VIEWS OF ELEMENTARY EDUCATION STUDENTS AT TERTIARY LEVEL ABOUT THE METHODS AND TECHNIQUES USED IN ATATÜRK’S PRINCIPLES AND REVOLUTION COURSE

This study examines elementary education department students’ view about the methods and techniques generally preferred by their instructors in teaching The History of Atatürk’s Principles and Revolution I and II courses. For the purpose of the study, the questionnaire (r=.90), investigating the methodological and technical skills of instructors, developed by Çelikkaya and Kuş (2009) has been administered to 1st (n=105) and 4th (n=123) year elementary education students in the faculty of education at a public university. Descriptive statistics has been used to analyze the data about the views of the elementary education students who participated in the study about The History of Atatürk’s Principles and Revolution I and II courses in terms of use of methods and techniques used by the instructors.  Relying on the findings obtained at the end of the study, the participants reported generally negative views about their instructors’ methods and techniques in The History of Atatürk’s Principles and Revolution course, however, they draw attention to the points such as use of technological aids, students’ presentations, feedback, opportunity projects, opportunity for students asking and answering questions both by the instructor and their peers, forming group works, and letting discussions in the classroom about the topics under discussions.

VARIOUS APPROACHES TO E-LEARNING CONTINUE TO EVOLVE

E-learning has made its entrance into educational institutions. Compared to traditional learning methods, e-learning has the benefit of enabling educational institutions to attract more students. E-learning not only opens up for an increased enrollment, it also gives students who would otherwise not be able to take the education to now get the possibility to do so. This paper introduces Axel Honneth’s theory on the need for recognition as a framework to understand the role and function of interaction in relation to e-learning. The paper argues that an increased focus on the dialectic relationship between recognition and learning will enable an optimization of the learning conditions and the interactive affordances targeting students under e-learning programs. The paper concludes that the engagement and motivation to learn are not only influenced by but depending on recognition.E-learning has made its entrance into educational institutions. Compared to traditional learning methods, e-learning has the benefit of enabling educational institutions to attract more students. E-learning not only opens up for an increased enrollment, it also gives students who would otherwise not be able to take the education to now get the possibility to do so. This paper introduces Axel Honneth’s theory on the need for recognition as a framework to understand the role and function of interaction in relation to e-learning. The paper argues that an increased focus on the dialectic relationship between recognition and learning will enable an optimization of the learning conditions and the interactive affordances targeting students under e-learning programs. The paper concludes that the engagement and motivation to learn are not only influenced by but depending on recognition

Social Constructivism: Does it Succeed in Reconciling Individual Cognition with Social Teaching and Learning Practices in Mathematics?

This article examines the literature associated with social constructivism. It discusses whether social constructivism succeeds in reconciling individual cognition with social teaching and learning practices. After reviewing the meaning of individual cognition and social constructivism, two views –Piaget and Vygotsky’s- accounting for learning from social constructivist perspectives including the differences and similarities between them are argued. This paper also reviews some research that is conducted from a social constructivist perspective. Keywords: mathematics education, social constructivism, teaching and learning, educational psychology

Comparative analysis of plant immune receptor architectures uncovers host proteins likely targeted by pathogens.

BACKGROUND: Plants deploy immune receptors to detect pathogen-derived molecules and initiate defense responses. Intracellular plant immune receptors called nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) proteins contain a central nucleotide-binding (NB) domain followed by a series of leucine-rich repeats (LRRs), and are key initiators of plant defense responses. However, recent studies demonstrated that NLRs with non-canonical domain architectures play an important role in plant immunity. These composite immune receptors are thought to arise from fusions between NLRs and additional domains that serve as "baits" for the pathogen-derived effector proteins, thus enabling pathogen recognition. Several names have been proposed to describe these proteins, including "integrated decoys" and "integrated sensors". We adopt and argue for "integrated domains" or NLR-IDs, which describes the product of the fusion without assigning a universal mode of action. RESULTS: We have scanned available plant genome sequences for the full spectrum of NLR-IDs to evaluate the diversity of integrations of potential sensor/decoy domains across flowering plants, including 19 crop species. We manually curated wheat and brassicas and experimentally validated a subset of NLR-IDs in wild and cultivated wheat varieties. We have examined NLR fusions that occur in multiple plant families and identified that some domains show re-occurring integration across lineages. Domains fused to NLRs overlap with previously identified pathogen targets confirming that they act as baits for the pathogen. While some of the integrated domains have been previously implicated in disease resistance, others provide new targets for engineering durable resistance to plant pathogens. CONCLUSIONS: We have built a robust reproducible pipeline for detecting variable domain architectures in plant immune receptors across species. We hypothesize that NLR-IDs that we revealed provide clues to the host proteins targeted by pathogens, and that this information can be deployed to discover new sources of disease resistance

Willingness to Pay for PEF-processed Orange Juice: Evidence from an Auction Experiment

This paper presents the results of experimental auctions of the orange juice processed with the pulsed electric field (PEF) technology. A series of experimental auctions are conducted to elicit consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for the PEF orange juice along with WTP for three other types of orange juice: unprocessed (fresh), thermally processed not-from-concentrate, and thermally processed from-concentrate orange juice. We adopt the second-price sealed-bid auction. With this auction method, the highest bidder claims the product at the price equal to the second highest bid. The auction results show that unprocessed "fresh" juice had the highest mean bidding price of $2.68/half gallon. The second-highest mean bidding price was for PEF juice at$2.48/half gallon; the third-highest was for not-from-concentrate juice at $1.95/half gallon; and the lowest was for concentrate juice at$1.31/half gallon. The bids were affected by product tasting. The mean bidding price for PEF juice dropped by nearly 17% after tasting.Consumer/Household Economics,

Acute Effects of Vardenafil on Pulmonary Artery Responsiveness in Pulmonary Hypertension

Phosphodiesterase type-5 (PDE-5) inhibitors are novel and important options for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Therefore, we aimed to examine effects of vardenafil, a PDE-5 inhibitor, on the pulmonary arteries isolated from rats with monocrotaline- (MCT-) induced pulmonary hypertension. MCT (60 mg/kg) or its vehicle was administered by a single intraperitoneal injection to 6-week-old male Sprague Dawley rats. Rats were sacrificed 21 days after MCT injection, and the main pulmonary arteries were isolated and then mounted in 20 mL organ baths. Concentration-response curves for vardenafil (10−10–10−5 M) were constructed in phenylephrine- (Phe-) precontracted rings. PAH caused marked rightward shift in the curves to vardenafil whereas maximal responses were not affected. Inhibition of NO synthase (L-NAME, 10−4 M) or guanylyl cyclase (ODQ, 10−5 M) caused similar attenuation in responses evoked by vardenafil. Moreover, contraction responses induced by CaCl2 (3×10−5–3×10−2 M) were significantly reduced in concentration-dependent manner by vardenafil. In conclusion, vardenafil induced pulmonary vasodilatation via inhibition of extracellular calcium entry in addition to NO-cGMP pathway activation. These results provide evidence that impaired arterial relaxation in PAH can be prevented by vardenafil. Thus, vardenafil represents a valuable therapeutic approach in PAH besides other PDE-5 inhibitors