Generating Cultural Capital? Impacts of Artists-in-Residence on Teacher Professional Learning

The introduction of the Australian Arts Curriculum and the rise of a twenty-first century creativity agenda in education signal an opportunity for teacher educators to re-examine the outcomes and potential of arts-based initiatives on teacher professional learning. This study re-visits the outcomes of the Australian Artist-in-Residence program in this context and analyses a subset of data collected for its evaluation. The study reveals that while teachers perceive an improvement in creative capital, it is important to consider questions about the capacity for such programs to generate long term changes in practice. The study illustrates how some States and Territories embedded opportunities for collective reflective activity to facilitate such change and suggests there is potential for AIR models to support pre-service and in-service professional learning in creative and critical thinking as well as the arts curriculum. With the Professional Engagement domain of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (Graduate teachers), in particular Standards 6 and 7, this is timely research

Perspectives on professional development in Australian education: some realities of Standards-based professional development

This article addresses the adoption of Standards‐based professional development (PD) in contemporary Australian education, through consideration of three different areas of professional practice: mathematics teaching, early childhood education and care (ECEC), and school leaders’ legal literacy. The article sets out the policy basis for Standards‐based PD in education, in particular the development of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers and Principals by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, as well as recent research on PD. A framework for effective PD, which draws on both policy and research, is set out as a model through which Standards‐based PD in the three areas of practice is examined. Standards‐based PD in mathematics teaching, which has had, and continues to exhibit, close connections with the relevant professional population through their peak representative body, is seen to satisfy the criteria for effective PD in terms of being continuous, relevant, collaborative and future‐focused. The PD arrangements within the ECEC sector, which have been well‐resourced and supported at the highest policy levels, similarly meet the criteria. The lack of systemic PD on Education Law for school principals is cause for concern

Type I interferon response in bovine endometrial cells co-cultured with peripheral blood mononuclear cells

Embryonic loss is an issue that livestock producers are faced with worldwide. This particular research assesses one aspect of the role that immune cells play in embryonic survival, more specifically, the interaction between peripheral blood mononuclear cells and bovine endometrial cells, and their connection to interferon-stimulated genes. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells were taken from three different cows and were cultured with bovine endometrial cells. Some of the cultures contained interferon, and some did not. After incubation, results showed that the immune cells did not increase interferon-stimulated genes, and are stimulating a pathway in the response to pregnancy that is currently unknown

Occupational Impacts of Seizures

This research looks at the occupational impacts of seizure disorders on the adolescent population. The research study explores how their condition impacts the adolescent and family unit. The research was gathered from multiple perspectives to gain an in-depth understanding to best aid occupational therapists and health care professionals to gain a deeper understanding of areas to address when working with this population.https://soar.usa.edu/otdcapstonesspring2024/1059/thumbnail.jp

How Do Epistemological Beliefs Contribute To Leadership Behaviour, And the Changes Required to Meet The Needs of Today's Business Challenges?

The relationship between personal epistemological beliefs and behaviours of leaders will be undertaken as part of a doctoral research investigation. The research will also examine the changes that occur in leadership constructs and behaviour when epistemological beliefs are surfaced and explored with individuals. Leadership research and theory are briefly examined to identify a relevant leadership paradigm on which to begin the research. Similarly, epistemological beliefs and their role in leader values, decision-making and practice are discussed. Links between surfacing epistemological beliefs and leadership change are highlighted from the literature and offered as an imperative for investigation. Several postulates from the literature review are presented for consideration and as signposts for the doctoral study

Violência exercida contra grupos considerados desviantes ou outsiders

Orientador: Nelson Rosário de SouzaMonografia (especialização) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Ciências Humanas, Curso de Especialização em Sociologia PolíticaInclui referênciasResumo: Esta monografia apresenta uma breve interpretação bibliográfica buscando compreender melhor a questão da percepção da violência exercida contra grupos considerados desviantes ou outsiders. Primeiramente buscando definir quem seriam esses desviantes, pois a violência contra as minorias é uma constante histórica. Também podemos perceber esse tipo de comportamento nas ações da polícia militar, poder judiciário e presídios, além da violência em nosso cotidiano contra esses grupos, por isso se torna imperativo estudarmos estas situações. Onde as medidas punitivas superam as buscam pela inclusão social

High-level synthesis for medical image processing on Systems on Chip : a case study

Adaptive radiotherapy is a technique intended to increase the accuracy of radiotherapy. Currently, it is not clinically feasible due to the time required to process the images of patient anatomy. Hardware acceleration of image processing algorithms may allow them to be carried out in a clinically acceptable timeframe. This paper presents the experiences encountered using high-level synthesis tools to design an accelerated segmentation algorithm for computed tomography images targeted for implementation on a System on Chip. Hardware coprocessors and their interfaces for optimal threshold generation and 3D mean filter algorithms were synthesised from C++ functions. Hardware acceleration significantly outperformed the software only implementation. The high-level synthesis tools allowed the rapid exploration of different design options. However, hardware design knowledge was still necessary in order to interpret the results effectively

Hardware accelerated image processing to enable real-time adaptive radiotherapy

The accuracy of radiotherapy is constrained by organ motion and deformation occurring between the acquisition of CT and MR images used to plan the treatment and the time at which the treatment is delivered. Adaptive radiotherapy uses image data acquired at the time of treatment to adapt the original treatment plan to match the current patient anatomy. Currently, the image processing and dose calculation algorithms required to perform this plan adaptation cannot be executed in a clinically acceptable timeframe. Hardware acceleration has the potential to speedup these algorithms, making real-time adaptive radiotherapy a clinical possibility[1]. Hardware acceleration is a technique where an algorithm is implemented using hardware that is better suited to the specific algorithm than more general purpose processors in order to reduce the execution time of the algorithm. This can be achieved using field programmable gate arrays (FPGA), which are devices consisting of reconfigurable hardware, allowing their function to be customised for a specific application. These devices have been shown to be able to accelerate image processing algorithms pertinent to adaptive radiotherapy[2]. In this study a global thresholding algorithm based on Otsu’s method combined with a three dimensional mean filter was used to segment a series of CT images of a Modus QUASAR respiratory motion phantom into three unique classes. A Xilinx Zynq Z-7020 device consisting of a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 central processing unit (CPU) coupled to an 85 000 logic cell FPGA was used to accelerate the algorithm by implementing sections of it in the reconfigurable hardware. The execution time of this implementation was compared to an implementation running on an ARM CPU and Intel Core-i5 CPU. The execution times of the implementations are shown in table 1. The hardware accelerated implementation was found to execute nearly sixty times as fast as the un-accelerated algorithm. The hardware accelerated implementation was also found to run around 14% faster than on the more powerful Intel Core-i5 CPU. Figure 1 shows an example of the segmentation results where the blue contour represents the boundary between two of the classes. In the algorithms presented here the overhead of transferring data to the hardware represents a significant proportion of the algorithm execution time. It is anticipated that greater acceleration will be possible for algorithms with greater computational complexity because the data transfer overhead will represent a smaller proportion of the overall execution time. The requirement for fast processing in radiotherapy is likely to increase as the amount of data available to more accurately guide treatment increases through the use of techniques such as 4D CT and image-guided radiotherapy. FPGA have been shown to be effective at accelerating certain algorithms required for real-time adaptive radiotherapy, however, more research is required to establish which will execute faster on other types of hardware, such as CPU and graphical processing units (GPU). It is likely that heterogeneous computing platforms, composed of a mixture of hardware architectures, will be used in the future implementation of real-time adaptive radiotherapy. References: 1.K. Østergaard Noe, B.D. De Senneville, U.V. Elstrøm, K. Tanderup, T.S. Sørensen, “Acceleration and validation of optical flow based deformable registration for image-guided radiotherapy,” Acta Oncologica, vol. 47, no. 7, pp.1286-1293, 2008 2.O. Dandekar, R. Shekhar, “FPGA-Accelerated Deformable Image Registration for Improved Target-Delineation During CT-Guided Interventions,” IEEE Trans. Biomed. Circuits Syst., vol. 1, no. 2, pp.116-127, 200