Muscle Research and Human Space Exploration: Current Progress and Future Challenges

Since the beginning of human space flight, there has been serious concern over the exposure of human crewmembers to the microgravity of space due to the systemic effects on terrestrially-evolved creatures that are adapted to Earth gravity. Humans in the microgravity environment of space, within our currently developed space vehicles, are exposed to various periods of skeletal muscle unloading (unweighting). Unloading of skeletal muscle both on Earth and during spaceflight results in remodeling of muscle (atrophic response) as an adaptation to the reduced loads placed upon it. As a result, there are decrements in skeletal muscle strength, fatigue resistance, motor performance, and connective tissue integrity. This normal adaptive response to the microgravity environment is for the most part of little consequence within the space vehicle per se but may become a liability resulting in an increased risk of crewmember physical failure during extravehicular activities or abrupt transitions to environments of increased gravity (such as return to Earth or landing on another planetary body)

Urine Monitoring System

The Urine Monitoring System (UMS) is a system designed to collect an individual crewmember's void, gently separate urine from air, accurately measure void volume, allow for void sample acquisition, and discharge remaining urine into the Waste Collector Subsystem (WCS) onboard the International Space Station. The Urine Monitoring System (UMS) is a successor design to the existing Space Shuttle system and will resolve anomalies such as: liquid carry-over, inaccurate void volume measurements, and cross contamination in void samples. The crew will perform an evaluation of airflow at the ISS UMS urinal hose interface, a calibration evaluation, and a full user interface evaluation. o The UMS can be used to facilitate non-invasive methods for monitoring crew health, evaluation of countermeasures, and implementation of a variety of biomedical research protocols on future exploration missions

Feedback on feedback

Northumbria University hosts a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) which specialises in the ‘Assessment for Learning’ Agenda (AfL). This agenda developed in response to the diverse needs and competencies of Northumbria’s learners. But are the issues addressed by AfL solely a concern in Northumbria? What challenges and possible solutions might other Higher Education institutions encounter or offer? This paper addresses such questions, by identifying, analysing, and reflecting upon an issue in student learning and support, relevant to the discipline of English Literature in another Higher Education teaching context: the attitudes of students and staff to feedback in the School of English, Queen’s University Belfast (2007). To do so, it references national statistical data, and general and subject-specific educational research and literature. As such, this paper offers 'feedback on feedback', exploring dialogue between teachers and learners

Improved Devices for Collecting Sweat for Chemical Analysis

Improved devices have been proposed for collecting sweat for biochemical analysis - especially for determination of the concentration of Ca2+ ions in sweat as a measure of loss of Ca from bones. Unlike commercially available sweat-collection patches used previously in monitoring osteoporosis and in qualitative screening for some drugs, the proposed devices would not allow evaporation of the volatile chemical components (mostly water) of sweat. Moreover, the proposed devices would be designed to enable determination of the volumes of collected sweat. From these volumes and the quantities of Ca(2+) and/or other analytes as determined by other means summarized below, one could determine the concentrations of the analytes in sweat. A device according to the proposal would be flexible and would be worn like a commercial sweat-collection patch. It would be made of molded polydimethylsiloxane (silicone rubber) or other suitable material having properties that, for the purpose of analyzing sweat, are similar to those of glass. The die for molding the silicone rubber would be fabricated by a combination of lithography and electroplating. The die would reproducibly form, in the silicone rubber, a precisely defined number of capillary channels per unit area, each channel having a precisely defined volume. Optionally, electrodes for measuring the Ca(2+) content of the sweat could be incorporated into the device. The volume of sweat collected in the capillary channels of the device would be determined from (1) the amount of light or radio waves of a given wavelength absorbed by the device and (2) the known geometry of the array of capillary channels. Then, in one of two options, centrifugation would be performed to move the sweat from the capillary tubes to the region containing the electrodes, which would be used to measure the Ca(2+) content by a standard technique. In the other option, centrifugation would be performed to remove the sweat from the device to make the sweat available to other analytical instruments for measuring concentrations of substances other than Ca(2+)

Corrective Feedback and Repair Strategies in Meaning-focused Language Classroom

The practice of corrective feedback in communicative language classroom has become a debate among applied linguists. Some consider it obstructs students' fluent speech and some assert it is vital to show students their linguistic gaps. This study aims to describe the practice of oral corrective feedback in meaning-focused instruction specifically to answer the questions 1) what is to correct, 2) how it is corrected, and 3) how repair is constructed. The data are in the forms of teacher's and students' utterances obtained through video recording during meaning-focused instruction in a secondary school. The result shows that in meaning-focused instruction, the ESL teacher mainly corrects semantic errors and among six types of corrective feedback (explicit correction, recast, clarification request, metalinguistic feedback, elicitation, and repetition), the teacher mostly uses elicitation and recast while the repair strategies that occur in this class takes the pattern of other initiation-self repair. So, it can be concluded that in a meaning-focused instruction the teacher does not relatively interrupt the students' fluent speech and that the communicative activity is maintained. And with self-repair, students notice their linguistic gaps. Therefore corrective feedback is still worth practicing in meaning-focused language classrooms

Written Corrective Feedback and Its Effects on English Department Students' Writing Drafts

This thesis investigates the teacher's Written Corrective Feedback (WCF) strategies used in the students' writing drafts and the effects analyzed from the comparison between the first and final drafts. It consists of fifty eight students' writing drafts as the source of data limited to language use (LU) and vocabulary. The theories applied were the WCF strategies by Ellis (2009a); the effects of written feedback to students by Hyland (2003), and supported by Ferris (2006). The qualitative approach was used in this study. The finding revealed that the strategies used in the class were Direct CF (430 times), and Indirect CF (329 times). The effects were Error corrected, Incorrect change, No change, and Deleted text. Moreover, it was revealed that LU problem was more noticed by the students to be corrected. In conclusion, WCF can guide the students to be more aware of their mistakes and to improve their writing