Rush to Judgment: Teacher Evaluation in Public Education

The troubled state of teacher evaluation is a glaring and largely neglected problem in public education. Co-director Thomas Toch and Robert Rothman of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform examine the causes and consequences of the crisis in teacher evaluation, as well as its implications for the current debate about performance pay

Delta Air Lines, Inc. v. August, 101 S. Ct. 1146 (1981)

Civil Procedure-FEDERAL RULE OF CIVIL PROCEDURE 68-WHEN IT COMES DOWN TO COSTS, IT\u27S NOT HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME, IT\u27S WHETHER YOU WIN OR LOS

The Development, Use, and Optimization of Sortase-Tag Expressed Protein Ligation

Molecular imaging is an emerging field that seeks to combine the mechanistic detail of biochemical assays with the the broad phenotypic data obtained from non-invasive medical imaging. A cornerstone of molecular imaging is the ability to chemically attach a contrast-inducing payload to a targeting ligand, a protein that binds tightly and specifically to the targeted cell population. There are currently many approaches to bioconjugation. Chemical approaches have broad applicability, but lack the site-specificity and efficiency desired for contrast agent generation. Enzymatic techniques are quantitative, efficient, and site-specific, but often have limited scope and can add significant bulk to the targeting ligand or require additional downstream purification steps. In this work, we create a novel bioconjugation and protein purification technique, Sortase-Tag Expressed Protein Ligation (STEPL). By fusing the active domain of S. aureus Sortase A to the targeting ligand as part of a greater chimeric protein, we are able to combine protein purification and the C-terminal bioconjugation of that protein into a single step. Using a mass-action kinetics model, we prove that this results in a modular, efficient system capable of producing high-purity conjugated protein. We then use the system to generate contrast agents for fluorescent and magnetic imaging studies. The modularity of the STEPL system allows us to create an array of monospecific and bispecific targeting ligand dimers, linked by two different spacer regions. The dimers\u27 binding properties are probed and they are used to successfully bind and label cells, with the bispecific proteins enhancing contrast of a cell line that is positive for both targets. Finally the STEPL system is subjected to a number of directed evolution approaches and screened for a clone that could further improve STEPL\u27s efficiency and yield

An Appeal to All Americans: National Commission on Civic Investment in Public Education

A national commission comprised of top education and philanthropic leaders is calling with new urgency for an increase in the nation's commitment to and civic investment in public education. An Appeal to All Americans also represents the first national and independently authored report to outline standards of practice for public and local education funds.As federal and state governments make dramatic cuts to public education funding, the independent National Commission on Civic Investment in Public Education urges the public to redouble its efforts to ensure that the nation's public schools provide a high-quality education for all young people.The Commission, created by Public Education Network (PEN), was charged with making a renewed case for civic investment, highlighting the work of organizations that can build and channel that investment, and developing standards for the rapidly-rising number of citizendriven, local public education assistance organizations - local education funds (LEFs), school foundations, etc. - working throughout our nation to improve public schools

The First Amendment and the Right(s) of Publicity

The right of publicity protects persons against unauthorized uses of their identity, most typically their names, images, or voices. The right is in obvious tension with freedom of speech. Yet courts seeking to reconcile the right with the First Amendment have to date produced only a notoriously confused muddle of inconsistent constitutional doctrine. In this Article, we suggest a way out of the maze. We propose a relatively straightforward framework for analyzing how the right of publicity should be squared with First Amendment principles.At the root of contemporary constitutional confusion lies a failure to articulate the precise state interests advanced by the right of publicity. We seek to remedy this deficiency by disaggregating four distinct state interests that the right of publicity is typically invoked to protect. We argue that in any given case the right of publicity is characteristically invoked to protect (one or more) of these four interests: the value of a plaintiff’s performance, the commercial value of a plaintiff’s identity, the dignity of a plaintiff, or the autonomous personality of a plaintiff.Plaintiffs’ interests in their identity must always be weighed against defendants’ constitutional interests in their speech. We therefore isolate three constitutional kinds of communication, each with a distinct form of First Amendment protection. A defendant’s misappropriation of a plaintiff’s identity can occur in public discourse, in commercial speech, or in what we call “commodities.” We then discuss how constitutional protections for these three kinds of speech should intersect with the four different interests that right of publicity claims are typically invoked to protect.The upshot is not a mechanical algorithm for producing correct constitutional outcomes, but an illumination of the constitutional stakes at issue in any given right of publicity action. We hope that by carefully surfacing the constitutional and policy stakes that beset the conflict between right(s) of publicity and the First Amendment, we have sketched a map that might substantially assist those who must navigate this tumultuous terrain

Referencing Sources of Molecular Spectroscopic Data in the Era of Data Science: Application to the HITRAN and AMBDAS Databases

The application described has been designed to create bibliographic entries in large databases with diverse sources automatically, which reduces both the frequency of mistakes and the workload for the administrators. This new system uniquely identifies each reference from its digital object identifier (DOI) and retrieves the corresponding bibliographic information from any of several online services, including the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data Systems (ADS) and CrossRef APIs. Once parsed into a relational database, the software is able to produce bibliographies in any of several formats, including HTML and BibTeX, for use on websites or printed articles. The application is provided free-of-charge for general use by any scientific database. The power of this application is demonstrated when used to populate reference data for the HITRAN and AMBDAS databases as test cases. HITRAN contains data that is provided by researchers and collaborators throughout the spectroscopic community. These contributors are accredited for their contributions through the bibliography produced alongside the data returned by an online search in HITRAN. Prior to the work presented here, HITRAN and AMBDAS created these bibliographies manually, which is a tedious, time-consuming and error-prone process. The complete code for the new referencing system can be found at \url{https://github.com/hitranonline/refs}.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, already published online at https://doi.org/10.3390/atoms802001

Disturbed EEG Sleep, Paranoid Cognition and Somatic Symptoms Identify Veterans With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Background Chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) behavioural symptoms and medically unexplainable somatic symptoms are reported to occur following the stressful experience of military combatants in war zones. Aims To determine the contribution of disordered EEG sleep physiology in those military combatants who have unexplainable physical symptoms and PTSD behavioural difficulties following war-zone exposure. Method This case-controlled study compared 59 veterans with chronic sleep disturbance with 39 veterans with DSM-IV and clinician-administered PTSD Scale diagnosed PTSD who were unresponsive to pharmacological and psychological treatments. All had standardised EEG polysomnography, computerised sleep EEG cyclical alternating pattern (CAP) as a measure of sleep stability, self-ratings of combat exposure, paranoid cognition and hostility subscales of Symptom Checklist-90, Beck Depression Inventory and the Wahler Physical Symptom Inventory. Statistical group comparisons employed linear models, logistic regression and chi-square automatic interaction detection (CHAID)-like decision trees. Results Veterans with PTSD were more likely than those without PTSD to show disturbances in non-rapid eye movement (REM) and REM sleep including delayed sleep onset, less efficient EEG sleep, less stage 4 (deep) non-REM sleep, reduced REM and delayed onset to REM. There were no group differences in the prevalence of obstructive sleep apnoeas/hypopnoeas and periodic leg movements, but sleep-disturbed, non-PTSD military had more EEG CAP sleep instability. Rank order determinants for the diagnosis of PTSD comprise paranoid thinking, onset to REM sleep, combat history and somatic symptoms. Decision-tree analysis showed that a specific military event (combat), delayed onset to REM sleep, paranoid thinking and medically unexplainable somatic pain and fatigue characterise chronic PTSD. More PTSD veterans reported domestic and social misbehaviour. Conclusions Military combat, disturbed REM/non-REM EEG sleep, paranoid ideation and medically unexplained chronic musculoskeletal pain and fatigue are key factors in determining PTSD disability following war-zone exposure

Lm-LLO-Based Immunotherapies and HPV-Associated Disease

HPV infection is a direct cause of neoplasia and malignancy. Cellular immunologic activity against cells expressing HPV E6 and E7 is sufficient to eliminate the presence of dysplastic or neoplastic tissue driven by HPV infection. Live attenuated Listeria monocytogenes- (Lm-) based immunotherapy (ADXS11-001) has been developed for the treatment of HPV-associated diseases. ADXS11-001 secretes an antigen-adjuvant fusion (Lm-LLO) protein consisting of a truncated fragment of the Lm protein listeriolysin O (LLO) fused to HPV-16 E7. In preclinical models, this construct has been found to stimulate immune responses and affect therapeutic outcome. ADXS11-001 is currently being evaluated in Phase 2 clinical trials for cervical intraepithelial neoplasia, cervical cancer, and HPV-positive head and neck cancer. The use of a live attenuated bacterium is a more complex and complete method of cancer immunotherapy, as over millennia Lm has evolved to infect humans and humans have evolved to prevent and reject this infection over millennia. This evolution has resulted in profound pathogen-associated immune mechanisms which are genetically conserved, highly efficacious, resistant to tolerance, and can be uniquely invoked using this novel platform technology