Facilitation of Teachers’ Professional Development through Principals’ Instructional Supervision and Teachers’ Knowledge- Management Behaviors

With the rise of global competition and the focus on teacher quality, teacher professional development is becoming increasingly crucial, and the stress and challenges for principals are more severe than ever. Teachers can improve their professional abilities through principals’ instructional supervision and their own knowledge-management (KM) behaviors to benefit students. Thus, this chapter analyzes the relationship among principals’ instructional supervision, teachers’ KM, and teachers’ professional development. The author believes that principals’ instructional supervision and effective KM can facilitate the professional development of teachers. The author also believes the readers can know the relationships among them, and teachers’ professional development can be improved through principal’s instructional supervision and teachers’ KM behaviors

Ethanol Ablation of a Peripheral Nerve Sheath Tumor Presenting as a Small Bowel Obstruction.

Ethanol has historically been used as an ablative agent for a variety of lesions. One of the more common applications of this technique is celiac plexus neurolysis; however, recent reports have suggested a role for the endoscopic alcohol ablation of a variety of solid and cystic lesions. We report a novel case of endoscopic ethanol ablation of a peripheral nerve sheath tumor presenting as a small bowel obstruction

Mixed medullary and papillary carcinoma of the thyroid: A case report

Buildings account for up to 40% of the total energy use in the world. Directives from the European Union have pointed out the significance of increasing the energy efficiency in buildings. New regulation in countries like Sweden has established that new buildings should fulfil regulations of Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB), providing the opportunity for renewable energy technologies to achieve these goals. In this paper, the retrofitting potential of renewable energy technologies for a single-family home in Sweden was investigated.The present work studied the characteristics of several renewable energy technologies and their applications for a single-family home in Sweden, including biomass, solar photovoltaics, solar thermal, heat pump, and small-scale wind turbine. Three renewable energy technologies (solar thermal, heat pump and small-scale wind turbine) and one renovation method (window) were selected to investigate. The analysis was made of the current energy use and the potential energy (and cost) savings from each retrofitting of these facilities by means of simulation models using IDA ICE software. The study results show that the proposed renewable energy technologies are technically feasible and economically viable as a source of alternative renewable energy in order to produce clean energy and reduce electricity bills for an electric-heated single-family home located in Sweden. Moreover, the combined retrofitting scheme consist of solar thermal system and window renovation was also proposed and explored. As a result the energy performance of the single-family home would satisfy the nearly-zero energy building requirements and thermal comfort could be maintained at an acceptable level

Prenatal Sonographic Features of Miller-Dieker Syndrome

Miller-Dieker syndrome (MDS) is a contiguous gene deletion disorder involving genes on chromosome 17p13.3. Clinical manifestations include central nervous system (CNS) anomalies (mainly Type I lissencephaly), facial dysmorphism, growth restriction, profound mental retardation, seizure, and extracranial anomalies. The affected individuals often die in infancy or early childhood. Owing to the poor prognosis of MDS, early diagnosis of fetuses with MDS is important. Currently, ultrasound is regarded as a useful tool in prenatal detection of MDS, in addition to fetal magnetic resonance imaging. This article provides an overview of the reported prenatal sonographic features of MDS, including CNS anomalies (ventriculomegaly, agyria or lissencephaly, abnormal sylvian fissures, agenesis or dysgenesis of corpus callosum, and microcephaly), intrauterine growth restriction, polyhydramnios, cardiac anomalies, omphalocele, facial anomalies, and rare anomalies. Several diseases may have phenotypic overlaps with MDS, including Type I lissencephaly (Lissencephaly 1, Lissencephaly 2, and X-linked lissencephaly) and Type II lissencephaly. Increasing the awareness and knowledge of fetal structural anomalies associated with MDS on prenatal ultrasound will be helpful in the early detection, thus allowing appropriate genetic counseling and optimize clinical management

Prenatal Sonographic Features of Turner Syndrome

Turner syndrome (TS) was first described by Henry Turner in 1938 and was then known to be secondary to karyotypic variation of 45, X in 1959. Most conceptuses with TS spontaneously abort, and only 1% of these embryos survive to term. Fetuses with a pure and complete monosomy X often have more complicated anomalies than those with mosaicism and structural abnormalities in one X chromosome. Ultrasound has been reported to be a reliable tool in the prenatal diagnosis of TS. This article provides an overview of the common sonographic features of fetuses with TS, including cystic hygromas, increased nuchal translucency, non-immune hydrops fetalis, cardiovascular anomalies, urinary anomalies, short femur length, and other rare structural anomalies. Despite that some sonographic markers are transient and may be resolved later in gestation, detection of these markers in early pregnancy should remind obstetric clinicians of the importance of these predictors in TS. The prognosis for cases with TS detected in fetal life is relatively poor. In addition, several diseases may have phenotypic overlap with fetal TS, including non-TS-related cystic hygromas, non-TS-related non-immune hydrops fetalis and Noonan syndrome. Therefore, prenatal recognition of these sonographic features is of great help in karyotypic confirmation, and in appropriate genetic counseling and obstetric treatment

Prenatal Sonographic Features of Pallister-Killian Syndrome

Pallister-Killian syndrome (PKS), which is characterized by mental retardation, seizures, pigmentary skin lesions and dysmorphic facial features, is a rare chromosomal anomaly with the mosaic presence of an extra tissue-specific isochromosome 12p (mosaic tetrasomy 12p). Advanced maternal age is believed to be a risk factor for PKS. Ultrasound is a useful tool in the prenatal detection of characteristic findings associated with PKS. This article provides an overview of the prenatal sonographic features of PKS, including congenital diaphragmatic hernia, polyhydramnios, abnormal extremities, increased nuchal translucency or nuchal edema, cardiovascular anomalies, central nervous system anomalies, an abnormal facial profile, and other rare anomalies. Appropriate tissue samples and laboratory analytic techniques should be selected for an accurate prenatal diagnosis because of the instability of isochromosome 12p and the potentially incorrect interpretation as tetrasomy 21q on the traditional G-banded technique. Fryns syndrome, which has phenotypic overlap with PKS, is also discussed. Increasing awareness and knowledge of various anomalies of PKS on prenatal ultrasound would be helpful for the early detection of PKS. Definite diagnosis of fetuses with PKS could help clinical physicians in the decisionmaking process during the prenatal or postnatal periods

An Effective Cold Start Recommendaton Method Using A Web Of Trust

Cold start recommendations are important because they help build user loyalty, which is the key to the success of e-services and e-commerce systems. Recommending useful information for new users generally creates a sense of belonging and loyalty, and encourages them to visit e-commerce systems frequently. However, as new users take time to become familiar with recommendation systems, the systems usually have limited information about newcomers and have difficulty providing appropriate recommendations. The cold start phenomenon has a serious impact on the performance of recommendation systems. To address the problem, we propose a cold start recommendation method that integrates a web of trust with a user model to identify trustworthy users. The suggestions of those users are then aggregated to provide useful recommendations for cold start users. Experiments based on the well-known Epinions dataset demonstrate that the proposed method is effective and efficient, and outperforms well-known recommendation methods by a significant margin