External Review of Portfolios in Preservice Teacher Education: Studying Our Own Practice.

In this article we present the results of a study in which we examine our use of literacy portfolios in our elementary education methods courses through the inclusion of an external reviewer in the portfolio evaluation process. Preservice teachers at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse are concurrently enrolled in a field-based block of three professional elementary education courses. They are required to create a literacy portfolio as a combined requirement in our two methods courses (Elementary Level Reading and Curriculum and Methods in Language Arts) in which they demonstrate and reflect upon the development of their knowledge and skills as literacy educators. Our one-semester study provided an external professional audience for the review of these literacy portfolios, and provided us new insights to improve the ways in which we evaluated these assessments

Wood particle filled polyvinyl chloride composites and their foams

Extruded composite compositions of PVC and wood particles containing chitosan or chitin as a coupling agent are described. The composite compositions have improved physical and mechanical properties.https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/patents/1029/thumbnail.jp

Biochemical Underpinnings of Immune Cell Metabolic Phenotypes

The metabolism of immune cells affects their function and influences host immunity. This review explores how immune cell metabolic phenotypes reflect biochemical dependencies and highlights evidence that both the metabolic state of immune cells and nutrient availability can alter immune responses. The central importance of oxygen, energetics, and redox homeostasis in immune cell metabolism, and how these factors are reflected in different metabolic phenotypes, is also discussed. Linking immune cell metabolic phenotype to effector functions is important to understand how altering metabolism can impact the way in which immune cells meet their metabolic demands and affect the immune response in various disease contexts.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant R01CA168653)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant R01CA201276

Synchronization in a neuronal feedback loop through asymmetric temporal delays

We consider the effect of asymmetric temporal delays in a system of two coupled Hopfield neurons. For couplings of opposite signs, a limit cycle emerges via a supercritical Hopf bifurcation when the sum of the delays reaches a critical value. We show that the angular frequency of the limit cycle is independent of an asymmetry in the delays. However, the delay asymmetry determines the phase difference between the periodic activities of the two components. Specifically, when the connection with negative coupling has a delay much larger than the delay for the positive coupling, the system approaches in-phase synchrony between the two components. Employing variational perturbation theory (VPT), we achieve an approximate analytical evaluation of the phase shift, in good agreement with numerical results.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure