Unchartered Territory for the Bluegrass State : Lessons to be learned from over a Quarter-century of State Charter School Legislation

Charter school success or failure is not simply a matter of chance. Both the existence and aggregate quality of charter schools in a state depend on the provisions of state charter school laws. These laws address a wide range of issues and vary from state to state. But the experiences of states with significant charter sectors, as well as those with innovative charter policies, provide important lessons for the charter school movement as a whole

Effect of 1,10-phenanthroline on DNA binding of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D receptors and characterization and regulation of retinoic acid receptors in rat osteosarcoma cells

The effect of the chelator 1,10-phenanthroline on the DNA-binding of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D receptor was demonstrated. Increasing concentrations of the chelator, up to 3 mM, decreased receptor binding to DNA-cellulose. This effect was specific for the chelating function because the nonchelating analog, 1,7-phenanthroline, did not inhibit DNA-cellulose binding of the receptor. The cations, Cd[superscript]2+ and Zn[superscript]2+, were able to block chelator-mediated inhibition. These cations were unable to reverse the inhibition unless 1,10-phenanthroline was removed by dialysis;The rat osteosarcoma 17/2.8 cells were shown to express both the cellular retinoic acid binding protein and the nuclear retinoic acid receptor. These two proteins exhibit saturable binding of retinoic acid with estimated equilibrium dissociation constants of 51 nM and 0.95 nM, respectively. The binding of various analogs to the nuclear receptor correlates with their ability to up-regulate the 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D receptor. Northern blot analysis confirmed that these cells express mRNA for retinoic acid receptors [alpha] and [beta];The concentration of retinoic acid receptor [beta] mRNA was essentially unaffected by retinoic acid treatment. A rapid (2 h) increase in retinoic acid receptor [alpha] mRNA concentration was seen with retinoic acid treatment. This increase reached as high as 5-fold by 24 h. 1,25-Dihydroxyvitamin D[subscript]3 did not affect retinoic acid receptor mRNA concentration. Both 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D[subscript]3 and parathyroid hormone decreased retinoic acid receptor concentration by 50% after 20 h of treatment. Thyroid hormone slightly increased 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D receptor concentration, whereas retinoic acid substantially increased this receptor concentration in rat osteosarcoma 17/2.8 cells. The retinoic acid increase in 1,25-Dihydroxyvitamin D receptor concentration was attenuated in the presence of thyroid hormone. This effect of thyroid hormone was specific for retinoic acid because thyroid hormone did not alter the 1,25-Dihydroxyvitamin D[subscript]3-mediated regulation of either the 1,25-Dihydroxyvitamin D or the retinoic acid receptors

Characterization of antibody-antigen interactions by fluorescence spectroscopy

This chapter presents the technical details for the study of antibody-antigen interactions using fluorescent spectroscopy. It identifies different methodologies for performing titrations depending on the availability and properties of the material, as well as providing information on ploting titration curves based on the quenching of the natural antibody fluorescence. Finally, it provides information on co-operativity and multiple antigen-antibody interactions and the way to handle those

Multimodal Sparse Coding for Event Detection

Unsupervised feature learning methods have proven effective for classification tasks based on a single modality. We present multimodal sparse coding for learning feature representations shared across multiple modalities. The shared representations are applied to multimedia event detection (MED) and evaluated in comparison to unimodal counterparts, as well as other feature learning methods such as GMM supervectors and sparse RBM. We report the cross-validated classification accuracy and mean average precision of the MED system trained on features learned from our unimodal and multimodal settings for a subset of the TRECVID MED 2014 dataset.Comment: Multimodal Machine Learning Workshop at NIPS 201

Putting LiDAR to the Test in the Brú na Bóinne WHS, Ireland: Site discovery, definition and investigation using LiDAR, geophysics and coring.

Historically aerial photography, and latterly LiDAR, have been used to identify and map new sites in the Brú na Bóinne World Heritage Site (WHS), an internationally significant archaeological landscape known for its Neolithic passage tombs, other monuments and megalithic art. Recent analysis of LiDAR data from the Brú na Bóinne WHS undertaken as part of the INSTAR (Irish National Strategic Archaeological Research) Boyne Valley Landscapes Project, which directly addresses a number of the knowledge gaps identified in the Brú na Bóinne WHS Research Framework (Smyth et al. 2009), has revealed a host of new monuments in this important archaeological landscape. This poster presents some of the results of a programme of ground truthing of a small sample of sites: Site W in Monknewtown - a previously recorded monument - and two sites first identified on the LiDAR data (LP1 in Newgrange townland and LP2 in Dowth townland). Ground-truthing involves a combination geophysical survey and coring to obtain material for sedimentological and geochemical analysis and for radiocarbon dating

Efficient Implementation of Radix-4 Division by Recurrence

This paper presents the design of a radix-4, 32-bit integer divider which uses a recursive, non-restoring division algorithm. The primary focus for this design is on high-speed operation while maintaining low power consumption. This implementation accepts 32-bit unsigned integers as input, and returns the quotient, remainder, and a special case divide-by-zero flag. Included in this paper is the motivation for this design, background information necessary to understand the algorithm in use, details of the algorithm's implementation, and the evaluation of the proposed design implemented in IBM/GF 32nm SOI technology, which is then compared against other division implementations.Electrical Engineerin