2,564 research outputs found

    The Need for Professionally Oriented ESL Instruction in the United States

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    Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90262/1/3586694.pd

    An Experiential Introduction to Aerospace Engineering

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    Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/77054/1/AIAA-2007-296-801.pd

    Policies of financing livestock programs by commercial banks in Kansas

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    Call number: LD2668 .R4 1964 O5

    Point-driven understanding in engineering lecture comprehension

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    Nonnative speakers have long been known to have trouble understanding academic lectures. ESP researchers and teachers agree that the problem lies mainly at the discourse level, not at the sentence level; accordingly, a body of discourse-oriented teaching materials for lecture comprehension is now on the market. Though a step in the right direction, these materials fail to do justice to the rhetorical, strategic nature of academic lectures. As our study shows, students may understand all the words of a lecture (including lexical connectives and other discourse markers) and yet fail to understand the lecturer's main points or logical argument.Our study was an exploratory one. Fourteen NNS graduate and undergraduate students watched an authentic 16-minute videotaped lecture on a topic in mechanical engineering and then were asked to provide immediate-recall summaries, which were then analyzed in consultation with the lecturer. Although the lecture was clerly structured around several main points, most of the students failed to grasp these points. These results are discussed in terms of listening strategies: the successful students used a `point-driven' strategy while the unsuccessful ones used an `information-driven' strategy. We conclude that students should be taught how to listen to lectures in a more rhetorical, strategic way. More generally, if we are to teach students to understand and communicate more effectively, we should help them see how the organization of their discourse fits into the larger goals, agendas, and contexts in their fields.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/28773/1/0000605.pd

    A framework for mathematics curricula in engineering education: a report of the mathematics working group.

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    This document adapts the competence concept to the mathematical education of engineers and explains and illustrates it by giving examples. It also provides information for specifying the extent to which a competency should be acquired. It does not prescribe a particular level of progress for competence acquisition in engineering education. There are many different engineering branches and many different job profiles with various needs for mathematical competencies; consequently it is not appropriate to specify a fixed profile. The competence framework serves as an analytical framework for thinking about the current state in one’s own institution and also as a design framework for specifying the intended profile. A sketch of an example profile for a practice-oriented study course in mechanical engineering is given in the document. This document retains the list of content-related learning outcomes (slightly modified) that formed the ‘kernel’ of the previous curriculum document. These are still important because lecturers teaching application subjects want to be sure that students have at least an ‘initial familiarity’ with certain mathematical concepts and procedures which they need in their application modelling. In order to offer helpful orientation for designing teaching processes, teaching and learning environments and approaches are outlined which help students to obtain the competencies to an adequate degree. It is clear that such competencies cannot be obtained by simply listening to lectures, so adequate forms of active involvement of students need to be included. Moreover, in a competence-based approach the mathematical education must be integrated in the surrounding engineering study course to really achieve the ability to use mathematics in engineering contexts. The document presents several forms of how this integration can be realized. This integration is essential to the development of competencies and will require close co-operation between mathematics academics and their engineering counterparts. Finally, since assessment procedures determine to a great extent the behaviour of students, it is extremely important to address competency acquisition in assessment schemes. Ideas for doing this are also outlined in the document. The main purpose of this document is to provide orientation for those who set up concrete mathematics curricula for their specific engineering programme, and for lecturers who think about learning and assessment arrangements for achieving the intended level of competence acquisition. It also serves as a framework for the group’s future work and discussions

    Evidence Supporting a Zoonotic Origin of Human Coronavirus Strain NL63

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    The relationship between bats and coronaviruses (CoVs) has received considerable attention since the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-like CoV was identified in the Chinese horseshoe bat (Rhinolophidae) in 2005. Since then, several bats throughout the world have been shown to shed CoV sequences, and presumably CoVs, in the feces; however, no bat CoVs have been isolated from nature. Moreover, there are very few bat cell lines or reagents available for investigating CoV replication in bat cells or for isolating bat CoVs adapted to specific bat species. Here, we show by molecular clock analysis that alphacoronavirus (α-CoV) sequences derived from the North American tricolored bat (Perimyotis subflavus) are predicted to share common ancestry with human CoV (HCoV)-NL63, with the most recent common ancestor between these viruses occurring approximately 563 to 822 years ago. Further, we developed immortalized bat cell lines from the lungs of this bat species to determine if these cells were capable of supporting infection with HCoVs. While SARS-CoV, mouse-adapted SARS-CoV (MA15), and chimeric SARS-CoVs bearing the spike genes of early human strains replicated inefficiently, HCoV-NL63 replicated for multiple passages in the immortalized lung cells from this bat species. These observations support the hypothesis that human CoVs are capable of establishing zoonotic-reverse zoonotic transmission cycles that may allow some CoVs to readily circulate and exchange genetic material between strains found in bats and other mammals, including humans
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