Empty spaces and the value of symbols: Estonia's 'war of monuments' from another angle

Taking as its point of departure the recent heightened discussion surrounding publicly sited monuments in Estonia, this article investigates the issue from the perspective of the country's eastern border city of Narva, focusing especially upon the restoration in 2000 of a 'Swedish Lion' monument to mark the 300th anniversary of Sweden's victory over Russia at the first Battle of Narva. This commemoration is characterised here as a successful local negotiation of a potentially divisive past, as are subsequent commemorations of the Russian conquest of Narva in 1704. A recent proposal to erect a statue of Peter the Great in the city, however, briefly threatened to open a new front in Estonia's ongoing 'war of monuments'. Through a discussion of these episodes, the article seeks to link the Narva case to broader conceptual issues of identity politics, nationalism and post-communist transition

Management Systems in Secondary Reading Classrooms

One outcome of federal, state or district funding of reading programs has been the development of a competency based curriculum with the inclusion of a classroom management system. This management system is the structure for the implementation of the goals, guidelines and behavioral objectives of the program. Each program with its management system is developed and written by teachers In consultation with school and/or district level cooperation

Mathematical Modeling Suggests Cooperation of Plant-Infecting Viruses

Viruses are major pathogens of agricultural crops. Viral infections often start after the virus enters the outer layer of a tissue, and many successful viruses, after local replication in the infected tissue, are able to spread systemically. Quantitative details of virus dynamics in plants, however, are poorly understood, in part, because of the lack of experimental methods which allow the accurate measurement of the degree of infection in individual plant tissues. Recently, a group of researchers followed the kinetics of infection of individual cells in leaves of Nicotiana tabacum plants using Tobacco etch virus (TEV) expressing either Venus or blue fluorescent protein (BFP). Assuming that viral spread occurs from lower to upper leaves, the authors fitted a simple mathematical model to the frequency of cellular infection by the two viral variants found using flow cytometry. While the original model could accurately describe the kinetics of viral spread locally and systemically, we found that many alternative versions of the model, for example, if viral spread starts at upper leaves and progresses to lower leaves or when virus dissemination is stopped due to an immune response, fit the data with reasonable quality, and yet with different parameter estimates. These results strongly suggest that experimental measurements of the virus infection in individual leaves may not be sufficient to identify the pathways of viral dissemination between different leaves and reasons for viral control. We propose experiments that may allow discrimination between the alternatives. By analyzing the kinetics of coinfection of individual cells by Venus and BFP strains of TEV we found a strong deviation from the random infection model, suggesting cooperation between the two strains when infecting plant cells. Importantly, we showed that many mathematical models on the kinetics of coinfection of cells with two strains could not adequately describe the data, and the best fit model needed to assume (i) different susceptibility of uninfected cells to infection by two viruses locally in the leaf vs. systemically from other leaves, and (ii) decrease in the infection rate depending on the fraction of uninfected cells which could be due to a systemic immune response. Our results thus demonstrate the difficulty in reaching definite conclusions from extensive and yet limited experimental data and provide evidence of potential cooperation between different viral variants infecting individual cells in plants

Using Microsoft HoloLens to improve memory recall in anatomy and physiology: A pilot study to examine the efficacy of using augmented reality in education

This paper explores the use of augmented reality (AR) to improve memory recall and learning experiences in human anatomy and physiology. In particular, the opportunity to assess new computer technologies to improve learning environments may allow for an improvement in self-efficacy and a reduction in test anxiety. Twenty-two undergraduates participated in one of two study groups, the Microsoft HoloLens group (HLNS) or the traditional projector-based Microsoft Power Point group (PPT). Each group completed a five-minute, three-subject anatomy identification and brain physiology memory test. After a three-minute time delay, participants completed a fill-in-the-blank anatomy identification test and brain physiology question test, followed by questionnaires for systems self-efficacy and test anxiety. Results indicated the PPT group significantly outperformed the HLNS group in the brain lobe identification portion of the exam and had reported higher mean test anxiety scores (though not high enough to be considered unhealthy levels). However, the HLNS group showed a significantly higher preference to the learning experience compared to the PPT group based on the systems self-efficacy questionnaire. This pilot study demonstrates an opportunity for the HLNS to use used in learning environments to improve the psychological aspects of studying and test taking

University Community Partnerships

University-Community Partnerships have been recognized as a valuable contribution to both the academic community and our cities and towns. In the words of Henry Cisneros, former U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Design secretary, “The long-term futures of both the city and the university in this country are so intertwined that one cannot—or perhaps will not—survive without the other.” Increasingly, colleges and university are bringing their time, energy and resources to bear on local problems. They are using their other physical, financial and intellectual capital to facilitate economic development, provide social services, technical assistance and create opportunities for applied research

The roles of Arabidopsis Growth-Regulating Factors 1 and 3 in growth-stress antagonism

Growth-Regulating Factors (GRFs) belong to a small family of transcription factors that are highly conserved in plants. GRFs regulate many developmental processes and plant responses to biotic and abiotic stimuli. Despite the importance of GRFs, a detailed mechanistic understanding of their regulatory functions remains lacking. In this study, we used chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-seq) to identify genome-wide binding sites of Arabidopsis GRF1 and GRF3 and correspondingly their direct downstream target genes. RNAsequencing (RNA-seq) analysis revealed that GRF1 and GRF3 regulate the expression of a significant number of the identified direct targets. The target genes unveiled broad regulatory functions of GRF1 and GRF3 in plant growth and development, phytohormone biosynthesis and signaling, and the cell cycle. Our analyses also revealed that clock core genes and genes with stress- and defense-related functions are most predominant among the GRF1- and GRF3-bound targets, providing insights into a possible role of these transcription factors in mediating growthdefense antagonism and integrating environmental stimuli into developmental programs. Additionally, GRF1 and GRF3 target molecular nodes of growth-defense antagonism and modulate the levels of defense- and development-related hormones in opposite directions. Taken together, our results point at GRF1 and GRF3 as potential key determinants of plant fitness under stress conditions