TRANSFORMING PRACTICE THROUGH AN UNDERSTANDING OF SOCIO – CULTURAL CONDITIONS IN THE CLASSROOM

Much of the debate on the teaching and learning of English and academic writing occurs largely from Eurocentric or Western perspectives on local contexts. This paper explores the role of the local English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher in transforming the way English for Academic Purposes is taught and learnt, particularly in higher education settings in Malaysia. In order to challenge Western notions, ESL teachers need to know their local contexts and students well enough in order to explain the complexities that arise within an education system that is continually shaped by historical and socio-political shifts in the country. The purpose of this paper is to inform ESL and academic writing teacher-researchers that it is possible to transform practice by paying close attention to the complexities of socio-cultural conditions. Using action research methodology, the case study presented here illuminates and exemplifies the recognition and explicit inclusion of socio-cultural conditions within academic literacies in a tertiary English language class for engineering, computing and business discipline students in a Malaysian university. Three narratives are critically selected using the Critical Incidents Technique and examined from a pool of qualitative data which comprised student letters, student interviews and teacher diaries. Green’s typology of operational, cultural and critical dimensions of literacy events is used to analyse how socio-cultural conditions within and beyond the classroom can affect the kinds of literacy which are identified by the teacher and used to improve student engagement and performance in the language besides enhancing the quality of teaching and learning academic writing. Findings reveal the need for greater leadership support for grass root level decision-making by the ESL teacher and a deeper understanding of the use of mediation as a tool to maximize social interaction. Even traditionally used teaching materials for language teaching can be brought into connection with broader genres and conceptual ideas by focusing on social interaction in classes. An extensive use of the English language through social interaction with explicit attention to social and cultural ESL contexts proves to be a highly significant means to aid the rapid development of students’ English language learning, so that students can be better prepared to meet global challenges

Minimizing Human Assistance: Augmenting a Single Demonstration for Deep Reinforcement Learning

The use of human demonstrations in reinforcement learning has proven to significantly improve agent performance. However, any requirement for a human to manually 'teach' the model is somewhat antithetical to the goals of reinforcement learning. This paper attempts to minimize human involvement in the learning process while still retaining the performance advantages by using a single human example collected through a simple-to-use virtual reality simulation to assist with RL training. Our method augments a single demonstration to generate numerous human-like demonstrations that, when combined with Deep Deterministic Policy Gradients and Hindsight Experience Replay (DDPG + HER), significantly improve training time on simple tasks and allows the agent to solve a complex task (block stacking) that DDPG + HER alone cannot solve. The model achieves this significant training advantage using a single human example, requiring less than a minute of human input.Comment: 7 pages, 11 figure

Diversity of progeny from a single colony of Salmonella typhimurium after 19 months in sealed agar stabs

Abstract only availableRecent studies at the Cancer Research Center revealed numerous mutations in Salmonella typhimurium that had been sealed in agar stab vials and stored for over forty years. The bacteria that were conserved in over 20,000 vials were all progeny of the same S. typhimurium strain. However, they were not progeny from a single colony (thus, a single parental cell), but from cultures used in genetic studies in several laboratories. To continue the evolutionary and mutational study of S.typhimurium, a new set of 100 similar agar stabs were inoculated 19 months ago from a single colony (thus, a single parental cell), and sealed. Cells from this set were assayed to see if mutations had occurred. Through motility tests, colony growth on three media, re-streaking of unique colonies, and phage spot testing, genetic variability was observed after 19 months storage. In this amount of time enough mutation did occur to display diverse phenotypes among progeny of the single strain of S. typhimurium. To confront any concerns that the mutations may have been present 19 months ago, a -80 °C stock of the parent colony was used as a control. While the phenotypic changes were significantly less then the vials stored for forty years, it is obvious that 19 months was enough time for genetic variability to occur in S. typhimurium from a single parent. Support from Cancer Research Center. Special thanks to Dustin Newman and Alison Fea for technical instruction.Cancer Research Cente

Efficient stochastic Hessian estimation for full waveform inversion

In this abstract we present a method that allows arbitrary elements of the approximate Hessian to be estimated simultaneously. Preliminary theoretical and numerical investigations suggest that the number of forward models required for this procedure does not increase with the number of shots. As the number of shots increases this means that the cost of estimating these approximate Hessian entries becomes negligible relative to the cost of calculating the gradient. The most obvious application would be to estimate the diagonal of the approximate hessian. This can then be used as a very inexpensive preconditioner for optimization procedures, such as the truncated Newton method

RoboChop: Autonomous Framework for Fruit and Vegetable Chopping Leveraging Foundational Models

With the goal of developing fully autonomous cooking robots, developing robust systems that can chop a wide variety of objects is important. Existing approaches focus primarily on the low-level dynamics of the cutting action, which overlooks some of the practical real-world challenges of implementing autonomous cutting systems. In this work we propose an autonomous framework to sequence together action primitives for the purpose of chopping fruits and vegetables on a cluttered cutting board. We present a novel technique to leverage vision foundational models SAM and YOLO to accurately detect, segment, and track fruits and vegetables as they visually change through the sequences of chops, finetuning YOLO on a novel dataset of whole and chopped fruits and vegetables. In our experiments, we demonstrate that our simple pipeline is able to reliably chop a variety of fruits and vegetables ranging in size, appearance, and texture, meeting a variety of chopping specifications, including fruit type, number of slices, and types of slices

Increased risk of depression in non-depressed HIV infected men with sleep disturbance: Prospective findings from the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study.

ObjectiveSleep disturbance is a known risk factor for depression, but it is not known whether sleep disturbance contributes to greater risk of depression in those infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV+) as compared to those uninfected with HIV (HIV-).MethodsUsing data from the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study, a population-based prospective study of men who have sex with men (MSM), self-reported sleep disturbance (>2 weeks) and depressive symptoms (Clinical Epidemiologic Scale for Depression, CES-D) were assessed every 6 months over 12 years of follow-up. Adjusted mixed effects logistic regression analyses tested whether sleep disturbance predicted depression (CES-D ≥ 16) at the immediate subsequent visit, and so on over 12 years, in non-depressed HIV+(N = 1054; 9556 person-visits) and non-depressed HIV- (N = 1217; 12,680 person-visits). In HIV+ vs. HIV- MSM, linearly estimated average incidence of depression and normalized cumulative rate of depression over 12 years were compared.ResultsIn the HIV+ MSM, sleep disturbance was associated with a significant increase in depression 6 months later (OR = 1.6; 95% CI, 1.30, 1.96), which was significantly greater (P < .05) than in HIV- MSM (OR = 1.16; 95% CI, 0.94, 1.44). HIV status and sleep disturbance interacted (P < .001), such that incidence of depression and normalized cumulative rate of depression were greater in HIV+ with sleep disturbance than in HIV+ without sleep disturbance and HIV- groups (all P's < 0.001).ConclusionsHIV+ persons who report sleep disturbance represent a high risk group to be monitored for depression, and possibly targeted for insomnia treatment to prevent depression. FUND: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Youth unemployment, community violence, creating opportunities in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: a qualitative study

Background: Tanzania has consistently shown in recent decades to have a high overall crime rate.  Although its homicide rate is moderate, Dar es Salaam has an unusually high amount of community violence; more than half of all homicides were due to lynching and vigilantism. Most of these homicides were a reaction to petty theft of purses, cell phones, and domestic meat animals. Employment is hypothesized to decrease petty theft and the resulting homicidal community violence. The objective of this research is to characterize appropriate interventions.Methods: In-depth interviews took place with proxy respondents of youth who had been killed through community violence. Most respondents were relatives of youth killed by community violence or youth who had directly experienced community violence. A focus group was held with at risk youth.Results:  “Lack of employment” was the largest node in terms of number of references and sources. It is reported with “Business Ability” and “Normal Life”. Occupational categories for uneducated youth in Dar es Salaam are:  formal employment, agriculture, petty business, and day labour. Stealing, begging and emigration occur when other options have failed. Suggestions for decreasing death by community violence fell into three categories, all to do with employment: employment creation, working with youth in groups, and creating a supportive environment for small enterprises.Conclusions: Productive occupations are needed, including the revivification of traditional natural resource based industries such as fisheries and forestry. The physical and legal environment must be made conducive for “self-employed non-agricultural workers”.  To optimize potential effectiveness, rigorous experimental research should be conducted, to facilitate humane, equitable, and environmentally sound scale up of youth employment opportunities

Do location specific forecasts pose a new challenge for communicating uncertainty?

In the last decade, the growth of local, site-specific weather forecasts delivered by mobile phone or website represents arguably the fastest change in forecast consumption since the beginning of Television weather forecasts 60 years ago. In this study, a street-interception survey of 274 members of the public a clear first preference for narrow weather forecasts above traditional broad weather forecasts is shown for the first time, with a clear bias towards this preference for users under 40. The impact of this change on the understanding of forecast probability and intensity information is explored. While the correct interpretation of the statement ‘There is a 30% chance of rain tomorrow’ is still low in the cohort, in common with previous studies, a clear impact of age and educational attainment on understanding is shown, with those under 40 and educated to degree level or above more likely to correctly interpret it. The interpretation of rainfall intensity descriptors (‘Light’, ‘Moderate’, ‘Heavy’) by the cohort is shown to be significantly different to official and expert assessment of the same descriptors and to have large variance amongst the cohort. However, despite these key uncertainties, members of the cohort generally seem to make appropriate decisions about rainfall forecasts. There is some evidence that the decisions made are different depending on the communication format used, and the cohort expressed a clear preference for tabular over graphical weather forecast presentation

Fluid Viscosity Prediction Leveraging Computer Vision and Robot Interaction

Accurately determining fluid viscosity is crucial for various industrial and scientific applications. Traditional methods of viscosity measurement, though reliable, often require manual intervention and cannot easily adapt to real-time monitoring. With advancements in machine learning and computer vision, this work explores the feasibility of predicting fluid viscosity by analyzing fluid oscillations captured in video data. The pipeline employs a 3D convolutional autoencoder pretrained in a self-supervised manner to extract and learn features from semantic segmentation masks of oscillating fluids. Then, the latent representations of the input data, produced from the pretrained autoencoder, is processed with a distinct inference head to infer either the fluid category (classification) or the fluid viscosity (regression) in a time-resolved manner. When the latent representations generated by the pretrained autoencoder are used for classification, the system achieves a 97.1% accuracy across a total of 4,140 test datapoints. Similarly, for regression tasks, employing an additional fully-connected network as a regression head allows the pipeline to achieve a mean absolute error of 0.258 over 4,416 test datapoints. This study represents an innovative contribution to both fluid characterization and the evolving landscape of Artificial Intelligence, demonstrating the potential of deep learning in achieving near real-time viscosity estimation and addressing practical challenges in fluid dynamics through the analysis of video data capturing oscillating fluid dynamics.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure

Smoking and Second Hand Smoking in Adolescents with Chronic Kidney Disease: A Report from the Chronic Kidney Disease in Children (CKiD) Cohort Study

The goal of this study was to determine the prevalence of smoking and second hand smoking [SHS] in adolescents with CKD and their relationship to baseline parameters at enrollment in the CKiD, observational cohort study of 600 children (aged 1-16 yrs) with Schwartz estimated GFR of 30-90 ml/min/1.73m2. 239 adolescents had self-report survey data on smoking and SHS exposure: 21 [9%] subjects had “ever” smoked a cigarette. Among them, 4 were current and 17 were former smokers. Hypertension was more prevalent in those that had “ever” smoked a cigarette (42%) compared to non-smokers (9%),