Authentic documents in the teaching and learning of a foreign language

Today's fast-paced and globalised world has made the learning of a foreign language a pressing need. As a result, many people, already seemingly settled in their occupations are flocking back to college to either learn the basics or master at least one foreign language. However, these attempts do not seem to yield much fruit in terms of applying these ‘learned' languages. Many students who have completed foreign language courses are barely capable of sustaining a conversation beyond the standard basic greetings. Learning a foreign language means being able to communicate effectively in everyday situations.Journal of Language, Technology and Entrepreneurship in Africa Vol. 1 (1) 2007 pp. 25-3

Minimally Invasive Glaucoma Surgery

This book covers all aspects of minimally invasive glaucoma surgery (MIGS) and provides detailed information on each MIGS device, including its mechanism of action; patient selection; implantation techniques; post-operative management; and a review of the existing literature. Step-by-step descriptions are provided for the surgical technique used in implanting each MIGS device, accompanied by clear photographs of each surgical stage. Other areas covered include intra-operative gonioscopy (with tips on optimising the view of the anterior chamber angle) and the management of the intra-operative and post-operative complications. Essential information on the anatomy and physiology of the different aqueous outflow pathways is also included. A separate chapter addresses the introduction of MIGS globally, including the consideration of different reimbursement environments and the different types of glaucoma, e.g. angle closure glaucoma. This book will assist both glaucoma surgeons and general ophthalmologists in overcoming the learning curve involved in performed MIGS, by providing valuable and practical clinical pearl

Energy-Aware Cloud Management through Progressive SLA Specification

Novel energy-aware cloud management methods dynamically reallocate computation across geographically distributed data centers to leverage regional electricity price and temperature differences. As a result, a managed VM may suffer occasional downtimes. Current cloud providers only offer high availability VMs, without enough flexibility to apply such energy-aware management. In this paper we show how to analyse past traces of dynamic cloud management actions based on electricity prices and temperatures to estimate VM availability and price values. We propose a novel SLA specification approach for offering VMs with different availability and price values guaranteed over multiple SLAs to enable flexible energy-aware cloud management. We determine the optimal number of such SLAs as well as their availability and price guaranteed values. We evaluate our approach in a user SLA selection simulation using Wikipedia and Grid'5000 workloads. The results show higher customer conversion and 39% average energy savings per VM.Comment: 14 pages, conferenc

Analysis of mutations in 7 genes associated with neuronal excitability and synaptic transmission in a cohort of children with non-syndromic Infantile Epileptic Encephalopathy

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The Demand for Products Linked to Public Goods: Evidence from an Online Field Experiment

We conduct a field experiment at a nonprofit organization's online store to study how demand changes when consumers' purchases generate revenue for a charitable cause. Consumers respond strongly when their purchases generate small donations by an anonymous outside group, but responses are substantially weaker when the outside donations are relatively large. Responses are also strong when the outside donation requires a personal donation which consumers generally decline. Overall, increasing the salience of financial incentives appears to dampen consumers' responses to charitable messages. We also present evidence that the donation pledges reduce price sensitivity and have positive long-term effects on demand

Major determinants of Interim Disclosures in an Emerging Market

An interim financial reporting protocol became mandatory in Finland as recently as calendar year 1986. This makes the Helsinki Stock Exchange an excellent forum for the investigation of the determinants of periodic reporting in present day European conditions. It is hypothesized that the level of disclosure should be a function of a firm\u27s: governance structure, business risk, market risk, capital structure, stock price adjustment, growth, growth potential and size. As predicted, Finnish interim disclosure over the period 1985 to 1993 is directly related to the quantitative measures of business risk, capital structure, size and market maturity. One other hypothesis is confirmed. Governance is found to be inversely related to disclosure, suggesting that, the greater the institutional concentration of ownership of Finnish firms by other firms, the lower the degree of interim disclosure

HIV/AIDS selective infectivity–report of two peculiar cases

AbstractWe report two peculiar cases that were observed in two communities of Anambra State, South East Nigeria. The first case was a woman of 44 with a history of blood transfusion from a donor of questionable HIV status. A pint of blood was transfused in a private Hospital on the 15 th January, 2000. She has had no form of antiviral therapy until 22nd April, 2008 when she came to the hospital for routine medical check up. Her HIV result came out confirmed positive while that of her husband came out negative. She has had active sexual life with her husband in the previous eight years as they have had some difficulties in getting their desired extra two children having earlier gotten a boy and a girl. The second case involves a family of six. A couple with four children of ages about 6 months, 2 years, 3 years and 5 years. The youngest, a female presented with fever and multiple lymphadenopathy. She tested HIV positive and so was her mother and her second sibling. But her father and two other siblings remained negative at post three and six months intervals from their very first test date with us. These reported cases appear to go contrary to earlier formed opinion on HIV transmission. We support the opinion on a naturally, occurring substance, APOBEC3G which possibly confers permanent immunity against the HIV virus. We recommend clinical trials of the characterized APOBEC3G as a vaccine for non HIV infected persons of all ages and to people living with as a therapeutic drug

Postdischarge interventions for children hospitalized with severe acute malnutrition: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Children hospitalized with severe acute malnutrition (SAM) have poor long-term outcomes following discharge, with high rates of mortality, morbidity, and impaired neurodevelopment. There is currently minimal guidance on how to support children with SAM following discharge from inpatient treatment. OBJECTIVES: This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to examine whether postdischarge interventions can improve outcomes in children recovering from complicated SAM. METHODS: Systematic searches of 4 databases were undertaken to identify studies of interventions delivered completely or partially after hospital discharge in children aged 6-59 mo, following inpatient treatment of SAM. The main outcome of interest was mortality. Random-effects meta-analysis was undertaken where ≥2 studies were sufficiently similar in intervention and outcome. RESULTS: Ten studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria, recruiting 39-1781 participants in 7 countries between 1975 and 2015. Studies evaluated provision of zinc (2 studies), probiotics or synbiotics (2 studies), antibiotics (1 study), pancreatic enzymes (1 study), and psychosocial stimulation (4 studies). Six studies had unclear or high risk of bias in ≥2 domains. Compared with standard care, pancreatic enzyme supplementation reduced inpatient mortality (37.8% compared with 18.6%, P < 0.05). In meta-analysis there was some evidence that prebiotics or synbiotics reduced mortality (RR: 0.72; 95% CI: 0.51, 1.00; P = 0.049). Psychosocial stimulation reduced mortality in meta-analysis of the 2 trials reporting deaths (RR: 0.36; 95% CI: 0.15, 0.87), and improved neurodevelopmental scores in ≥1 domain in all studies. There was no evidence that zinc reduced mortality in the single study reporting deaths. Antibiotics reduced infectious morbidity but did not reduce mortality. CONCLUSIONS: Several biological and psychosocial interventions show promise in improving outcomes in children following hospitalization for SAM and require further exploration in larger randomized mortality trials. This study was registered with PROSPERO as CRD42018111342 (https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=111342)

A novel locus of resistance to severe malaria in a region of ancient balancing selection.

The high prevalence of sickle haemoglobin in Africa shows that malaria has been a major force for human evolutionary selection, but surprisingly few other polymorphisms have been proven to confer resistance to malaria in large epidemiological studies. To address this problem, we conducted a multi-centre genome-wide association study (GWAS) of life-threatening Plasmodium falciparum infection (severe malaria) in over 11,000 African children, with replication data in a further 14,000 individuals. Here we report a novel malaria resistance locus close to a cluster of genes encoding glycophorins that are receptors for erythrocyte invasion by P. falciparum. We identify a haplotype at this locus that provides 33% protection against severe malaria (odds ratio = 0.67, 95% confidence interval = 0.60-0.76, P value = 9.5 × 10(-11)) and is linked to polymorphisms that have previously been shown to have features of ancient balancing selection, on the basis of haplotype sharing between humans and chimpanzees. Taken together with previous observations on the malaria-protective role of blood group O, these data reveal that two of the strongest GWAS signals for severe malaria lie in or close to genes encoding the glycosylated surface coat of the erythrocyte cell membrane, both within regions of the genome where it appears that evolution has maintained diversity for millions of years. These findings provide new insights into the host-parasite interactions that are critical in determining the outcome of malaria infection

Wintersongs: A Holiday Concert

The Utah State University Department of Music presents Wintersongs: a holiday concert featuring the USU Chamber Singers, University Chorale, and the USU Women\u27s Choir.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/music_programs/1111/thumbnail.jp