A comparison of teaching qualifications in grades 10 through 12 mathematics

Academic tracking is a standard practice for Grades 10-12 students in Alberta (Alberta Education, n.d.). Schools may also have locally developed enrichment or remedial mathematics programs. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between teacher characteristics (years of teaching, mathematics training, and highest education level achieved) and teacher placement within mathematics tracks and mathematics programs. Grades 10-12 mathematics teachers from two Alberta school divisions participated. Data was gathered using an online survey. Data analysis included use of the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient. Results indicated relationships between several teacher characteristics and mathematics program placement. Notable findings included a positive relationship between years taught and enriched mathematics placement, and mathematics training and enriched mathematics placement, as well as a negative relationship between highest education level achieved and remedial mathematics placement. Future research is needed to provide an understanding of how teacher characteristics are related to placement in tracked high school mathematics

Conditioned Arc expression in CA1 of the rat hippocampus supports long-term memory for temporal events

The hippocampus is important for the acquisition, storage, and retrieval of memories. It has been largely examined for its role in spatial and contextual memory, but the mechanisms of encoding temporal cues are not well understood. The present work explores the expression of an immediate early gene which contributes to synaptic changes associated with long-term plasticity, Arc, as a temporally-specific marker of hippocampal memory to a time-of-day cue in a novel conditioning procedure in rats. We video-recorded locomotor activity and delivered a clock time-specific, multimodal alarm signal to cage-paired rats for 14 days, and quantified Arc mRNA expression at conditioned and unconditioned times. We predicted that neural activity associated with a temporally-conditioned response to a time-of-day cue would include expression of Arc genes in the hippocampus and interactions with circadian cycles of sleep-wake behaviour

The use of analytics in decision-making: the role of information processing capability and analytical-based culture

This study examines the role of data quality, organizational analytical structure, and bigness of data in the quality of decision making. It investigates the mediating role of information processing capability in the association of data quality, organizational structure, and bigness of data with decision quality. Furthermore, the moderating role of analytical-based culture in the relationship of information processing capability and decision quality is investigated. Data was collected from 54 industry professionals within the field of analytics. Ordinal linear regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. The results support that data quality and organizational analytical structure have a positive effect on decision quality. Additionally, the results suggest that information processing capability is a significant and positive predictor of decision quality. Findings from this study contribute to the literature by providing understanding on the structural, process, and cultural view of the use of analytics within an organization

Sexual adaptation: is female-male mounting a supernormal courtship display in Japanese macaques?

Accepted author manuscriptWe analysed heterosexual consortships in a free-ranging group of Japanese macaques in which adult females routinely perform female-to-male mounting (FMM). We tested whether FMM is more efficient (i.e., a “supernormal courtship” behavioral pattern) than species-typical female-to-male sexual solicitations (FMSS) at prompting subsequent male-to-female mounts (MFM). In a context of high femalefemale competition for male mates, we found that (1) FMM functioned to focus the male consort partner’s attention as efficiently as FMSS and prevented him from moving away, and (2) FMM was more efficient than species-typical FMSS at expediting MFM (i.e., the most fitness-enhancing sexual behavior of a mating sequence). We concluded that FMM could be considered a supernormal courtship behavioral pattern in adult female Japanese macaques. This population-specific sexual adaptation may result from a combination of favorable socio-demographic conditions. This study has implications for the evolutionary history of non-conceptive mounting patterns in Japanese macaques and non-conceptive sexuality in humans

What are they good for?: Ultrasonic vocalizations as social communication signals in rats

Rats emit ultrasonic vocalizations in a variety of appetitive and aversive contexts. Although the reason why these calls are emitted is yet unknown, two prominent theories exist, the affective state theory and the social communication theory. This thesis will provide evidence to support the theory that these calls are emitted as a form of social communication. Four experiments will be presented, each testing a facet of the social communication theory. These experiments provide evidence that the calls are linked to social stimuli over non-social reward, and are emitted in divergent patterns depending on strain, regardless of depressive state. Further, they demonstrate that not all appetitive rewards elicit the same calling response, and that the calls emitted have a direct impact on conspecific behaviour. Overall, it is concluded that, although some vocalizations may be an indicator of the rat’s affective state, they are also used as a form of social communication.Canadian Institutes of Health Research (PJT-156302) NWO-ENW Veni grant (016.Veni.181.039) NSERC PG

Early and Middle Pleistocene glaciation of the southern Patagonian plain

Open access article. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) appliesEvidence of at least three Early to Middle Pleistocene glaciations is recorded in the stratigraphic exposures near the outer limit of glaciation in southern Patagonia. At Cabo Vírgenes, at the mouth of the Strait of Magellan, up to 70 m of till, gravel, sand, and stony silt were deposited in a grounding-line environment at the front of the Magellan lobe along a front several tens of kilometres wide. Accommodation space for the sediments was produced by glacio-isostatic depression resulting from the advance of the Magellan lobe to the Atlantic coast. At that time, the ‘moat’ in which the sediments accumulated may have been seaward of the modern Atlantic shoreline because the continental shelf is shallow and sea level was much lower than it is today. The sediments at Cabo Vírgenes are normally magnetized, carry no reversed overprints, and thus probably date to the Brunhes Chron (<0.774 Ma). Seacliff exposures south of the Strait of Magellan along the Atlantic coast of northern Tierra de Fuego expose two tills separated by glaciofluvial sediments. Although not dated, the tills record two advances of the Magellan lobe onto the Atlantic continental shelf. The location of the exposures relative to Cabo Vírgenes indicates that the upper of the two tills may correlate with the Cabo Vírgenes drift. The Tres de Enero highway cut, 90 km northwest of Cabo Vírgenes, exposes lodgement tills deposited during the Great Patagonian glaciation (GPG) – two stacked, normally magnetized tills overlie a reversely magnetized till. Truncated sand wedges separate each of the three tills, indicating that the tills record three separate Early to Middle Pleistocene glaciations. The younger of the two normally magnetized tills, and perhaps both, were deposited in the Brunhes Chron; the lowest, reversely magnetized till records extensive glaciation late during the Matuyama Chron (2.608–0.780 Ma). At Bella Vista in the Río Gallegos valley, a 0.89-Ma-old basalt flow caps a thick unit of normally magnetized glaciofluvial gravel, which was probably deposited during the Jaramillo Subchron (1.075–0.991 Ma), but certainly not later. Sediments at Tres de Enero and Bella Vista show that the GPG is not a single event as originally thought, but rather at least three glaciations, perhaps spanning several hundred thousand years.Ye

Investigating model explanation of bug report assignment recommenders

Software projects receive a lot of bug reports, and each bug report needs to be triaged. An objective of the bug report triaging process is to find an appropriate developer who can fix the reported bug. As this process can be time-consuming and requires a lot of effort, researchers have implemented recommender systems using a variety of algorithms to automate this process. Although using these recommender systems has a number of benefits, there are still many obstacles to overcome. A key obstacle is that commonly used algorithms are black-box, making it difficult for practitioners to comprehend how the models make decisions. Lack of explainability results in a lack of trust and transparency in the recommendations. This work investigates approaches that lead to visually explainable bug report assignment recommender systems. First, we developed and compared six different recommender systems using three distinct machine learning algorithms: Random Forest (RF), MLP Classifier and Bidirectional Neural Networks (BNN) and two different feature extraction techniques: TF-IDF and Word2Vec. Second, we examine the use of WordNet to improve recommender accuracy. Third, we explore the explanation of a bug report assignment recommender using the feature-based local model LIME. Finally, we assess the use of a positivenegative horizontal bar chart, feature table, and word cloud to explain the recommender systems visually. Our analytical analysis indicates that the optimum approach for developing a bug report assignment recommender system uses TF-IDF with RF and visually explains the recommendation with a word cloud and LIME as a local model

Synthesis and reactivity of Rh and Ir imino and azidophosphonamido complexes

This work reports a family of iminophosphonamido Rh and Ir cyclooctadiene (COD) complexes, [Ph2P(NR)2]M(COD), where the substituents on nitrogen vary, R = 2,4,6-trimethylphenyl (Mes) or adamantyl (Ad). The reaction chemistry of the iminophosphonamido Rh and Ir COD complexes was probed. This work also demonstrates the synthetic route to and of a family of azidophosphonamide Rh and Ir phosphazide containing ligand cyclooctadiene (COD) complexes, [Ph2P(N3R)(NR])M(COD). The unusual ligand linkage isomerism of said species is discussed. Preliminary results pertaining to bis(cyclooctene) (COE) complexes bearing both ligand types are also reported

"For the greater good" 99.8 % free and the expendable 0.2%: Freedom Fighters and the COVID-19 pandemic

83 p. : color illustration

Hybrid tip selection algorithm in IOTA

Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) refers to the technical architecture that enables simultaneous access, validation, and record of transactions in an immutable way over a network. IOTA is a distributed ledger developed to record and send transactions between nodes in the Internet of Things (IoT) design. Node is an electronic device that can create, receive, or transmit transactions over the IOTA network, known as the tangle. Every node in IOTA wants to submit a transaction. The network will allow nodes to submit their transaction, only after they run the Tip Selection Algorithm (TSA). TSA is an essential part of the IOTA tangle. The term "tips" refers to transactions that are still waiting to be approved by other nodes. The unverified transactions are called orphan tips, meaning that orphan transactions are not approved by any node. Nodes in the tangle that approve older transactions are called lazy nodes, and transactions submitted by lazy nodes are called lazy tips. There should be a trade-off between verifying a transaction (orphan) and how quickly a transaction is verified (lazy tips). The importance of the TSA is to balance the number of orphan transactions and lazy tips. Our contribution in this thesis is to make adjustments in the TSAs by assigning adaptive values for the TSAs. Parameter α is a determining factor in the TSA algorithms to adjust the number of lazy and orphan tips. In this thesis, we propose a new hybrid TSA algorithm. The hybrid TSA employs a recursive walk with a variable α parameter. In the experimental analysis of the thesis, we measured the orphan and lazy tips for different TSA algorithms from the output data generated by the IOTA simulator. The result shows that the hybrid TSA can effectively eliminate the number of lazy tips