Strategies to support general education teachers serving students with mild to moderate disabilities

This action thesis project is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts in Education degree at California State University, Monterey Bay. The purpose of this action research project, Effective Strategies To Use In The Classroom, was to bring together my high school\u27s general educators and special education staff to work. together through collaboration to better serve the development and learning needs of students with learning disabilities. It examines the effectiveness of researched based instructional modifications and strategies to improve collaboration between general educators and special education teachers working as a team in support of the special needs student in the mainstream class setting. This action research project is a summary of this collaboration as a special education teacher with the focus on weekly analysis of student observations in the mainstream classroom. The collaboration team worked together to support special education students in a general education classroom setting. The weekly observations were analyzed by the volunteers and the researcher. The results revealed that the modifications by the teacher could support students to be active learners and engaged in the teacher made lesson plans. The Identification, Modifications and Strategies For Students With Disabilities booklet supported the teachers collaboration needs. The impact of this action research project improved the collaborative efforts of the general and special educators, by the implementation of the handbook so to serve all students

Measurements of nonmethane hydrocarbons in 28 United States cities

Between 1999 and 2005 a sampling campaign was conducted to identify and quantify the major species of atmospheric nonmethane hydrocarbons (NMHCs) in United States cities. Whole air canister samples were collected in 28 cities and analyzed for methane, carbon monoxide (CO) and NMHCs. Ambient mixing ratios exhibited high inter- and intra-city variability, often having standard deviations in excess of 50% of the mean value. For this reason, ratios of individual NMHC to CO, a combustion tracer, were examined to facilitate comparison between cities. Ratios were taken from correlation plots between the species of interest and CO, and most NMHCs were found to have correlation coefficients (r2) greater than 0.6, particularly ethene, ethyne and benzene, highlighting the influence of vehicular emissions on NMHC mixing ratios. Notable exceptions were the short-chain alkanes, which generally had poor correlations with CO. Ratios of NMHC vs. CO were also used to identify those cities with unique NMHC sources. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Efficient illumination independent appearance-based face tracking

One of the major challenges that visual tracking algorithms face nowadays is being able to cope with changes in the appearance of the target during tracking. Linear subspace models have been extensively studied and are possibly the most popular way of modelling target appearance. We introduce a linear subspace representation in which the appearance of a face is represented by the addition of two approxi- mately independent linear subspaces modelling facial expressions and illumination respectively. This model is more compact than previous bilinear or multilinear ap- proaches. The independence assumption notably simplifies system training. We only require two image sequences. One facial expression is subject to all possible illumina- tions in one sequence and the face adopts all facial expressions under one particular illumination in the other. This simple model enables us to train the system with no manual intervention. We also revisit the problem of efficiently fitting a linear subspace-based model to a target image and introduce an additive procedure for solving this problem. We prove that Matthews and Baker’s Inverse Compositional Approach makes a smoothness assumption on the subspace basis that is equiva- lent to Hager and Belhumeur’s, which worsens convergence. Our approach differs from Hager and Belhumeur’s additive and Matthews and Baker’s compositional ap- proaches in that we make no smoothness assumptions on the subspace basis. In the experiments conducted we show that the model introduced accurately represents the appearance variations caused by illumination changes and facial expressions. We also verify experimentally that our fitting procedure is more accurate and has better convergence rate than the other related approaches, albeit at the expense of a slight increase in computational cost. Our approach can be used for tracking a human face at standard video frame rates on an average personal computer

γ-Linolenic acid increases expression of key regulators of lipid metabolism in human skeletal muscle cells

Control of skeletal muscle fat metabolism is regulated acutely through Peroxisome Proliferator Activated Receptor (PPAR) δ activation and its downstream intracellular targets. The purpose of this study was to determine whether fatty acids with high binding affinity for PPARδ can elevate the expression of genes related to fatty acid oxidation and indicators of mitochondrial biogenesis in cultured human skeletal myotubes. Myotubes were treated for 72 hours with one of four conditions: (i) Control (CON); (ii) Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA 250μM); (iii) γ-linolenic acid (γ-LA 250μM); (iv) PPARδ Agonist (GW501516 10nM). Incubation with γ-LA induced increases in the gene expression of CD36 (p= 0.005), HADHA (p= 0.022) and PDK4 (p=0.025) in comparison with CON, with no further differences observed between conditions. Furthermore, intensity of MitoTracker® Red immunostaining in myotubes increased following incubation with γ-LA (p≤ 0.001) and EPA (p= 0.005) however these trends were not mirrored in the expression of PGC-1α as might be expected. Overall, γ-LA elevates levels the transcription of key intracellular regulators of lipid metabolism and transport in human myotubes, which may be clinically beneficial in the control of metabolic diseases

Myosin V passing over Arp2/3 junctions: branching ratio calculated from the elastic lever arm model

Myosin V is a two-headed processive motor protein that walks in a hand-over-hand fashion along actin filaments. When it encounters a filament branch, formed by the Arp2/3 complex, it can either stay on the straight mother filament, or switch to the daughter filament. We study both probabilities using the elastic lever arm model for myosin V. We calculate the shapes and bending energies of all relevant configurations in which the trail head is bound to the actin filament before Arp2/3 and the lead head is bound either to the mother or to the daughter filament. Based on the assumption that the probability for a head to bind to a certain actin subunit is proportional to the Boltzmann factor obtained from the elastic energy, we calculate the mother/daughter filament branching ratio. Our model predicts a value of 27% for the daughter and 73% for the mother filament. This result is in good agreement with recent experimental data.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, to appear in Biophysical Journa

Eye position and eye velocity integrators reside in separate brainstem nuclei.

Two types of central nervous system integrators are critical for oculomotor performance. The first integrates velocity commands to create position signals that hold fixation of the eye. The second stores relative velocity of the head and visual surround to stabilize gaze both during and after the occurrence of continuous self and world motion. We have used recordings from single neurons to establish that the 'position' and 'velocity' integrators for horizontal eye movement occupy adjacent, but nonoverlapping, locations in the goldfish medulla. Lidocaine inactivation of each integrator results in the eye movement deficits expected if horizontal eye position and velocity signals are processed separately. These observations also indicate that each brainstem compartment generates and stores these signals. Consequently, each integrator exhibits functional autonomy. Therefore, we propose that the intrinsic electrophysiological properties of the constituent neurons in each brainstem subnucleus may be sufficient for producing integrator rhythmicity

Elastic lever arm model for myosin V

We present a mechanochemical model for myosin V, a two-headed processive motor protein. We derive the properties of a dimer from those of an individual head, which we model both with a 4-state cycle (detached, attached with ADP.Pi, attached with ADP and attached without nucleotide) and alternatively with a 5-state cycle (where the power stroke is not tightly coupled to the phosphate release). In each state the lever arm leaves the head at a different, but fixed, angle. The lever arm itself is described as an elastic rod. The chemical cycles of both heads are coordinated exclusively by the mechanical connection between the two lever arms. The model explains head coordination by showing that the lead head only binds to actin after the power stroke in the trail head and that it only undergoes its power stroke after the trail head unbinds from actin. Both models (4- and 5-state) reproduce the observed hand-over-hand motion and fit the measured force-velocity relations. The main difference between the two models concerns the load dependence of the run length, which is much weaker in the 5-state model. We show how systematic processivity measurement under varying conditions could be used to distinguish between both models and to determine the kinetic parameters.Comment: 15 pages, 15 figures, to appear in Biophys.

Medium-Energy Gamma-Ray Astrophysics with the 3-DTI Gamma-Ray Telescope

Gamma-ray observations in the medium energy range (0.50-50.0 MeV) are central to unfolding many outstanding questions in astrophysics. The challenges of medium-energy gamma-ray observations, however, are the low photon statistics and large backgrounds. We review these questions, address the telescope technology requirements, and describe our development of the 3-Dimensional Track Imaging (3-DTI) Compton telescope and its performance for a new mediumenergy gamma-ray mission. The 3-DTI is a large-volume time projection chamber (TPC) with a 2-dimensional gas micro-well detector (MWD) readout

Temporal fluctuation of multidrug resistant salmonella typhi haplotypes in the mekong river delta region of Vietnam.

BACKGROUND: typhoid fever remains a public health problem in Vietnam, with a significant burden in the Mekong River delta region. Typhoid fever is caused by the bacterial pathogen Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi (S. Typhi), which is frequently multidrug resistant with reduced susceptibility to fluoroquinolone-based drugs, the first choice for the treatment of typhoid fever. We used a GoldenGate (Illumina) assay to type 1,500 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and analyse the genetic variation of S. Typhi isolated from 267 typhoid fever patients in the Mekong delta region participating in a randomized trial conducted between 2004 and 2005. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: the population of S. Typhi circulating during the study was highly clonal, with 91% of isolates belonging to a single clonal complex of the S. Typhi H58 haplogroup. The patterns of disease were consistent with the presence of an endemic haplotype H58-C and a localised outbreak of S. Typhi haplotype H58-E2 in 2004. H58-E2-associated typhoid fever cases exhibited evidence of significant geo-spatial clustering along the Sông H u branch of the Mekong River. Multidrug resistance was common in the established clone H58-C but not in the outbreak clone H58-E2, however all H58 S. Typhi were nalidixic acid resistant and carried a Ser83Phe amino acid substitution in the gyrA gene. SIGNIFICANCE: the H58 haplogroup dominates S. Typhi populations in other endemic areas, but the population described here was more homogeneous than previously examined populations, and the dominant clonal complex (H58-C, -E1, -E2) observed in this study has not been detected outside Vietnam. IncHI1 plasmid-bearing S. Typhi H58-C was endemic during the study period whilst H58-E2, which rarely carried the plasmid, was only transient, suggesting a selective advantage for the plasmid. These data add insight into the outbreak dynamics and local molecular epidemiology of S. Typhi in southern Vietnam