Supporting Computing Educators to Create a Cycle of Teaching and Computing Education Research

Despite a rich history of computing education in the United Kingdom and Ireland, computing educators often rely on the same procedures and teaching practices rather than embrace innovations. Similarly, while a growing collection of literature exists on educational theory and practice in computing education, much of this focuses on the same concepts and concerns. An aspiration is that both these problems can be simultaneously addressed by computing educators adopting a cycle of embracing existing literature when devising teaching practice and then feeding their experience and findings back to the community in a rigorous fashion. Consequently, this panel supports computing educators by acting as advisers on a one-on-one basis to support audience members in discovering or devising their own cycle of teaching practice and computing education research

Cooperative Carbon Dioxide Adsorption in Alcoholamine- and Alkoxyalkylamine-Functionalized Metal-Organic Frameworks.

A series of structurally diverse alcoholamine- and alkoxyalkylamine-functionalized variants of the metal-organic framework Mg2 (dobpdc) are shown to adsorb CO2 selectively via cooperative chain-forming mechanisms. Solid-state NMR spectra and optimized structures obtained from van der Waals-corrected density functional theory calculations indicate that the adsorption profiles can be attributed to the formation of carbamic acid or ammonium carbamate chains that are stabilized by hydrogen bonding interactions within the framework pores. These findings significantly expand the scope of chemical functionalities that can be utilized to design cooperative CO2 adsorbents, providing further means of optimizing these powerful materials for energy-efficient CO2 separations

Pulmonary effects of inhalation of spark-generated silver nanoparticles in Brown-Norway and Sprague-Dawley rats

The increasing use of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) in consumer products is concerning. We examined the potential toxic effects when inhaled in Brown-Norway (BN) rats with a pre-inflammatory state compared to Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats.We determined the effect of AgNPs generated from a spark generator (mass concentration: 600-800 μg/mm(3); mean diameter: 13-16 nm; total lung doses: 8 [Low] and 26-28 [High] μg) inhaled by the nasal route in both rat strains. Rats were sacrificed at day 1 and day 7 after exposure and measurement of lung function.In both strains, there was an increase in neutrophils in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid at 24 h at the high dose, with concomitant eosinophilia in BN rats. While BAL inflammatory cells were mostly normalised by Day 7, lung inflammation scores remained increased although not the tissue eosinophil scores. Total protein levels were elevated at both lung doses in both strains. There was an increase in BAL IL-1β, KC, IL-17, CCL2 and CCL3 levels in both strains at Day 1, mostly at high dose. Phospholipid levels were increased at the high dose in SD rats at Day 1 and 7, while in BN rats, this was only seen at Day 1; surfactant protein D levels decreased at day 7 at the high dose in SD rats, but was increased at Day 1 at the low dose in BN rats. There was a transient increase in central airway resistance and in tissue elastance in BN rats at Day 1 but not in SD rats. Positive silver-staining was seen particularly in lung tissue macrophages in a dose and time-dependent response in both strains, maximal by day 7. Lung silver levels were relatively higher in BN rat and present at day 7 in both strains.Presence of cellular inflammation and increasing silver-positive macrophages in lungs at day 7, associated with significant levels of lung silver indicate that lung toxicity is persistent even with the absence of airway luminal inflammation at that time-point. The higher levels and persistence of lung silver in BN rats may be due to the pre-existing inflammatory state of the lungs

Effect of spironolactone and potassium canrenoate on cytosolic and nuclear androgen and estrogen receptors of rat liver

Spironolactone and potassium canrenoate are diuretics that are used widely for management of cirrhotic ascites. The administration of spironolactone frequently leads to feminization, which has been noted less frequently with the use of potassium canrenoate, a salt of the active metabolite of spironolactone. The use of these two drugs has been associated with decreases in serum testosterone levels and spironolactone with a reduction in androgen receptor (AR) activity. This decrease in AR has been cited as the cause of the antiandrogen effect of these drugs. We therefore assessed the effect of both drugs on levels of androgen and estrogen receptors (ER) in the liver, a tissue that is responsive to sex steroids. Three groups of male rats (n = 12 rats each) were studied. Group 1 (control) received vehicle only; group 2 received spironolactone (5 mg/day); group 3 received potassium canrenoate (5 mg/day). After 21 days of treatment, the animals of all groups were killed and liver tissue was assayed for nuclear and cytosolic AR and ER, and for male specific estrogen binder (MEB), an androgen-responsive protein. Both drugs drastically decreased the nuclear AR content, as compared with the control group, but only spironolactone decreased cytosolic AR. When the total hepatic content of AR is considered, a highly significant decrease is observed only in rats treated with spironolactone. This reduction in hepatic AR content suggested loss of androgen responsiveness of liver. We confirmed this by assessing levels of MEB, and found that livers from group 2 animals had no detectable MEB activity, whereas livers from both group 1 and 3 had normal MEB activity. No changes were observed in nuclear ER and cytosolic ER of group 3 as compared with group 1. Nuclear estrogen receptor decreased and cytosolic ER increased in group 2, but with no change in total ER content. These results indicate that (a) only spironolactone appears to act as an antiandrogen in liver, resulting in a decrease in both AR and male specific estrogen binder content, and (b) neither drug results in elevated hepatic ER content, although spironolactone-treated animals show an altered subcellular localization. © 1987

Fotografía DE DOS JÓVENES EN TONO SONRIENTE [Material gráfico]

Copia digital. Madrid : Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, 201

Spatial correlations in attribute communities

Community detection is an important tool for exploring and classifying the properties of large complex networks and should be of great help for spatial networks. Indeed, in addition to their location, nodes in spatial networks can have attributes such as the language for individuals, or any other socio-economical feature that we would like to identify in communities. We discuss in this paper a crucial aspect which was not considered in previous studies which is the possible existence of correlations between space and attributes. Introducing a simple toy model in which both space and node attributes are considered, we discuss the effect of space-attribute correlations on the results of various community detection methods proposed for spatial networks in this paper and in previous studies. When space is irrelevant, our model is equivalent to the stochastic block model which has been shown to display a detectability-non detectability transition. In the regime where space dominates the link formation process, most methods can fail to recover the communities, an effect which is particularly marked when space-attributes correlations are strong. In this latter case, community detection methods which remove the spatial component of the network can miss a large part of the community structure and can lead to incorrect results.Comment: 10 pages and 7 figure

Computer Science Concept Inventories: Past and Future

Concept Inventories (CIs) are assessments designed to measure student learning of core concepts. CIs have become well known for their major impact on pedagogical techniques in other sciences, especially physics. Presently, there are no widely used, validated CIs for computer science. However, considerable groundwork has been performed in the form of identifying core concepts, analyzing student misconceptions, and developing CI assessment questions. Although much of the work has been focused on CS1 and a CI has been developed for digital logic, some preliminary work on CIs is underway for other courses. This literature review examines CI work in other STEM disciplines, discusses the preliminary development of CIs in computer science, and outlines related research in computer science education that contributes to CI development