Planting Reconnaissance in District 1

Due to the great devastation to reproduction and young growth caused by fire and lumbering (the former by far the greater cause) District I of the United States Forest Service has for a number of years past, resorted to artificial regeneration or forest planting

A new approach to automatically evaluate problems that are solved using diagrams

Automatic correction of problems that are solved using diagrams through educational platforms is of great importance, especially in the field of engineering studies. In this paper, we present a new strategy to automatically assess diagrams. The proposed approach is described in detail as well as its application to assess entity/relationship diagrams used in the conceptual design of databases. The results indicate that the differences between manual and automatic assessment is less than 075 points over a total of ten which confirms the validity of the proposed approach. As a conclusion, the validity of the proposed method to assess entity/relationship diagrams reducing teacher correction time and unifying applied correction criteria is corroborated

From NCLB to ESSA: Implications for Teacher Preparation and Policy

With the 2001 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the term highly qualified teacher (HQT) became an important component of teacher licensure, including for special educators. However, when ESEA was reauthorized in 2015 as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the highly qualified regulations were removed. The purpose of this study was to look back at the historical record of policy implementation of HQT and compare the record across states to provide implications for teacher preparation and licensure policy in the era of ESSA. This was accomplished through a review of the history of special education teacher licensure and completion of a comprehensive analysis of state licensure requirements under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act. Despite a general consistency across three domains (i.e., degree, examination, and licensure) of the highly qualified statute, inconsistencies among states at both the elementary and secondary levels of special educator licensure may yield significant challenges related to the impact of teacher quality on student outcomes. Better understanding of these challenges is important as policymakers will be better able to make decisions regarding what teachers need to know prior to entering the field to meet students’ needs and generate student achievement

A new protein linear motif benchmark for multiple sequence alignment software

BACKGROUND: Linear motifs (LMs) are abundant short regulatory sites used for modulating the functions of many eukaryotic proteins. They play important roles in post-translational modification, cell compartment targeting, docking sites for regulatory complex assembly and protein processing and cleavage. Methods for LM detection are now being developed that are strongly dependent on scores for motif conservation in homologous proteins. However, most LMs are found in natively disordered polypeptide segments that evolve rapidly, unhindered by structural constraints on the sequence. These regions of modular proteins are difficult to align using classical multiple sequence alignment programs that are specifically optimised to align the globular domains. As a consequence, poor motif alignment quality is hindering efforts to detect new LMs. RESULTS: We have developed a new benchmark, as part of the BAliBASE suite, designed to assess the ability of standard multiple alignment methods to detect and align LMs. The reference alignments are organised into different test sets representing real alignment problems and contain examples of experimentally verified functional motifs, extracted from the Eukaryotic Linear Motif (ELM) database. The benchmark has been used to evaluate and compare a number of multiple alignment programs. With distantly related proteins, the worst alignment program correctly aligns 48% of LMs compared to 73% for the best program. However, the performance of all the programs is adversely affected by the introduction of other sequences containing false positive motifs. The ranking of the alignment programs based on LM alignment quality is similar to that observed when considering full-length protein alignments, however little correlation was observed between LM and overall alignment quality for individual alignment test cases. CONCLUSION: We have shown that none of the programs currently available is capable of reliably aligning LMs in distantly related sequences and we have highlighted a number of specific problems. The results of the tests suggest possible ways to improve program accuracy for difficult, divergent sequences

La plaqueta pintada del yacimiento epipaleolítico de Picamoixons (Alt Camp, Tarragona) : aproximación al estudio de la cadena operativa

En este trabajo se presenta el estudio realizado sobre una plaqueta pintada localizada en el yacimiento de Picamoixons, cuya cronología oscila entre 9.l70±80 y 11.050±90 B.P. A su vez se desarrolla una metodología referida al medio de aplicación de la pintura mediante las técnicas digital, pincel y "a crayon", en base a un programa experimental. Se describen los primeros resultados y su aplicación a la plaqueta de Picamoixons.In this work we present the study concerning a painted tablet on limestone located at the Picamoixons site, whose dating stands between 9.170±80 and 11.050±90 B.P. At the same time, a methodology is currently being developed regarding the means of application of (he painting through the digital, paintbrush and "a crayon" techniques, based on an experimental programo The frrst results and their application on the Picamoixons tablet are described