New and Developing Research on Disparities in Discipline

This briefing paper describes the results of new research in the area of disciplinary disparities, and identifies remaining gaps in the literature that can guide researchers and funders of research. The brief is organized into two sections:1) What Have we Learned? Key New Research Findings describes research from leading scholars across the nation commissioned by The Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA's Civil Rights Project with the support of the Collaborative, findings from projects supported by the Collaborative Funded Research Grant Program, and other new research on disproportionality in school discipline in the peer-reviewed literature.2) Future Research Needs describes gaps that remain in the research base. Although there has been considerable new knowledge generated in recent years, significant gaps remain, especially in identifying and evaluating intervention strategies that reduce inequity in discipline for all students

Design and Performance Analysis of a Non-Standard EPICS Fast Controller

The large scientific projects present new technological challenges, such as the distributed control over a communication network. In particular, the middleware EPICS is the most extended communication standard in particle accelerators. The integration of modern control architectures in these EPICS networks is becoming common, as for example for the PXI/PXIe and xTCA hardware alternatives. In this work, a different integration procedure for PXIe real time controllers from National Instruments is proposed, using LabVIEW as the design tool. This methodology is considered and its performance is analyzed by means of a set of laboratory experiments. This control architecture is proposed for achieving the implementation requirements of the fast controllers, which need an important amount of computational power and signal processing capability, with a tight real-time demand. The present work studies the advantages and drawbacks of this methodology and presents its comprehensive evaluation by means of a laboratory test bench, designed for the application of systematic tests. These tests compare the proposed fast controller performance with a similar system implemented using an standard EPICS IOC provided by the CODAC system.Comment: This is the extended version of the Conference Record presented in the IEEE Real-Time Conference 2014, Nara, Japan. This paper has been submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Scienc

Spectral Doppler Ultrasonography of Hepatic Vein in a Patient with Atrial Fibrillation and Rapid Ventricular Rate

Background: Point of Care ultrasound (POCUS) is a tool that enables the clinicians to objectively assess hemodynamics at the bedside. Recently, a novel concept of venous excess Doppler ultrasound (VExUS) grading system has been proposed to assess venous congestion at the organ level in real time. This concept evaluates the presence of severe flow abnormalities in 2 or more veins (of the hepatic, portal, and kidney parenchymal veins) with a dilated IVC (≥2 cm). There are reports in literature that tachyarrhythmias alter the flow pattern in the hepatic veins. Case presentation: We present a case of a 88-year-old gentleman with a past medical history of hypertension, paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, CKD and diabetes, who was admitted due to sepsis in the setting of multifocal pneumonia. On admission day 3, the patient developed atrial fibrillation with rapid ventricular response and worsening hemodynamic status. A bedside POCUS was performed as part of the evaluation. Hepatic vein doppler flow showed complete S wave reversal suggesting high right atrial pressures (RAP) and severe intravascular congestion. Diltiazem infusion was started immediately, and diuretics were ordered. Rate control was achieved after 2 hours of diltiazem infusion. Reassessment of hepatic vein Doppler flow showed normalization of S wave with an S \u3c D pattern which is common in atrial fibrillation even in the absence of elevated RAP. A decision was made to discontinue diuretics as S wave reversal was attributed to rapid ventricular rate. Conclusions: VExUS grading is a novel concept, that evaluates intravascular congestion based on IVC diameter, hepatic, portal and kidney veins Doppler waveforms. Awareness of hepatic vein doppler alterations in tachyarrhythmias allows one to avoid misinterpretation of the hepatic vein signal and permits assessment of the impact on right heart hemodynamics

On invariance functions in Relativity Theory

A new result for equivariant functions in terms of invariant functions in the case of Minkowski space is given. This generalizes the work of Hall and Wightman in the sense that only equivariance is required. In particular, it implies the possibility of defining physical magnitudes independently of the choice of the coordinate system, like the center of mass for relativistic particles

A Study of the Electrophoretic Mobilities of Multiple Myeloma Proteins

Over a period of several years our laboratory has been carrying out electrophoretic analysis of plasma, serum and body fluids from individuals with various diseases. One disease in which we have been interested is that of multiple myeloma

Effects of experimental warming on peroxidase, nitrate reductase and glutamine synthetase activities in wheat

ArticleGiven the effects of climate change and its significant consequences on plant productivity, it is necessary to evaluate the enzymatic responses of the most important crops such as wheat (Triticum durum L.). We examined the response of foliar peroxidase activity, nitrate reductase, and glutamine synthetase to experimental increments of temperature (+2 °C) under field conditions following conventional agricultural practices. Foliar samples, in both control and warming treatments were taken during growth, tillering and flowering phenophases to test the peroxidase activity. Similarly, nitrate reductase, glutamine synthetase activities, and glutamine content were measured during the heading phenophase. Due to the effects of experimental warming, peroxidase activity significantly increased. The nitrate reductase activity was also higher in the warming treatment, suggesting a high nitrogen metabolism efficiency. Whereas, the increase observed in the glutamine synthetase activity, and consequently the glutamine content, evidenced a biochemical signal of an early senescence due to the effect of warming

Characteristics of Mexican Leather Footwear Industry and its International Trade Activity, Correlation of Productivity, and Competitiveness

This paper focuses on analyzing the globalization effect on the Mexican leather footwear industry at a firm-level. In this work, the analysis of competitiveness is done based on the definition given by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). They defined it as ‘a measure of a country's advantage or disadvantage in selling its products in international market’. The productivity of the Mexican leather footwear industry was calculated using the Latin American-KLEMS Model that relates gross output to primary (Capital and Labor) and intermediate inputs (Energy, Other intermediate goods, and Services). Furthermore, firms were categorized considering the number of employees, the annual value of production, and the commercial diversification in order to calculate the correlation Pearson coefficient. Firstly, the results show that the correlation of production value with the number of exporting companies is bigger than the correlation of the importing companies. Secondly, that the correlation of Total Productivity Factor (TPF) to exports is strong (0.7028); and finally, that the correlation of Total Productivity Factor (TPF) to imports is also significant (0.6511)

A demonstration of modeling count data with an application to physical activity

Counting outcomes such as days of physical activity or servings of fruits and vegetables often have distributions that are highly skewed toward the right with a preponderance of zeros, posing analytical challenges. This paper demonstrates how such outcomes may be analyzed with several modifications to Poisson regression. Five regression models 1) Poisson, 2) overdispersed Poisson, 3) negative binomial, 4) zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP), and 5) zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) are fitted to data assessing predictors of vigorous physical activity (VPA) among Latina women. The models are described, and analytical and graphical approaches are discussed to aid in model selection. Poisson regression provided a poor fit where 82% of the subjects reported no days of VPA. The fit improved considerably with the negative binomial and ZIP models. There was little difference in fit between the ZIP and ZINB models. Overall, the ZIP model fit best. No days of VPA were associated with poorer self-reported health and less assimilation to Anglo culture, and marginally associated with increasing BMI. The intensity portion of the model suggested that increasing days of VPA were associated with more education, and marginally associated with increasing age. These underutilized models provide useful approaches for handling counting outcomes

CF2 transcription factor is involved in the regulation of Mef2 RNA levels, nuclei number and muscle fiber size

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. CF2 and Mef2 influence a variety of developmental muscle processes at distinct stages of development. Nevertheless, the exact nature of the CF2-Mef2 relationship and its effects on muscle building remain yet to be resolved. Here, we explored the regulatory role of CF2 in the Drosophila embryo muscle formation. To address this question and not having proper null CF2 mutants we exploited loss or gain of function strategies to study the contribution of CF2 to Mef2 transcription regulation and to muscle formation. Our data point to CF2 as a factor involved in the regulation of muscle final size and/or the number of nuclei present in each muscle. This function is independent of its role as a Mef2 collaborative factor in the transcriptional regulation of muscle-structural genes. Although Mef2 expression patterns do not change, reductions or increases in parallel in CF2 and Mef2 transcript abundance were observed in interfered and overexpressed CF2 embryos. Since CF2 expression variations yield altered Mef2 expression levels but with correct spatio-temporal Mef2 expression patterns, it can be concluded that only the mechanism controlling expression levels is de-regu-lated. Here, it is proposed that CF2 regulates Mef2 expression through a Feedforward Loop circuit.This work was supported by Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad español (MINECO) BFU2010-19551 to M