Changing the World through the Word: Developing Critical Consciousness through Multicultural Children’s Literature with Critical Literacy in an Elementary Classroom

The purpose of this study was to explore how fifth graders develop critical consciousness regarding the self and the world through critical literacy approaches using multicultural children’s literature. I employed Lewison, Flint, and Van Sluys’ four dimensions of critical literacy. I used a qualitative case study to design, frame and conduct this study in order to collect data and examine students’ cultural patterns including values, beliefs, behaviors, and language that they enacted in the critical literacy practices. I collected data through classroom observations, semi-structured students and teacher interviews, informal conversation, researcher’s reflective journal entries and field notes, and student-made artifacts. Findings show that the students were more aware of their own sociopolitical positions in the school, home and society, as well as how their lives were shaped by the sociocultural and political forces. The students were able to link their critical understanding of their own lives to larger sociopolitical issues associated with power and privilege, and this understanding encouraged them to engage in action for social justice. They were eager to take action such as writing a petition for a gender fairness agenda to create a positive school climate. This study is important for educators who hope to encourage students to become critical thinkers, as it shows how children critically engage in reading, discussion, and action regarding social justice issues through multicultural children’s literature with critical literacy approaches

Living and Teaching in Two Worlds: Professional Identity Development in Transnational Dual Language Immersion Teachers

This study explores how transnational teachers working in dual language immersion schools in the United States negotiate their professional identity to pursue a career in teaching. Researchers pay attention to tensions between transnational teachers’ individual agency and the sociocultural influence of the workplace. An important issue is how chainging teacher’s professional identity impacts the ways in which they implement curriulum, particularly related to accountability. Framed by third space theory, we explore their heterogeneous stories and socio-culturally contextualized teaching experiences via a qualitative multiple case study. The three teachers wer all teaching Spanish or Chinese in urban public elementary schools in the Intermountain West region of the United States. Data sources include a semester long classroom observation, semi-structured teacher interviews, informal conversations with the teachers, teacher journal entries, and artifacts. Our results indicate that these teachers’ professional identity development processes were diverse, complex, and ongoing. All three displayed multicultural awareness regarding the codes of their new educational and cultural settings and exercised their agency through strong self-concept and frequent reflection within their situated contexts. Their prior cross-cultural teaching and schooling experiences served as a springboard that enabled them to gain a better understanding of their culturally and linguistically diverse students and to teach their target languages by incorporating elements of their students’ sociocultural backgrounds. This study supports a rich sociocultural appreciation of the processes and contexts of transnational teachers’ professional identity development. Keywords: Professional identity development, teacher identity, transnational teacher, third space theory, dual language immersio

Gating of memory encoding of time-delayed cross-frequency MEG networks revealed by graph filtration based on persistent homology

To explain gating of memory encoding, magnetoencephalography (MEG) was analyzed over multi-regional network of negative correlations between alpha band power during cue (cue-alpha) and gamma band power during item presentation (item-gamma) in Remember (R) and No-remember (NR) condition. Persistent homology with graph filtration on alpha-gamma correlation disclosed topological invariants to explain memory gating. Instruction compliance (R-hits minus NR-hits) was significantly related to negative coupling between the left superior occipital (cue-alpha) and the left dorsolateral superior frontal gyri (item-gamma) on permutation test, where the coupling was stronger in R than NR. In good memory performers (R-hits minus false alarm), the coupling was stronger in R than NR between the right posterior cingulate (cue-alpha) and the left fusiform gyri (item-gamma). Gating of memory encoding was dictated by inter-regional negative alpha-gamma coupling. Our graph filtration over MEG network revealed these inter-regional time-delayed cross-frequency connectivity serve gating of memory encoding

DeepCompass: AI-driven Location-Orientation Synchronization for Navigating Platforms

In current navigating platforms, the user's orientation is typically estimated based on the difference between two consecutive locations. In other words, the orientation cannot be identified until the second location is taken. This asynchronous location-orientation identification often leads to our real-life question: Why does my navigator tell the wrong direction of my car at the beginning? We propose DeepCompass to identify the user's orientation by bridging the gap between the street-view and the user-view images. First, we explore suitable model architectures and design corresponding input configuration. Second, we demonstrate artificial transformation techniques (e.g., style transfer and road segmentation) to minimize the disparity between the street-view and the user's real-time experience. We evaluate DeepCompass with extensive evaluation in various driving conditions. DeepCompass does not require additional hardware and is also not susceptible to external interference, in contrast to magnetometer-based navigator. This highlights the potential of DeepCompass as an add-on to existing sensor-based orientation detection methods.Comment: 7page with 3 supplemental page

Optimal likelihood-ratio multiple testing with application to Alzheimers disease and questionable dementia

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.Abstract Background Controlling the false discovery rate is important when testing multiple hypotheses. To enhance the detection capability of a false discovery rate control test, we applied the likelihood ratio-based multiple testing method in neuroimage data and compared the performance with the existing methods. Methods We analysed the performance of the likelihood ratio-based false discovery rate method using simulation data generated under independent assumption, and positron emission tomography data of Alzheimers disease and questionable dementia. We investigated how well the method detects extensive hypometabolic regions and compared the results to those of the conventional Benjamini Hochberg-false discovery rate method. Results Our findings show that the likelihood ratio-based false discovery rate method can control the false discovery rate, giving the smallest false non-discovery rate (for a one-sided test) or the smallest expected number of false assignments (for a two-sided test). Even though we assumed independence among voxels, the likelihood ratio-based false discovery rate method detected more extensive hypometabolic regions in 22 patients with Alzheimers disease, as compared to the 44 normal controls, than did the Benjamini Hochberg-false discovery rate method. The contingency and distribution patterns were consistent with those of previous studies. In 24 questionable dementia patients, the proposed likelihood ratio-based false discovery rate method was able to detect hypometabolism in the medial temporal region. Conclusions This study showed that the proposed likelihood ratio-based false discovery rate method efficiently identifies extensive hypometabolic regions owing to its increased detection capability and ability to control the false discovery rate

Tailored growth of single-crystalline InP tetrapods

Despite the technological importance of colloidal covalent III-V nanocrystals with unique optoelectronic properties, their synthetic process still has challenges originating from the complex energy landscape of the reaction. Here, we present InP tetrapod nanocrystals as a crystalline late intermediate in the synthetic pathway that warrants controlled growth. We isolate tetrapod intermediate species with well-defined surfaces of (110) and ((1) over bar(1) over bar(1) over bar) via the suppression of further growth. An additional precursor supply at low temperature induces [(1) over bar(1) over bar(1) over bar]-specific growth, whereas the [110]-directional growth occurs over the activation barrier of 65.7 kJ/mol at a higher temperature, thus finalizes into the (111)-faceted tetrahedron nanocrystals. We address the use of late intermediates with well-defined facets at the sub-10 nm scale for the tailored growth of covalent III-V nanocrystals and highlight the potential for the directed approach of nanocrystal synthesis