Critical Thinking Ability as a Predictor of Success in a Nontraditional Master's Degree : Program in Adult and Continuing Education

Presented at the Midwest Research to Practice Conference in Adult and Continuing Education, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, October 8-9, 1987.This research-in-progress examines the predictive validity of the Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (WGCTA) for forecasting master's degree students' attrition, achievement level, thesis progress, and program completion time in a field-based accelerated program in Adult and Continuing Education (ACE). In the fall of 1986, National College of Education (NCE) changed one of the admission requirements for this program from satisfactory performance on the Miller Analogies Test (MAT) to similar performance on the WGCTA. The appropriateness of the MAT content for NCE's nontraditional students was questioned and the WGCTA was chosen as an alternative. The current issue is the relative forecasting efficacy of the MAT and the WGCTA among predictor variables such as sex, age, race, marital status, geographic area, undergraduate major, time since baccalaureate degree, type of undergraduate institution, and junior-senior GPA. The results of multiple regression analysis and multiple discriminant analysis will be compared for the MAT and WGCTA

Robust Cardiac Motion Estimation using Ultrafast Ultrasound Data: A Low-Rank-Topology-Preserving Approach

Cardiac motion estimation is an important diagnostic tool to detect heart diseases and it has been explored with modalities such as MRI and conventional ultrasound (US) sequences. US cardiac motion estimation still presents challenges because of the complex motion patterns and the presence of noise. In this work, we propose a novel approach to estimate the cardiac motion using ultrafast ultrasound data. -- Our solution is based on a variational formulation characterized by the L2-regularized class. The displacement is represented by a lattice of b-splines and we ensure robustness by applying a maximum likelihood type estimator. While this is an important part of our solution, the main highlight of this paper is to combine a low-rank data representation with topology preservation. Low-rank data representation (achieved by finding the k-dominant singular values of a Casorati Matrix arranged from the data sequence) speeds up the global solution and achieves noise reduction. On the other hand, topology preservation (achieved by monitoring the Jacobian determinant) allows to radically rule out distortions while carefully controlling the size of allowed expansions and contractions. Our variational approach is carried out on a realistic dataset as well as on a simulated one. We demonstrate how our proposed variational solution deals with complex deformations through careful numerical experiments. While maintaining the accuracy of the solution, the low-rank preprocessing is shown to speed up the convergence of the variational problem. Beyond cardiac motion estimation, our approach is promising for the analysis of other organs that experience motion.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, Physics in Medicine and Biology, 201

The Impact of Environmental Laws on the American Economy

Paper presented at the Third International Scientific & Practical Conference for Lecturers, Post-Graduate Students, and Young Scientists; Mechnikov National University, Odesa, Ukraine; May 2008.In conclusion, environmental regulation in an industrialized nation such as the United States is vital to protecting the natural environment from the adverse affects of pollution. There is no question that regulation is necessary, and that it has worked. Thanks to the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Environmental Protection Agency, Americans can breathe easier and still enjoy the nation’s multitude of waterways. Environmental regulations were put into place at exactly the right time, before any permanent damage to the environment could occur

Poglish in England, the United States, and Poland

Paper presented at the March 4, 2015 Conference "Culture-Tradition-Language" at Zespół Szkół Ekonomicznych in Nowy Sącz, PolandPoglish is a dialect that results from combining language elements from Polish and English. It is most commonly heard among people whose first language is Polish, but encounter the need to use English for practical situations in an English-speaking country, or to describe things using English words in Poland because there is no easily translatable equivalent term in Polish. The Poglish examples in this presentation will include those personally experienced by the author when listening to Polish immigrants in Chicago, some accounts of this dialect currently used by Polish immigrants in England, and the incorporation of English words or modifications of English words into the Polish lexicon in Poland. The implications of the use of Poglish on Polish immigrant traditions and the culture of present-day Poland are discussed

The impact of instructional technology on business education in the United States

Internet jest bardzo ważnym czynnikiem w dzisiejszej edukacji. Służy jako źródło nowych praktyk, metod nauczania i uczenia się. Nauczanie on-line uważane jest za skuteczne interakcje podtrzymujące to nowe środowisko. Przeglądanie stron www łączy nowe sposoby nauczania i uczenia się oraz stawia coraz nowsze i wyższe wymagania studentom i instruktorom. Programy kursów on-line są dobrze zaprojektowane, posiadają dobrze napisane teksty i efektywne cele uczenia się. Istnieją jednak krytyczne uwagi, że kursy on-line zmniejszają kontakty personalne między uczniami a nauczycielem. W rzeczywistości programy uczenia się on-line stwarzają nowe możliwości tworzenia oddzielnego, skutecznego środowiska, które podnosi wartość uczenia się. Aby osiągnąć skuteczne wyniki uczenia się studenci musza mieć dostęp do najnowszych technologii i muszą wiedzieć jak je zastosować. Role nauczyciela sprowadza się do projektowania i wdrożenia procesu uczenia się oraz kontroli

Individual Identity and Social Identity: Conflict or Confluence?

Paper presented at Third Scientific Conference and Discussion Forum on Personality: Psychology and Frontiers, “The Body in Health and Illness,” Wyższa Szkoła Biznesu-National Louis University, Nowy Sacz, Poland.Sometimes it is difficult or impossible to correctly classify or specify a person because of the lack of constancy or the lack of distinguishing information

The role of NF-κB transcription factor in cellular response to ionizing radiation

The NF-κB transcription factor is involved in different aspects of the cellular response to stress, including atypical NF-κB pathway activated by damage induced by ionizing radiation. Moreover, NF-κB could be involved in the regulation of genes activated by other stress-responsive factors. Here we aimed to perform the integrative genomics screening to compare subsets of NF-κB-dependent genes induced by a pro-inflammatory stimulus and a high dose of ionizing radiation and also to identify new genes potentially co-regulated by NF-κB and p53 transcription factors in irradiated cells. Methods. The RelA-containing NF-κB dimers were activated by TNFα cytokine (classical proinflammatory pathway) and a single 4 or 10 Gy dose (atypical radiation-induced pathway) in human osteosarcoma cells. NF-κB-dependent and p53-dependent genes were identified using the gene expression profiling (by RNA-Seq) in cells with downregulated RELA or TP53 combined with the global profiling of RelA and p53 binding sites (by ChIP-Seq). Candidate genes were subsequently validated by quantitative PCR. Results: There were 37 NF-κB-dependent protein-coding genes identified: in all cases RelA bound in their regulatory regions upon activation while downregulation of RELA suppressed their stimulus-induced upregulation, which apparently indicated the positive regulation mode (this set of genes included a few “novel” NF-κB-dependent species). The kinetics of the NF-κB activation was slower in cells exposed to radiation than in cytokine-stimulated ones. However, subsets of NF-κB-dependent genes upregulated by both types of stimuli were essentially the same. Moreover, we identified a subset of radiation-modulated genes whose expression was affected by silencing of both TP53 and RELA, and a subset of radiation-upregulated genes where radiation stimulated binding of both p53 and RelA. For three genes an antagonistic effect of both transcription factors was observed: IL4I1 was activated by NF-κB and inhibited by p53, while CDKN1A and SERPINE1 were activated by p53 and inhibited by NF-κB. Moreover, RRAD was putatively co-activated by both factors. Conclusions: One could expect that similar cellular processes resulting from activation of the NF-κB pathway could be induced in cells responding to pro-inflammatory cytokines and in cells where so-called “sterile inflammation” response was initiated by radiation-induced damage. Moreover, certain stress-responsive genes induced by ionizing radiation could be co-regulated by NF-κB and p53.publishedVersio