RIVERS AND CAPITALS

Grade Level(s): 9-12To show a relationship between rivers/bodies of water and capital cities.Northview High School, Brazil, I

Active Learning Through The Use Of Virtual Environments

Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) has seen explosive growth over the last decade. Immersive VR attempts to give users the sensation of being fully immersed in a synthetic environment by providing them with 3D hardware, and allowing them to interact with objects in virtual worlds. The technology is extremely effective for learning and exploration, and has been widely adopted by the military, industry and academia. This current study set out to study the effectiveness of 3D interactive environments on learning, engagement, and preference. A total of 180 students took part in the study where significant results were found regarding preference for this new technology over standard educational practices. Students were more motivated when using the immersive environment than with traditional methods which may translate into greater learning and retention. Larger studies will need to be performed in order to quantify the benefits of this new, cutting edge technology, as it relates to understanding and retention of educational content.

Student Involvement : A Descriptive Analysis of Adults Enrolled in Community College Vocational Technical Programs

vii, 111 leaves. Advisor: Thomas S. Westbrook.The purpose: The purpose of this study was to provide a descriptive analysis of the educational experiences of adults in community college vocational technical programs (AVTs) according to their levels of student involvement, assessment of progress toward goals, and level of satisfaction with the college environment. Procedures: The overall educational experiences of AVTs were compared to other community college student sub-populations. The Community College Student Experiences Questionnaire (CCSEQ) was used as the instrument to collect data. A total of 361 students completed the CCSEQ and constituted the comparison student groups: adult learners (ALs), and traditional age learners (TLs); and within those groups: adults in vocational technical programs (AVTs), traditional age students in vocational technical programs (TVTs), and adults in college transfer programs (ACTS). Findinqs: 1) AVT student activities. AVTs involvement consists of energy invested in course and writing do not invest much energy on interaction with other students or faculty. AVTs do not invest as much energy in vocational skills as younger vocational technical students. 2) AVT involvement follows what Astin (1984) describes as a continuum of different levels of involvement in different types of activities. 3) AVT involvement is both quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative involvement was identified by AVTs' reports of gains. AVT satisfaction reflects the qualitative aspect of involvement (Astin, 1984). 4) AVTs are more marginal, less involved students than other adult learners or traditional age learners. College personnel can address these areas of differences and produce services and policies that can lead to AVT increases in involvement, gains, and satisfaction. Conclusions: @ AVTs' educational involvement largely centers on course and writing activities. @ AVTs experience moderate gains while in college. @ AVTs are only moderately satisfied with their college environment. @ AVTs differ somewhat from other adult learners in community colleges. @ AVTs differ substantially from traditional age learners in community college vocational technical programs. Recommendations: 1) Seek methods to increase AVT levels of involvement with faculty members and student acquaintances. 2) To increase gain, tie AVT out of class learning opportunities to course completion. 3) To increase involvement, gain, and, satisfaction, design policies that offer credit for on-the-job internships and life experiences and recognition for academic achievement for part-time students. 4) To increase satisfaction, balance the desire to provide services with a respect to not intrude on the AVTs' complex lives and pragmatic natures

A LASSO-based approach to sample sites for phylogenetic tree search

Motivation In recent years, full-genome sequences have become increasingly available and as a result many modern phylogenetic analyses are based on very long sequences, often with over 100 000 sites. Phylogenetic reconstructions of large-scale alignments are challenging for likelihood-based phylogenetic inference programs and usually require using a powerful computer cluster. Current tools for alignment trimming prior to phylogenetic analysis do not promise a significant reduction in the alignment size and are claimed to have a negative effect on the accuracy of the obtained tree. Results Here, we propose an artificial-intelligence-based approach, which provides means to select the optimal subset of sites and a formula by which one can compute the log-likelihood of the entire data based on this subset. Our approach is based on training a regularized Lasso-regression model that optimizes the log-likelihood prediction accuracy while putting a constraint on the number of sites used for the approximation. We show that computing the likelihood based on 5% of the sites already provides accurate approximation of the tree likelihood based on the entire data. Furthermore, we show that using this Lasso-based approximation during a tree search decreased running-time substantially while retaining the same tree-search performance

Sex determination, longevity, and the birth and death of reptilian species

Vertebrate sex-determining mechanisms (SDMs) are triggered by the genotype (GSD), by temperature (TSD), or occasionally, by both. The causes and consequences of SDM diversity remain enigmatic. Theory predicts SDM effects on species diversification, and life-span effects on SDM evolutionary turnover. Yet, evidence is conflicting in clades with labile SDMs, such as reptiles. Here, we investigate whether SDM is associated with diversification in turtles and lizards, and whether alterative factors, such as lifespan\u27s effect on transition rates, could explain the relative prevalence of SDMs in turtles and lizards (including and excluding snakes). We assembled a comprehensive dataset of SDM states for squamates and turtles and leveraged large phylogenies for these two groups. We found no evidence that SDMs affect turtle, squamate, or lizard diversification. However, SDM transition rates differ between groups. In lizards TSD-to-GSD surpass GSD-to-TSD transitions, explaining the predominance of GSD lizards in nature. SDM transitions are fewer in turtles and the rates are similar to each other (TSD-to-GSD equals GSD-to-TSD), which, coupled with TSD ancestry, could explain TSD\u27s predominance in turtles. These contrasting patterns can be explained by differences in life history. Namely, our data support the notion that in general, shorter lizard lifespan renders TSD detrimental favoring GSD evolution in squamates, whereas turtle longevity permits TSD retention. Thus, based on the macro-evolutionary evidence we uncovered, we hypothesize that turtles and lizards followed different evolutionary trajectories with respect to SDM, likely mediated by differences in lifespan. Combined, our findings revealed a complex evolutionary interplay between SDMs and life histories that warrants further research that should make use of expanded datasets on unexamined taxa to enable more conclusive analyses

iDBPs: a web server for the identification of DNA binding proteins

Summary: The iDBPs server uses the three-dimensional (3D) structure of a query protein to predict whether it binds DNA. First, the algorithm predicts the functional region of the protein based on its evolutionary profile; the assumption is that large clusters of conserved residues are good markers of functional regions. Next, various characteristics of the predicted functional region as well as global features of the protein are calculated, such as the average surface electrostatic potential, the dipole moment and cluster-based amino acid conservation patterns. Finally, a random forests classifier is used to predict whether the query protein is likely to bind DNA and to estimate the prediction confidence. We have trained and tested the classifier on various datasets and shown that it outperformed related methods. On a dataset that reflects the fraction of DNA binding proteins (DBPs) in a proteome, the area under the ROC curve was 0.90. The application of the server to an updated version of the N-Func database, which contains proteins of unknown function with solved 3D-structure, suggested new putative DBPs for experimental studies

Performance guidelines for the swine operation

1 online resource (PDF, 6 pages)This archival publication may not reflect current scientific knowledge or recommendations. Current information available from the University of Minnesota Extension: https://www.extension.umn.edu