Science materials for the gifted in grades two and three

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Modal Verbs in Tyneside English

Until very recently, the syntax of Tyneside English, like that of most English dialects, has been more or less neglected. This has partly been due to the methodological problems involved in collecting sufficient tokens of forms that will occur rarely in even a long stretch of speech, as is pointed out by Jones-Sargeant (1985). This paper constitutes a condensed account of a larger study carried out by the first-named author: at present, this is the only major study of Tyneside syntax to have been undertaken.  The modal syntax of Tyneside differs from that of Standard English in several important ways. Firstly, may and shall are hardly used at all in Tyneside, and at best are stylistic variants of can and will respectively, there being no context in which either may or shall is compulsory. Can and could have even more 'non-modal' characteristics in Tyneside than in Standard English. Other differences between Tyneside and Standard English include the more frequent use of 'epistemic' must and the rarity of ought, which coincides with infrequent use of should in 'non-root, non epistemic' uses as would be predicted by Leech & Coates (1977a and 1977b). Finally, the system of tags is totally different in Tyneside and Standard English respectively, the former having a larger set of options in which single and double negatives, contracted and uncontracted, are contrasted in order to distinguish between tags which ask for information and those requiring confirmation

Texar Federal Credit Union: Where Your Friends Are

TEXAR Federal Credit Union (formerly Bowie County Teachers Credit Union, Bowie-Cass Teachers Credit Union, and the Teachers Federal Credit Union) has been, from inception in 1951, a provider of a broad range of financial services to its members, primarily in Texarkana, Texas, and Arkansas and the surrounding areas. The credit union experienced normal growth over the years as it progressed through major name changes, especially to TEXAR in 2001. Another significant milestone was the decision to launch a major building program that concluded with moving into a new, large, and modern building in 2003. As the national economy went into a recession in 2008, the states of Texas and Arkansas experienced economic slowdowns that were not as significant as the changes that were reflected in the economic indicators at the national level or those experienced by other states that were much more severely affected. The Texarkana area economy was moderately affected by slowdowns in lending, especially for housing, automobiles, and other durable products.There was additional impact by an elevation in member loan defaults. Another significant occurrence, not related to the local economy, was the failure of U.S. Central Federal Credit Union and Western Corporate (WesCorp) Federal Credit Union and the financial losses of Southwest Corporate Federal Credit Union.Similar to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation that insures losses in the banking industry, the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund (NCUSIF) insures losses among credit unions. To help cover the losses of U.S. Central and WesCorp, TEXAR was assessed approximately $750,000 and because of the losses at Southwest Corporate, it was assessed approximately$700,000.That is the essence of this case

Six things to never say or hear during an IEP meeting: Educators as advocates for families

This is the publisher's version, also found here: http://cec.metapress.com/content/q473527322248262/?p=014673d7b6bc491891c1b5b4516bda13&pi=5The article discusses strategies for successful communication and collaboration between parents of children with disabilities and educators in individualized education programs (IEPs) that are mandated by the U.S. Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The authors look at communication over least restrictive environment (LEA) educational approaches which place students with disabilities in classroom settings like those of students without disabilities. Topics include educational leadership in IEPs, parent participation in IEPs in U.S. special education, and school district responsibilities for IEPs

Design for success: Identifying a process for transitioning to an intensive online course delivery model in health professions education.

Intensive courses (ICs), or accelerated courses, are gaining popularity in medical and health professions education, particularly as programs adopt e-learning models to negotiate challenges of flexibility, space, cost, and time. In 2014, the Department of Clinical Research and Leadership (CRL) at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences began the process of transitioning two online 15-week graduate programs to an IC model. Within a year, a third program also transitioned to this model. A literature review yielded little guidance on the process of transitioning from 15-week, traditional models of delivery to IC models, particularly in online learning environments. Correspondingly, this paper describes the process by which CRL transitioned three online graduate programs to an IC model and details best practices for course design and facilitation resulting from our iterative redesign process. Finally, we present lessons-learned for the benefit of other medical and health professions\u27 programs contemplating similar transitions. ABBREVIATIONS: CRL: Department of Clinical Research and Leadership; HSCI: Health Sciences; IC: Intensive course; PD: Program director; QM: Quality Matters

Is There an Estimation Bias in Occupational Health and Safety Surveys? The Mode of Administration and Informants as a Source of Error

Information quality deficiencies have been detected in occupational safety and health surveys in Europe, which typically gather self-reported data responded by employers or their representatives. For instance, their low response rates and informant profiles make estimations on establishments with safety representatives (SRs) unreliable. We tested the mode of administration and informants as sources of error regarding establishments with SRs in Catalonia, Spain. Two sources of information were compared: the Second Catalan Survey of Working Conditions 2011 (IICSWC) with a methodology similar to surveys conducted at the state and European level and the Progam on Prevention of Risks Management in Companies (PPRMC) in which the labor authority collected data using a documentary verification in another sample of establishments. Percentage of establishments with SRs was estimated using the data from the PPRMC and also the differences in percentage between sources and informant profiles (with 95 percent confidence interval). Results show that the IICSWC overestimates the percentage of establishments with SRs

Procurement of human tissues for research banking in the surgical pathology laboratory: Prioritization practices at Washington University Medical Center

Academic hospitals and medical schools with research tissue repositories often derive many of their internal human specimen acquisitions from their site's surgical pathology service. Typically, such acquisitions come from appropriately consented tissue discards sampled from surgical resections. Because the practice of surgical pathology has patient care as its primary mission, competing needs for tissue inevitably arise, with the requirement to preserve adequate tissue for clinical diagnosis being paramount. A set of best-practice gross pathology guidelines are summarized here, focused on the decision for tissue banking at the time specimens are macroscopically evaluated. These reflect our collective experience at Washington University School of Medicine, and are written from the point of view of our site biorepository. The involvement of trained pathology personnel in such procurements is very important. These guidelines reflect both good surgical pathology practice (including the pathologic features characteristic of various anatomic sites) and the typical objectives of research biorepositories. The guidelines should be helpful to tissue bank directors, and others charged with the procurement of tissues for general research purposes. We believe that appreciation of these principles will facilitate the partnership between surgical pathologists and biorepository directors, and promote both good patient care and strategic, value-added banking procurements

Получение модифицированных нефтеполимерных смол и применение их в составе водомасляных эмульсий

Использование нефтеполимерных смол в качестве стабилизаторов в водомасляных эмульсиях.Use of polimeric petroleum resins as stabilizers in water-in-oil emulsions

An Automated Procedure to Identify Biomedical Articles that Contain Cancer-associated Gene Variants

The proliferation of biomedical literature makes it increasingly difficult for researchers to find and manage relevant information. However, identifying research articles containing mutation data, a requisite first step in integrating large and complex mutation data sets, is currently tedious, time-consuming and imprecise. More effective mechanisms for identifying articles containing mutation information would be beneficial both for the curation of mutation databases and for individual researchers. We developed an automated method that uses information extraction, classifier, and relevance ranking techniques to determine the likelihood of MEDLINE abstracts containing information regarding genomic variation data suitable for inclusion in mutation databases. We targeted the CDKN2A (p16) gene and the procedure for document identification currently used by CDKN2A Database curators as a measure of feasibility. A set of abstracts was manually identified from a MEDLINE search as potentially containing specific CDKN2A mutation events. A subset of these abstracts was used as a training set for a maximum entropy classifier to identify text features distinguishing relevant from not relevant abstracts. Each document was represented as a set of indicative word, word pair, and entity tagger-derived genomic variation features. When applied to a test set of 200 candidate abstracts, the classifier predicted 88 articles as being relevant; of these, 29 of 32 manuscripts in which manual curation found CDKN2A sequence variants were positively predicted. Thus, the set of potentially useful articles that a manual curator would have to review was reduced by 56%, maintaining 91% recall (sensitivity) and more than doubling precision (positive predictive value). Subsequent expansion of the training set to 494 articles yielded similar precision and recall rates, and comparison of the original and expanded trials demonstrated that the average precision improved with the larger data set. Our results show that automated systems can effectively identify article subsets relevant to a given task and may prove to be powerful tools for the broader research community. This procedure can be readily adapted to any or all genes, organisms, or sets of documents

HIV prevalence and undiagnosed infection among a community sample of gay and bisexual men in Scotland, 2005-2011: implications for HIV testing policy and prevention

<b>Objective</b><p></p> To examine HIV prevalence, HIV testing behaviour, undiagnosed infection and risk factors for HIV positivity among a community sample of gay men in Scotland.<p></p> <b>Methods</b><p></p> Cross-sectional survey of gay and bisexual men attending commercial gay venues in Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland with voluntary anonymous HIV testing of oral fluid samples in 2011. A response rate of 65.2% was achieved (1515 participants).<p></p> <b>Results</b><p></p> HIV prevalence (4.8%, 95% confidence interval, CI 3.8% to 6.2%) remained stable compared to previous survey years (2005 and 2008) and the proportion of undiagnosed infection among HIV-positive men (25.4%) remained similar to that recorded in 2008. Half of the participants who provided an oral fluid sample stated that they had had an HIV test in the previous 12 months; this proportion is significantly higher when compared to previous study years (50.7% versus 33.8% in 2005, p<0.001). Older age (>25 years) was associated with HIV positivity (1.8% in those <25 versus 6.4% in older ages group) as was a sexually transmitted infection (STI) diagnosis within the previous 12 months (adjusted odds ratio 2.13, 95% CI 1.09–4.14). There was no significant association between age and having an STI or age and any of the sexual behaviours recorded.<p></p> <b>Conclusion</b><p></p> HIV transmission continues to occur among gay and bisexual men in Scotland. Despite evidence of recent testing within the previous six months, suggesting a willingness to test, the current opt-out policy may have reached its limit with regards to maximising HIV test uptake. Novel strategies are required to improve regular testing opportunities and more frequent testing as there are implications for the use of other biomedical HIV interventions.<p></p&gt