Avian musing feature space analysis

The purpose of this study was to analyze the possibility of utilizing known signal processing and machine learning algorithms to correlate environmental data to chicken vocalizations. The specific musing to be analyzed consist of not just one chicken's vocalizations but of a whole collective, it therefore becomes a chatter problem. There have been similar attempts to create such a correlation in the past but with singled out birds instead of a multitude. This study was performed on broiler chickens (birds used in meat production). One of the reasons why this correlation is useful is for the purpose of an automated control system. Utilizing the chickens own vocalization to determine the temperature, the humidity, the levels of ammonia among other environmental factors, reduces, and might even remove, the need for sophisticated sensors. Another factor that this study wanted to correlate was stress in the chickens to their vocalization. This has great implications in animal welfare, to guarantee that the animals are being properly take care off. Also, it has been shown that the meat of non-stressed chickens is of much better quality than the opposite. The audio was filtered and certain features were extracted to predict stress. The features considered were loudness, spectral centroid, spectral sparsity, temporal sparsity, transient index, temporal average, temporal standard deviation, temporal skewness, and temporal kurtosis. In the end, out of all the features analyzed it was shown that the kurtosis and loudness proved to be the best features for identifying stressed birds in audio.MSCommittee Chair: Anderson, David; Committee Member: Romberg, Justin; Committee Member: Vela, Patrici

Increasing Student Motivation in a Foreign Language Classroom Through Mindfulness

The purpose of this study was to explore how mindfulness practices help increase motivation in high school students in a foreign language classroom. This study was conducted at a small school in an urban area in Texas. Nineteen students between the ninth and tenth grades were the participants in this research. The data collection included a pre and post motivational questionnaire that helped identify how motivated the students felt in the classroom. Data was collected on each participant through weekly self-assessments. The results of this action research showed that the implementation of mindfulness practices helped to increase the motivation of the students in the high school Spanish class. The action research project was conducted at the beginning of the second semester of the school year with a duration of four weeks

El uso del currículo oculto en la interpretación de cambio climático en infografías de estudiantes de educación superior

La importancia de los problemas ambientales hace evidente que se considere educar en cambio climático a los estudiantes. El propósito principal de este estudio fue explorar la interpretación de cambio climático en infografías de estudiantes de educación superior mediante el uso del currículo oculto. Para el logro del propósito se realizó un análisis de contenido para analizar las infografías que presentan los estudiantes antes (diagnóstico) y después (formativo) de usar un currículo oculto con conceptos de cambio climático en un curso de Biología General. El estudio que se llevó a cabo fue de carácter cualitativo con un enfoque de análisis de contenido. La muestra estuvo conformada por estudiantes de una institución de educación superior de Puerto Rico que tomaron un curso de Biología General. Los resultados del análisis de contenido reflejaron que el 81% de los estudiantes tuvo algún concepto erróneo de cambio climático al comienzo del curso. Luego, de ofrecer el curso de Biología General e integrar conceptos de cambio climático con un currículo oculto, los estudianestudiantes minimizaron sus conceptos erróneos a un 9%. Por tanto, se concluye que se deben integrar conceptos de cambio climático en los cursos de Ciencias para lograr una mejor Educación Ambiental. Esto explica que existe una necesidad por educar a los estudiantes en cambio climático como recomiendan las agencias estatales e internaciones. Entonces, se afirma que se debe considerar el potencial de las universidades para desarrollar la Educación Ambiental y establecer una colaboración estrecha entre las distintas instituciones de educación superior como bien lo estableció la Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura. // The importance of environmental issues is evident deemed climate change to educate students. The main purpose of this study was to explore the interpretation of climate change on infographics in higher education students using the hidden curriculum.To achieve the purpose, a content analysis was performed to analyze the infographics that present students before (diagnostic) and after (formative) to use a hidden curriculum concepts of climate change in a course of General Biology. The study was conducted was a qualitative content analysis approach. The sample consisted of undergraduate students of an institution of higher education in Puerto Rico who took a course in General Biology. The results of the content analysis reflected that 81% of students had some misconceptions of climate change at the beginning of the course. Then offer the course General Biology and integrate conceptsof climate change with a hidden curriculum, students downplayed their erroneous concepts to 9%. Therefore, we conclude that concepts should be integrated in climate change science courses for better environmental education. This explains why there is a need to educate students on climate change as recommended by the state and international agencies. So states to consider the potential of universities to develop environmental education and close collaboration between institutions of higher education as well as established the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

Characterization of the WEE1 Homologues and the Investigation of Factors Promoting Cellular Enlargement in Cryptococcus Neoformans

Cryptococcus neoformans is an opportunistic fungal pathogen, infecting mainly immunocompromised individuals. As the main cause of cryptococcosis, it is responsible for over 180,000 deaths every year. As an environmental yeast, it has unique adaptations that allow it to proliferate in the human host. Among these adaptations its capacity to transition to an extreme phenotype known as Titan cells is of special interest to researchers. With sizes above 10 um and able to reach 70 um or more in cell size. This size is accompanied with a large vacuole, larger polysaccharide capsule, and an increased resistance to fluconazole (FLC). FLC is a fungistatic drug that is widely used to treat cryptococcosis, so any mechanism that confers resistance to fluconazole is of the utmost importance to understand. Protocols to develop titanization in vitro have been developed, allowing the study of Titan cells in a laboratory setting, but questions remain. This dissertation utilizes two in vitro titanization protocols to answer if only C. neoformans can titanize. Multiple members of the Cryptococcus spp. were subjected to titanization protocols and analyzed to confirm if they had all characteristics described for Titan cells. This dissertation shows that titanization is unique to the members of the C. neoformans and its sister species C. gattii. Other Cryptococcus spp. could generate Titan- like cells but did not exhibit all the defined characteristics. This dissertation also highlights minimum conditions that contribute to titanization in vitro. While previous titanization protocol relied on serum, here we present a serum-free protocol that induces titanization in vitro and allowed us to analyze these Titan cells. In particular pH was found to be of importance for titanization. An optimal pH for titanization was found to be ~7.3, while slightly acidic pH (5.5) prevents titanization but is conducive to proliferation of yeast cells and a relatively alkaline (8.0) inhibits proliferation. This dissertation establishes that pH response is critical for Titan cell formation, and that conditions that inhibit proliferation are enough for titanization. Additionally, this dissertation characterizes two cell cycle control kinases, SWE1 and SWE102. These genes are homologs of the cell cycle regulator SWE1 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The cell cycle in budding yeast, S. cerevisiae, is regulated by the morphogenesis checkpoint kinase Swe1, which inhibits cyclin dependent kinase (CDK), by phosphorylation, prior to mitosis and during stress. SWE1 and SWE102 were knocked out individually, generating single deletion mutants. These mutants demonstrated that Swe1 and Swe102 can phosphorylate CDK1 in C. neoformans and can recover the phenotype in a S. cerevisiae swe1∆ strain phosphorylating CDK1 in it as well. The single deletion mutants also show increased sensitivity to antifungals, heat stress response, and surprisingly to DNA damage by genotoxic chemicals. Elimination of SWE1 and SWE102 appears to be synthetic lethal. To circumvent this, a copper regulated promoter (CTR4) was introduced as the promoter for Swe1, while Swe102 was knocked out in the same C. neoformans strains. Treating this CTR4 promoter strain and the single deletion mutants with DNA damaging agents resulted in the treated cells becoming resistant to FLC and showing aneuploidy and increase in ploidy levels, both of which have been associated with FLC resistance. The single deletions were able to titanize, with the swe1∆ demonstrating an irregular-looking capsule and swe102∆ shows an elongated cell body phenotype and capsule formation. We provide an analysis of the myriad roles Swe1 and Swe102 have in cell cycle control, stress response, and morphological transitions demonstrating the importance of studying the cell cycle to better understand the pathogenesis of C. neoformans

Bilingual Education in English-Only: A Qualitative Case Study of Language Policy in Practice at Lincoln Elementary School

In this qualitative case study, we investigate teachers’ appropriation of language policy at one urban elementary school in Illinois. Recognizing classroom teachers’ central role in the education of English learners, we probe teachers’ policy appropriation, or how bilingual educators take state-, district-, and school-level policies and corresponding programmatic requirements and utilize them in their own ways in classrooms in the midst of heightened accountability, including the shift to the Common Core Standards and other policy changes. Using ethnographic methods including participant observation, field notes, surveys, and interviews, we study the case of Abraham Lincoln School, which serves predominantly Latino students through both transitional and maintenance bilingual program models. Findings indicate the impacts of external demands on bilingual teachers’ policy appropriation, as accountability to English-only tests shaped decisions in classroom practice. Results demonstrate that bilingual education is not consistently occurring in Lincoln classrooms, due to lack of clear expectations, multiple initiatives that take away from needed classroom instructional time, high-stakes and standardized tests given only in English, and varying challenges of students’ Spanish proficiency due to the rush to mainstream. The significance of findings center on teachers’ integral roles as policy makers in bilingual education, as they engage in daily decision making that directly impacts the education of English learners in Midwestern schools

Stochastic Invariants for Probabilistic Termination

Termination is one of the basic liveness properties, and we study the termination problem for probabilistic programs with real-valued variables. Previous works focused on the qualitative problem that asks whether an input program terminates with probability~1 (almost-sure termination). A powerful approach for this qualitative problem is the notion of ranking supermartingales with respect to a given set of invariants. The quantitative problem (probabilistic termination) asks for bounds on the termination probability. A fundamental and conceptual drawback of the existing approaches to address probabilistic termination is that even though the supermartingales consider the probabilistic behavior of the programs, the invariants are obtained completely ignoring the probabilistic aspect. In this work we address the probabilistic termination problem for linear-arithmetic probabilistic programs with nondeterminism. We define the notion of {\em stochastic invariants}, which are constraints along with a probability bound that the constraints hold. We introduce a concept of {\em repulsing supermartingales}. First, we show that repulsing supermartingales can be used to obtain bounds on the probability of the stochastic invariants. Second, we show the effectiveness of repulsing supermartingales in the following three ways: (1)~With a combination of ranking and repulsing supermartingales we can compute lower bounds on the probability of termination; (2)~repulsing supermartingales provide witnesses for refutation of almost-sure termination; and (3)~with a combination of ranking and repulsing supermartingales we can establish persistence properties of probabilistic programs. We also present results on related computational problems and an experimental evaluation of our approach on academic examples.Comment: Full version of a paper published at POPL 2017. 20 page

Una Especie Nueva de Tillus Olivier, 1790 (Coleoptera Cleridae) de la Peninsula Ibérica

6 páginas, 2 figuras et al..[EN] Tillus ibericus sp. nov. is described from the Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain) and it is compared to the western Palaearctic species of the genus Tillus Olivier, 1790. Tillus ibericus is easily distinguished from all other species of the genus by the structure of the elytral sculpture and its characteristic coloration. This new species shares a general habitus and characters from the antennae, and general body stucture with T. flabellicornis Fairmaire, 1866, a species from northern Africa. All preexisting records of T. flabellicornis in the Iberian Peninsula correspond to T. ibericus.[ES]Se describe Tillus ibericus sp. nov. de la Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid (España) y se compara con las otras especies del género Tillus Olivier, 1790 de la región Paleártica occidental. Tillus ibericus se distingue con facilidad de las especies próximas por la estructura del punteado elitral y por su coloración característica. La especie nueva comparte un aspecto general y caracteres de la estructura del cuerpo y de las antenas con T. flabellicornis Fairmaire, 1866 del Norte de África. Todas las citas anteriores de T. flabellicornis de la Península Ibérica corresponden a T. ibericus sp. nov.Peer reviewe

Semi-Empirical Haken-Strobl Model for Molecular Spin Qubits

Understanding the physical processes that determine the relaxation $T_{1}$ and dephasing $T_2$ times of molecular spin qubits is critical for envisioned applications in quantum metrology and information processing. Recent spin-echo $T_1$ measurements of solid-state molecular spin qubits have stimulated the development of quantum mechanical models for predicting intrinsic spin qubit timescales using first-principles electronic structure methods. We develop an alternative semi-empirical approach to construct Redfield quantum master equations for molecular spin qubits using a stochastic Haken-Strobl model for a central spin with a fluctuating gyromagnetic tensor due to spin-lattice interaction and a fluctuating local magnetic field due to interactions with other lattice spins. Using a vanadium-based spin qubit as a case study, we compute qubit population and decoherence timescales as a function of temperature and magnetic field using a bath spectral density parametrized with a small number of $T_{1}$ measurements. The theory quantitatively agrees with experimental data over a range of conditions beyond those used to parametrize the model, demonstrating the generalization potential of the method. The ability of the model to describe the temperature dependence of the ratio $T_2/T_1$ is discussed and possible applications for designing novel molecule-based quantum magnetometers are suggested.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure