Having a Heart for ALL Students

The student body in today’s general educational classrooms continues to increase in diversity, with many of the students being English language learners. This growth in the number of non-English speaking students brings challenges to educators. Students’ test scores are the measurement of success for educators, resulting in a decrease of caring about students as individuals. This article addresses the importance and responsibility for Christian educators to reach out to non-English speaking students

Strong Hall voltage modulation in hybrid ferromagnet/semiconductor microstructures

We present a new magnetoelectronic device consisting of a µm-scale semiconductor cross junction and a patterned, electrically isolated, ferromagnetic overlayer with in-plane magnetization. The large local magnetic field emanating from the edge of the thin ferromagnetic film has a strong perpendicular magnetic component, B[perpendicular](r), which induces a Hall resistance, RH, in the microjunction. External application of a weak in-plane magnetic field reverses the magnetization of the ferromagnet and with it B[perpendicular](r), thus modulating RH. Our data demonstrate that this strong "local" Hall effect is operative at both cryogenic and room temperatures, and is promising for device applications such as field sensors or integrated nonvolatile memory cells

Magnetoelectronic Phenomena at a Ferromagnet-Semiconductor Interface

A Comment on the Letter by P. R. Hammar et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 203 (1999)

ALICE Diffractive Detector Control System for RUN-II in the ALICE Experiment

This paper describes general characteristics of the deployment and commissioned of the Detector Control System (DCS) AD0 for the second phase of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The AD0 detector is installed in the ALICE experiment to provide a better selection of diffractive events.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, To be published in Journal of Physics Conference Series (IOP). Joint Proceedings of the XV Mexican Workshop on Particles and Fields & the XXX Annual Meeting of the Division of Particles and Fields of the Mexican Physical Societ

Ultrasound-guided trans-rectal high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) for advanced cervical cancer ablation is feasible: a case report.

High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is an ablative treatment undergoing assessment for the treatment of benign and malignant disease. We describe the first reported intracavitary HIFU ablation for recurrent, unresectable and symptomatic cervical cancer.A 38 year old woman receiving palliative chemotherapy for metastatic cervical adenocarcinoma was offered ablative treatment from an intracavitary trans-rectal HIFU device (Sonablate® 500). Pre-treatment symptoms included vaginal bleeding and discharge that were sufficient to impede her quality of life. No peri-procedural adverse events occurred. Symptoms resolved completely immediately post-procedure, reappeared at 7 days, increasing to pre-procedural levels by day 30.This first time experience of intracavitary cervical HIFU suggests that it is feasible for palliation of advanced cervical cancer, with no early evidence of unexpected toxicity. Ethical approval had also been granted for the use of per-vaginal access if appropriate. This route, alone or in combination with the rectal route, may provide increased accessibility in future patients with a redesigned device more suited to trans-vaginal ablations.Intracavitary HIFU is a potentially safe procedure for the treatment of cervical cancer and able to provide symptomatic improvement in the palliative setting

Spin Injection in a Ballistic Two-Dimensional Electron Gas

We explore electrically injected, spin polarized transport in a ballistic two-dimensional electron gas. We augment the Buettiker-Landauer picture with a simple, but realistic model for spin-selective contacts to describe multimode reservoir-to-reservoir transport of ballistic spin 1/2 particles. Clear and unambiguous signatures of spin transport are established in this regime, for the simplest measurement configuration that demonstrates them directly. These new effects originate from spin precession of ballistic carriers; they exhibit strong dependence upon device geometry and vanish in the diffusive limit. Our results have important implications for prospective ``spin transistor'' devices.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

MTBVAC vaccine is safe, immunogenic and confers protective efficacy against Mycobacterium tuberculosis in newborn mice

Development of novel more efficient preventive vaccines against tuberculosis (TB) is crucial to achieve TB eradication by 2050, one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) for the current century. MTBVAC is the first and only live attenuated vaccine based on a human isolate of Mycobacterium tuberculosis developed as BCG-replacement strategy in newborns that has entered first-in-human adult clinical trials. In this work, we characterize the safety, immunogenicity and protective efficacy of MTBVAC in a model of newborn C57/BL6 mice. Our data clearly indicate that MTBVAC is safe for newborn mice, and does not affect animal growth or organ development. In addition, MTBVAC-vaccinated mice at birth showed enhanced immunogenicity and better protection against M. tuberculosis challenge in comparison with BCG

Critical assessment of protein intrinsic disorder prediction (CAID) - Results of round 2

Protein intrinsic disorder (ID) is a complex and context-dependent phenomenon that covers a continuum between fully disordered states and folded states with long dynamic regions. The lack of a ground truth that fits all ID flavors and the potential for order-to-disorder transitions depending on specific conditions makes ID prediction challenging. The CAID2 challenge aimed to evaluate the performance of different prediction methods across different benchmarks, leveraging the annotation provided by the DisProt database, which stores the coordinates of ID regions when there is experimental evidence in the literature. The CAID2 challenge demonstrated varying performance of different prediction methods across different benchmarks, highlighting the need for continued development of more versatile and efficient prediction software. Depending on the application, researchers may need to balance performance with execution time when selecting a predictor. Methods based on AlphaFold2 seem to be good ID predictors but they are better at detecting absence of order rather than ID regions as defined in DisProt. The CAID2 predictors can be freely used through the CAID Prediction Portal, and CAID has been integrated into OpenEBench, which will become the official platform for running future CAID challenges

Pediatric Esophageal Dilatations: A Cross-Specialty Experience

AIM OF THE STUDY: Esophageal dilatations are commonly performed in pediatric patients who have undergone an esophageal atresia/tracheoesophageal fistula (EA/TEF) repair or following caustic injury. We sought to compare the practice of esophageal dilatation across different specialties. METHODS: We analyzed all patients who had an esophageal dilatation at our center between April 2014 and December 2018. Patients were identified via prospectively maintained databases and clinical coding records. Patients had a combination of dilatations under each specialty: interventional radiology (IR), surgery, and gastroenterology. RESULTS: Thirty-five individual patients underwent 226 dilatations, median dilatations per patient was 3 (1–40). The median age at first dilatation was 18 months (1–194 months). Sixty-eight percent of patients had a previous EA/TEF repair. IR performed 59% of dilatations, surgeons 26%, and 15% by gastroenterologists. Surgeons more frequently were performing initial dilatations (P < .05) and performed more dilatations in EA/TEF patients (P < .0001). There was a significant difference between the time from a surgical dilatation until the next dilatation, 3.7 months, compared with an IR dilatation, 1.8 months (ANOVA, P < .05). Surgeons more frequently increased the size of balloon used (57% versus 33% versus 39%, P < .01). There was no significant difference in balloon size between specialties or in the incremental increase in size between subsequent dilatations. There was one postprocedure perforation, managed conservatively (complication rate = 0.4%). CONCLUSIONS: We have demonstrated that on average, patients wait longer after a surgical dilatation until their next procedure, and surgical teams are more likely to increase the size of the dilating balloon. Surgeons tend to be more involved in their postoperative patients in the initial phases of stricture management. Our results suggest the feasibility and safety of a multispecialty approach for these patients

Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans’ Amphibian Host Species and Invasion Range

Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal), a species related to the destructive pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), was found and identified in Europe in 2013. Now, a decade later, a large amount of information is available. This includes data from studies in the field, reports of infection in captive amphibians, laboratory studies testing host susceptibility, and data from prospective studies that test for Bsal’s presence in a location. We conducted a systematic review of the published literature and compiled a dataset of Bsal tests. We identified 67 species that have been reported positive for Bsal, 20 of which have a threatened conservation status. The distribution of species that have been found with infection encompasses 69 countries, highlighting the potential threat that Bsal poses. We point out where surveillance to detect Bsal have taken place and highlight areas that have not been well monitored. The large number of host species belonging to the families Plethodontidae and Salamandridae suggests a taxonomic pattern of susceptibility. Our results provide insight into the risk posed by Bsal and identifies vulnerable species and areas where surveillance is needed to fill existing knowledge gaps