An Investigation into the Pedagogical Features of Documents

Characterizing the content of a technical document in terms of its learning utility can be useful for applications related to education, such as generating reading lists from large collections of documents. We refer to this learning utility as the "pedagogical value" of the document to the learner. While pedagogical value is an important concept that has been studied extensively within the education domain, there has been little work exploring it from a computational, i.e., natural language processing (NLP), perspective. To allow a computational exploration of this concept, we introduce the notion of "pedagogical roles" of documents (e.g., Tutorial and Survey) as an intermediary component for the study of pedagogical value. Given the lack of available corpora for our exploration, we create the first annotated corpus of pedagogical roles and use it to test baseline techniques for automatic prediction of such roles.Comment: 12th Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications (BEA) at EMNLP 2017; 12 page

Professional Negligence in 2022: The Year in Review

It is the view of this author, and perhaps also some readers of the journal, that 2022 was a year that held hope of brighter times and, in many ways, failed to deliver. While restrictive rules introduced during the Covid-19 crisis were gradually lifted for much of the world, allowing increased freedom and long-awaited reunions for many, the consequences of the devastating global event that was the pandemic are still being felt and uncovered. In addition, this year was rocked by war, economic and political upheaval, and natural disasters linked to the climate crisis. Any sense of certainty, or predictability even in the short term, has taken knock after knock. Wariness and weariness abound. This article concerns some interesting cases and issues arising in 2022 from the field of torts, and therefore relevant to professional liability. It is the privilege of the writer of such a review to cherry-pick material for consideration; the following discussion is selective rather than comprehensive. This review considers developments in vicarious liability, the duty to confer a benefit, pure psychiatric injury and the defence of illegality. Acknowledging the selective lens applied, it appears also to have been a year marked by wariness and caution in the courts. This is no doubt in part because the cases considered here are principally Court of Appeal or lower court cases; unlike the preceding four years, the Supreme Court has been quiet on the tort front in 2022. Decisions on important appeals have not yet been handed down.1 Nevertheless, some significant judgments were delivered in which the courts have proceeded with notable caution, with a firm eye to precedent, and shown great concern for recent warnings by the Supreme Court against excessive expansion

Concert recording 2021-12-08

[Track 1]. Oh! Had I Jubal’s lyre / George Frideric Handel -- [Track 2]. Ophelia Lieder. Wie Erkenn’ Ich Dien Treulieb ; Sein Leichenhemd Weiss ; Auf Morgen ist Sankt Valentins Tag ; Sie Trugen ihn auf der Bahre bloss ; Und konnt er nicht mehr zuruck? / Johannes Brahms -- [Track 3]. Le oiseaux dan la charmille / Jacques Offenbach -- [Track 4]. La vie en rose / Edith Piaf -- [Track 5]. 3 Shakespeare songs. O mistress mine ; Take o take those lips away ; [Track 6]. Fairy lullaby / Amy Beach -- [Track 7]. Le rossignol et la rose / Camille Saint-Saens -- [Track 8]. The ocean / Aron Accurso

Evaluating Established Methods for Rumen 16S rRNA Amplicon Sequencing With Mock Microbial Populations

peer-reviewedThe rumen microbiome scientific community has utilized amplicon sequencing as an aid in identifying potential community compositional trends that could be used as an estimation of various production and performance traits including methane emission, animal protein production efficiency, and ruminant health status. In order to translate rumen microbiome studies into executable application, there is a need for experimental and analytical concordance within the community. The objective of this study was to assess these factors in relation to selected currently established methods for 16S phylogenetic community analysis on a microbial community standard (MC) and a DNA standard (DS; ZymoBIOMICSTM). DNA was extracted from MC using the RBBC method commonly used for microbial DNA extraction from rumen digesta samples. 16S rRNA amplicon libraries were generated for the MC and DS using primers routinely used for rumen bacterial and archaeal community analysis. The primers targeted the V4 and V3–V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene and samples were subjected to both 20 and 28 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) cycles under identical cycle conditions. Sequencing was conducted using the Illumina MiSeq platform. As the bacteria contained in the microbial mock community were well-classified species, and for ease of explanation, we used the results of the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool classification to assess the DNA, PCR cycle number, and primer type. Sequence classification methodology was assessed independently. Spearman’s correlation analysis indicated that utilizing the repeated bead beating and column method for DNA extraction in combination with primers targeting the 16S rRNA gene using 20 first-round PCR cycles was sufficient for amplicon sequencing to generate a relatively accurate depiction of the bacterial communities present in rumen samples. These results also emphasize the requirement to develop and utilize positive mock community controls for all rumen microbiomic studies in order to discern errors which may arise at any step during a next-generation sequencing protocol

Pittsburgh School Closures: The Impact on Physical and Social Neighborhood Dynamics

School closures can have enormous effects on students and families living in a neighborhood. School districts in many urban areas in the United States have recently been faced with the challenge of how to deal with a shrinking school-aged population, budget crises, aging facilities and poor academic performance. This has led some districts to close large numbers of school buildings. A prime example occurred in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 2006. This research will examine changes in population count, racial composition, and housing characteristics in three affected neighborhoods of Pittsburgh following the decision by the Pittsburgh Board of Education to close 22 schools that year. The research will examine how large vacant facilities affect the neighborhood’s physical and social dynamics. Data analysis, interviews and site analysis help to answer the research questions. The findings suggest that school vacancies have a negative effect on neighborhoods to varying degrees, and the neighborhood’s ability to cope with this loss is determined by a number of factors such as desirability of the area and community resources. Recommendations can help other cities to better plan for closures in the future to ensure the most equitable outcomes

Developing a new Governance Approval Process to support federated discovery and meta-analysis of data across the UK through the CO-CONNECT project

Objectives To develop a new approval process for federated data custodians to install and support a new platform which enables researchers to run from one website, instantaneous, aggregate-level queries to determine the number of patients in each dataset which meet their research criteria. To agree security controls across data custodians which protect patient confidentiality whilst also providing this new automated capability for researchers and reducing the burden on each data custodian to manually provide the information. Approach The COVID - Curated and Open aNalysis aNd rEsearCh plaTform (CO-CONNECT) has integrated a Cohort Discovery Tool into the Health Data Research (HDR) UK Innovation Gateway website and is connecting >50 different federated datasets. The underpinning architecture is novel, without precedent at such a scale in the UK. We found that although each data custodian recognised the benefits of the platform, many were unclear of the process to formally approve this new model. We have worked across data custodians to co-develop the required new processes and document the security controls. Results We found vast differences in technical knowledge and infrastructures across different data custodians, especially across small research groups hosting data on consented research cohorts verses larger organisations who host and manage routinely collected data. A model for approvals evolved for these 2 separate groups: Consented research cohorts: a 2-stage process of a pre-assessment for the need for a DPIA and/or completed DPIA. All returned a positive outcome which deemed no personal identifiable information was being used. Unconsented population level data: 4 different documents were required each being approved by different committees within each data custodian: DPIA, Data Access Application, Security Risk Assessment, Disclosure Control Assessment. As the model was novel to many data custodians, we developed many different explainer videos and detailed step by step instructions. Conclusion We recommend a new approvals process for new technologies/models is developed to support initiatives which are not covered by the traditional data access request process. Increased investment in teams which approve data governance and IT security applications which have been overwhelmed by the increased demand for their services to review COVID-19 related projects would be welcomed