Culturally and Linguistically Diverse School Environments – Exploring the Unknown

Abstract: Australian education policies aspire to meet the unique needs of all students including those from linguistically diverse backgrounds; however, a first step in achieving this aim is clear identification of such students. Many children from previous migrant families and new arrivals to Australia come from homes where at least one parent speaks a language other than English. This exploratory research utilises survey and interview responses from students and staff in five Queensland state high schools. Results showed that 79.5% of the 2,484 students surveyed were from English-only homes with only 10.5% classified as having English as Another Language/Dialect. The remaining 10% were also from bi/multilingual homes. While early identification of bi/multilingual students allows for appropriate assessment and strategic support, staff responses highlighted limited preservice training and/or understanding of how to support these students. Only 4.7% of staff surveyed had received any academic training, and 10.4% professional development, about teaching students from diverse backgrounds who, in the surveyed schools, accounted for 20.5% of the student cohort

Dynamic Behavior Analysis and Synchronization of Memristor-Coupled Heterogeneous Discrete Neural Networks

© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Continuous memristors have been widely studied in recent years; however, there are few studies on discrete memristors in the field of neural networks. In this paper, a four-stable locally active discrete memristor (LADM) is proposed as a synapse, which is used to connect a two-dimensional Chialvo neuron and a three-dimensional KTZ neuron, and construct a simple heterogeneous discrete neural network (HDNN). Through a bifurcation diagram and Lyapunov exponents diagram, the period and chaotic regions of the discrete neural network model are shown. Through numerical analysis, it was found that the chaotic region and periodic region of the neural network based on DLAM are significantly improved. In addition, coexisting chaos and chaos attractors, coexisting periodic and chaotic attractors, and coexisting periodic and periodic attractors will appear when the initial value of the LADM is changed. Coupled by a LADM synapse, two heterogeneous discrete neurons are gradually synchronized by changing the coupling strength. This paper lays a good foundation for the future analysis of LADMs and the related research of discrete neural networks coupled by LADMs.Peer reviewe

Robust, reproducible, industrialized, standard membrane feeding assay for assessing the transmission blocking activity of vaccines and drugs against Plasmodium falciparum.

BackgroundA vaccine that interrupts malaria transmission (VIMT) would be a valuable tool for malaria control and elimination. One VIMT approach is to identify sexual erythrocytic and mosquito stage antigens of the malaria parasite that induce immune responses targeted at disrupting parasite development in the mosquito. The standard Plasmodium falciparum membrane-feeding assay (SMFA) is used to assess transmission-blocking activity (TBA) of antibodies against candidate immunogens and of drugs targeting the mosquito stages. To develop its P. falciparum sporozoite (SPZ) products, Sanaria has industrialized the production of P. falciparum-infected Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes, incorporating quantitative analyses of oocyst and P. falciparum SPZ infections as part of the manufacturing process.MethodsThese capabilities were exploited to develop a robust, reliable, consistent SMFA that was used to assess 188 serum samples from animals immunized with the candidate vaccine immunogen, Pfs25, targeting P. falciparum mosquito stages. Seventy-four independent SMFAs were performed. Infection intensity (number of oocysts/mosquito) and infection prevalence (percentage of mosquitoes infected with oocysts) were compared between mosquitoes fed cultured gametocytes plus normal human O(+) serum (negative control), anti-Pfs25 polyclonal antisera (MRA39 or MRA38, at a final dilution in the blood meal of 1:54 as positive control), and test sera from animals immunized with Pfs25 (at a final dilution in the blood meal of 1:9).ResultsSMFA negative controls consistently yielded high infection intensity (mean = 46.1 oocysts/midgut, range of positives 3.7-135.6) and infection prevalence (mean = 94.2%, range 71.4-100.0) and in positive controls, infection intensity was reduced by 81.6% (anti-Pfs25 MRA39) and 97.0% (anti-Pfs25 MRA38), and infection prevalence was reduced by 12.9 and 63.5%, respectively. A range of TBAs was detected among the 188 test samples assayed in duplicate. Consistent administration of infectious gametocytes to mosquitoes within and between assays was achieved, and the TBA of anti-Pfs25 control antibodies was highly reproducible.ConclusionsThese results demonstrate a robust capacity to perform the SMFA in a medium-to-high throughput format, suitable for assessing large numbers of experimental samples of candidate antibodies or drugs

Low-volume jet injection for intradermal immunization in rabbits

BACKGROUND: This study tested a low-volume (20–30 μl/20–30 μg DNA) jet injection method for intradermal delivery of a DNA vaccine. Jet injection offers the advantages of a needle-less system, low-cost, rapid preparation of the injected DNA solution, and a simple delivery system. More than one construct can be injected simultaneously and the method may be combined with adjuvants. RESULTS: Low-volume jet injection targeted delivery of a DNA solution exclusively to the dermis and epidermis of rabbits. A three injection series of plasmid DNA, encoding the Hepatitis B Surface Antigen stimulated a humoral immune response in 2/5 rabbits. One rabbit developed a significant rise in antibody titer after 1 injection and one following 2 injections. There were no significant differences between jet injection and particle bombardment in the maximal antibody titers or number of injections before response. A three injection series of the same plasmid DNA by particle bombardment elicited a significant rise in antibody titer in 3/5 rabbits. One rabbit developed antibody after 1 injection and two after 3 injections. In contrast, 0/5 rabbits receiving DNA by needle and syringe injection responded. In the jet injection and particle bombardment groups, gene expression levels in the skin did not predict response. While immune responses were similar, luciferase gene expression levels in the skin following particle bombardment were 10–100 times higher than jet injection. CONCLUSION: Low-volume jet injection is a simple, effective methodology for intradermal DNA immunization

A memristive non-smooth dynamical system with coexistence of bimodule periodic oscillation

© 2022 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved. This is the accepted manuscript version of an article which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aeue.2022.154279In order to explore the bursting oscillations and the formation mechanism of memristive non-smooth systems, a third-order memristor model and an external periodic excitation are introduced into a non-smooth dynamical system, and a novel 4D memristive non-smooth system with two-timescale is established. The system is divided into two different subsystems by a non-smooth interface, which can be used to simulate the scenario where a memristor encounters a non-smooth circuit in practical application circuits. Three different bursting patterns and bifurcation mechanisms are analyzed with the time series, the corresponding phase portraits, the equilibrium bifurcation diagrams, and the transformed phase portraits. It is pointed that not only the stability of the equilibrium trajectory but also the non-smooth interface may influence the bursting phenomenon, resulting in the sudden jumping of the trajectory and non-smooth bifurcation at the non-smooth interface. In particular, the coexistence of bimodule periodic oscillations at the non-smooth interface can be observed in this system. Finally, the correctness of the theoretical analysis is well verified by the numerical simulation and Multisim circuit simulation. This paper is of great significance for the future analysis and engineering application of the memristor in non-smooth circuits.Peer reviewe

A locally active discrete memristor model and its application in a hyperchaotic map

© 2022 Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Part of Springer Nature. This is the accepted manuscript version of an article which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11071-021-07132-5The continuous memristor is a popular topic of research in recent years, however, there is rare discussion about the discrete memristor model, especially the locally active discrete memristor model. This paper proposes a locally active discrete memristor model for the first time and proves the three fingerprints characteristics of this model according to the definition of generalized memristor. A novel hyperchaotic map is constructed by coupling the discrete memristor with a two-dimensional generalized square map. The dynamical behaviors are analyzed with attractor phase diagram, bifurcation diagram, Lyapunov exponent spectrum, and dynamic behavior distribution diagram. Numerical simulation analysis shows that there is significant improvement in the hyperchaotic area, the quasi-periodic area and the chaotic complexity of the two-dimensional map when applying the locally active discrete memristor. In addition, antimonotonicity and transient chaos behaviors of system are reported. In particular, the coexisting attractors can be observed in this discrete memristive system, resulting from the different initial values of the memristor. Results of theoretical analysis are well verified with hardware experimental measurements. This paper lays a great foundation for future analysis and engineering application of the discrete memristor and relevant the study of other hyperchaotic maps.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Successes and failures in language planning for European languages in Asian nations

Although there have been some attempts to examine language planning and its successes and failures in South and East Asian languages, especially as such planning relates to English and to other European languages, no systematic cross-national study is available that looks systemati-cally at these issues. While such a study is not possible within the limits imposed by this paper – a monograph would probably be needed; we attempt to sketch the broad outlines of what such a study might look like and provide some basic data about, and examples of the successful and more problematic language policy and planning that has occurred in this region. If we look beyond the large regional languages (e.g., Bengali, Chinese, Japanese, Javanese, Korean, and more recently Malay/Indonesian and Filipino) and the multitude of minority lan-guages, we find European – and of course Arabic and other Asian languages – have become es-tablished in the various polities in the region. These languages have come to be used for a number of reasons, including: •Trade internally within the region, from the Arabian peninsula, and later from Europe (Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish); •Religious proselytisation conducted through Arabic and various European languages; •Colonization, as conducted through various European (and Asian) languages; •Languages learned to access overseas education and technology; •Wars of aggression, some of which were linked to European, North American, and Asian colonial development; •The geopolitics of the “cold war”, especially for Russian and English; and •The rise of English as an economic world language or lingua franca

Heritability enrichment of immunoglobulin G N-glycosylation in specific tissues

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified over 60 genetic loci associated with immunoglobulin G (IgG) N-glycosylation; however, the causal genes and their abundance in relevant tissues are uncertain. Leveraging data from GWAS summary statistics for 8,090 Europeans, and large-scale expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) data from the genotype-tissue expression of 53 types of tissues (GTEx v7), we derived a linkage disequilibrium score for the specific expression of genes (LDSC-SEG) and conducted a transcriptome-wide association study (TWAS). We identified 55 gene associations whose predicted levels of expression were significantly associated with IgG N-glycosylation in 14 tissues. Three working scenarios, i.e., tissue-specific, pleiotropic, and coassociated, were observed for candidate genetic predisposition affecting IgG N-glycosylation traits. Furthermore, pathway enrichment showed several IgG N-glycosylation-related pathways, such as asparagine N-linked glycosylation, N-glycan biosynthesis and transport to the Golgi and subsequent modification. Through phenome-wide association studies (PheWAS), most genetic variants underlying TWAS hits were found to be correlated with health measures (height, waist-hip ratio, systolic blood pressure) and diseases, such as systemic lupus erythematosus, inflammatory bowel disease, and Parkinson’s disease, which are related to IgG N-glycosylation. Our study provides an atlas of genetic regulatory loci and their target genes within functionally relevant tissues, for further studies on the mechanisms of IgG N-glycosylation and its related diseases