Speaking is a Challenging Skill in Language Learning

The aim of the research is to develop speaking skills and improve the efficiency of teaching English as a foreign language in our country. To be successful in achieving the aim, it is necessary to increase students\u27 involvement and encouragement in the speaking process. With this purpose, it is inevitable to find out who our students are, their needs, and what approaches to use. Having answered all these questions, it is possible to engage them in the process of learning language with enthusiasm and increase English speaking skills competence by creating self-confidence in them

A High Angular Resolution Survey of Massive Stars in Cygnus OB2: Results from the Hubble Space Telescope Fine Guidance Sensors

We present results of a high angular resolution survey of massive OB stars in the Cygnus OB2 association that we conducted with the Fine Guidance Sensor 1R (FGS1r) on the Hubble Space Telescope. FGS1r is able to resolve binary systems with a magnitude difference delta-V < 4 down to separations as small as 0.01 arcsec. The sample includes 58 of the brighter members of Cyg OB2, one of the closest examples of an environment containing a large number of very young and massive stars. We resolved binary companions for 12 targets and confirmed the triple nature of one other target, and we offer evidence of marginally resolved companions for two additional stars. We confirm the binary nature of 11 of these systems from complementary adaptive optics imaging observations. The overall binary frequency in our study is 22% to 26% corresponding to orbital periods ranging from 20 - 20,000 years. When combined with the known short-period spectroscopic binaries, the results supports the hypothesis that the binary fraction among massive stars is > 60%. One of the new discoveries is a companion to the hypergiant star MT 304 = Cyg OB2-12, and future measurements of orbital motion should provide mass estimates for this very luminous star.Comment: accepted for AJ, 84 pages, 61 figure

Pengaruh Universal Design For Learning (UDL) Berbasis Social Learning Networks (SLN) Terhadap Hasil Belajar Mahasiswa STKIP PGRI Situbondo

Abstrak: Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian eksperimen dengan menggunakan rancangan eksperimental, pretest & posttest control group design. Terdapat dua kelompok dalam penelitian ini, yaitu kelompok eksperimen yang menerapkan perlakuan pembelajaran UDL berbasis SLN dan kelompok kontrol yang tidak menerapkan perlakuan. Subjek penelitian ini melibatkan mahasiswa sebanyak 45 orang di STKIP PGRI Situbondo yang mengambil mata kuliah Telaah Kurikulum. Data yang dikumpulkan dalam penelitian ini diolah dengan bantuan program SPSS for windows versi 22.0 dengan teknik analisis data paired sample t test untuk menguji hipotesis penelitian. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa terdapat perbedaan hasil belajar antara kelompok eksperimen (78,00) yang diberi perlakuan pembelajaran UDL berbasis SLN dengan kelompok kontrol (71,50) yang tidak diberi perlakuan. Hal ini juga dibuktikan dari hasil perhitungan menggunakan normalized gain diperoleh gain untuk kelompok eksperimen (0,38) sedangkan kelompok kontrol (0,12). Selisih rata-rata gain kelompok eksperimen dan kelompok kontrol adalah 0,38 – 0,12 = 0,26, dengan demikian dapat dikatakan bahwa pembelajaran UDL berbasis SLN efektif untuk meningkatkan hasil belajar mahasiswa. Dalam pengujian hipotesis menggunakan t test didapatkan hasil thitung sebesar 3,630 apabila dibandingkan dengan ttabel sebesar 1,729 yang berarti thitung > ttabel (3,630 > 1,729), artinya dengan demikian H1 diterima. Jadi kesimpulannya pembelajaran Universal Design for Learning berbasis Social Learning Networks berpengaruh terhadap hasil belajar secara signifikan.Abstract. This research is an experimental research using experimental design, pretest & posttest control group design. There were two groups in this study, namely the experimental group that applied the SLL-based UDL learning treatment and the control group that did not apply the treatment. The subject of this study involved 45 students at STKIP PGRI Situbondo who took the Curriculum Study course. The data collected in this study were processed with the help of the SPSS for Windows version 22.0 program with paired sample t-test data analysis techniques to test the research hypothesis. The results showed that there were differences in learning outcomes between the experimental group (78.00) who were treated with SLL-based UDL learning and the untreated control group (71.50). This is also proven from the results of calculations using gain normalized obtained gain for the experimental group (0.38) while the control group (0.12). The difference in gain of the experimental group and the control group is 0.38 - 0.12 = 0.26, thus it can be said that the SLL-based UDL learning is effective for improving student learning outcomes. In testing the hypothesis using t-test the results of t-count are 3,630 when compared with t-table of 1,729 which means tcount> t table (3,630> 1,729), meaning that H1 is accepted. So the conclusion is the learning of Universal Design for Learning based on Social Learning Networks has an effect on learning outcomes significantly

The CIRDO Corpus: Comprehensive Audio/Video Database of Domestic Falls of Elderly People

International audienceAmbient Assisted Living aims at enhancing the quality of life of older and disabled people at home thanks to Smart Homes. In particular, regarding elderly living alone at home, the detection of distress situation after a fall is very important to reassure this kind of population. However, many studies do not include tests in real settings, because data collection in this domain is very expensive and challenging and because of the few available data sets. The CIRDOcorpus is a dataset recorded in realistic conditions in DOMUS, a fully equipped Smart Home with microphones and home automation sensors, in which participants performed scenarios including real falls on a carpet and calls for help. These scenarios were elaborated thanks to a field study involving elderly persons. Experiments related in a first part to distress detection in real-time using audio and speech analysis and in a second part to fall detection using video analysis are presented. Results show the difficulty of the task. The database can be used as standardized database by researchers to evaluate and compare their systems for elderly person's assistance. Keywords: audio and video data set, multimodal corpus, natural language and multimodal interaction, Ambient Assisted Living (AAL), distress situation

Promoter hypermethylation of the AE2/SLC4A2 gene in PBC

Primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) is a chronic immuneassociated cholestatic liver disease with unclear complex/multifactorial etiopathogenesis affecting mostly middle-aged women. Patients with PBC exhibit reduced expression of the AE2/SLC4A2 gene. Herein, we found that AE2 promoter regions are hypermethylated in the liver and peripheral blood mononuclear cells of patients with PBC. This increased methylation is associated with downregulated AE2-gene expression, which might contribute to the pathogenesis of PBC. Therefore, novel epigenetic targets may improve treatment in patients with PBC who respond poorly to current pharmacological therapies

Beyond Logarithmic Corrections to Cardy Formula

As shown by Cardy modular invariance of the partition function of a given unitary non-singular 2d CFT with left and right central charges c_L and c_R, implies that the density of states in a microcanonical ensemble, at excitations Delta and Delta-bar and in the saddle point approximation, is \rho_0(\Delta,\bar\Delta;c_L, c_R)=c_L c_R \exp(2\pi\sqrt{{c_L\Delta}/{6}})\exp(2\pi\sqrt{{c_R\bar\Delta}/{6}}). In this paper, we extend Cardy's analysis and show that in the saddle point approximation and up to contributions which are exponentially suppressed compared to the leading Cardy's result, the density of states takes the form \rho(\Delta,\bar\Delta; c_L,c_R)= f(c_L\Delta) f(c_R\bar\Delta)\rho_0(\Delta,\bar\Delta; c_L, c_R), for a function f(x) which we specify. In particular, we show that (i) \rho (\Delta,\bar\Delta; c_L, c_R) is the product of contributions of left and right movers and hence, to this approximation, the partition function of any modular invariant, non-singular unitary 2d CFT is holomorphically factorizable and (ii) \rho(\Delta,\bar\Delta; c_L, c_R)/(c_Lc_R) is only a function of $c_R\bar\Delta$ and $c_L\Delta$. In addition, treating \rho(\Delta,\bar\Delta; c_L, c_R) as the density of states of a microcanonical ensemble, we compute the entropy of the system in the canonical counterpart and show that the function f(x) is such that the canonical entropy, up to exponentially suppressed contributions, is simply given by the Cardy's result \ln\rho_0(\Delta,\bar\Delta; c_L, c_R).Comment: 30 pages, no figures; v2: minor improvements, one reference added, v3: minor corrections to match the published versio

EVH Black Holes, AdS3 Throats and EVH/CFT Proposal

Within class of generic black holes there are extremal black holes (with vanishing Hawking temperature T) and vanishing horizon area Ah, but with finite Ah/T ratio,the Extremal Vanishing Horizon (EVH) black holes. We study the near horizon limit of a four dimensional EVH black hole solution to a generic (gauged) Einstein-Maxwell dilaton theory and show that in the near horizon limit they develop a throat which is a pinching orbifold limit of AdS3. This is an extension of the well known result for extremal black holes the near horizon limit of which contains an AdS2 throat. We show that in the near EVH near horizon limit the pinching AdS3 factor turns to a pinching BTZ black hole and that this near horizon limit is indeed a decoupling limit. We argue that the pinching AdS3 or BTZ orbifold is resolved if the near horizon limit is accompanied by taking the 4d Newton constant G4 to zero such that the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy S = Ah/(4G4) remains finite. We propose that in this limit the near horizon EVH black hole is dual to a 2d CFT. We provide pieces of evidence in support of the EVH/CFT correspondence and comment on its connection to the Kerr/CFT proposal and speculations how the EVH/CFT may be used to study generic e.g. Schwarzchild-type black holes.Comment: 31 pages, 3 figures, JHEP styl

Are There Regional Variations in the Diagnosis, Surveillance, and Control of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus?

Abstract Objective: To assess the way healthcare facilities (HCFs) diagnose, survey, and control methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Design: Questionnaire. Setting: Ninety HCFs in 30 countries. Results: Evaluation of susceptibility testing methods showed that 8 laboratories (9%) used oxacillin disks with antimicrobial content different from the one recommended, 12 (13%) did not determine MRSA susceptibility to vancomycin, and 4 (4.5%) reported instances of isolation of vancomycin-resistant S. aureus but neither confirmed this resistance nor alerted public health authorities. A MRSA control program was reported by 55 (61.1%) of the HCFs. The following isolation precautions were routinely used: hospitalization in a private room (34.4%), wearing of gloves (62.2%), wearing of gowns (44.4%), hand washing by healthcare workers (53.3%), use of an isolation sign on the patient's door (43%), or all four. When the characteristics of HCFs with low incidence rates (< 0.4 per 1,000 patient-days) were compared with those of HCFs with high incidence rates (P = 0.4 per 1,000 patient-days), having a higher mean number of beds per infection control nurse was the only factor significantly associated with HCFs with high incidence rates (834 vs 318 beds; P = .02). Conclusion: Our results emphasize the urgent need to strengthen the microbiologic and epidemiologic capacities of HCFs worldwide to prevent MRSA transmission and to prepare them to address the possible emergence of vancomycin-resistant S. aureu

Alternative statistical methods for estimating efficacy of interferon beta-1b for multiple sclerosis clinical trials

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In the randomized study of interferon beta-1b (IFN beta-1b) for multiple sclerosis (MS), it has usually been evaluated the simple annual relapse rate as the study endpoint. This study aimed to investigate the performance of various regression models using information regarding the time to each recurrent event and considering the MS specific data generation process, and to estimate the treatment effect of a MS clinical trial data.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We conducted a simulation study with consideration of the pathological characteristics of MS, and applied alternative efficacy estimation methods to real clinical trial data, including 5 extended Cox regression models for time-to-event analysis, a Poisson regression model and a Poisson regression model with Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE). We adjusted for other important covariates that may have affected the outcome.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We compared the simulation results for each model. The hazard ratios of real data were estimated for each model including the effects of other covariates. The results (hazard ratios of high-dose to low-dose) of all models were approximately 0.7 (range, 0.613 - 0.769), whereas the annual relapse rate ratio was 0.714.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The precision of the treatment estimation was increased by application of the alternative models. This suggests that the use of alternative models that include recurrence event data may provide better analyses.</p