An exploration of preservice teachers\u27 multicultural self-efficacy and awareness of white privilege

Currently, in the United States there is incongruence between student demographics in public schools and the characteristics of American K-12 teachers. More specifically, there are growing numbers of students of color, while the majority of teachers are White, middle-class females. Given the increasing pluralism in U.S. schools, it is imperative that teachers have multicultural self-efficacy as well as an awareness of White privilege in order to be prepared to teach in a culturally competent manner. Educators and students must be prepared to live and work effectively in a social system as well as a global environment where they will need to be able to work with people of different races and cultural practices. This necessitates a change in the way schools and teachers traditionally have functioned as well as the preparation of preservice teachers entering the field. It is negligent to enter preservice teachers into the field of education without taking proper measures to increase their level of multicultural self-efficacy and awareness of White privilege. This study will examine preservice teachers\u27 multicultural self-efficacy and awareness of White privilege. The current literature on cultural competence is robust in the field of counseling/social work and healthcare; however, it does not explore multicultural self-efficacy and white privilege in depth and certainly does not extend to the field of education. Herein lies the gap in the current research. Critical Race Theory, Critical White Studies, and Self-efficacy Theory are the lens for multicultural self-efficacy and awareness of White privilege in this study

Improving Patch-Based Convolutional Neural Networks for MRI Brain Tumor Segmentation by Leveraging Location Information.

The manual brain tumor annotation process is time consuming and resource consuming, therefore, an automated and accurate brain tumor segmentation tool is greatly in demand. In this paper, we introduce a novel method to integrate location information with the state-of-the-art patch-based neural networks for brain tumor segmentation. This is motivated by the observation that lesions are not uniformly distributed across different brain parcellation regions and that a locality-sensitive segmentation is likely to obtain better segmentation accuracy. Toward this, we use an existing brain parcellation atlas in the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) space and map this atlas to the individual subject data. This mapped atlas in the subject data space is integrated with structural Magnetic Resonance (MR) imaging data, and patch-based neural networks, including 3D U-Net and DeepMedic, are trained to classify the different brain lesions. Multiple state-of-the-art neural networks are trained and integrated with XGBoost fusion in the proposed two-level ensemble method. The first level reduces the uncertainty of the same type of models with different seed initializations, and the second level leverages the advantages of different types of neural network models. The proposed location information fusion method improves the segmentation performance of state-of-the-art networks including 3D U-Net and DeepMedic. Our proposed ensemble also achieves better segmentation performance compared to the state-of-the-art networks in BraTS 2017 and rivals state-of-the-art networks in BraTS 2018. Detailed results are provided on the public multimodal brain tumor segmentation (BraTS) benchmarks

The Self and Autobiographical Memory: Correspondence and Coherence

Introduces a modified version of Conway and Pleydell-Pearce\u27s Self Memory System (SMS) account of autobiographical memory and the self. Discussion of a fundamental tension between adaptive correspondence and self-coherence; Examination of tension; Application of SMS to personality and clinical psychology

Práticas de ensino a partir da inclusão do tema transversal pluralidade cultural: análise de projetos na Escola Estadual Dr. Fernando Abbott – São Gabriel/RS

This article studies extracurricular projects developed at a Brazilian Public School name EscolaEstadual Dr Fernando Abbott located in São Gabriel, Rio Grande do Sul State, which had theintention to incorporate the Transversal Subjects, in special, the Cultural Plurality in its EducationalProgram. The available projects were evaluated as well as the interviews done with teachers andthe members of the Principal Office. After doing that we got to the conclusion that almost all theprojects have taken into consideration those Transversal Subjects and that Cultural Plurality wasaccomplished during the realization of the Project called “ConsciênciaNegra” (or BlackConsciousness) about African contribution to Brazilian Culture, including not only Art, History,Food, Religious aspects but also the situation of afro Brazilians into contemporary society. Thispaper has demonstrated how rich and meaningful this subject can be if we use it permanently.Este artigo refere-se ao estudo de projetos extracurriculares desenvolvidos na Escola Estadual Dr. Fernando Abbott, do município de São Gabriel-RS, que tiveram a intenção de incorporar os temas transversais, em especial, a Pluralidade Cultural em seu currículo. Foram avaliados os projetos disponíveis na supervisão escolar, realizadas entrevistas com professores e direção da Escola, onde se constatou que a maioria dos projetos propostos contemplou os Temas Transversais, sendo que a Pluralidade Cultural esteve evidenciada mais especificamente na realização do “Projeto Consciência Negra”. Estepropiciou de maneira interdisciplinar, um resgate histórico eculturalque valorizou as diversidades étnicas. Nesta investigação,percebeu-se o quanto a abordagem deste tema oferece um campo extremamente diversificado e importante, que deve ser inserido no processo ensino-aprendizagem de forma contextualizada e permanente

Conceptual and Measurement Challenges in Research on Cognitive Reserve

Cognitive reserve, broadly conceived, encompasses aspects of brain structure and function that optimize individual performance in the presence of injury or pathology. Reserve is defined as a feature of brain structure and/or function that modifies the relationship between injury or pathology and performance on neuropsychological tasks or clinical outcomes. Reserve is challenging to study for two reasons. The first is: reserve is a hypothetical construct, and direct measures of reserve are not available. Proxy variables and latent variable models are used to attempt to operationalize reserve. The second is: in vivo measures of neuronal pathology are not widely available. It is challenging to develop and test models involving a risk factor (injury or pathology), a moderator (reserve) and an outcome (performance or clinical status) when neither the risk factor nor the moderator are measured directly. We discuss approaches for quantifying reserve with latent variable models, with emphasis on their application in the analysis of data from observational studies. Increasingly latent variable models are used to generate composites of cognitive reserve based on multiple proxies. We review the theoretical and ontological status of latent variable modeling approaches to cognitive reserve, and suggest research strategies for advancing the field

Corrigendum: Improving Patch-Based Convolutional Neural Networks for MRI Brain Tumor Segmentation by Leveraging Location Information.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2019.01449.]

Comparative transcriptomic analysis of Gardnerella vaginalis biofilms vs. planktonic cultures using RNA-seq

Bacterial vaginosis is the most common gynecological disorder affecting women of reproductive age. Bacterial vaginosis is frequently associated with the development of a Gardnerella vaginalis biofilm. Recent data indicates that G. vaginalis biofilms are more tolerant to antibiotics and are able to incorporate other bacterial vaginosis -associated species, yielding a multi-species biofilm. However, despite its apparent role in bacterial vaginosis, little is known regarding the molecular determinants involved in biofilm formation by G. vaginalis. To gain insight into the role of G. vaginalis in the pathogenesis of bacterial vaginosis, we carried out comparative transcriptomic analysis between planktonic and biofilm phenotypes, using RNA-sequencing. Significant differences were found in the expression levels of 815 genes. A detailed analysis of the results obtained was performed based on direct and functional gene interactions. Similar to other bacterial species, expression of genes involved in antimicrobial resistance were elevated in biofilm cells. In addition, our data indicate that G. vaginalis biofilms assume a characteristic response to stress and starvation conditions. The abundance of transcripts encoding proteins involved in glucose and carbon metabolism was reduced in biofilms. Surprisingly, transcript levels of vaginolysin were reduced in biofilms relative to planktonic cultures. Overall, our data revealed that gene-regulated processes in G. vaginalis biofilms resulted in a protected form of bacterial growth, characterized by low metabolic activity. This phenotype may contribute towards the chronic and recurrent nature of bacterial vaginosis. This suggests that G. vaginalis is capable of drastically adjusting its phenotype through an extensive change of gene expressionThis work was presented at Biofilms7 meeting (26–28 June 2016, Porto, Portugal) and was awarded the Biofilms7—SPM Young Researcher Award. N.C. is an Investigador FCT. This work was funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) by the strategic project of UID/BIO/04469/2013 unit and the project RECI/BBB-EBI/0179/2012 (FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-027462), and by the National Institutes of Health; P60 MD002256 “VCU NIMHD Comprehensive Center of Excellence”. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The following authors had an individual FCT fellowship: J.C. (SFRH/BD/93963/2013) and A.F. (SFRH/BPD/99961/2014)