Study of behavioral modifications resulting from exposure to high let radiation

Animal irradiations, behavioral studies, neurological studies, and nuclear medicine studies are discussed

Teaching Notes for CHAPTER 3: The Declarations of Independence: The Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic

Teaching Notes for The Declarations of Independence: The Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, by Rudy L. Hightower II. The Declarations of Independence tells the story of two lifelong, middle-aged friends who are on opposite, ethnically divided sides of a sovereignty issue facing their homeland, known locally as Pridnestrovie. Not recognized by the majority of the International Community, Pridnestrovie must decide between fighting for independence and peaceful reunification with Moldova. Yet, either course of action could lead to perennially tense co-existence between Pridnestrovians and Moldavans. The case study addresses several recurring factors found in most sovereignty disputes, such as ethnicity, history, international credibility and recognition, military conflicts, language, and culture

The Closing of One Black Box, The Opening of Another: A Self-Study of How an Instructional Coach Makes Decisions

Despite the efforts of traditional and alternative teacher education programs (i.e. pre-service teacher education) in the United States, teachers frequently report feeling unprepared by the time they begin teaching full time in the classroom. Teachers with low levels of self-efficacy are correlated with lower job satisfaction, higher levels of stress and anxiety, and lower student achievement gains in the classroom. To assist with ameliorating these gaps, schools, districts, and private distributors provide training opportunities for teachers once they have begun the job (i.e. in-service teacher training) in the form of teacher professional development. Mainstream professional development approaches are traditionally simplistic in nature, offered only as single sessions, lectures, or occasional workshops, and are defined by a lack of direct application hands-on practice, are limited in scope, and frequently do not involve follow-up or feedback opportunities. While these approaches may be suitable for simple classroom procedures, they are rarely effective for long term retention of complex skills or for shifting pedagogical paradigms.Coaching is a professional development practice that holds several affordances beyond the traditional approaches. It is highly customizable to each teacher, student group, and overall context, allowing for differentiation and scaffolding for each unique situation. Additionally, feedback and frequent follow-up provide teachers with ample data to inform their practice and growth while also being held accountable to the goals of the professional development. These affordances are well-suited for complex professional development goals, but gaps remain in the coaching literature. Notably, there are few documented experiences of the coach themselves in addition to the coachee. In research where the coach is documented, the internal decision-making processes or justifications of the coach are rarely clarified or examined. This is concerning, as it represents a ‘black box’ in the field that obfuscates the actual moment-to-moment process(es) that a coach utilizes when providing training and support to their coachee. This study sought to address the following research question: as the coaching cycle progresses over time, how does a coach make decisions based on the interactions between internal thought processes and observed teacher and classroom behaviors? To address this question, the study used an adapted self-study methodology modeled after instructional coaching cycles of observations and debriefings, with a heuristic evidentialist theoretical framing guiding the moment-to-moment and larger-scale interactions. The study utilized a moment-to-moment form of integrated analysis during the coaching cycles, as well as a second stage database analysis where all of the data was examined a second time using content analysis for overarching themes and a model to describe the coaching decision-making that took place. The coach/researcher was paired with a teacher by the principal of a Southwestern small charter school for approximately five months, twice a week for most weeks plus additional meetings after hours. The findings of the study lead to the creation of the black box model of coaching decisions, which describes a cyclical process of decision-making as informed from teacher’s observed actions, behaviors, and statements. Two themes of the decision-making process were revealed following the second stage of analysis: the perception of the teacher-coach relationship and its influence on the decision-making process, and the presence of seen/known and unseen/unknown factors’ interactions with decision-making. The findings suggest that there needs to be a greater emphasis in coaching research on the emotional realities of coaches (identity, background, experiences, trauma, etc.), as there are many underlying factors that are not initially observable in the decision-making process without prolonged reflection and action research. In particular, action research served as a cost and time-effective means of identifying unseen/unknown factors, and bringing them into increased awareness as seen/known factors that could actively be included as part of decision-making reflection process. Through this cyclical process of opening the coach’s black box, more complex reflection was possible, leading to more informed decision-making

IS AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH STILL A PUBLIC GOOD?

The nature of public agricultural research changed in 1980 when the Bayh-Dole Act allowed universities to retain title to inventions that were created with Federal funds, and the court case Diamond v. Chakrabarty allowed patenting of living tissue and eventually other bio-engineered products. In 1997, over 2,300 new licenses and options were executed on academic life-sciences property. This raises the questions agricultural research still be a public good? This paper is a critical first step in understanding how increasingly private ownership of intellectual property affects the agribusiness environment and the evolving role of public agricultural research institutions. The innovative step in this paper is the development of a formal economic model which represents the role of applied biotech research in the agricultural life sciences. The model is built around neo-Schumpeterian ideas of endogenous innovation and growth. The most salient implications for the role of the public sector are(1)The private sector underinvests in applied R&D activity. (2) Concentration in the large-firm, life-science R&D industry increases over time. (3) The life-science revolution is reducing the number of markets, in the short run. This reduction in the number of niche markets diminishes the role of the public sector. (4) There is a role for the public sector in conducting R&D in niche markets. (5) In the long run, the life-science revolution may also create new niche markets. (6) There is a role for the public sector in the provision of basic research which increases the productivity of applied R&D.Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

CYCLICAL CONCENTRATION AND CONSOLIDATION IN BIOTECH R&D: A NEO-SCHUMPETERIAN MODEL

Over the past fifteen years, the agricultural biotechnology industry has exhibited cyclical behavior in concentration and consolidation. This paper provides a theoretical model of endogenous R&D, in which industry concentration exhibits cyclical behavior. The model also generates additional testable hypotheses, and policy implications.Industrial Organization, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Scalable Mining of Common Routes in Mobile Communication Network Traffic Data

A probabilistic method for inferring common routes from mobile communication network traffic data is presented. Besides providing mobility information, valuable in a multitude of application areas, the method has the dual purpose of enabling efficient coarse-graining as well as anonymisation by mapping individual sequences onto common routes. The approach is to represent spatial trajectories by Cell ID sequences that are grouped into routes using locality-sensitive hashing and graph clustering. The method is demonstrated to be scalable, and to accurately group sequences using an evaluation set of GPS tagged data

Mercury Concentrations in Fish Jerky Snack Food: Marlin, Ahi, and Salmon

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Dried meat and fish have served as an important durable nutrition source for humans for centuries. Because omega 3 fatty acids in fish are recognized as having antioxidant and anti inflammatory properties found to be beneficial for good health, many consumers are looking to fish as their main source of protein. Unfortunately, contaminants such as methylmercury can accumulate in some species of fish. The purpose of this research is to test commercially available fish jerky snack foods for mercury contamination.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Fifteen bags of marlin jerky, three bags of ahi jerky, and three bags of salmon jerky were purchased from large retail stores in Hawaii and California, and directly from the proprietors' Internet websites. Five individual strips of jerky per bag were analyzed for a total of one hundred and five tests.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>From the seventy-five marlin jerky samples, mercury concentration ranged from 0.052-28.17 μg/g, with an average of 5.53 μg/g, median 4.1 μg/g. Fifty-six (75%) marlin samples had mercury concentrations that exceeded the FDA's current mercury action level of 1.0 μg/g, while six samples had greater than 10 μg/g. Fifteen samples of ahi had mercury concentrations ranging from 0.09-0.55 μg/g, while mercury concentrations in fifteen salmon samples ranged from 0.030-0.17 μg/g.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This study found that mercury concentrations in some fish jerky can often exceed the FDA's allowable mercury limit and could be a significant source of mercury exposure.</p

A Level-2 Reformulation–Linearization Technique Bound for the Quadratic Assignment Problem

This paper studies polyhedral methods for the quadratic assignment problem. Bounds on the objective value are obtained using mixed 0–1 linear representations that result from a reformulation–linearization technique (rlt). The rlt provides different “levels” of representations that give increasing strength. Prior studies have shown that even the weakest level-1 form yields very tight bounds, which in turn lead to improved solution methodologies. This paper focuses on implementing level-2. We compare level-2 with level-1 and other bounding mechanisms, in terms of both overall strength and ease of computation. In so doing, we extend earlier work on level-1 by implementing a Lagrangian relaxation that exploits block-diagonal structure present in the constraints. The bounds are embedded within an enumerative algorithm to devise an exact solution strategy. Our computer results are notable, exhibiting a dramatic reduction in nodes examined in the enumerative phase, and allowing for the exact solution of large instances