Who Chooses? Which Hartford students are likely to apply to a different public school operated by the City?

Hartford has the lowest student achievement test scores in the State of Connecticut, which is also the state with the highest achievement gap. Since 2008 Hartford students have had the choice to apply to a variety of schools, including Hartford public neighborhood schools, Hartford public interdistrict magnet schools, and suburban Open Choice schools. The rationale for open choice is primarily to allow parents to choose better performing schools, driving out the lower performing schools, thus improving the achievement level of Hartford students. In our research we attempt to answer: “Which Hartford students were more likely to exercise choice?” We use data on all Hartford Public School students grades 3-8. We expect to find students making applications to higher performing schools. We found, however, that very few students who are currently attending a HPS apply to another HP neighborhood school. Of these applications, 30% was to Achievement First, the only HP district school with a high achievement score. Movement to this high performing school was almost exclusively from the north end, where the school is located. Virtually no applications came from the south end of Hartford

Who Chooses? A Preliminary Analysis of Hartford Public Schools

In this preliminary analysis of Hartford Public School district choice applications from Spring 2010, the authors examine which Hartford students were more likely to voluntarily apply to another district school operated by the city. Among the 6,591 potential voluntary choosers in grades 3-7, only 227 (3%) submitted voluntary district choice applications, and among these, the highest percentage (43%) were willing to travel farther for a higher-scoring school. But when excluding about one-third of these students who listed the city\u27s high-scoring district school (Achievement First) as their first choice, a large percentage (35%) were willing to travel farther for a lower-scoring school

Investigation of complete and incomplete fusion in 7^{7}Li+124^{124}Sn reaction around Coulomb barrier energies

The complete and incomplete fusion cross sections for $^{7}$Li+$^{124}$Sn reaction were measured using online and offline characteristic $\gamma$-ray detection techniques. The complete fusion (CF) cross sections at energies above the Coulomb barrier were found to be suppressed by $\sim$ 26 \% compared to the coupled channel calculations. This suppression observed in complete fusion cross sections is found to be commensurate with the measured total incomplete fusion (ICF) cross sections. There is a distinct feature observed in the ICF cross sections, i.e., $\textit{t}$-capture is found to be dominant than $\alpha$-capture at all the measured energies. A simultaneous explanation of complete, incomplete and total fusion (TF) data was also obtained from the calculations based on Continuum Discretized Coupled Channel method with short range imaginary potentials. The cross section ratios of CF/TF and ICF/TF obtained from the data as well as the calculations showed the dominance of ICF at below barrier energies and CF at above barrier energies.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure

Effect of vitamin D supplementation on bone health parameters of healthy young Indian women

Summary There is a huge prevalence of hypovitaminosis D in the Indian population. We studied the efficacy and safety of oral vitamin D supplementation in apparently healthy adult women. Monthly cholecalciferol given orally, 60,000 IU/month during summers and 120,000 IU/month during winters, safely increases 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25 (OH)D) levels to near normal levels. Introduction There is a huge burden of hypovitaminosis D in the Indian population. The current recommendation for vitamin D supplementation is not supported by sufficient evidence. Methods Study subjects included 100 healthy adult women of reproductive age group from hospital staff. They wer

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Modelling the Critical Success Factors of Net-zero Energy Buildings in India

Amidst the widespread consciousness and several awareness programs to combat the adverse impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the climate, Net-zero energy buildings (NZEB) have emerged as one of the potential solutions. Various factors, including the need for heavy initial capital investment, weather conditions, government regulations, policies, training and development, technology, and so forth, were figured out by carrying out a literature review and interviewing the area experts. Further, investigating the inter-contextual relationships helps to have key success factors of NZEBs in India that are multidimensional in nature. To achieve this goal, the Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) approach was employed to compute the mutual influence of the ten key success factors in the Indian context. The results report that favorable weather conditions, government policies, and regulations are the most crucial factors for the NZEB sectoral development in Indian contexts

Physico-Chemical Properties of Surface Soil in Ashoknagar District of Madhya Pradesh for Agricultural Production

Looking at the crop production and soil related constraints in different village of Ashoknagar District of Madhya Pradesh we found it important to characterize the soils of the village. For this purpose, one hundred twenty-five GPS-based surface soil samples (0-15 cm) were collected from five blocks (Mungaoli, Chanderi, Ishagarh, Ashoknagar and Sadora) of Ashoknagar district from April to May 2017-2018. Soils were studied for their physical and chemical characteristics - status of sand,silt,clay percent varied from 36.6-56.7%, 3.9-38% and 25.2-42.4%, with the mean value of 47.5%, 17.2% or 35.1%, respectively and soil pH, EC, OC, Calcium carbonate, total Nitrogen or available sulphur were observed in the range of 7.2– 8.6, 0.32 - 0.62dSm‑1, 2.14 - 7.06 gkg-1, 0.5 –3.5 %&nbsp; 0.01-0.24 % and 4.36 – 40.25 mg kg-1under different villages of the investigated area with the average value of 8.0, 0.45dSm‑1, 4.35gkg-1, 1.7% and 0.11 %,14.68 mg kg-1 respectively. The availability of sulphur increased with an increase in organic carbon and clay content in the soil

Neutralizing IgG antibody seroprevalence, efficacy and safety post covishield vaccination: A follow up study

COVID-19, a pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome &nbsp;(SARS) corona virus-2 has been a worldwide challenge for the entire mankind. However, a safe and efficacious vaccine would be clinically valuable to reduce the risks of COVID-19. In this study, we aimed to assess the seroprevalence of the Neutralizing IgG Antibodies six months after completion of both the doses of Covishield Vaccination (ChAdox1 nCoV-19) and compare it with the IgG titres one month after the first dose and one month after the second dose of the vaccine respectively. The efficacy, safety and comorbidities related to the vaccine were also assessed at different time intervals. The levels of IgG antibodies were estimated in 72 subjects from the Teerthanker Mahaveer Medical College &amp; Research Centre (who turned up after six months of the complete regimen of Covishield Vaccination) using the Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) Technique. A highly significant increase (p= 0.00) in the neutralizing Antibodies titre was seen in fully vaccinated individuals post six months when compared to the titres of post one month of 1st &amp; 2nddoses. It can therefore be concluded that (ChAdox1 nCoV-19) Covishield Vaccination if administered in full regimen has both acceptable efficacies as well as safety profile.&nbsp

Deep sequencing-based de novo transcriptome analysis reveals biosynthesis of gymnemic acid in Gymnema sylvestre (Retz.) Schult

Not AvailableGymnema sylvestre extract is used to cure the diabetes mellitus which is an important life style disease. Triterpene saponins having anti-diabetic property from G. sylvestre leaves belonging to oleanane and dammarene classes are collectively known as gymnemic acid. Genomic resources focused on biosynthesis of these molecules are not available. De novo transcriptome sequencing of leaf, flower and fruits of G. sylvestre genotype DGS-22 produced 60.95, 56.99 and 45.82 million raw reads. Quality raw reads were assembled into 112583, 203145 and 138343 set of unigenes for leaf, flower and fruit, respectively from which coding DNA sequences (CDSs) were predicted. Total of 71676, 99643 and 92770 CDSs were annotated against protein databases for leaf, flower and fruit, respectively. The Blast2GO was used to compare and determine the GO annotations. A total of 22933, 30420,29631 and 33282 CDSs of leaf, flower, fruit and master assembly, respectively were assigned at least one GO term. Pathway mapping based on master assembly using KEGG database revealed probable candidate genesinvolved in gymnemic acid biosynthesis which showed that there were total of 287 CDSs encoding genes involved in the gymnemic acid pathway. Validation and expression profiling of nine genes through real time PCR showed up regulation of these genes in leaves of DGS 22 as compared to DGS 3 confirming efficient gymnemicacid biosynthesis in DGS 22 which was in accordance with chemo-profiling of these genotypes. Based on theavailable information from the master assembly, a putative pathway of the gymnemic acid biosynthesis isproposed.Not Availabl

A novel peptide interferes with Mycobacterium tuberculosis virulence and survival

Tuberculosis (TB) is a huge global burden, with new and resistant strains emerging at an alarming rate, necessitating an urgent need for a new class of drug candidates. Here, we report that SL3, a novel 33-amino acid peptide, causes debilitating effects on mycobacterial morphology. Treatment with SL3 drastically inhibits the growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in vitro as well as in a pre-clinical mouse model for M.tb infection. Microarray analysis of SL3-expressing strain demonstrates wide-scale transcriptional disruption in M.tb. We therefore believe that SL3 and similar peptides may herald a new approach towards discovering new molecules for TB therapy