The social shaping of educational technologies in Saudi Arabia: An examination of how the social fabric shapes the construction and use of technologies

This article is organised around the research question: To what extent has the social fabric shaped the way in which educational technologies are constructed at the institutional level in a specific social context? This question is addressed through a naturalistic study of a state university in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Guided by the grounded theory approach, the data analysis demonstrated that Saudi society was committed to many established relationships, structures and identities, a commitment that has resulted in the social shaping of educational technologies.     

Impairment in shifting attention in autistic and cerebellar patients.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and autopsy evidence of early maldevelopment of cerebellar vermis and hemispheres in autism raises the question of how cerebellar maldevelopment contributes to the cognitive and social deficits characteristic of autism. Compared with 18 normal controls, 8 autistic patients (mean age 13.9 yrs) and 6 patients (mean age 8.6 yrs) with acquired cerebellar lesions were similarly impaired in a task requiring rapid and accurate shifts of attention between auditory and visual stimuli. Neurophysiologic and behavioral evidence rules out motor dysfunction as the cause of this deficit. These findings are consistent with the proposal that in autism cerebellar maldevelopment may contribute to an inability to execute rapid attention shifts, which in turn undermines social and cognitive development. Findings support the proposal that the human cerebellum is involved in the coordination of rapid attention shifts in a fashion analogous to its role in the coordination of movement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Engineering of Living Cells with Polyphenol-Functionalized Biologically Active Nanocomplexes

Approaches to safely and effectively augment cellular functions without compromising the inherent biological properties of the cells, especially through the integration of biologically labile domains, remain of great interest. Here, a versatile strategy to assemble biologically active nanocomplexes, including proteins, DNA, mRNA, and even viral carriers, on cellular surfaces to generate a cell-based hybrid system referred to as “Cellnex” is established. This strategy can be used to engineer a wide range of cell types used in adoptive cell transfers, including erythrocytes, macrophages, NK cells, T cells, etc. Erythrocyte_nex can enhance the delivery of cargo proteins to the lungs in vivo by 11-fold as compared to the free cargo counterpart. Biomimetic microfluidic experiments and modeling provided detailed insights into the targeting mechanism. In addition, Macrophage_nex is capable of enhancing the therapeutic efficiency of anti-PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitors in vivo. This simple and adaptable approach may offer a platform for the rapid generation of complex cellular systems.     

长江上游洪水与汉江洪水遭遇规律研究

长江干流与支流洪水互相遭遇容易形成长江流域特大洪水,为进一步优化三峡工程调度方案,充分发挥其巨大的防洪效益,从遭遇次数、遭遇时间、遭遇程度以及洪峰、洪量等角度,采用水文学分析法,重点研究了长江上游与汉江不同量级的洪水遭遇规律。研究表明,长江上游与汉江的中小量级的洪水遭遇频繁,遭遇时间主要发生在7,8,9三个月,洪水遭遇时各自的洪峰,最大7 d和15 d洪水过程无明显相应关系,遭遇后洪水过程重叠程度较高。     

Combinatorial strategies for targeting protein families: application to the proteases

Tens of thousands of proteins have been identified as a result of recent large scale genomic and proteomic efforts. With this large influx of new proteins, the formidable task of elucidating their function begins. However, this task becomes more manageable if proteins are divided into families based upon sequence homology, thereby allowing tools for their systematic study to be developed based upon their common structural and mechanistic characteristics. Combinatorial chemistry is ideally suited for the systematic study of protein families because a large amount of diversity can be readily displayed about a common scaffold designed to target a given protein family. Targeted combinatorial libraries have been particularly effective for the study of a ubiquitous family of proteins, the proteases. Substrate-specificity profiles of many proteases have been determined by using combinatorial libraries of appropriately labeled peptides. This specificity information been utilized to identify the physiological protein substrates of these enzymes and has facilitated inhibitor design efforts. Furthermore, combinatorial libraries of small molecules prepared with mechanism-based scaffolds have resulted in the identification of potent, small-molecule inhibitors of numerous proteases. Cell-permeable small-molecule inhibitors identified by these methods have served as powerful chemical tools to study protease function in vitro and in vivo and have served as leads for the development of therapeutic agents.     

Flavonoids Seen through the Energy Perspective

In all life forms, opposing forces provide the energy that flows through networks in an organism, which fuels life. In this concept, health is the ability of an organism to maintain the balance between these opposing forces, which creates resilience, and a deranged flow of energy is the basis for diseases. Treatment should focus on adjusting the deranged flow of energy, e.g., by the redox modulating activity of antioxidants. A major group of antioxidants is formed by flavonoids, a group of polyphenolic compounds abundantly present in our diet. The objective here is to review how the redox modulation by flavonoids fits in the various concepts on the mode of action of bioactive compounds, so we can ‘see’ where there is overlap and where the missing links are. Based on this fundament, we should choose our research path aiming to ‘understand’ the redox modulating profile of specific flavonoids, so we can ultimately rationally apply the redox modulating power of flavonoids to improve our health.