Inside Success: Strategies of 25 Effective Small High Schools in NYC

For decades, New York City's high school graduation rates hovered at or below 50 percent. In attempt to turn around these disappointing results, the NYC Department of Education enacted a series of large-scale reforms, including opening hundreds of new "small schools of choice" (SSCs). Recent research by MDRC has shown that these schools have had large and sustained positive effects on students' graduation rates and other outcomes. How have they done it? What decisions -- made by the educators who created, supported, and operated these schools -- have been critical to their success? What challenges do these schools face as they try to maintain that success over time? The Research Alliance set out to answer these questions, conducting in-depth interviews with teachers and principals in 25 of the most highly effective SSCs. Educators reported three features as essential to their success:Personalization, which was widely seen as the most important success factor. This includes structures that foster strong relationships with students and their families, systems for monitoring student progress -- beyond just grades and test scores, and working to address students' social and emotional needs, as well as academic ones.High expectations -- for students and for educators -- and instructional programs that are aligned with these ambitious goals.Dedicated and flexible teachers, who were willing to take on multiple roles, sometimes outside their areas of expertise.The findings, presented in this report, paint a picture of how these features were developed in practice. The report also describes challenges these schools face and outlines lessons for other schools and districts that can be drawn from the SSCs' experience. These include the need to avoid teacher burnout, improving the fit between schools and external partners, and expanding current notions of accountability

A multi-group SEIRA model for the spread of COVID-19 among heterogeneous populations

The outbreak and propagation of COVID-19 have posed a considerable challenge to modern society. In particular, the different restrictive actions taken by governments to prevent the spread of the virus have changed the way humans interact and conceive interaction. Due to geographical, behavioral, or economic factors, different sub-groups among a population are more (or less) likely to interact, and thus to spread/acquire the virus. In this work, we present a general multi-group SEIRA model for representing the spread of COVID-19 among a heterogeneous population and test it in a numerical case of study. By highlighting its applicability and the ease with which its general formulation can be adapted to particular studies, we expect our model to lead us to a better understanding of the evolution of this pandemic and to better public-health policies to control it

Transient tunneling effects of resonance doublets in triple barrier systems

Transient tunneling effects in triple barrier systems are investigated by considering a time-dependent solution to the Schr\"{o}dinger equation with a cutoff wave initial condition. We derive a two-level formula for incidence energies $E$ near the first resonance doublet of the system. Based on that expression we find that the probability density along the internal region of the potential, is governed by three oscillation frequencies: one of them refers to the well known Bohr frequency, given in terms of the first and second resonance energies of the doublet, and the two others, represent a coupling with the incidence energy $E$. This allows to manipulate the above frequencies to control the tunneling transient behavior of the probability density in the short-time regim

Eficacia de finasterida en el tratamiento de la hematuria asociada a la hiperplasia protática benigna

La hematuria es una complicación de la hiperplasia benigna de próstata (HBP), tanto en su evolución natural como durante el seguimiento post cirugía prostática. En el estudio de Mebust et al., de 3000 pacientes sometidos a prostactectomía por Hiperplasia prostática benigna (HBP), en el 12 % la presencia de hematuria fue la causa de esta indicación quirúrgica (1). Existen escasas referencias de la acción de la finasterida ante dicho síntoma (2-7), aunque los resultados publicados hasta el momento demuestran un efecto terapéutico precoz y estable mientras dura el tratamient

Real-Time Estimation of R_t for Supporting Public-Health Policies Against COVID-19

In the absence of a consensus protocol to slow down the spread of SARS-CoV-2, policymakers need real-time indicators to support decisions in public health matters. The Effective Reproduction Number (R_t) represents the number of secondary infections generated per each case and can be dramatically modified by applying effective interventions. However, current methodologies to calculate R_t from data remain somewhat cumbersome, thus raising a barrier between its timely calculation and application by policymakers. In this work, we provide a simple mathematical formulation for obtaining the effective reproduction number in real-time using only and directly daily official case reports, obtained by modifying the equations describing the viral spread. We numerically explore the accuracy and limitations of the proposed methodology, which was demonstrated to provide accurate, timely, and intuitive results. We illustrate the use of our methodology to study the evolution of the pandemic in different iconic countries, and to assess the efficacy and promptness of different public health interventions

A multi-group SEIRA model for the spread of COVID-19 among heterogeneous populations

The outbreak and propagation of COVID-19 have posed a considerable challenge to modern society. In particular, the different restrictive actions taken by governments to prevent the spread of the virus have changed the way humans interact and conceive interaction. Due to geographical, behavioral, or economic factors, different sub-groups among a population are more (or less) likely to interact, and thus to spread/acquire the virus. In this work, we present a general multi-group SEIRA model for representing the spread of COVID-19 among a heterogeneous population and test it in a numerical case of study. By highlighting its applicability and the ease with which its general formulation can be adapted to particular studies, we expect our model to lead us to a better understanding of the evolution of this pandemic and to better public-health policies to control it