Switching middle school teachers onto STEM using a pedagogical framework for technology integration: The case for High Possibility Classrooms in Australia

Education in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) is a significant issue for governments and organizations across the world as concerns are expressed about students’ lack of progress in these areas. In Australia, middle school teachers’ capacity and confidence in teaching the STEM disciplines has been identified as wanting. The paper draws on findings from a study that used a pedagogical framework for technology enhanced learning to develop integrated STEM units of work. Analysis of the findings illustrates that the High Possibility Classrooms framework builds teacher agency in STEM and that being involved in professional development conducted, as a research experience is beneficial. The paper argues for greater teacher professional development resourcing in schools to make STEM an education priority, and it concludes by recommending that more middle school teachers consider pedagogical scaffolds to integrate curriculum and enhance their professional knowledge in STEM

Case study: Technology-enhanced learning in High Possibility Classrooms in Australian schools

Research conducted in the classrooms of exemplary teachers in Australian schools is published as a collection of case studies in a new book on technology-enhanced learning. Understanding what makes an effective case study for practitioners to reflect upon to change classroom teaching is important. In doctoral research that inspired the assemblage of case studies in the book, an additional process of cross-case analysis was used to bring participants together for deeper understanding of the study phenomena. An all-day workshop held at the conclusion of the data-gathering period allowed participants to not only meet each other for the first time, they also had opportunities to discuss, interpret, and analyze case summaries prepared by the researcher prior to writing the final case narratives. Carefully prepared case summaries add another layer of understanding to research findings, and it is necessary in organizing published exemplar case studies of teachers' pedagogical practices in schools. In this moment, participants in a study who often worked in isolation within their own contexts, reflected and drew comfort from understanding how other “tech-savvy teachers” worked in both similar and different ways when they finally came together in the workshop. This case study pays attention to the usual processes in case study methods but also demonstrates how validity and reliability in analysis using member-checks, software for staged coding, and a “collective member check” in the format of a day-long workshop supports building a rich picture of the phenomenon studied

Salt enhanced solvent relaxation and particle surface area determination via rapid spin-lattice NMR

This paper demonstrates the influence of surface charge chemistry on the application of nuclear magnetic relaxation measurements (NMR relaxometry) for the in situ determination of particle surface area, in the presence of high electrolyte concentration. Specifically, dispersions of titania, calcite and silica with and without 1 M KCl were investigated. The addition of salt, showed no significant change to relaxation measurements for titanium dioxide; however, a significant rate enhancement was observed for both calcite and silica systems. These differences were attributed to counterion layers forming as a result of the particles surface charge, leading to an increase in the relaxation rate of bound surface layer water. Further, changes appeared to be more pronounced in the silica systems, due to their larger charge. No enhancement was observed for titania, which was assumed to be due to the particles being at their isoelectric point, with no resulting counterion layer formation. Solvent relaxation was further used to successfully determine the surface area of particles in a dispersion using a silica standard reference material, with results compared to Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) and spherical equivalent estimations. Two different dispersions of titanium dioxide, of different crystal phases, were shown to have NMR surface area measurements in good agreement with BET. Thus showing the technique was able to measure changes in surface charge when surface chemistry remained relatively similar, due to the reference silica material also being an oxide. In contrast, the NMR technique appeared to overestimate the calcite surface areas in reference to BET, which was assumed to occur due to both better dispersion in the liquid state of nanocrystallites and potential ion enhancement from the solubility of the calcite. These results highlight the potential of this technique as a fast, non-destructive and non-invasive method for dispersion analysis, but also show the competition between surface area and surface chemistry interactions on measured relaxation rates

Wide variation in susceptibility of transmitted/founder HIV-1 subtype C Isolates to protease inhibitors and association with in vitro replication efficiency

© 2016 The Author(s).The gag gene is highly polymorphic across HIV-1 subtypes and contributes to susceptibility to protease inhibitors (PI), a critical class of antiretrovirals that will be used in up to 2 million individuals as second-line therapy in sub Saharan Africa by 2020. Given subtype C represents around half of all HIV-1 infections globally, we examined PI susceptibility in subtype C viruses from treatment-naïve individuals. PI susceptibility was measured in a single round infection assay of full-length, replication competent MJ4/gag chimeric viruses, encoding the gag gene and 142 nucleotides of pro derived from viruses in 20 patients in the Zambia-Emory HIV Research Project acute infection cohort. Ten-fold variation in susceptibility to PIs atazanavir and lopinavir was observed across 20 viruses, with EC50 s ranging 0.71-6.95 nM for atazanvir and 0.64-8.54 nM for lopinavir. Ten amino acid residues in Gag correlated with lopinavir EC50 (p < 0.01), of which 380 K and 389I showed modest impacts on in vitro drug susceptibility. Finally a significant relationship between drug susceptibility and replication capacity was observed for atazanavir and lopinavir but not darunavir. Our findings demonstrate large variation in susceptibility of PI-naïve subtype C viruses that appears to correlate with replication efficiency and could impact clinical outcomes

Barriers to correct child restraint use: A qualitative study of child restraint users and their needs

© 2018 Motor vehicle crashes are a major cause of death and injury to children worldwide. Although risk of injury to child passengers can be reduced by using a child restraint, most restraints are incorrectly used. This greatly reduces the restraints’ protective potential; however there is limited research on drivers of correct child restraint use. The aim of this study was to explore perceived barriers and motivators of correct child restraint use in experienced child restraint users, to inform interventions to promote correct use. Motivations and risk perceptions concerning incorrect child restraint use among high and low socioeconomic populations and culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) child restraint users in Sydney, Australia were qualitatively examined. Six focus groups (N = 44 participants) were facilitated using a semi-structured discussion guide. Transcriptions were deductively analysed using QSR NVivo11 software and the COM-B model of behaviour. Common perceived barriers to correct restraint use were: (a) difficulty interpreting instructions and labels, particularly among CALD participants; (b) remembering and attending to correct use information; (c) lack of information and behavioural feedback on how to correctly install and use a child restraint; and (d) low confidence in ability to install and use a child restraint correctly. The results indicate current child restraint product information is poorly understood, particularly among those whose first language is not English. Interventions to increase correct child restraint use should address access to correct use information, capability to understand and use these, and the influence of motivation, memory and attention in the process

Infrared composition of the Large Magellanic Cloud

The evolution of galaxies and the history of star formation in the Universe are among the most important topics in today's astrophysics. Especially, the role of small, irregular galaxies in the star-formation history of the Universe is not yet clear. Using the data from the AKARI IRC survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud at 3.2, 7, 11, 15, and 24 {\mu}m wavelengths, i.e., at the mid- and near-infrared, we have constructed a multiwavelength catalog containing data from a cross-correlation with a number of other databases at different wavelengths. We present the separation of different classes of stars in the LMC in color-color, and color-magnitude, diagrams, and analyze their contribution to the total LMC flux, related to point sources at different infrared wavelengths

An experimental model to measure the ability of headphones with active noise control to reduce patient's exposure to noise in an intensive care unit.

BACKGROUND: Defining the association between excessive noise in intensive care units, sleep disturbance and morbidity, including delirium, is confounded by the difficulty of implementing successful strategies to reduce patient's exposure to noise. Active noise control devices may prove to be useful adjuncts but there is currently little to quantify their ability to reduce noise in this complex environment. METHODS: Sound meters were embedded in the auditory meatus of three polystyrene model heads with no headphones (control), with headphones alone and with headphones using active noise control and placed in patient bays in a cardiac ICU. Ten days of recording sound levels at a frequency of 1 Hz were performed, and the noise levels in each group were compared using repeated measures MANOVA and subsequent pairwise testing. RESULTS: Multivariate testing demonstrated that there is a significant difference in the mean noise exposure levels between the three groups (p < 0.001). Subsequent pairwise testing between the three groups shows that the reduction in noise is greatest with headphones and active noise control. The mean reduction in noise exposure between the control and this group over 24 h is 6.8 (0.66) dB. The use of active noise control was also associated with a reduction in the exposure to high-intensity sound events over the course of the day. CONCLUSIONS: The use of active noise cancellation, as delivered by noise-cancelling headphones, is associated with a significant reduction in noise exposure in our model of noise exposure in a cardiac ICU. This is the first study to look at the potential effectiveness of active noise control in adult patients in an intensive care environment and shows that active noise control is a candidate technology to reduce noise exposure levels the patients experience during stays on intensive care

Impact on diarrhoeal illness of a community educational intervention to improve drinking water quality in rural communities in Puerto Rico

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Waterborne disease is a major risk for small water supplies in rural settings. This study was done to assess the impact of an educational intervention designed to improve water quality and estimate the contribution of water to the incidence of diarrhoeal disease in poor rural communities in Puerto Rico a two-part study was undertaken.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>An educational intervention was delivered to communities relying on community water supplies. This intervention consisted of student operators and administrators supervising and assisting community members who voluntarily "operate" these systems. These voluntary operators had no previous training and were principally concerned with seeing that some water was delivered. The quality of that water was not something they either understood or addressed. The impact of this intervention was measured through water sampling for standard bacteriological indicators and a frank pathogen. In addition, face-to-face epidemiological studies designed to determine the base-line occurrence of diarrhoeal disease in the communities were conducted. Some 15 months after the intervention a further epidemiological study was conducted in both the intervention communities and in control communities that had not received any intervention.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Diarrhoeal illness rates over a four week period prior to the intervention were 3.5%. <it>Salmonella </it>was isolated from all of 5 distributed samples prior to intervention and from only 2 of 12 samples after the intervention. In the 15 months follow-up study, illness rates were lower in the intervention compared to control communities (2.5% <it>vs </it>3.6%%) (RR = 0.70, 95%CI 0.43, 1.15), though this was not statistically significant. However, in the final Poisson regression model living in an intervention system (RR = 0.318; 95%CI 0.137 - 0.739) and owning a dog (RR = 0.597, 95%CI 0.145 - 0.962) was negatively associated with illness. Whilst size of system (RR = 1.006, 95%CI 1.001 - 1.010) and reporting problems with sewage system (RR = 2.973, 95%CI 1.539 - 5.744) were positively associated with illness.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Educational interventions directed both at identified individuals and the community in general in small communities with poor water quality is a way of giving communities the skills and knowledge to manage their own drinking water quality. This may also have important and sustainable health benefits, though further research preferably using a randomised control trial design is needed.</p