The Processes of Teaching Languages to Sixth Grade Students in an International Immersion School in a Midwestern City, U.S.A

This paper examines the teaching strategies used in an international immersion school in a Midwestern city in the U.S.A.  A good number of teaching strategies are highlighted in literature review to provide context for this particular study. The immersion program is considered a teaching strategy and an additional name for bilingual schools in which students learn through a second language’s environment with the purpose of developing proficiency in two languages. The significance of this study is that students in immersion schools should have the same quality of education as their peers have in public schools.  The participants in this study used the cognate, cooperative, structural strategies and other strategies in teaching the second language itself or when teaching subjects in the students’ second language. This study is a basic qualitative research and the data was collected though observations and interviews. The data was analyzed by using the ground theory approach. This study shows that immersion schools help students to achieve their second language acquisition and help them in the future to have the ability to access different languages of curriculum. Because the school is under development, this is one limitation that is presented in this study. Keywords: Teaching Strategies, Motivations, Immersion schools, Language acquisitions. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/11-5-07 Publication date: February 29th 202

Factors that Influence Evaluation Skills of Arabic Language Teachers in Saudi Arabia: A Regression Analysis Study

Evaluation of learning is a process used to maintain and improve the quality of education at all grade levels.  Evaluation in any subject is becoming of increasing interest to the educational professionals. Best practice for classroom teachers for all school subjects includes active and continuous involvement in the evaluation process. In Saudi Arabia, teachers of Arabic language faced numerous obstacles, which are mostly attributed to the teachers’ lack of alignment of planning, implementation, and evaluation of learning outcomes. The purpose of this study was to investigate factors that influence the evaluation skills of Arabic language teachers at all public and private schools in the Majmaah School District, Saudi Arabia. Using descriptive statistics and multiple regression, three research questions were answered.  From the estimated population of 250-280 Arabic teachers, 158 individuals responded to a survey (response rate = 56.4% to 63.2%).  Results indicated that all elements in the Evaluation Needs Scale were ranked between less needed and most needed (mean range = 2.61 to 2.44).  Analysis revealed planning and implementation needs as predictors explained 47.10% of the variance (unique and shared) in evaluation needs, F (2, 157) = 70.80, p = .00.  Of these two predictors, planning needs made the larger unique contribution. Implications for the professional development of Arabic teachers are discussed. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/11-23-09 Publication date:August 31st 202

Investigating the role of Cry2Aa’s N terminus in its activity towards dipteran species Aedes aegypti

Bacillus thuringiensis is known to produce pesticidal proteins that have been used to control a variety of insect species. Cry2Aa, a three-domain pore-forming toxin, has been shown to have activity against both lepidopteran and dipteran insects. In particular it has been shown to have activity against the yellow fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti) whereas the closely related protein, Cry2Ab, does not possess such activity. The specificity of these proteins to a particular insect has generally been associated with the binding of domains II and III to a particular receptor on the surface of midgut epithelial cells. Recent work however has shown that domain I of Cry2Aa heavily influences the activity of the protein to this mosquito, and that changing just four amino acids within the N-terminal region was enough to introduce this activity to Cry2Ab.This project sought to understand the role of domain I, and these four amino acids in particular, in the activity of Cry2A proteins against A. aegypti. Initially we discounted the hypothesis that this region was directly involved in receptor binding by demonstrating that it was removed during the proteolytic activation step. We then went on to show that it was whether or not the protein was cleaved around these four amino acids by the mosquito digestive enzymes that determined whether or not it would have activity against the insect. This led to a new hypothesis that cleavage of the protein in this region revealed a new epitope involved in receptor binding. This was tested by performing binding assays with different truncated forms of Cry2Aa which showed that the region of domain I between amino acids 49 and 144 was required for the binding of the protein to the midgut of A. aegypti

Hormone Replacement Therapy: Would it be Possible to Replicate a Functional Ovary?

Background: Throughout history, menopause has been regarded as a transition in a woman’s life. With the increase in life expectancy, women now spend more than a third of their lives in menopause. During these years, women may experience intolerable symptoms both physically and mentally, leading them to seek clinical advice. It is imperative for healthcare providers to improve the quality of life by reducing bothersome menopausal symptoms and preventing disorders such as osteoporosis and atherosclerosis. The current treatment in the form of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is sometimes inadequate with several limitations and adverse effects. Objective and rationale: The current review aims to discuss the need, efficacy, and limitations of current HRT; the role of other ovarian hormones, and where we stand in comparison with ovary-in situ; and finally, explore towards the preparation of an HRT model by regeneration of ovaries tissues through stem cells which can replicate a functional ovary. Search methods: Four electronic databases (MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science and CINAHL) were searched from database inception until 26 April 2018, using a combination of relevant controlled vocabulary terms and free-text terms related to ‘menopause’, ‘hormone replacement therapy’, ‘ovary regeneration’, ‘stem cells’ and ‘ovarian transplantation’. Outcomes: We present a synthesis of the existing data on the efficacy and limitations of HRT. HRT is far from adequate in postmenopausal women with symptoms of hormone deprivation as it fails to deliver all hormones secreted by naïve ovarian tissue. Moreover, the pharmacokinetics of synthetic hormones makes them substantially different from natural ones. Not only does the number and type of hormones given in HRT matter, but the route of delivering and their release in circulation are also imperative. The hormones are delivered either orally or topically in a non-physiological uniform manner, which brings along with it several side effects. These identify the need for a hormone delivery system which replicates, integrates and reacts as per the requirement of the female body. Wider implications: The review outlines the strengths and weaknesses of HRT and highlights the potential areas for future research. There is a tremendous potential for research in this field to understand the collective roles of the various ovarian hormones and to devise an auto-regulated hormone delivery system which replicates the normal physiology. Its clinical applications can prove to be transformative for postmenopausal women helping them to lead a healthy and productive life

Optimisation of analytical methods for the detection of cannabinoids and nicotine in hair

Unlike conventional biological samples (blood and urine), hair samples have a much wider detection period and can provide a retrospective timeline of an individual’s drug use. However, the most crucial issue facing hair analysis is the avoidance of false-positive results caused by passive exposure to the drug. Passive exposure could be a result of direct contact with the consumed material or its smoke. This issue is of great concern especially with the drugs that have a greater potential for external contamination. Common examples of these are cannabis and nicotine, two drugs that are by far the most used drugs worldwide. The work presented in this thesis describes the development and validation of three analytical methods for cannabis and nicotine in hair matrices. These methods were then employed to analyse authentic hair samples and their washes. The first method involved liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) of the cannabinoids, Δ9- tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabidiol (CBD), cannabinol (CBN) and metabolite 11-hydroxy-Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (11-OH-THC) from hair followed by analysis using standard gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Cyclohexane: EtOAc (3/1, v/v) was found be the best extracting solvent for THC, CBD, CBN and 11-OH-THC. The percentage of extraction recovery for all four analytes ranged from 87.9% to 97.2%. The second method involved solid-phase extraction (SPE) of the main metabolite 11-nor-Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol-9-carboxylic acid (THC-COOH) from hair followed by analysis using two-dimensional gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (2D GC-MS). The SPE method provided a clean extract with an acceptable extraction recovery (approximately 50%). Authentic hair samples were then collected from 20 known cannabis users admitted to Al-Amal addiction hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Cannabis users were interviewed at the time of sample collection and self-reported their cannabis use history. Concentrations of different cannabinoids were then measured using the validated methods. The aim of this project was to investigate the potential value of measuring cannabinoid concentrations in hair. The detected concentrations ranged from 0.11 to 0.34 ng/mg for THC, 0.2 to 4.42 ng/mg for 3 CBD, 0.31 to 1.02 for CBN, and 2.14 to 7.01 pg/mg for THC-COOH. Surprisingly, THC has a very low detection rate, whereas, CBD and THC-COOH had the highest detection rate of all cannabinoids. The relationship between measured concentrations and use history was then subject to statistical analysis. There was no significant correlation found between concentrations of cannabinoids in hair and the use history. The third method involved methanolic extraction of nicotine and cotinine from pet dogs’ fur followed by analysis by zwitterionic hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (ZICHILIC-MSMS). Further clean-up of the fur methanolic extract was found to be problematic. Centrifugation and direct analysis was found to be the best approach. The tandem MS allowed for low detection limits. The aim of this project was to investigate the association between dog fur nicotine and cotinine concentrations and owner-reported exposure to environmental tobacco smoke. 66 fur samples were collected from 41 dogs at two time points. Total nicotine and total cotinine were quantified in unwashed fur samples using the validated method. Statistical analysis revealed a significant difference in the mean concentrations of nicotine and cotinine in different exposure groups. By providing information on dog’s exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) over time, fur analysis may be useful in assessing dogs and companion owner’s histories of exposure to ETS

MVTN: Learning Multi-View Transformations for 3D Understanding

Multi-view projection techniques have shown themselves to be highly effective in achieving top-performing results in the recognition of 3D shapes. These methods involve learning how to combine information from multiple view-points. However, the camera view-points from which these views are obtained are often fixed for all shapes. To overcome the static nature of current multi-view techniques, we propose learning these view-points. Specifically, we introduce the Multi-View Transformation Network (MVTN), which uses differentiable rendering to determine optimal view-points for 3D shape recognition. As a result, MVTN can be trained end-to-end with any multi-view network for 3D shape classification. We integrate MVTN into a novel adaptive multi-view pipeline that is capable of rendering both 3D meshes and point clouds. Our approach demonstrates state-of-the-art performance in 3D classification and shape retrieval on several benchmarks (ModelNet40, ScanObjectNN, ShapeNet Core55). Further analysis indicates that our approach exhibits improved robustness to occlusion compared to other methods. We also investigate additional aspects of MVTN, such as 2D pretraining and its use for segmentation. To support further research in this area, we have released MVTorch, a PyTorch library for 3D understanding and generation using multi-view projections.Comment: under review journal extension for the ICCV 2021 paper arXiv:2011.1324

A Case of Gastroesophageal Cancer after Laparoscopic Sleeve Gastrectomy

Gastric cancer has been reported in relatively few cases after sleeve gastrectomy, which has become a common bariatric procedure. In this paper, we present a 58-year-old woman diagnosed with gastric cancer by esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) 4 years after sleeve gastrectomy. For that, she underwent distal esophagectomy and total gastrectomy with Roux-en-Y esophagojejunostomy. Preoperative endoscopy is recommended before planning surgery in patients with gastroesophageal reflux symptoms. In addition, annual EGD should be considered after sleeve gastrectomy in patients with risk factors for gastric cancer

Electronic waste collection incentivization scheme based on the blockchain

The approaches of motivating people for the collection of electronic waste (e-waste) are often insufficient due to inadequate methods of given incentives. Prior research studies have been carried out to tackle the issue of e-waste management in a broad sense. The findings of those studies indicated diverse strategies, each of which is relevant solely to a restricted range of electronic e-waste reprocessing circumstances. The current study has presented a proposed technique for incentivizing tasks and activities associated with the collection of e-waste through the adoption of the vector space technique. The method this research undertakes lies with utilizing blockchain smart contract technology. The reason for selecting this approach lies with the mapping of tasks, the nature of activities, and their magnitude, in order to derived an incentive. While the vector space model defines the set of tasks with their corresponding incentives, blockchain smart contract maps them together and establishes them in a record. Experimental scenarios for the calculation of incentives are presented; the findings reveal that among many scenarios of allocating incentives for e-waste collection, the best case is by utilizing a weighting scale scheme where each task and activity is mapped to its associated incentive rather than providing fixed incentive values. Ethereum was used as a digital token for each unit of incentive. This concept has contributed in encouraging personal accountability in the management of e-waste collection in order to cultivate sustainable behaviors for a long-term solution

MZe786 Rescues Cardiac Mitochondrial Activity in High sFlt-1 and Low HO-1 Environment

Hypertensive disorder in pregnancy is a major cause of maternal and perinatal mortality worldwide. Women who have had preeclampsia are at three to four times higher risk in later life of developing high blood pressure and heart disease. Soluble Flt-1 (sFlt-1) is elevated in preeclampsia and may remain high postpartum in women with a history of preeclampsia. Heme oxygenase-1 (Hmox1/HO-1) exerts protective effects against oxidative stimuli and is compromised in the placenta of pregnant women with preeclampsia. We hypothesized that sFlt-1 inhibits cardiac mitochondrial activity in HO-1 deficient mice. HO-1 haplo-insufficient mice (Hmox1+/−) were injected with adenovirus encoding sFlt-1 (Ad-sFlt-1) or control virus (Ad-CMV). Subsequently, they were treated daily with either placebo or MZe786 for six days, when the heart tissue was harvested to assess cardiac mitochondrial activity. Here, we show that the loss of HO-1 disturbed cardiac mitochondrial respiration and reduced mitochondrial biogenesis. The overexpression of sFlt-1 resulted in the inhibition of the cardiac mitochondrial activity in Hmox1+/− mice. The present study demonstrates that the hydrogen sulfide (H2S) releasing molecule, MZe786, rescues mitochondrial activity by stimulating cardiac mitochondrial biogenesis and antioxidant defense in Hmox1−/− mice and in Hmox1+/− mice exposed to a high sFlt-1 environment

Cesarean Section and Development of Childhood Bronchial Asthma: Is There A Risk?

BACKGROUND: Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease of the airways that results from complex interactions between multiple environmental and genetic influences. In recent years, studies have observed an increase in caesarean section rates, and have suggested a strong association with the rapid increase in the incidence of childhood asthma that cannot be explained by genetic factors alone. In this case-control study, we investigate the association between the developments of childhood asthma with the mode of delivery. We also explored the relationship between mode of delivery and control of asthma. METHODS: Two groups (509 pediatric patients in total) were assessed between January 1, 2017, and January 1, 2018. Part of these patients, 257 (50.4%) were asthmatic children visiting specialised clinics, and 252 (49.6%) controlled cases selected from a primary health care clinic from the same institution (control group). RESULTS: The Chi-square test revealed a significant association between cesarean sections and bronchial asthma (OR, 1.483 [95% CI, 1.013–21.71]; P = 0.042). However, the adjusted OR from our binary logistic regression model revealed this association to be insignificant (adjusted OR, 1.417 [95% CI, 0.885–2.269]; P = 0.804). The value of the chi-square of the model shows that the overall model is statistically significant at 1%. The Nagelkerke R square indicates that 34.9% of the variation in having asthma is explained by the risk factors included in the model. CONCLUSION: We do not believe that the rise in cesarean sections explains the increase in childhood bronchial asthma – at least not in our population. We also found no association between the mode of delivery and asthma control. We encourage further research into this topic, namely to recruit a larger number of patients, and to adjust for the significant risk factors found in our study