Teacher professional development: a cross-national analysis of quality features associated with teaching practices and student achievement

This thesis ponders three theory-based aspects of the relationship between quality features of teacher professional development (TPD) and national educational outcomes by using comparable data from the United States (US), England, Japan and Finland. Studies carried out in the US and England have suggested that TPD delivered with content focus, coherence, active learning, collective participation and longer duration is linked with better teaching practices and student achievement. However, there has been no systematic examination of the generalisability of this association into different contexts, thus data from Japan and Finland is used here to explore this aspect. Firstly, I analyse whether student achievement in mathematics is associated with TPD which is either focused on content (Chapter 2) or managed coherently by head-teachers (Chapter 3). Then, I examine whether active teaching practices are associated to TPD with greater degrees of active learning, collective participation and extended duration (Chapter 4). I find that active learning is positively associated in Japan with all the teaching practices examined, whereas in Finland it is only related to project-based learning. Collective participation is also positively associated with project-based learning in Japan, but it is particularly detrimental in Finland, also for the use of information and communication technologies (ICT). TPD with longer duration increases the likelihood of using ICT in the US, cooperative learning in England and project-based learning in Finland. Contrary to expectations, I find that the achievement of students in the English-speaking countries seems to slightly decrease insofar as the coherence of TPD improves. Likewise, I also find a slight negative association for English and Japanese students in relation to the engagement of their teachers in mathematics content-focused TPD. These results suggest, contrary to current theory, that the relationships between the quality features of TPD and educational outcomes are country specific. What is more important, they cannot be accepted in all cases as a panacea for rasing the quality of education

Geo-hydrological hazard underlined by toponymy of Italian Military Geographycal Institute maps at 1:25,000 scale. Contributions to the knowledge of floodplain and hillslope dinamycs

Toponymy is a linguistic discipline, which has already been used as a tool for geographical studies in Italy and particularly in Liguria. Geographical studies have already classified the toponyms in several categories: physical geography, human geography and socio-economic geography. By selecting the place names connected to physical geography, we study those suggesting the presence of landslides or floods. We focussed on the Italian Military Geographic Institute maps at 1: 25.000 scale, edited between 1936-1939 and related to a territory approximately located between Genoa and Chiavari, in Ligurian coastal area, and Tortona and Piacenza in Po valley. On the Ligurian slopes we have examined the maps relating to the Polcevera, Bisagno and Entella streams catchments. For the Po side we dealt with maps of the Scrivia and Trebbia rivers catchments: From the Ligurian-Po watershed, these rivers flow into the Adriatic Sea. The place names have been compared with landslide and flood hazard maps of Basin Master Plans for geo-hydrological risk reduction. The toponyms feature a linguistic layer linked to different historical periods. In particular in the study area several layers have been recognized: the ancient Ligurian pre-Roman, Latin, ancient Lombard, vulgar Gaulish-Italic of local languages and Italian terms related to the twentieth century. The first three layers and the last one match in the entire area of study. The vulgar Gaulish-Italic is structured into two Ligurian and Emilian groups: the latter is further splitted into the Oltrepo variants of Tortona and Piacenza. The identified names were distinguished in related-landslides or floods. In addition, the toponyms have been further divided into three linguistic influence areas: Ligurian, from Ligurian Sea up to Novi Ligure and Bobbio, the language of Tortona, downstream of Novi Ligure and Piacenza from Bobbio to Po river. Overall, place names linked to physical geography features represent nearly 25% of toponyms with a density of about 0.5 per km2. Almost half of these are toponyms related to landslides, floods or predisposing factors such as erosion, steepness or water. The names of places linked to landsliding prevail in Liguria, while those related to the waters or floods in the Po areas are located in plain areas or in very gentle slopes. The most common names related to landslides or erosion are \u201cmoggia\u201d, \u201cliggia\u201d or \u201ccrosi\u201d and similar, which respectively mean swampy deposits, landslides or gullies. Names related to floods are \u201criva\u201d, \u201cpiana\u201d \u201cponte\u201d or \u201cisola\u201d which mean respectively edge of fluvial scarp, floodplain, bridge or isle. The comparison with the Basin Master Plan gave satisfying results: we found a good correspondence between names and geo-hydrological hazard. The use of toponyms allowed a geographycal interpretation of the slope and floodplain dynamics. It suggests a possible use of toponymys in land planning activities

A developmental evaluation approach to lesson study: exploring the impact of lesson study in London schools

This article presents a methodology for the developmental evaluation of a lesson study programme in primary and secondary schools. Our approach combined the principles of (i) user-focused evaluation, in which, as evaluators, we acted as participatory members of the innovation team and sought to involve users in the design and implementation of evaluation tools, (ii) a multi-level logical model to guide data collection and impact measurement and (iii) an ‘improving rather than proving’ approach to evaluation. The evaluation tools were used on a programme to promote lesson study in London schools involving 133 teachers and 33 schools. The evaluation methodology included outcomes at school leadership, teacher and student levels. Issues of internal and external validity are discussed and strengths and weaknesses are described. Findings showed promise in the use of our scale to measure changes in teacher pedagogical outcomes and in the recording of qualitative changes to both teachers and students as a result of the lesson study cycles. Suggestions for the future use and development of this methodology are proposed, including better use of control groups and quantitative measures to record changes in learning outcomes for students. List of Abbreviations: HE: Higher Education; LS: Lesson Study; PD: Professional Developmen

Proteostasis Regulators in Cystic Fibrosis: Current Development and Future Perspectives

In cystic fibrosis (CF), the deletion of phenylalanine 508 (F508del) in the CF transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) leads to misfolding and premature degradation of the mutant protein. These defects can be targeted with pharmacological agents named potentiators and correctors. During the past years, several efforts have been devoted to develop and approve new effective molecules. However, their clinical use remains limited, as they fail to fully restore F508del-CFTR biological function. Indeed, the search for CFTR correctors with different and additive mechanisms has recently increased. Among them, drugs that modulate the CFTR proteostasis environment are particularly attractive to enhance therapy effectiveness further. This Perspective focuses on reviewing the recent progress in discovering CFTR proteostasis regulators, mainly describing the design, chemical structure, and structure-activity relationships. The opportunities, challenges, and future directions in this emerging and promising field of research are discussed, as well

A learning-based shared control architecture for interactive task execution

Shared control is a key technology for various robotic applications in which a robotic system and a human operator are meant to collaborate efficiently. In order to achieve efficient task execution in shared control, it is essential to predict the desired behavior for a given situation or context to simplify the control task for the human operator. To do this prediction, we use Learning from Demonstration (LfD), which is a popular approach for transferring human skills to robots. We encode the demonstrated behavior as trajectory distributions and generalize the learned distributions to new situations. The goal of this paper is to present a shared control framework that uses learned expert distributions to gain more autonomy. Our approach controls the balance between the controller’s autonomy and the human preference based on the distributions of the demonstrated trajectories. Moreover, the learned distributions are autonomously refined from collaborative task executions, resulting in a master-slave system with increasing autonomy that requires less user input with an increasing number of task executions. We experimentally validated that our shared control approach enables efficient task executions. Moreover, the conducted experiments demonstrated that the developed system improves its performances through interactive task executions with our shared control

Analysis of Mandibular Fractures Caused by Work Related Accidents. Retrospective Descriptive Study

Indexación: Web of Science; Scielo.El objetivo de este estudio fue evaluar la tendencia de los pacientes con fracturas mandibulares asociados a accidentes laborales. Se realizó un estudio descriptivo retrospectivo en todos los casos de fracturas mandibulares que asistieron al servicio de cirugía maxilofacial del Hospital Clínico Mutual de Seguridad C.Ch.C., Santiago de Chile en un periodo de 4 años (enero 2009 - diciembre 2012). Todas las fracturas mandibulares fueron consignadas. La información fue recopilada a través de revisión de fichas clínicas electrónicas. Entre los años 2009 al 2012 se presentaron un total de 74 pacientes incluidos en el estudio con 102 rasgos de fracturas mandibulares. La fractura más común fue la de cóndilo mandibular (35 pacientes). Se observó una tasa de complicaciones del 8%. Los resultados mostrados en este estudio están en línea con la literatura y el análisis de este reporte provee información para el diseño de planes de prevención de riesgos, especialmente para desarrollar medidas de protección facial. Nivel de Evidencia: Tipo II. Estudio descriptivo.ABSTRACT: The objective of this study was to evaluate the tendency of patients with mandibular fractures associated with working accidents. A retrospective descriptive study was performed in all cases of mandibular fractures who attended the maxillofacial surgery service at the Clinical Hospital Mutual Seguridad C.CH.C. Santiago de Chile, in a 4-year period (January 2009 - December 2012). All mandibular fractures were recorded. The information was collected through review of electronic medical records. Between 2009 and 2012, 74 patients were included in the study with 102 lines of mandibular fractures. The most common fracture was the mandibular condyle (35 patients). The complication rate was 8%. The results shown in this study are in line with the literature and the analysis of this report provides information for the design of risk prevention plans, especially in developing measures of facial protection.http://ref.scielo.org/p5w48

Cystic Fibrosis: A New Target for 4-Imidazo[2,1-b]thiazole-1,4-dihydropyridines

The pharmacology of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) Cl(-) channel has attracted significant interest in recent years with the aim to search for rational new therapies for diseases caused by CFTR malfunction. Mutations that abolish the function of CFTR cause the life-threatening genetic disease cystic fibrosis (CF). The most common cause of CF is the deletion of phenylalanine 508 (ΔF508) in the CFTR chloride channel. Felodipine, nifedipine, and other antihypertensive 1,4-dihydropyridines (1,4-DHPs) that block L-type Ca(2+) channels are also effective potentiators of CFTR gating, able to correct the defective activity of ΔF508 and other CFTR mutants ( Mol. Pharmacol. 2005 , 68 , 1736 ). For this purpose, we evaluated the ability of the previously and newly synthesized 4-imidazo[2,1-b]thiazoles-1,4-dihydropyridines without vascular activity and inotropic and/or chronotropic cardiac effects ( J. Med. Chem. 2008 , 51 , 1592 ) to enhance the activity of ΔF508-CFTR. Our studies indicate compounds 17, 18, 20, 21, 38, and 39 as 1,4-DHPs with an interesting profile of activity

Characterisation of High Temperature Oxidation Phenomena during AISI 430 Stainless Steel Manufacturing under a Controlled H-2 Atmosphere for Bright Annealing

Localised-in-the-edge oxidation of four AISI 430 alloys was investigated after an industrial bright annealing process. The oxidised surface of each specimen was characterised by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Raman-spectroscopy and SEM. The results showed that the selective oxidation of Cr and Mn took place at the coil edges of AISI 430. This led to the formation of an oxide scale based on Cr2O3 and MnCr2O4. On the other hand, the formation of Cr(OH)(3) and MnOOH in the outer part of the oxide scale was related to the effect of the H-2-N-2 environment on the annealing furnace. The results concluded that the composition of Cr and Mn in the alloy determined the composition of the oxidation products. However, the effect of annealing time was minor in this oxidation mechanism, which slightly contributed to an increase in the cation diffusion from the steel to the oxide. Finally, the results obtained indicate that the colouration of the coil edges displayed in each studied material varies according to the alloy chemical composition and annealing time.This research was funded by the "Proyectos de I+D Individuales" programme, Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnologico Industrial (CDTI), Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad from the Spanish Government-project "FERRINOP"

The impact of ancient Mesoamerican cities on long-term environmental sustainability: the view from historical ecology

The impact of ancient urban occupations on sustainability has recently become a topic of interest for archaeologists as well as many other scholars. Much of this archaeological research has focused on documenting the longevity of ancient cities and elucidating the social and economic strategies employed at the urban and regional scales to promote urban sustainability. In this article, we add to this discussion by addressing the issue of sustainability by considering the impact of environmental legacies left by ancient cities after their abandonment. Using a series of cases from pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica [OMYK (Coba), Kiuic, Lagunas de Yalahau, and Tlaxcallan], we show through ethnoecological and historical ecological research that in some cases pre-Hispanic people, living in urban zones, affected “intermediate” disturbances that increased biodiversity, biomass, and sustainability by creating second natures that have endured for centuries