Addressing Urban High-Poverty School Teacher Attrition by Addressing Urban High Poverty School Teacher Retention: Why Effective Teachers Perservere

Recruiting and retaining quality teachers specific for high-poverty schools in urban areas is a national concern, especially in light of the No Child Left Behind federal legislation. The educational realities, detrimental effects of poverty, and human despair that often depress low-income communities can prove to be quite overpowering for many teachers new to the profession and significantly contribute to high levels of teacher absenteeism, attrition rates, and teacher shortages. Examining this issue through a new lens, that being through the eyes of effective urban high-poverty school educators, has the potential to spark spirited conversations and debates among policy makers and educators alike so that significant polices and efforts can be developed and implemented. Therefore, the intent of this study was to develop a profile of high-quality educators who remain in urban high-poverty schools within a large metropolitan school district, and identify the indicators that influence them to remain. The results indicated that teachers who are African American, older, and more experienced define the profile of teachers most likely to remain beyond the first three years in this demanding setting. Additionally, these teachers reported that they remain because they believe they are well suited for teaching in high-poverty schools. Unless more attention is given to teacher retention, and why some educators are successful and persevere in even the most hard-to-staff schools, teacher attrition will continue to be a national concern

Off-diagonal Interactions, Hund's Rules and Pair-binding in Hubbard Molecules

We have studied the effect of including nearest-neighbor, electron-electron interactions, in particular the off-diagonal (non density-density) terms, on the spectra of truncated tetrahedral and icosahedral ``Hubbard molecules,'' focusing on the relevance of these systems to the physics of doped C$_{60}$. Our perturbation theoretic and exact diagonalization results agree with previous work in that the density-density term suppresses pair-binding. However, we find that for the parameter values of interest for $C_{60}$ the off-diagonal terms {\em enhance} pair-binding, though not enough to offset the suppression due to the density-density term. We also find that the critical interaction strengths for the Hund's rules violating level crossings in C$_{60}^{-2}$, C$_{60}^{-3}$ and C$_{60}^{-4}$ are quite insensitive to the inclusion of these additional interactions.Comment: 20p + 5figs, Revtex 3.0, UIUC preprint P-94-10-08

Exome chip analyses identify genes affecting mortality after HLA-matched unrelated-donor blood and marrow transplantation

© 2018 by The American Society of Hematology Although survival outcomes have significantly improved, up to 40% of patients die within 1 year of HLA-matched unrelated-donor blood and marrow transplantation (BMT). To identify non-HLA genetic contributors to mortality after BMT, we performed the first exome-wide association study in the DISCOVeRY-BMT cohorts using the Illumina HumanExome BeadChip. This study includes 2473 patients with acute myeloid leukemia, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or myelodysplastic syndrome and 2221 10/10 HLA-matched donors treated from 2000 to 2011. Single-variant and gene-level analyses were performed on overall survival (OS), transplantation-related mortality (TRM), and disease-related mortality (DRM). Genotype mismatches between recipients and donors in a rare nonsynonymous variant of testis-expressed gene TEX38 significantly increased risk of TRM, which was more dramatic when either the recipient or donor was female. Using the SKAT-O test to evaluate gene-level effects, variant genotypes of OR51D1 in recipients were significantly associated with OS and TRM. In donors, 4 (ALPP, EMID1, SLC44A5, LRP1), 1 (HHAT), and 2 genes (LYZL4, NT5E) were significantly associated with OS, TRM, and DRM, respectively. Inspection of NT5E crystal structures showed 4 of the associated variants affected the enzyme structure and likely decreased the catalytic efficiency of the enzyme. Further confirmation of these findings and additional functional studies may provide individualized risk prediction and prognosis, as well as alternative donor selection strategies

b-Initiated processes at the LHC: a reappraisal

Several key processes at the LHC in the standard model and beyond that involve $b$ quarks, such as single-top, Higgs, and weak vector boson associated production, can be described in QCD either in a 4-flavor or 5-flavor scheme. In the former, $b$ quarks appear only in the final state and are typically considered massive. In 5-flavor schemes, calculations include $b$ quarks in the initial state, are simpler and allow the resummation of possibly large initial state logarithms of the type $\log \frac{{\cal Q}^2}{m_b^2}$ into the $b$ parton distribution function (PDF), ${\cal Q}$ being the typical scale of the hard process. In this work we critically reconsider the rationale for using 5-flavor improved schemes at the LHC. Our motivation stems from the observation that the effects of initial state logs are rarely very large in hadron collisions: 4-flavor computations are pertubatively well behaved and a substantial agreement between predictions in the two schemes is found. We identify two distinct reasons that explain this behaviour, i.e., the resummation of the initial state logarithms into the $b$-PDF is relevant only at large Bjorken $x$ and the possibly large ratios ${\cal Q}^2/m_b^2$'s are always accompanied by universal phase space suppression factors. Our study paves the way to using both schemes for the same process so to exploit their complementary advantages for different observables, such as employing a 5-flavor scheme to accurately predict the total cross section at NNLO and the corresponding 4-flavor computation at NLO for fully exclusive studies.Comment: Fixed typo in Eq. (A.10) and few typos in Eq. (C.2) and (C.3

T-violation in Kμ3K_{\mu3} decay in a general two-Higgs doublet model

We calculate the transverse muon polarization in the $K^+_{\mu3}$ process arising from the Yukawa couplings of charged Higgs boson in a general two-Higgs doublet model where spontaneous violation of CP is presentComment: 6 pages, latex, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Single-top t-channel hadroproduction in the four-flavour scheme with POWHEG and aMC@NLO

We present results for the QCD next-to-leading order (NLO) calculation of single-top t-channel production in the 4-flavour scheme, interfaced to Parton Shower (PS) Monte Carlo programs according to the POWHEG and MC@NLO methods. Comparisons between the two methods, as well as with the corresponding process in the 5-flavour scheme are presented. For the first time results for typical kinematic distributions of the spectator-b jet are presented in an NLO+PS approach.Comment: 16+1 pages, 8 figures, matches version accepted for publication in JHE

Baryon Density and the Dilated Chiral Quark Model

We calculate perturbatively the effect of density on hadronic properties using the chiral quark model implemented by the QCD trace anomaly to see the possibility of constructing Lorentz invariant Lagrangian at finite density. We calculate the density dependent masses of the constituent quark, the scalar field and the pion in one-loop order using the technique of thermo field dynamics. In the chiral limit, the pion remains massless at finite density. It is found that the tadpole type corrections lead to the decreasing masses with increasing baryon density, while the radiative corrections induce Lorentz-symmetry-breaking terms. We found in the large $N_c$ limit with large scalar mass that the tadpoles dominate and the mean-field approximation is reliable, giving rise a Lorentz-invariant Lagrangian with masses decreasing as the baryon density increases.Comment: Late

Exome sequencing followed by large-scale genotyping suggests a limited role for moderately rare risk factors of strong effect in schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder with strong heritability and marked heterogeneity in symptoms, course, and treatment response. There is strong interest in identifying genetic risk factors that can help to elucidate the pathophysiology and that might result in the development of improved treatments. Linkage and genome-wide association studies (GWASs) suggest that the genetic basis of schizophrenia is heterogeneous. However, it remains unclear whether the underlying genetic variants are mostly moderately rare and can be identified by the genotyping of variants observed in sequenced cases in large follow-up cohorts or whether they will typically be much rarer and therefore more effectively identified by gene-based methods that seek to combine candidate variants. Here, we consider 166 persons who have schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and who have had either their genomes or their exomes sequenced to high coverage. From these data, we selected 5,155 variants that were further evaluated in an independent cohort of 2,617 cases and 1,800 controls. No single variant showed a study-wide significant association in the initial or follow-up cohorts. However, we identified a number of case-specific variants, some of which might be real risk factors for schizophrenia, and these can be readily interrogated in other data sets. Our results indicate that schizophrenia risk is unlikely to be predominantly influenced by variants just outside the range detectable by GWASs. Rather, multiple rarer genetic variants must contribute substantially to the predisposition to schizophrenia, suggesting that both very large sample sizes and gene-based association tests will be required for securely identifying genetic risk factors. © 2012 The American Society of Human Genetics

Resonance and frequency-locking phenomena in spatially extended phytoplankton-zooplankton system with additive noise and periodic forces

In this paper, we present a spatial version of phytoplankton-zooplankton model that includes some important factors such as external periodic forces, noise, and diffusion processes. The spatially extended phytoplankton-zooplankton system is from the original study by Scheffer [M Scheffer, Fish and nutrients interplay determines algal biomass: a minimal model, Oikos \textbf{62} (1991) 271-282]. Our results show that the spatially extended system exhibit a resonant patterns and frequency-locking phenomena. The system also shows that the noise and the external periodic forces play a constructive role in the Scheffer's model: first, the noise can enhance the oscillation of phytoplankton species' density and format a large clusters in the space when the noise intensity is within certain interval. Second, the external periodic forces can induce 4:1 and 1:1 frequency-locking and spatially homogeneous oscillation phenomena to appear. Finally, the resonant patterns are observed in the system when the spatial noises and external periodic forces are both turned on. Moreover, we found that the 4:1 frequency-locking transform into 1:1 frequency-locking when the noise intensity increased. In addition to elucidating our results outside the domain of Turing instability, we provide further analysis of Turing linear stability with the help of the numerical calculation by using the Maple software. Significantly, oscillations are enhanced in the system when the noise term presents. These results indicate that the oceanic plankton bloom may partly due to interplay between the stochastic factors and external forces instead of deterministic factors. These results also may help us to understand the effects arising from undeniable subject to random fluctuations in oceanic plankton bloom.Comment: Some typos errors are proof, and some strong relate references are adde