Generic Skills Assessment Through Implementation of Group Based Learning to Understand SDGs

In this competitive world, it is important for students to acquire generic skills and its assessment in higher education is scarce. This study is an attempt to address the effect of group based learning on generic skills development and and also an approach to spread the knowledge of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Like generic skills, educating young students about SDGs has become crucial. A workshop was conducted for 3 days and a total of 12 students filled in the questionnaire for group and self assessment of generic skills for 10 selected generic skills after every workshop. The overall results indicated that the group based learning have positive impact on the development of generic skills. We found that all generic skills were more developed in group assessment than individual assessment. When the inter-relationship among the skills were assessed for individual ratings using network analysis, the results revealed that the effective team work was strongly associated with co-operativity (r2 =0.7529 p <0.001), communication (r2 =0.7146, p <0.001) and information sharing (r2 =0.7529 p <0.001). The significant finding of this study is the use of shared educational materials which helped the students to overcome the language barrier and be more interactive to achieve the given goal. Further, this study has explored the application of group based learning as an effective educational approach to introduce any designed studies (in this case, SDGs) for fostering the innovative human resources belonging to different educational backgrounds. Moreover, this study also emphasizes on the importance of teaching SDGs to the engineering students for their capacity building, so that they not only understand but also act to ensure that the goals are met for better future. Keywords: Engineering students, Generic skills, Group based learning, Self assessment, Group Assessment Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Three-body Coulomb breakup of 11Li in the complex scaling method

Coulomb breakup strengths of 11Li into a three-body 9Li+n+n system are studied in the complex scaling method. We decompose the transition strengths into the contributions from three-body resonances, two-body ``10Li+n'' and three-body ``9Li+n+n'' continuum states. In the calculated results, we cannot find the dipole resonances with a sharp decay width in 11Li. There is a low energy enhancement in the breakup strength, which is produced by both the two- and three-body continuum states. The enhancement given by the three-body continuum states is found to have a strong connection to the halo structure of 11Li. The calculated breakup strength distribution is compared with the experimental data from MSU, RIKEN and GSI.Comment: RevTeX4, 6 pages, 4 figures, Accepted to Phys. Lett. B DOI

Global parameter search reveals design principles of the mammalian circadian clock

Background: Virtually all living organisms have evolved a circadian (~24 hour) clock that controls physiological and behavioural processes with exquisite precision throughout the day/night cycle. The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), which generates these ~24 h rhythms in mammals, consists of several thousand neurons. Each neuron contains a gene-regulatory network generating molecular oscillations, and the individual neuron oscillations are synchronised by intercellular coupling, presumably via neurotransmitters. Although this basic mechanism is currently accepted and has been recapitulated in mathematical models, several fundamental questions about the design principles of the SCN remain little understood. For example, a remarkable property of the SCN is that the phase of the SCN rhythm resets rapidly after a 'jet lag' type experiment, i.e. when the light/ dark (LD) cycle is abruptly advanced or delayed by several hours. Results: Here, we describe an extensive parameter optimization of a previously constructed simplified model of the SCN in order to further understand its design principles. By examining the top 50 solutions from the parameter optimization, we show that the neurotransmitters' role in generating the molecular circadian rhythms is extremely important. In addition, we show that when a neurotransmitter drives the rhythm of a system of coupled damped oscillators, it exhibits very robust synchronization and is much more easily entrained to light/dark cycles. We were also able to recreate in our simulations the fast rhythm resetting seen after a 'jet lag' type experiment. Conclusion: Our work shows that a careful exploration of parameter space for even an extremely simplified model of the mammalian clock can reveal unexpected behaviours and non-trivial predictions. Our results suggest that the neurotransmitter feedback loop plays a crucial role in the robustness and phase resetting properties of the mammalian clock, even at the single neuron level

How to Achieve Fast Entrainment? The Timescale to Synchronization

Entrainment, where oscillators synchronize to an external signal, is ubiquitous in nature. The transient time leading to entrainment plays a major role in many biological processes. Our goal is to unveil the specific dynamics that leads to fast entrainment. By studying a generic model, we characterize the transient time to entrainment and show how it is governed by two basic properties of an oscillator: the radial relaxation time and the phase velocity distribution around the limit cycle. Those two basic properties are inherent in every oscillator. This concept can be applied to many biological systems to predict the average transient time to entrainment or to infer properties of the underlying oscillator from the observed transients. We found that both a sinusoidal oscillator with fast radial relaxation and a spike-like oscillator with slow radial relaxation give rise to fast entrainment. As an example, we discuss the jet-lag experiments in the mammalian circadian pacemaker

Novel Mouse Xenograft Models Reveal a Critical Role of CD4+ T Cells in the Proliferation of EBV-Infected T and NK Cells

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), a ubiquitous B-lymphotropic herpesvirus, ectopically infects T or NK cells to cause severe diseases of unknown pathogenesis, including chronic active EBV infection (CAEBV) and EBV-associated hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (EBV-HLH). We developed xenograft models of CAEBV and EBV-HLH by transplanting patients' PBMC to immunodeficient mice of the NOD/Shi-scid/IL-2Rγnull strain. In these models, EBV-infected T, NK, or B cells proliferated systemically and reproduced histological characteristics of the two diseases. Analysis of the TCR repertoire expression revealed that identical predominant EBV-infected T-cell clones proliferated in patients and corresponding mice transplanted with their PBMC. Expression of the EBV nuclear antigen 1 (EBNA1), the latent membrane protein 1 (LMP1), and LMP2, but not EBNA2, in the engrafted cells is consistent with the latency II program of EBV gene expression known in CAEBV. High levels of human cytokines, including IL-8, IFN-γ, and RANTES, were detected in the peripheral blood of the model mice, mirroring hypercytokinemia characteristic to both CAEBV and EBV-HLH. Transplantation of individual immunophenotypic subsets isolated from patients' PBMC as well as that of various combinations of these subsets revealed a critical role of CD4+ T cells in the engraftment of EBV-infected T and NK cells. In accordance with this finding, in vivo depletion of CD4+ T cells by the administration of the OKT4 antibody following transplantation of PBMC prevented the engraftment of EBV-infected T and NK cells. This is the first report of animal models of CAEBV and EBV-HLH that are expected to be useful tools in the development of novel therapeutic strategies for the treatment of the diseases