Schalmont Central School District and Schalmont Teachers Association

In the Matter of the Fact-Finding Between SCHALMONT CENTRAL SCHOOL DISTRICT AND SCHALMONT TEACHERS ASSOCIATION. PERB Case No. M2006-107. Before: Peter A. Prosper, Fact Finder

Children Engagement with Literacy: A Study of Literacy Practices at a Multilingual Classroom in Cape Town, South Africa

This paper reports on the early literacy activities which children engage with at school to develop multi-competences. It draws an understanding of literacy as a social practice given the intricacies related to a particular literacy event. In this paper literacy is understood beyond reading and writing ability in order to widen the scope for early literacy learners to explore with literacy. The data was collected through ethnographic case study design from a grade three class using observation and document analysis. The class teacher became a resource as she used linguistic competence in English, Afrikaans and IsiXhosa to teach literacy in different situations. The data shows that, language is a resource for teaching and learning literacy instead of seeing it as a problem and barrier to the learning process. Home language can be an instrument through which children develop cognitive skills for learning. The paper concludes that, despite the efforts to support learners to become multi-literate, teachers’ competence in different languages is necessary to facilitate the acquisition of multilingual skills

Deep learning methods for modeling bitcoin price

A precise prediction of Bitcoin price is an important aspect of digital financial markets because it improves the valuation of an asset belonging to a decentralized control market. Numerous studies have studied the accuracy of models from a set of factors. Hence, previous literature shows how models for the prediction of Bitcoin suffer from poor performance capacity and, therefore, more progress is needed on predictive models, and they do not select the most significant variables. This paper presents a comparison of deep learning methodologies for forecasting Bitcoin price and, therefore, a new prediction model with the ability to estimate accurately. A sample of 29 initial factors was used, which has made possible the application of explanatory factors of different aspects related to the formation of the price of Bitcoin. To the sample under study, different methods have been applied to achieve a robust model, namely, deep recurrent convolutional neural networks, which have shown the importance of transaction costs and difficulty in Bitcoin price, among others. Our results have a great potential impact on the adequacy of asset pricing against the uncertainties derived from digital currencies, providing tools that help to achieve stability in cryptocurrency markets. Our models offer high and stable success results for a future prediction horizon, something useful for asset valuation of cryptocurrencies like BitcoinThis research was funded by Cátedra de Economía y Finanzas Sostenibles, University of Malaga, Spai

Identifying explanatory factors of bitcoin price with artificial neural networks

This study aims to develop a new model that allows determining with high precision the factors that explain the price of bitcoin. To do this, an extensive database of variables related to bitcoin and artificial neural network techniques has been used. The results obtained have made it possible to identify that aspects related to the number of forum posts, the volume of transactions on the blockchain, and the hash rate provide an excellent strategy for predicting the price of bitcoi

Prevalence of Bacterial Vaginosis and Associated Factors among Pregnant Women Attending at Bugando Medical Centre, Mwanza, Tanzania

Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is an extremely common reproductive tract condition worldwide with reported high prevalence among African population. Factors associated with this condition include preterm labour, premature rupture of membranes, preterm delivery and possibly spontaneous abortion. Nevertheless, antenatal screening and treatment is not routinely available in most poor-resource countries including Tanzania. A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted among delivering women at Bugando Medical Centre (BMC), Mwanza, Tanzania to determine the magnitude of the BV using the Nugent’s criteria and to document factors associated with the condition. A total of 284 women who presented for delivery at BMC labour ward from February to March 2011 were recruited into the study. For each consented women, a vaginal swab was taken, samples collected tested and a Nugent’s score of at least seven indicated bacterial vaginosis. Overall, bacterial vaginosis was diagnosed in 28.5% (n=81) of all participants. Gardnerella was the commonest morphotypes found in approximately 66.2% (n=188) of all participants while 11.6% (33 participants) had Mobilincus. There were no evidence for the association between bacterial vaginosis having formal education, (OR, 1.42[95%CI, 0.29-6.97; p=0.667]). Urban residence (OR, 1.29 [95% CI, 0.76-2.19; p=0.352]), ever delivered before (OR 0.66[95%CI, 0.39-1.12; p=0.126]), vaginal practice to enhance dry sex (OR, 1.16[95%CI, 0.43-3.17; p=0.768]) or wet sex (OR 1.31[95%CI, 0.46-3.7; p=0.613]), gestation age less than 37 weeks (OR 0.82[95%CI, 0.45-1.51; p=0.534]) and HIV infection (OR 0.90[95%CI, 0.28-2.92; p=0.863]) were not associated with bacterial vaginosis. Bacterial vaginosis is common among women delivering at Bugando Medical Centre and more studies to include antenatal clinic attendees initiating care are required to reliably document the magnitude the condition

Dependencia financiera y crecimiento económico: evidencia en PYME

This paper is intended to contribute to the debate on the consequences of the external financing needs of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) for their economic growth. This paper differs from previous research in that it uses investment flows that cannot be financed with generated cash flows as a proxy of external financing. The results obtained show that financial dependence explains the economic growth of SMEs but there are also other important explanatory variables such as financial development.En este trabajo contribuimos al debate de los efectos de las necesidades financieras externas de las empresas sobre el crecimiento económico. Nuestra investigación se distingue por utilizar como proxy de dependencia financiera externa de pequeñas y medianas empresas (PYME) los flujos de inversiones que no pueden ser financiados con cash flows generados. Los resultados obtenidos indican que la dependencia financiera explica el nivel de crecimiento económico de las PYME, y que también son significativas otras variables de control como las de desarrollo financiero

BIONOMER PILOT PLANT

The purpose of this project is to develop a pilot-scale process for the bacterial production of methacrylic acid (MAA) and methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) from biomass feedstocks and the subsequent purification steps. The pilot plant will also be located on site at a sugar cane refinery in Brazil where the feedstock should be inexpensive and readily available. Although these sugar cane refineries only operate for 9 months each year, molasses can be stored so that the pilot plant runs year-round. To obtain useful information about the feasibility and scalability of the process, 30 M kg/yr of each product will be produced. The products will be tested for purity and samples will be sent out to consumers to demonstrate the quality of the product. The MAA and MEK must be of the same purity generated by current commercial processes. The pilot plant will be designed in three major parts. The first part consists of the bacterial fermentors that are used to produce and scale up MAA and MEK production. Relatively little is currently known about the efficiency of production of MAA and MEK by E. coli and this part of the plant will provide critical data about conditions required for the bacteria as well as production rates. The second part of the plant consists of the MAA purification process. Many options will be considered for the purification steps, many of which will have to be modeled in ASPEN because MAA is usually not produced in the aqueous phase. The final section of the plant will be used for MEK purification. To reduce plant costs, the design will try to share equipment between the two purification processes. The main goal of the plant is to obtain data and demonstrate feasibility, not to demonstrate sustainable profitability. Estimates for total capital investment and show that the plant will not be profitable for the first five years of operation, but the valuable data gained from the operation will be used to design the larger, more efficient, full-scale plant. The total capital investment required for the plant is approximately $ 6.33 million. Returns generated from sales are minimal compared to the capital investment and operating costs. A full scale plant is expected to be profitable over time because of economies of scale and the price of inputs and outputs of the process

Some observations on marine turtles landed along Maharashtra coast

The landing of three out of the five species of turtles found in the Indian seas is reported here. Of these species, the leathery or leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) locally known as 'Kuruma kasav' is the rarest and the largest while the other two namely olive ridley(Lepidochelys olivacea) and green turtle (Chelonia mydas) locally known as 'Kasav' and 'Hirwakasav' respectively are relatively common