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Drawing extensively on the expertise of teachers of German in universities across the UK, this volume offers an overview of recent trends, new pedagogical approaches and practical guidance for teaching at beginners level in the higher education classroom. At a time when entries for UK school exams in modern foreign languages are decreasing, this book serves the urgent need for research and guidance on "ab initio" learning and teaching in HE. Using the example of teaching German, it offers theoretical reflections on teaching "ab initio" and practice-oriented approaches that will be useful for teachers of both German and other languages in higher education. The first chapters assess the role of "ab initio" provision within the wider context of modern languages departments and language centres. They are followed by sections on teaching methods and innovative approaches in the "ab initio" classroom that include chapters on the use of music, textbook evaluation, the effective use of a flipped classroom and the contribution of language apps. Finally, the book focuses on the learner in the "ab initio" context and explores issues around autonomy and learner strengths. The whole builds into a theoretically grounded guide that sketches out perspectives for teaching and learning "ab initio" languages that will benefit current and future generations of students.

A variety of laws and regulations apply to school counselors, psychologists, and social workers in their work. This book presents information on legal issues of particular interest to counselors, psychologists, and social workers. Each chapter concludes with at least one relevant court case. Ten chapters provide indepth information on the following: (1) the anatomy of the law; (2) confidentiality and the duty to warn; (3) civil and criminal liability; (4) education records and the students' right to privacy; (5) legal issues related to assessing and grouping students; (6) students with special educational needs; (7) behavior control and student discipline; (8) child abuse and neglect; and (9 and 10) rights related to schooling, parts I and II. A topic overview lists questions answered in each chapter. Appendices contain selected constitutional and federal statutes and relevant provisions of the ethical standards from several professional organizations. A glossary and subject-author index are included. (LMI)

From the earliest times onwards humans in Africa have created and developed mathematical ideas. For an annotated bibliography of mathematics in African history and cultures, see Gerdes and Djebbar (2004, 2007). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2006, the first of two vaccines for human papillomavirus (HPV) prevention was approved for use in several countries. This has prompted great attention to be paid to HPV infections and their consequences. As the genital HPV types are acquired sexually, acceptability to the public of a vaccine to prevent a sexually transmitted infection (STI) will be an important issue in ensuring good uptake of the vaccine by those who would most benefit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we extend the Frangi filter[1] to recognize edges and do not enhance them. We give a theoretical framework for optimal scale selection and choice of the free parameters. We discuss discretization details concerning especially the discrete kernel used for building the scale-space and the choice of discrete scales. We present several experiments on phantom data to objectively and quantitatively compare and judge the filters. Experiments on real coronary angiograms enhance the improvement reached by the integration of the edge indicator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Up until recently, work on automatic music transcription has concentrated mainly on the transcription of pitched instruments, i.e., melodies. However, during the past few years there has been a growing interest in the problem of transcription of percussive instruments. This chapter aims to give an overview of the methods used in this field ranging from the pioneering works of the 1980s to more recent systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe a technique for 4D-reconstruction of coronary arteries from a sequence of monoplane X-ray angiograms. An initial 3D model of coronary centerlines is reconstructed from two appropriate views. A 3D-2D registration framework is formulated in which the model deforms in space to best fit the given angiograms. The 3D motion model is hierarchical and includes rigid, affine and B-spline transformations. The registration is guided by a sum of energy terms which measures the goodness of the 3D-2D mapping and constrains the deformation of the model. The method is tested on three sequences of patient data, each containing 248 frames. The registration time for one frame varies between one and four minutes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent advances in nuclear-medicine based small-animal imaging technology have enabled researchers to acquire in vivo images of the biodistribution of radiolabeled molecules in small-animal models such as mice. The standard imaging method requires the use of anesthetic and/or physical restraint to immobilize the mouse during image acquisition of the radioisotope tracer biodistribution. This has the potential to interfere with neurological or other processes that are being studied.With this in mind, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)and Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab), in collaboration with Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPAH)in Sydney, Australia and Johns Hopkins University, designed and constructed a high-resolution single-photon emission tomography (SPECT)system to study unrestrained,unanesthetized mice. Others have reported development of scintillator based PET isotope probes and systems to study the brain of unanesthetized rodents +Woody, 2001, Zimmer, 2002, Vaska, 2001-. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amyloidosis refers to a diverse group of diseases characterized by the abnormal extracellular deposition of proteinaceous substances within the body's organs and tissues. The protein substances are known as amyloid and consist of insoluble fibrils. In general, amyloid deposits arise due to the overproduction of an amyloidogenic protein or as a result of a genetic mutation that occurs in a normally soluble, innocuous, protein that renders it amyloidogenic.Amyloid deposits have been found in virtually every organ and tissue and may be of a restricted localized form or systemic and involve multiple organ or tissue systems.More than 20 proteins have been identified as components of pathologic amyloid deposits, including the A(β) peptide in Alzheimer's disease; amylin in Type-2 diabetes;and the prion protein in the spongiform encephalopathies such as mad cow disease. Our focus is on AA-and AL-amyloidosis, which respectively are composed of apolipoprotein A synthesized during chronic inflammation and immunoglobulin light chains synthesized by abnormal plasma cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that pulse height analyzer (PHA) was originally developed to measure the amplitude of pulses from nuclear radiation detectors. It is therefore an important part of most systems that are used for analyzing event energies from alpha, beta, gamma, and X rays, for analyzing the time between events, and for ensuring orderly storage of count information in sequential time periods. PHAs are ideally suitable in system configurations for experimental and production applications in nuclear, chemical, medical, and materials analyses. PHAs are an outgrowth of the single-channel analyzer, which counted amplified electrical signals of a given pulse height created by nuclear events occurring within a detector. The amplitude was accepted by a peak voltage within a "window" or channel defined by two discriminators-referred to as a differential discriminator.

We compare optimized arithmetics with ideals in real resp. imaginary quadratic function fields for divisor class groups of hyperelliptic curves. Our analysis shows that the new real quadratic arithmetic presented by Rück and the first author in [6] and an appropriate modification of the algorithm of Cantor both require a number of operations which is O(g2) in the field of constants, where g is the genus of a hyperelliptic curve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an algorithm for lattice basis reduction in function fields. In contrast to integer lattices, there is a simple algorithm which provably computes a reduced basis in polynomial time. This algorithm works only with the coefficients of the polynomials involved, so there is no polynomial arithmetic needed. This algorithm can be generically extended to compute a reduced basis starting from a generating system for a lattice. Moreover, it can be applied to lattices over the field of puiseux expansions of a function field. In that case, this algorithm represents one major step towards an efficient arithmetic in Jacobians of curves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce a new cryptosystem with trapdoor decryption based on the difficulty of computing discrete logarithms in the class group of the nonmaximal imaginary quadratic order NΔq, where δq = δq2, δ square-free and q prime. The trapdoor information is the conductor q. Knowledge of this trapdoor information enables one to switch to and from the class group of the maximal order NΔ, where the representatives of the ideal classes have smaller coefficients. Thus, the decryption procedure may be performed in the class group of NΔ rather than in the class group of the public NΔq, which is much more efficient. We show that inverting our proposed cryptosystem is computationally equivalent to factoring the non-fundamental discriminant δq, which is intractable for a suitable choice of δ and q. We also describe how signature schemes in NΔq may be set up using this trapdoor information. Furthermore, we illustrate how one may embed key escrow capability into classical imaginary quadratic field cryptosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a new one way function based on the difficulty of finding shortest vectors in lattices. This new function consists of exponentiation of an ideal in an order of a number field and multiplication by an algebraic number which can both be performed in polynomial time. The best known algorithm for inverting this function is exponential in the degree of the lattices involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By adaptively controlling the mode structure in a gas-filled capillary with spatially shaped laser pulses we can manipulate the spatial and spectral properties of high-harmonic generation. This complements the control achieved by temporal pulse shaping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents several reference sources on ethnomathematics. "Ethnomathematics: A Multicultural View of Mathematical Ideas," by Marcia Ascher; "Code of the Quitpu; A Study in Media, Mathematics, and Culture," by Marcia Ascher and Robert Ascher; "Native American Mathematics," edited by Michael Closs.

Presents an overview of reference sources on the history of science and technology in sub-Saharan Africa. "Mathématiques dans l'environnement socio-culturel Africain," vol. I, edited by Salimata Doumbia; "On Mathematics in the History of Sub-Saharan Africa," by Paulus Gerdes in "Historia Mathematica"; "The Art of Tracking: The Origin of Science," by Louis Liebenberg; "Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern," edited by Ivan Van Sertima.