China as a campaign issue

This document is part of a digital collection provided by the Martin P. Catherwood Library, ILR School, Cornell University, pertaining to the effects of globalization on the workplace worldwide. Special emphasis is placed on labor rights, working conditions, labor market changes, and union organizing.CLW_2010_Report_China_China_as_a_campaign.pdf: 36 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Assessment For Learning: An Evaluation Of A Professional

The purpose of this program evaluation was to determine how teachers have come to understand, use, and value formative assessment through their participation in our Assessment for Learning Teams for the past five years. Greeno, Collins, & Resnick\u27s (1996) learning theory serves as the theoretical framework of the evaluation, as this program evaluation serves to determine if, and how, teachers have changed their mental models of assessment from a Behaviorist-Differentiationist model to the Cognitive-Situative model, or from an Assessment of Learning view of assessment, to an Assessment for Learning perspective. In order to determine if teachers have gained the conceptual and practical tools from the professional development program to make this shift, evaluation questions include: After participating in the professional development program, how do these teachers understand, use, and value Assessment for Learning? The interviewer conducted focus group interviews of the Learning Team members from three high schools where the professional development had taken place. Classroom observations and document analysis were the other methods for data collections for this evaluation. The Learning Teams\u27 understandings, stories, interpretations, and descriptions presented in this dissertation have been cross cut with the observation and document data to present five significant findings: 1) AfL allows for the impetus for learning to be located within the student; 2) with AfL, the teacher and student to work on the same team towards learning standards; 3) teachers must often surrender control of certain student behaviors; 4) high school traditions must often be manipulated or accommodated in order to implement AfL; and 5) AfL is part of what is considered good, effective teaching. These findings have implications for administrations of other districts implementing AfL professional development as well as our own district moving forward to fill gaps in our own professional development. Therefore, recommendations for further development of AfL in our district are offered as well

Dynamic optimization with path constraints

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Chemical Engineering, 1998.Includes bibliographical references (p. 381-391).by William Francis Feehery.Ph.D

The Physical Nature of F Plasmid TraI and its Effect During Conjugative Transfer

F plasmid TraI (192 kD) is essential for DNA transfer during bacterial conjugation. TraI is composed of a relaxase domain, ssDNA binding domain, helicase domain, and C-terminal domain. Some TraI mutants, created by the Traxler lab, have a 31 AA insertion (i31) in different domains that exhibit higher mating efficiencies than wild-type (WT) TraI. We used a live cell SeqA-YFP fusion protein system to investigate the observed higher mating efficiency. DNA appeared earlier in the recipient in the i31 mutants compared to WT, and the change was not due to a difference in second strand synthesis. To investigate where the transfer process is altered, we employed a TraI fusion protein system to determine if altering the stability of a protein inserted within the i31 of the TraI mutants would alter mating efficiency. Utilizing TraI-YFP cloned into the i31 sites, we created YFP point mutants with altered stability, G67A and I161A. Mating efficiency is reduced when YFP is inserted into TraI. However, when the YFP chromophore is destabilized (G67A), or a hydrophobic cluster is altered (161A) mating efficiency recovers to near i31 levels. These data indicate that altering the stability of the protein can affect transfer efficiency. These data also suggest that altered stability may play a role in producing the i31 phenotype. To investigate the stability and folding of the i31 mutants, a region of TraI (309-858) containing various i31 insertion points were cloned and expressed. These fragments were analyzed by circular dichroism and chemical titration denaturation to determine the ∆G of unfolding for each fragment. There were no significant differences in the ∆G values, however subtle differences in the data are consistent with stability playing a role for the increased mating efficiency for i681. These data also indicate the increased mating efficiency seen for all the i31 mutants analyzed may have multiple different causes, the nature of which is dependent on the location of the insertion

Insights into the behaviour of systems biology models from dynamic sensitivity and identifiability analysis: a case study of an NF-kB signaling pathway

Mathematical modelling offers a variety of useful techniques to help in understanding the intrinsic behaviour of complex signal transduction networks. From the system engineering point of view, the dynamics of metabolic and signal transduction models can always be described by nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODEs) following mass balance principles. Based on the state-space formulation, many methods from the area of automatic control can conveniently be applied to the modelling, analysis and design of cell networks. In the present study, dynamic sensitivity analysis is performed on a model of the IB-NF-B signal pathway system. Univariate analysis of the Euclidean-form overall sensitivities shows that only 8 out of the 64 parameters in the model have major influence on the nuclear NF-B oscillations. The sensitivity matrix is then used to address correlation analysis, identifiability assessment and measurement set selection within the framework of least squares estimation and multivariate analysis. It is shown that certain pairs of parameters are exactly or highly correlated to each other in terms of their effects on the measured variables. The experimental design strategy provides guidance on which proteins should best be considered for measurement such that the unknown parameters can be estimated with the best statistical precision. The whole analysis scheme we describe provides efficient parameter estimation techniques for complex cell networks

The properties of differential-algebraic equations representing optimal control problems

This paper outlines a procedure for transforming a general optimal control problem to a system of Differential-Algebraic Equations (DAEs). The Kuhn-Tucker conditions consist of differential equations, complementarity conditions and corresponding inequalities. These latter are converted to equalities by the addition of a new variable combining the slack variable and the corresponding Lagrange multipliers. The sign of this variable indicates whether the constraint is active or not. The concept of the tractability index is introduced as a general purpose tool for determining the index of a system of DAEs by checking for the nonsingularity of the elements of the matrix chain. This is helpful in determining the well-conditioning of the problem, and an appropriate method for solving it numerically. In the examples used here, the solution of all the differential equations could be performed analytically. The given examples are tested by the numerical determination of the tractability index chain, and the results confirm the previously known properties of the examples

I Going Away. I Going Home. : Austin Clarke\u27s Leaving this Island Place

Austin Clarke’s “Leaving This Island Place” is one of scores of Caribbean autobiographical works that focus on a bright, young, lower-class islander leaving his/her small island place and setting out on “Eldorado voyages.” The narrative of that journey away from home to Europe or Canada or the United States and the later efforts to return may be said to be the Caribbean story, as suggested in the subtitle of Wilfred Cartey’s study of Caribbean literature, Whispers from the Caribbean: I Going Away, I Going Home, which argues that while in Caribbean literature there is much movement away, there is also a body of literature in which “the notion of ‘away’ and images of movement out are replaced by images of return” (xvi). Traditionally, however, the first autobiographical works, such as George Lamming’s In the Castle of My Skin, V. S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas, Merle Hodge’s Crick Crack, Monkey, Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John, Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven, Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory, and Elizabeth Nunez’s Beyond the Limbo Silence, have focused on the childhood in the Caribbean and the journey away—or at least the preparation for that journey. Such is the case with Clarke’s “Leaving This Island Place.

A Multi-Variant, Viral Dynamic Model of Genotype 1 HCV to Assess the in vivo Evolution of Protease-Inhibitor Resistant Variants

Variants resistant to compounds specifically targeting HCV are observed in clinical trials. A multi-variant viral dynamic model was developed to quantify the evolution and in vivo fitness of variants in subjects dosed with monotherapy of an HCV protease inhibitor, telaprevir. Variant fitness was estimated using a model in which variants were selected by competition for shared limited replication space. Fitness was represented in the absence of telaprevir by different variant production rate constants and in the presence of telaprevir by additional antiviral blockage by telaprevir. Model parameters, including rate constants for viral production, clearance, and effective telaprevir concentration, were estimated from 1) plasma HCV RNA levels of subjects before, during, and after dosing, 2) post-dosing prevalence of plasma variants from subjects, and 3) sensitivity of variants to telaprevir in the HCV replicon. The model provided a good fit to plasma HCV RNA levels observed both during and after telaprevir dosing, as well as to variant prevalence observed after telaprevir dosing. After an initial sharp decline in HCV RNA levels during dosing with telaprevir, HCV RNA levels increased in some subjects. The model predicted this increase to be caused by pre-existing variants with sufficient fitness to expand once available replication space increased due to rapid clearance of wild-type (WT) virus. The average replicative fitness estimates in the absence of telaprevir ranged from 1% to 68% of WT fitness. Compared to the relative fitness method, the in vivo estimates from the viral dynamic model corresponded more closely to in vitro replicon data, as well as to qualitative behaviors observed in both on-dosing and long-term post-dosing clinical data. The modeling fitness estimates were robust in sensitivity analyses in which the restoration dynamics of replication space and assumptions of HCV mutation rates were varied