scholarly journals Editor's note

2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. i-ii
Keyword(s):  
State Of The Art ◽  
Language Testing ◽  
Language Assessment ◽  
Test Design ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Professional Discourse ◽  
Comparative Review ◽  
The World

As Stephen Stoynoff points out in his state-of-the-art review of four major international ESOL examinations, more than 500,000 examinees take each of these tests annually, making them among the most widely used ESOL examinations in the world. The inferences and decisions made with the scores from these tests have significant consequences for examinees, score users, and society. Thus, his review will contribute to the professional discourse in several ways: by providing a context for discussing some of the fundamental considerations and persistent issues in language assessment, by demonstrating how language testing research and concerns for test consequences are affecting the test design and validation activities related to these four extremely influential assessments of L2 ability, and above all by encouraging a thorough consideration of important aspects of these high-stakes assessments. The paper is accompanied by a comparative review of books by Christine Coombe.

scholarly journals Task-Based Language Assessment: Implications for the Language Classroom

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 209-224
Author(s):  
Frank Giraldo
Keyword(s):  
Performance Assessment ◽  
Classroom Assessment ◽  
Language Testing ◽  
Language Assessment ◽  
Language Ability ◽  
Instructional Task ◽  
Language Classroom ◽  
Testing Performance ◽  
The World ◽  
Communicative Approach

With a communicative approach to language testing, performance assessment has taken on a prominent role in testing systems around the world. Specifically, task-based assessment (TBA) is now being used to make inferences about people’s language ability and what they can do with this construct under realistic communicative scenarios. This reflection paper discusses central issues in TBA, and in doing so, it shows that TBA can be observed through a classroom-assessment lens, an idea I present as Instructional Task-Based Assessment (ITBA). The paper starts by reviewing the meaning of tasks, then discusses problems with TBA and finally offers a checklist for teachers to explore TBA in classroom contexts. I also include limitations of the proposal and conclusions

scholarly journals THE IMPORTANCE OF FIVE MAIN PRINCIPLES OF LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT IN DESIGNING THE LANGUAGE TESTS IN UZBEK UNIVERSITIES

2021 ◽  
Vol 02 (06) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Feruza Tulibayevna Jumaniyozova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Language Testing ◽  
Language Assessment ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Test Design ◽  
World Languages ◽  
Language Tests

Language testing plays a vital role in the language learning process, enabling teachers to diagnose students’ strengths and weaknesses, which place them at their appropriate levels. This article discusses three significant aspects of L2 test design: (1) the importance of five primary principles of language assessment; (2) the disadvantages of using only limited production and selected-response tasks; (3) the importance of using extended tasks in testing students’ grammar skills. I researched in the Uzbekistan state world languages university and concluded that the efficient assessment, which follows five fundamental principles of language assessment, facilitates learners' further study and achievement.

Perbedaan Pengetahuan Siswa Tentang Penyakit Hepatitis A Sebelum Dan Sesudah Penyuluhan Di MTsN 02 Bondowoso Tahun 2015

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 14
Author(s):  
Putri Megasari
Keyword(s):  
Hepatitis A ◽  
Hepatitis Virus ◽  
Sampling Technique ◽  
Mean Value ◽  
Test Design ◽  
The World ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Post Test ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Paired T Test

Hepatitis has become a health problem in the world. The hepatitis virus infected many people. According to the teacher of MTsN 02 Bondowoso more than 20 students have hepatitis A viral infection. The purpose of this research was to know the differences of students' knowledge about hepatitis A before and after counseling in MTsN 02 Bondowoso 2015. This study used pre-experimental (pre-post test design). This study used stratified random sampling technique, 127 students from 270 sample involved this research,and 143 students was excluded. We used questionnaires to collect data. The results showed that the mean value of the students 'knowledge about hepatitis A before counseling in MTsN 02 Bondowoso 2015 was 83.96 with the lowest value of 37.5 and the highest value was 100. The mean value of the students' knowledge about hepatitis A after counseling in MTsN 02 Bondowoso 2015 was 93.21 with the lowest value waf 62.5 and the highest value was 100. Paired t test showed that t (-9.07) > t table (1.98), the null hypothesis (H0) was rejected. There was a difference between students' knowledge about hepatitis A before and after counseling in MTsN 02 Bondowoso 2015. This study showed that routine counseling by healthcare provider was important to prevent hepatitis A infection.; Keywords: counseling, knowledge of students, hepatitis

scholarly journals D-Penicillamine: The State of the Art in Humans and in Dogs from a Pharmacological and Regulatory Perspective

Antibiotics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 648
Author(s):  
Michela Pugliese ◽  
Vito Biondi ◽  
Enrico Gugliandolo ◽  
Patrizia Licata ◽  
Alessio Filippo Peritore ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Veterinary Medicine ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
European Medicines Agency ◽  
Therapeutic Goals ◽  
First Choice ◽  
Regulatory Perspective ◽  
The World ◽  
United States Food ◽  
States Food ◽  
Food And Drugs Administration

Chelant agents are the mainstay of treatment in copper-associated hepatitis in humans, where D-penicillamine is the chelant agent of first choice. In veterinary medicine, the use of D-penicillamine has increased with the recent recognition of copper-associated hepatopathies that occur in several breeds of dogs. Although the different regulatory authorities in the world (United States Food and Drugs Administration—U.S. FDA, European Medicines Agency—EMEA, etc.) do not approve D-penicillamine for use in dogs, it has been used to treat copper-associated hepatitis in dogs since the 1970s, and is prescribed legally by veterinarians as an extra-label drug to treat this disease and alleviate suffering. The present study aims to: (a) address the pharmacological features; (b) outline the clinical scenario underlying the increased interest in D-penicillamine by overviewing the evolution of its main therapeutic goals in humans and dogs; and finally, (c) provide a discussion on its use and prescription in veterinary medicine from a regulatory perspective.

Interpreting testing and assessment: A state-of-the-art review

2021 ◽  
pp. 026553222110361
Author(s):  
Chao Han
Keyword(s):  
State Of The Art ◽  
Professional Certification ◽  
Automatic Assessment ◽  
Prospective Students ◽  
Assessment Practice ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Assessment Tasks ◽  
Interpreter Education ◽  
Selection Of

Over the past decade, testing and assessing spoken-language interpreting has garnered an increasing amount of attention from stakeholders in interpreter education, professional certification, and interpreting research. This is because in these fields assessment results provide a critical evidential basis for high-stakes decisions, such as the selection of prospective students, the certification of interpreters, and the confirmation/refutation of research hypotheses. However, few reviews exist providing a comprehensive mapping of relevant practice and research. The present article therefore aims to offer a state-of-the-art review, summarizing the existing literature and discovering potential lacunae. In particular, the article first provides an overview of interpreting ability/competence and relevant research, followed by main testing and assessment practice (e.g., assessment tasks, assessment criteria, scoring methods, specificities of scoring operationalization), with a focus on operational diversity and psychometric properties. Second, the review describes a limited yet steadily growing body of empirical research that examines rater-mediated interpreting assessment, and casts light on automatic assessment as an emerging research topic. Third, the review discusses epistemological, psychometric, and practical challenges facing interpreting testers. Finally, it identifies future directions that could address the challenges arising from fast-changing pedagogical, educational, and professional landscapes.

scholarly journals State-of-the-Art Management of Germ Cell Tumors

2018 ◽  
pp. 319-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darren R. Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Germ Cell ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Germ Cell Tumors ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Inappropriate Use ◽  
Common Mistake ◽  
Relative Rarity ◽  
Cure Rates ◽  
Perfect Storm

The state of the art management of germ cell tumors (GCT) in 2018 does not include novel agents targeting genomic alterations or exciting immunologic-based approaches but rather the avoidance of pitfalls in everyday practice. The relative rarity of GCT and high curability with correct management create the "perfect storm" for high-stakes errors to occur. This review focuses on several common pitfalls that should be avoided in staging and management of early-stage and advanced GCT in order to maximize patient outcomes. A particularly frequent misstep is to base treatment decisions on pre- rather than postorchiectomy tumor markers that, depending on marker directionality, can lead to either undertreatment with potentially inferior outcomes or overtreatment with excess toxicity. Another common mistake is the failure to consider the unique ability of GCT to differentiate and the distinct biology of teratoma (chemoresistance and lack of increased glucose uptake compared with normal tissue), which exerts a pervasive influence on nonseminoma management. This may lead to inappropriate use of PET scan to evaluate the postchemotherapy residual mass and, if negative, the conclusion that surgery is not needed whereas (FDG-negative) teratoma should be removed. It could also result in administration of additional unnecessary chemotherapy to patients with marker normalization but without robust radiographic response after 3 to 4 cycles of BEP. Finally, oncologists should strive to maintain standard chemotherapy doses, not substitute carboplatin for cisplatin, and refer to expert centers when expertise (e.g., RPLND) is not available locally in order to achieve optimal cure rates in advanced disease.

scholarly journals Multi-Task Learning Using Task Dependencies for Face Attributes Prediction

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 2535
Author(s):  
Di Fan ◽  
Hyunwoo Kim ◽  
Jummo Kim ◽  
Yunhui Liu ◽  
Qiang Huang
Keyword(s):  
Human Computer Interaction ◽  
Video Surveillance ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Learning Task ◽  
Face Verification ◽  
Task Learning ◽  
The World ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Learning Architectures

Face attributes prediction has an increasing amount of applications in human–computer interaction, face verification and video surveillance. Various studies show that dependencies exist in face attributes. Multi-task learning architecture can build a synergy among the correlated tasks by parameter sharing in the shared layers. However, the dependencies between the tasks have been ignored in the task-specific layers of most multi-task learning architectures. Thus, how to further boost the performance of individual tasks by using task dependencies among face attributes is quite challenging. In this paper, we propose a multi-task learning using task dependencies architecture for face attributes prediction and evaluate the performance with the tasks of smile and gender prediction. The designed attention modules in task-specific layers of our proposed architecture are used for learning task-dependent disentangled representations. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed network by comparing with the traditional multi-task learning architecture and the state-of-the-art methods on Faces of the world (FotW) and Labeled faces in the wild-a (LFWA) datasets.

Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy bridge over the River Barrow. Design and Construction of a long span extrados bridge

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcos Sanchez Sanchez ◽  
John Iliff
Keyword(s):  
State Of The Art ◽  
Single Plane ◽  
Robust Approach ◽  
Analysis Techniques ◽  
Long Span ◽  
The World ◽  
Art Analysis ◽  
Concrete Deck ◽  
Design And Construction

<p>This paper describes the key elements from early planning to completion of a new bridge over the River Barrow which is part of the New Ross bypass in the south of Ireland. The structure has a total length of 887m, with a span arrangement of 36-45-95-230-230-95-70-50-36m. The two central twin spans are the longest of its kind in the world (extrados with a full concrete deck). The bridge carries a dual carriageway with a cable arrangement consisting of a single plane of cables located in the central axis of the deck. The design and construction focused in providing a structure with long term durability, resilience, and a robust approach to design scenarios using the Eurocodes and state of the art analysis techniques, including extreme events such as fire and ship impact<i>.</i></p>

Can Computers Outperform Humans in Detecting User Zone-Outs? Implications for Intelligent Interfaces

2022 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Nigel Bosch ◽  
Sidney K. D'Mello
Keyword(s):  
Operating Characteristic ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Characteristic Curve ◽  
Ground Truth ◽  
Mind Wandering ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Machine Learning Model ◽  
Improve Accuracy ◽  
Comparable Accuracy ◽  
Operating Characteristic Curve

The ability to identify whether a user is “zoning out” (mind wandering) from video has many HCI (e.g., distance learning, high-stakes vigilance tasks). However, it remains unknown how well humans can perform this task, how they compare to automatic computerized approaches, and how a fusion of the two might improve accuracy. We analyzed videos of users’ faces and upper bodies recorded 10s prior to self-reported mind wandering (i.e., ground truth) while they engaged in a computerized reading task. We found that a state-of-the-art machine learning model had comparable accuracy to aggregated judgments of nine untrained human observers (area under receiver operating characteristic curve [AUC] = .598 versus .589). A fusion of the two (AUC = .644) outperformed each, presumably because each focused on complementary cues. Furthermore, adding more humans beyond 3–4 observers yielded diminishing returns. We discuss implications of human–computer fusion as a means to improve accuracy in complex tasks.

Sir Charles Parsons and Electrical Power Generation—a Turbine Designer's Perspective

1994 ◽  
Vol 208 (3) ◽  
pp. 159-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
J R Bolter
Keyword(s):  
Power Generation ◽  
Steam Turbine ◽  
Gas Turbine ◽  
Electrical Power Generation ◽  
Analytical Methods ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Electrical Power ◽  
Turbine Generator ◽  
Current State ◽  
The World

Sir Charles Parsons died some three years after the author was born. In this paper the author looks back at the pioneering work of Parsons in the field of power generation. It shows how he was able to increase output of the steam turbine generator from 7.5 kW in 1884 to 50000 kW in 1930 while increasing efficiency from 1.6 to 36 per cent, and relates these achievements to the current state of the art. Blading design, rotor construction and other aspects of turbine engineering are considered. The conclusion is that Parsons and his associates charted the course which manufacturers and utilities throughout the world have continued to follow, although increasingly sophisticated design and analytical methods have succeeded the intuitive approach of Parsons. His constant search for improved efficiency was and is highly relevant to today's concern for the environment. Finally, although it did not become a practical proposition in his lifetime, the paper reviews Parsons' vision of, and continuing interest in, the gas turbine, first mentioned in his 1884 patents.

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