Fairness challenge from first global education 'laureate'

Sean Coughlan, BBC News education correspondent

The "About to teach" course: an introductory orientation course for secondary teachers in training: an evaluation of student assessments

This piece of research is an attempt to evaluate the assessments made by secondary teachers in training of an introductory orientation course offered during the first seven weeks of the 1984 H.D. E. course in the Department of Education of Rhodes University. This course, the About To Teach (ATT) course, was introduced in an attempt to obviate some of the perceived problems that students experience in the initial months of their H.D.E. year. The course was first offered in 1982 and in both 1982 and 1983 it was assessed by the students. The evaluation of the assessments offered in those two years provided much of the background for this in-depth look at student assessments of the 1984 ATT course. Briefly, the course attempts to offer the students a stimulating, meaningful, interesting and enjoyable learning experience which will help them to orientate; prepare them adequately for their first teaching practice and the reception later of the offerings of the core theory discipline of Philosophy, Sociology and Psychology. The course itself is a piece of action research and its underlying assumptions are essentially humanistic in nature. Its planners have attempted to bracket as many assumptions as possible and to espouse only those assumptions which are basically positive in nature. It does not attempt to prescribe or offer any dogma which can or must be assessed in any formal sense; it attempts to meet the students from whatever stages in their development they are at when they arrive to commence their H.D.E. year; and it does not attempt to compel the students in any way whatsoever. It is a course which must stand or fall on its own merits. Since the researcher is himself an involved participant in the process, he felt that the completion of a detailed questionnaire and interviews with a sample of the students would be the most economical and the best means of obtaining data for as objective an analysis as possible. To further obviate the possibility of researcher bias all the responses collected have been included in the appendices so that the reader may satisfy him/herself that the interpretations made and conclusions drawn are reasonable. Briefly, the chief conclusion of this researcher is that the overwhelming majority of the students perceived the course as offering them a meaningful learning experience. In addition, it can be argued that the course is, in effect, a guidance course in that it appears to be preparing students for experiences which they still have to come across . Most are generally critical of other courses offered during the H.D . E. year and many make an appeal for, or suggest, a much more integrated approach along the lines of the ATT course . There is a definite appeal for a coherent H.D.E. experience which is meaningful and 'peoplecentred'. By no stretch of the imagination can the findings of this particular piece of research be generalised to any other context since it is very definitely specific in both context and setting. However the researcher is quietly confident that his conclusions and recommendations make a great deal of sense within the specific context of this study

Crafting happiness from everyday life:Personality, personal projects, basic psychological need satisfaction, and well-being

Introduction: Feeling competent, related, and autonomous promotes well-being through satisfying basic psychological needs, according to self-determination theory’s basic psychological need satisfaction mini-theory. Personal projects are personally relevant goal-directed activities that take place over an extended period. The quality of life elicited from pursuing personal projects depends on the degree to which projects provide a sense of relatedness, competence, and autonomy. We expected that, when controlling for perfectionistic standards and discrepancies, achievement striving would lead to the pursual of projects that provide a sense of competence, which in turn leads to well-being. We also explored autonomy and relatedness as mediators. Methods: The sample (N = 327) was composed of students and the general adult population who provided information on positive mental health, passion, zest for life, life purpose, personality, basic psychological need satisfaction, and personal projects. We used a cross-sectional survey design and tested hypotheses with twelve serial mediation models. Results: Achievement striving and personal standards were positively associated with competence, which in turn predicted well-being in 12 of 12 indirect effects tested. Achievement striving, personal standards and discrepancies contributed to change in well-being through relatedness or autonomy in 9 of 24 of exploratory indirect effects tested. Discussion: Those oriented toward achievement motivation are likely to feel competent in their pursuits (personal projects), which in turn promotes well-being. Pursuing personal projects that suit one’s personality (i.e., make it more likely to meet basic psychological needs) may be a tool to boost well-being

Subtle memory and attentional deficits revealed in an Irish stroke patient sample using domain-specific cognitive tasks

Stroke disrupts motor, sensory, and cognitive systems in survivors. Unlike in physical impairments, assessment of cognitive function is often inadequate, as no standardized procedure to monitor cognitive recovery post stroke exists. We evaluated a number of novel task-orientated tools designed to assess subtle cognitive deficits (including memory, attention, and executive functioning) in a sample of stroke patients. Although unimpaired on MMSE (Mini-Mental State Examination)-based indices of cognition, memory, and intelligence, stroke survivors were significantly impaired on tasks testing visual attention, spatial/relational processing, and associative memory. We recommend a standardized multidomain cognitive assessment and propose that cognitive deficits post stroke require in-depth assessment to inform patient-orientated rehabilitation

Transcriptome analysis reveals new insight into appressorium formation and function in the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae

Analysis of genome-wide gene-expression changes during spore germination and appressorium formation in Magnaporthe oryzae revealed that protein degradation and amino-acid metabolism are essential for appressorium formation and subsequent infection

Mechanical Stress Induces Biotic and Abiotic Stress Responses via a Novel cis-Element

Plants are continuously exposed to a myriad of abiotic and biotic stresses. However, the molecular mechanisms by which these stress signals are perceived and transduced are poorly understood. To begin to identify primary stress signal transduction components, we have focused on genes that respond rapidly (within 5 min) to stress signals. Because it has been hypothesized that detection of physical stress is a mechanism common to mounting a response against a broad range of environmental stresses, we have utilized mechanical wounding as the stress stimulus and performed whole genome microarray analysis of Arabidopsis thaliana leaf tissue. This led to the identification of a number of rapid wound responsive (RWR) genes. Comparison of RWR genes with published abiotic and biotic stress microarray datasets demonstrates a large overlap across a wide range of environmental stresses. Interestingly, RWR genes also exhibit a striking level and pattern of circadian regulation, with induced and repressed genes displaying antiphasic rhythms. Using bioinformatic analysis, we identified a novel motif overrepresented in the promoters of RWR genes, herein designated as the Rapid Stress Response Element (RSRE). We demonstrate in transgenic plants that multimerized RSREs are sufficient to confer a rapid response to both biotic and abiotic stresses in vivo, thereby establishing the functional involvement of this motif in primary transcriptional stress responses. Collectively, our data provide evidence for a novel cis-element that is distributed across the promoters of an array of diverse stress-responsive genes, poised to respond immediately and coordinately to stress signals. This structure suggests that plants may have a transcriptional network resembling the general stress signaling pathway in yeast and that the RSRE element may provide the key to this coordinate regulation

Global levels of fundamental motor skills in children : a systematic review

Competence in fundamental motor skills (FMS) facilitates physical activity participation and is important for children’s holistic development. This study aimed to systematically review the FMS levels of children worldwide, using the Test of Gross Motor Development-2 (TGMD-2). In accordance with PRISMA guidelines, studies were identified from searches across 7 databases. Studies were required to: (i) include typically developing children (3–10 years), (ii) be published in English, (iii) have been published between 2004 and 2019 and, (iv) report ≥1 TGMD-2 outcome scores. Extracted data were evaluated based on importance of determinants, strength of evidence, and methodological quality. Data from 64 articles were included. Weighted mean (and standard deviation) scores were calculated for each FMS outcome score. Analyses revealed FMS competence increases across age during childhood, with greater proficiency in locomotor skills than object control skills. Additionally, boys exhibit higher object control skill proficiency than girls. Compared to TGMD-2 normative data, children demonstrate “below average” to “average” FMS levels. This review highlights the scope for FMS development among children worldwide. These findings reinforce the necessity for FMS interventions in early educational settings, as FMS competence is positively associated with physical activity and other health outcomes

Differential cross section measurements for the production of a W boson in association with jets in proton–proton collisions at √s = 7 TeV

Measurements are reported of differential cross sections for the production of a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, in association with jets, as a function of several variables, including the transverse momenta (pT) and pseudorapidities of the four leading jets, the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT), and the difference in azimuthal angle between the directions of each jet and the muon. The data sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV was collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb[superscript −1]. The measured cross sections are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo generators, MadGraph + pythia and sherpa, and to next-to-leading-order calculations from BlackHat + sherpa. The differential cross sections are found to be in agreement with the predictions, apart from the pT distributions of the leading jets at high pT values, the distributions of the HT at high-HT and low jet multiplicity, and the distribution of the difference in azimuthal angle between the leading jet and the muon at low values.United States. Dept. of EnergyNational Science Foundation (U.S.)Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio

Optimasi Portofolio Resiko Menggunakan Model Markowitz MVO Dikaitkan dengan Keterbatasan Manusia dalam Memprediksi Masa Depan dalam Perspektif Al-Qur`an

Risk portfolio on modern finance has become increasingly technical, requiring the use of sophisticated mathematical tools in both research and practice. Since companies cannot insure themselves completely against risk, as human incompetence in predicting the future precisely that written in Al-Quran surah Luqman verse 34, they have to manage it to yield an optimal portfolio. The objective here is to minimize the variance among all portfolios, or alternatively, to maximize expected return among all portfolios that has at least a certain expected return. Furthermore, this study focuses on optimizing risk portfolio so called Markowitz MVO (Mean-Variance Optimization). Some theoretical frameworks for analysis are arithmetic mean, geometric mean, variance, covariance, linear programming, and quadratic programming. Moreover, finding a minimum variance portfolio produces a convex quadratic programming, that is minimizing the objective function ðð¥with constraintsð ð 𥠥 ðandð´ð¥ = ð. The outcome of this research is the solution of optimal risk portofolio in some investments that could be finished smoothly using MATLAB R2007b software together with its graphic analysis