The impact of teacher wages on the performance of students: evidence from PISA

Teacher profile and characteristics are not weightless because student achievements are heavily teacher dependent. In this detailed and in-depth research, the impact of teacher wages on students’ achievement was assessed in different ways by using different measuring sticks; starting salary, salary after 15 year of experience, salary per hour of net teaching time and salary ratio to GDP per capita and by using country scores, of 15 year old pupil enrolled in lower secondary school, in OECD member countries. For this propose PISA 2000, 2003 and 2006 survey data of students’ scores were used. The independent variables “wages” was regressed on the dependent variable “students total mean country score”. The results of these analyses gave an indication that there is a positive impact of teacher wages on students’ performance.characteristics, profile, qualities, impact, teacher, learning, achievements, performance, student, salary, wages, gender, PISA, OECD

Informational Divergence and Entropy Rate on Rooted Trees with Probabilities

Rooted trees with probabilities are used to analyze properties of a variable length code. A bound is derived on the difference between the entropy rates of the code and a memoryless source. The bound is in terms of normalized informational divergence. The bound is used to derive converses for exact random number generation, resolution coding, and distribution matching.Comment: 5 pages. With proofs and illustrating exampl

Fixed-to-Variable Length Distribution Matching

Fixed-to-variable length (f2v) matchers are used to reversibly transform an input sequence of independent and uniformly distributed bits into an output sequence of bits that are (approximately) independent and distributed according to a target distribution. The degree of approximation is measured by the informational divergence between the output distribution and the target distribution. An algorithm is developed that efficiently finds optimal f2v codes. It is shown that by encoding the input bits blockwise, the informational divergence per bit approaches zero as the block length approaches infinity. A relation to data compression by Tunstall coding is established.Comment: 5 pages, essentially the ISIT 2013 versio

Analysis of reporter proteins GUS and DsRed driven under the control of CaMV35S promoter in syncytia induced by beet cyst nematode Heterodera schachtii in Arabidopsis roots

Background: Cyst nematodes induce specialized feeding structures called syncytia in the plant roots. The expression of CaMV promoter in syncytia has remained topic of debate. The objective of this research was to study the activity of CaMV promoter by using reporter proteins like GUSand DsRed under the control of CaMV35S promoter in syncytia induced by H. schachtii in Arabidopsis roots.Methods: pMAA-Red and pPZP3425 plasmids were used to study expression of GUS and DsRedin syncytia.  The plants were grown in 2% Knop medium under sterile conditions in growth chambers at 25°C in long day conditions. GUS activity in syncytia was studied through staining of syncytia using X-gluc solution. Ds-Red fluorescence in syncytia was detected by using an inverse microscope equipped with UV filter.Results: The expression analysis of DsRed protein driven by CaMV promoter demonstrated that this promoter is active in syncytia at all the time points. All the syncytia showed DsRed expression at 5 dpi. At 7 dpi, 10 dpi and 15 dpi over 90%, 80% and 50% of the syncytia showed DsRedfluorescence respectively. There was very high fluorescence in the syncytia as compared to the uninfected root segments due to high expression. CaMV::GUS lines showed GUS expression in 80% of 5dpi syncytia. However, unlike expression of DsRed, the number of GUS stained syncytia decreased quickly to around 50% at 7 dpi and to about 5% in the 15 dpi syncytia.Conclusions: The results conclude that CaMV promoter is more active in younger syncytia as compared to older syncytia but can be used for expression in syncytia. Moreover, DsRed protein could be used as better reporter for evaluation of gene expression in syncytia as compared to GUS

Ruthenium and osmium clusters containing imido and sulfido ligands and their reactions with unsaturated organic molecules

Chapter 1 is an introduction to our research in triosmium and triruthenium clusters and details the different types of trinuclear clusters and capping ligands available. The uses of clusters in catalysis are then discussed. Chapter 2 describes the synthesis of amido and imido systems derived from [M3(CO)12] and NH2SO2tolyl. The formation and crystal structure of [Ru3(μ3-H)2(μ3-NSO2tolyl)(CO)9] is presented with its thermal decarbonylation to give [{Ru3(μ-H)2 (μ4-NSO2tolyl)(CO)7}2] (based on spectroscopic evidence) and protonation to give [Ru3(μ-H)3(μ3-NSO2tolyl)(CO)9]⁺. The deprotonation of [Os3(μ-H)(μ-NHSO2tolyl)(CO)10] to give the pyramidal μ2-imido system [OS3(μ-H)(μ-NSO2tolyl)(CO)10] which has been crystallographically characterised, is also discussed Chapter 3 reports the formation of the MeCN-substituted derivatives by treatment of [M3(μ-H)2(μ3-NSO2tolyl)(CO)9] with Me3NO.2H2O/MeCN. Important new discoveries on how alkynes are incorporated into these clusters are described, including single insertions into M-H bonds and coupling of alkenyl ligands formed by double insertions to give butadiene clusters. The crystal structures of [Os3(μ-trans-σ, η2-CH=CHBu)(μ3-NSO2tolyl)(CO)8] and [Ru3(μ-η2, η2-C4H6)(μ3-NSO2tolyl)(μ3- CO)(CO)7] are given. Chapter 4 studies the reactions of [M3(μ-H)2(μ3-S)(CO)8(MeCN)] (M = Ru or Os) with alkynes. Here evidence for the formation of double insertion products is presented as well as for single insertion products and butadiene clusters. The mode of coordination for the butadiene ligand in this case was different to those in Chapter 3. The crystal structure of [Os3(η4-PhCH=CHCPh=CH2)(μ3-S)(CO)8] is discussed. Studies on the reductive coupling of alkynes to give butadienes are described. Comparisons between the different effects of μ3-NSO2tolyl compared with μ3-S and Ru compared with Os are presented. Chapter 5 focuses on the coupling of high-valent with low-valent transition metal units within a single molecular cluster. For instance, the synthesis and characterisation of the high-low valent clusters [Ru3(CO)12MoX2] where MoX2 is the high-valent fragment is reported. The crystal structure of [Ru3(CO)12{Mo(N-2,6- Me2C6H3)2}] results on protonating this cluster are presented