Training & prompting pre-service teachers’ noticing in a standardized classroom simulation – a mobile eye-tracking study

Numerous events happening in classrooms require a teacher to select important and filter out irrelevant information. This crucial and challenging skill is referred to as noticing. For noticing classroom management events pre-service teachers have a smaller knowledge base and little teaching experience compared to expert teachers. Supporting pre-service teachers in developing their classroom management knowledge and noticing skill is, thus, of great importance for teacher education. Previous research finds positive effects of interventions on teachers’ noticing during video observation. To our knowledge, no studies depict noticing during teaching. We examined N = 46 pre-service teachers’ noticing with regard to classroom management during classroom teaching in a quasi-experimental between-subjects design. Pre-service teachers’ took part in a standardized classroom simulation after a classroom management training, with one group receiving prompting regarding evidence-based classroom management strategies before and during the classroom simulation and one group receiving only training. We also included a control group without classroom management training. To assess differences in pre-service teachers’ noticing, the classroom simulation elicited comparable conditions, including standardized classroom management events and student behavior. Mobile eye-tracking as well as retrospective video observations were used to explore teachers’ event-related and global noticing. Event-related noticing was assessed via count and accuracy of noticed classroom management events. Global noticing included objective parameters of teachers eye movements (visit/fixation counts and duration) onto the students in the standardized classroom simulation. The results show that training and prompting significantly affected pre-service teachers’ event-related noticing, with both experimental groups making fewer target and time errors compared to the control group. No significant differences were found with regard to global noticing. This includes fixation and visit count and duration on students. Correlational analysis showed a positive association between higher noticing accuracy and share of fixations on students. This study expands upon previous empirical research using mobile eye-tracking to obtain objective measures of teachers’ noticing. It sheds light on the relevance of knowledge for teachers’ noticing during teaching. It also takes a first step toward understanding how pre-service teachers’ noticing during classroom teaching can be promoted through fostering knowledge about classroom management through a training

Software Supported Modelling in Pharmacokinetics

A powerful new software concept to physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modelling of drug disposition is presented. It links the inherent modular understanding in pharmacology with orthogonal design principles from software engineering. This concept allows for flexible and user-friendly design of pharmacokinetic whole body models, data analysis, hypotheses testing or extrapolation. The typical structure of physiologically-based pharmacokinetic models is introduced. The resulting requirements from a modelling and software engineering point of view and its realizations in the software tool MEDICI-PK [9] are described. Finally, an example in the context of drug-drug interaction studies is given that demonstrates the advantage of defining a whole-body pharmacokinetic model in terms of the underlying physiological processes quite impressively: A system of 162 ODEs is automatically compiled based on the specification of 7 local physiological processes only

Discrimination of Dynamical System Models for Biological and Chemical Processes

In technical chemistry, systems biology and biotechnology, the construction of predictive models has become an essential step in process design and product optimization. Accurate modelling of the reactions requires detailed knowledge about the processes involved. However, when concerned with the development of new products and production techniques for example, this knowledge often is not available due to the lack of experimental data. Thus, when one has to work with a selection of proposed models, the main tasks of early development is to discriminate these models. In this article, a new statistical approach to model discrimination is described that ranks models wrt. the probability with which they reproduce the given data. The article introduces the new approach, discusses its statistical background, presents numerical techniques for its implementation and illustrates the application to examples from biokinetics

Training & prompting pre-service teachers’ noticing in a standardized classroom simulation – a mobile eye-tracking study

Numerous events happening in classrooms require a teacher to select important and filter out irrelevant information. This crucial and challenging skill is referred to as noticing. For noticing classroom management events pre-service teachers have a smaller knowledge base and little teaching experience compared to expert teachers. Supporting pre-service teachers in developing their classroom management knowledge and noticing skill is, thus, of great importance for teacher education. Previous research finds positive effects of interventions on teachers’ noticing during video observation. To our knowledge, no studies depict noticing during teaching. We examined N = 46 pre-service teachers’ noticing with regard to classroom management during classroom teaching in a quasi-experimental between-subjects design. Pre-service teachers’ took part in a standardized classroom simulation after a classroom management training, with one group receiving prompting regarding evidence-based classroom management strategies before and during the classroom simulation and one group receiving only training. We also included a control group without classroom management training. To assess differences in pre-service teachers’ noticing, the classroom simulation elicited comparable conditions, including standardized classroom management events and student behavior. Mobile eye-tracking as well as retrospective video observations were used to explore teachers’ event-related and global noticing. Event-related noticing was assessed via count and accuracy of noticed classroom management events. Global noticing included objective parameters of teachers eye movements (visit/fixation counts and duration) onto the students in the standardized classroom simulation. The results show that training and prompting significantly affected pre-service teachers’ event-related noticing, with both experimental groups making fewer target and time errors compared to the control group. No significant differences were found with regard to global noticing. This includes fixation and visit count and duration on students. Correlational analysis showed a positive association between higher noticing accuracy and share of fixations on students. This study expands upon previous empirical research using mobile eye-tracking to obtain objective measures of teachers’ noticing. It sheds light on the relevance of knowledge for teachers’ noticing during teaching. It also takes a first step toward understanding how pre-service teachers’ noticing during classroom teaching can be promoted through fostering knowledge about classroom management through a training

A comparison of spectrophotometric and denuder based approaches for the determination of gaseous molecular iodine

The presence of molecular iodine in the atmosphere is thought to have implications for both climate and human nutritional health, but measurement of the gas at low concentrations requires technically demanding techniques that are not widely accessible. Here, amylose coated denuder tubes and solvent traps coupled with spectrophotometric detection are evaluated and compared as relatively cheap and straightforward methods to measure gaseous molecular iodine at environmentally relevant concentrations. Denuder tubes were found to give unacceptably low and highly variable recoveries of molecular iodine from a test gas source, with values ranging from 1 to 62%. Blank concentrations were also high, being equivalent to a gas phase concentration of 5 pptv under typical operating conditions. Ethanol and hexane solvent traps gave much better performance. Optimisation of the hexane solvent trap method gave 100% recovery and an atmospheric limit of detection of 70 pptv, which is within the range of concentrations observed in the coastal marine atmosphere

Immunoexpression of the relaxin receptor LGR7 in breast and uterine tissues of humans and primates

BACKGROUND: The receptor for the peptide hormone relaxin has recently been identified as the heptahelical G-protein coupled receptor, LGR7. In order to generate molecular tools with which to characterize both in vivo and in vitro expression of this receptor in human and primate tissues, specific monotypic antibodies have been generated and applied to a preliminary analysis of human and primate female reproductive tissues. METHODS: Three peptide sequences were identified from the proposed open reading frame of the cloned LGR7 receptor gene, representing both extracellular and intracellular domains. Two to three rabbits were immunized for each epitope, and the resulting sera subjected to a systematic validation using cultured cells transiently transfected with a receptor-expressing gene construct, or appropriate control constructs. RESULTS: Human and monkey (marmoset, macaque) endometrium showed consistent and specific immunostaining in the stromal cells close to glands. Staining appeared to be more intense in the luteal phase of the cycle. Weak immunostaining was also evident in the endometrial epithelial cells of the marmoset. A myoma in one patient exhibited strong immunostaining in the circumscribing connective tissue. Uterine expression was supported by RT-PCR results from cultured primary endometrial and myometrial cells. Human breast tissue (healthy and tumors) consistently indicated specific immunostaining in the interstitial connective (stromal) tissue within the glands, but not in epithelial or myoepithelial cells, except in some tumors, where a few epithelial and tumor cells also showed weak epitope expression. CONCLUSIONS: Using validated monotypic antibodies recognizing different epitopes of the LGR7 receptor, and from different immunized animals, and in different primate species, a consistent pattern of LGR7 expression was observed in the stromal (connective tissue) cells of the endometrium and breast, consistent also with the known physiology of the relaxin hormone

Refining Kidney Survival in 383 Genetically Characterized Patients With Nephronophthisis

Kidney survival; Nephronophthisis; Prognostic factorsSupervivencia renal; Nefronoptisis; Factores pronósticosSupervivència renal; Nefronoftisi; Factors pronòsticsIntroduction Nephronophthisis (NPH) comprises a group of rare disorders accounting for up to 10% of end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) in children. Prediction of kidney prognosis poses a major challenge. We assessed differences in kidney survival, impact of variant type, and the association of clinical characteristics with declining kidney function. Methods Data was obtained from 3 independent sources, namely the network for early onset cystic kidney diseases clinical registry (n = 105), an online survey sent out to the European Reference Network for Rare Kidney Diseases (n = 60), and a literature search (n = 218). Results A total of 383 individuals were available for analysis: 116 NPHP1, 101 NPHP3, 81 NPHP4 and 85 NPHP11/TMEM67 patients. Kidney survival differed between the 4 cohorts with a highly variable median age at onset of ESKD as follows: NPHP3, 4.0 years (interquartile range 0.3–12.0); NPHP1, 13.5 years (interquartile range 10.5–16.5); NPHP4, 16.0 years (interquartile range 11.0–25.0); and NPHP11/TMEM67, 19.0 years (interquartile range 8.7–28.0). Kidney survival was significantly associated with the underlying variant type for NPHP1, NPHP3, and NPHP4. Multivariate analysis for the NPHP1 cohort revealed growth retardation (hazard ratio 3.5) and angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor (ACEI) treatment (hazard ratio 2.8) as 2 independent factors associated with an earlier onset of ESKD, whereas arterial hypertension was linked to an accelerated glomerular filtration rate (GFR) decline. Conclusion The presented data will enable clinicians to better estimate kidney prognosis of distinct patients with NPH and thereby allow personalized counseling.NEOCYST (Network of Early Onset Cystic Kidney Diseases; www.neocyst.de)27 is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research—grant code 01GM1515A. This study was also supported by the European Reference Network for Rare Kidney Diseases, which is partly co-funded by the European Union within the framework of the Third Health Program “ERN-2016-Framework Partnership Agreement 2017-2021.

Optical detection of gadolinium(iii) ions quantum dot aggregation

A rapid, sensitive and selective optical readout of the presence of gadolinium(iii) ions would have a wide range of applications for clinical and environmental monitoring. We demonstrate that water-soluble CdTe quantum dots (QDs) are induced to aggregate by Gd3+ ions in aqueous solution. By using a combination of photoluminescence spectroscopy, dynamic light scattering and fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) to monitor quantum dot aggregation kinetics, we correlate the efficiency of the self-quenching process with the degree of aggregation across a broad range of conditions, including different sizes of QDs. We attribute the aggregation to metal binding to the QD's surface ligands and the quenching to intra-aggregate energy transfer between QDs. When the strategy was applied to additional trivalent ions, the aggregation rate varied according to the particular trivalent metal ion used, suggesting that the selectivity can be enhanced and controlled by appropriate design of the capping ligands and solution conditions

Spatial and temporal variability of bacterial communities within a combined sewer system.

This study describes the temporal and spatial variability of bacterial communities within a combined sewer system in England. Sampling was conducted over 9 months in a sewer system with intensive monitoring of hydraulic conditions. The bacterial communities were characterized by 16S rRNA gene-targeted terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis. These data were related to the hydraulic data as well as the sample type, location, and time. Temporal and spatial variation was observed between and within wastewater communities and biofilm communities. The bacterial communities in biofilm were distinctly different from the communities in wastewater and exhibited greater spatial variation, while the wastewater communities exhibited variability between different months of sampling. This study highlights the variation of bacterial communities between biofilm and wastewater, and has shown both spatial and temporal variations in bacterial communities in combined sewers. The temporal variation is of interest for in-sewer processes, for example, sewer odor generation, as field measurements for these processes are often carried out over short durations and may therefore not capture the influence of this temporal variation of the bacterial communities