Improving quality and equity in schools in socially disadvantaged areas

Background: Recent effectiveness studies have investigated the relationship between two dimensions of effectiveness - namely, quality and equity. Specifically, the question of whether effective schools can also reduce the initial differences in student outcomes attributed to student background factors has been examined. In this context, the Dynamic Approach to School Improvement (DASI) makes use of theory and the research findings of effectiveness studies to try to improve school effectiveness in terms of quality and equity. Purpose: This study aimed to examine whether the implementation of DASI in primary schools in socially disadvantaged areas in four European countries (Cyprus, England, Greece and Ireland) was able to promote student learning outcomes in mathematics and to reduce the impact of student background factors on student achievement in mathematics. Design and methods: A sample of 72 primary schools across the four countries was randomly split into experimental and control groups. At the beginning and at the end of the school year, mathematics tests were administered to all students of Grades 4-6 (n = 5560; student ages 9-12 years). The experimental group made use of DASI. Within-country multilevel regression analyses were conducted to evaluate the impact of the intervention and search for interaction effects between the use of DASI and student background factors on final achievement. Results: In each country, the experimental group achieved better results in mathematics than the control group. At the beginning of the intervention, the achievement gap based on socio-economic status (SES) was equally large in the experimental and the control groups. Only in the experimental group did the achievement gap based on SES become smaller. However, DASI was not found to have an effect on equity when the equity dimension was examined by focusing on the achievement gap based on either gender or ethnicity. Conclusions: Implications of findings are drawn and the importance of measuring equity in terms of student achievement gaps based on different background factors, rather than only on SES, is emphasised. We propose the evaluation of the impact of interventions on promoting equity by the use of various criteria

Systems Level Metabolic Phenotype of Methotrexate Administration in the Context of Non-alcoholic Steatohepatitis in the Rat.

Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) represent a significant clinical challenge with respect to patient morbidity and mortality. We investigated the hepatotoxicity and systems level metabolic phenotype of methotrexate (MTX) in the context of a prevalent liver disease; non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). A nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopic-based metabonomic approach was employed to analyze the metabolic consequences of MTX (0, 10, 40, and 100 mg/kg) in the urine and liver of healthy rats (control diet) and in a model of NASH (methionine-choline deficient diet). Histopathological analysis confirmed baseline (0 mg/kg) liver necrosis, liver inflammation, and lipid accumulation in the NASH model. Administration of MTX (40 and 100 mg/kg) led to liver necrosis in the control cohort, whereas the NASH cohort also displayed biliary hyperplasia and liver fibrosis (100 mg/kg), providing evidence of the synergistic effect of MTX and NASH. The complementary hepatic and urinary metabolic phenotypes of the NASH model, at baseline, revealed perturbation of multiple metabolites associated with oxidative and energetic stress, and folate homeostasis. Administration of MTX in both diet cohorts showed dose-dependent metabolic consequences affecting gut microbial, energy, nucleobase, nucleoside, and folate metabolism. Furthermore, a unique panel of metabolic changes reflective of the synergistic effect of MTX and NASH was identified, including the elevation of hepatic phenylalanine, urocanate, acetate, and both urinary and hepatic formiminoglutamic acid. This systems level metabonomic analysis of the hepatotoxicity of MTX in the context of NASH provided novel mechanistic insight of potential wider clinical relevance for further understanding the role of liver pathology as a risk factor for ADRs

11-Year Experience with Anatomical and Extra-anatomical Repair of Mycotic Aortic Aneurysms

AbstractBackground. We have reviewed our management, of both ruptured and non-ruptured, abdominal and thoraco-abdominal mycotic aneurysms in order to determine the safety and efficacy of in situ and extra-anatomical prosthetic repairs.Methods. Data regarding presenting symptoms, investigations, operative techniques and outcome, were collected on patients treated at a singe centre over 11 years.Results. There were 11 men and four women, with a median age of 70 years (range, 24–79). All but one patient were symptomatic and six had a contained leak on admission. In six patients no organisms were identified in either blood or tissue cultures. Pre-operative CT identified; four infra-renal, four juxta-renal, three (Crawford thoraco-abdominal) type IV, three type III and one type II, aortic aneurysms. Thirteen were repaired with in situ prostheses and two required axillo-femoral prosthetic grafts. There were four early deaths. All surviving patients have been followed-up for a median duration of 38 months (range 1/2–112 months). There were two late deaths at 3 months (juxta-renal) and at 2 years (type III), the latter relating to graft infection.Conclusions. In the absence of uncontrolled sepsis, repair of mycotic aortic aneurysms using prosthetic grafts can achieve durable results

Seismic retrofitting and health monitoring of school buildings of Cyprus

The vulnerability of existing buildings to seismic forces and their retrofitting is an international problem. The majority of structures in seismic-prone areas worldwide are structures that have been designed either without the consideration of seismic forces, or with previous codes of practice specifying lower levels of seismic forces. In Cyprus, after the three earthquakes that occurred in 1995, 1996, and 1999, the Cyprus State, acting in a pioneering way internationally, has decided the seismic retrofitting of all school buildings, taking into account the sensitivity of the society towards these structures, which house the future generation of the society. In this paper the overall assessment methodology is presented, along with details of the over 10 year ongoing retrofitting program of the school buildings of Cyprus, with emphasis on the description of the program and the development of a wireless monitoring system. In addition, mathematical models of selected school buildings are presented and comparison is made with in-situ measurement

Surgery remains the best option for the management of pain in patients with chronic pancreatitis: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Controversy related to endoscopic or surgical management of pain in patients with chronic pancreatitis remains. Despite improvement in endoscopic treatments, surgery remains the best option for pain management in these patients

Seismic retrofitting of RC frames with RC infilling

The effectiveness of seismic retrofitting of multi-storey multi-bay RC-frame buildings, by converting selected bays into new walls through infilling with RC, was studied experimentally at the ELSA facility at JRC, Ispra, and the results are reported here. The full-scale model tested with the pseudo-dynamic method consisted of two parallel frames, linked through 0.15m slabs, having three bays each (8.5m long), with the central bay (2.5m) infilled with RC wall, and being four storeys tall (12m). The frames were designed and detailed for gravity loads only and are typical of similar frames built in Cyprus in the 1970's. Different connection details and reinforcement percentages for the two infilled frames were used in order to study the effects of these parameters. The results of the pseudo-dynamic and cyclic testing performed are presented and conclusions are drawn

Emission-aware Energy Storage Scheduling for a Greener Grid

Reducing our reliance on carbon-intensive energy sources is vital for reducing the carbon footprint of the electric grid. Although the grid is seeing increasing deployments of clean, renewable sources of energy, a significant portion of the grid demand is still met using traditional carbon-intensive energy sources. In this paper, we study the problem of using energy storage deployed in the grid to reduce the grid's carbon emissions. While energy storage has previously been used for grid optimizations such as peak shaving and smoothing intermittent sources, our insight is to use distributed storage to enable utilities to reduce their reliance on their less efficient and most carbon-intensive power plants and thereby reduce their overall emission footprint. We formulate the problem of emission-aware scheduling of distributed energy storage as an optimization problem, and use a robust optimization approach that is well-suited for handling the uncertainty in load predictions, especially in the presence of intermittent renewables such as solar and wind. We evaluate our approach using a state of the art neural network load forecasting technique and real load traces from a distribution grid with 1,341 homes. Our results show a reduction of >0.5 million kg in annual carbon emissions -- equivalent to a drop of 23.3% in our electric grid emissions.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure, This paper will appear in the Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Future Energy Systems (e-Energy 20) June 2020, Australi

The role of thrombospondins in wound healing, ischemia, and the foreign body reaction

Thrombospondin (TSP) 1 and TSP2 have been implicated in the regulation of several processes during tissue repair. Due to their matricellular nature, these proteins are thought to modulate cell-matrix interactions through a variety of mechanisms specific to the spatio-temporal context of their expression. Most notably, TSP1 and TSP2 appear to play distinct, non-overlapping roles in the healing of skin wounds. In contrast, both proteins have been implicated as regulators of ischemia-induced angiogenesis. Moreover, TSP2 has been shown to be a critical regulator of angiogenesis in the foreign body response (FBR). In this review, we discuss the role of TSPs in tissue repair and examine the mechanistic data regarding the ability of the thrombospondins to modulate cell-matrix interactions in this context

Optimizing Bus Routes in Nicosia

In this report the conclusions by the team of experts that took the ”Trans- portation Organization of the Nicosia District (OSEL)” challenge are provided. The challenge was to identify ways to improve efficiency of the bus network and increase the utilization of the network by the public. A thorough analysis of the various factors that affect bus route planning is provided. Moreover, a demonstration of a simplified route planning problem is described in order to motivate further work on this topic. Recommendations are provided to the company on the way to move forward towards solving the problem of creating a bus network with increased efficiency and grater appeal to the public. Specific recommendations include the collection of a larger amounts of data that can be used to generate models used in simulation analysis. Data include demographic data on bus usage and bus usage preferences by the public. In addition, data is required on bus travel times, walking distance to the nearest bus stop by the commuter, and traffic data

Exploring the pharmacokinetics of phenoxymethylpenicillin (Penicillin-V) in adults: a healthy volunteer study

This healthy volunteer study aimed to explore Phenoxymethylpenicillin (Penicillin-V) pharmacokinetics (PK) to support the planning of large, dosing studies in adults. Volunteers were dosed with penicillin-V at steady state. Total and unbound penicillin-V serum concentration was determined and a base population PK model were fitted to the data