin is compatible with in situ hybridization. Retroactive studies of viral diseases using routinely processed blocks of tissue (formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded) are therefore conceivable.


Mathematical indices of the structure of the external surface of guard hairs have been developed on the basis of a KS300 system of automatic image analysis (Kontrom Elektronik, Germany), which are capable of serving, in some cases, as diagnostic parameters of large taxa (order, family). The guard hair morphology is affected by various factors, such as body region where a given hair is located, season, diet, sex of individual, and state of its health, which is expressed in changes of some morphometric data. For a more complete analysis of the characteristics of the guard hair structure, it is necessary to use indices that describe the macro- and microstructure of the external surface of the stem and its internal structure.


The G-7's "global minimum tax" accord—followed by a new version of the OECD's "Two Pillar Solution" and its endorsement by the G-20—is accepted by many as evidence for international tax cooperation. But recent policy discussions offer no answer to a basic question: What can countries cooperate to achieve? This Article shows that the answers provided by proponents of the new international tax agreement are alarmingly ad hoc, misleading, and incoherent. Scholarship on corporate taxation has also long failed to identify potentials for international cooperation. The more successful international agreements purport to be, in other words, the more puzzling they become. I first examine three rationales recently identified for collective action. The first alleges a transformation in the services trade that supposedly undermines premises of traditional international tax design. The second emphasizes the international community's need to appease the United States and prevent the latter from starting trade wars. Both make unusual and untenable factual and normative assumptions. A third rationale seems more familiar—countries should cooperate to end tax competition and multinational companies' tax avoidance—but is at odds with both economic theory and the actual content of the OECD's proposal. Theoretically, ending tax competitions—whether for productive capital or for corporate headquarters—cannot create gains for all countries. And in terms of policy content, the OECD proposal can more plausibly be read as limiting, rather than enhancing, governments' capacities to tax MNCs. Older and more basic puzzles in theories of international taxation—concerning source-country taxation, residence countries' unilateral relief from double taxation, and bilateral tax treaties—compound these new puzzles. Arguably, these puzzles have led tax scholars to abandon a basic social scientific template for explaining cooperation. Indeed, much of economic scholarship takes international tax institutions as exogenously given. I contrast this state of affairs with economic theories of trade agreements—in particular, with the way the "terms-of-trade" theory rationalizes the GATT/WTO regime. To emulate the success of the "terms-of-trade" theory, I argue, certain assumptions that have long prevailed in discourses about international taxation may need to be jettisoned. Only a more fundamental reconceptualization of the subject matter of international taxation can shed light on the true past and future grounds for international tax cooperation.


One of the most independent thinkers in German intellectual history, the Enlightenment author Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) contributed in decisive and lasting fashion to literature, philosophy, theology, criticism, and drama theory. Lessing invented the burgerliches Trauerspiel (bourgeois tragedy) and wrote one of the first successful German tragedies as well as one of the finest German comedies. In his final dramatic masterpiece, Nathan der Weise, he writes of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, of religious tolerance and intolerance and the clash of civilizations. Lessing's dramas are the oldest German theater pieces still regularly performed (both in Germany and internationally), and both his plays and his drama theory have influenced such writers as Goethe, Schiller, Hebbel, Hauptmann, Ibsen, Strindberg, Schnitzler, and Brecht. Addressing an audience ranging from graduate students to seasoned scholars, this volume introduces Lessing's life and times and places him within the broader context of the European Enlightenment. It discusses his pathbreaking dramas, his equally revolutionary theoretical, critical, and aesthetic writings, his original fables, his innovative work in philosophy and theology, and his significant contributions to Jewish emancipation. The volume concludes by examining 20th-century reception of Lessing and his oeuvre. Contributors: Barbara Fischer, Thomas C. Fox, Steven D. Martinson, Klaus L. Berghahn, John Pizer, Beate Allert, H. B. Nisbet, Arno Schilson, Willi Goetschel, Peter Hoyng, Karin A. Wurst, Ann Schmiesing, Reinhart Meyer, Hans-Joachim Kertscher, Hinrich C. Seeba, Dieter Fratzke, Helmut Berthold, Herbert Rowland. Barbara Fischer is associate professor of German and Thomas C. Fox is professor of German, both at the University of Alabama.


Purpose/Background:
 The purpose of this abstract is to demonstrate rapid change improvement in SCORE quality measures specifically,
 Door-to-CT-times
 , for patients presenting to the Emergency Department with signs and symptoms of stroke.This change was implemented subsequent to review of data which revealed less than optimal
 Door-to-CT-times
 sustained over the course of several quarters.

 Objectives:

 1. To visually demonstrate the algorithm developed to model the care pathway of the acute stroke patient from Registration to initiation of the CT radiographic exam.

 2. To exhibit an educational pathway that resulted in rapid change and improvement of
 Door-to-CT-times
 as well as an unintentional favorable trend for the
 CT-to-Result
 measure.

 3. To compare
 Door-to-CT-times
 pre- and post-implementation of multidisciplinary education on the stroke pathway and goal of
 Door-to-CT
 in less than 20 minutes.

 Results:
 Prior to implementation of education utilizing the stroke pathway algorithm, results were consistently inconsistent ranging from 22% compliance to 63% compliance month over month. In January 2014 we had a 47% success rate and February 33% success rate for door to CT within 20 minutes. The educational program was implemented in February of 2014. Clearly, the visual depiction of patient flow thru the ED to CT greatly enhanced the educational process. We exceeded our goal of attaining 50% compliance and stretch goal of 70% compliance to 89% compliance in Door-to-CT times in the first month (March 2014) following implementation of the process improvement initiative. Data reveals sustained improvements through Q2 as follows: April 90%, May 68%, and June 73%. Due to the significant improvement in our Door-to-CT compliance, we also noted a comparably significant enhancement in our Door-To-Results times.

 Conclusions/Implications for Practice:
 By developing an ongoing educational process with demonstrable improvements in care for the acute stroke patient, Emergency Department staff appreciated improved outcomes for this particular patient population. This is a single institution study, results may not be applicable to other institutions.


In digital era the e-learning tools for project management teams include: automation, gamification, cloud computing and collaborative algorithms.
We propose an analysis starting from specific criteria in IT project teams: Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and we propose e-learning tools to improve team members levels of project knowledge.
E-learning becomes vital for project performance and can be considered as a regulatory activity among project members.
In order for KPIs to be representative we choose SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-Bound) indicators like: planned hours vs time spent, resource capacity, number of errors, training/research needed for project, number of change requests.
IT projects have some specific characteristics that influence e-learning methods applied as we mention: strong dynamics, high level of specialization on technology, reuse of knowledge and requirements for project libraries with code and best practices.
Regarding tools used in IT projects e-learning, they should satisfy the following criteria: on-line acces on various gadgets, resource sharing among team members, certifications available for e-learners.
Open-source is a trend in IT projects and from this perspective we mention GIT Hub as a platform for e-learning and analyze its advantages and disadvantages against the KPIs set previously proposed.
This analysis should meet an important requirement: e-learning works as a prerequisite for project quality and adapt people skills to project scope.
An IT project team should adapt its learning capabilities in an environment full of challenges and diversity, therefore the keywords are personalization and collaboration. Through e-learning an IT project team becomes an adaptive and intelligent organization.


A new analytic approach for the performance evaluation of buffer insertion rings is proposed which overcomes the basic limitations of former analyses. Key to our analysis is that the global performance model of a buffer insertion ring is decomposed into submodels in such a way that the basic interdependence of interarrival and transmission times of the frames transmitted is taken into account. The analysis itself is relatively straightforward and yields simple and explicit results for the mean delays of the frames. For special traffic patterns, the analysis is exact, for the general case, it is approximate but its accuracy turns out to be high, as comparison with simulation results shows.


Turbulent axisymmetric wakes under pressure gradient have received little attention in the literature, in spite of their fundamental and practical importance, for example, in the case of wind turbine wakes over topography. In this paper, we develop an analytical framework to analyse turbulent axisymmetric wakes under different pressure gradient conditions. Specifically, we develop a model to predict how an arbitrary imposed pressure gradient perturbs the evolution of the zero-pressure-gradient wake. The starting point of the model is the basic mean conservation of the streamwise momentum equation. We take advantage of the self-similarity of the wake velocity deficit and the assumption that the ratio of the maximum velocity deficit to the wake width is independent of the pressure gradient; such an assumption is supported experimentally for planar wakes, and numerically for axisymmetric wakes in this study. Furthermore, an asymptotic solution for the problem is also derived. The problem is considered for both an axisymmetric strain and a planar strain. The inputs to the model are the imposed pressure gradient and the wake width in the zero-pressure-gradient case. To validate the model results, a set of large-eddy simulations (LES) are performed. Comparing the evolution of the maximum velocity deficit and the wake width, the model results and the LES data show good agreement. Similarly to planar wakes, it is observed that the axisymmetric wake recovers faster in the favourable pressure gradient compared with the adverse one.


Schollenberger,
  Frederick
  Scott
  (Mechanical
  Engineering) Passive
  Solar
  Collector
  Freeze
  Characteristics Thesis
  directed
  by
  Professor
  Frank
  Kreith The
  major
  challenge
  for
  solar
  water
  heaters
  is
  to
  provide
  heat
  at
  a
  cost
  comparable
  to
  or
  lower
  than conventional
  fuels.

  Since
  the
  price
  of
  integral-‐collector-‐storage
  solar
  water
  heaters
  (ICS)
  is
  about
  one half
  to
  two
  thirds
  of
  that
  for
  active
  systems
  with
  freeze
  protection,
  they
  can
  provide
  lower-‐cost
  energy. However,
  ICS
  are
  subject
  to
  freeze
  damage,
  as
  the
  collector
  generally
  has
  metal
  tubes
  carrying pressurized
  water
  that
  can
  freeze
  and
  burst.

  In
  order
  to
  delineate
  the
  geographical
  areas
  where
  ICS
  can be
  deployed
  safely
  it
  is
  necessary
  to
  experimentally
  determine
  the
  conditions
  under
  which
  freeze damage
  occurs,
  to
  develop
  a
  model
  relating
  the
  freeze
  behavior
  to
  climatic
  conditions,
  and
  to
  validate that
  model
  with
  the
  experimental
  data.

  Three
  types
  of
  ICS
  have
  been
  subjected
  to
  increasingly
  severe freeze
  conditions,
  until
  freeze
  damage
  occurs.

  Tested
  units
  include
  double
  and
  single-‐glazed conventional
  units,
  and
  an
  innovative
  ICS
  with
  immersed
  metallic
  heat
  exchanger
  carrying
  pressurized water
  in
  a
  plastic
  box
  of
  stagnant,
  unpressurized
  water.

  Existing
  models
  for
  ICS
  thermal
  performance were
  modified
  to
  incorporate
  the
  freezing
  process,
  and
  have
  been
  validated
  with
  the
  experimental
  data. The
  validated
  models
  will
  be
  used
  to
  predict
  regions
  of
  the
  country
  safe
  for
  installing
  the
  ICS. Simulations
  will
  be
  done
  over
  at
  least
  30
  years
  of
  weather.

  Finally
  maps
  are
  created
  to
  illustrate
  the regions
  of
  safe
  installation.


Few defence topics have been as prominent or invested with as much optimism in recent years as defence diplomacy. This paper has been created to explore the issue and help guide policymakers. Foreword Few Defence topics have been as prominent or invested with as much optimism in recent years as defence diplomacy (also called military diplomacy or defence engagement). In response to the growing security challenges of Asia, scholars, policymakers and practitioners have looked for ways to build confidence, decrease the risk and impact of accidents and encourage peaceful dispute resolution. Defence diplomacy, namely the practice of military and defence officials engaging their overseas counterparts, is increasingly regarded as a vital way to achieve these aims. Given the importance of this topic, a special Centre of Gravity paper has been created to explore the issue and help guide policymakers. This edition features six short papers, each with a different take and policy recommendation. The authors were asked the same question 'Is the game worth the candle?' and while their answers focus largely on Australia there are lessons and implications from their findings for the entire region. Brendan Taylor, the head of the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre begins the special edition calling for a stocktake of current efforts, in a bid to understand what has worked and what resources it requires. He is joined by two colleagues, John Blaxland who argues strongly in favour of an expanded defence diplomacy program and Hugh White who urges caution about the strategic influence of the practice. To complement these views, Nick Bisley, Executive Director La Trobe Asia, highlights the need for realistic ambitions. Lieutenant General (Ret.) Peter Leahy draws on his distinguished career in the ADF to detail how defence diplomacy occurs in practice and why it matters. Finally, See Seng Tan, Deputy Director of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore provides a regional perspective on Australia's defence diplomacy. The authors of these papers don't agree with each other, and that was precisely why they were invited to contribute. But some common themes are clear. Such as the need for a clear —and public — strategy along with integrating defence diplomacy into the efforts of other parts of government. Together these six papers provide insight into the practice and potential of defence diplomacy. This special edition also marks a re-launch of the Centre of Gravity Series. While some of the design may change, the focus remains the same: inviting some of the best analysts from Australia and around the world to provide short, accessible papers on the key questions facing Australian strategic affairs.


A total internal reflection photoluminescence (TIRPh) device employing an easily fabricated PMMA/PDMS waveguide system provides a detection limit comparable to the best reported results but without using an excitation filter. The optical mechanism is similar to total-internal-reflection-fluorescence (TIRF) but uses a ruthenium-based phosphorescent dye (Ru(dpp)3) deposited on the PMMA core, motivating the generalized term of photoluminescence to include both fluorescence and phosphorescence. An enzymatic hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) biosensor incorporating catalase was fabricated on the TIRPh platform without photolithography or etching. The O2-sensitive phosphorescence of Ru(dpp)3 was used as a transduction mechanism and catalase was used as a biocomponent for sensing. The H2O2 sensor exhibits a phosphorescence to scattered excitation light ratio of 76 ± 10 without filtering. The unfiltered device demonstrates a detection limit of (2.2 ± 0.6) μM with a linear range of 0.1 mM to 20 mM. The device is the first total internal reflection photoluminescence based enzymatic biosensor platform, and is promising for cost-effective, low excitation interference, field-portable sensing.


ABSTRACK
Irwan Sutirman Wahdiat, Magister Management of Widyatama University.
View analyze propect about tourism attractions and accestability with influence
on attention and interested visiting (Case Study in Region of Cangkuang
tourism)
Garut Regency Government wish to make tourism as prime sector. It is implicity sien
in Garut Regency vision which is written in Distric Rule No. 2000 of Basic Pattern of
Garut Development from 2001 to 2005. It is mentioned that the Vision of Garut is to
make Garut "pangirutan". The word "pangirutan" here means Garut is to be make as
an interesting place to be visited by many people or as tourism object.
Can tourist object located in Garut especially Cangkuang Object Tourism ? There is,
the objective of the research is to help the management of Cangkuang Tourism Object
by analyzing prospect perception tourist prospects in Bandung City especially awong
university student. The research is carried out by using population sample
"Widyatama Student" of 100 respondent by using Sample Random Sampling Method.
The written predicts that Attaction and Accestability is able to influence attention and
interest in a positive and significantly to visit.
Questionaire data processing result shows that the decription of attraction and
accestability according to prospect perceptions (Widyatama Student) is include
in"HIGH" category, while attentions ang interest to visit is categorized "MEDIUM" .
Data testing of influence on attraction and accestability to attention ang interest to
visit can to be explained by attraction and accestability of 0.49. it can also mean that
factors outside the model influence 0.51 but influence on attraction and accestability
parsially influence 0.40 and 0.37 and correlation between attraction and accestability
is 0. 864


Like many apparently simple devices, the vertical water wheel has been around for so long that it is taken for granted. Yet this "picturesque artifact" was for centuries man's primary mechanical source of power and was the foundation upon which mills and other industries developed.Stronger than a Hundred Men explores the development of the vertical water wheel from its invention in ancient times through its eventual demise as a source of power during the Industrial Revolution. Spanning more than 2000 years, Terry Reynolds's account follows the progression of this labor-saving device from Asia to the Middle East, Europe, and America-covering the evolution of the water wheel itself, the development of dams and reservoirs, and the applications of water power.


The genus Rickettsiella (class Gammaproteobacteria; order Legionellales; family Coxiellaceae) comprises intracellular bacterial pathogens of a wide range of arthropods that are currently classified in the three recognized species, Rickettsiella popilliae, Rickettsiella grylli, and Rickettsiella chironomi. Rickettsiella bacteria contain a type IVB secretion system (T4SS) known to be a key virulence factor of the related genus Legionella. Providing the first respective sequence information for the nomenclatural type species, R. popilliae, the three T4SS components DotA, IcmB, and IcmQ were used as phylogenetic markers to test hypotheses implicit in the currently accepted taxonomic organization of Rickettsiella at the species, genus, and family level. These results, firstly, firmly corroborate the previous 16S rRNA gene-based coassignment of the species R. grylli and R. popilliae to the g-proteobacterial order Legionellales and, secondly, support the current classification of the investigated R. grylli and R. popilliae strains in different species of the same genus. In contrast, the analysis of intergeneric sequence distances does not lend support to the current taxonomic classification of the genus Rickettsiella in the family Coxiellaceae, but is consistent with a hierarchically neutral family-level assignment within the order Legionellales.


Abstract In this article, we study methods for estimating causal effects in settings with panel data, where some units are exposed to a treatment during some periods and the goal is estimating counterfactual (untreated) outcomes for the treated unit/period combinations. We propose a class of matrix completion estimators that uses the observed elements of the matrix of control outcomes corresponding to untreated unit/periods to impute the "missing" elements of the control outcome matrix, corresponding to treated units/periods. This leads to a matrix that well-approximates the original (incomplete) matrix, but has lower complexity according to the nuclear norm for matrices. We generalize results from the matrix completion literature by allowing the patterns of missing data to have a time series dependency structure that is common in social science applications. We present novel insights concerning the connections between the matrix completion literature, the literature on interactive fixed effects models and the literatures on program evaluation under unconfoundedness and synthetic control methods. We show that all these estimators can be viewed as focusing on the same objective function. They differ solely in the way they deal with identification, in some cases solely through regularization (our proposed nuclear norm matrix completion estimator) and in other cases primarily through imposing hard restrictions (the unconfoundedness and synthetic control approaches). The proposed method outperforms unconfoundedness-based or synthetic control estimators in simulations based on real data.


Low success rates and unpredictable results have plagued cloning researchers, particularly those trying to clone pigs. Now, on page
 1188, Japanese researchers offer the first scientific report of a cloned pig, named Xena, raising hopes that pigs could one day provide an unlimited supply of organs for transplantation thanks to their close physiological relationship to humans. But this week those hopes were dealt a blow by more evidence suggesting that pig retroviruses can infect human cells.


The role of schools as site for sexual health promotion has been widely acknowledged. Studies have shown that the education sector has a strong potential to make a difference in the fight against HIV and AIDS. Comprehensive sexuality education programs are known to delay initiation of sex, reduce number of sexual partners and increase the use of condoms and other forms of contraceptives. The aim of this study was to establish the attitude and perception of teachers to sexuality education in senior secondary schools in Gaborone, Botswana. This was a cross-sectional, quantitative study aimed at establishing the knowledge and attitudes of 25, randomly selected teachers to sexuality education in secondary schools of Gaborone, Botswana. The survey was conducted using a self-administered, closed-ended, structured questionnaire. Out of 25 respondents, 14 were males and 11 females. The mean age was 44.5years. Eighty percent were married and 20% single. The levels of education of respondents were (60%) with a bachelors' degree in education, 20% with diploma, 12% with masters' degree and 8% with certificate in education. Majority (80%) agreed that sexuality education was appropriate and a high proportion of respondents (97%) were willing to teach sexuality education. A greater number of respondents (72%) indicated that sexuality education should include contraceptives, but 64% were of the view that condoms should not be made available to students in secondary schools. Ninety-two percent agreed that sexuality education delays sexual debut and all respondents agreed that sexuality education increases awareness of HIV and AIDS. Overwhelming number of respondents (96%) agreed that sexuality education promotes condom use. Only forty-four percent indicated that the current school curricula were appropriate for teaching sexuality education. Majority (68%) indicated that the school curricula do not cover topics on abortion and communication and negotiation skills to reduce risks for HIV, other sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. The major barriers to sexuality education are culture (60%) and lack of training (24%).Majority of teachers (64%) indicated that they were not trained to teach sexuality education. Teachers in Gaborone secondary schools are knowledgeable on sexuality education and their attitude and perception of sexuality education are mostly positive. Culture and lack of training are the major barriers to teaching sexuality education in secondary schools. Teachers need in-service training to improve their overall knowledge on Stellenbosch University http://scholar.sun.ac.za


In order to preserve natural resources, the use of waste and alternative materials in the construction and maintenance of roads is increasingly investigated. This paper presents the results of testing wearing course asphalt mixtures (AC 11s SURF 50/70) made with various percentages of fly ash, used as a partial or complete substitute for mineral filler. The properties of fly ash were determined to assess their suitability for use in asphalt mixtures. The experimental research was performed on asphalt samples containing fly ash from three different sources, with 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of mineral filler substitution. The control mixture was prepared with 100% of mineral filler. The paper presents the volumetric composition, stability, and flow of asphalt mixtures tested on standard Marshall's samples, water sensitivity, and resistance to permanent deformation. The results of this study indicate that a satisfactory volumetric composition can be achieved by adding fly ash, while the bulk density and voids of the mineral and asphalt mixture generally depend on the type of fly ash and its content. The stability and flow of mixtures with fly ash are favourable compared with the control mixture. The water sensitivity of mixtures with fly ash is generally lower compared with the control mixture and depends on the type and percentage of fly ash. The resistance to permanent deformation of the asphalt mixtures depends on the fly ash type and percentage. The results obtained in this study are an important step towards broader implementation of fly ash in asphalt mixtures.


This thesis proposes to critically examine the ways in which whiteness and femininity are represented in recent Disney animated films. It will be contended that the Disney text is an influential part of the popular cultural discourse on femininity and whiteness but this is often obscured or made invisible by the ways in which the films work to naturalise these constructions. The work of this thesis will be to unpack the constructions of femininity and whiteness through an analysis of the figuration of the Disney heroine. This thesis will argue that idealized whiteness and femininity are discursively embodied in these Disney heroines in complex and contradictory ways, and that Disney works on and through these bodies to fix and contain the ideological constructions of gender, race, and sexuality.


The Louisiana Code of Civil Procedure was adopted in 1961, and four years later the Louisiana Supreme Court handed down the first case setting the standard for awarding sanctions for frivolous civil appeals under article 2164. The court adopted an extremely liberal subjective standard, i.e., sanctions could be awarded only if the appeal was taken solely for delay or if appellant's counsel was obviously insincere. Louisiana courts have followed this standard for the past fifty years. Frivolous appeals waste the courts' time and diminish the resources available for consideration of serious appeals. Although sanctions could deter frivolous appeals, Louisiana courts rarely award them; when they do, the sanctions are paltry. The author examined the 884 Louisiana cases seeking frivolous-appeal sanctions between 1985 and 2015 and discovered that Louisiana courts awarded sanctions in less than ten percent of the cases in which they were sought — fewer than three awards per year, on average.The fault for the low number of sanctions rests partly with the attorneys who fail to follow proper procedure. The author found procedural deficiencies accounted for sixteen percent of the denials (128 of 801) in that same thirty-year period. The most common deficiency was failing to answer the appeal or file a cross appeal.This article examines the standard applied by Louisiana courts, the circumstances under which frivolous-appeal sanctions will be awarded, the procedural issues attorneys encounter, the types of sanctions awarded, the treatment of pro se litigants, and the ethical issues that arise. It concludes with suggestions for the court and legislature — that the courts apply a more objective standard and award greater sanctions and that the legislature amend the Code of Civil Procedure to extend the period to request sanctions and to allow sanctions when appeals are dismissed as abandoned.


complex onto replication, assembly of Cdc45, essential replication protein, in late G1. The assembly of Cdc45 onto origins of replication forms a complex distinct from the pre-replicative complex, called the pre-initiation complex. The assembly of Cdc45 onto origins correlates with the time of initiation. Mcm2-7 proteins, Cdc45 binds specifically to origins in the G1 phase of the cell cycle and to non-origin DNA during S phase and is therefore thought to travel with the replication fork. Indeed, S. cerevisiae Cdc45 is required for DNA replication elongation as well as replication initiation. Cdc45 is required for the association of alpha DNA polymerase:primase with chromatin. Based on this observation and the observation that in S. cerevisiae, cCdc45 has been found in large complexes with some components of Mcm2-7 complex, it has been suggested that Cdc45 plays a scaffolding role at the replication fork, coupling Pol-al-pha:primase to the replication fork through the helicase. Association of Cdc45 with origin DNA is regulated in the cell cycle and its association is dependent on the activity of cyclin-dependent kinases but not the Cdc7/Dbf4 kinase. In Xenopus egg extracts, association of Cdc45 with chromatin is dependent on Xmus101. TopBP1, the human homolog of Xmus1, is essential for DNA replication and interacts with DNA polymerase epsilon, one of the polymerases involved in replicating the genome. TopBP1 homologs have been found in S. cerevisiae and S. pombe. Sld3, an additional protein required for Cdc45 association with chromatin in S. cerevisiae and S. pombe, has no known human homolog.


The influence from peers is viewed as the most important factor that causes substance use among teenagers (e.g., Akers et al. 1979; Kandel 1996). Among a variety of preventive factors, certain aspects of parenting (e.g., parental responsiveness, psychological control) are believed to affect adolescents' susceptibility to negative peer influence. These studies have produced some intriguing findings. Nonetheless, three significant gaps remain in the literature. First, previous research of parent-peer linkages has exclusively focused on deviance behaviors. We know little about how parental practices may affect adolescents' susceptibility to peer influence (SPI) on consumer choices. Second, past studies have mainly examined the direct effects of parenting on negative peer pressure, while the process by which parents affect peer relationships remains an area that to date has been underexplored. Lastly, interpersonal influence is inherently a cultural process. Despite the importance of culture as a contextual factor, there has been little academic research on the topic of SPI in a cross-cultural setting. The purpose of this research is to fill these gaps by further explicating parental influences on SPI. Different from previous studies, we will examine parent-peer linkages not only from the angle of negative peer pressure, but also from a more general perspective to study peer influence on purchasing patterns. More importantly, we will investigate not only the direct effects of relevant parent practices on SPI per se, but also the mediated effects of parenting on SPI through the adolescent self-concept. In addition, we will extend the proposed parent-self-peer paradigm developed in Western cultures to Eastern cultures, in order to investigate the moderating role of culture on the proposed relationships among parenting dimensions, key elements of self, and SPI. In Study 1, triadic data from 109 English-Canadian families was collected to verify the proposed parent-self-peer model in the Western context. Consistent with our expectations, results revealed that the effects of parental responsiveness on SPI were fully mediated by key aspects of self-concept, including interdependent self-construal, self-esteem, and self-monitoring. Since Study 1 was cross-sectional and could not verify the causality proposed in our framework, we conducted Study 2 to determine the causal directions of the parent-self-peer relationships through a longitudinal analysis of the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) data. Findings of the longitudinal analysis largely supported our assumption that parenting dimensions are more likely to be the antecedents of peer influence than conversely. In Study 3, we gathered 1,142 sets of family triadic data from mainland China and selected a part of the sample (n = 216) to test the hypothesized moderating effects of culture on the parent-self-peer linkages. Cross-cultural similarities as well as differences were found in this study. Specifically, in both cultures, parental responsiveness tended to be negatively associated with SPI, while psychological control tended to be positively associated with it. The magnitudes of these relationships and the way through which parents affect SPI, however, were different across the English-Canadian and the Chinese samples. These findings are broadly supportive of our hypotheses. Theoretical and managerial implications to the literature will also be discussed.


The design of a Spoken Dialogue System (SDS) is a long, iterative and costly process. Especially, it requires test phases on actual users either for assessment of performance or optimization. The number of test phases should be minimized, yet without degrading the final performance of the system. For these reasons, there has been an increasing interest for dialogue simulation during the last decade. Dialogue simulation requires simulating the behavior of users and therefore requires user modeling. User simulation is often done by statistical systems that have to be tuned or trained on data. Yet data are generally incomplete with regard to the necessary information for simulating the user decision making process. For example, the internal knowledge the user builds along the conversation about the information exchanged while interacting is difficult to annotate. In this contribution, we propose the use of a previously developed user simulation system based on Bayesian Networks (BN) and the training of this model using algorithms dealing with missing data. Experiments show that this training method increases the simulation performance in terms of similarity with real dialogues.


Random walks with memory usually involve rules where a preference for either revisiting or avoiding those sites visited in the past are introduced somehow. Such effects have a direct consequence on the transport properties as well as on the statistics of first-passage and subsequent recurrence times through a site. A preference for revisiting sites is thus expected to result in a positive correlation between consecutive recurrence times. Here we derive a continuous-time generalization of the random walk model with preferential relocation to visited sites proposed in Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 240601 (2014)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.112.240601 to explore this effect, together with the main transport properties induced by the long-range memory. Despite the long-range memory effects governing the process, our analytical treatment allows us to (i) observe the existence of an asymptotic logarithmic (ultraslow) growth for the mean square displacement, in accordance to the results found for the original discrete-time model, and (ii) confirm the existence of positive correlations between first-passage and subsequent recurrence times. This analysis is completed with a comprehensive numerical study which reveals, among other results, that these correlations between first-passage and recurrence times also exhibit clear signatures of this ultraslow relaxation dynamics.


Swirl produces notable effects on flames, generally making them shorter and highly stable over a wide range of air and fuel flows. One common method of generating a swirling jet is to employ a vane swirler. In this work the aerodynamics of vane-swirled premixed town gas-air flames are investigated in two furnaces, using the same swirlers. Variables investigated include the swirler vane angle, geometry, degree of confinement, Reynolds Number and fuel/air ratio. Cold tests were also carried out for the purpose of modelling. Significant changes in the flow and the combustion patterns were produced by swirl. Strong swirl created a central recirculation zone which when well established had a maximum diameter and length of nearly fixed proportions of the furnace diameter. The jet spread rate was found to increase mainly with the swirler-vane angle and to vary slightly with combustion and confinement particularly at strong swirl. The presence of a central hub in the swirler had little effect on the flow and combustion pattern. The survey of previous work and the present results showed the need for a revised measure of swirl, This was taken as the ratio of the tangential to axial velocity momentum fluxes divided by the furnace diameter. The values of this Swirl Number obtained by integrations of the flow properties were found to be a valuable index of the flow and combustion patterns. A critical value at which the flow reversal occurs was found to be the same for all input conditions tested. The strong relation between combustion and flow patterns shows the value of isothermal model results for furnace design. For a non-swirled flame a parameter was derived on the basis of the ratio of source to shear momenta. For swirling flames, the use of the Swirl Number defined above proved to be a satisfactory modelling criterion since it has a fixed relation to the flow pattern under both cold and burning conditions. A mathematical model was developed for the prediction of the flow and combustion patterns of confined swirling flows. The results obtained for weak and medium degrees of swirl were reasonably similar to those experimentally measured. The study of the measured combustion patterns shows that swirling flames are stabilized by a mechanism of mixing between the fresh charge and the recirculated gases. These contained direct combustion products and entrained gases from the surroundings. The effective fuel/air ratio at the reaction zone versus blow-off velocity relations were obtained and found to be the same for both free and confined swirling flames. Finally some recommendations to the choice of the optimum swirl range and suggestions for further work are presented. A paper presented at the Combustion Institute European Symposium (1973) is included as an Appendix.


In an age which bears witness to a proliferation of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras for security and surveillance monitoring, the use of image processing and computer vision techniques which were provided as top end bespoke solutions can now be realised using desktop PC processing. Commercial Video Motion Detection (VMD) and Intelligent Scene Monitoring (ISM) systems are becoming increasingly sophisticated, aided, in no small way, by a technology transfer from previously exclusively military research sectors. Image processing is traditionally concerned with pre-processing operations such as Fourier filtering, edge detection and morphological operations. Computer vision extends the image processing paradigm to include understanding of scene content, tracking and object classification. Examples of computer vision applications include Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), people and vehicle tracking, crowd analysis and model based vision. Often image processing and computer vision techniques are developed with highly specific applications in mind and the goal of a more global understanding computer vision system remains, at least for now, outside the bounds of present technology. This paper will review some of the most recent developments in computer vision and image processing for challenging outdoor perimeter security applications. It also describes the efforts of development teams to integrate some of these advanced ideas into coherent prototype development systems.


We show that there exists no left order on the free product of two nontrivial, finitely generated, left-orderable groups such that the corresponding positive cone is represented by a regular language. Since there are orders on free groups of rank at least two with positive cone languages that are context-free (in fact, 1-counter languages), our result provides a bound on the language complexity of positive cones in free products that is the best possible within the Chomsky hierarchy. It also provides a strengthening of a result by Cristobal Rivas stating that the positive cone in a free product of nontrivial, finitely generated, left-orderable groups cannot be finitely generated as a semigroup.


A fully consistent relativistic random phase approximation is applied to study the systematic behavior of the isovector giant dipole resonance of nuclei along the β-stability line in order to test the effective Lagrangians recently developed. The centroid energies of response functions of the isovector giant dipole resonance for stable nuclei are compared with the corresponding experimental data and the good agreement is obtained. It is found that the effective Lagrangian with an appropriate nuclear symmetry energy, which can well describe the ground state properties of nuclei, could also reproduce the isovector giant dipole resonance of nuclei along the β-stability line.


Accumulated studies have shown that environmental factors (EFs) can regulate the expression of microRNA (miRNA) which is closely associated with several diseases. Therefore, identifying miRNA-EF associations can facilitate the study of diseases. Recently, several computational methods have been proposed to explore miRNA-EF interactions. In this paper, a novel computational method, MEI-BRWMLL, is proposed to uncover the relationship between miRNA and EF. The similarities of miRNA-miRNA are calculated by using miRNA sequence, miRNA-EF interaction, and the similarities of EF-EF are calculated based on the anatomical therapeutic chemical information, chemical structure and miRNA-EF interaction. The similarity network fusion is used to fuse the similarity between miRNA and the similarity between EF, respectively. Further, the multiple-label learning and bi-random walk are employed to identify the association between miRNA and EF. The experimental results show that our method outperforms the state-of-the-art algorithms.


Lee Miles gave one of the lead presentations at an international conference on 'Political Outsiders in Swedish History', funded by the Centre for Nordic Research and the Department of Scandinavian Studies at University College London (UCL) and the Scandinavian Politics Specialist Group of the UK's Political Studies Association (PSA). The paper by a political scientist commented upon the value interdisciplinary linkages between studies by political scientists and historians. Lee Miles also argued that the study of political outsiders in Swedish history offered new means to challenge some of the traditional orthodoxes surrounding the study of Swedish politics, past and present


InThe Journal, March 26, 1904, we gave a preliminary report of a case of splenomedullary leukemia symptomatically cured by the Roentgen rays. Since then we have given a more detailed account of the same case,1and now as it has come to autopsy we make a final report. Especial attention will be given to the postmortem findings, in the hope that some light may be thrown on themodus operandiand the value of thex-rays in this class of cases. No attempt will be made to review the literature, as this has been done so completely by Dr. George Dock2quite recently. We repeat the history of the case, as given in the other reports, together with the later developments: Patient. —W. E., male, American, aged 30, a cigar maker, unmarried, was first examined July 1, 1903. His family history is negative, except that one sister has had tuberculosis. History. —The patient has lived in Decatur all his life; his habits have been good; he does not use alcohol, but he is a moderate smoker. He has had the usual diseases of childhood, with good recovery in all. No history of malaria or syphilis. Present Trouble. —The patient came to the office complaining of weakness, pain in the back and a feeling of weight and distress in the left side. Two years ago he had a fall, alighting


We use thermodynamic models and published 1996 Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of SO2, SO, and monatomic sulfur gas in the Pele volcanic plume on Jupiter's moon Io to evaluate the temperature (1440 K) and oxidation state (3.3 log fO2 units below the Ni‐NiO buffer) of Pele's magma and exsolved volcanic gas. Combination of these results with 1999 HST data on the SO2/S2 ratio in the Pele plume allows us to calculate pressures (10−4.7–10−5.4 bar) in the vicinity of volcanic vent and to present a detailed chemical model for the plume. Our model indicates that the Pele plume represents volcanic gas, which last equilibrated at magmatic temperature and was not significantly altered in the plume. Finally, the redox state of Pele plume indicates that Io is differentiated and has an oxidized, Fe‐metal free mantle.


This study measured technical efficiency and identified its determinants in irrigated vegetable production in Nasarawa State of Nigeria using a stochastic frontier model. A complete enumeration of 193 NADP-registered vegetable farmers was done. The predicted farm technical efficiency ranges from 25.94 to 96.24 per cent with average of 56.75, 52.13 and 68.92 per cent in Nasarawa south, Nasarawa north and Nasarawa west respectively. The wide variation in the technical efficiency suggests that there is tendency for increasing vegetable production and farmers' income through improvements in technical efficiency. Education, farming experience and farm size were found to be positively and significantly related to technical efficiency in the vegetable farming. Keywords : Stochastic frontier, technical efficiency, vegetable production Journal of Agriculture, Forestry and the Social Sciences Vol. 4 (2) 2006: pp. 33-39


Mobile crowdsensing (MCS) is a cost-effective paradigm for gathering real-time and location-related urban sensing data. To complete MCS tasks, MCS platform needs to exploit the trajectory of participants (vehicles or individuals, etc.) for effectively choosing participants. On one hand, the existing works usually assume that platform has possessed the abundant historical movement trajectory for participant selection, or can accurately predict the movement of participant before selection, but this assumption is impractical for many MCS applications, for some candidates have just arrived without sufficient mobility profiles, so-called trajectory from-scratch, or cold-trajectory issue. On the other hand, most of works only considers the coverage ratio of the sensing area, while some hotspots should be sensed frequently, so-called coverage degree of hotspots. To solve the issue, this paper proposes a reinforcement learning (RL) based, i.e., an improved Q-learning based online participant selection scheme to incorporate both coverage ratio and degree, PSARE. First, to solve the explosion of state-value table in traditional tabular Q-learning, an improved two-level Q-learning method is proposed to select participants in online way so as to achieve high long-term return. Specifically, in each selection round, PSARE dynamically compresses all the real participants (RPs) into several virtual participants (VPs) using the available historical trajectories of RPs, and the VP-based state-value table is constructed and constantly updated (i.e., the first level). Then, after selecting the VP through looking up the table, PARSE chooses the RP with the largest expected reward in this VP using epsilon-greedy way to balance the effect of exploration and exploitation (i.e., the second level). Moreover, the reward function is designed to measure the MCS coverage quality, including both coverage degree of hotspots and coverage ratio of target area. Thorough experiments on real-world mobility data set demonstrate that PSARE outperforms than other RL based online participant selection schemes (including deep Q-learning network) and traditional offline selection methods.


Background Several vitamins, including C, E, and B12, have been recognized as antioxidants and have shown hepatoprotective effects against the hepatotoxicity caused by acetaminophen (APAP) overdose. The current investigation aims to study the effect of these vitamins and their combination in protecting the liver from APAP hepatotoxicity in rats. Materials and methods An in vitro model of freshly isolated rat hepatocytes was utilized for assessing hepatocyte mitochondrial activity conducted by cell proliferation assay (MTT). The isolated hepatocytes were treated with vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin B12 and their combination, with and without further addition of toxic concentrations of APAP. In addition, an in vivo experiment was carried out on Sprague Dawley rats treated intraperitoneally for 8 days with emulsions of the vitamins or their combination prior to injecting them with APAP. Results In vitro results showed that vitamins C and B and the combination preparation significantly increased the percentage of hepatocyte mitochondrial activity, both with and without the addition of APAP (P<0.01). The mitochondrial activity in the isolated cultured hepatocytes was further enhanced with APAP addition. In vivo, the vitamins and their combination effectively reduced APAP-induced serum liver enzymes levels, namely ALT, AST, and ALP, and also attenuated oxidative stress and lipids peroxidation confirmed by the results of glutathione, superoxide dismutase, and maloondialdehyde. Conclusion Pretreatment with vitamins C, E, B12, or their combination was found to be beneficial in preventing in vivo hepatic oxidative stress induced by APAP overdose. Vitamin C on its own showed superior protection against APAP-induced liver injury in rats compared to the other vitamins. The proliferation of APAP-intoxicated liver cells in vitro was highest when protected with the vitamins' combination.


This article analyzes the discursive and conceptual equation of the ocean and the database. Considering how the chemical and vital properties of seawater serve to transform what is 'stored', the language of flow and fluidity is inadequate to describe what seawater actually does to things – it encrusts them, rusts them, adheres burgeoning life-forms to them. Seawater asks us to rethink terrestrial notions of the archive or database as informed by the language of earth and sediment, and instead consider the ocean-as-database in terms of seawater's capacity for protean transformation. Although the protean properties of seawater are meaningful at a macro scale, on increasingly microscopic scales, multiple processes of abstraction make seawater commensurate with digitality. The author considers the stakes of focusing on different scales of seawater and its materiality, taking as her examples two different data visualizations/animations: Google Ocean (scaling the ocean down to the size of a computer screen) and ATLAS in silico (scaling ocean microbial genomic data up to the size of a projection, or cluster of computer screens). She concludes by asking, how might a theory of media evolve from the materiality of seawater differently on macro and micro scales?


: Right ventricular (RV) failure is now accepted as a pathophysiological entity. This acceptance has stemmed from the increasing facility of bedside assessment of pump function using thermodilution techniques. The subsequent improvement in the assessment of RV volume changes has allowed existing theories to be confirmed. The anatomical disposition and geometry of the right ventricle allow it to adapt very well to wide variations in preload, but poorly to increases in afterload. In the presence of increased afterload, RV stroke volume decreases linearly with increasing resistance and the ventricle eventually dilates. This dilation is then responsible for further RV failure, due to decreased right coronary artery flow (from systolo-diastolic to diastolic only) at a time when myocardial oxygen consumption is increased. Furthermore, RV dilation shifts the interventricular septum to the left, decreasing left ventricular preload and, hence, the cardiac output. An often lethal vicious circle is induced. The main therapeutic goals aimed at breaking this circle are restoration of adequate oxygen delivery to the myocardium and diminution of RV afterload.


ENGAGE is in
development as a web-based observation system with core features we believe
will facilitate its use as a scalable assessment-to-action coaching and
instructional support system in preschool classrooms. ENGAGE assesses adult interaction
practices and children's active engagement such that classroom teams receive
data to inform their intentional design and delivery of embedded instruction
that can be made more effective for children's developmental needs through
differentiation and intensification. For this study, we describe important
precursors to evaluating other psychometric properties within an argument-based
approach to validation. We used iterative cycles to gather evidence to refine
and validate the content of our measurement targets (i.e., adult interaction practices
and child active engagement) as well as constructs (i.e., groupings of practices
by theorized mechanisms). Following two iterative rounds using online
questionnaires, responses from participants representing intended users of
ENGAGE generally demonstrated consistency with our definitions and
conceptualizations, with more varied responses for child engagement. We discuss
our procedures and results in terms of reducing measurement error that may be
attributable to measurement targets in advance of future examinations of observation
conditions (e.g., observer training, session duration) and situational variance
(e.g., instructional pedagogy, adult-child ratios) that are often influential
within observation-based assessments.