2,687 research outputs found
Provision of Consultantation Service: Revamp of the Teachers' IT Training Framework
The existing framework of teachers' information technology (IT) training in Hong Kong, with a series of programmes aiming to develop teachers' IT competency at Basic (BIT), Upper Intermediate (UIT) and Advanced (AIT) Levels, was launched under the Five-year Information Technology in Education (ITEd) Strategy in 1998. With the inception of the IT in education strategy in 2004, it is anticipated that more emphasis should be centered upon using IT to enhance teaching and learning as well as the development of students' information literacy and high-order thinking. In light of this, revamping the teacher professional development framework is thus of paramount importance.
A Joint Consultation Service Team (JCST) from CUHK, HKBU, HKIED and HKU has been formed and is now undertaking a consultancy service for Information Technology in Education Section, EMB. The outcome of this service would be a proposal for the revamp of teachers' information technology (IT) training framework. Thus, this consultation seminar endeavours to solicit opinions from the stakeholders and to establish a rapport and a dialogue with frontline teachers regarding the proposed revamped frameworkpublished_or_final_versionCentre for Information Technology in Education, University of Hong Kon
Collider Phenomenology with Split-UED
We investigate the collider implications of Split Universal Extra Dimensions.
The non-vanishing fermion mass in the bulk, which is consistent with the
KK-parity, largely modifies the phenomenology of Minimal Universal Exta
Dimensions. We scrutinize the behavior of couplings and study the discovery
reach of the Tevatron and the LHC for level-2 Kaluza-Klein modes in the
dilepton channel, which would indicates the presence of the extra dimensions.
Observation of large event rates for dilepton resonances can result from a
nontrivial fermion mass profile along the extra dimensions, which, in turn, may
corroborate extra dimensional explanation for the observation of the positron
excess in cosmic rays.Comment: 23 pages, 15 figure
5D UED: Flat and Flavorless
5D UED is not automatically minimally flavor violating. This is due to flavor
asymmetric counter-terms required on the branes. Additionally, there are likely
to be higher dimensional operators which directly contribute to flavor
observables. We document a mostly unsuccessful attempt at utilizing
localization in a flat extra dimension to resolve these flavor constraints
while maintaining KK-parity as a good quantum number. It is unsuccessful
insofar as we seem to be forced to add brane operators in such a way as to
precisely mimic the effects of a double throat warped extra dimension. In the
course of our efforts, we encounter and present solutions to a problem common
to many extra dimensional models in which fields are "doubly localized:"
ultra-light modes. Under scrutiny, this issue seems tied to an intrinsic
tension between maintaining Kaluza-Klein parity and resolving mass hierarchies
via localization.Comment: 27 pages, 6 figure
Parameter Estimation and Quantitative Parametric Linkage Analysis with GENEHUNTER-QMOD
Objective: We present a parametric method for linkage analysis of quantitative phenotypes. The method provides a test for linkage as well as an estimate of different phenotype parameters. We have implemented our new method in the program GENEHUNTER-QMOD and evaluated its properties by performing simulations. Methods: The phenotype is modeled as a normally distributed variable, with a separate distribution for each genotype. Parameter estimates are obtained by maximizing the LOD score over the normal distribution parameters with a gradient-based optimization called PGRAD method. Results: The PGRAD method has lower power to detect linkage than the variance components analysis (VCA) in case of a normal distribution and small pedigrees. However, it outperforms the VCA and Haseman-Elston regression for extended pedigrees, nonrandomly ascertained data and non-normally distributed phenotypes. Here, the higher power even goes along with conservativeness, while the VCA has an inflated type I error. Parameter estimation tends to underestimate residual variances but performs better for expectation values of the phenotype distributions. Conclusion: With GENEHUNTER-QMOD, a powerful new tool is provided to explicitly model quantitative phenotypes in the context of linkage analysis. It is freely available at http://www.helmholtz-muenchen.de/genepi/downloads. Copyright (C) 2012 S. Karger AG, Base
Combining phage display with SMRTbell next-generation sequencing for the rapid discovery of functional scFv fragments
Phage display technology in combination with next-generation sequencing (NGS) currently is a state-of-the-art method for the enrichment and isolation of monoclonal antibodies from diverse libraries. However, the current NGS methods employed for sequencing phage display libraries are limited by the short contiguous read lengths associated with second-generation sequencing platforms. Consequently, the identification of antibody sequences has conventionally been restricted to individual antibody domains or to the analysis of single domain binding moieties such as camelid VHH or cartilaginous fish IgNAR antibodies. In this study, we report the application of third-generation sequencing to address this limitation. We used single molecule real time (SMRT) sequencing coupled with hairpin adaptor loop ligation to facilitate the accurate interrogation of full-length single-chain Fv (scFv) libraries. Our method facilitated the rapid isolation and testing of scFv antibodies enriched from phage display libraries within days following panning. Two libraries against CD160 and CD123 were panned and monitored by NGS. Analysis of NGS antibody data sets led to the isolation of several functional scFv antibodies that were not identified by conventional panning and screening strategies. Our approach, which combines phage display selection of immune libraries with the full-length interrogation of scFv fragments, is an easy method to discover functional antibodies, with a range of affinities and biophysical characteristics
The rapid formation a large rotating disk galaxy three billion years after the Big Bang
[Abridged] Over the past two decades observations and theoretical simulations
have established a global frame-work of galaxy formation and evolution in the
young Universe. Galaxies formed as baryonic gas cooled at the centres of
collapsing dark matter halos. Mergers of halos led to the build up of galaxy
mass. A major step forward in understanding these issues requires well resolved
physical information on individual galaxies at high redshift. Here we report
adaptive optics, spectroscopic observations of a representative luminous star
forming galaxy when the Universe was only twenty percent of its age. The
superior angular resolution of these data reveals the physical and dynamical
properties of a high redshift galaxy in unprecedented detail. A large and
massive rotating proto-disk is channelling gas towards a growing central
stellar bulge hosting an accreting massive black hole.Comment: Narure, accepted (Released Aug 17th
Microbial ligand costimulation drives neutrophilic steroid-refractory asthma
Funding: The authors thank the Wellcome Trust (102705) and the Universities of Aberdeen and Cape Town for funding. This research was also supported, in part, by National Institutes of Health GM53522 and GM083016 to DLW. KF and BNL are funded by the Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, BNL is the recipient of an European Research Commission consolidator grant and participates in the European Union FP7 programs EUBIOPRED and MedALL. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Constraining Bosonic Supersymmetry from Higgs results and 8 TeV ATLAS multi-jets plus missing energy data
The collider phenomenology of models with Universal Extra Dimensions (UED) is
surprisingly similar to that of supersymmetric (SUSY) scenarios. For each
level-1 bosonic (fermionic) Kaluza-Klein (KK) state, there is a fermionic
(bosonic) analog in SUSY and thus UED scenarios are often known as bosonic
supersymmetry. The minimal version of UED (mUED) gives rise to a
quasi-degenerate particle spectrum at each KK-level and thus, can not explain
the enhanced Higgs to diphoton decay rate hinted by the ATLAS collaboration of
the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment. However, in the non-minimal version
of the UED (nmUED) model, the enhanced Higgs to diphoton decay rate can be
easily explained via the suitable choice of boundary localized kinetic (BLK)
terms for higher dimensional fermions and gauge bosons. BLK terms remove the
degeneracy in the KK mass spectrum and thus, pair production of level-1 quarks
and gluons at the LHC gives rise to hard jets, leptons and large missing energy
in the final state. These final states are studied in details by the ATLAS and
CMS collaborations in the context of SUSY scenarios. We find that the absence
of any significant deviation of the data from the Standard Model (SM)
prediction puts a lower bound of about 2.1 TeV on equal mass excited quarks and
gluons.Comment: 19 page
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