Becoming a Reflective In-service Teacher: Role of Research Attitude

In this article we consider the importance of the role of reflective practice and research attitude for the professional development of in-service teachers. Nine teachers engaged in an international master course (in a Belgium and French university) are interviewed to obtain self-narratives. The two years full-time master was aimed to acquire skills of science educational research. The interview was conducted at the end of the master to explore their reflective practices and to evaluate the impact of the research attitude developed during the master on their reflective practices. From the results we can consider how the reflection practice is differently by the teachers interviewed especially in relation to seniority in the teaching. The research activities learned in the master course has enabled the teachers to develop and expand they reflective practice on the analysis of their experience. In the same time emerges the need of a regular and more guided support to improve the reflective practice, especially for junior teachers

Aspect Βased Classification Model for Social Reviews

Aspect based opinion mining investigates deeply, the emotions related to one’s aspects. Aspects and opinion word identification is the core task of aspect based opinion mining. In previous studies aspect based opinion mining have been applied on service or product domain. Moreover, product reviews are short and simple whereas, social reviews are long and complex. However, this study introduces an efficient model for social reviews which classifies aspects and opinion words related to social domain. The main contributions of this paper are auto tagging and data training phase, feature set definition and dictionary usage. Proposed model results are compared with CR model and Naïve Bayes classifier on same dataset having accuracy 98.17% and precision 96.01%, while recall and F1 are 96.00% and 96.01% respectively. The experimental results show that the proposed model performs better than the CR model and Naïve Bayes classifier

COVID 19 and its Impact on the Mental Health of Women Professionals – An Empirical Study in Jeddah Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

This research study is aimed to investigate the impact of COVID 19 on the mental health of working women professionals in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The study adopted a quantitative descriptive analysis research design that was applied on a sample of 322 respondents who were selected using simple random sampling. The study utilized a three- domain questionnaire and 37 items to collect data. The three domains were: “Emotional and Health Domain, “Functional and Thinking Activity Domain” and “Social Domain”. Findings revealed that the COVID 19 had moderately impacted the mental health of the Women professionals in all three Domains. The Study recommended taking certain measures to enhance people’s mental health, such as staying engaged in activities that alleviate the individual’s mental stress. Recommendations include avoiding exposure to media, staying in touch with family and friends, getting enough sleep, ensuring physical fitness

Comparative evaluation of slide agglutination and Widal tube agglutination test in detecting enteric fever among patients attending a tertiary care hospital in North India

Background: Enteric fever is a major public health problem with significant morbidity and mortality in developing countries. Although, isolation of causative organism from blood is the standard laboratory method, but due to frequent use of self-medication by patients, and its long turnaround time, it is seldom used, and enteric fever is usually diagnosed by using serological methods. Widal tube agglutination test is the standard serological test used, which is now a days replaced by slide agglutination test due to its convenience and rapidity. The present study was done to comparatively evaluate the slide agglutination and Widal tube agglutination test in detecting enteric fever.Methods: A hospital based cross-sectional study was done from January to June 2016. A total of 117 patients with clinical presentation suggestive of enteric fever were included in the study whose venous blood was collected and serum was tested by both slide agglutination and Widal tube agglutination test.Results: Out of 117 patients, slide agglutination test showed positive results in 39 (33.3%) samples, whereas, Widal tube agglutination test showed positive results in 23 (19.7%) samples only. The slide test had a sensitivity of 91.3%, specificity of 80.9%, positive predictive value of 53.8% and negative predictive value of 97.4% as compared to Widal tube agglutination test.Conclusions: Due to high false positivity shown by slide test, it is suggested that serological diagnosis should not be made solely on the basis of slide test rather its results should be confirmed by using Widal tube agglutination test

Technological Developments and the Role of L2 Motivation in University English Language Teaching Education

The 21st century is the era of technology and digitalization in teaching and learning dynamics., The present study explores the function of L2 motivation in university-based English language teaching (ELT) education. It also seeks to comprehend how technological developments are changing L2 motivation and examines teachers coping mechanisms in this changing educational environment. This study employs a qualitative research approach to explore the university teachers choices of technology instruments and pedagogical choices for enhancing students’ L2 motivation. Thus, the study uses semi-structured interviews to collect data from the 15 university teachers, (8 from Pakistan and 7 from Russia). Moreover, the secondary aim of the study is to comprehend the variables influencing L2 teacher motivation, and pedagogical approaches. This study adds to the body of information on language teaching by emphasizing the necessity for university teachers to adapt to changes in L2 motivation by utilizing technology, developing cutting-edge resources, and creating motivating learning settings

Sequence analysis of genes associated with resistance to chloroquine and sulphadoxine pyrimethamine in P. falciparum and P. vivax isolates from the Bannu district of Pakistan

AbstractPlasmodium vivax and Plasmodium falciparum are becoming resistant to drugs including antifolates, sulphonamides and chloroquine. This study was focused at sequence analysis of resistant genes of these parasites against sulphadoxine–pyrimethamine and chloroquine, from Bannu, Pakistan. Known mutations were detected at codons 57, 58 and 117 of pvdhfr gene of P. vivax, while none of the isolates had any pvdhps mutation. Similarly P. falciparum isolates exhibited double 59R+108N mutations in pfdhfr, and single 437G in pfdhps thus demonstrating the existance of triple mutant 59R+108N+437G haplotype in this region. The key chloroquine resistance mutation, 76T in pfcrt was observed in 100% of the P. falciparum isolates, with haplotype SVMNT which is also associated with resistance to amodiaquine. Some novel mutations were also observed in pvdhfr and pfdhfr genes

On the character degree graph of solvable groups

Let G be a finite solvable group, and let 06(G) denote the prime graph built on the set of degrees of the irreducible complex characters of G. A fundamental result by P. P. P\ue1lfy asserts that the complement 06(G) of the graph 06(G) does not contain any cycle of length 3. In this paper we generalize P\ue1lfy\u2019s result, showing that 06(G) does not contain any cycle of odd length, whence it is a bipartite graph. As an immediate consequence, the set of vertices of 06(G) can be covered by two subsets, each inducing a complete subgraph. The latter property yields in turn that if n is the clique number of 06(G), then 06(G) has at most 2n vertices. This confirms a conjecture by Z. Akhlaghi and H. P. Tong-Viet, and provides some evidence for the famous \u3c1-\u3c3 conjecture by B. Huppert

Enhanced Arabic disaster data classification using domain adaptation

Natural disasters, like pandemics and earthquakes, are some of the main causes of distress and casualties. Governmental crisis management processes are crucial when dealing with these types of problems. Social media platforms are among the main sources of information regarding current events and public opinion. So, they have been used extensively to aid disaster detection and prevention efforts. Therefore, there is always a need for better automatic systems that can detect and classify disaster data of social media. In this work, we propose enhanced Arabic disaster data classification models. The suggested models utilize domain adaptation to provide state-of-the-art accuracy. We used a standard dataset of Arabic disaster data collected from Twitter for testing the proposed models. Experimental results show that the provided models significantly outperform the previous state-of-the-art results

Genetic structure of Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium falciparum in the Bannu district of Pakistan

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Plasmodium vivax </it>and <it>Plasmodium falciparum </it>are the major causative agents of malaria. While knowledge of the genetic structure of malaria parasites is useful for understanding the evolution of parasite virulence, designing anti-malarial vaccines and assessing the impact of malaria control measures, there is a paucity of information on genetic diversity of these two malaria parasites in Pakistan. This study sought to shed some light on the genetic structure of <it>P. vivax </it>and <it>P. falciparum </it>in this understudied region.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The genetic diversities of <it>P. vivax </it>and <it>P. falciparum </it>populations from the densely populated, malaria-endemic Bannu district of Pakistan were evaluated by analysis of their merozoite surface protein (<it>msp</it>) genes by PCR-RFLP. Specifically, the <it>Pvmsp-3α </it>and <it>Pvmsp-3β </it>genes of <it>P. vivax </it>and the <it>Pfmsp-1 </it>and <it>Pfmsp-2 </it>genes of <it>P. falciparum </it>were analysed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In <it>P. vivax</it>, genotyping of <it>Pvmsp-3α </it>and <it>Pvmsp-3β </it>genes showed a high level of diversity at these loci. Four distinct allele groups: A (1.9 kb), B (1.5 kb), C (1.2 kb), and D (0.3 kb) were detected for <it>Pvmsp</it>-<it>3α</it>, type A being the most prevalent (82%). Conversely, amplification of the <it>P. vivax msp</it>-<it>3β </it>locus produced two allele groups: A (1.7-2.2 kb, 62%) and B (1.4-1.5 kb, 33%), with 5% mixed-strain infections. Restriction analysis of <it>Pvmsp-3α </it>and <it>Pvmsp-3β </it>yielded 12 and 8 distinct alleles, respectively, with a combined mixed genotype prevalence of 20%. In <it>P. falciparum</it>, all three known genotypes of <it>Pfmsp-1 </it>and two of <it>Pfmsp-2 </it>were observed, with MAD20 occurring in 67% and 3D7/IC in 65% of the isolates, respectively. Overall, 24% <it>P. falciparum </it>samples exhibited mixed-strain infections.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These results indicate that both <it>P. vivax </it>and <it>P. falciparum </it>populations in Pakistan are highly diverse.</p

How can health promotion interventions be adapted for minority ethnic communities? Five principles for guiding the development of behavioural interventions.

The term ‘culturally sensitive’ is often used to describe interventions adapted for minority ethnic communities. However, understanding of strategies for adapting behavioural interventions for such communities is limited. The questions addressed in this paper are: What are the main strategies for adapting interventions to reduce coronary heart disease (CHD) for minority ethnic communities? Why have interventions been adapted in these ways? A systematic review was carried out to investigate interventions for preventing CHD, including promoting physical activity, smoking cessation and healthier diets in Pakistani, Chinese and Indian communities in countries where these groups are minorities. International databases and key websites were searched, and 23 477 titles and abstracts were initially identified. Seventeen papers met inclusion and quality criteria. A ‘meta-ethnographic’ approach to data synthesis was employed to identify underlying principles for adapting interventions. The rationale underpinning adaptations is not made explicit in individual studies, limiting generalizability. Five principles for adapting behavioural interventions for minority ethnic communities were identified: (i) use community resources to publicize the intervention and increase accessibility; (ii) identify and address barriers to access and participation; (iii) develop communication strategies which are sensitive to language use and information requirements; (iv) work with cultural or religious values that either promote or hinder behavioural change; and (v) accommodate varying degrees of cultural identification. While the principles require further testing and verification, they have been generated through a systematic approach to study identification, quality appraisal and data synthesis. This represents significant progress in advancing understanding of adapted behavioural interventions for minority ethnic communities