Cooperative learning and its effects on social interactions in the third grade

The purpose of this action research project was to determine whether social interactions would improve when utilizing cooperative learning techniques. The social interactions observed included listening and speaking, courtesy, peaceful conflict resolution, leadership, and cooperative behaviors such as keeping one\u27s hands to themselves. The targeted population for this study was a class of fifteen third grade students. The researcher submitted pre- and post-treatment surveys to the students which measured the students\u27 sense of classroom responsibility and their sense of personal responsibility within the class. The researcher also utilized journals and cooperative behavior checklists in order to compare student surveys with observed behaviors. The researcher used t tests and Levenne\u27s Test for Equality of Variances in order to determine significance of the data gathered. The results of this study indicated that there were no significant difference social interactions of third grade students when using cooperative learning techniques. The students studied did not improve upon their social skills through this research

The Automatic Control Telelab: a remote control engineering laboratory

Describes the realization of a remote laboratory of automatic control developed at the University of Siena. The Automatic Control Telelab (ACT) allows the on-line interaction between remote users and a set of remote physical processes through the Internet. The key feature of this project is the user-defined controller facility. The remote user can design his/her own controller through the well-known Simulink environment. The overall architecture of the Automatic Control Telelaboratory has been designed with the goal of simplifying the upgrading procedure and the procedures to add new experiments

Muscle ultrasound in myopathies.

This review highlights recent developments in the field of muscle ultrasound (MUS) for the diagnosis and follow up of muscle disorders. The diagnostic screening capacity of quantitative grayscale analysis is still sufficient to assess children suspected of a neuromuscular disorder. A combination of visual and quantitative assessment is advised for optimal interpretation. MUS was more sensitive but less specific than MRI for detecting pathology in limb girdle dystrophies and inflammatory myopathies. New techniques such as shearwave elastography and artificial intelligence algorithms for automated image segmentation show promise but need further development for use in everyday practice.Muscle ultrasound has high correlations with clinical measures of function in skeletal and respiratory muscles and the orofacial region, in most of the myopathies and dystrophies studied. Over time, imaging changes precede changes in clinical status, making them attractive for biomarker use in trials. In Duchenne muscular dystrophy MUS was also responsive to the effects of steroid treatment. Muscle ultrasound is a sensitive technique to diagnose and follow up of skeletal, facial and respiratory muscles in neuromuscular disorders. Its role is both complementary to and partially overlapping with that of MRI

Assessment of required torque and power by-big square baler during the wrapping and baling process

The big square baler is an operating machine that performs the harvesting of hay and crop residues (straw) and the wrapping and baling process of big prismatic bales. The main operating organs of the machine are: i) the harvesting head; ii) the feeder; iii) the compression chamber and iv) the binding apparatus. The required power by the HD1270 big square baler, manufactured by Cicoria in Palazzo San Gervasio (near Potenza, Italy) has been studied. This big baler HD1270 is equipped with specially designed and manufactured devices aimed at reducing the costs of wrapping and baling. Practically these devices are the “Leverage Piston System”, the “Top Feeding System” and the “Controlled Binding System”, which manage, respectively, the motion of the piston, the feeding of the product and the binding operations. According to the manufacturer's technical specifications, these devices allow minimum required power from the tractor down to only 60 kW. Using an ad hoc high precision torque meter and tachometer, mounted between the tractor power take-off (PTO) and the cardan shaft connecting the HD 1270 big baler, the required torque values and power during the straw wrapping and baling process were measured and recorded. The tests were repeated considering different operating conditions. The obtained results were statistically evaluated in the time domain and clearly showed that the effective required power complies with technical specifications. The variability in stress could induce fatigue phenomena in the components that make up the piston motion transmission chain, with a reduction in their useful life

Optimal Management of Energy Communities Hosting a Fleet of Electric Vehicles

In this paper, we study the problem of managing an energy community hosting a fleet of electric vehicles for rent. On the day-ahead, service requests of electric vehicles are submitted to the community. Then, the optimal request-to-vehicle assignment has to be found, as well as the optimal charging schedule of vehicle batteries. A suitable model is presented and included in an existing energy community architecture. The overall community management problem is formulated as a bilevel model, featuring two nested optimization problems. The optimal request-to-vehicle assignment requires the solution of a mixed-integer linear program. To reduce the computational complexity, a heuristic solution to the assignment problem is presented. Numerical results show that the participation in the community grants a remarkable reduction of the electric vehicle charging cost. The adoption of the heuristic assignment solution provides a dramatic reduction of the computation time required to solve the bilevel model. At the same time, the level of suboptimality introduced appears to be negligible, being less than 1% in most of the considered cases

Sequential nitrification/denitrification in subsurface flow constructed wetlands : a literature review.

http://archive.org/details/sequentialnitrif00tit

A severe case of neuroleukemiosis caused by B cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia, presenting as mononeuritis multiplex.

To report an exceptional case of nerve infiltration by an otherwise benign chronic B cell leukemia, inducing severe mononeuritis multiplex. The patient underwent extensive evaluation, including nerve conduction study and myography, brain and plexus MRI, and nerve biopsy. The clinical and electrophysiological diagnosis was a mononeuritis multiplex with severe motor and sensory involvement; only the nerve biopsy allowed definite diagnosis and introduction of chemotherapy, leading to resolution of sensory deficit and progressive motor improvement. Neuroleukemiosis caused by chronic lymphoid leukemia is an exceptional diagnosis. The presence of other possible causes like cryoglobulinemia could induce avoidance of nerve biopsy thus undertreating patient, since steroid treatment is not expected to be efficient on lymphocytic proliferation. Our case stretches the importance of nerve biopsy and raises neuromuscular specialist's awareness of this rare entity

712. AAV-Mediated Allele-Specific RNA Interference of a Common Dominant Rhodopsin Mutation Causing Retinitis Pigmentosa

Inherited retinal degenerations are a group of clinically and genetically heterogeneous diseases characterized by progressive photoreceptor cell death eventually leading to blindness and for which no therapies are available. Mutations in the rhodopsin gene are common causes of autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa (RP). Among them the P23H amino-acid substitution represents the most frequent rhodopsin mutation in US. Given the gain of function effect exerted by the P23H mutation, strategies aimed at silencing the expression of the mutated allele, like RNA interference, are desirable