Supporting self-regulated learning in a blended learning environment using prompts and learning analytics

Higher education institutions, teachers, and students face new difficulties and opportunities resulting from the introduction of modern technology into the learning process. The widespread of learning environments that integrate online learning and face-to-face learning may pose some opportunities as well as difficulties for some groups of students' self-regulation skills. Providing automated prompts may help to support those students with insufficient self-regulation skills. The use of learning analytics and multiple methods and data sources (data triangulation) may give better insight into the self-regulation process. The objective of the proposed research is to explore the students' evaluation of the usefulness of prompts implemented in a blended learning environment. A secondary objective is to develop and evaluate a real-time dashboard designed to notify teachers of student responses to deployed prompts. The research methodology will be grounded in action research and empirical research. The scientific contribution will be achieved through the development of artefacts and the performance of empirical research to advance understanding of the student's self-regulation in a blended learning environment

Ecologically relevant measures of tolerance to potentially lethal temperatures

The acute thermal tolerance of ectotherms has been measured in a variety of ways; these include assays where organisms are shifted abruptly to stressful temperatures and assays where organisms experience temperatures that are ramped more slowly to stressful levels. Ramping assays are thought to be more relevant to natural conditions where sudden abrupt shifts are unlikely to occur often, but it has been argued that thermal limits established under ramping conditions are underestimates of true thermal limits because stresses due to starvation and/or desiccation can arise under ramping. These confounding effects might also impact the variance and heritability of thermal tolerance. We argue here that ramping assays are useful in capturing aspects of ecological relevance even though there is potential for confounding effects of other stresses that can also influence thermal limits in nature. Moreover, we show that the levels of desiccation and starvation experienced by ectotherms in ramping assays will often be minor unless the assays involve small animals and last for many hours. Empirical data illustrate that the combined effects of food and humidity on thermal limits under ramping and sudden shifts to stressful conditions are unpredictable; in Drosophila melanogaster the presence of food decreased rather than increased thermal limits, whereas in Ceratitis capitata they had little impact. The literature provides examples where thermal limits are increased under ramping presumably because of the potential for physiological changes leading to acclimation. It is unclear whether heritabilities and population differentiation will necessarily be lower under ramping because of confounding effects. Although it is important to clearly define experimental methods, particularly when undertaking comparative assessments, and to understand potential confounding effects, thermotolerance assays based on ramping remain an important tool for understanding and predicting species responses to environmental change. An important area for further development is to identify the impact of rates of temperature change under field and laboratory conditions

Occurence of common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) in the Gulf of Trieste and the northern Adriatic Sea

1. The Mediterranean common dolphin (Delphinus delphis), considered to have been very common in the past, had undergone a dramatic decline across most of the basin by the end of 1970s. In the northern Adriatic Sea, one of the regions with most available historical information, the common dolphin is thought to have been the most common and abundant cetacean throughout most of the 20th century. However, by the end of 1970s, it had virtually disappeared from the region and is now considered generally absent from the entire Adriatic Sea. 2. This contribution summarizes the occurrence of common dolphins in the Gulf of Trieste and provides a brief review of published records in other parts of the Adriatic Sea. 3. Systematic boat surveys in the wider area of the Gulf of Trieste between 2002 and 2019 confirmed that the common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) is the only regularly occurring cetacean species in this area. Despite this, several records of common dolphins were documented in the Gulf of Trieste between 2009 and 2012, through sightings of live animals or recovery of dead stranded animals. 4. Dorsal fin markings allowed the photo‐identification of some of these, suggesting that at least four different live individuals (three adults and one calf) occurred here in recent times. Most cases involved single adult individuals, but one included a mother‐calf pair that was temporarily resident in a port for several months, a behaviour atypical for this species. Photo‐identification showed that the presumed mother had previously been sighted in the Ionian Sea in Greece, over 1,000 km from the Gulf of Trieste, making this the longest documented movement for this species worldwide. 5. At present, the common dolphin continues to be rare in the region.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Effects of vessel traffic on relative abundance and behaviour of cetaceans : the case of the bottlenose dolphins in the Archipelago de La Maddalena, north-western Mediterranean sea

Acknowledgements This study was part of the Tursiops Project of the Dolphin Research Centre of Caprera, La Maddalena. Financial and logistical support was provided by the Centro Turistico Studentesco (CTS) and by the National Park of the Archipelago de La Maddalena. We thank the Natural Reserve of Bocche di Bonifacio for the support provided during data collection. The authors thank the numerous volunteers of the Caprera Dolphin Research Centre and especially Marco Ferraro, Mirko Ugo, Angela Pira and Maurizio Piras whose assistance during field observation and skills as a boat driver were invaluable.Peer reviewedPostprin

A Comparative Study of the Short Term Cold Resistance Response in Distantly Related Drosophila Species: The Role of regucalcin and Frost

The molecular basis of short term cold resistance (indexed as chill-coma recovery time) has been mostly addressed in D. melanogaster, where candidate genes (Dca (also known as smp-30) and Frost (Fst)) have been identified. Nevertheless, in Drosophila, the ability to tolerate short term exposure to low temperatures evolved several times independently. Therefore, it is unclear whether variation in the same candidate genes is also responsible for short term cold resistance in distantly related Drosophila species. It should be noted that Dca is a candidate gene for cold resistance in the Sophophora subgenus only, since there is no orthologous gene copy in the Drosophila subgenus. Here we show that, in D. americana (Drosophila subgenus), there is a north-south gradient for a variant at the 5′ non-coding region of regucalcin (a Dca-like gene; in D. melanogaster the proteins encoded by the two genes share 71.9% amino acid identities) but in our D. americana F2 association experiment there is no association between this polymorphism and chill-coma recovery times. Moreover, we found no convincing evidence that this gene is up-regulated after cold shock in both D. americana and D. melanogaster. Size variation in the Fst PEST domain (putatively involved in rapid protein degradation) is observed when comparing distantly related Drosophila species, and is associated with short term cold resistance differences in D. americana. Nevertheless, this effect is likely through body size variation. Moreover, we show that, even at two hours after cold shock, when up-regulation of this gene is maximal in D. melanogaster (about 48 fold expression change), in D. americana this gene is only moderately up-regulated (about 3 fold expression change). Our work thus shows that there are important differences regarding the molecular basis of cold resistance in distantly related Drosophila species

Long-Term Cold Acclimation Extends Survival Time at 0°C and Modifies the Metabolomic Profiles of the Larvae of the Fruit Fly Drosophila melanogaster

Drosophila melanogaster is a chill-susceptible insect. Previous studies on this fly focused on acute direct chilling injury during cold shock and showed that lower lethal temperature (LLT, approximately -5°C) exhibits relatively low plasticity and that acclimations, both rapid cold hardening (RCH) and long-term cold acclimation, shift the LLT by only a few degrees at the maximum.We found that long-term cold acclimation considerably improved cold tolerance in fully grown third-instar larvae of D. melanogaster. A comparison of the larvae acclimated at constant 25°C with those acclimated at constant 15°C followed by constant 6°C for 2 d (15°C→6°C) showed that long-term cold acclimation extended the lethal time for 50% of the population (Lt(50)) during exposure to constant 0°C as much as 630-fold (from 0.137 h to 86.658 h). Such marked physiological plasticity in Lt(50) (in contrast to LLT) suggested that chronic indirect chilling injury at 0°C differs from that caused by cold shock. Long-term cold acclimation modified the metabolomic profiles of the larvae. Accumulations of proline (up to 17.7 mM) and trehalose (up to 36.5 mM) were the two most prominent responses. In addition, restructuring of the glycerophospholipid composition of biological membranes was observed. The relative proportion of glycerophosphoethanolamines (especially those with linoleic acid at the sn-2 position) increased at the expense of glycerophosphocholines.Third-instar larvae of D. melanogaster improved their cold tolerance in response to long-term cold acclimation and showed metabolic potential for the accumulation of proline and trehalose and for membrane restructuring

Cloud Computing in Education and Student's Needs

Abstract: Cloud computing is not just a buzz-word, it represents a strong direction of IT industry development. Speaking of cloud computing we should distinguish three different service models: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS). The scope of this work is a model of Software as a Service. This represents the lease of computing resources on a network of remote servers where applications are executed and data is stored. The application of cloud computing is very broad and growing daily because of many advantages to the users, and is driven by the increasing use of various mobile devices (laptops, tablets and smartphones) and mobile Internet access being more available. Cloud computing is applicable in education, but it implies the acceptance of these services by all involved in the educational process. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to investigate whether there is a need between our students for applications and services in the "cloud" (SaaS), the extent to which they use them and what types of applications and services are leading. The paper analyzes and interprets the results of this study which provides indications of students' willingness to "move to the cloud"

Genetic mapping of adaptive wing size variation in Drosophila simulans

Many ecologically important traits exhibit latitudinal variation. Body size clines have been described repeatedly in insects across multiple continents, suggesting that similar selective forces are shaping these geographical gradients. It is unknown whether these parallel clinal patterns are controlled by the same or different genetic mechanism(s). We present here, quantitative trait loci (QTL) analysis of wing size variation in Drosophila simulans. Our results show that much of the wing size variation is controlled by a QTL on Chr 3L with relatively minor contribution from other chromosome arms. Comparative analysis of the genomic positions of the QTL indicates that the major QTL on Chr 3 are distinct in D. simulans and D. melanogaster, whereas the QTL on Chr 2R might overlap between species. Our results suggest that parallel evolution of wing size clines could be driven by non-identical genetic mechanisms but in both cases involve a major QTL as well as smaller effects of other genomic regions

The effects of phenophase on essential oil quality and quantity

In spite of the growing interest in essential oils (EOs) and their commercial importance, it is not yet clear how development factors influence the plant material optimum harvesting period for EOs production. factors that determine the EOs' composition and yield are numerous, and in some cases, it is quite difficult to isolate them as many are interdependent and influenced by each other. Therefore, EOs chemical composition is subject to high quantitative and qualitative variations, as well as their related biological activities or properties