THE CUMA FARM MACHINERY CO-OPERATIVES

Agribusiness,

Building Teacher Capacity to Support English Language Learners in Schools Receiving School Improvement Grants

The Study of School Turnaround examines the improvement process in a purposive sample of 35 case study schools receiving federal funds through the School Improvement Grants (SIG) program over a three-year period (2010 -- 11 to 2012 -- 13 school years). This brief focuses on 11 of these SIG schools with high proportions of English Language Learner (ELL) students (a median of 45 percent ELLs), describing their efforts to improve teachers' capacity for serving ELLs through staffing strategies and professional development (PD). Key findings that emerged from the ELL case study data collected during the 2011 -- 12 and 2012 -- 13 school years include:Few schools reported leveraging staffing strategies to improve teacher capacity for serving ELLs. Administrators in 3 of the 11 schools reported considering ELL expertise and experience when hiring classroom teachers, while respondents in 2 of the 11 schools reported that teachers' ELL expertise and experience purposefully factored into assignment of teachers to specific classrooms.Most teacher survey respondents (54 to 100 percent) in all 11 schools reported participating in ELL-related PD during the 2011 -- 12 school year. On average, teachers reported that ELL-related PD accounted for less than 20 percent of their total PD hours.Teacher survey respondents in schools that reported a greater PD focus on ELL-related topics, such as instructional strategies for advancing English proficiency or instructional strategies to use for ELLs within content classes, also generally appeared more likely to report that PD improved their effectiveness as teachers of ELLs

Gαq and its \u3ci\u3eAkt\u3c/i\u3eions

No abstract available

Generalized Lévy walks and the role of chemokines in migration of effector CD8+ T cells.

Chemokines have a central role in regulating processes essential to the immune function of T cells, such as their migration within lymphoid tissues and targeting of pathogens in sites of inflammation. Here we track T cells using multi-photon microscopy to demonstrate that the chemokine CXCL10 enhances the ability of CD8+ T cells to control the pathogen Toxoplasma gondii in the brains of chronically infected mice. This chemokine boosts T-cell function in two different ways: it maintains the effector T-cell population in the brain and speeds up the average migration speed without changing the nature of the walk statistics. Notably, these statistics are not Brownian; rather, CD8+ T-cell motility in the brain is well described by a generalized Lévy walk. According to our model, this unexpected feature enables T cells to find rare targets with more than an order of magnitude more efficiency than Brownian random walkers. Thus, CD8+ T-cell behaviour is similar to Lévy strategies reported in organisms ranging from mussels to marine predators and monkeys, and CXCL10 aids T cells in shortening the average time taken to find rare targets

Using patient-reported outcome measures for quality improvement in clinical genetics: an exploratory study

International advocacy of patient-centred healthcare delivery has led to emphasis on the (re)design and evaluation of healthcare processes and outcomes from a patient perspective. Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) have significant potential to inform such attempts. However there is limited understanding of the processes by which this can be achieved. This exploratory study followed attempts to utilise two different PROMs measures to support service quality improvement in clinical genetics. PROMs used were the Genetic Counseling Outcome Scale (GCOS-24), a well-validated clinical genetics-specific PROM and Euroqol (EQ-5D), a generic PROM favoured by the UK National Institute for Health and Excellence (NICE). Both of these PROMs enable pre/post intervention comparison. A service audit tool was also used, premised on a patient-reported experience measure. In addition, the study draws on interviews with clinical staff to identify challenges associated with the use of PROMs (response rate, data collection, analysis). Benefits are also explored and include the provision of insight into patients’ needs; complementing clinical judgement; identification of needs being met, evidencing the benefit of services provided; prompting consideration of areas requiring attention; and encouraging professional development

Disentangling Vacancy Oxidation on Metallicity-Sorted Carbon Nanotubes

Pristine single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) are rather inert to O$_2$ and N$_2$, which for low doses chemisorb only on defect sites or vacancies of the SWCNTs at the ppm level. However, very low doping has a major effect on the electronic properties and conductivity of the SWCNTs. Already at low O$_2$ doses (80 L), the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) O 1s signal becomes saturated, indicating nearly all the SWCNT's vacancies have been oxidized. As a result, probing vacancy oxidation on SWCNTs via XPS yields spectra with rather low signal-to-noise ratios, even for metallicity-sorted SWCNTs. We show that, even under these conditions, the first principles density functional theory calculated Kohn-Sham O 1s binding energies may be used to assign the XPS O 1s spectra for oxidized vacancies on SWCNTs into its individual components. This allows one to determine the specific functional groups or bonding environments measured. We find the XPS O 1s signal is mostly due to three O-containing functional groups on SWCNT vacancies: epoxy (C$_2$$>$O), carbonyl (C$_2$$>$C$=$O), and ketene (C$=$C$=$O), as ordered by abundance. Upon oxidation of nearly all the SWCNT's vacancies, the central peak's intensity for the metallic SWCNT sample is 60\% greater than for the semiconducting SWCNT sample. This suggests a greater abundance of O-containing defect structures on the metallic SWCNT sample. For both metallic and semiconducting SWCNTs, we find O$_2$ does not contribute to the measured XPS O~1s spectra

Shocking features in the merging galaxy cluster RXJ0334.2-0111

© 2016 The Authors. We present a 66 ks Chandra X-ray observation of the galaxy cluster RXJ0334.2-0111. This deep observation revealed a unique bow shock system associated with a wide angle tail (WAT) radio galaxy and several intriguing substructures. The temperature across the bow shock jumps by a factor of ~1.5 (from 4.1 to 6.2 keV), and is consistent with the Mach numberM= 1.6+ 0.5 -0.3. A second inner surface brightness edge is a cold front that marks the border between infalling subcluster cool core and the intracluster medium of the main cluster. The temperature across the cold front increases from 1.3 +0.3 -0.8 to 6.2 +0.6 -0.6 keV. We find an overpressurized region ~250 kpc east of the cold front that is named 'the eastern extension (EE)'. The EE may be a part of the third subcluster in the ongoing merger. We also find a tail shaped feature that originates near the bow shock and may extend up to a distance of ~1 Mpc. This feature is also likely overpressurized. The luminous FR-I radio galaxy, 3C89, appears to be the cD galaxy of the infalling subcluster. We estimated 3C89's jet power from jet bending and the possible interaction between the X-ray gas and the radio lobes. A comparison between the shock standoff distance and the Mach number for all known shock front/cold front combinations suggests that the core is continuously shrinking in size by stripping