Comparing alternate teaching styles to teach computing skills to girls in their English classes

Low female participation rates in computing are a current concern of the education sector. To address this problem an intervention was developed — computing skills were introduced to girls in their English classes using three different teaching styles: peer tutoring, cross-age tutoring and teacher instruction (control). The sample comprised 136 girls from Years 8 and 10 from a single-sex government school. A pre-test post-test quantitative design was used. To describe the students perspectives, qualitative data were collected from six focus groups conducted with 8–10 students — one from each of the six classes. It was predicted that cross-age tutoring would yield more positive effects than peer tutoring which, in turn, would yield more positive effects than traditional teacher instruction as assessed by achievement on class tasks and attitudes towards computing. The hypothesis was not supported by the quantitative analysis, however in the qualitative data cross-age tutoring was appraised more favourably than peer tutoring or teacher instruction. The latter was the least preferred condition due to: (1) inefficiency; (2) difficulty understanding teachers' explanations; and (3) lack of teacher knowledge. Problems with the implementation of the intervention identified in the focus groups were teacher differences, system failures, missed classes, lack of communication, and selection of computing activities. Practical suggestions were provided relevant to the introduction of cross-age tutoring and the use of computers within secondary level English classes.     

Dieldrin in fish and shellfish from the Mersey Estuary and Liverpool Bay

OBJECT: The authors studied the reliability of a new method for noninvasive assessment of cerebral perfusion pressure (CPP) in head-injured patients in which mean arterial blood pressure (ABP) and transcranial Doppler middle cerebral artery mean and diastolic flow velocities are measured. METHODS: Cerebral perfusion pressure was estimated (eCPP) over periods of continuous monitoring (20 minutes-2 hours, 421 daily examinations) in 96 head-injured patients (Glasgow Coma Scale score < 13) who were admitted to the intensive care unit. All patients were sedated, paralyzed, and ventilated. The eCPP and the measured CPP (ABP minus intracranial pressure, measured using an intraparenchymal microsensor) were compared. The correlation between eCPP and measured CPP was r=0.73; p < 10(-6). In 71% of the examinations, the estimation error was less than 10 mm Hg and in 84% of the examinations, the error was less than 15 mm Hg. The method had a high positive predictive power (94%) for detecting low CPP (< 60 mm Hg). The eCPP also accurately reflected changes in measured CPP over time (r > 0.8; p < 0.001) in situations such as plateau and B waves of intracranial pressure, arterial hypotension, and refractory intracranial hypertension. A good correlation was found between the average measured CPP and eCPP when day-by-day variability was assessed in a group of 41 patients (r=0.71). CONCLUSIONS: Noninvasive estimation of CPP by using transcranial Doppler ultrasonography may be of value in situations in which monitoring relative changes in CPP is required without invasive measurement of intracranial pressure.     

An Ultra-Low Dose of ∆9-Tetrahydrocannabinol Alleviates Alzheimer’s Disease-Related Cognitive Impairments and Modulates TrkB Receptor Expression in a 5XFAD Mouse Model

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia, but there is still no available treatment. Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is emerging as a promising therapeutic agent. Using THC in conventional high doses may have deleterious effects. Therefore, we propose to use an ultra-low dose of THC (ULD-THC). We previously published that a single injection of ULD-THC ameliorated cognitive functioning in several models of brain injuries as well as in naturally aging mice. Here, 5xFAD AD model mice received a single treatment of ULD-THC (0.002 mg/kg) after disease onset and were examined in two separate experiments for cognitive functions, neurotropic, and inflammatory factors in the hippocampus. We show that a single injection of ULD-THC alleviated cognitive impairments in 6- and 12-month-old 5xFAD mice. On the biochemical level, our results indicate an imbalance between the truncated TrkB receptor isoform and the full receptor, with AD mice showing a greater tendency to express the truncated receptor, and ULD-THC improved this imbalance. We also investigated the expression of three AD-related inflammatory markers and found an ameliorating effect of ULD-THC. The current research demonstrates for the first time the beneficial effects of a single ultra-low dose of THC in a mouse model of AD after disease onset.     

Mitochondrial protein gene expression and the oxidative phosphorylation pathway associated with feed efficiency and energy balance in dairy cattle

Feed efficiency and energy balance are important traits underpinning profitability and environmental sustainability in animal production. They are complex traits, and our understanding of their underlying biology is currently limited. One measure of feed efficiency is residual feed intake (RFI), which is the difference between actual and predicted intake. Variation in RFI among individuals is attributable to the metabolic efficiency of energy utilization. High RFI (H_RFI) animals require more energy per unit of weight gain or milk produced compared with low RFI (L_RFI) animals. Energy balance (EB) is a closely related trait calculated very similarly to RFI. Cellular energy metabolism in mitochondria involves mitochondrial protein (MiP) encoded by both nuclear (NuMiP) and mitochondrial (MtMiP) genomes. We hypothesized that MiP genes are differentially expressed (DE) between H_RFI and L_RFI animal groups and similarly between negative and positive EB groups. Our study aimed to characterize MiP gene expression in white blood cells of H_RFI and L_RFI cows using RNA sequencing to identify genes and biological pathways associated with feed efficiency in dairy cattle. We used the top and bottom 14 cows ranked for RFI and EB out of 109 animals as H_RFI and L_RFI, and positive and negative EB groups, respectively. The gene expression counts across all nuclear and mitochondrial genes for animals in each group were used for differential gene expression analyses, weighted gene correlation network analysis, functional enrichment, and identification of hub genes. Out of 244 DE genes between RFI groups, 38 were MiP genes. The DE genes were enriched for the oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) and ribosome pathways. The DE MiP genes were underexpressed in L_RFI (and negative EB) compared with the H_RFI (and positive EB) groups, suggestive of reduced mitochondrial activity in the L_RFI group. None of the MtMiP genes were among the DE MiP genes between the groups, which suggests a non-rate limiting role of MtMiP genes in feed efficiency and warrants further investigation. The role of MiP, particularly the NuMiP and OXPHOS pathways in RFI, was also supported by our gene correlation network analysis and the hub gene identification. We validated the findings in an independent data set. Overall, our study suggested that differences in feed efficiency in dairy cows may be linked to differences in cellular energy demand. This study broadens our knowledge of the biology of feed efficiency in dairy cattle.     

Tool vs. agent: attributing agency to natural language generation systems

This paper argues that we should shift our consideration of natural language generation systems as tools for manifesting human intent to natural language generation systems as agents in themselves. Such a semantic shift would permit a more holistic conversation about the transformative social power of these systems’ output.     

Development of metal supported solid oxide fuel cells for operation at 500–600 °C

A novel metal-supported solid oxide fuel cell has been developed that is capable of operating at temperatures of 500–600 °C. The rationale behind the materials used to construct this fuel cell type is given, and results are presented from cell testing on hydrogen and reformed natural gas, including durability trials of some 2500 h duration. This new fuel cell variant is shown to be tolerant of carbon monoxide, durable, robust to thermal and redox cycling, and capable of delivering technologically relevant power densities. This paper was presented at the Fuel Cells: Materials, Processing, and Manufacturing Technologies Symposium sponsored by the Energy/Utilities Industrial Sector & Ground Transportation Industrial Sector and the Specialty Materials Critical Technologies Sector at the ASM International Materials Solutions Conference, October 13–15, 2003, in Pittsburgh, PA. The symposium was organized by P. Singh, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, S.C. Deevi, Philip Morris USA, T. Armstrong, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and T. Dubois, U.S. Army CECOM.     

Direct and indirect measures of memory for modality in young and older adults.

In 2 experiments, young and older adults demonstrated modality effects of similar magnitude in perceptual identification tasks. That is, both young and older adults demonstrated more repetition priming when study and test modalities matched than when they were different, suggesting that contextual information was equally available across age. However, when asked explicitly to retrieve modality information, older adults were less accurate than young adults. These results constitute evidence for a dissociation between direct and indirect measures of memory for modality information. They call into question hypotheses that memory impairment in old age is due to deficient encoding of contextual information and challenge current accounts of modality effects in repetition priming. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptions of life stress and chronic insomnia in older adults.

This study compared the level of self-reported stress of 42 older good sleepers (M age?=?68.2 years) and 42 poor sleepers (M age?=?68.7 years). The relations among subjective ratings of sleep, level of perceived stress, and negative mood were analyzed for each group. Good and poor sleepers reported similar amounts of life stress, but the relations between life stress and sleep perceptions differed for the 2 groups. Specifically, within the group of poor sleepers, those with higher life stress had greater difficulty falling asleep and less early morning waking than did poor sleepers with lower life stress. There was no association between life stress and any sleep measures for good sleepers. These results are compatible with the notion that good and poor sleepers may have different susceptibilities to poor sleep despite experiencing similar stressful life events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adult age differences in memory for prose: The question of sensitivity to passage structure.

The hypothesis that older adults remember prose less well than young adults because they are less sensitive to the structure of prose passages was investigated in three experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, older adults (aged 54–85) recalled less information than younger ones (aged 20–36) from stories having various structures, but there was no evidence that older people were insensitive to story structure. The pattern of recall of information high and low in the story structure was similar for young and old for each story examined. Experiment 3 extended the findings to recall of full-length essays and their summaries. These results suggest that the old are as sensitive to passage structure as the young. In addition, comparisons across the three experiments suggest that other frequently invoked explanations of age deficits in prose recall, such as individual differences in verbal ability and the nature of the materials used, cannot explain our results. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)