Fadeout in an early mathematics intervention: Constraining content or preexisting differences?

A robust finding across research on early childhood educational interventions is that the treatment effect diminishes over time, with children not receiving the intervention eventually catching up to children who did. One popular explanation for fadeout of early mathematics interventions is that elementary school teachers may not teach the kind of advanced content that children are prepared for after receiving the intervention, so lower-achieving children in the control groups of early mathematics interventions catch up to the higher-achieving children in the treatment groups. An alternative explanation is that persistent individual differences in children’s long-term mathematical development result more from relatively stable pre-existing differences in their skills and environments than from the direct effects of previous knowledge on later knowledge. We tested these two hypotheses using data from an effective preschool mathematics intervention previously known to show a diminishing treatment effect over time. We compared the intervention group to a matched subset of the control group with a similar mean and variance of scores at the end of treatment. We then tested the relative contributions of factors that similarly constrain learning in children from treatment and control groups with the same level of post-treatment achievement and pre-existing differences between these two groups to the fadeout of the treatment effect over time. We found approximately 72% of the fadeout effect to be attributable to pre-existing differences between children in treatment and control groups with the same level of achievement at post-test. These differences were fully statistically attenuated by children’s prior academic achievement

Hes3 regulates cell number in cultures from glioblastoma multiforme with stem cell characteristics

Tumors exhibit complex organization and contain a variety of cell populations. The realization that the regenerative properties of a tumor may be largely confined to a cell subpopulation (cancer stem cell) is driving a new era of anti-cancer research. Cancer stem cells from Glioblastoma Multiforme tumors express markers that are also expressed in non-cancerous neural stem cells, including nestin and Sox2. We previously showed that the transcription factor Hes3 is a marker of neural stem cells, and that its expression is inhibited by JAK activity. Here we show that Hes3 is also expressed in cultures from glioblastoma multiforme which express neural stem cell markers, can differentiate into neurons and glia, and can recapitulate the tumor of origin when transplanted into immunocompromised mice. Similar to observations in neural stem cells, JAK inhibits Hes3 expression. Hes3 RNA interference reduces the number of cultured glioblastoma cells suggesting a novel therapeutic strategy

PSYCARIA - EMOTION DETECTOR FOR A PSYCHIATRIST

Every person will experience stress around the world, some healthy, called EUSTRESS and some unpleasant, named DISTRESS. Good pressure and stress promote success. Stress damages people's lives and health and causes various diseases. On the other hand, psychiatrists have a hard time treating their patients owing to a lack of time. They need innovative and intelligent equipment to treat their patients. We prepared a device that can detect a person's POSITIVE and NEGATIVE emotions through a smartwatch and a gadget that can sense body temperature, respiration, and heart rate. After witnessing these parameters, it can store the results on a website depending on the patient's condition. For example, the psychiatrist observed one patient for at least seven days regarding the days' results stored on a website. After seven days, the report is generated. The goal of psychiatrists in keeping their patients for seven days is to assess their emotional health and determine if they need to adjust their treatment. This system detects eight positive and negative emotions through heartbeat, respiratory, and body temperature sensors. These sensors are incorporated by utilizing machine learning. Web-based apps interpret sensor readings. Psychiatrists will analyze and report the website's results

Wanderlust Borneo Travel / Abdul Ghaffar Naning... [et al.]

This company runs a business relating to the tourism industry which it aims to provide tour and travel services. Basically, this company provides services like transportations and accommodations and also touring services for the convenience of all the clients especially the foreign tourists who have never been to Sabah, Malaysia

Intuitive and Informal Knowledge in Preschoolers’ Development of Probabilistic Thinking

Preschoolers develop a wide range of mathematical informal knowledge and intuitive thinking before they enter formal, goal-oriented education. In their everyday activities young children get engaged with situations that enhance them to develop skills, concepts, strategies, representations, attitudes, constructs and operations concerning a wide range of mathematical notions. Recently there is scientific interest in linking children’s informal and formal knowledge in order to provide them with opportunities to avoid biases aiming at formulating, perceiving, reflecting on and exercising probabilistic notions. The current study investigates preschoolers’ (N=90) intuitive understanding of the likelihood of events in a probabilistic task with spinners. Participants, at the age of 4 to 6, are tested on their predictions of the most probable outcome prior to and after an instructive session of reasoning. The probabilistic task, based on constructivist principles, includes methodological alterations concerning the sample space and the themes of the stimuli. Educational implications are further discussed under the general point of view that in order to link informal to formal mathematical learning in preschool classroom, the subject content and the cognitive capacity of children are important to match

Is intervention fadeout a scaling artefact?

To determine whether scaling decisions might account for fadeout of impacts in early education interventions, we reanalyze data from a well-known early mathematics RCT intervention that showed substantial fadeout in the two years after the intervention ended. We examine how various order-preserving transformations of the scale affect the relative mathematics achievement of the control and experimental groups by age. Although fadeout was robust to most transformations, we were able to eliminate or even reverse fadeout by emphasizing differences in scores near typical levels of first-graders while treating differences elsewhere as unimportant. Such a transformation lowers treatment effects at preschool age and raises them in first grade, relative to the original scale. The findings suggest substantial implications for interpreting the effects of educational interventions.Accepted manuscrip

Społeczno-ekonomiczne i przestrzenne przemiany struktur regionalnych Vol. 2

Praca recenzowana / peer-reviewed pape

Is alignment enough? Investigating the effects of state policies and professional development on science curriculum implementation

Implementation of science curriculum materials has been a fundamental challenge in science education for decades. Policy researchers have argued that alignment of standards, curriculum, and assessment are the key to supporting implementation. This paper focuses on teachers' perceptions of curricular alignment and on curriculum implementation using empirical data from a statewide systemic inquiry science reform effort targeting students from kindergarten to eighth grade. We find that the success of alignment policies depends on teachers' construal of the relationship between standards and curriculum materials and on allocation of time for planning at the school level. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 93: 656–677, 2009Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/63036/1/20321_ftp.pd

Contributions of Motivation, Early Numeracy Skills, and Executive Functioning to Mathematical Performance. A Longitudinal Study

The main goal of this longitudinal study is to examine the power of different variables and its dynamic interactions in predicting mathematical performance. The model proposed in this study includes indicators of motivational constructs (learning motivation and attributions), executive functioning (inhibition and working memory), and early numeracy skills (logical operations, counting, and magnitude comparison abilities), assessed during kindergarten, and mathematical performance in the second year of Primary Education. The sample consisted of 180 subjects assessed in two moments (5–6 and 7–8 years old). The results showed an indirect effect of initial motivation on later mathematical performance. Executive functioning and early numeracy skills mediated the effect of motivation on later mathematic achievement. Practical implications of these findings for mathematics education are discussed