TEACHING AND PROMOTION ON INQUIRYBASED INSTRUCTIONAL MODULE

The purpose of this study is to design two teaching modules that will enable science teachers to teach laboratory course for students to achieve a meaningful and useful learning. We emphasize students’ self-exploration about science. Each module can be modified for students of different grades (7-12 students) and abilities. The modules greatly enhanced the teacher's own understanding of what he/she wishes the laboratory teaching to achieve. The module contained inquiring activities with explicit teaching of the nature of science. At the same time, these activities can promote their learning motivation; let the students have a better understanding of the science concepts by doing the experiments, and to undergo an experience of learning and reflection by themselves. By observing interesting phenomena and practicing the scientific process skills repeatedly, the modules also efficiently inspired students who lack of learning motivation. This study involves the design of two experimental teaching modules dealing with concepts about animal life, plant life, foraging behavior and social behavior. The designed modules are: 1) Ecosphere experimental teaching module: including photosynthesis, respiration and burning; and 2) Animal behavior ecological observation experimental teaching module: including foraging behavior and social behavior

Fake News Detection with Heterogeneous Transformer

The dissemination of fake news on social networks has drawn public need for effective and efficient fake news detection methods. Generally, fake news on social networks is multi-modal and has various connections with other entities such as users and posts. The heterogeneity in both news content and the relationship with other entities in social networks brings challenges to designing a model that comprehensively captures the local multi-modal semantics of entities in social networks and the global structural representation of the propagation patterns, so as to classify fake news effectively and accurately. In this paper, we propose a novel Transformer-based model: HetTransformer to solve the fake news detection problem on social networks, which utilises the encoder-decoder structure of Transformer to capture the structural information of news propagation patterns. We first capture the local heterogeneous semantics of news, post, and user entities in social networks. Then, we apply Transformer to capture the global structural representation of the propagation patterns in social networks for fake news detection. Experiments on three real-world datasets demonstrate that our model is able to outperform the state-of-the-art baselines in fake news detection

The study on SFLAB GanedenBC30 viability on baking products during storage

AbstractFor understanding Bacillus coagulans, GanedenBC30 was used in different ways to added in raw dough and examine their viability after baking. Eight different baking products: (1) chrysanthemum cookies, (2) egg pastry cakes, (3) mooncakes, (4) muffins, (5) polo breads, (6) soda cookies, (7) sponge cakes, and (8) toasts were made from 0.5% GanedenBC30 added to their dough in two ways: (a) flour powder or (b) egg yolk. Then the (a) pH value, (b) titratable acidity, (c) GanedenBC30 counts, and (d) viability GanedenBC30 of eight different baking products were determined after storing at 4oC for 0, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 days, or 25oC for 0, 3, 6 days. The eight types of raw dough had relatively lower pH values and rise after baking. The titratable acidity of the eight types of dough was relatively higher, and declined after baking. However, the pH value and titratable acidity of the eight baking products remained the same after 9 days at 4oC. On the other hand, the GanedenBC30 counts in the eight baking products were less than their raw dough GanedenBC30 levels. For storage at both 4 and 25oC, the results show the GanedenBC30 viability of baking products decreased with storage days. The dough made by flour powder and baking showed higher GanedenBC30 viability than by egg yolk. GanedenBC30 are good candidates for baking product use, both in lactic acid production and probiotic preparations

Role of myosin light chain kinase in intestinal epithelial barrier defects in a rat model of bowel obstruction

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Bowel obstruction is a common cause of abdominal emergency, since the patients are at increased risk of septicemia resulting in high mortality rate. While the compartmentalized changes in enteric microfloral population and augmentation of bacterial translocation (BT) have already been reported using experimental obstruction models, alterations in epithelial permeability of the obstructed guts has not been studied in detail. Myosin light chain kinase (MLCK) is actively involved in the contraction of epithelial perijunctional actinomyosin ring and thereby increases paracellular permeability. In the current study we attempt to investigate the role of MLCK in epithelial barrier defects using a rat model of simple mechanical obstruction.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Wistar rats received intraperitoneal injection of ML-7 (a MLCK inhibitor) or vehicle at 24, 12 and 1 hrs before and 12 hrs after intestinal obstruction (IO). The distal small intestine was obstructed with a single ligature placed 10 cm proximal to the ileocecal junction in IO rats for 24 hrs. Sham-operated rats served as controls.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Mucosal injury, such as villous blunting and increased crypt/villus ratio, was observed in the distal small intestine of IO rats. Despite massive enterocyte shedding, intestinal villi were covered with a contiguous epithelial layer without cell apoptosis. Increased transmural macromolecular flux was noticed in the distal small intestine and the proximal colon after IO. The bacterial colony forming units in the spleen and liver of IO rats were significantly higher than those of sham controls. Addition of ML-7 ameliorated the IO-triggered epithelial MLC phosphorylation, mucosal injury and macromolecular flux, but not the level of BT.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The results suggest that IO-induced premature enterocytic sloughing and enhanced paracellular antigenic flux were mediated by epithelial MLCK activation. In addition, enteric bacteria may undergo transcytotic routes other than paracellular paths to cross the epithelium.</p

hnRNP A1 interacts with the genomic and subgenomic RNA promoters of Sindbis virus and is required for the synthesis of G and SG RNA

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Sindbis virus (SV) is the prototype of alphaviruses which are a group of widely distributed human and animal pathogens. Heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein (hnRNP) A1 is an RNA-binding protein that shuttles between the nucleus and the cytoplasm. Our recent studies found that hnRNP A1 relocates from nucleus to cytoplasm in Sindbis virus (SV)-infected cells. hnRNP A1 binds to the 5' UTR of SV RNA and facilitates the viral RNA replication and translation.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Making use of standard molecular techniques, virology methods and an in <it>vitro </it>system developed by our lab to assess the role of hnRNP A1 in SV positive strand RNA synthesis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>hnRNP A1 interacted with the genomic (G) and subgenomic (SG) RNA promoters. Knockdown of hnRNP A1 resulted in markedly decrease in the synthesis of G and SG RNA both in infected cells and <it>in vitro</it>.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our study provides the first direct evidence that hnRNP A1 actively participates in viral RNA replication and is required for the synthesis of G and SG RNA.</p

Overview of Contraindicated Chinese Medicines for Pregnancy

Chinese medicines should be classified into drugs, which have both beneficial and harmful effects. For centuries, Chinese medicines have been widely used to relieve many symptoms and to treat complications during pregnancy. It is not clear how safe the Chinese medicines are being used during pregnancy and if there is any adverse effects to embryo-fetal development and prenatal and postnatal growth. Some Chinese medicines are indicated that they cannot be used in pregnancy. In this chapter, we will conduct a systematic review to summarize and characterize in details the Chinese medicines classified as contraindicated, not recommended and cautiously used for pregnancy in most updated version of Pharmacopeia of the People’s Republic of China. Clinical reports including clinical trials, case reports, case series and animal studies including short-term and long-term toxicity, specific organ toxicity and different species of the Chinese medicines will be studied. Unlike those pharmaceutical drugs not recommend for use during pregnancy because of known or suspected adverse or teratogenic effects evident by animal studies and/or clinical trials, most of the Chinese medicines were utilized for long history in culture which, however, has very limited scientific data regarding the adverse pregnant outcomes

Modeling Typhoon Event-Induced Landslides Using GIS-Based Logistic Regression: A Case Study of Alishan Forestry Railway, Taiwan

This study develops a model for evaluating the hazard level of landslides at Alishan Forestry Railway, Taiwan, by using logistic regression with the assistance of a geographical information system (GIS). A typhoon event-induced landslide inventory, independent variables, and a triggering factor were used to build the model. The environmental factors such as bedrock lithology from the geology database; topographic aspect, terrain roughness, profile curvature, and distance to river, from the topographic database; and the vegetation index value from SPOT 4 satellite images were used as variables that influence landslide occurrence. The area under curve (AUC) of a receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve was used to validate the model. Effects of parameters on landslide occurrence were assessed from the corresponding coefficient that appears in the logistic regression function. Thereafter, the model was applied to predict the probability of landslides for rainfall data of different return periods. Using a predicted map of probability, the study area was classified into four ranks of landslide susceptibility: low, medium, high, and very high. As a result, most high susceptibility areas are located on the western portion of the study area. Several train stations and railways are located on sites with a high susceptibility ranking