The Impact of Parent Involvement on Preschool English Language Learners\u27 Ability to Learn the English Language

Abstract Montessori preschool children who are English Language Learners (ELL) age three to five, consisting of one female and six males. It was conducted in two different preschool classrooms, focusing on literacy skills as well as oral communication skills. The direct aim of the study was to help children successfully learn English as their second language while keeping their native language. Researchers also investigated whether parental involvement increased the ability of ELLs to learn the English language. Data collection procedures utilized were: (1) parent interviews, (2) observation and anecdotal records, (3) pretest, and (4) post-test. A take-home literacy kit was used to measure the effectiveness of parental involvement. Researchers also provided a take-home literacy kit for parents to work on with their child at home. Parents were given a total of four literacy kits, one new kit each week. Result of this research indicated an improvement in parent and child interaction. The take-home literacy kit fostered communication between parent and child because words were translated in their home language. Over the course of four weeks, children showed great interest in literacy and progress in their communication skills

Single-Cell Profiling of Epigenetic Modifiers Identifies PRDM14 as an Inducer of Cell Fate in the Mammalian Embryo

SummaryCell plasticity or potency is necessary for the formation of multiple cell types. The mechanisms underlying this plasticity are largely unknown. Preimplantation mouse embryos undergo drastic changes in cellular potency, starting with the totipotent zygote through to the formation of the pluripotent inner cell mass (ICM) and differentiated trophectoderm in the blastocyst. Here, we set out to identify and functionally characterize chromatin modifiers that define the transitions of potency and cell fate in the mouse embryo. Using a quantitative microfluidics approach in single cells, we show that developmental transitions are marked by distinctive combinatorial profiles of epigenetic modifiers. Pluripotent cells of the ICM are distinct from their differentiated trophectoderm counterparts. We show that PRDM14 is heterogeneously expressed in 4-cell-stage embryos. Forced expression of PRDM14 at the 2-cell stage leads to increased H3R26me2 and can induce a pluripotent ICM fate. Our results shed light on the epigenetic networks that govern cellular potency and identity in vivo.Video Abstrac

Evaluation of new regenerated fiber Bragg grating high-temperature sensors in an ISO 834 fire test

[EN] Temperature, one of the most important parameters in building fires, is now mostly measured with high-temperature thermocouples, which have the typical drawbacks of electric sensors, such as their sensitivity to electrical and magnetic interference. Fiber optic sensors are an alternative to electric sensors and offer many advantages, although their use in fire engineering is somewhat limited at the present time. This paper presents a set of new fiber optic sensors for measuring high temperatures, based on Regenerated Fiber Bragg Gratings (RFBGs). The sensors were placed near the surface of two concrete specimens and then tested under ISO 834 fire curve conditions for one hour. We consider this an important step forward in the application of high-temperature fiber optic sensors in fire engineering, as the sensors were subjected to direct flames and temperature increments of the order of 200 degrees C/min, similar to those in a real fire. The RFBG sensors measured maximum gas temperatures of circa 970 degrees C, in good agreement with those provided by thermocouples in the same position. The gas temperature measurements of the FOSs were also compared with the adiabatic temperatures measured by plate thermometers and concrete specimens surface temperatures calculated with numerical heat transfer models. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work has been possible thanks to the financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (Research Projects BIA 2011-27104 and TEC2011-29120-C05-05). Funding for this research was provided to Paula Rinaudo by the European Commission (Erasmus Mundus Project Action 2 ARCOIRIS).Rinaudo, P.; Torres Górriz, B.; Paya-Zaforteza, I.; Calderón García, PA.; Sales Maicas, S. (2015). Evaluation of new regenerated fiber Bragg grating high-temperature sensors in an ISO 834 fire test. Fire Safety Journal. 71:332-339. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.firesaf.2014.11.024S3323397

A review of sample analysis at mars-evolved gas analysis laboratory analog work supporting the presence of perchlorates and chlorates in gale crater, mars

Funding Information: The research reviewed in this paper was funded by the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) project office. M.-P.Z. acknowledges funding from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (ref. PID2019-104205GB-C21). The authors are grateful to the engineers and scientists of the MSL Curiosity team, who have made the mission possible and the reported data available. The authors would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers who provided careful reviews that increased the quality of this manuscript. The authors would like to remember and recognize the contributions of Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez, a dedicated SAM and HABIT team member who passed away on 28 January 2021. Navarro-Gonzalez, who was a distinguished researcher, conducted laboratory experiments that demonstrated that chloromethanes could form through a reaction between perchlorates and organics during sample heating, which greatly advanced our understanding of perchlorates and organic detection on Mars. Data Availability Statement: SAM data are publicly available through the NASA Planetary Data System at: http://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/missions/msl/sam.htm, which was updated in March 2021. See references for the original research articles that contain the data reviewed in this paper.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

A survey of sRNA families in α-proteobacteria

We have performed a computational comparative analysis of six small non-coding RNA (sRNA) families in α-proteobacteria. Members of these families were first identified in the intergenic regions of the nitrogen-fixing endosymbiont S. meliloti by a combined bioinformatics screen followed by experimental verification. Consensus secondary structures inferred from covariance models for each sRNA family evidenced in some cases conserved motifs putatively relevant to the function of trans-encoded base-pairing sRNAs i.e., Hfq-binding signatures and exposed anti Shine-Dalgarno sequences. Two particular family models, namely αr15 and αr35, shared own sub-structural modules with the Rfam model suhB (RF00519) and the uncharacterized sRNA family αr35b, respectively. A third sRNA family, termed αr45, has homology to the cis-acting regulatory element speF (RF00518). However, new experimental data further confirmed that the S. meliloti αr45 representative is an Hfq-binding sRNA processed from or expressed independently of speF, thus refining the Rfam speF model annotation. All the six families have members in phylogenetically related plant-interacting bacteria and animal pathogens of the order of the Rhizobiales, some occurring with high levels of paralogy in individual genomes. In silico and experimental evidences predict differential regulation of paralogous sRNAs in S. meliloti 1021. The distribution patterns of these sRNA families suggest major contributions of vertical inheritance and extensive ancestral duplication events to the evolution of sRNAs in plant-interacting bacteria

Nus transcription elongation factors and RNase III modulate small ribosome subunit biogenesis in E scherichia coli

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/96334/1/mmi12105.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/96334/2/mmi12105-sup-0001-si.pd

Cell Rep

Cell plasticity or potency is necessary for the formation of multiple cell types. The mechanisms underlying this plasticity are largely unknown. Preimplantation mouse embryos undergo drastic changes in cellular potency, starting with the totipotent zygote through to the formation of the pluripotent inner cell mass (ICM) and differentiated trophectoderm in the blastocyst. Here, we set out to identify and functionally characterize chromatin modifiers that define the transitions of potency and cell fate in the mouse embryo. Using a quantitative microfluidics approach in single cells, we show that developmental transitions are marked by distinctive combinatorial profiles of epigenetic modifiers. Pluripotent cells of the ICM are distinct from their differentiated trophectoderm counterparts. We show that PRDM14 is heterogeneously expressed in 4-cell-stage embryos. Forced expression of PRDM14 at the 2-cell stage leads to increased H3R26me2 and can induce a pluripotent ICM fate. Our results shed light on the epigenetic networks that govern cellular potency and identity in vivo

Learning vector representation of medical objects via EMR-driven nonnegative restricted Boltzmann machines (eNRBM)

Electronic medical record (EMR) offers promises for novel analytics. However, manual feature engineering from EMR is labor intensive because EMR is complex – it contains temporal, mixed-type and multimodal data packed in irregular episodes. We present a computational framework to harness EMR with minimal human supervision via restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM). The framework derives a new representation of medical objects by embedding them in a low-dimensional vector space. This new representation facilitates algebraic and statistical manipulations such as projection onto 2D plane (thereby offering intuitive visualization), object grouping (hence enabling automated phenotyping), and risk stratification. To enhance model interpretability, we introduced two constraints into model parameters: (a) nonnegative coefficients, and (b) structural smoothness. These result in a novel model called eNRBM (EMR-driven nonnegative RBM). We demonstrate the capability of the eNRBM on a cohort of 7578 mental health patients under suicide risk assessment. The derived representation not only shows clinically meaningful feature grouping but also facilitates short-term risk stratification. The F-scores, 0.21 for moderate-risk and 0.36 for high-risk, are significantly higher than those obtained by clinicians and competitive with the results obtained by support vector machines

Quantification of CH4_{4} emissions from waste disposal sites near the city of Madrid using ground- and space-based observations of COCCON, TROPOMI and IASI

The objective of this study is to derive methane (CH$_{4}$) emissions from three landfills, which are found to be the most significant CH$_{4}$ sources in the metropolitan area of Madrid in Spain. We derive CH$_{4}$ emissions from the CH$_{4}$ enhancements observed by spaceborne and ground-based instruments. We apply satellite-based measurements from the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) and the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) together with measurements from the ground-based COllaborative Carbon Column Observing Network (COCCON) instruments. In 2018, a 2-week field campaign for measuring the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases was performed in Madrid in the framework of Monitoring of the Greenhouse Gases Concentrations in Madrid (MEGEI-MAD) project. Five COCCON instruments were deployed at different locations around the Madrid city center, enabling the observation of total column-averaged CH$_{4}$ mixing ratios (XCH$_{4}$). Considering the prevalent wind regimes, we calculate the wind-assigned XCH$_{4}$ anomalies for two opposite wind directions. Pronounced bipolar plumes are found when applying the method to NO$_{2}$, which implies that our method of wind-assigned anomaly is suitable to estimate enhancements of trace gases at the urban level from satellite-based measurements. For quantifying the CH$_{4}$ emissions, the wind-assigned plume method is applied to the TROPOMI XCH$_{4}$ and to the lower tropospheric CH$_{4}$  dry-air column ratio (TXCH$_{4}$) of the combined TROPOMI+IASI product. As CH$_{4}$ emission strength we estimate 7.4 × 10$^{25}$ ± 6.4 × 10$^{24}$ molec. s$^{-1}$ from the TROPOMI XCH$_{4}$ data and 7.1 × 10$^{25}$ ± 1.0 × 10$^{25}$ molec. s$^{-1}$ from the TROPOMI+IASI merged TXCH$_{4}$ data. We use COCCON observations to estimate the local source strength as an independent method. COCCON observations indicate a weaker CH$_{4}$ emission strength of 3.7 × 1025 molec. s$^{-1}$ from a local source (the Valdemingómez waste plant) based on observations from a single day. This strength is lower than the one derived from the satellite observations, and it is a plausible result. This is because the analysis of the satellite data refers to a larger area, covering further emission sources in the study region, whereas the signal observed by COCCON is generated by a nearby local source. All emission rates estimated from the different observations are significantly larger than the emission rates provided via the official Spanish Register of Emissions and Pollutant Sources

Quantification of CH4 emissions from waste disposal sites near the city of Madrid using ground- and space-based observations of COCCON, TROPOMI and IASI

We use different methane ground- and space-based remote sensing data sets for investigating the emission strength of three waste disposal sites close to Madrid. We present a method that uses wind-assigned anomalies for deriving emission strengths from satellite data and estimating their uncertainty to 9–14 %. The emission strengths estimated from the remote sensing data sets are significantly larger than the values published in the official register.ESA support through the COCCON-PROCEEDS and COCCON-PROCEEDS II projects. In addition, this research was funded by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad from Spain through the INMENSE project (CGL2016-80688-P). This research has largely benefit from funds of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (provided for the two projects MOTIV and TEDDY with IDs/290612604 and 416767181, respectively)