“I Sorta Felt Like I was out in the Middle of the Ocean”: Novice Teachers’ Transition to the Classroom

The design of initial teacher education courses is to provide pre-service teachers with skills, processes and knowledge about the practice and profession of teaching. This allows graduate teachers to best service the learning needs of future students. A disposition of inquiry in relation to ongoing teacher learning is a significant aspect of initial teacher education programs. The contribution that teacher education programs make in the transition from pre-service teachers to teacher challenges the experiences that occur during the teacher education program. The impetus for this study was to examine the graduate teacher’s transition to novice teaching and the impact of their initial teacher education course in preparing them for this transition

Autism Overview

This overviews Autism, including causes, evaluation Strategies, genetic counseling, management and further resources.GeneReviews is funded by the National Institutes of Health and Developed at the University of Seattle, Washington

Documenting Teaching Effectiveness

In this presentation, three veteran faculty members discuss how faculty can document their teaching effectiveness for purposes of annual reviews, awards, and promotion

Chewing gum modifies state-anxiety and alertness under conditions of social stress

Objectives: The finding that chewing gum can moderate state-anxiety under conditions of acute stress¹ has proved difficult to replicate.2,4 The present study examines the extent to which chewing gum can moderate state-anxiety under conditions of acute social stress. Method: In a between-participants design, 36 participants completed a task comprising a mock job interview (a variation on the Trier Social Stress Task3, which included a mental arithmetic component) whilst either chewing gum or without gum. Self-rated measures of mood and anxiety were taken at baseline, after a 10-minute presentation preparation stage, after the 10-minute presentation, and following a 5-minute recovery stage. Results: Post-presentation measures reflected increased state-anxiety and decrease self-rated calmness and contentedness. Chewing gum attenuated the rise in state-anxiety whilst increasing self-rated alertness. Chewing gum did not affect contentedness or calmness. Conclusions: The findings indicate that chewing gum can act to reduce anxiety under conditions of acute social stress: a finding consistent with Scholey et al.1 Furthermore, the data add to the growing body of literature demonstrating that chewing gum can increase alertness.1,2,4,

Psychometric validation of the Coronary Revascularisation Outcome Questionnaire (CROQv2) in the context of the NHS Coronary Revascularisation PROMs Pilot.

OBJECTIVES: The Coronary Revascularisation Outcome Questionnaire (CROQ) is a patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) for coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG) and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). We tested the psychometric properties of a modified version (CROQv2) when administered in a National Health Service (NHS)/Department of Health (DH) funded pilot of PROMs for coronary revascularisation. DESIGN: Psychometric validation study. SETTING: 11 English hospitals in the UK taking part in the NHS/DH funded pilot of PROMs for coronary revascularisation. PARTICIPANTS: Comprehensive analyses of acceptability, reliability, validity and responsiveness were conducted independently for each of the prerevascularisation (n=2685 and n=3711) and postrevascularisation (n=869 and n=837) versions of the CROQ-CABG and CROQ-PCI, respectively. RESULTS: All versions met prespecified stringent criteria for (1) acceptability of items (missing data) and scales (missing data, floor and ceiling effects, skewness); (2) tests of scaling assumptions; (3) reliability: internal consistency (Cronbach's α, item-total correlations); (4) construct validity based on within-scale analyses (internal consistency, intercorrelations between scales, factor analysis and hypothesis testing); (5) construct validity based on comparisons with external measures (convergent and discriminant validity and hypothesis testing) and (6) responsiveness. Results were also confirmed when tests were repeated on subsamples of CABG (n=639) and PCI (n=615) patients who reported receiving help completing prerevascularisation questionnaires. CONCLUSIONS: The availability of a psychometrically robust procedure-specific tool that could be used as part of a large-scale coronary revascularisation PROMs programme to capture the patients' perspective of coronary revascularisation will enable outcomes important to patients to be routinely collected alongside clinical outcomes. The CROQ is suitable for administration by postal survey or the prerevascularisation versions can be administered in the clinical setting as in the Coronary Revascularisation PROMs Pilot

Conceptual design of a manned orbital transfer vehicle

With the advent of the manned space station, man now requires a spacecraft based on the space station with the ability to deploy, recover, and repair satellites quickly and economically. Such a craft would prolong and enhance the life and performance of many satellites. A basic design was developed for an orbital tansfer vehicle (OTV). The basic design criteria are discussed. The design of the OTV and systems were researched in the following areas: avionics, crew systems, electrical power systems, environmental control/life support systems, navigation and orbital maneuvers, propulsion systems, reaction control systems (RCS), servicing systems, and structures. The basic concepts in each of the areas are summarized

GCN2 EIF2 Kinase is Critical for Keratinocyte Collective Migration and Wound Healing

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)A critical factor in the healing of a cutaneous wound is the closure of the wound bed that is accomplished by collectively migrating keratinocytes. Wounds that fail to heal appropriately are a significant burden on patient well-being as well as healthcare systems. Further understanding of the molecular pathways involved in wound healing is needed to find new treatments to accelerate healing and reduce treatment costs. Previously, we demonstrated that the integrated stress response (ISR) is critical for keratinocyte response to multiple stresses. Because wounding and repair mechanisms can induce stresses in the skin, we hypothesized that the ISR plays a central role in wound healing. The ISR features a family of stress-activated protein kinases phosphorylate the translation factor eIF2 (eIF2α-P), resulting in diminished global protein synthesis coincident with preferential translation of gene transcripts that lead to the remedy of the stress. Wounding of immortalized NTERT human keratinocyte monolayers led to rapid activation of the eIF2 kinase GCN2, and subsequent eIF2α-P and translational control. Deletion of GCN2 in wounding assays diminished eIF2α-P and translational control during wound healing. Global transcriptome analysis of wounded keratinocytes revealed that deletion of GCN2 induced a compensatory unfolded protein response and dysregulation of mRNAs important for cellular migration. Pathway analysis suggested that GCN2 is necessary for proper activation of key signaling networks and subsequent coordination of RAC-GTP driven reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation following wounding. Additionally, amino acid control of cysteine is regulated by GCN2. We therefore investigated ROS levels following wounding and observed that GCN2 was required for proper ROS induction and actin reorganization in leading edge keratinocytes and that these changes were coincident with reduced RAC and RHO activation and cysteine depletion. The loss of leading-edge ROS in GCN2-deleted cells can be phenocopied with NOX inhibition. Lastly, mice deleted for GCN2 exhibited delayed wound healing compared to WT controls in an excisional wound healing model. These results indicate that GCN2 is required for the induction of collective cell migration and plays a critical role in coordinating the re-epithelialization of cutaneous wounds. We propose the ISR is a potential therapeutic target in chronic wounds

Optical tweezers: wideband microrheology

Microrheology is a branch of rheology having the same principles as conventional bulk rheology, but working on micron length scales and micro-litre volumes. Optical tweezers have been successfully used with Newtonian fluids for rheological purposes such as determining fluid viscosity. Conversely, when optical tweezers are used to measure the viscoelastic properties of complex fluids the results are either limited to the material's high-frequency response, discarding important information related to the low-frequency behavior, or they are supplemented by low-frequency measurements performed with different techniques, often without presenting an overlapping region of clear agreement between the sets of results. We present a simple experimental procedure to perform microrheological measurements over the widest frequency range possible with optical tweezers. A generalised Langevin equation is used to relate the frequency-dependent moduli of the complex fluid to the time-dependent trajectory of a probe particle as it flips between two optical traps that alternately switch on and off.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Special Issue of the Journal of Optic