Teachers’ and educator’s perceptions and experiences of maker education:readiness, attitudes, and challenges

Abstract. Maker education can be recognized as one of the most recent and autonomous learning strategy which helps the students to explore themselves in different ways while polishing a particular skill in their way. This study aims to identify the perceptions and experiences of teachers and educators towards the use of maker education while evaluating their technical readiness towards the use of resources, their attitude towards maker education, and lastly, explaining the challenges which teachers are facing in the current scenario regarding the maker education activities. This research study is based on Qualitative analysis, as it is going to investigate the quality of certain perspectives and particular situations while aiming for an in-depth analysis of the situation regarding maker education. The data collection tool being selected was the survey Questionnaire, which was distributed to 14 university teachers and educators while focusing on various international educational setups. The targeted audience for this research belongs to Finland, the University of Oulu, and the University of Helsinki. But the most distinguished and amazing aspect of this research was to get involved with two professors from the University of Copenhagen (Denmark), the University of Malmo (Sweden), and Omnia (Estonia). The research finding indicates that time management during activities was found to be a challenge for the educators, as teachers were mostly new to digital fabrication and they needed time to incorporate maker education activities in the educational curriculum. As far as the teacher’s interest towards the integration of maker education into pedagogical education is concerned, most of them were found in favor of aligning the maker spaces with the professional standards for teachers. Computational and digital learning is found to be an area, where some of the teachers need to learn these skills to implement digital fabrication in maker spaces. As far as the pedagogical integration of curriculum and maker activities is concerned, all the respondents were found to be very optimistic and agreed towards the successful integration, as many of them were already using this technique in their particular subject method. A positive attitude can be seen from teachers and the challenges can be resolved with a little effort from both sides either it is the management or the educators

Anatomy and Physiology of Knee Stability

Knee instability has been the focus of large number of studies over the last decade; however, a high incidence rate of injury still exists. The aim of this short report is to examine knee joint anatomy and physiology with respect to knee stability. Knee joint stability requires the integration of a complex set of anatomical structures and physiological mechanism. Compromising any of these structures leads to destabilisation and increased risk of injuries. This review highlights the structure and soft tissue of the knee that contribute to its stability and function. This introduction is part of the Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology’s Special Issue “The Knee: Structure, Function and Rehabilitation”

Randomised feasibility study of a novel experience-based internet intervention to support self-management in chronic asthma.

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Physical and Chemical Characterization of Drag Reducing Polymer Based on Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) in Human Blood Flow

A new attempt to use Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as a bio-drag reducing polymer agent for human blood flow has been studied. PVP was added at 0, 500, 750 and 1000 part per million (ppm) and mixed with human blood at room temperature for 2 minutes. Then, a cone on plate rheometer was used to investigate the effectiveness of PVP agent on blood rheological properties. The results showed significant effecting of PVP on blood fluidity characteristics, where the viscosity decreased as the PVP content increased or as a shear rate increased. For a certain shear rate, the shear stress decreased as PVP content increased. These changes will lead to increased mixing efficiency within the capillaries, increased oxygen transportation, increased tissue perfusion, modified red blood cells (RBCs) distribution, reduced pressure drop gradients, enhanced turbulent flow tendency, enhanced viscoelasticity nature of the blood and its strengthened non-Newtonian pattern. Also, the results showed that the viscosity-shear stress relationships become more linear at higher PVP concentrations. PVP addition caused no shifting in UV-absorbing positions and only moderate intensity changing. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) parameters provide other indicators about the role of PVP as a drag reduction agent for blood flow, where all of the amplitude, hybrid and special parameters decreased significantly

Some factors affecting agricultural production .and productivity in Iraq including selected climate variables and crops

In this study of factors affecting Iraqi agricultural production and productivity, it has been found essential to deal both with socioeconomic and technical factors on the one hand and environmental conditons on the other. The ultimate objective of this study is to assess the impact of selected climatic factors on the production and productivity of some principal crops. Such assessment, however, cannot be achieved in isolation from the influence of the socio-economic and technical factors. Considerable variability over time of the latter factors, caused by specific institutional changes such as the land reform of 1958, resulted in changes in agricultural conditions as a whole. Therefore, in Chapters Two to Nine are examined the national and regional conditions of Iraqi agriculture during the 1950-1975 period, i.e. planning and investment, land utilization, land tenure system and land reform, agricultural cooperatives and other organizations, new input factors including farm machinery and, finally, water resources and irrigation methods. The inescapable conclusion of this section of the study is that there were no significant medium or long-term improvement trends in the yields of principal crops despite varying but considerable additional inputs and planning attention. Moreover, the controls exerted by climate and weather appear crucial factors in both the irrigated and rainfed area. In Chapters Ten and Eleven we therefore turn to a direct examination of climatic and weather factors. In Chapters Twelve and Thirteen a study is made of the relationship between selected weather variables, i.e. rainfall, temperature and relative humidity, and wheat and barley yield. These two crops were chosen because of their importance to Iraqi agriculture as a whole, and in particular to the rainfed area of northern Iraq where environmental modifications by man are least strong. The first point appearing from this analysis shows that yields of these two crops are significantly affected by climatic and weather factors during specific periods within the growing season. The significance of statistical correlations between yields and certain critical climatic factors appear sufficiently valid for crop forecasting with a certain degree of accuracy. As a by-product of this analysis, it appears that there was a significant dislocation period following the implementation of land reform measures. In conclusion, it is clear that agricultural production and productivity must be dealt with in the context of a whole set of factors, socio-economic, technical and environmental, if significant developments in agriculture and rural welfare are to be achieved

Three Dimensional Mapping of Texture in Dental Enamel

We have used synchrotron x-ray diffraction to study the crystal orientation in human dental enamel as a function of position within intact tooth sections. Keeping tooth sections intact has allowed us to construct 2D and 3D spatial distribution maps of the magnitude and orientation of texture in dental enamel. We have found that the enamel crystallites are most highly aligned at the expected occlusal points for a maxillary first premolar, and that the texture direction varies spatially in a three dimensional curling arrangement. Our results provide a model for texture in enamel which can aid researchers in developing dental composite materials for fillings and crowns with optimal characteristics for longevity, and will guide clinicians to the best method for drilling into enamel, in order to minimize weakening of remaining tooth structure, during dental restoration procedure

Reverse Osmosis Membrane Chlorine Effects Reduction Using Kinetic Degradation Fluxion Media

Nowadays reverse osmosis is one of the most used technologies for water treatment and it is a favored method for potable water production from seawater. However, membrane fouling is a critical problem associated with reverse osmosis (RO) plants, since it has many negative impacts on RO efficiency, effectiveness and operation costs. Moreover, membrane cleaning techniques used to overcome fouling reduce the membrane life time, and sometimes it damage the membrane, also these techniques may create environmental issues related to the waste chemical disposal. In this study the effectiveness of applying Kinetic Degradation Fluxion media (KDF ) as pretreatment step for reducing fouling caused by high dosage of chlorine in RO system was investigated. Each test was carried out using two membranes, reference or control membrane in which feed solution moved directly inside without passing through the KDF media (RO-only), and pretreatment membrane with feed solution passing through KDF media (RO-KDF). The comparison between the two systems in terms of salt rejection and permeate flow indicates that KDF-media effectiveness in cl2 removal is high and it can extend the lifetime of RO membrane 3 times at least