Preservice Science Teachers\u27 Experiences with Repeated, Guided Inquiry

The purpose of this study was to examine preservice science teachers’ experiences with repeated scientific inquiry (SI) activities. The National Science Education Standards (National Research Council, 1996) stress students should understand and possess the abilities to do SI. For students to meet these standards, science teachers must understand and be able to perform SI; however, previous research demonstrated that many teachers have naïve understandings in this area. Teacher preparation programs provide an opportunity to facilitate the development of inquiry understandings and abilities. In this study, preservice science teachers had experiences with two inquiry activities that were repeated three times each. The research questions for this study were (a) How do preservice science teachers’ describe their experiences with repeated, guided inquiry activities? (b) What are preservice science teachers’ understandings and abilities of SI? This study was conducted at a large, urban university in the southeastern United States. The 5 participants had bachelor’s degrees in science and were enrolled in a graduate science education methods course. The researcher was one of the course instructors but did not lead the activities. Case study methodology was used. Data was collected from a demographic survey, an open-ended questionnaire with follow-up interviews, the researcher’s observations, participants’ lab notes, personal interviews, and participants’ journals. Data were coded and analyzed through chronological data matrices to identify patterns in participants’ experiences. The five domains identified in this study were understandings of SI, abilities to conduct SI, personal feelings about the experience, science content knowledge, and classroom implications. Through analysis of themes identified within each domain, the four conclusions made about these preservice teachers’ experiences with SI were that the experience increased their abilities to conduct inquiry, increased their understanding of how they might use SI in their classroom, increased their understanding of why variables are used in experiments, and did not increase their physics content knowledge. These conclusions suggest that preservice science teachers having repeated, guided experiences with inquiry increase their abilities to conduct SI and consider how inquiry could be used in their future science classrooms

Risk and the School-to-Work Transition in East Germany and the United States.

This study investigates how young adults in vocational education perceive risk in regard to their professional futures in East Germany and the United States. It analyzes students’ career aspirations and life plans in both countries and how they cope with uncertainties at the labor market. It further outlines underlying values, beliefs, and attitudes that guide young Americans and East Germans in their planning. Several theoretical frameworks ground this study and comprise the majority of the relevant literature. This cross-cultural comparative case study takes a mixed method approach using a concurrent triangulation design. The inquiry is framed by theories in the field of risk and cultural risk perception, school-to-work transition, vocational education and training, and welfare studies. In both countries, 129 students filled out a questionnaire. Additionally, narratives from nine focus groups and 29 biographical interviews were conducted. A three level analysis of the data was compiled that outlines the themes and categorizes them according to an individual, institutional, and macro-structural level of influence on risk perception in each country. Emerging premises on an individual level were choice, family and career planning concerns, geographical and occupational flexibility, further education and training, and agency. On the institutional level the influence of public career advisement institutions, teachers, parents, peers and friends was outlined. On the macro-structural level unemployment, political welfare reforms, the vocational education and training system were themes that have been of concern among the East German population. The dissertation also offers a comparative analysis of the data. This study reveals that young adults in East Germany are highly concerned about their occupational futures and tend to be pessimistic about current welfare reforms. They hold on to the idea of a standard biography and try to make strategic career plans. Their counterparts in the United States are highly optimistic about their futures, expressed little concern about labor market policies, but also appeared to be short term oriented in their life planning in order to remain flexible and mobile

Eosinophil adhesion under flow conditions activates mechanosensitive signaling pathways in human endothelial cells

Leukocyte transmigration can be affected by shear stress; however, the mechanisms by which shear stress modulates transmigration are unknown. We found that adhesion of eosinophils or an eosinophilic cell line to intereukin 4–stimulated endothelial cells led to a shear-dependent increase in endothelial cell intracellular calcium and increased phosphorylation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) 2, but not c-Jun NH2-terminal kinase or p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase. Latex beads coated with antibodies were used to characterize the role of specific endothelial cell surface molecules in initiating signaling under shear conditions. We found that ligation of either vascular cell adhesion molecule–1 or E-selectin, but not major histocompatibility complex class I, induced a shear-dependent increase in ERK2 phosphorylation in cytokine-stimulated endothelial cells. Disassembly of the actin cytoskeleton with latrunculin A prevented ERK2 phosphorylation after adhesion under flow conditions, supporting a role for the cytoskeleton in mechanosensing. Rapid phosphorylation of focal adhesion kinase and paxillin occurred under identical conditions, suggesting that focal adhesions were also involved in mechanotransduction. Finally, we found that Rho-associated protein kinase and calpain were both critical in the subsequent transendothelial migration of eosinophils under flow conditions. These data suggest that ligation of leukocyte adhesion molecules under flow conditions leads to mechanotransduction in endothelial cells, which can regulate subsequent leukocyte trafficking

Clinical features that identify children with primary immunodeficiency diseases

BACKGROUND: The 10 warning signs of primary immunodeficiency diseases (PID) have been promoted by various organizations in Europe and the United States to predict PID. However, the ability of these warning signs to identify children with PID has not been rigorously tested. OBJECTIVE: The main goal of this study was to determine the effectiveness of these 10 warning signs in predicting defined PID among children who presented to 2 tertiary pediatric immunodeficiency centers in the north of England. METHODS: A retrospective survey of 563 children who presented to 2 pediatric immunodeficiency centers was undertaken. The clinical records of 430 patients with a defined PID and 133 patients for whom detailed investigations failed to establish a specific PID were reviewed. RESULTS: Overall, 96% of the children with PID were referred by hospital clinicians. The strongest identifiers of PID were a family history of immunodeficiency disease in addition to use of intravenous antibiotics for sepsis in children with neutrophil PID and failure to thrive in children with T-lymphocyte PID. With these 3 signs, 96% of patients with neutrophil and complement deficiencies and 89% of children with T-lymphocyte immunodeficiencies could be identified correctly. Family history was the only warning sign that identified children with B-lymphocyte PID. CONCLUSIONS: PID awareness initiatives should be targeted at hospital pediatricians and families with a history of PID rather than the general public. Our results provide the general pediatrician with a simple refinement of 10 warning signs for identifying children with underlying immunodeficiency diseases. </jats:sec

Species traits and geomorphic setting as drivers of global soil carbon stocks in seagrass meadows

Our knowledge of the factors that can influence the stock of organic carbon (OC) that is stored in the soil of seagrass meadows is evolving, and several causal effects have been used to explain the variation of stocks observed at local to national scales. To gain a global-scale appreciation of the drivers that cause variation in soil OC stocks, we compiled data on published species-specific traits and OC stocks from monospecific and mixed meadows at multiple geomorphological settings. Species identity was recognized as an influential driver of soil OC stocks, despite their large intraspecific variation. The most important seagrass species traits associated with OC stocks were the number of leaves per seagrass shoot, belowground biomass, leaf lifespan, aboveground biomass, leaf lignin, leaf breaking force and leaf OC plus the coastal geomorphology of the area, particularly for lagoon environments. A revised estimate of the global average soil OC stock to 20 cm depth of 15.4 Mg C ha−1 is lower than previously reported. The largest stocks were still recorded in Mediterranean seagrass meadows. Our results specifically identify Posidonia oceanica from the Mediterranean and, more generally, large and persistent species as key in providing climate regulation services, and as priority species for conservation for this specific ecosystem service

Providing a Framework for Seagrass Mapping in United States Coastal Ecosystems Using High Spatial Resolution Satellite Imagery

Seagrasses have been widely recognized for their ecosystem services, but traditional seagrass monitoring approaches emphasizing ground and aerial observations are costly, time-consuming, and lack standardization across datasets. This study leveraged satellite imagery from Maxar\u27s WorldView-2 and WorldView-3 high spatial resolution, commercial satellite platforms to provide a consistent classification approach for monitoring seagrass at eleven study areas across the continental United States, representing geographically, ecologically, and climatically diverse regions. A single satellite image was selected at each of the eleven study areas to correspond temporally to reference data representing seagrass coverage and was classified into four general classes: land, seagrass, no seagrass, and no data. Satellite-derived seagrass coverage was then compared to reference data using either balanced agreement, the Mann-Whitney U test, or the Kruskal-Wallis test, depending on the format of the reference data used for comparison. Balanced agreement ranged from 58% to 86%, with better agreement between reference- and satellite-indicated seagrass absence (specificity ranged from 88% to 100%) than between reference- and satellite-indicated seagrass presence (sensitivity ranged from 17% to 73%). Results of the Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis tests demonstrated that satellite-indicated seagrass percentage cover had moderate to large correlations with reference-indicated seagrass percentage cover, indicative of moderate to strong agreement between datasets. Satellite classification performed best in areas of dense, continuous seagrass compared to areas of sparse, discontinuous seagrass and provided a suitable spatial representation of seagrass distribution within each study area. This study demonstrates that the same methods can be applied across scenes spanning varying seagrass bioregions, atmospheric conditions, and optical water types, which is a significant step toward developing a consistent, operational approach for mapping seagrass coverage at the national and global scales. Accompanying this manuscript are instructional videos describing the processing workflow, including data acquisition, data processing, and satellite image classification. These instructional videos may serve as a management tool to complement field- and aerial-based mapping efforts for monitoring seagrass ecosystems

Databases for Congenital Heart Defect Public Health Studies Across the Lifespan

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139106/1/jah31841_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139106/2/jah31841.pd

Species traits and geomorphic setting as drivers of global soil carbon stocks in seagrass meadows

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-MOur knowledge of the factors that can influence the stock of organic carbon (OC) that is stored in the soil of seagrass meadows is evolving, and several causal effects have been used to explain the variation of stocks observed at local to national scales. To gain a global-scale appreciation of the drivers that cause variation in soil OC stocks, we compiled data on published species-specific traits and OC stocks from monospecific and mixed meadows at multiple geomorphological settings. Species identity was recognized as an influential driver of soil OC stocks, despite their large intraspecific variation. The most important seagrass species traits associated with OC stocks were the number of leaves per seagrass shoot, belowground biomass, leaf lifespan, aboveground biomass, leaf lignin, leaf breaking force and leaf OC plus the coastal geomorphology of the area, particularly for lagoon environments. A revised estimate of the global average soil OC stock to 20 cm depth of 15.4 Mg C ha−1 is lower than previously reported. The largest stocks were still recorded in Mediterranean seagrass meadows. Our results specifically identify Posidonia oceanica from the Mediterranean and, more generally, large and persistent species as key in providing climate regulation services, and as priority species for conservation for this specific ecosystem service

The invisible plan: how English teachers develop their expertise and the special place of adapting the skills of lesson planning

This paper analyses how English teachers learn to become expert designers of learning and why sharing that expertise is increasingly vital. Its conceptual framework is the widely recognised, empirically tested, five-stage developmental Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, exemplifying the development of teacher expertise, constituted by the “milestone” [m] and “transitory” [t] phases connecting with the five stages of: Novice [m], Advanced Beginner [t], Competent [m], Proficient [t] and Expert [m]. Teacher planning is analysed as one key tacit or non-tangible component of developing expertise. Focusing specifically on English teachers as key participants in this pioneer teacher cognition study, the defining characteristics of milestone stages of expertise development are explored with specific attention to the remarkably under-researched area of planning. We introduce three new categories, defining modes of planning: (i) visible practical planning, (ii) external reflective planning and (iii) internal reflective planning, demonstrating their role in teacher development through the Dreyfus five stages. English is a subject which suffers from frequent disruptive changes to curriculum and assessment: new learning designs are constantly demanded, making planning an ongoing challenge. The implications for practice include the importance of an explicit understanding of how teachers’ planning moves through the three phases from the very “visible” novice phase to the internal relatively “automatic” competent teacher and finally the seemingly “invisible” expert phase. Further research is needed to explore how English teachers can share planning expertise between the three phases to improve teachers’ skills and student learning

Transfusional approach in multi-ethnic Sickle Cell patients: real-world practice data from a Multicenter survey in Italy

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a worldwide distributed hereditary red cell disorder characterized by recurrent acute vaso-occlusive crises (VOCs and anemia). Gold standard treatments are hydroxycarbamide (HC) and/or different red blood cell (RBC) transfusion regimens to limit disease progression. Here, we report a retrospective study on 1,579 SCD patients (median age 23 years; 802 males/777 females), referring to 34 comprehensive Italian centers for hemoglobinopathies. Although we observed a similar proportion of Caucasian (47.9%) and African (48.7%) patients, Italian SCD patients clustered into two distinct overall groups: children of African descent and adults of Caucasian descent. We found a subset of SCD patients requiring more intensive therapy with a combination of HC plus chronic transfusion regimen, due to partial failure of HC treatment alone in preventing or reducing sickle cell-related acute manifestations. Notably, we observed a higher use of acute transfusion approaches for SCD patients of African descent when compared to Caucasian subjects. This might be related to (i) age of starting HC treatment; (ii) patients' low social status; (iii) patients' limited access to family practitioners; or (iv) discrimination. In our cohort, alloimmunization was documented in 135 patients (8.5%) and was more common in Caucasians (10.3%) than in Africans (6.6%). Alloimmunization was similar in male and female and more frequent in adults than in children. Our study reinforces the importance of donor-recipient exact matching for ABO, Rhesus, and Kell antigen systems for RBC compatibility as a winning strategy to avoid or limit alloimmunization events that negatively impact the clinical management of SCD-related severe complications