A phonological awareness intervention for at-risk preschoolers: the effects of supplemental, intensive small-group instruction

Results from phonological awareness research on assessment and intervention support two major suppositions. First, findings from correlational studies revealing that young children\u27s phonological sensitivity is related to the future development of reading skills (Lonigan et al., 1998) validate early screening of phonological awareness to identify children who may be at risk for encountering reading difficulties. Second, experimental studies examining the effectiveness of phonological awareness instruction demonstrate that young children\u27s phonological sensitivity can be promoted, thereby altering patterns of initial weaknesses (Bentin & Leshem, 1993; O\u27Connor et al., 1995b; Torgesen & Davis, 1996; Warrick et al., 1993) The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of small-group instruction designed to enhance whole-class phonological awareness instruction delivered to preschoolers. Intensive small-group instruction, which supplemented phonological awareness activities conducted with large classroom groups 3 times each week, was provided biweekly to students who demonstrated waeknesses in phonological awareness on pre-treatment measures. The contrast group of low-performing students participated in the whole-class phonological awareness instruction, but received no additional small-group instruction. All students enrolled in 4 different preschool classes participated in phonological awareness instruction delivered to intact classes of 17 to 20 students. Data collected on students participating in the low-skilled treatment and contrast groups and on a sample of average- to high-skilled students, serving as an additional contrast group, were analyzed to examine the effects of supplemental, intensive, small-group phonological awareness instruction delivered to low-skilled preschoolers. The effectiveness of supplemental, intensive, small-group phonological awareness instruction for preschoolers with little awareness of the phonological structure of language was not supported by the results of this study. Analyses of post-intervention scores revealed that the experimental treatment did not promote subjects\u27 phonological awareness to levels significantly higher than those of the low-skilled contrast students, who participated only in phonological awareness instruction delivered to the whole class. The supplemental small-group instruction also did not promote subjects\u27 phonological awareness to levels similar to those of the average- to high-skilled contrast students

TB research at UT-Houston--a review of cord factor: new approaches to drugs, vaccines and the pathogenesis of tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis remains a major threat as drug resistance continues to increase. Pulmonary tuberculosis in adults is responsible for 80% of clinical cases and nearly 100% of transmission of infection. Unfortunately, since we have no animal models of adult type pulmonary tuberculosis, the most important type of disease remains largely out of reach of modern science and many fundamental questions remain unanswered. This paper reviews research dating back to the 1950\u27s providing compelling evidence that cord factor (trehalose 6,6 dimycolate [TDM]) is essential for understanding tuberculosis. However, the original papers by Bloch and Noll were too far ahead of their time to have immediate impact. We can now recognize that the physical and biologic properties of cord factor are unprecedented in science, especially its ability to switch between two sets of biologic activities with changes in conformation. While TDM remains on organisms, it protects them from killing within macrophages, reduces antibiotic effectiveness and inhibits the stimulation of protective immune responses. If it comes off organisms and associates with lipid, TDM becomes a driver of tissue damage and necrosis. Studies emanating from cord factor research have produced (1) a rationale for improving vaccines, (2) an approach to new drugs that overcome natural resistance to antibiotics, (3) models of caseating granulomas that reproduce multiple manifestations of human tuberculosis. (4) evidence that TDM is a key T cell antigen in destructive lesions of tuberculosis, and (5) a new understanding of the pathology and pathogenesis of postprimary tuberculosis that can guide more informative studies of long standing mysteries of tuberculosis

OpenRefine/OpenRefine: OpenRefine v3.7.6

New in 3.7.6 A missing space was added in the layout of the text facet, by @frafra (#6071) Browser launching on startup was fixed for Snap-packaged OpenRefine, by @kristbaum (#6065) The selection of Wikibase statement merging strategies was fixed, by @wetneb (#6066) A resizing issue in the presence of the Wikibase extension and facets was fixed, by @Abbe98 (#6070) Vulnerabilities (fixed since 3.7.5) A moderate vulnerabilities in the database extension was fixed. Connecting to a malicious MySQL server could read files or execute arbitrary code on the machine running OpenRefine. The vulnerabilities were assigned CVE-2023-41886 and CVE-2023-41887 identifiers respectively, and were reported by @nbxiglk0. (fixed since 3.7.4) A moderate vulnerability in project import was fixed. Importing a maliciously crafted project could execute arbitrary code on the machine running OpenRefine. This vulnerability has been assigned the CVE-2023-37476 identifier. It was reported by Stefan Schiller from SonarSource. New features Most text exposed to users in OpenRefine's UI can now be translated. Some strings (generated server-side) were not translatable so far. To help translators catch up on this backlog, do not hesitate to join us on Weblate. (#5030) New media files can be uploaded to Wikibase instances such as Wikimedia Commons. The wikitext of existing files can also be edited thanks to the new fields introduced. (#4682) A button "Discover Wikibase instances…" was added on the dialog which lists the registered Wikibase instances (#5007), whose design was improved (#5009) In the Wikibase schema editor, statements with non-standard datatypes (such as EDTF dates or musical notations) are now supported, assuming they use strings as underlying representation (#3263) The Wikibase issues tab now makes it possible to locate which rows are responsible for certain issues, using facets (#5033) The default throttle delay for the "Add column by fetching URLs" operation was reduced to 500ms and the error reporting for this field was improved (#5188) Wikibase templates (incomplete Wikibase schemas) can be saved and shared, as a way of helping contributors use the same way of structuring data in a Wikibase instance (#5043, #5303) The line-based importer now supports a custom delimiter, instead of only newlines (#4103) The Excel importer can be configured to import all cells as text, disabling the use of other datatypes supported by OpenRefine (#4838) The "some value" and "no value" Wikibase values can now be uploaded by OpenRefine (#5360) The Excel importer will also avoid coercing cell values to OpenRefine datatypes which do not fully fit them, such as representing a date as a date with time (#5389, #5390). GREL changes Improved error handling in number formatting with the GREL toString function (#816) The behaviour of the GREL function wholeText() has changed slightly in the way it handles newlines, following an upstream change in the jsoup library (jsoup issue #1636) A new parent GREL function, to obtain the parent element of an XML element, was added (#5176) Bug fixes The layout of the dialog to select a reconciliation match was improved so that the auto-complete widget does not hide the other options (#4821) Better in-tool documentation around the way the scatterplot facet detects numerical columns (#4890) The detection of URLs in cell values was fixed (#4546) The error message displayed when trying to add a Wikibase manifest with a manifest version that is too old or recent was improved (#4847) Errors returned by Jython expressions are more readable (#3012) The ODS exporter no longer creates a default sheet "Sheet1" in the documents it creates (#4864) Longer descriptions in auto-completion widget are not cut off anymore (#4988) The interface for editing cell values was improved to better explain how to input dates (#3082) The Windows refine.bat script was made more consistent with the Unix refine script (#4949, #5404) The "Search for Match" dialog was rearranged so that the dropdown does not cover the buttons (#4945) Error handling in the scatterplot facet was improved (#4893) The "Collapse consecutive whitespaces" operation now handles unicode whitespace correctly (#4898) (#4991) The handling of GZIP-compressed files without .gz extension was improved in the importing pipeline (#547) (#5153) The "Add column based on this column dialog" can be submitted by pressing "Enter" in the column field (#5143) The editing of redirected Wikibase items was fixed (#5162) The user experience was improved in the case of incomplete Wikibase schemas (#5131) The memory usage display was improved to show the used memory instead of the total memory, and was made more precise (#5222) The association of labels to form inputs was improved, enhancing the accessibility of the interface (#5239, #5242, #5249, #5284) An overflow issue in the reconciliation dialog was fixed (#5285) The Wikibase manifests now properly support locally-running reconciliation endpoints (#5035) The aspect ratio of Wikibase logos is now properly preserved (#5306) The SQL exporter interface was improved (#5224) The cell edit popup and dialogs with textbox inputs became resizable (#5330) When marking a set of cells as "New" in an unreconciled column, the user is prompted for the reconciliation service to use (#4985) More quality assurance checks were introduced in the Wikibase extension, such as checking for identical label and description in new Wikibase items (#4980) The caching of auto-completion results in the Wikibase extension was fixed (#5190) The Wikidata extension was fully renamed to "Wikibase extension" (#4525) The controls of the cluster and edit dialog are greyed out while clustering is taking place (#5369) The handling of unicode whitespace was improved throughout the application (#5105) Our MacOS packages (.DMG) are now properly signed and notarized, which should make their installation easier (#4586). Also, the presentation of the DMG image was made more user-friendly by including the customary link to the Applications folder. (#5509) The parsing of the unary minus sign in GREL was fixed (#5465) (From 3.7-beta3 on) The clustering dialog no longer introduces non-breaking spaces when selecting options with spaces in them (#5581) (From 3.7.1 on) The display of the memory usage during project import was fixed (#5665) (From 3.7.2 on) The localization in German was fixed (#5750) (From 3.7.3 on) Starting openrefine.exe on Windows with Java 17 was fixed (#5583) (From 3.7.3 on) Wikibase edits on deleted items are skipped and do not stall the entire batch (#5385) (From 3.7.3 on) The HTML document language is aligned with the language of the interface (#5925) (From 3.7.3 on) The default reconciliation types are displayed with both name and id (#5907) (From 3.7.3 on) The transpose cells across columns was fixed so it treats blank cells as null (#5229

Expression and alternative splicing of classical and nonclassical MHCI genes in the hippocampus and neuromuscular junction

The major histocompatibility complex class I (MHCI) is a large gene family, with over 30 members in mouse. Some MHCIs are well-known for their critical roles in the immune response. Studies in mice which lack stable cell-surface expression of many MHCI proteins suggest that one or more MHCIs also play unexpected, essential roles in the establishment, function, and modification of neuronal synapses in the central nervous system (CNS). However, there is little information about which genes mediate MHCI’s effects in neurons. In this study, RT-PCR was used to simultaneously assess transcription of many MHCI genes in regions of the central and peripheral nervous system where MHCI has a known or suspected role. In the hippocampus, a part of the CNS where MHCI regulates synapse density, synaptic transmission, and plasticity, we found that more than a dozen MHCI genes are transcribed. Single-cell RT-PCR revealed that individual hippocampal neurons can express more than one MHCI gene, and that the MHCI gene expression profile of CA1 pyramidal neurons differs significantly from that of CA3 pyramidal neurons or granule cells of the dentate gyrus. MHCI gene expression was also assessed at the neuromuscular junction (NMJ), a part of the peripheral nervous system (PNS) where MHCI plays a role in neuronal regeneration, and could potentially influence developmental synapse elimination. Four MHCI genes are expressed at the NMJ at an age when synapse elimination is occurring in three different muscles. Several MHCI mRNA splice variants were detected in hippocampus, but not at the NMJ. Together, these results establish the first profile of MHCI gene expression at the developing NMJ, and demonstrate that MHCI gene expression is under tight spatial and temporal regulation in the nervous system. They also identify more than a dozen MHCIs that could play important roles in synaptic transmission and plasticity in the central and peripheral nervous systems