A process oriented approach for Modelling On line Learning Environments

In this paper we describe the modelling approach used in an on going project bringing together partners from the academic world and from a company. The two main features of this approach are the following. Firstly, it starts from the production model recommended by ISO for modelling any production activity in industry and then it refines and specialises this general cycle to on-line learning production. Secondly, it takes a reverse engineering perspective as it starts from an existing set of software services, which are currently tailored to customers'needs by the company engineers. The general model includes three complementary views: a process oriented-view, a life cycle oriented view and a data flow oriented view. We compare this model with some models previously proposed or currently in use. Then we give an overview of SERPOLET; the kernel set of services which is included in all the on line learning delivery environments currently provided by the company. We show how the existing components can be split throughout the models. Finally, we show our perspectives for anticipating forthcoming needs

Next generation sequencing analysis reveals a relationship between rDNA unit diversity and locus number in Nicotiana diploids

© 2012 Matyášek et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Ré-ingénierie d'une plate-forme fondée sur la modélisation d'un processus global de FOAD

Les actes papiers peuvent être commandés à l'adresse suivant http://www.utc.fr/tice2004/commande_actes_tice2004.docLMS providers have to adjust their products to the newneeds of their customers as well as to an evolving technological context, they do not start from scratch but from existing products. A re-engineering process for existing software is described in this paper, it aims at providing a component based architecture for reusable and interoperable components. The proposal includes a functional specification relying on the global cycle of ODL and a component based decomposition implementing the listed functions. For heading towards interoperability at the data exchange level, a model allowing data classification is proposed. Finally a set of metadata is proposed for resource indexing.Les fournisseurs de plates-formes pour la formation en ligne doivent pouvoir adapter leur offre aux nouveaux besoins des acteurs et aux évolutions technologiques tout en exploitant un existant. Un processus de réingénierie de logiciel existant, aboutissant à une architecture à base de composants réutilisables et interopérables est proposé dans cet article. Il comprend une spécification fonctionnelle couvrant l'ensemble du cycle d'une FOAD et une décomposition en composants implantant les fonctionnalités retenues. Pour assurer l'interopérabilité au niveau des données, un modèle permettant d'organiser et de hiérarchiser les données échangées est proposé, pour décrire les ressources un premier ensemble de métadonnées a été mis en évidence

Merging semantic and participative approaches for organising teachers' documents

International audienceCommunities of teachers need tools to gather and organise educational resources scattered over the Web. As current generic search engines are insufficient to deal with contexts, these tools must rely on human annotations. First, we compare the Semantic Web and the Participative Web (2.0) approaches to annotate resources and we argue for the need to merge them. Secondly, we propose a social bookmarking tool merging the flexibility of tags with basic inference processes attached to ontologies. Thus we define the concept of structurable tags which are tags that can be linked through relations while keeping their spontaneous, on-the-fly and aggregative properties

Prevalence of questioning regarding life-sustaining treatment and time utilisation by forgoing treatment in Francophone PICUs

International audiencePURPOSE:Our goal is to assess the prevalence of questioning about the appropriateness of initiating or maintaining life-sustaining treatments (LST) in French-speaking paediatric intensive care units (PICUs) and to evaluate time utilisation related to decision-making processes (DMP).METHODS:18-month, multicentre, prospective, descriptive, observational study in 15 French-speaking PICUs.RESULTS:Among the 5,602 children admitted, 410 died (7.3%), including 175 after forgoing LST (42.7% of deaths). LST was questioned in 308 children (5.5%) with a prevalence of 13.3 per 100 patient-days. More than 30% of children survived despite the appropriateness of LST being questioned (23% despite a decision to forgo treatment). Median caregiver time spent on making and presenting the decisions was 11 h per child.CONCLUSIONS:In this study, on any given day in each 10-bed PICU, there was more than one child for whom a DMP was underway. Of children, 23% survived despite a decision to forgo LST being made, which underlines the need to elaborate a care plan for these children. Also, DMP represented a large amount of staff time that is undervalued but necessary to ensure optimal palliative practice in PICU

A comparative study of Tam3 and Ac transposition in transgenic tobacco and petunia plants

Transposition of the Anthirrinum majus Tam3 element and the Zea mays Ac element has been monitored in petunia and tobacco plants. Plant vectors were constructed with the transposable elements cloned into the leader sequence of a marker gene. Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated leaf disc transformation was used to introduce the transposable element constructs into plant cells. In transgenic plants, excision of the transposable element restores gene expression and results in a clearly distinguishable phenotype. Based on restored expression of the hygromycin phosphotransferase II (HPTII) gene, we established that Tam3 excises in 30% of the transformed petunia plants and in 60% of the transformed tobacco plants. Ac excises from the HPTII gene with comparable frequencies (30%) in both plant species. When the β-glucuronidase (GUS) gene was used to detect transposition of Tam3, a significantly lower excision frequency (13%) was found in both plant species. It could be shown that deletion of parts of the transposable elements Tam3 and Ac, removing either one of the terminal inverted repeats (TIR) or part of the presumptive transposase coding region, abolished the excision from the marker genes. This demonstrates that excision of the transposable element Tam3 in heterologous plant species, as documented for the autonomous element Ac, also depends on both properties. Southern blot hybridization shows the expected excision pattern and the reintegration of Tam3 and Ac elements into the genome of tobacco plants.

Differential Dynamics of Transposable Elements during Long-Term Diploidization of Nicotiana Section Repandae (Solanaceae) Allopolyploid Genomes

PubMed ID: 23185607This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

The CACTA transposon Bot1 played a major role in Brassica genome divergence and gene proliferation

We isolated and characterized a Brassica C genome-specific CACTA element, which was designated Bot1 (Brassica oleracea transposon 1). After analysing phylogenetic relationships, copy numbers and sequence similarity of Bot1 and Bot1 analogues in B. oleracea (C genome) versus Brassica rapa (A genome), we concluded that Bot1 has encountered several rounds of amplification in the oleracea genome only, and has played a major role in the recent rapa and oleracea genome divergence. We performed in silico analyses of the genomic organization and internal structure of Bot1, and established which segment of Bot1 is C-genome specific. Our work reports a fully characterized Brassica repetitive sequence that can distinguish the Brassica A and C chromosomes in the allotetraploid Brassica napus, by fluorescent in situ hybridization. We demonstrated that Bot1 carries a host S locus-associated SLL3 gene copy. We speculate that Bot1 was involved in the proliferation of SLL3 around the Brassica genome. The present study reinforces the assumption that transposons are a major driver of genome and gene evolution in higher plants