Easy on that trigger dad: a study of long term family photo retrieval

We examine the effects of new technologies for digital photography on people's longer term storage and access to collections of personal photos. We report an empirical study of parents' ability to retrieve photos related to salient family events from more than a year ago. Performance was relatively poor with people failing to find almost 40% of pictures. We analyze participants' organizational and access strategies to identify reasons for this poor performance. Possible reasons for retrieval failure include: storing too many pictures, rudimentary organization, use of multiple storage systems, failure to maintain collections and participants' false beliefs about their ability to access photos. We conclude by exploring the technical and theoretical implications of these findings

The Nonprofit Quarterly Study on Nonprofit and Philanthropic Infrastructure

Examines trends in the nonprofit sector's support network and financing system and their capacity to address the impact of the financial crisis on small and midsize nonprofits, share organizational survival strategies, and connect them to resources

Researching creatively with pupils in Assessment for Learning (AfL) classrooms on experiences of participation and consultation

This paper reports on an ESRC TLRP project, Consulting Pupils on the Assessment of their Learning (CPAL). The CPAL project provides an additional theoretical perspective to the ‘educational benefits’ perspective of engaging pupil voice in learning and teaching (Rudduck et al., 2003) through its exploration of pupil rights specifically in relation to assessment issues presently on the policy agenda in the Northern Ireland context – notably Assessment for Learning (AfL). An emergent framework for assessing pupil rights, based on Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Lundy, 2007), is being used to explore the ways in which AfL classroom practice creates the conditions for increased pupil participation and consultation. Pupil views on their AfL classroom experiences and participation are explored by means of a variety of pupil-centred, creative research methods that engage and stimulate pupils to observe, communicate and analyse their learning and assessment experiences and give meaning to them. This presentation highlights preliminary data based on a sample of 11-14 years pupils' experiences of participation and consultation in classrooms adopting AfL pedagogical principles, and identifies characteristics that support or inhibit pupil participation in their learning and the expression of their views about such matters

Transcriptome changes in the phenylpropanoid pathway of Glycine max in response to Pseudomonas syringae infection

BACKGROUND: Reports of plant molecular responses to pathogenic infections have pinpointed increases in activity of several genes of the phenylpropanoid pathway leading to the synthesis of lignin and flavonoids. The majority of those findings were derived from single gene studies and more recently from several global gene expression analyses. We undertook a global transcriptional analysis focused on the response of genes of the multiple branches of the phenylpropanoid pathway to infection by the Pseudomonas syringae pv. glycinea with or without the avirulence gene avrB to characterize more broadly the contribution of the multiple branches of the pathway to the resistance response in soybean. Transcript abundance in leaves was determined from analysis of soybean cDNA microarray data and hybridizations to RNA blots with specific gene probes. RESULTS: The majority of the genes surveyed presented patterns of increased transcript accumulation. Some increased rapidly, 2 and 4 hours after inoculation, while others started to accumulate slowly by 8 – 12 hours. In contrast, transcripts of a few genes decreased in abundance 2 hours post inoculation. Most interestingly was the opposite temporal fluctuation in transcript abundance between early responsive genes in defense (CHS and IFS1) and F3H, the gene encoding a pivotal enzyme in the synthesis of anthocyanins, proanthocyanidins and flavonols. F3H transcripts decreased rapidly 2 hours post inoculation and increased during periods when CHS and IFS transcripts decreased. It was also determined that all but one (CHS4) family member genes (CHS1, CHS2, CHS3, CHS5, CHS6 and CHS7/8) accumulated higher transcript levels during the defense response provoked by the avirulent pathogen challenge. CONCLUSION: Based on the mRNA profiles, these results show the strong bias that soybean has towards increasing the synthesis of isoflavonoid phytoalexins concomitant with the down regulation of genes required for the synthesis of anthocyanins and proanthocyanins. Although proanthocyanins are known to be toxic compounds, the cells in the soybean leaves seem to be programmed to prioritize the synthesis and accumulation of isoflavonoid and pterocarpan phytoalexins during the resistance response. It was known that CHS transcripts accumulate in great abundance rapidly after inoculation of the soybean plants but our results have demonstrated that all but one (CHS4) member of the gene family member genes accumulated higher transcript levels during the defense response

Embracing virtual outpatient clinics in the era of COVID-19

The response to the COVID-19 pandemic has raised the profile and level of interest in the use, acceptability, safety and effectiveness of virtual outpatient consultations and telemedicine. These models of care are not new but a number of challenges have so far hindered widespread take up and endorsement of these ways of working. With the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, remote and virtual working and consultation have become the default. This paper explores our experience of and learning from virtual and remote consultation and questions how this experience can be retained and developed for the future

Consulting secondary school students on increasing participation in their own assessment in Northern Ireland

The Consulting Pupils on the Assessment of their Learning (CPAL) project comprised three interrelated studies focusing on (1) the development of Annual Pupil profiles in NI in the context of giving pupils ‘a voice’ (Lundy, 2007); (2) students' perceptions of ‘AfL classrooms’; and (3) teachers' and parents' perceptions of pupils increasing participation in assessment. This paper presents the main findings and educational implications of studies 2 and 3 which consulted pupils at key stage 3 (11-14 years). It identifies teachers', parents' and students' perceptions of the increasing pupil participation in the assessment of their own classroom learning. Preliminary findings of this twenty-one month study, completed at the end of February 2007, were presented in this ECER Children's Rights Network last year (see Leitch et al. 2006). This presentation updates some of the main findings for Key stage 3 pupils. The samples included approximately 200 students and a sample of their parents (n=180) from six post-primary schools in Northern Ireland, as well as 11 teachers of different subjects (i.e. Arts, Maths, English, Geography and Science). All teachers were engaged in an in-service course to help them embed Assessment for Learning (AfL) - a pedagogical approach that emphasizes the use of formative assessment to help students take control of their own learning by being aware of where they are, ‘where they need to go to improve, and how best to get there’ (Gardner, 2006). It establishes that, where principles of AfL are embedded in practice, pupils can experience high levels of participation in their learning and assessment. However, the relationship between consultation and participation requires further clarification and there is a need is to promote greater consistency amongst teachers in understanding what consultation means from a rights-based perspective

Easy on that trigger dad: a study of long term family photo retrieval

We examine the effects of new technologies for digital photography on people's longer term storage and access to collections of personal photos. We report an empirical study of parents' ability to retrieve photos related to salient family events from more than a year ago. Performance was relatively poor with people failing to find almost 40% of pictures. We analyze participants' organizational and access strategies to identify reasons for this poor performance. Possible reasons for retrieval failure include: storing too many pictures, rudimentary organization, use of multiple storage systems, failure to maintain collections and participants' false beliefs about their ability to access photos. We conclude by exploring the technical and theoretical implications of these findings

Use of arm measurements to improve radiative transfer models used in climate models

The demands of accurate predictions of radiative transfer for climate applications are well-documented. While much effort is being devoted to evaluating the accuracy of the GCM radiative transfer schemes, the problem of developing accurate, computationally efficient schemes for climate models still remains. This paper discusses our efforts in developing accurate and fast computational methods for global and regional climate models

A persistent homology-based topological loss function for multi-class CNN segmentation of cardiac MRI

With respect to spatial overlap, CNN-based segmentation of short axis cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) images has achieved a level of performance consistent with inter observer variation. However, conventional training procedures frequently depend on pixel-wise loss functions, limiting optimisation with respect to extended or global features. As a result, inferred segmentations can lack spatial coherence, including spurious connected components or holes. Such results are implausible, violating the anticipated topology of image segments, which is frequently known a priori. Addressing this challenge, published work has employed persistent homology, constructing topological loss functions for the evaluation of image segments against an explicit prior. Building a richer description of segmentation topology by considering all possible labels and label pairs, we extend these losses to the task of multi-class segmentation. These topological priors allow us to resolve all topological errors in a subset of 150 examples from the ACDC short axis CMR training data set, without sacrificing overlap performance.Comment: To be presented at the STACOM workshop at MICCAI 202

Search for radial velocity variations in eight M-dwarfs with NIRSPEC/Keck II

Context. Radial velocity (RV) measurements from near-infrared spectra have become a potentially powerful tool to search for planets around cool stars and sub-stellar objects. As part of a large survey to characterize M-dwarfs using NIRSPEC at Keck II, we obtained spectra of eight late M-dwarfs (spectral types M5.0-M8.0) during two or more observing epochs per target. These spectra were taken with intermediate spectral resolving powers (R \sim 20,000) in the J-band. Aims. We search for relative radial velocity variability in these late M-dwarfs and test the NIRSPEC capability of detecting short period brown dwarf and massive planetary companions around low-mass stars in the J-band (\approx 1.25 micron). Additionally, we reanalyzed the data of the M8-type star vB10 (one of our targets) presented in Zapatero Osorio et al. (2009), which were obtained with the same instrumentation as our data. Methods. [...] Results. For the entire M-dwarf sample, we do not find any evidence of relative RV variations induced by a short period brown dwarf or massive planetary companion. The typical RV precision of the measurements is between 180 and 300 m/s, which is sufficient to detect hot Neptunes around M-dwarfs. Also, we find that the spurious RV shift in Zapatero et al. (2009) of the star VB10 was caused by asymmetries in the instrumental profile between different observing epochs, which were not taken into account in their analysis.Comment: A&A, 7 pages, 5 figure