Performing WeChat Recording Tasks in Mixed-Ability Study Abroad Content Courses

This case study explores the use of WeChat’s recording tool as a solution to the challenges of teaching mixed-ability students in content courses offered in study abroad programs. The tool successfully reduced anxiety and boredom, created opportunities for students to engage in personalized learning tasks in real time, enabled instructors to provide individualized feedback, and helped course curriculums stay on track. Data was collected from an online survey, email interview, and students’ recordings of topics and instructor’s feedback. The study determined that using WeChat’s recording function to complete linguistic tasks is a useful instructional tool for a mixed-ability classes in study abroad, despite limited technical difficulties

Long-Term Administration of Conjugated Estrogen and Bazedoxifene Decreased Murine Fecal β-Glucuronidase Activity Without Impacting Overall Microbiome Community

AbstractConjugated estrogens (CE) and Bazedoxifene (BZA) combination is used to alleviate menopause-associated symptoms in women. CE+BZA undergo first-pass-metabolism in the liver and deconjugation by gut microbiome via β-glucuronidase (GUS) enzyme inside the distal gut. To date, the impact of long-term exposure to CE+BZA on the gut microbiome or GUS activity has not been examined. Our study using an ovariectomized mouse model showed that CE+BZA administration did not affect the overall cecal or fecal microbiome community except that it decreased the abundance of Akkermansia, which was identified as a fecal biomarker correlated with weight gain. The fecal GUS activity was reduced significantly and was positively correlated with the abundance of Lactobacillaceae in the fecal microbiome. We further confirmed in Escherichia coli K12 and Lactobacillus gasseri ADH that Tamoxifen-, 4-hydroxy-Tamoxifen- and Estradiol-Glucuronides competed for GUS activity. Our study for the first time demonstrated that long-term estrogen supplementation directly modulated gut microbial GUS activity. Our findings implicate that long-term estrogen supplementation impacts composition of gut microbiota and microbial activity, which affects estrogen metabolism in the gut. Thus, it is possible to manipulate such activity to improve the efficacy and safety of long-term administered estrogens for postmenopausal women or breast cancer patients.</jats:p

Performing WeChat Recording Tasks in Mixed-Ability Study Abroad Content Courses

This case study explores the use of WeChat’s recording tool as a solution to the challenges of teaching mixed-ability students in content courses offered in study abroad programs. The tool successfully reduced anxiety and boredom, created opportunities for students to engage in personalized learning tasks in real time, enabled instructors to provide individualized feedback, and helped course curriculums stay on track. Data was collected from an online survey, email interview, and students’ recordings of topics and instructor’s feedback. The study determined that using WeChat’s recording function to complete linguistic tasks is a useful instructional tool for a mixed-ability classes in study abroad, despite limited technical difficulties

Arsenic speciation in waters draining historical alaskan mine sites

This presentation looks at arsenic speciation in waters draining historical alaskan mine site

Patient and Provider Perspectives on Symptom Monitoring During Outpatient Chemotherapy: Interview Study

BackgroundFluctuating symptoms and side effects are common during outpatient cancer treatment, and approaches to monitoring symptoms vary widely across providers, patients, and clinical settings. To design a remote symptom monitoring system that patients and providers find to be useful, it may be helpful to understand current clinical approaches to monitoring and managing chemotherapy-related symptoms among patients and providers and assess how more frequent and systematic assessment and sharing of data could improve patient and provider experiences. ObjectiveThe goals of this study were to learn about patient and provider perspectives on monitoring symptoms during chemotherapy, understand barriers and challenges to effective symptom monitoring at one institution, and explore the potential value of remote symptom monitoring between provider visits. MethodsA total of 15 patients who were currently undergoing or had recently completed chemotherapy and 7 oncology providers participated in semistructured interviews. Interviews were transcribed and coded using an iterative thematic analysis approach. The study was conducted at a National Cancer Institute–Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center. ResultsFour main themes were discussed by patients and providers: (1) asynchronous nature of current methods for tracking and managing symptoms, (2) variability in reported symptoms due to patient factors, (3) limitations of existing communication channels, and (4) potential value of real-time remote symptom monitoring during chemotherapy. Current asynchronous methods and existing communication channels resulted in a disconnect between when symptoms are most severe and when conversations about symptoms happen, a situation further complicated by memory impairments during chemotherapy. Patients and providers both highlighted improvements in patient-provider communication as a potential benefit of remote real-time symptom monitoring. Providers also emphasized the value of temporal data regarding when symptoms first emerge and how they progress over time, as well as the potential value of concurrent activity or other data about daily activities and functioning. Patients noted that symptom monitoring could result in better preparation for subsequent treatment cycles. ConclusionsBoth patients and providers highlighted significant challenges of asynchronous, patient-initiated, phone-dependent symptom monitoring and management. Oncology patients and providers reported that more routine remote monitoring of symptoms between visits could improve patient-provider communication, prepare patients for subsequent chemotherapy cycles, and facilitate provider insight and clinical decision-making with regard to symptom management

Conquering an exo-planet through the use of a virtual role playing game assisted by an emotionally intelligent pedagogical agent

In this paper, we present a serious role playing game that teaches STEM. Every role has been designed while keeping Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences and entry points in mind. From a technology point of view, the advances of our Serious Game are the way we use a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), as well as the use of Intelligent Pedagogical Agents (IPAs), which guides the learner trough the game. Players' emotions enter the loop performing sentiment analysis trough chat messages among team members and the IPA. From a pedagogical point of view, the main novelty is that the game follows an inquiry-based approach where the learner is encouraged to ask questions and create her own path to arrive to the solution of the assigned task. While in state-of-the-art games, the user usually interacts by choosing a sentence among a set of predefined possibilities, our system allows the user to freely express her thoughts in textual form and provides the user with an adequate answer. The role-playing game also offers the possibility to work in teams and develop meta competences such as adaptation and anticipation. © The Authors, 2016. All Rights Reserved

Additional file 12: of Protein relative abundance patterns associated with sucrose-induced dysbiosis are conserved across taxonomically diverse oral microcosm biofilm models of dental caries

Clinical metadata for subjects. Lists each subject’s age at time of sampling, gender, the universal ID code for the restored primary tooth from which the sample was taken and the clinical characteristics of the composite restoration around the margins of which plaque was collected

Additional file 1: of Protein relative abundance patterns associated with sucrose-induced dysbiosis are conserved across taxonomically diverse oral microcosm biofilm models of dental caries

ProbeSeq results as received from the HOMINGS core facility. The first worksheet provides read count summaries for each sample. The second worksheet lists read counts for all HOMINGS probes (including those not detected) for each sample. The third worksheet presents the read counts as a percent of total reads for each sample, and the fourth worksheet summarizes results for each sample as stacked column plots