Learning From Summer: Effects of Voluntary Summer Learning Programs on Low-Income Urban Youth

The largest-ever study of summer learning finds that students with high attendance in free, five to six-week, voluntary summer learning programs experienced educationally meaningful benefits in math and reading.The findings are important because children from low-income families lose ground in learning over the summer compared to their more affluent peers. Voluntary, district-run summer programs could help shrink this gap and have the potential to reach more students than traditional summer school or smaller-scale programs run by outside organizations. Yet until now little has been known about the impact of these programs and how they can succeed. Wallace's $50 million National Summer Learning Project seeks to help provide answers.Since 2011, five urban school districts and their partners, the RAND Corporation and Wallace have been working together to find out whether and how voluntary-attendance summer learning programs combining academics and enrichment can help students succeed in school.Starting in 2013, RAND conducted a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in five districts—Boston; Dallas; Duval County, Florida; Pittsburgh; and Rochester—to evaluate educational outcomes, focusing on children who were in 3rd grade in spring of that year. The 5,600 students who applied to summer programs were randomly assigned to one of two groups—those selected to take part in the programs for two summers (the treatment group) and those not selected (the control group). The study analyzed outcomes for 3,192 students offered access to the programs.Researchers found that those who attended a five-to-six-week summer program for 20 or more days in 2013 did better on state math tests than similar students in the control group. This advantage was statistically significant and lasted through the following school year. The results are even more striking for high attenders in 2014: They outperformed control group students in both math and English Language Arts (ELA), on fall tests and later, in the spring. The advantage after the second summer was equivalent to 20-25 percent of a year's learning in math and ELA.These findings are correlational but controlled for prior achievement and demographics, giving researchers confidence that the benefits are likely due to the programs and meeting the requirements for promising evidence under the Every Student Succeeds Act.High-attending students were also rated by teachers as having stronger social and emotional competencies than the control group students; however, researchers have less confidence that this was due to the programs, given the lack of prior data on these competencies.About 60 percent of students attending at least one day met the 20-day threshold that was defined as high attendance.Separately, the study also examined the impact of the programs on all students who were offered access, whether or not they actually attended. Because many students did not attend at a high level, and some didn't attend at all, the average benefits for all of these students were smaller and not statistically significant, with the exception of a modest but educationally meaningful boost in math scores in the fall after the first summer equivalent to 15 percent of a year's learning. These findings are causal, meaning that researchers are confident that they were due to the programs, and meet the standard of strong evidence under the Every Student Succeeds Act.For students to experience lasting benefits from attending summer programs, the report recommends that districts: run programs for at least five weeks; promote high attendance; include sufficient instructional time and protect it; invest in instructional quality; and factor in attendance and likely no-show rates when staffing the programs in order to lower per-student costs

Information Literacy Needs Open Access or: Open Access is not Only for Researchers

The Open Access was initially (blandly) conceived in view not only of researchers but also of lay readers, then this perspective slowly faded out. The Information Literacy movement wants to teach citizens how to arrive at trustable information but the amount of paywalled knowledge is still big. So, their lines of development are somehow complementary: Information Literacy needs Open Access for the citizens to freely access high quality information while Open Access truly fulfils its scope when it is conceived and realized not only for the researchers (an aristocratic view which was the initial one) but for the whole society

A Comparative Study of Defeasible Argumentation and Non-monotonic Fuzzy Reasoning for Elderly Survival Prediction Using Biomarkers

Computational argumentation has been gaining momentum as a solid theoretical research discipline for inference under uncertainty with incomplete and contradicting knowledge. However, its practical counterpart is underdeveloped, with a lack of studies focused on the investigation of its impact in real-world settings and with real knowledge. In this study, computational argumentation is compared against non-monotonic fuzzy reasoning and evaluated in the domain of biological markers for the prediction of mortality in an elderly population. Different non-monotonic argument-based models and fuzzy reasoning models have been designed using an extensive knowledge base gathered from an expert in the field. An analysis of the true positive and false positive rate of the inferences of such models has been performed. Findings indicate a superior inferential capacity of the designed argument-based models

InforMing the PAthway of COPD Treatment (IMPACT Trial) Single-Inhaler Triple Therapy (Fluticasone Furoate/Umeclidinium/Vilanterol) Versus Fluticasone Furoate/Vilanterol and Umeclidinium/Vilanterol in Patients With COPD: Analysis o the Western Europe and North America Regions

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a lung disease characterized by airflow limitation and progressive respiratory symptoms.1 Global public health trends estimate that the COPD burden will continue to rise, with COPD deaths estimated to increase to 4.4% of all deaths in Europe and 6.3% in the World Health Organization-defined region of the Americas by 2060.2 There are differences in the COPD burden in different regions reflecting variations in etiology,3,4 disease severity,5 symptoms,6 medication use,7 and health care systems and utilization.7 These differences may help inform therapeutic strategies to optimize therapeutic approaches to reducing symptoms and exacerbation risk.1 In the global InforMing the PAthway of COPD Treatment (IMPACT) trial, single-inhaler triple therapy fluticasone furoate/umeclidinium/vilanterol (FF/UMEC/VI) reduced moderate/severe exacerbation rates and improved lung function and health-related quality of life versus FF/VI or UMEC/VI dual therapy in patients ≥40 years of age with symptomatic COPD and a history of exacerbations.8 Within trial populations, regional differences such as patient characteristics, treatment patterns, access to care and cultural/socioeconomic factors may dictate treatment choices and influence disease severity and progression in particular geographical locations. For example, a meta-analysis conducted in 2015 comprising 123 studies between 1990 and 2010 found that the overall prevalence of COPD as well as the rate of increase was higher in the Americas (including both North and South America) compared with Europe.9 Furthermore, a cross-sectional study assessing the burden of COPD symptoms in the United States and Europe found variations between patients across countries who had experienced at least 1 symptom of COPD.10 In Europe, patients with more frequent symptoms were more likely to experience worsening of symptoms and unexpected hospitalization. Whereas in the United States, patients with more frequent symptoms were not only more likely to experience worsening of symptoms but also longer lasting symptoms and a longer length of exacerbations.10 A further difference was that treatment adherence was higher in the United States than Europe, however, adherence was consistent across patients in Europe when assessed by modified Global initiative for chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) 2014 groups11 but varied in the United States with adherence highest in the GOLD Group C and lowest in Group A.10 Therefore, it is important to evaluate how overall population results pertain to patients treated in particular regions. As IMPACT is one of the largest trials conducted in patients with COPD to date, we have the unique opportunity to analyze study outcomes in patients enrolled in Western Europe and North America, the 2 main regions from an enrollment perspective

“Excellence R Us”: university research and the fetishisation of excellence

The rhetoric of “excellence” is pervasive across the academy. It is used to refer to research outputs as well as researchers, theory and education, individuals and organisations, from art history to zoology. But does “excellence” actually mean anything? Does this pervasive narrative of “excellence” do any good? Drawing on a range of sources we interrogate “excellence” as a concept and find that it has no intrinsic meaning in academia. Rather it functions as a linguistic interchange mechanism. To investigate whether this linguistic function is useful we examine how the rhetoric of excellence combines with narratives of scarcity and competition to show that the hypercompetition that arises from the performance of “excellence” is completely at odds with the qualities of good research. We trace the roots of issues in reproducibility, fraud, and homophily to this rhetoric. But we also show that this rhetoric is an internal, and not primarily an external, imposition. We conclude by proposing an alternative rhetoric based on soundness and capacity-building. In the final analysis, it turns out that that “excellence” is not excellent. Used in its current unqualified form it is a pernicious and dangerous rhetoric that undermines the very foundations of good research and scholarship

3rd Annual Federal Practice Institute

Outline of speakers\u27 presentations from the 3rd Annual Federal Practice Institute held by UK/CLE on September 23, 1988

The effect of moderate alcohol consumption on adiponectin oligomers and muscle oxidative capacity: a human intervention study

Aims/hypothesis The aim of this study was to investigate whether moderate alcohol consumption increases plasma high molecular weight (HMW) adiponectin and/or muscle oxidative capacity. Materials and methods Eleven lean (BMI 18 - 25 kg/m(2)) and eight overweight ( BMI >= 27 kg/m(2)) men consumed 100 ml whisky (similar to 32 g alcohol) or water daily for 4 weeks in a randomised, controlled, crossover trial. After each treatment period, muscle biopsies and fasting blood samples were collected. Results Adiponectin concentrations increased ( p <0.001) by 12.5% after 4 weeks of moderate alcohol consumption. Moderate alcohol consumption tended to increase HMW adiponectin by 57% ( p= 0.07) and medium molecular weight adiponectin by 12.5% ( p= 0.07), but not low molecular weight (LMW) adiponectin. Skeletal muscle citrate synthase, cytochrome c oxidase and beta-3-hydroxyacyl coenzyme A dehydrogenase (beta-HAD) activity were not changed after moderate alcohol consumption, but an interaction between alcohol consumption and BMI was observed for cytochrome c oxidase ( p= 0.072) and citrate synthase ( p= 0.102) activity. Among lean men, moderate alcohol consumption tended to increase cytochrome c oxidase ( p= 0.08) and citrate synthase activity ( p= 0.12) by 23 and 26%, respectively, but not among overweight men. In particular, plasma HMW adiponectin correlated positively with activities of skeletal muscle citrate synthase ( r= 0.64, p= 0.009), cytochrome c oxidase ( p= 0.59, p= 0.009) and beta-HAD ( r= 0.46, p= 0.056), while such correlation was not present for LMW adiponectin. Whole-body insulin sensitivity and intramyocellular triacylglycerol content were not affected by moderate alcohol consumption. Conclusions/interpretation Moderate alcohol consumption increases adiponectin concentrations, and in particular HMW adiponectin. Concentrations of HMW adiponectin in particular were positively associated with skeletal muscle oxidative capacity

The Role of Alpha 6 Integrin in Prostate Cancer Migration and Bone Pain in a Novel Xenograft Model

Of the estimated 565,650 people in the U.S. who will die of cancer in 2008, almost all will have metastasis. Breast, prostate, kidney, thyroid and lung cancers metastasize to the bone. Tumor cells reside within the bone using integrin type cell adhesion receptors and elicit incapacitating bone pain and fractures. In particular, metastatic human prostate tumors express and cleave the integrin A6, a receptor for extracellular matrix components of the bone, i.e., laminin 332 and laminin 511. More than 50% of all prostate cancer patients develop severe bone pain during their remaining lifetime. One major goal is to prevent or delay cancer induced bone pain. We used a novel xenograft mouse model to directly determine if bone pain could be prevented by blocking the known cleavage of the A6 integrin adhesion receptor. Human tumor cells expressing either the wildtype or mutated A6 integrin were placed within the living bone matrix and 21 days later, integrin expression was confirmed by RT-PCR, radiographs were collected and behavioral measurements of spontaneous and evoked pain performed. All animals independent of integrin status had indistinguishable tumor burden and developed bone loss 21 days after surgery. A comparison of animals containing the wild type or mutated integrin revealed that tumor cells expressing the mutated integrin resulted in a dramatic decrease in bone loss, unicortical or bicortical fractures and a decrease in the ability of tumor cells to reach the epiphyseal plate of the bone. Further, tumor cells within the bone expressing the integrin mutation prevented cancer induced spontaneous flinching, tactile allodynia, and movement evoked pain. Preventing A6 integrin cleavage on the prostate tumor cell surface decreased the migration of tumor cells within the bone and the onset and degree of bone pain and fractures. These results suggest that strategies for blocking the cleavage of the adhesion receptors on the tumor cell surface can significantly prevent cancer induced bone pain and slow disease progression within the bone. Since integrin cleavage is mediated by Urokinase-type Plasminogen Activator (uPA), further work is warranted to test the efficacy of uPA inhibitors for prevention or delay of cancer induced bone pain