Examining the Landscape of Charter Systems in Georgia

Charter schools have autonomy from district and state regulations related to who they hire, how they structure the school day, and how they spend their resources. In exchange for this autonomy, charter schools must exceed the state average of traditional public schools on performance measures. Most charter schools operate alone from their districts or with

Black hole shadow of a rotating polytropic black hole by the Newman--Janis algorithm without complexification

In this work, starting from a spherically symmetric polytropic black hole, a rotating solution is obtained by following the Newman--Janis algorithm without complexification. Besides studying the horizon, the static conditions and causality issues of the rotating solution, we obtain and discuss the shape of its shadow. Some other physical features as the Hawking temperature and emission rate of the rotating polytropic black hole solution are also discussed.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, some references adde

Painless Livedoid Vasculopathy in a Patient with G20210A Prothrombin Gene Mutation

87 year old Caucasian female with chronic painless non-healing ulcers over malleoli was admitted to the hospital. On a physical examination, there were two bilateral and laterally located malleoli ulcers with no discharge. A thorough work up was done: lower extremities venous and arterial Doppler ultrasound did not show any evidence of venous and arterial disease respectively. Heterozygous G20210A Prothrombin gene mutation was found, and the patient was started on anticoagulation. This case reports highlights a possibility of a painless livedoid vasculopathy presentation in a patient without significant past thrombotic events. Therefore, it is important to consider livedoid vasculopathy in the differential in a patient with painless ulcerative, atrophic and/or nodular skin lesions over the shins and malleoli

Contrasting patterns of selection between MHC I and II across populations of Humboldt and Magellanic penguins

Indexación: Web of ScienceThe evolutionary and adaptive potential of populations or species facing an emerging infectious disease depends on their genetic diversity in genes, such as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). In birds, MHC class I deals predominantly with intracellular infections (e.g., viruses) and MHC class II with extracellular infections (e.g., bacteria). Therefore, patterns of MHC I and II diversity may differ between species and across populations of species depending on the relative effect of local and global environmental selective pressures, genetic drift, and gene flow. We hypothesize that high gene flow among populations of Humboldt and Magellanic penguins limits local adaptation in MHC I and MHC II, and signatures of selection differ between markers, locations, and species. We evaluated the MHC I and II diversity using 454 next-generation sequencing of 100 Humboldt and 75 Magellanic penguins from seven different breeding colonies. Higher genetic diversity was observed in MHC I than MHC II for both species, explained by more than one MHC I loci identified. Large population sizes, high gene flow, and/or similar selection pressures maintain diversity but limit local adaptation in MHC I. A pattern of isolation by distance was observed for MHC II for Humboldt penguin suggesting local adaptation, mainly on the northernmost studied locality. Furthermore, trans species alleles were found due to a recent speciation for the genus or convergent evolution. High MHC I and MHC II gene diversity described is extremely advantageous for the long term survival of the species.http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.2502/epd

Bikepark Curico, Espacio Publico

75 p.Escuela de Arquitectura, Universidad de Talca. Resumen de Obra Alumno: Carlos Andrés Velásquez Ubille Período: 2008 - 2009. Proceso de diseño: Marzo 2008 – Diciembre 2008 Proceso de construcción: Etapa 1, Diciembre 2008 –Enero 2009 Etapa 2, Junio 2009 – Agosto 2009 Fecha de entrega de la obra: 20 de Octubre de 2009 Comisión evaluadora: Juan Román, Andrés Maragaño, Kenneth Gleiser Profesor guía: Juan Román Ubicación: Cerro Carlos Condell, Curicó Participantes construcción: Trabajadores de Inserción Laboral Oficina OMIL Curicó. Financiamiento: Ilustre Municipalidad de Curicó Costo Total Proyecto: $ 7.513.936 de pesos

Linguistic politeness across Austria and Italy: Backing out of an invitation with an instant message

The study compares how native speakers of German from the area of Innsbruck (Austria) and native speakers of Italian from the area of Rome (Italy) perceive the communicative act of backing out of an invitation for dinner at the last minute, in a situation of low social distance. The purpose of the study is twofold: to shed light on the orientation of Austrian German and Italian languages/cultures in terms of linguistic politeness, and to expand empirical cross-cultural research to a less-commonly investigated speech act. Data collected by means of a discourse completion task (DCT) are triangulated with responses to an assessment question and metapragmatic comments, and analyzed following a quantitative approach. The analysis of the DCT findings shows some cross-group differences in the choice of speech act realization strategies and internal modifiers. However, the overall results reveal more similarities than differences between the two populations regarding the informants’ perception of face threat in last-minute cancellations. This seems to disprove the idea that the two groups belong to different cultural frameworks in terms of politeness orientation, at least as far as it concerns the specific speech act under investigation

Neisseria gonorrhoeae challenge increases matrix metalloproteinase-8 expression in fallopian tube explants

Indexación: Scopus.Background: Neisseria gonorrhoeae (Ngo) is the etiological agent of gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted infection that initially infects the female lower genital tract. In untreated women, the bacteria can ascend to the upper genital reproductive tract and infect the fallopian tube (FTs), which is associated with salpingitis and can lead to impaired FT function and infertility. The extracellular matrix (ECM) plays an important role in cell migration and differentiation in the female genital tract, and some pathogens modify the ECM to establish successful infections. The ECM is regulated by matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) and tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases (TIMPs), their endogenous inhibitors; MMP deregulation causes pathological conditions in a variety of tissues. Results: The aim of this work was to analyze the expression and localization of MMP-3, MMP-8, MMP-9, and TIMP-1 in FT explants during Ngo infection using real-time PCR, immunohistochemistry, zymography and ELISA. No significant variations in MMP-3, MMP-9, and TIMP-1 transcript levels were observed. In contrast, a significant increase (p < 0.05) was observed for MMP-8 expression and was accompanied by stromal immunoreactivity in infected explants. ELISA results supported these findings and showed that MMP-8 release increased upon gonococcal infection. Conclusions: Our results indicate that gonococcal infection induces increased MMP-8 expression, which might contribute to FT damage during infection. © 2017 Juica, Rodas, Solar, Borda, Vargas, Muñoz, Paredes, Christodoulides and Velasquez.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2017.00399/ful

Visual Assessment of Soil Structure as an Early Indicator of Soil Quality in Response to Intensive Rotational Grazing

Grasslands can play a crucial role in mitigation of global warming by serving as carbon sink. Nevertheless, to achieve the grasslands’ potential, sustainable management is of the utmost importance as it determines system’s productivity and ecosystem services. Due to the increasing demand for animal products in developing countries, grazed areas increase exponentially in the tropics, mainly due to unsustainable management leading to low productivity and soil degradation. We evaluated the impact of intensive rotational grazing management (IRG) on early indicators of soil quality following land-use change based on on-farm observations of visual soil characteristics using two different widely used assessment methods: visual soil assessment-VSA and visual evaluation of soil structure-VESS. Correlation of visual methods were combined with measurements of soil macrofauna abundance and physical properties (e.g. bulk density, soil porosity). The IRG established in two study sites in Colombia was compared with traditional long-term continuous grazing with low stocking rate (1 LU ha-1). The IRG was based on rapid (1 day) cattle grazing in paddocks with high stocking rate (180 LU ha-1) followed by 60 days of recovery. In both study sites, IRG increased considerably total stocking rate to 4 LU ha-1 while improving grassland composition by enabling more valuable species, which contributed to soil quality and increased grassland productivity. Both VSA and VESS discriminated IRG-managed sites in less than one year after IRG adoption. Our results demonstrate that visual soil assessment is a useful mean for evaluation of soil quality and grassland productivity. Furthermore, VSA and VESS seemed to be more suitable in discriminating among management in early stages, when compared to commonly used soil physical properties, and were strongly correlated mainly to the abundance of earthworms. Furthermore, our study confirms the importance of grazing management in soil quality and ecosystem productivity/sustainability