Compensatory education for disadvantaged Mexican students : an impact evaluation using propensity score matching

The authors use propensity score matching to evaluate the effectiveness of CONAFE, a compensatory education program in Mexico, in improving student test scores and lowering repetition and failure rates. They find that CONAFE is most effective in improving primary school math learning and secondary school Spanish learning. Secondary education delivered by way of television to remote communities and bilingual education for indigenous students are both shown to improve student achievement. CONAFE also lowers primary school repetition and failure rates. The authors conclude that this compensatory education program can effectively improve short-term learning results for disadvantaged students, but that improvement varies by the subject of instruction and the demographics of students taught.Primary Education,Gender and Education,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Teaching and Learning,Public Health Promotion,Teaching and Learning,Gender and Education,Primary Education,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Girls Education

非球形のアレイ形状を持つAmbisonicsの定式化

Tohoku University鈴木陽一課

Characteristics of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs for Detection of MIG

The aim of this research work is to analyze the surface characteristics of an improved AlGaN/GaN HEMT biosensor. The investigation leads to analyze the transistor performance to detect human MIG with the help of an analytical model and measured data. The surface engineering includes the effects of repeatability, influence of the substrate, threshold shifting, and floating gate configuration. A numerical method is developed using the charge-control model and the results are used to observe the changes in the device channel at the quantum level. A Self-Assembled Monolayer (SAM) is formed at the gate electrode to allow immobilization and reliable crosslinking between the surface of the gate electrode and the antibody. The amperometric detection is realized solely by varying surface charges induced by the biomolecule through capacitive coupling. The equivalent DC bias is 6.99436 × 10−20 V which is represented by the total number of charges in the MIG sample. The steady state current of the clean device is 66.89 mA. The effect of creation and immobilization of the protein on the SAM layer increases the current by 80 - 150 μA which ensures that successful induction of electrons is exhibited

Trehalose alleviates the phenotype of Machado–Joseph disease mouse models

Machado-Joseph disease (MJD), also known as spinocerebellar ataxia type 3, is the most common of the dominantly inherited ataxias worldwide and is characterized by mutant ataxin-3 aggregation and neuronal degeneration. There is no treatment available to block or delay disease progression. In this work we investigated whether trehalose, a natural occurring disaccharide widely used in food and cosmetic industry, would rescue biochemical, behavioral and neuropathological features of an in vitro and of a severe MJD transgenic mouse model.This work was funded by BioBlast Pharma, the ERDF through the Regional Operational Program Center 2020, Competitiveness Factors Operational Program (COMPETE 2020) and National Funds through FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology) - SFRH/BD/87404/2012, BrainHealth2020 projects (CENTRO-01-0145-FEDER-000008), ViraVector (CENTRO-01-0145FEDER-022095), CortaCAGs (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016719), SpreadSilenc‑ing POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029716 and POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007440, as well as the SynSpread, ESMI and ModelPolyQ under the EU Joint ProgramNeurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND), the last two co-funded bythe European Union H2020 program, GA No. 643417; by National Ataxia Foundation (USA), the American Portuguese Biomedical Research Fund (APBRF) and the Richard Chin and Lily Lock Machado–Joseph Disease Research Fund.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Societal-level versus individual-level predictions of ethical behavior: a 48-society study of collectivism and individualism

Is the societal-level of analysis sufficient today to understand the values of those in the global workforce? Or are individual-level analyses more appropriate for assessing the influence of values on ethical behaviors across country workforces? Using multi-level analyses for a 48-society sample, we test the utility of both the societal-level and individual-level dimensions of collectivism and individualism values for predicting ethical behaviors of business professionals. Our values-based behavioral analysis indicates that values at the individual-level make a more significant contribution to explaining variance in ethical behaviors than do values at the societal-level. Implicitly, our findings question the soundness of using societal-level values measures. Implications for international business research are discussed

Search for stop and higgsino production using diphoton Higgs boson decays

Results are presented of a search for a "natural" supersymmetry scenario with gauge mediated symmetry breaking. It is assumed that only the supersymmetric partners of the top-quark (stop) and the Higgs boson (higgsino) are accessible. Events are examined in which there are two photons forming a Higgs boson candidate, and at least two b-quark jets. In 19.7 inverse femtobarns of proton-proton collision data at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV, recorded in the CMS experiment, no evidence of a signal is found and lower limits at the 95% confidence level are set, excluding the stop mass below 360 to 410 GeV, depending on the higgsino mass

Impacts of the Tropical Pacific/Indian Oceans on the Seasonal Cycle of the West African Monsoon

The current consensus is that drought has developed in the Sahel during the second half of the twentieth century as a result of remote effects of oceanic anomalies amplified by local land–atmosphere interactions. This paper focuses on the impacts of oceanic anomalies upon West African climate and specifically aims to identify those from SST anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Oceans during spring and summer seasons, when they were significant. Idealized sensitivity experiments are performed with four atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs). The prescribed SST patterns used in the AGCMs are based on the leading mode of covariability between SST anomalies over the Pacific/Indian Oceans and summer rainfall over West Africa. The results show that such oceanic anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Ocean lead to a northward shift of an anomalous dry belt from the Gulf of Guinea to the Sahel as the season advances. In the Sahel, the magnitude of rainfall anomalies is comparable to that obtained by other authors using SST anomalies confined to the proximity of the Atlantic Ocean. The mechanism connecting the Pacific/Indian SST anomalies with West African rainfall has a strong seasonal cycle. In spring (May and June), anomalous subsidence develops over both the Maritime Continent and the equatorial Atlantic in response to the enhanced equatorial heating. Precipitation increases over continental West Africa in association with stronger zonal convergence of moisture. In addition, precipitation decreases over the Gulf of Guinea. During the monsoon peak (July and August), the SST anomalies move westward over the equatorial Pacific and the two regions where subsidence occurred earlier in the seasons merge over West Africa. The monsoon weakens and rainfall decreases over the Sahel, especially in August.Peer reviewe

Differential cross section measurements for the production of a W boson in association with jets in proton–proton collisions at √s = 7 TeV

Measurements are reported of differential cross sections for the production of a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, in association with jets, as a function of several variables, including the transverse momenta (pT) and pseudorapidities of the four leading jets, the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT), and the difference in azimuthal angle between the directions of each jet and the muon. The data sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV was collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb[superscript −1]. The measured cross sections are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo generators, MadGraph + pythia and sherpa, and to next-to-leading-order calculations from BlackHat + sherpa. The differential cross sections are found to be in agreement with the predictions, apart from the pT distributions of the leading jets at high pT values, the distributions of the HT at high-HT and low jet multiplicity, and the distribution of the difference in azimuthal angle between the leading jet and the muon at low values.United States. Dept. of EnergyNational Science Foundation (U.S.)Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio