Enhancing Life Sciences Teachers’ Biodiversity Knowledge

In the last two decades, South Africa has made efforts to integrate biodiversity content in its Life Sciences curriculum; however its implementation lacks systemic coherence. This is due to ineffective professional development approaches. This paper provides insights into how Life Sciences teachers in the Eastern Cape can be supported through professional learning communities (PLCs) as a potential approach to enhancing their biodiversity knowledge. PLCs are communities that provide the setting and necessary support for groups of classroom teachers to participate collectively in determining their own developmental trajectories, and to set up activities that will drive their development. The case study presented in this paper is part of a broader qualitative PhD study which explored the functionings and conversion factors in biodiversity teacher PLCs in South Africa. Drawing on teachers’ and facilitators’ experiences and the observation of the PLC approaches, the capability approach was used to analyse the functionings and conversion factors that enhance teachers’ biodiversity knowledge. The paper highlights that for PLCs to be effective approaches for professional development, they need to be aligned to teachers’ valued functionings. It also reveals that different conversion factors enable teachers’ achievements of valued functionings in the PLC. The paper aims to contribute to wider policies on capacity building for teachers

Interaction between clients and physiotherapists in group exercise classes in geriatric rehabilitation

The aim of this paper is to explore how older people construct their interaction in group exercise classes in geriatric rehabilitation and what is their contribution to the interaction. Discourse analysis was employed and data, consisting of seven videotaped group-based exercise sessions, were collected from 52 older people (aged 66–93 years) and nine rehabilitation professionals in seven rehabilitation centres. Four discourse categories were found. In “taciturn exercising”, older people remained verbally silent but physically active. In “submissive disagreeing”, older people opposed the professionals’ agenda by displaying reluctant consent to proposals. In “resilient endeavouring”, older adults persisted on their course of action, regardless of the disapproval of the professionals. In “lay helping”, older people initiated spontaneous encouragement, but also gave verbal and physical assistance to their peers. Older people's meaningful contribution to interaction, whilst it may challenge the institutional flow of activities, can constitute an integral part of the re-ablement process of rehabilitation

A Scoping Review of Digital Gaming Research Involving Older Adults Aged 85 and Older

Background: Interest in the use of digital game technologies by older adults is growing across disciplines from health and gerontology to computer science and game studies. The objective of this scoping review was to examine research evidence involving the oldest old (persons 85 years of age or greater) and digital game technology. Materials and Methods: PubMed, CINHAL, and Scopus were searched, and 46 articles were included in this review. Results: Results highlighted that 60 percent of articles were published in gerontological journals, whereas only 8.7 percent were published in computer science journals. No studies focused directly on the oldest old population. Few studies included sample sizes greater than 100 participants. Seven primary and 34 secondary themes were identified, of which Hardware Technology and Assessment were the most common. Conclusions: Existing evidence demonstrates the paucity of studies engaging older adults 85 years of age and above regarding the use of digital gaming and highlights a new understudied cohort for further research focus. Recommendations for future research include intentional recruitment and proportionate representation of participants ≥85 years of age, large sample sizes, and explicit mention of specific numbers of participants ≥85 years of age, which are necessary to advance knowledge in this area. Integrating a rigorous and robust mixed-methods approach including theoretical perspectives would lend itself to further in-depth understanding and knowledge generation in this field

Entangling and Elevating Creativity and Criticality in Participatory Futuring Engagements

This article proposes that creativity and criticality not only can but should be entangled and elevated in participatory futuring engagements. Selected concepts from creativity theory and critical futures studies are applied to develop a set of futuring games through action research. We claim that participatory processes designed to entangle and elevate creativity and criticality produce more novel and varied ideas that better fit the purposes of futures studies. This article offers four arguments for combining creativity and criticality in participatory futuring engagements. First, due to complexity and uncertainty, the future is ultimately unknowable and requires tools to probe the unknown. Second, novelty is difficult to achieve in practice while creativity and criticality can help overcome these challenges. Third, discontinuities are the main sources of futures that are most radically different from the present and will have the biggest impact. Fourth, creativity and criticality support the rigorous imagining required for exploring and discovering new possible futures. This article analyzes three experimentations in entangling and elevating creativity and criticality in game-based futuring, stemming from Causal Layered Analysis. Based on these examples, we demonstrate that creativity and criticality, when combined, help people break through the limitations of current understanding, reveal approaching tipping points, and find the “unvisited cavities” through rhizomatic knowledge creation. However, there remain challenges in evaluating how well various participatory designs support creativity and criticality in practice. Context-sensitive evaluation tools and open sharing of outcomes are needed to develop participation design principles capable of supporting creativity and criticality in participatory futuring.</p

Bounds on the Higgs-Boson Mass in the Presence of Non-Standard Interactions

The triviality and vacuum stability bounds on the Higgs-boson mass are revisited in the presence of new interactions parameterized in a model-independent way by an effective lagrangian. When the scale of new physics is below 50 TeV the triviality bound is unchanged but the stability lower bound is increased by 40-60 GeV. Should the Higgs-boson mass be close to its current lower experimental limit, this leads to the possibility of new physics at the scale of a few TeV, even for modest values of the effective lagrangian parameters.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, RevTex, submitted to PR

A Model System for In Vitro Studies of Bank Vole Borne Viruses

The bank vole (Myodes glareolus) is a common small mammal in Europe and a natural host for several important emerging zoonotic viruses, e.g. Puumala hantavirus (PUUV) that causes hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS). Hantaviruses are known to interfere with several signaling pathways in infected human cells, and HFRS is considered an immune-mediated disease. There is no in vitro-model available for infectious experiments in bank vole cells, nor tools for analyses of bank vole immune activation and responses. Consequently, it is not known if there are any differences in the regulation of virus induced responses in humans compared to natural hosts during infection. We here present an in vitro-model for studies of bank vole borne viruses and their interactions with natural host cell innate immune responses. Bank vole embryonic fibroblasts (VEFs) were isolated and shown to be susceptible for PUUV-infection, including a wild-type PUUV strain (only passaged in bank voles). The significance of VEFs as a model system for bank vole associated viruses was further established by infection studies showing that these cells are also susceptible to tick borne encephalitis, cowpox and Ljungan virus. The genes encoding bank vole IFN-β and Mx2 were partially sequenced and protocols for semi-quantitative RT-PCR were developed. Interestingly, PUUV did not induce an increased IFN-β or Mx2 mRNA expression. Corresponding infections with CPXV and LV induced IFN-β but not Mx2, while TBEV induced both IFN-β and Mx2

Power of lower extremities and age were the main determinants on the agility test for adults in a cohort of men aged 66-91 years

Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Objective: To evaluate the relationship between agility and personal factors, muscle strength and power, mobility, self-reported balance and physical activity among older men. Methods: Agility was measured by using the Agility Test for Adults (ATA). We studied 100 Finnish male former elite athletes (endurance n = 50; power n = 50) and 50 matched controls aged 66 to 91 years (mean age 75.5 years). The associations between agility and other variables were similar between three groups; thus, multiple linear regression analyses were done by using the pooled data of the participants. Results: On the basis of multiple linear regression analyses, combination of age (p = .02), self-reported Activities-specific Balance Confidence scale (ABC scale), jumping height (p = .001) and self-rated health explained 26% of the variance in execution time of ATA (R-2 = 0.26; p = .000002) among elderly men. Conclusion: Power of lower extremities and age were the main determinants of the results of ATA in a cohort of men aged 66-91 years. From a clinical point of view, power of lower extremities measured by test demanding explosive power plays an important role to maintain or enhance capacity of agility.Peer reviewe

On the phenomenology of a Z' coupling only to third-family fermions

The phenomenology of an additional U(1) neutral gauge boson Z' coupled to the third family of fermions is discussed. One might expect such a particle to contribute to processes where taus, b and t quarks are produced. Precision data from LEP1 put severe constraints on the mixing and heavy-boson mass. We find that the effects of such a particle could not be observed at hadronic colliders, be it at the Tevatron or the LHC, because of the QCD background. At LEP2 and future e^+e^- linear colliders, one could instead hope to observe such effects, in particular for b\bar b final states.Comment: 36 pages, LaTeX, including 12 figure

Neutrino Masses in the Supersymmetric Standard Model with Right-Handed Neutrinos and Spontaneous R-Parity Violation

We propose an extension of the supersymmetric standard model with right-handed neutrinos and a singlet Higgs field, and study the neutrino masses in this model. The Majorana masses for the right-handed neutrinos are generated around the supersymmetry breaking scale through the vacuum expectation value of the singlet Higgs field. This model may induce spontaneous R-parity violation via the vacuum expectation value of the right-handed sneutrino. In the case, the effective theory is similar to a bilinear R-parity violating model. There are two sources for the neutrino masses: one is this bilinear R-parity breaking effect, and the other is the ordinary seesaw effect between left- and right-handed neutrinos. Combining these two effects, the hierarchical neutrino mass pattern arises even when the neutrino Yukawa matrices are not hierarchical. We acquire appropriate masses and mixings to explain both the solar and atmospheric neutrino oscillations.Comment: 22pages, RevTeX, 3 ps figures; a reference adde