5,480 research outputs found
Developing a Pan-European Approach to Teacher Educators
This paper explores from an English perspective the outcomes of the InFo-TED* Summer Academy: a pan- European attempt to encourage collaboration in professional development for teacher educators (see Conway et al., 2015; Czerniawski et al., 2017). In exploring the experience and outcomes of collaborative professional development through the InFo-TED project, we recognise that the diversity of teacher education routes in England and shifting policy landscapes (Murray et al., 2017) create salient opportunities to explore the English context in line with European policy directives (Czerniawski et al., 2018; Vanassche et al., 2019) and the enacted and lived professional experiences of other European colleagues in this shifting field. To do this, this paper draws upon the auto-ethnographical reflections, vignettes and journals of Summer Academy participants, seeking to situate teacher educatorsâ practices within the âconcrete contextâ of teacher education reform (Vanassche et al., 2015). Within this context, we argue, is the need for a returned attention to teacher educatorsâ development
Teacher Educators and Expansive Learning in the Workplace and Beyond
Research on the professional learning of teacher educators is a relatively young and under-researched area, despite the importance of this occupational group in the fast-changing area of teacher education internationally. Past provision for learning has often focused on either one-off professional development events or workplace learning. Aiming to develop new knowledge and understanding of professional learning for teacher educators, this article attempts firstly, to analyse the impact of a one-off learning event, offered by the European InFo-TED group, on its participants, and secondly, to look at where and how the learning generated there developed further learning back in the workplace. Deploying a conceptual framework emphasising participatory professional learning and Engestromâs concept of expansive learning, we explore how these two forms of learning might be planned and implemented in order to provide integrated, professionally relevant and enduring forms of learning
Synchronicity of historical dry spells in the Southern Hemisphere
A shift in climate occurred during the mid-1970s that affected the
hydroclimate of the Southern Hemisphere resulting in drying trends across
continental regions including Australia, New Zealand and southern and western
Africa. There is also anecdotal evidence of other periods of climatic
synchronicity in the Southern Hemisphere (e.g., the 1920s and 1940s),
indicating that the mid-1970s event may not be anomalous. This paper
identifies periods within the last ~120 years using statistical
analysis where dry spells (in terms of annual to multi-decadal rainfall
deficiencies) have coincided across the continental Southern Hemisphere in
order to characterize temporal consistency. It is shown that synchronicity of
dry spells is (a) most likely common over the last 120 years and (b)
associated with changes in the large-scale climate modes of the Pacific,
Indian and Southern Oceans. Importantly, the findings presented in this paper
have marked implications for drought management and drought forecasting
studies in the Southern Hemisphere
Automating biomedical data science through tree-based pipeline optimization
Over the past decade, data science and machine learning has grown from a
mysterious art form to a staple tool across a variety of fields in academia,
business, and government. In this paper, we introduce the concept of tree-based
pipeline optimization for automating one of the most tedious parts of machine
learning---pipeline design. We implement a Tree-based Pipeline Optimization
Tool (TPOT) and demonstrate its effectiveness on a series of simulated and
real-world genetic data sets. In particular, we show that TPOT can build
machine learning pipelines that achieve competitive classification accuracy and
discover novel pipeline operators---such as synthetic feature
constructors---that significantly improve classification accuracy on these data
sets. We also highlight the current challenges to pipeline optimization, such
as the tendency to produce pipelines that overfit the data, and suggest future
research paths to overcome these challenges. As such, this work represents an
early step toward fully automating machine learning pipeline design.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, to appear in EvoBIO 2016 proceeding
Claims of employment discrimination and worker voice
Peer reviewedPostprin
Links between the Big Dry in Australia and hemispheric multi-decadal climate variability – implications for water resource management
Southeast Australia (SEA) experienced a protracted drought during the
mid-1990s until early 2010 (known as the Big Dry or Millennium Drought) that
resulted in serious environmental, social and economic effects. This paper
analyses a range of historical climate data sets to place the recent drought
into context in terms of Southern Hemisphere inter-annual to multi-decadal
hydroclimatic variability. The findings indicate that the recent Big Dry in
SEA is in fact linked to the widespread Southern Hemisphere climate shift
towards drier conditions that began in the mid-1970s. However, it is shown
that this link is masked because the large-scale climate drivers responsible
for drying in other regions of the mid-latitudes since the mid-1970s did not
have the same effect on SEA during the mid- to late 1980s and early 1990s.
More specifically, smaller-scale synoptic processes resulted in elevated
autumn and winter rainfall (a crucial period for SEA hydrology) during the
mid- to late 1980s and early 1990s, which punctuated the longer-term drying.
From the mid-1990s to 2010 the frequency of the synoptic processes associated
with elevated autumn/winter rainfall decreased, resulting in a return to
drier than average conditions and the onset of the Big Dry. The findings
presented in this paper have marked implications for water management and
climate attribution studies in SEA, in particular for understanding and
dealing with "baseline" (i.e. current) hydroclimatic risks
Whatâs so bad about scientism?
In their attempt to defend philosophy from accusations of uselessness made by prominent scientists, such as Stephen Hawking, some philosophers respond with the charge of âscientism.â This charge makes endorsing a scientistic stance, a mistake by definition. For this reason, it begs the question against these critics of philosophy, or anyone who is inclined to endorse a scientistic stance, and turns the scientism debate into a verbal dispute. In this paper, I propose a different definition of scientism, and thus a new way of looking at the scientism debate. Those philosophers who seek to defend philosophy against accusations of uselessness would do philosophy a much better service, I submit, if they were to engage with the definition of scientism put forth in this paper, rather than simply make it analytic that scientism is a mistake
Widespread mitochondrial depletion via mitophagy does not compromise necroptosis
Programmed necrosis (or necroptosis) is a form of cell death triggered by the activation of receptor interacting protein kinase-3 (RIPK3). Several reports have implicated mitochondria and mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation as effectors of RIPK3-dependent cell death. Here, we directly test this idea by employing a method for the specific removal of mitochondria via mitophagy. Mitochondria-deficient cells were resistant to the mitochondrial pathway of apoptosis, but efficiently died via tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-induced, RIPK3-dependent programmed necrosis or as a result of direct oligomerization of RIPK3. Although the ROS scavenger butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) delayed TNF-induced necroptosis, it had no effect on necroptosis induced by RIPK3 oligomerization. Furthermore, although TNF-induced ROS production was dependent on mitochondria, the inhibition of TNF-induced necroptosis by BHA was observed in mitochondria-depleted cells. Our data indicate that mitochondrial ROS production accompanies, but does not cause, RIPK3-dependent necroptotic cell death
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