After-school Child Care Projects Administered by Public School Districts in Seven Selected States

The purpose of this study was to determine the administrative structure, staff qualifications, and staffing patterns of selected school-age child care projects administered by public school districts; and to develop guidelines for planning future projects. Nine research questions were considered to be relevant to the study: (1) What types of administrative structure were demonstrated by after-school child care projects? (2) Did the projects surveyed require similar staff qualifications for initial employment? (3) Did the projects surveyed utilize similar staffing patterns? (4) Did the literature indicate prescribed staff qualifications? (5) Did the literature state prescribed staff qualifications in behavioral terms? (6) What was the adult/child ratio of projects surveyed? (7) Did the projects surveyed utilize a staff development program? (8) Which of the states included in the study required prescribed standards for after-school projects administered by public school districts? (9) Were there similarities among states of prescribed standards for after-school projects administered by public school districts? By contacting the child care licensing agents of the Departments of Human Services, and/or the Departments of Education of the states of Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, after-school child care projects administered by public school districts were identified. The directors of these projects were mailed a validated survey instrument along with a cover letter requesting their participation in the study. In addition, on-site visitations to three communities having after-school child care projects administered by public school districts were conducted. A total of 19 directors representing 45 projects responded to the survey instrument of which 42 projects were found to meet the research limitations imposed on the study. Project directors from five of the seven selected states participated in the study. Data from the survey instrument responses were analyzed. Guidelines for school-age child care projects administered by public school districts were developed from the survey of related literature, analysis of survey responses, and on-site visitations. Recommendations based on the findings were given

What Comes Next? Evaluating Uncertainty in Neural Text Generators Against Human Production Variability

In Natural Language Generation (NLG) tasks, for any input, multiple communicative goals are plausible, and any goal can be put into words, or produced, in multiple ways. We characterise the extent to which human production varies lexically, syntactically, and semantically across four NLG tasks, connecting human production variability to aleatoric or data uncertainty. We then inspect the space of output strings shaped by a generation system’s predicted probability distribution and decoding algorithm to probe its uncertainty. For each test input, we measure the generator’s calibration to human production variability. Following this instance-level approach, we analyse NLG models and decoding strategies, demonstrating that probing a generator with multiple samples and, when possible, multiple references, provides the level of detail necessary to gain understanding of a model’s representation of uncertainty

Subspace Chronicles: How Linguistic Information Emerges, Shifts and Interacts during Language Model Training

Representational spaces learned via language modeling are fundamental to Natural Language Processing (NLP), however there has been limited understanding regarding how and when during training various types of linguistic information emerge and interact. Leveraging a novel information theoretic probing suite, which enables direct comparisons of not just task performance, but their representational subspaces, we analyze nine tasks covering syntax, semantics and reasoning, across 2M pre-training steps and five seeds. We identify critical learning phases across tasks and time, during which subspaces emerge, share information, and later disentangle to specialize. Across these phases, syntactic knowledge is acquired rapidly after 0.5% of full training. Continued performance improvements primarily stem from the acquisition of open-domain knowledge, while semantics and reasoning tasks benefit from later boosts to long-range contextualization and higher specialization. Measuring cross-task similarity further reveals that linguistically related tasks share information throughout training, and do so more during the critical phase of learning than before or after. Our findings have implications for model interpretability, multi-task learning, and learning from limited data.</p

Morphometric analyses of the visual pathways in macular degeneration

Introduction. Macular degeneration (MD) causes central visual field loss. When field defects occur in both eyes and overlap, parts of the visual pathways are no longer stimulated. Previous reports have shown that this affects the grey matter of the primary visual cortex, but possible effects on the preceding visual pathway structures have not been fully established. Method. In this multicentre study, we used high-resolution anatomical magnetic resonance imaging and voxel-based morphometry to investigate the visual pathway structures up to the primary visual cortex of patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and juvenile macular degeneration (JMD). Results. Compared to age-matched healthy controls, in patients with JMD we found volumetric reductions in the optic nerves, the chiasm, the lateral geniculate bodies, the optic radiations and the visual cortex. In patients with AMD we found volumetric reductions in the lateral geniculate bodies, the optic radiations and the visual cortex. An unexpected finding was that AMD, but not JMD, was associated with a reduction in frontal white matter volume. Conclusion. MD is associated with degeneration of structures along the visual pathways. A reduction in frontal white matter volume only present in the AMD patients may constitute a neural correlate of previously reported association between AMD and mild cognitive impairment. Keywords: macular degeneration - visual pathway - visual field - voxel-based morphometryComment: appears in Cortex (2013

The magnetofection method: Using magnetic force to enhance gene delivery

In order to enhance and target gene delivery we have previously established a novel method, termed magnetofection, which uses magnetic force acting on gene vectors that are associated with magnetic particles. Here we review the benefits, the mechanism and the potential of the method with regard to overcoming physical limitations to gene delivery. Magnetic particle chemistry and physics are discussed, followed by a detailed presentation of vector formulation and optimization work. While magnetofection does not necessarily improve the overall performance of any given standard gene transfer method in vitro, its major potential lies in the extraordinarily rapid and efficient transfection at low vector doses and the possibility of remotely controlled vector targeting in vivo

One Year Sustainability of Risk Factor Change from a 9-Week Workplace Intervention

We examined the effect of a 9-week diet and physical activity intervention provided in the workplace by a group education session where personal dietary and physical activity goals were proposed. Measurements of anthropometry, fasting blood lipids, glucose and insulin, assays for antioxidant activity (AOA) and questionnaires were completed at 0, 3, 6, 9, and 12 weeks in 50 healthy workers (50% male, mean age 46y). Followup measurements in 39 (56% male) were possible at 52 weeks. At week 3 a group dietary and physical activity “motivational seminar” was held. At week 6, half the group were supplied daily kiwifruit for 3 weeks with cross over at week 9 until week 12. Compared to baseline, lipid, glucose, insulin and AOA measurements were improved at 12 and 52 weeks. Body measurements did not change. Group diet and physical activity advice reinforced over 9 weeks is associated with a sustained improvement in cardiovascular risk factors at 52 weeks

Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk: Report #23

The Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk (CRESPAR) was established in 1994 and continued until 2004. It was a collaboration between Johns Hopkins University and Howard University. CRESPAR’s mission was to conduct research, development, evaluation, and dissemination of replicable strategies designed to transform schooling for students who were placed at risk due to inadequate institutional responses to such factors as poverty, ethnic minority status, and non-English-speaking home background.Many graduates who have the academic ability to continue their schooling beyond high school do not enroll in higher education. This phenomenon has been referred to as talent loss. The challenges involved in financing higher education partially contribute to talent loss and its pervasiveness among poor students, but they fall short of providing a complete explanation. This study explicates other possible sources of talent loss. The authors use dual methodologies to examine critical sources of talent loss among students who perform well academically, but are placed at risk of academic failure because they are also from low SES families.Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education (R-117-D4005