THE FIRST GRADE PRIVATE SCHOOL SECTOR: TAXONOMY, CHOICE, AND ACHIEVEMENT

Studies focusing on Catholic schools as a proxy for all private education or all private religious education miss important variances within the private school sector, especially at the first grade level. The implication of this is that the vast majority of secondary school choice studies are incomplete; the elementary schooling decision of the parents should be included for all secondary school choice analyses. I augment the scope of a households first grade schooling choice by offering a rich model that includes the public schooling option and the most detailed typology of private schools to date: Catholic, Evangelical or Fundamental Protestant, Mainline Protestant or Other Faith, and Secular. Upon selecting a school type, I evaluate a students performance within this selected sector. While critics argue that selection and omitted variable biases generate test score gains for students rather than private school superiority, I include a childs fall kindergarten reading, math, and general knowledge test scores to control for a students knowledge acquired prior to kindergarten enrollment. I examine whether higher first grade test scores are the result of selection into the private sector or preeminence of the private sector. I find kindergarten test performance, household income, and parental education are significant and positive factors in selecting a school. Additionally, household religiosity and the denominational composition in the households home county are also significant determinants of schooling choice. Results from voucher simulations indicate that an increase in private school attendance does not translate to uniform enrollment increases at all types of private schools. White and Hispanic girls display similar patterns for Catholic and Protestant schools while African-American and white girls select Evangelical schools in analogous trends. Findings suggest that, while a students ability is the driving force behind first grade achievement, the type of school attended in first grade does affect a childs test score for all three tests. First grade private school enrollment makes below average achievers in kindergarten into better students in the first grade. Private schools offer no significant benefit for first grade enrollment to high achieving kindergarten students

Cosmography and constraints on the equation of state of the Universe in various parametrizations

We use cosmography to present constraints on the kinematics of the Universe, without postulating any underlying theoretical model. To this end, we use a Monte Carlo Markov Chain analysis to perform comparisons to the supernova Ia Union 2 compilation, combined with the Hubble Space Telescope measurements of the Hubble constant, and the Hubble parameter datasets. We introduce a sixth order cosmographic parameter and show that it does not enlarge considerably the posterior distribution when comparing to the fifth order results. We also propose a way to construct viable parameter variables to be used as alternatives of the redshift $z$. These can overcome both the problems of divergence and lack of accuracy associated with the use of $z$. Moreover, we show that it is possible to improve the numerical fits by re-parameterizing the cosmological distances. In addition, we constrain the equation of state of the Universe as a whole by the use of cosmography. Thus, we derive expressions which can be directly used to fit the equation of state and the pressure derivatives up to fourth order. To this end, it is necessary to depart from a pure cosmographic analysis and to assume the Friedmann equations as valid. All our results are consistent with the $\Lambda$CDM model, although alternative fluid models, with nearly constant pressure and no cosmological constant, match the results accurately as well.Comment: 23 pages. 1 reference added. Minor correction

Confident Living Program for Senior Adults Experiencing Combined Vision and Hearing Loss

Educational Objectives 1. Identify needs common among older adults who have combined vision and hearing loss. 2. Describe a model program that provides information, resources, and training to older adults experiencing combined vision and hearing loss. 3. Describe how the program benefits not only consumers, but also family, friends, caregivers, students, and service providers

The REVERE project:Experiments with the application of probabilistic NLP to systems engineering

Despite natural language’s well-documented shortcomings as a medium for precise technical description, its use in software-intensive systems engineering remains inescapable. This poses many problems for engineers who must derive problem understanding and synthesise precise solution descriptions from free text. This is true both for the largely unstructured textual descriptions from which system requirements are derived, and for more formal documents, such as standards, which impose requirements on system development processes. This paper describes experiments that we have carried out in the REVERE1 project to investigate the use of probabilistic natural language processing techniques to provide systems engineering support

Intravenous Vitamin C Administered as Adjunctive Therapy for Recurrent Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome

This case report summarizes the first use of intravenous vitamin C employed as an adjunctive interventional agent in the therapy of recurrent acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). The two episodes of ARDS occurred in a young female patient with Cronkhite-Canada syndrome, a rare, sporadically occurring, noninherited disorder that is characterized by extensive gastrointestinal polyposis and malabsorption. Prior to the episodes of sepsis, the patient was receiving nutrition via chronic hyperalimentation administered through a long-standing central venous catheter. The patient became recurrently septic with Gram positive cocci which led to two instances of ARDS. This report describes the broad-based general critical care of a septic patient with acute respiratory failure that includes fluid resuscitation, broad-spectrum antibiotics, and vasopressor support. Intravenous vitamin C infused at 50 mg per kilogram body weight every 6 hours for 96 hours was incorporated as an adjunctive agent in the care of this patient. Vitamin C when used as a parenteral agent in high doses acts “pleiotropically” to attenuate proinflammatory mediator expression, to improve alveolar fluid clearance, and to act as an antioxidant

Juan Bautista Maino's Adoration of the Shepherds: An Analysis of Iconography, Iconology, and Style

This thesis investigates the iconography, iconology, and style of Juan Bautista Maino s Adoration of the Shepherds (1615-1620) located at the Meadows Museum, Dallas, Texas. The study begins with an overview of general information on Maino and his works. Chapter 2 explores the evolution of the Adoration of the Shepherds depiction in art, while examining social and political factors which may have influenced Maino's iconographical choices. Chapter 3 is a comparative analysis of the Meadows Adoration of the Shepherds to two other Adoration of the Shepherds by Maino, revealing a stylistic progression and presenting an argument for the dates the Meadows painting was rendered. Chapter 4 reviews the findings and suggests further study on this and other paintings by Maino

Therapeutic alliance in psychological therapy for people with recent onset psychosis who use cannabis

Background This paper examines the role of therapeutic alliance in predicting outcomes in a Randomised Controlled Trial of Motivational Interviewing and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (MICBT) for problematic cannabis use in recent onset psychosis. Methods All clients were participating in a three arm pragmatic rater-blind randomised controlled trial of brief MICBT plus standard care compared with longer term MICBT plus standard care and standard care alone. Participants completed measures to assess clinical symptoms, global functioning and substance misuse at baseline, 4.5 months, 9 months and 18 months. Clients and therapists completed the Working Alliance Inventory approximately one month into therapy. Client alliance data was available for 35 participants randomised to therapy and therapist alliance data was available for 52 participants randomised to therapy. Results At baseline, poorer client-rated alliance was associated with more negative symptoms, poorer insight and greater cannabis use, whereas poorer therapist-rated alliance was only associated with amount of cannabis used per cannabis using day. Alliance ratings were also positively associated with amount of therapy: client-rated alliance was higher in the longer compared to the briefer therapy; therapist-rated alliance was associated with greater number of sessions attended (controlling for type of therapy) and therapy completion. In predicting outcome, client-rated alliance predicted total symptom scores and global functioning scores at follow-up. Neither client nor therapist alliance predicted changes in substance misuse at any time point. Conclusions Findings demonstrate that individuals with psychosis and substance misuse who form better alliances with their therapists gain greater benefits from therapy, at least in terms of improvements in global functioning

Usefulness of mid-infrared spectroscopy as a tool to estimate body condition score change from milk samples in intensively-fed dairy cows.

Directly measuring individual cow energy balance is not trivial. Other traits, like body condition score (BCS) and BCS change (ΔBCS) can, however, be used as an indicator of cow energy status. Body condition score is a metric used world-wide to estimate cow body reserves and the estimation of ΔBCS was, until now, conditional on the availability of multiple BCS assessments. The aim of the present study was to estimate ΔBCS from milk mid-infrared (MIR) spectra and days in milk (DIM) in intensively-fed dairy cows using statistical prediction methods. Daily BCS was interpolated from cubic splines fitted through the BCS records and daily ΔBCS was calculated from these splines. Body condition score change records were merged with milk MIR spectra recorded on the same week. The data set comprised 37,077 ΔBCS phenotypes across 9,403 lactations from 6,988 cows in 151 herds based in Quebec (Canada). Partial least squares regression (PLSR) and a neural network (NN) were then used to estimate ΔBCS from 1) MIR spectra only, 2) DIM only, or 3) MIR spectra and DIM together. ΔBCS data in both the first 120 DIM and 305 DIM of lactation were used to develop the estimates. Daily ΔBCS had a standard deviation of 4.40*10-3 BCS units in the 120-d data set and of 3.63*10-3 BCS units in the 305-d data set. 4-fold cross-validation was used to calibrate and test the prediction equations. External validation was also conducted using more recent years of data. Irrespective of whether based on the first 120 or 305 DIM, or when MIR spectra only, DIM only or MIR spectra and DIM were jointly used as prediction variables, NN produced the lowest root mean square error (RMSE) of cross-validation (1.81*10-3 BCS units and 1.51*10-3 BCS units, respectively, using the 120-d and 305-d data set). Relative to predictions for the entire 305 DIM, the RMSE of cross-validation was 15.4% and 1.5% lower in the first 120 DIM when using PLSR and NN, respectively. Predictions from DIM only were more accurate than those using just MIR spectra data but, irrespective of the data set and of the prediction model used, the combining DIM information with MIR spectral data as prediction variables reduced the RMSE compared with inclusion of DIM alone, albeit the benefit was small (the RMSE from cross-validation was reduced up to 5.5% when DIM and spectral data were jointly used as model features instead of DIM only). However, when predicting extreme ΔBCS records, the MIR spectral data was more informative than DIM. Model performance when predicting ΔBCS records in future years was similar to that from cross-validation demonstrating the ability of MIR spectra of milk and DIM combined to estimate ΔBCS, particularly in early lactation. This can be used to routinely generate estimates of ΔBCS to aid in day-to-day individual cow management