Using stories to help children learn a foreign language

This investigation is set to explore the possible advantages of using story books alongside a standard textbook inside the English as a Foreign Language (FL) classroom. The approach will be used to determine if it is possible to enhance the students’ motivation, attention span and participation within the Primary School FL context. The approach will contain pre-reading, during-reading and post-reading activities to enable the students to achieve the highest level of comprehension possible. The results will be taken from answers of the students themselves and based on comments given by their habitual English teacher and the differences that have been easily noticeable.Universidad de Granada. Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación. Grado en Educación Primaria no Bilingü

Adjunct Therapy in Type 1 Diabetes: A Survey to Uncover Unmet Needs and Patient Preferences Beyond HbA1c Measures.

Background: Adjunct therapy can help patients with type 1 diabetes achieve glycemic goals while potentially mitigating some of the side effects of insulin. In this study, we used a patient survey to identify the unmet needs in type 1 diabetes therapy, patient views of treatment benefit-risk trade-offs, and patient preferences for the use of an adjunct therapy. Methods: A quantitative survey was sent to 2084 adults with type 1 diabetes in November 2017. "Jobs-to-be-done" and conjoint analyses were performed on survey responses to identify unmet needs and the importance of treatment-associated benefits and risks to patients. A 5-point Likert scale measured the importance and satisfaction with patients' current therapy, and with gaps relating to unmet needs. In the conjoint analysis, patients were asked to choose between "packages" of attributes of two doses of adjunct therapy (200 and 400 mg) and placebo, based on established benefits and side effects. Results: A total of 1313 patients (63%) responded. The greatest unmet needs identified were simplifying treatment, lowering/maintaining glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), reducing mental effort, and increasing time in range (TIR). Conjoint analysis showed that reductions in body weight and TIR had the highest attribute importance (25% and 18%, respectively). The majority (93%) of patients had a preference for the adjunct therapy (either dose) over placebo. Conclusions: This survey highlights the importance of measures beyond HbA1c, such as treatment simplification and TIR, and patient preference for adjunct therapies that help address unmet needs in type 1 diabetes treatment

WeedCLR: Weed Contrastive Learning through Visual Representations with Class-Optimized Loss in Long-Tailed Datasets

Image classification is a crucial task in modern weed management and crop intervention technologies. However, the limited size, diversity, and balance of existing weed datasets hinder the development of deep learning models for generalizable weed identification. In addition, the expensive labelling requirements of mainstream fully-supervised weed classifiers make them cost- and time-prohibitive to deploy widely, for new weed species, and in site-specific weed management. This paper proposes a novel method for Weed Contrastive Learning through visual Representations (WeedCLR), that uses class-optimized loss with Von Neumann Entropy of deep representation for weed classification in long-tailed datasets. WeedCLR leverages self-supervised learning to learn rich and robust visual features without any labels and applies a class-optimized loss function to address the class imbalance problem in long-tailed datasets. WeedCLR is evaluated on two public weed datasets: CottonWeedID15, containing 15 weed species, and DeepWeeds, containing 8 weed species. WeedCLR achieves an average accuracy improvement of 4.3\% on CottonWeedID15 and 5.6\% on DeepWeeds over previous methods. It also demonstrates better generalization ability and robustness to different environmental conditions than existing methods without the need for expensive and time-consuming human annotations. These significant improvements make WeedCLR an effective tool for weed classification in long-tailed datasets and allows for more rapid and widespread deployment of site-specific weed management and crop intervention technologies.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures, 8 tables. Submitted to the Computers and Electronics in Agriculture journa

SmartTrack: Efficient Predictive Race Detection

Widely used data race detectors, including the state-of-the-art FastTrack algorithm, incur performance costs that are acceptable for regular in-house testing, but miss races detectable from the analyzed execution. Predictive analyses detect more data races in an analyzed execution than FastTrack detects, but at significantly higher performance cost. This paper presents SmartTrack, an algorithm that optimizes predictive race detection analyses, including two analyses from prior work and a new analysis introduced in this paper. SmartTrack's algorithm incorporates two main optimizations: (1) epoch and ownership optimizations from prior work, applied to predictive analysis for the first time; and (2) novel conflicting critical section optimizations introduced by this paper. Our evaluation shows that SmartTrack achieves performance competitive with FastTrack-a qualitative improvement in the state of the art for data race detection.Comment: Extended arXiv version of PLDI 2020 paper (adds Appendices A-E) #228 SmartTrack: Efficient Predictive Race Detectio

Prospectus, October 20, 2010

WILL TEACHERS TWEET? NOT ANYTIME SOON.; Change in AP exams should relieve stress for high school pupils; Chuck Shepherd\u27s News of the Weird; Human Pandora, Part 1: Band of Horses; Didn\u27t your mama ever tell ya? Parkland\u27s Civility Committee hopes to enlighten students and staff; A Prospectus guide to transferring; A quiet shift in GOP stance on gay marriage; A touching example of respect for Old Glory; Fashion lads that shouldn\u27t be seen at school; How to catch up when you\u27re falling behind; Don\u27t let the flu bugs bite; Prospectus Pick: BIood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy; Hester ties NFL record for career TD returns; Do you have any secrets on staying healthy during flu season?; Twisted pumpkinshttps://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_2010/1026/thumbnail.jp

Fluency Assistance Device (FAD): Masker Upgrades

There are around seventy million people internationally who have a stutter, a form of fluency disorder. Some fluency assistance devices are available to the public, but most are highly expensive or unreliable. The Fluency Assistive Device (FAD) team seeks to assist a niche community of these individuals for whom therapy has not worked, and who currently rely on a device known as the Edinburgh Masker. To best reach this community, FAD is partnering with Dave Germeyer, who has invaluable experience repairing these masker devices for his clientele. FAD is redesigning the masker to increase its portability, functionality, and cost-effectiveness by developing an improved analog and new digital version. The Analog Masker v1.3 focuses on updated components and consolidated circuitry to eliminate troublesome wiring of the original. The Digital Masker v1.0 employs a Bluetooth-enabled microcontroller to achieve masker functionality, offering the flexibility of alternative fluency assistance algorithms to assist a broader group of users. An updated prototype of the Analog Masker v1.3 was fabricated and tested for power consumption and overall functional output characteristics versus the original Edinburgh version. The Analog Masker v1.3 has also been fully packaged and enclosed to produce a client testable unit. Bluetooth audio output for the Digital Masker has almost been completed, and two of the alternative algorithms have been coded for the masking output. One of these algorithms, Delayed Altered Feedback (DAF), now produces the expected output in response to an audio test input. Clarity and integrity of the DAF signal output have also been improved. The Masking Altered Feedback (MAF) algorithm that emulates the behavior of the Edinburgh original on the Digital Masker v1.0 is under development. Funding for this work provided by The Collaboratory for Strategic Partnerships and Applied Research.https://mosaic.messiah.edu/engr2022/1006/thumbnail.jp

Prospectus, November 3, 2010

CHAMPAIGN-URBANA RANKS TOP 5 IN COLLEGE DESTINATIONS INDEX; Interested, but not smothering: Student-Parent relationships are continuing on in college; Chuck Shepherd\u27s News of the Weird; Human Pandora, Part 2: Death Cab Cor Cutie; Why you should tune in to PCTV, Autumn Learning Opportunities: Non-credit classes at Parkland; The Illinois Traction Society; Can Republicans rescind \u27Obamacare\u27?; Voters, beware a bum\u27s rush; DIY or DIE: Reconstructing Clothes; Public Symposium on Digital Technology in Champaign-Urbana; Prospectus Pick: MTV\u27s Daria; Quidditch dies off the page and onto campus fields; PCTV Broadcast Schedule: Novemberhttps://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_2010/1028/thumbnail.jp

Prospectus, October 27, 2010

GIVING FUTURE GENERATIONS A CHANCE TO LEARN; The College Students Guide to Statewide Elections; Chuck Shepherd\u27s News of the Weird; The Perfect Soundtrack for Your Halloween Party; The Origin of Halloween; What Should You do This Halloween?; A Trend That is Taking Over Faster Thank Skinny Jeans: Kindness; Skinny Celebrity Chefs Can\u27t be Trusted; Zuckerberg Left With Plenty of Success, but Not Many Friends : Facebook Creator Shown as More than a Computer Genius in New Film, The Social Network; How to Stay Safe This Halloween Weekend; Former Parkland Instructor Wins Gold Medal; Nebraska Brings Tradition to Big Ten Table; In Search of Spiritshttps://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_2010/1027/thumbnail.jp