A Green Peel on STEAM Education: An Innovative and Sustainable Education Scheme Integrating STEAM and Environmental Education

The STEAM education in China started late so it is still in its infancy. Its curriculum is partial to IT and Internet, which is against the original purpose of interdisciplinary education in STEAM. Meanwhile, the resources put on environmental education are minute so the environmental awareness of citizens is very weak. Therefore, we have proposed an innovative education scheme—integrating STEAM, environmental and family education together so that they can complement each other. Such a scheme not only makes STEAM education more comprehensive, it can also make environmental education more effective. To implement our scheme, we have made use of peel wastes to produce a new natural peel crayon. The whole production process is further developed to a curriculum which serves as an education model that combines all five elements in STEAM education. Together we have created a ‘learning package’ that takes care of students’ individuality in education. After putting it into practice, we have received positive feedbacks from both parents and children. Furthermore, we have done several standard tests to ensure the safety of our peel crayons. Results have proved the feasibility of our new education scheme. Such a scheme has provided a role model for integration of environmental and STEAM education. In the future, we hope to develop more education models to make our learning package more diverse and applied in different aspects

Correlation between Pineal Activation and Religious Meditation Observed by Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

The human brain possesses plenty of functions but little is known about its scientific relationship with mind and spirit. Conferences^1,2^ focused on the connection between science and religion were held very recently in which neuroscientists, Buddhist scholars and Dalai Lama discussed attention, mental imagery, emotion, mind, brain functions and meditation, suggesting religious meditation offers an effective means to investigate the mystery of mind and spirit. In the past decade, scientists struggled to obtain brain mappings for various meditation styles using different brain imaging techniques and stimulating results have been observed^3-17^. In this letter we report that, together with other brain regions, pineal body exhibit significant activation during meditation process, supporting the long lasting speculation that pineal plays an important role in the intrinsic awareness which might concern spirit or soul. Pineal is known as an endocrine organ which produces substrates including melatonin and has been ascribed numerous even mysterious functions but its activation during meditation has never been observed by brain imaging technique. In seventeenth century, based on anatomic observation, Descartes ventured to suggest that pineal serves as the principal seat of the soul^18-20^. Inspired by its geometric center in the brain, physiologists, psychologists, philosophers and religionists have been speculating for centuries about pineal's function relevant to spirit and soul. In this study, we chose Chinese Original Quiet Sitting, one style of meditation, to explore this long lasting speculation by functional magnetic resonance imaging technique. Our results demonstrate a correlation between pineal activation and religious meditation which might have profound implications in physiological understanding of the intrinsic awareness

miR-15a and miR-16-1 inhibit the proliferation of leukemic cells by down-regulating WT1 protein level

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>miR-15a and miR-16-1(miR-15a/16-1) have been implicated as tumor suppressors in chronic lymphocytic leukemia, multiple myeloma, and acute myeloid leukemic cells. However the mechanism of inhibiting the proliferation of leukemic cells is poorly understood.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>K562 and HL-60 cells were transfected with pRS-15/16 or pRS-E, cell growth were measured by CCK-8 assay and direct cell count. Meanwhile WT1 protein and mRNA level were measured by Western blotting and quantitative real-time PCR.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this study we found that over-expression of miR-15a/16-1 significantly inhibited K562 and HL-60 cells proliferation. Enforced expression of miR-15a/16-1 in K562 and HL-60 cells significantly reduced the protein level of WT1 but not affected the mRNA level. However enforced expression of miR-15a/16-1 can not reduce the activity of a luciferase reporter carrying the 3'-untranslated region(3'UTR) of WT1. Silencing of WT1 by specific siRNA suppressed leukemic cells proliferation resembling that of miR-15a/16-1 over-expression. Anti-miR-15a/16-1 oligonucleotides (AMO) reversed the expression of WT1 in K562 and HL-60 cells. Finally, we found a significant inverse correlation between miR-15a or miR-16-1 expression and WT1 protein levels in primary acute myeloid leukemia (AML) blasts and normal controls.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These data suggest that miR-15a/16-1 may function as a tumor suppressor to regulate leukemic cell proliferation potentially by down-regulating the WT1 oncogene. However WT1 is not directly targeted by miR-15a/16-1 through miRNA-mRNA base pairing, therefore more study are required to understand the mechanism by which miR-15a/16-1 downregulate WT1.</p

Simultaneous removal of NO and Hg⁰ using Fe and Co co-doped Mn-Ce/TiO₂ catalysts

Fe and Co co-doped Mn-Ce/TiO2 (MCT) catalysts were investigated for the simultaneous removal of nitric oxide (NO) and elemental mercury (Hg0) at reaction temperature lower than 200 °C. The catalysts were characterized by Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET), temperature program reduction (TPR), scanning electron microscope (SEM), x-ray diffraction (XRD) and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis. The experimental results showed that the co-doped 2Fe4Co-MCT catalyst exhibited better performance for the simultaneous removal of NO and Hg0 compared to Fe or Co doped catalysts. This could be due to higher BET surface area and better redox property of 2Fe4Co-MCT catalyst. In addition, we propose that chemisorbed O2 played a dominant role in selective catalytic reduction (SCR) of NO while lattice O2 played a key role in Hg0 oxidation. The results also indicate that the introduction of Fe species enhanced the activity of SCR, whereas the introduction of Co species enhanced the oxidation of Hg0. The synergistic effect of Fe and Co species in the 2Fe4Co-MCT catalyst are also suggested to be an important mechanism for simultaneously removing NO and Hg0

Outage performance analysis of cell-center/edge users under two policies of energy harvesting

In this paper, two energy harvesting policies deploying in cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) systems are considered. After period of wireless power transfer, the NOMA users including cell-edge and cell-center users simultaneously transmit the superposition coded symbols to the base station (BS). In the last time slot, the BS decodes to achieve its signal based on superposition coded symbol with corresponding power allocation factors. This paper provides exact expressions of outage probability in two schemes. Performance gap of two NOMA users can be raised by providing different power allocation factors. It is confirmed by numerical result. Distance and data rate are main factors affecting outage performance. Scheme I exhibit scenario where power beacon transmits energy signal to NOMA user while the BS feeds energy to NOMA user in Scheme II. It is shown that outage performance of Scheme I is better than that of Scheme II.Web of Science254807

Dosimetric Selection for Helical Tomotherapy Based Stereotactic Ablative Radiotherapy for Early-Stage Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer or Lung Metastases

Background No selection criteria for helical tomotherapy (HT) based stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) to treat early stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) or solitary lung metastases has been established. In this study, we investigate the dosimetric selection criteria for HT based SABR delivering 70 Gy in 10 fractions to avoid severe toxicity in the treatment of centrally located lesions when adequate target dose coverage is desired. Materials and Methods 78 HT-SABR plans for solitary lung lesions were created to prescribe 70 Gy in 10 fractions to the planning target volume (PTV). The PTV was set to have ≥95% PTV receiving 70 Gy in each case. The cases for which dose constraints for ≥1 OAR could not be met without compromising the target dose coverage were compared with cases for which all target and OAR dose constraints were met. Results There were 23 central lesions for which OAR dose constraints could not be met without compromising PTV dose coverage. Comparing to cases for which optimal HT-based SABR plans were generated, they were associated with larger tumor size (5.72±1.96 cm vs. 3.74±1.49 cm, p\u3c0.0001), higher lung dose, increased number of immediately adjacent OARs ( 3.45±1.34 vs. 1.66±0.81, p\u3c0.0001), and shorter distance to the closest OARs (GTV: 0.26±0.22 cm vs. 0.88±0.54 cm, p\u3c0.0001; PTV 0.19±0.18 cm vs. 0.48±0.36 cm, p = 0.0001). Conclusion Delivery of 70 Gy in 10 fractions with HT to meet all the given OAR and PTV dose constraints are most likely when the following parameters are met: lung lesions ≤3.78 cm (11.98 cc), ≤2 immediately adjacent OARs which are ≥0.45 cm from the gross lesion and ≥0.21 cm from the PTV