An Exploration of Models for Collaborative Leadership of Virtual Learning Network e-Learning Clusters in New Zealand

Faced with the massive challenge of personalising learning for a digital generation, educators need to change. Collaboration and collaborative leadership, having been widely researched and implemented, are now considered to be strategic components of systemic transformation. Many jurisdictions have trialled or instituted collaborative or cluster-based projects to address the collaborative learning and leadership challenges associated with transformation through e-learning. New Zealand’s emergent Virtual Learning Network and e-learning clusters have developed new system leadership from grass-roots rural schools with the Ministry of Education’s strategic support. Can these innovative collaborative projects continue to improve and sustainably contribute to educational transformation in NZ? This small-scale qualitative investigation focussed on semi-structured interviews to gather data from five experienced rural cluster Lead Principals who have successfully lead some of the stronger rural Virtual Learning Network e-learning clusters across rural New Zealand. The key research question which guided the interview questions and analysis was: What are the most appropriate and effective models for managing and leading collaborative relationships and shared long-term projects for clusters of secondary schools? The aim was to discover the conceptions and use of collaborative processes, structures and leadership which theoretical and empirical research suggest are critical components of system-wide reform. Research findings reveal a high degree of congruence between theory and the practice of these five Lead Principals. Their understanding and practice of shared, distributive and collaborative leadership, with a clear commitment to building leadership capacity, was based more upon their personal style supported by some knowledge of the international literature, rather than formal policies. However, while these maturing clusters have outlasted many others, they continue to face challenges of viability, effectiveness, and sustainability, in spite of the Ministry of Education’s support for critical background infrastructure. The data shows that while there are strong collaborative support strategies in and for these clusters, two key areas could be addressed more effectively. This study suggests that collaborative transparency and accountability needs strengthening in a drive for consistent quality and effectiveness. Also, while new structural cluster models may be emerging in the search for sustainability, the well-established cost of managing collaborations has not yet been accepted by the MoE, leaving 100% of the burden of management costs on the mostly small rural schools. It is therefore recommended that the MoE find a way around the current school-based funding model to at least partially fund regional management of these transformative collaborations, perhaps within the government’s current drive to build performance management and accountability. New Zealand’s systemic transformation and its current leadership within the e-learning revolution may depend on it

Technological Factors Implementing Informatics Support Tools for RIOS Net, an AHRQ Practice-Based Research Network

The Research Involving Outpatient Settings (RIOS) Network is an AHRQ Practice-Based Research Network in New Mexico composed of clinicians practicing in Community Health Centers, Indian Health Service/Tribal facilities, and University of New Mexico academic settings. We are creating a standardized term-based research data repository to support all RIOS Net research projects and to support future research/data-mining of the accumulated data. Because many of the networks 200+ members are located in extremely remote areas, access to the internet or even basic computer equipment is often very limited. Therefore, we are evaluating the use of adaptive turn-a-round documents as a strategy for automating data collection.\u27https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/hslic-posters-presentations/1025/thumbnail.jp

First Arkansas Records for Bigscale Logperch Percina macrolepida Stevenson (Pisces: Percidae), with Comments on Habitat Preference and Distinctive Characters

Fish samples were collected with seines and rotenone from 21 localities representing five major habitat types along the Red River in Arkansas. The bigscale logperch, Percina macrolepida, was found at 11 of those sites, providing the first records ofthat species from the state. The primary preferred habitat parameters for bigscale logperch are no current, a sand and/or silt substrate, and a water depth of 1.0-2.0 m. Percina macrolepida is morphologically very similar to the widespread and common logperch, P. caprodes, but can be distinguished from all forms of that species in Arkansas by a combination of characters. Snout shape and the presence of scales on the breast, prepectoral area, and along the posterior edge of the preopercle in P. macrolepida are the most useful distinguishing features

Approaches to the classification of high entropy file fragments.

In this paper we propose novel approaches to the problem of classifying high entropy file fragments. We achieve 97% correct classification for encrypted fragments and 78% for compressed. Although classification of file fragments is central to the science of Digital Forensics, high entropy types have been regarded as a problem. Roussev and Garfinkel [1] argue that existing methods will not work on high entropy fragments because they have no discernible patterns to exploit. We propose two methods that do not rely on such patterns. The NIST statistical test suite is used to detect randomness in 4KB fragments. These test results were analysed using Support Vector Machines, k-Nearest-Neighbour analysis and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). We compare the performance of each of these analysis methods. Optimum results were obtained using an ANN for analysis giving 94% and 74% correct classification rates for encrypted and compressed fragments respectively. We also use the compressibility of a fragment as a measure of its randomness. Correct classification was 76% and 70% for encrypted and compressed fragments respectively. Although it gave poorer results for encrypted fragments we believe that this method has more potential for future work. We have used subsets of the publicly available GovDocs1 Million File Corpus‘ so that any future research may make valid comparisons with the results obtained here

Fast contraband detection in large capacity disk drives.

In recent years the capacity of digital storage devices has been increasing at a rate that has left digital forensic services struggling to cope. There is an acknowledgement that current forensic tools have failed to keep up. The workload is such that a form of ‘administrative triage’ takes place in many labs where perceived low priority jobs are delayed or dropped without reference to the data itself. In this paper we investigate the feasibility of first responders performing a fast initial scan of a device by sampling on the device itself. A Bloom filter is used to store the block hashes of large collections of contraband data. We show that by sampling disk clusters, we can achieve 99.9% accuracy scanning for contraband data in minutes. Even under the constraints imposed by low specification legacy equipment, it is possible to scan a device for contraband with a known and controllable margin of error in a reasonable time. We conclude that in this type of case it is feasible to boot the device into a forensically sound environment and do a pre-imaging scan to prioritise the device for further detailed investigation

BID mediates selective killing of APC-deficient cells in intestinal tumor suppression by nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs

Colorectal tumorigenesis is driven by genetic alterations in the adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) tumor suppressor pathway and effectively inhibited by nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). However, how NSAIDs prevent colorectal tumorigenesis has remained obscure. We found that the extrinsic apoptotic pathway and the BH3 interacting-domain death agonist (BID) are activated in adenomas from NSAID-treated patients. Loss of BID abolishes NSAID-mediated tumor suppression, survival benefit, and apoptosis in tumor-initiating stem cells in APC(Min/+) mice. BID-mediated cross-talk between the extrinsic and intrinsic apoptotic pathways is responsible for selective killing of neoplastic cells by NSAIDs. We further demonstrate that NSAIDs induce death receptor signaling in both cancer and normal cells, but only activate BID in cells with APC deficiency and ensuing c-Myc activation. Our results suggest that NSAIDs suppress intestinal tumorigenesis through BID-mediated synthetic lethality triggered by death receptor signaling and gatekeeper mutations, and provide a rationale for developing more effective cancer prevention strategies and agents

The Physical Properties of the Red Supergiant WOH G64: The Largest Star Known?

WOH G64 is an unusual red supergiant (RSG) in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), with a number of properties that set it apart from the rest of the LMC RSG population, including a thick circumstellar dust torus, an unusually late spectral type, maser activity, and nebular emission lines. Its reported physical properties are also extreme, including the largest radius for any star known and an effective temperature that is much cooler than other RSGs in the LMC, both of which are at variance with stellar evolutionary theory. We fit moderate-resolution optical spectrophotometry of WOH G64 with the MARCS stellar atmosphere models, determining an effective temperature of 3400 +/- 25 K. We obtain a similar result from the star's broadband V - K colors. With this effective temperature, and taking into account the flux contribution from the aysmmetric circumstellar dust envelope, we calculate log(L/L_sun) = 5.45 +/- 0.05 for WOH G64, quite similar to the luminosity reported by Ohnaka and collaborators based on their radiative transfer modeling of the star's dust torus. We determine a radius of R/R_sun = 1540, bringing the size of WOH G64 and its position on the H-R diagram into agreement with the largest known Galactic RSGs, although it is still extreme for the LMC. In addition, we use the Ca II triplet absorption feature to determine a radial velocity of 294 +/- 2 km/s for the star; this is the same radial velocity as the rotating gas in the LMC's disk, which confirms its membership in the LMC and precludes it from being an unusual Galactic halo giant. Finally, we describe the star's unusual nebula emission spectrum; the gas is nitrogen-rich and shock-heated, and displays a radial velocity that is significantly more positive than the star itself by 50 km/s.Comment: 25 pages, 5 figures; accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journa

Cardiac Performance Measure Compliance in Outpatients The American College of Cardiology and National Cardiovascular Data Registry's PINNACLE (Practice Innovation And Clinical Excellence) Program

ObjectivesWe examined compliance with performance measures for 14,464 patients enrolled from July 2008 through June 2009 into the American College of Cardiology's PINNACLE (Practice Innovation And Clinical Excellence) program to provide initial insights into the quality of outpatient cardiac care.BackgroundLittle is known about the quality of care of outpatients with coronary artery disease (CAD), heart failure, and atrial fibrillation, and whether sex and racial disparities exist in the treatment of outpatients.MethodsThe PINNACLE program is the first, national, prospective office-based quality improvement program of cardiac patients designed, in part, to capture, report, and improve outpatient performance measure compliance. We examined the proportion of patients whose care was compliant with established American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association, and American Medical Association-Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement (ACC/AHA/PCPI) performance measures for CAD, heart failure, and atrial fibrillation.ResultsThere were 14,464 unique patients enrolled from 27 U.S. practices, accounting for 18,021 clinical visits. Of these, 8,132 (56.4%) had CAD, 5,012 (34.7%) had heart failure, and 2,786 (19.3%) had nonvalvular atrial fibrillation. Data from the PINNACLE program were feasibly collected for 24 of 25 ACC/AHA/PCPI performance measures. Compliance with performance measures ranged from being very low (e.g., 13.3% of CAD patients screened for diabetes mellitus) to very high (e.g., 96.7% of heart failure patients with blood pressure assessments), with moderate (70% to 90%) compliance observed for most performance measures. For 3 performance measures, there were small differences in compliance rates by race or sex.ConclusionsFor more than 14,000 patients enrolled from 27 practices in the outpatient PINNACLE program, we found that compliance with performance measures was variable, even after accounting for exclusion criteria, suggesting an important opportunity to improve the quality of outpatient care

The criminogenic and psychological effects of police stops on adolescent black and Latino boys

Proactive policing, the strategic targeting of people or places to prevent crimes,is a well-studied tactic that is ubiquitous in modern law enforcement. A 2017 National Academies of Sciences report reviewed existing literature, entrenched in deterrence theory, and found evidence that proactive policing strategies can reduce crime. The existing literature, however, does not explore what the short and long-term effects of police contact are for young people who are subjected to high rates of contact with law enforcement as a result of proactive policing. Using four waves of longitudinal survey data from a sample of predominantly black and Latino boys in ninth and tenth grades, we find that adolescent boys who are stopped by police report more frequent engagement in delinquent behavior 6, 12, and 18 months later, independent of prior delinquency, a finding that is consistent with labeling and life course theories. We also find that psychological distress partially mediates this relationship, consistent with the often stated, but rarely measured, mechanism for adolescent criminality hypothesized by general strain theory. These findings advance the scientific understanding of crime and adolescent development while also raising policy questions about the efficacy of routine police stops of black and Latino youth. Police stops predict decrements in adolescents’ psychological well-being and may unintentionally increase their engagement in criminal behavior

Changes in patient characteristics in anti-tumour necrosis factor clinical trials for rheumatoid arthritis: results of an analysis of the literature over the past 16 years

Objective To evaluate changes in baseline patient characteristics and entry criteria of randomised, controlled studies of tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNF alpha) inhibitors in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. Methods A systematic literature review was performed using predefined inclusion criteria to identify randomised, double-blind, controlled trials that evaluated TNF alpha inhibitors in adult RA patients. Entry criteria and baseline clinical characteristics were evaluated over time for methotrexate-experienced and methotrexate-naive study populations. Enrolment start date for each trial was the time metric. The anchor time was the study with the earliest identifiable enrolment start date. Results 44 primary publications (reporting the primary study endpoint) from 1993 to 2008 met the inclusion criteria. Enrolment start dates of August 1993 and May 1997 were identified as time anchors for the 37 methotrexate-experienced studies and the seven methotrexate-naive studies, respectively. In methotrexate-experienced trials, no significant change was observed over the years included in this study in any inclusion criteria (including swollen joint counts and C-reactive protein (CRP)), but a significant decrease over time was observed in the baseline swollen joint count, CRP and total Sharp or van der Heijde modified Sharp score, but not in baseline tender joint counts. In the methotrexate-naive studies, significant decreases over the years were observed in swollen joint and tender joint inclusion criteria, but not in baseline tender joint count, baseline CRP, CRP inclusion criteria or baseline total Sharp or van der Heijde modified Sharp score. Conclusion Inclusion criteria and baseline characteristics of RA patients enrolled in studies of TNF alpha inhibitors have changed, with more recent trials enrolling cohorts with lower disease activity, especially in methotrexate-experienced trials.Pathophysiology and treatment of rheumatic disease