School Responsiveness and Psychosocial Stability of Teachers, Parents, and Learners on the Implementation of Learning Delivery Modalities (LDMs): A Basis in Policy Brief Formulation

Pedagogy, technology, and material resources are some challenges in ensuring the continuity of learning, while teachers, parents, and learners are factors that significantly affect the school’s learning performance. The Department of Education mandate schools and learning centers to implement capacity building and establish support mechanism to ensure the seamless transition of learning activities into the New Normal. The objective of the study is to understand how parents, learners, and teachers will be able to adjust to the new learning setup, embrace the changes, and affects the delivery and acquisition of new learning, as well as the implications of the pandemic in the participant’s personality. A sequential explanatory research design was used in the study. Data were collected in two consecutive phases. First phase data were computed from the responses in the survey questionnaire, while the second phase responses from focus group discussion used thematic analysis. Based on the generated themes, a new intervention model, Three-way Teaching and Learning Process in the New Normal, was established. The model integrates significant processes such as observation, communication, instruction, interaction, support, and participation in ensuring the success of the new learning set-up. The model also shows interventions highlighted, such as communication access, professional development, digital collaboration, independent learning, stakeholder engagement, and parental education. The intervention model is recommended to be used as an implementation framework in the Division and School Learning Continuity Plan

Mutation of an Arabidopsis Golgi membrane protein ELMO1 reduces cell adhesion

Plant growth, morphogenesis and development involve cellular adhesion, a process dependent on the composition and structure of the extracellular matrix or cell wall. Pectin in the cell wall is thought to play an essential role in adhesion, and its modification and cleavage are suggested to be highly regulated so as to change adhesive properties. To increase our understanding of plant cell adhesion, a population of ethyl methanesulfonate-mutagenized Arabidopsis were screened for hypocotyl adhesion defects using the pectin binding dye Ruthenium Red that penetrates defective but not wild-type (WT) hypocotyl cell walls. Genomic sequencing was used to identify a mutant allele of ELMO1 which encodes a 20 kDa Golgi membrane protein that has no predicted enzymatic domains. ELMO1 colocalizes with several Golgi markers and elmo1-/- plants can be rescued by an ELMO1-GFP fusion. elmo1-/- exhibits reduced mannose content relative to WT but no other cell wall changes and can be rescued to WT phenotype by mutants in ESMERALDA1, which also suppresses other adhesion mutants. elmo1 describes a previously unidentified role for the ELMO1 protein in plant cell adhesion

Book reviews

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45602/1/11199_2004_Article_BF00289693.pd

Measuring urban sustainability and liveability performance: the City Analysis Methodology

The rise in the influence of sustainability principles has resulted in an almost overwhelming number of methods for defining, measuring and assessing sustainability and liveability. For such assessments to be accurate they must have a clearly defined ‘sustainability and liveability space’, be designed for the context in which the measurements are to be taken, evidence a clear causal chain and make explicit interdependencies. The degree to which current methods meet these criteria is varied. This paper introduces the City Analysis Methodology (CAM), an innovative urban analysis framework for holistically measuring the performance of UK cities with regard to sustainability and liveability. It demonstrates the need for, and defines the parameters for, interventions that enhance rather than compromise wellbeing and provides a model for other countries to leverage the sustainability and liveability of their cities. The paper concludes with an application of the CAM to the design of city infrastructure

The evaluation of exposure risks for natural transmission of scrapie within an infected flock

Background: Although the epidemiology of scrapie has been broadly understood for many years, attempts to introduce voluntary or compulsory controls to eradicate the disease have frequently failed. Lack of precision in defining the risk factors on farm has been one of the challenges to designing control strategies. This study attempted to define which parts of the annual flock management cycle represented the greatest risk of infection to naive lambs exposed to the farm environment at different times.Results: In VRQ/VRQ lambs exposed to infected sheep at pasture or during lambing, and exposed to the buildings in which lambing took place, the attack rate was high and survival times were short. Where exposure was to pasture alone the number of sheep affected in each experimental group was reduced, and survival times were longer and related to length of exposure.Conclusion: At the flock level, eradication and control strategies for scrapie must take into account the need to decontaminate buildings used for lambing, and to reduce (or prevent) the exposure of lambs to infected sheep, especially in the later stages of incubation, and at lambing. The potential for environmental contamination from pasture should also be considered. Genotype selection may still prove to be the only viable tool to prevent infection from contaminated pasture, reduce environmental contamination and limit direct transmission from sheep to sheep

Quantitation of endogenous metabolites in mouse tumors using mass-spectrometry imaging

Described is a quantitative-mass-spectrometryimaging (qMSI) methodology for the analysis of lactate and glutamate distributions in order to delineate heterogeneity among mouse tumor models used to support drug-discovery efficacy testing. We evaluate and report on preanalysisstabilization methods aimed at improving the reproducibility and efficiency of quantitative assessments of endogenous molecules in tissues. Stability experiments demonstrate that optimum stabilization protocols consist of frozen-tissue embedding, post-tissue-sectioning desiccation, and storage at −80 °C of tissue sections sealed in vacuum-tight containers. Optimized stabilization protocols are used in combination with qMSI methodology for the absolute quantitation of lactate and glutamate in tumors, incorporating the use of two different stable-isotope-labeled versions of each analyte and spectral-clustering performed on each tissue section using k-means clustering to allow region-specific, pixel-by-pixel quantitation. Region-specific qMSI was used to screen different tumor models and identify a phenotype that has low lactate heterogeneity, which will enable accurate measurements of lactate modulation in future drug-discovery studies. We conclude that using optimized qMSI protocols, it is possible to quantify endogenous metabolites within tumors, and region-specific quantitation can provide valuable insight into tissue heterogeneity and the tumor microenvironment