Instructional Television in the Brookings, South Dakota, Elementary Schools

This paper intends to determine if instructional television is widely used in the Brookings, South Dakota, elementary schools. It also attempts to determine what attitudes Brookings elementary teachers have about instructional television. Instructional television (ITV) is a modern-day teaching tool available and used in most schools. The cost to the individual school district is minimal after receiving sets have been purchased. Supplementary materials go with the programs and are available to the school from the public television station. A school may purchase any or none of the material it chooses. The advantages of instructional television are many, as will be discussed in Chapter III. This writer became interested in IT V several years ago while serving as a substitute teacher in the Lincoln, Nebraska, public schools. Th e programs were good, for the most part, and interesting on a level the children could understand. Television sets were not available in the classroom, however. Students were taken to the school auditorium, which could seat several hundred. The sets were placed high on the walls which made it necessary to hold one\u27s head back to see the screens. The reader can easily imagine transporting 35 active junior high students down halls and stairways, seating them in a small corner of the large room, and trying to recreate a learning atmosphere and restore some semblance of classroom order. The course of least resistance, not taking them to watch the programs, was attractive. In social conversation, one Brookings elementary· teacher responded to this writer\u27s question that she seldom used ITV--it was too much bother. Her statement was a reminder of the previous experience in substitute teaching, and, was the beginning of this research project. Did her attitude pervade the whole school system? What were the reasons for her attitude? Was it really a bother? Weren\u27t enough receiving sets or supplementary materials available? Were the programs dull and uninteresting or badly produced? Did the programs tie-in or complement the course of study? Considerable reading preparation preceded the writing of the questionnaire. Many studies have been done on the effectiveness of television instruction in the classroom. The most comprehensive study done in the field was done indirectly by a famous researcher, Wilbur Schramm. Actually, his contribution was an extensive review of the available research

Trace- and pseudo-products: restriction-like semigroups with a band of projections

We ascertain conditions and structures on categories and semigroups which admit the construction of pseudo-products and trace products respectively, making their connection as precise as possible. This topic is modelled on the ESN Theorem and its generalization to ample semigroups. Unlike some other variants of ESN, it is self-dual (two-sided), and the condition of commuting projections is relaxed. The condition that projections form a band (are closed under multiplication) is shown to be a very natural one. One-sided reducts are considered, and compared to (generalized) D-semigroups. Finally the special case when the category is a groupoid is examined.Comment: 17 pages. After referee comments. Proof of Th. 3.2 corrected, subsection 5.2 added, 2 new references, minor amendments. Proof of Lem. 4.3(ii) and paragraph on D-semigroups amende

ENIGMA: Efficient Learning-based Inference Guiding Machine

ENIGMA is a learning-based method for guiding given clause selection in saturation-based theorem provers. Clauses from many proof searches are classified as positive and negative based on their participation in the proofs. An efficient classification model is trained on this data, using fast feature-based characterization of the clauses . The learned model is then tightly linked with the core prover and used as a basis of a new parameterized evaluation heuristic that provides fast ranking of all generated clauses. The approach is evaluated on the E prover and the CASC 2016 AIM benchmark, showing a large increase of E's performance.Comment: Submitted to LPAR 201

Isolation and Characterization of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus from Pork Farms and Visiting Veterinary Students

In the last decade livestock-associated methicillin-resistant S. aureus (LA-MRSA) has become a public health concern in many parts of the world. Sequence type 398 (ST398) has been the most commonly reported type of LA-MRSA. While many studies have focused on long-term exposure experienced by swine workers, this study focuses on short-term exposures experienced by veterinary students conducting diagnostic investigations. The objectives were to assess the rate of MRSA acquisition and longevity of carriage in students exposed to pork farms and characterize the recovered MRSA isolates. Student nasal swabs were collected immediately before and after farm visits. Pig nasal swabs and environmental sponge samples were also collected. MRSA isolates were identified biochemically and molecularly including spa typing and antimicrobial susceptibility testing. Thirty (30) veterinary students were enrolled and 40 pork farms were visited. MRSA was detected in 30% of the pork farms and in 22% of the students following an exposure to a MRSA-positive pork farm. All students found to be MRSA-positive initially following farm visit were negative for MRSA within 24 hours post visit. Most common spa types recovered were t002 (79%), t034 (16%) and t548 (4%). Spa types found in pork farms closely matched those recovered from students with few exceptions. Resistance levels to antimicrobials varied, but resistance was most commonly seen for spectinomycin, tetracyclines and neomycin. Non-ST398 MRSA isolates were more likely to be resistant to florfenicol and neomycin as well as more likely to be multidrug resistant compared to ST398 MRSA isolates. These findings indicate that MRSA can be recovered from persons visiting contaminated farms. However, the duration of carriage was very brief and most likely represents contamination of nasal passages rather than biological colonization. The most common spa types found in this study were associated with ST5 and expands the range of livestock-associated MRSA types

Investigation of the Impact of Increased Dietary Insoluble Fiber through the Feeding of Distillers Dried Grains with Solubles (DDGS) on the Incidence and Severity of Brachyspira-Associated Colitis in Pigs

Diet has been implicated as a major factor impacting clinical disease expression of swine dysentery and Brachyspira hyodysenteriae colonization. However, the impact of diet on novel pathogenic strongly beta-hemolytic Brachyspira spp. including “B. hampsonii” has yet to be investigated. In recent years, distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS), a source of insoluble dietary fiber, has been increasingly included in diets of swine. A randomized complete block experiment was used to examine the effect of increased dietary fiber through the feeding of DDGS on the incidence of Brachyspira-associated colitis in pigs. One hundred 4-week-old pigs were divided into five groups based upon inocula (negative control, Brachyspira intermedia,Brachyspira pilosicoli, B. hyodysenteriae or “B. hampsonii”) and fed one of two diets containing no (diet 1) or 30% (diet 2) DDGS. The average days to first positive culture and days post inoculation to the onset of clinical dysentery in the B. hyodysenteriae groups was significantly shorter for diet 2 when compared to diet 1 (P = 0.04 and P = 0.0009, respectively). A similar difference in the average days to first positive culture and days post inoculation to the onset of clinical dysentery was found when comparing the “B. hampsonii” groups. In this study, pigs receiving 30% DDGS shed on average one day prior to and developed swine dysentery nearly twice as fast as pigs receiving 0% DDGS. Accordingly, these data suggest a reduction in insoluble fiber through reducing or eliminating DDGS in swine rations should be considered an integral part of any effective disease elimination strategy for swine dysentery

ProofWatch: Watchlist Guidance for Large Theories in E

Watchlist (also hint list) is a mechanism that allows related proofs to guide a proof search for a new conjecture. This mechanism has been used with the Otter and Prover9 theorem provers, both for interactive formalizations and for human-assisted proving of open conjectures in small theories. In this work we explore the use of watchlists in large theories coming from first-order translations of large ITP libraries, aiming at improving hammer-style automation by smarter internal guidance of the ATP systems. In particular, we (i) design watchlist-based clause evaluation heuristics inside the E ATP system, and (ii) develop new proof guiding algorithms that load many previous proofs inside the ATP and focus the proof search using a dynamically updated notion of proof matching. The methods are evaluated on a large set of problems coming from the Mizar library, showing significant improvement of E's standard portfolio of strategies, and also of the previous best set of strategies invented for Mizar by evolutionary methods.Comment: 19 pages, 10 tables, submitted to ITP 2018 at FLO

A method for finding new sets of axioms for classes of semigroups

We introduce a general technique for finding sets of axioms for a given class of semigroups. To illustrate the technique, we provide new sets of defining axioms for groups of exponent n, bands, and semilattices

Improved Selective Medium for the Isolation of \u3ci\u3eTreponema hyodysenteriae\u3c/i\u3e

An agar medium with improved selection for Treponema hyodysenteriae was developed. Cultures of T. hyodysenteriae and T. innocens, feces from 11 clinically normal pigs, and colonic contents from 6 pigs with gross lesions consistent with swine dysentery were diluted in phosphate-buffered saline and plated on Trypticase soy agar (BBL Microbiology Systems, Cockeysville, Md.) with 5% citrated bovine blood (TSA), TSA with 400 ,ug of spectinomycin per ml (TSA-S400), TSA-S400 with 25 ,ug each of colistin and vancomycin per ml, and TSA with 5% pig feces extract and five antimicrobial agents (spiramycin, rifampin, vancomycin, colistin, and spectinomycin) (BJ). Viable numbers of T. hyodysenteriae grown on BJ were virtually identical to those for TSA, TSA-S400, and TSA-S400 with colistin and vancomycin. Pure cultures of four isolates of T. hyodysenteriae and three isolates of T. innocens were sustained through six subcultures on BJ. Fecal floras were completely inhibited on BJ for 14 of 17 fecal samples from both groups of pigs. A total of 461 colonic specimens from naturally occurring cases of porcine intestinal disease were plated on TSA-S400 and BJ. T. hyodysenteriae was isolated on both TSA-S400 and BJ for 69 specimens and on BJ alone for an additional 19 specimens