Elementary school teachers\u27 beliefs about teaching and learning mathematics : selected case studies in Taiwan.

Mathematics curriculum innovation has been launched in Taiwan recently in order to reflect the changing needs of the 21st century. The underlying assumptions of reform are: a learner-centered approach, emphasis on confluent education, and a problem-solving & reasoning approach. Research has revealed that teachers\u27 beliefs can negatively interact with curriculum reform. On the other hand, some studies document that beliefs have little effect on instructional behavior. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate three questions: (1) what are the teachers\u27 beliefs about the teaching and learning of mathematics in Taiwanese elementary schools and in what ways are teachers\u27 beliefs congruent with the ongoing trend of reform; (2) what is the general picture of teachers\u27 mathematical instructional practices in Taiwanese elementary schools and in what ways are these instructional practices congruent with the ongoing trend of reform; and (3) what is the relationship between teachers\u27 beliefs and their instructional practices? Basically, this study combines qualitative and quantitative methods in collecting and analyzing data. That is, teacher interviews and questionnaires were administered in order to understand teachers\u27 beliefs about teaching and learning mathematics while observational checklists and naturalistic field observations were used to portray instructional behavior. The major findings of this study are: (1) Elementary school teachers\u27 beliefs tend to hold with the traditional absorption learning theory and seem incongruent with the undergoing curriculum reform. (2) The instructional practices tend to reflect a traditional teacher-centered classroom and also seem incongruent with the launched reform. (3) Teachers\u27 beliefs about teaching and learning play a vital role in shaping their instructional behavior; the situational constraints merely play a minor role. In light of the above findings, some implications such as teacher education were drawn to broaden teachers\u27 beliefs

The Evaluation And Using Intention For Digital Teaching Materials Of Penghu Basalt

The Bureau of Culture of Penghu County produced the Penghu Basalt Digital Teaching Materials, which are supplementary teaching materials for local curriculums in elementary and middle schools in Penghu County. But just what are the teachers’ and students’ opinions of the said teaching materials? Are they willing to use them? Are they suitable? These questions are, indeed, worth further research. The questionnaire survey was conducted to gather the opinions of 142 teachers and 151 students of elementary and middle schools in Penghu County. In addition, using the quasi-experimental and experimental teaching methods, after comparing the pre-test and post-test results to the control group, the learning effectiveness was determined. The results indicate that teachers and students have the highest evaluation for the interface design aspect of this teaching material. The teachers’ evaluation for the teaching materials is significantly higher than the students’. Furthermore, the teaching materials are evaluated highly in terms of attracting attention, generating interest and willingness to use, indicating that the digital teaching materials have potential for promotion in Penghu. After the experimental teaching, only the vocational high school students’ scores before and after the experiment showed significantly improvement, while the scores of the students in the other levels of schools did not. &nbsp

A two-genome microarray for the rice pathogens Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae and X. oryzae pv. oryzicola and its use in the discovery of a difference in their regulation of hrp genes

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Xanthomonas oryzae </it>pv. <it>oryzae </it>(<it>Xoo</it>) and <it>X. oryzae </it>pv. <it>oryzicola </it>(<it>Xoc</it>) are bacterial pathogens of the worldwide staple and grass model, rice. <it>Xoo </it>and <it>Xoc </it>are closely related but <it>Xoo </it>invades rice vascular tissue to cause bacterial leaf blight, a serious disease of rice in many parts of the world, and <it>Xoc </it>colonizes the mesophyll parenchyma to cause bacterial leaf streak, a disease of emerging importance. Both pathogens depend on <it>hrp </it>genes for type III secretion to infect their host. We constructed a 50–70 mer oligonucleotide microarray based on available genome data for <it>Xoo </it>and <it>Xoc </it>and compared gene expression in <it>Xoo </it>strains PXO99^Aand <it>Xoc </it>strain BLS256 grown in the rich medium PSB vs. XOM2, a minimal medium previously reported to induce <it>hrp </it>genes in <it>Xoo </it>strain T7174.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Three biological replicates of the microarray experiment to compare global gene expression in representative strains of <it>Xoo </it>and <it>Xoc </it>grown in PSB vs. XOM2 were carried out. The non-specific error rate and the correlation coefficients across biological replicates and among duplicate spots revealed that the microarray data were robust. 247 genes of <it>Xoo </it>and 39 genes of <it>Xoc </it>were differentially expressed in the two media with a false discovery rate of 5% and with a minimum fold-change of 1.75. Semi-quantitative-RT-PCR assays confirmed differential expression of each of 16 genes each for <it>Xoo </it>and <it>Xoc </it>selected for validation. The differentially expressed genes represent 17 functional categories.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We describe here the construction and validation of a two-genome microarray for the two pathovars of <it>X. oryzae</it>. Microarray analysis revealed that using representative strains, a greater number of <it>Xoo </it>genes than <it>Xoc </it>genes are differentially expressed in XOM2 relative to PSB, and that these include <it>hrp </it>genes and other genes important in interactions with rice. An exception was the <it>rax </it>genes, which are required for production of the host resistance elicitor AvrXa21, and which were expressed constitutively in both pathovars.</p

Janus monolayers of transition metal dichalcogenides.

Structural symmetry-breaking plays a crucial role in determining the electronic band structures of two-dimensional materials. Tremendous efforts have been devoted to breaking the in-plane symmetry of graphene with electric fields on AB-stacked bilayers or stacked van der Waals heterostructures. In contrast, transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers are semiconductors with intrinsic in-plane asymmetry, leading to direct electronic bandgaps, distinctive optical properties and great potential in optoelectronics. Apart from their in-plane inversion asymmetry, an additional degree of freedom allowing spin manipulation can be induced by breaking the out-of-plane mirror symmetry with external electric fields or, as theoretically proposed, with an asymmetric out-of-plane structural configuration. Here, we report a synthetic strategy to grow Janus monolayers of transition metal dichalcogenides breaking the out-of-plane structural symmetry. In particular, based on a MoS2 monolayer, we fully replace the top-layer S with Se atoms. We confirm the Janus structure of MoSSe directly by means of scanning transmission electron microscopy and energy-dependent X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and prove the existence of vertical dipoles by second harmonic generation and piezoresponse force microscopy measurements

IKKβ Suppression of TSC1 Links Inflammation and Tumor Angiogenesis via the mTOR Pathway

SummaryTNFα has recently emerged as a regulator linking inflammation to cancer pathogenesis, but the detailed cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying this link remain to be elucidated. The tuberous sclerosis 1 (TSC1)/TSC2 tumor suppressor complex serves as a repressor of the mTOR pathway, and disruption of TSC1/TSC2 complex function may contribute to tumorigenesis. Here we show that IKKβ, a major downstream kinase in the TNFα signaling pathway, physically interacts with and phosphorylates TSC1 at Ser487 and Ser511, resulting in suppression of TSC1. The IKKβ-mediated TSC1 suppression activates the mTOR pathway, enhances angiogenesis, and results in tumor development. We further find that expression of activated IKKβ is associated with TSC1 Ser511 phosphorylation and VEGF production in multiple tumor types and correlates with poor clinical outcome of breast cancer patients. Our findings identify a pathway that is critical for inflammation-mediated tumor angiogenesis and may provide a target for clinical intervention in human cancer

ORAI1 Genetic Polymorphisms Associated with the Susceptibility of Atopic Dermatitis in Japanese and Taiwanese Populations

Atopic dermatitis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease. Multiple genetic and environmental factors are thought to be responsible for susceptibility to AD. In this study, we collected 2,478 DNA samples including 209 AD patients and 729 control subjects from Taiwanese population and 513 AD patients and 1027 control subject from Japanese population for sequencing and genotyping ORAI1. A total of 14 genetic variants including 3 novel single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the ORAI1 gene were identified. Our results indicated that a non-synonymous SNP (rs3741596, Ser218Gly) associated with the susceptibility of AD in the Japanese population but not in the Taiwanese population. However, there is another SNP of ORAI1 (rs3741595) associated with the risk of AD in the Taiwanese population but not in the Japanese population. Taken together, our results indicated that genetic polymorphisms of ORAI1 are very likely to be involved in the susceptibility of AD

Overview of the interactive task in BioCreative V

Fully automated text mining (TM) systems promote efficient literature searching, retrieval, and review but are not sufficient to produce ready-to-consume curated documents. These systems are not meant to replace biocurators, but instead to assist them in one or more literature curation steps. To do so, the user interface is an important aspect that needs to be considered for tool adoption. The BioCreative Interactive task (IAT) is a track designed for exploring user-system interactions, promoting development of useful TM tools, and providing a communication channel between the biocuration and the TM communities. In BioCreative V, the IAT track followed a format similar to previous interactive tracks, where the utility and usability of TM tools, as well as the generation of use cases, have been the focal points. The proposed curation tasks are user-centric and formally evaluated by biocurators. In BioCreative V IAT, seven TM systems and 43 biocurators participated. Two levels of user participation were offered to broaden curator involvement and obtain more feedback on usability aspects. The full level participation involved training on the system, curation of a set of documents with and without TM assistance, tracking of time-on-task, and completion of a user survey. The partial level participation was designed to focus on usability aspects of the interface and not the performance per se. In this case, biocurators navigated the system by performing pre-designed tasks and then were asked whether they were able to achieve the task and the level of difficulty in completing the task. In this manuscript, we describe the development of the interactive task, from planning to execution and discuss major findings for the systems tested