Strengths and Weaknesses of Applying Cooperative Learning in Foreign Language Classrooms: A Case Study of Arab Learners’ Perspectives

This study aims to explore the strengths and weaknesses of implementing Cooperative Learning (CL) in language classrooms from learners’ perspectives. Many studies have investigated the effect of CL on learners’ L2 production, but fewer studies have been conducted to discover the strengths and possible weaknesses of applying CL. Therefore, this study is undertaken to investigate Saudi learners’ views towards the strengths and weaknesses of implementing CL in foreign language classrooms. The participants are six low-level Saudi EFL learners enrolled in a general English course as part of their foundation year requirements. The participants were first given a language background questionnaire and a language proficiency test to determine their current proficiency levels. They were then exposed to CL in their language classes for a total of six hours, after which they were asked to take part in semi-structured interviews. The interviews were designed to gather the learners’ opinions of using CL activities in classrooms after they had experienced the use of it. The study outlines the strengths and weaknesses of CL as reported by the participants. Based on the findings, the study highlights some teaching implications for language practitioners and provides suggestions for future research

Burnout among surgeons before and during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: an international survey

Background: SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has had many significant impacts within the surgical realm, and surgeons have been obligated to reconsider almost every aspect of daily clinical practice. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study reported in compliance with the CHERRIES guidelines and conducted through an online platform from June 14th to July 15th, 2020. The primary outcome was the burden of burnout during the pandemic indicated by the validated Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure. Results: Nine hundred fifty-four surgeons completed the survey. The median length of practice was 10 years; 78.2% included were male with a median age of 37 years old, 39.5% were consultants, 68.9% were general surgeons, and 55.7% were affiliated with an academic institution. Overall, there was a significant increase in the mean burnout score during the pandemic; longer years of practice and older age were significantly associated with less burnout. There were significant reductions in the median number of outpatient visits, operated cases, on-call hours, emergency visits, and research work, so, 48.2% of respondents felt that the training resources were insufficient. The majority (81.3%) of respondents reported that their hospitals were included in the management of COVID-19, 66.5% felt their roles had been minimized; 41% were asked to assist in non-surgical medical practices, and 37.6% of respondents were included in COVID-19 management. Conclusions: There was a significant burnout among trainees. Almost all aspects of clinical and research activities were affected with a significant reduction in the volume of research, outpatient clinic visits, surgical procedures, on-call hours, and emergency cases hindering the training. Trial registration: The study was registered on clicaltrials.gov "NCT04433286" on 16/06/2020

The L2 Acquisition of Mass Nouns by Arab Leaners of English

This study explores how Arab L2 learners of English acquire mass nouns. The mass/count distinction is a morphosyntactically encoded grammatical distinction.  Arabic and English have different morphosyntactic realisations of mass nouns. English mass nouns take the form of bare singular whereas Arabic mass nouns can take the definite singular form or the indefinite singular, but never the bare singular form. Therefore, the study explores how Arab learners interpret English mass nouns in light of the morphosyntactic differences between the two languages. 45 upper- and lower-intermediate Arab English learners were given a context-based acceptability judgment task on English mass nouns. It was hypothesised that Arabic learners would be influenced by their first language (L1), causing them to over accept definite singulars and under accept bare singulars as grammatical in mass noun contexts. The findings are consistent with what was hypothesised, except that Arab learners were found to interpret bare singulars accurately. It is argued that learners’ performance is affected by not only L1transfer but also UG accessibility where learners can structure away from L1 and more towards L2. Consequently, the findings implicate that L2 teachers should not teach grammatical structures that come for free and instead they should focus on grammatical structures that cause L2 acquisition difficulty

Explicit instruction and translation: A generative view of the acquisition of English articles

Articles’ substitution errors are commonly documented in L2 research. Ionin, Ko and Wexler (2004) tested the ‘Fluctuation Hypothesis”, which predicts that learners overuse ‘the’ with indefinite specific contexts of article use and overuse ‘a’ with definite non-specific contexts. They demonstrated that specificity has an effect on learners whose L1s are article-less, but left open the question of fluctuation regarding learners whose L1s have articles. Additionally, genericity distinctions (Noun-phrase vs. Sentence-level Generics) are rarely addressed by L2 researchers (Ionin et al., 2011). Meanwhile, classroom instruction is lacking in terms of article semantics, as specificity and genericity are currently not taught to learners of English, whereas definiteness is. This study aims to discover whether explicit instruction in definiteness, specificity and genericity, and translation activities that target article use can contribute to accurate article choice. The study adopts an experimental design including 67 Saudi (Hejazi) Arabic-speaking learners of English and 23 native English speakers. The participants took three tasks (Article Elicitation, Acceptability Judgment and Elicited Written Production) as a pre-test, an immediate post-test and a delayed post-test. They were divided into four intervention groups. Over a period of three weeks, each group was subjected to either explicit or implicit instruction and to either translation or gap fill activities. The results are consistent with Ionin, Ko and Wexler’s (2004) predictions, Slabakova’s (2008) semantic principles and Schwartz and Sprouse’s (1996) Full Transfer/ Full Access Hypothesis. The findings show fluctuation in indefinite specific contexts, which suggests sensitivity to specificity. Learners also distinguished between genericity types even though this distinction is not morphologically marked in Arabic, but showed evidence of L1 transfer in article generic use/interpretation. The study shows that explicit instruction and translation activities did not have a clear effect on article accuracy. It also discusses implications for SLA research and article pedagogy and methodological challenges

STUDY OF THE EFFECT OF ETHANOL ALCOHOLS ON YEASTS AND FUNGI ISOLATED FROM THE NAIL

The right to use alcoholic materials excessively, such as 75% ethanol concentration, which is produced locally by several companies, and the use of these materials as sterilizing agents to get rid of certain kinds of viruses or microorganisms, as happened recently due to the Corona virus outbreak, have resulted in an increase in resistance. This study, which involved bleaching a number of yeast species, including Candida albicans, Candida glabrata, Candida krusei, Candida tropicalis, Rhodotorula, and Aspergillus flavus, revealed the emergence of high resistance by those yeasts and fungi to the alcohols used EtOH, surgical, joonandjood, which was caused by certain types of microorganisms, including fungi and yeasts, and the emergence of resistant strains, particularly those that accompanied skin infections or nail injuries. This might be the result of patients' overuse of alcohol and the resistant strains that followed i

STUDY OF THE EFFECT OF ETHANOL ALCOHOLS ON YEASTS AND FUNGI ISOLATED FROM THE NAIL

The right to use alcoholic materials excessively, such as 75% ethanol concentration, which is produced locally by several companies, and the use of these materials as sterilizing agents to get rid of certain kinds of viruses or microorganisms, as happened recently due to the Corona virus outbreak, have resulted in an increase in resistance. This study, which involved bleaching a number of yeast species, including Candida albicans, Candida glabrata, Candida krusei, Candida tropicalis, Rhodotorula, and Aspergillus flavus, revealed the emergence of high resistance by those yeasts and fungi to the alcohols used EtOH, surgical, joonandjood, which was caused by certain types of microorganisms, including fungi and yeasts, and the emergence of resistant strains, particularly those that accompanied skin infections or nail injuries. This might be the result of patients' overuse of alcohol and the resistant strains that followed i

46,XY disorder of sex development in a sudanese patient caused by a novel mutation in the HSD17B3 gene

In this study, we present a Sudanese 46,XY patient raised as a female and diagnosed at the age of 20 years with having 17β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 3 (17β-HSD3) deficiency. She presented with primary amenorrhea, undeveloped breasts and a male pattern of secondary sexual characteristics. Examination of her external genitalia showed type IV genital circumcision. Steroid measurements both in urine and serum pointed to 17β-HSD3 deficiency. A novel homozygous splice-site mutation [c.524 + 2T&gt;A] was detected in intron 7 of the &lt;i&gt;HSD17B3&lt;/i&gt; gene. In this patient, steroid concentration clearly supported both the clinical diagnosis of 17β-HSD3 deficiency and the functional relevance of the mutation. Interestingly, despite of the type IV genital circumcision, the patient expressed her interest in reassigning her sex from female to male.</jats:p

Unraveling the role of salt-sensitivity genes in obesity with integrated network biology and co-expression analysis.

Obesity is a multifactorial disease caused by complex interactions between genes and dietary factors. Salt-rich diet is related to the development and progression of several chronic diseases including obesity. However, the molecular basis of how salt sensitivity genes (SSG) contribute to adiposity in obesity patients remains unexplored. In this study, we used the microarray expression data of visceral adipose tissue samples and constructed a complex protein-interaction network of salt sensitivity genes and their co-expressed genes to trace the molecular pathways connected to obesity. The Salt Sensitivity Protein Interaction Network (SSPIN) of 2691 differentially expressed genes and their 15474 interactions has shown that adipose tissues are enriched with the expression of 23 SSGs, 16 hubs and 84 bottlenecks (p = 2.52 x 10-16) involved in diverse molecular pathways connected to adiposity. Fifteen of these 23 SSGs along with 8 other SSGs showed a co-expression with enriched obesity-related genes (r ≥ 0.8). These SSGs and their co-expression partners are involved in diverse metabolic pathways including adipogenesis, adipocytokine signaling pathway, renin-angiotensin system, etc. This study concludes that SSGs could act as molecular signatures for tracing the basis of adipogenesis among obese patients. Integrated network centered methods may accelerate the identification of new molecular targets from the complex obesity genomics data

Impact of heat stress on agro-morphological, physio-chemical and fiber related paramters in upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) genotypes

The unpredictably changing climatic conditions, especially high temperatures, are putting a continuous threat to sustainable cotton production. The current study was designed to investigate the impact of heat stress on several morpho-physiological, biochemical, and fibre quality-related traits. The results revealed the presence of significant variations in agro-morphological, physio-chemical and staple length-related parameters for upland cotton genotypes and stress treatments. Further analysis of pooled data unveiled that heat stress had a detrimental impact on all studied plant traits. Severe reduction in plant height, nodes per plant, sympodial branches per plant, number of bolls per plant, ginning out-turn, and staple length were recorded under heat stress. A significant reduction in net photosynthetic rate (Pn) up to 28.6 % was observed in cotton genotype BH-200 (24.7 to 19.2 µmole m−2 s−1). The accumulation of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) was increased from 7.1 % in BH-306 to 28.7 % in BH-200 under heat stress due to the incidence of oxidative stress. A substantial increase in the accumulation of antioxidants i.e., catalase (65 %–74 %), peroxidase (54 %–169 %), and superoxide dismutase (52 %–98 %) was seen under high-temperature stress conditions. The correlation coefficient analysis unveiled a significantly positive correlation of seed cotton yield with nodes per plant (r = 0.432*), net photosynthetic rate (r = 0.829**), peroxidase (r = 0.974**), and superoxide dismutase (r = 0.868**), under heat stress conditions. However, a negative but statistically significant correlation of seed cotton yield with ginning out turn (r = −0.466*), staple length (r = −0.898**), hydrogen peroxide (r = −0.955**) and catalase (r = −0.904**) was also observed. The overall results unveiled that cotton genotype BH-232 has a comparatively higher heat tolerance than other contesting genotypes while BH-306 showed the highest susceptibility to heat stress. Hence, BH-232 could be recommended after its approval for general cultivation in heat-prone areas of Pakistan