Assessment in the service of learning: challenges and opportunities or Plus ça Change, Plus c’est la même Chose

This paper begins with a brief overview of literature indicating that, although there have been significant advances in the field’s capacity to conduct both formative and summative assessments over the past decades, those advances have not been matched by comparable impact. The bulk of the paper is devoted to a series of examples from the Mathematics Assessment Project that illustrate issues of methods, and the unrealized potential for advances

Toward green mobility: The evolution of transport

We envisage a transport system producing zero emissions and sparing the surface landscape, while people, on average, range hundreds of kilometres daily. We believe this prospect of ‘green mobility’ is consistent in general principles with historical evolution. We lay out these general principles, extracted from widespread observations of human behaviour over long periods, and use them to explain past transport and to project the next 50 to 100 years. Our picture emphasizes the slow penetration of new technologies of transport, adding speed in the course of substituting for the old ones in terms of time allocation. We discuss in increasing detail railroads, cars, aeroplanes, and magnetically levitated trains (maglevs)

Existence of a tightly regulated water channel in saccharomyces cerevisiae

The Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain Σ1278b possesses two putative aquaporins, Aqy1-1p and Aqy2-1p. Previous work demonstrated that Aqy1-1p functions as a water channel in Xenopus oocyte. However, no function could be attributed to Aqy2-1p in this system. Specific antibodies were used to follow the expression of Aqy1-1p and Aqy2-1p in the yeast. Aqy1-1p was never detected whatever the growth phase and culture conditions tested. In contrast, Aqy2-1p was detected only during the exponential growth phase in rich medium containing glucose. Aqy2-1p expression was repressed by hyper-osmotic culture conditions. Both immunocytochemistry and biochemical subcellular fractionation demonstrated that Aqy2-1p is located on the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) as well as on the plasma membrane. In microsomal vesicles enriched in ER, a water channel activity due to Aqy2-1p was detected by stopped-flow analysis. Our results show that the expression of aquaporins is tightly controlled. The physiological relevance of aquaporin-mediated water transport in yeast is discussed