Understanding the Volunteer Experience: A Case Study of AIDS Community Care Montreal

This qualitative case study examined the potential of transformational learning through Volunteering at a Montreal based HIV/AIDS organization, Aids Community Care Montreal (ACCM). Five volunteers agreed to participate in the project and they were interviewed about their experiences at ACCM, HIV/AIDS education as well as their judgement about the impact of volunteering in their lives. The author also underwent training as a volunteer in the same organization and this experience provided another lens in analyzing the interview results. Through open ended interviews, five participants narrated the transformative impact of learning about HIV/AIDS and working in the community centre. The interviews were taped and transcribed and the analysis followed the ten steps of transformative learning outlined by Mezirow. The participants acknowledged that their experience has led them to be more proactive with safe sexual practices, as well as encouraging others to learn about safe sex practices and the realization that HIV is no longer a death sentence necessarily. The volunteer participants have also begun trying to reduce the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS beginning with their immediate social circles and beyond. The participants also expressed the importance of emotional connections and the need for feeling useful in order to continue with their volunteer time investment. Without feeling needed and useful, there is a certain level of dissatisfaction and while ideas and perceptions on HIV/AIDS remain transformed, the motivation to continue working with the organizations wanes. This project is a first building block towards further study of the impact of volunteering on transformational learning and whether or not the effects of similar experiences can be long-lasting

Developing a Questionnaire to Assess Prior Knowledge of Basic Statistical Concepts in Students Following a Statistics Course as Part of an Engineering Degree At an Online University.

This study aims to build a questionnaire to assess initial statisticalcompetence in university students doing Engineering degrees at an online University (Degrees in Industrial Organization Engineering, Computer Engineering and Engineering of Telecommunications Technologies and Services). The Statistics Concept Inventory (SCI), a multiple-choice questionnaire which assesses understanding of basic statistical concepts, was used to design this questionnaire. Ten of the 38 questions which make up the questionnaire were chosen, those which fit the prior studies of the students and the content of the course to be studied. Applying this questionnaire will allow the prior knowledge of the students to be identified, in order to design didactic methods that will improve understanding of statistical concepts.2018-1

Osteopontin expression in healing wounds of horses and in human keloids

REASONS FOR PERFORMING STUDY: Convincing evidence shows that persistent or excessive expression of osteopontin (OPN) is linked to fibroproliferation of various organs in laboratory animals and in man, such that its downregulation is a logical therapeutic objective. OBJECTIVES: To investigate OPN expression in an equine model of wound healing and in clinical specimens of equine exuberant granulation tissue and human keloids in an effort to better understand the contribution of this protein to inflammation-associated skin fibrosis. STUDY DESIGN: Description of gene and protein expression in an experimental equine model of wound healing and clinical specimens in horse and man. METHODS: Osteopontin gene expression was evaluated by quantitative PCR, while protein expression was investigated by means of immunohistochemical staining. RESULTS: Quantitative PCR showed that the OPN gene is expressed in normal intact skin of horses and continues to be expressed during the wound-healing process. An increase in gene expression was observed throughout the phases of wound healing, with a final decrease at wound closure. The protein was not detected in normal skin. Keratinocytes in wound-edge samples did not express the protein, whereas dermal immunoreactivity was confined to inflammatory cells. Healed wounds were devoid of staining. Equine exuberant granulation tissue showed immunoreactivity of the surrounding epidermis, infiltrating neutrophils, mononuclear cells, endothelial cells and fibroblasts. Human keloids showed OPN immunoreactivity throughout the epidermis as well as in mononuclear cells and scattered fibroblasts. CONCLUSIONS: Immunohistochemical data show a different pattern of expression between normally healing and fibrotic wounds (exuberant granulation tissue and keloids), thus suggesting a role in fibroproliferation in horses and man

Kaluza-Klein FRW cosmological models in Lyra manifold

Abstract We have constructed five dimensional FRW cosmological models for k= -1, 1, 0 in Lyra manifold with time dependent displacement field. The matter field is considered in the form of a perfect fluid with isotropic matter pressure. It is found that the model for k=-1 is inflationary. For k=1, the model is inflationary for set of values of arbitrary constant n and decelerates in the standard way for another set of values of n. Moreover the concept of Lyra manifold does not exist at infinite time

Explaining and inducing savant skills: privileged access to lower level, less-processed information

I argue that savant skills are latent in us all. My hypothesis is that savants have privileged access to lower level, less-processed information, before it is packaged into holistic concepts and meaningful labels. Owing to a failure in top-down inhibition, they can tap into information that exists in all of our brains, but is normally beyond conscious awareness. This suggests why savant skills might arise spontaneously in otherwise normal people, and why such skills might be artificially induced by low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation. It also suggests why autistic savants are atypically literal with a tendency to concentrate more on the parts than on the whole and why this offers advantages for particular classes of problem solving, such as those that necessitate breaking cognitive mindsets. A strategy of building from the parts to the whole could form the basis for the so-called autistic genius. Unlike the healthy mind, which has inbuilt expectations of the world (internal order), the autistic mind must simplify the world by adopting strict routines (external order)