iPads for STEM Teachers: A Case Study on Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Proficiency, Intention to Adopt,and Integration in K-12 Instruction

With the rapidly growing popularity of mobile learning and the trend for Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) in the United States, there is an emergent need for up-to-date training on the use of mobile technologies for K-12 STEM teachers. This article will discuss the implementation of and results from an exploratory case study conducted within a summer professional development focused on cultivating teacher readiness for mobile learning on iPads in the STEM fields

Innovative Web 2.0 Technologies to Support Struggling Readers

Most Web 2.0 technologies are either free or inexpensive, making them accessible for teachers to use for instructional purposes, especially to assist diverse students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. This article discusses the qualitative findings of a mixed-methods study that investigated how a group of candidates in a reading licensure graduate program responded to Web 2.0 technology integration when working with struggling readers, including their perceptual reaction and their implemented practice. The results from the study may help K-12 classroom teachers and teacher educators better understand how to include technologies in working with teacher candidates and assist them in designing instructional practices to support all learners

Optimal Vaccine Distribution Strategy for Different Age Groups of Population: A Differential Evolution Algorithm Approach

Vaccination is one of the effective ways for protecting susceptible individuals from infectious diseases. Different age groups of population have different vulnerability to the disease and different contact frequencies. In order to achieve the maximum effects, the distribution of vaccine doses to the groups of individuals needs to be optimized. In this paper, a differential evolution (DE) algorithm is proposed to address the problem. The performance of the proposed algorithm has been tested by a classical infectious disease transmission model and a series of simulations have been made. The results show that the proposed algorithm can always obtain the best vaccine distribution strategy which can minimize the number of infectious individuals during the epidemic outbreak. Furthermore, the effects of vaccination on different days and the vaccine coverage percentages have also been discussed

Design of overvoltage suppression filter based on high-frequency modeling of cable in SiC based motor drive

SiC-based motor drives have the advantages of achieving higher efficiency and higher power density than traditional Si-based motor drives, and are gradually being widely used in electric power transmission. Due to different application situations such as oil field and airplane, a long cable is applied between the motor drive and three-phase motor and the distance may exceed hundreds of meters, which will cause serious voltage reflection problem, damaging working life of the motor. Meanwhile, the high slew rate of output voltage created by SiC-based motor drive deteriorates this phenomenon. In order to solve this problem, we first analyze the principle and influencing factors of voltage reflection, and establish the equivalent circuit model of the long cable. Then we put forward design method of LRC passive filter to suppress voltage reflection, and give simulation analysis. At last we built an experimental platform to verify the effectiveness of the LRC passive filter in SiC-based motor drive, and the experimental results show that the LRC passive filter with optimized parameters has good suppression effect of voltage reflection

Macropinocytosis in Gracilariopsis lemaneiformis (Rhodophyta)

Macropinocytosis is an endocytic process that plays an important role in animal development and disease occurrence but until now has been rarely reported in organisms with cell walls. We investigated the properties of endocytosis in a red alga, Gracilariopsis lemaneiformis. The cells non-selectively internalized extracellular fluid into large-scale endocytic vesicles (1.94 ± 0.51 μm), and this process could be inhibited by 5-(N-ethyl-N-isopropyl) amiloride, an macropinocytosis inhibitor. Moreover, endocytosis was driven by F-actin, which promotes formation of ruffles and cups from the cell surface and facilitates formation of endocytotic vesicles. After vesicle formation, endocytic vesicles could be acidified and acquire digestive function. These results indicated macropinocytosis in G. lemaneiformis. Abundant phosphatidylinositol kinase and small GTPase encoding genes were found in the genome of this alga, while PI3K, Ras, and Rab5, the important participators of traditional macropinocytosis, seem to be lacked. Such findings provide a new insight into endocytosis in organisms with cell walls and facilitate further research into the core regulatory mechanisms and evolution of macropinocytosis

LLM-Mini-CEX: Automatic Evaluation of Large Language Model for Diagnostic Conversation

There is an increasing interest in developing LLMs for medical diagnosis to improve diagnosis efficiency. Despite their alluring technological potential, there is no unified and comprehensive evaluation criterion, leading to the inability to evaluate the quality and potential risks of medical LLMs, further hindering the application of LLMs in medical treatment scenarios. Besides, current evaluations heavily rely on labor-intensive interactions with LLMs to obtain diagnostic dialogues and human evaluation on the quality of diagnosis dialogue. To tackle the lack of unified and comprehensive evaluation criterion, we first initially establish an evaluation criterion, termed LLM-specific Mini-CEX to assess the diagnostic capabilities of LLMs effectively, based on original Mini-CEX. To address the labor-intensive interaction problem, we develop a patient simulator to engage in automatic conversations with LLMs, and utilize ChatGPT for evaluating diagnosis dialogues automatically. Experimental results show that the LLM-specific Mini-CEX is adequate and necessary to evaluate medical diagnosis dialogue. Besides, ChatGPT can replace manual evaluation on the metrics of humanistic qualities and provides reproducible and automated comparisons between different LLMs

Special Patterns of Dynamic Brain Networks Discriminate Between Face and Non-face Processing: A Single-Trial EEG Study

Face processing is a spatiotemporal dynamic process involving widely distributed and closely connected brain regions. Although previous studies have examined the topological differences in brain networks between face and non-face processing, the time-varying patterns at different processing stages have not been fully characterized. In this study, dynamic brain networks were used to explore the mechanism of face processing in human brain. We constructed a set of brain networks based on consecutive short EEG segments recorded during face and non-face (ketch) processing respectively, and analyzed the topological characteristic of these brain networks by graph theory. We found that the topological differences of the backbone of original brain networks (the minimum spanning tree, MST) between face and ketch processing changed dynamically. Specifically, during face processing, the MST was more line-like over alpha band in 0–100 ms time window after stimuli onset, and more star-like over theta and alpha bands in 100–200 and 200–300 ms time windows. The results indicated that the brain network was more efficient for information transfer and exchange during face processing compared with non-face processing. In the MST, the nodes with significant differences of betweenness centrality and degree were mainly located in the left frontal area and ventral visual pathway, which were involved in the face-related regions. In addition, the special MST patterns can discriminate between face and ketch processing by an accuracy of 93.39%. Our results suggested that special MST structures of dynamic brain networks reflected the potential mechanism of face processing in human brain

An Extensive Replication Study on Three New Susceptibility Loci of Primary Angle Closure Glaucoma in Han Chinese: Jiangsu Eye Study

Genome-wide association study (GWAS) analysis identified three new susceptibility loci for PACG. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether these three loci in PLEKHA7, COL11A1, and PCMTD1-ST18 are associated with PAC and ocular biometric characteristics, such as axial length (AL), anterior chamber depth (ACD), and diopter of spherical power (DS). The study was a part of the Jiangsu Eye Study. The samples were collected from 232 PAC subjects and 306 controls from a population-based prevalence survey conducted in Funing County of Jiangsu, China. The single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of rs11024102 in PLEKHA7, rs3753841 in COL11A1, and rs1015213 in PCMTD1-ST18 were genotyped by TaqMan-MGB probe using the RT-PCR system. None of the three polymorphisms showed differences in the distribution of genotypes and allele frequencies between the PAC group and the control group. No significant association was determined between the 3 SNPs and AL, ACD, or DS of PAC subjects. We concluded that even though PLEKHA7 rs11024102, COL11A1 rs3753841, and PCMTD1-ST18 rs1015213 are associated with PACG, those sequence variations are not associated with PAC in a Han Chinese population. Our results also did not support a significant role for these three SNPs in ocular biometry such as AL, ACD, and DS

Association of eNOS Polymorphisms with Anterior Chamber Depth in Han Chinese: Jiangsu Eye Study

Recently, a study reported that single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) were associated with primary angle closure glaucoma (PACG) in Australian cohort. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether those eNOS SNPs are associated with primary angle closure (PAC) or ocular biometric characteristics such as axial length (AL), anterior chamber depth (ACD), and diopter of spherical power (DS) in Han Chinese. The samples consisted of 232 PAC subjects and 306 controls collected from a population-based prevalence survey conducted in Funing County of Jiangsu, China. The rs3793342 and rs11771443 in eNOS were genotyped by TaqMan-MGB probe using the RT-PCR system. Our data did not identify any association of the eNOS SNPs with PAC. However, the analysis on the quantitative traits of ocular biometrics showed that the ACD of rs11771443 AA and GA carriers is significantly deeper than that of rs11771443 GG carriers (P = 0.0025), even though the AL and DS are not associated with rs11771443 genotypes. Rs3793342 was not associated with any biometric parameters including ACD, AL and DS. In summary, our data indicates that eNOS rs11771443 is associated with ACD and its role in the pathogenesis of PACG warranted further study