The Impact of COVID-19 on Secondary Teachers’ Health and Wellbeing

Secondary teachers across the United States have had various experiences due to the COVID-19 global pandemic during the 2020-2021 school year. These experiences may have influenced teacher exhaustion and their ability to cope with numerous stressors related to COVID-19. This applied dissertation was designed to provide additional clarity to districts related to secondary teachers’ daily work experiences and attitudes while teaching during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Secondary teachers were surveyed on how they perceived their occupational demands related specifically to emotional exhaustion, personal accomplishments, and depersonalization utilizing the Maslach Burnout Inventory- Educators (MBI-ES). The study also examined how secondary teachers’ coping mechanisms influenced their perception of well-being and its impact on the primary method of instruction (i.e., face-to-face, blended, or fully virtual) during the COVID-19 global pandemic using the Impact of Coronavirus Pandemic on Secondary Teachers Survey (IC-19PSTS). The results indicated significant, negative correlations between Depersonalization and well-being and Depersonalization and coping. Similar analysis reported that Personal Accomplishment and coping were significantly, positively correlated, while there was a moderate positive correlation found between coping mechanisms and well-being. The overarching discoveries to the study were that professional development benefits teachers during crisis by contributing to their overall feeling of Personal Accomplishment and teachers who choose positive coping mechanisms improve their overall well-being

As First Secretary of State, is Dominic Raab the second most senior politician in the UK?

As well as being Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab holds the office of First Secretary of State, and he has previously deputised for the PM. Surveying this office’s near 60-year history, Stephen Thornton and Jonathan Kirkup explain how its importance depends on who holds the post, and, whatever happens to Raab in any reshuffle, the status of First Secretary can vary according to how the post-holder is perceived by the PM

Insecticide resistance selection and reversal in two strains of Aedes aegypti

Background: Laboratory reared mosquito colonies are essential tools to understand insecticide action. However, they differ considerably from wild populations and from each other depending on their origin and rearing conditions, which makes studying the effects of specific resistance mechanisms difficult. This paper describes our methods for establishing multiple resistant strains of Aedes aegypti from two colonies as a new resource for further research on metabolic and target site resistance. Methods: Two resistant colonies of Ae. aegypti, from Cayman and Recife, were selected through 10 generations of exposure to insecticides including permethrin, malathion and temephos, to yield eight strains with different profiles of resistance due to either target site or metabolic resistance. Resistance ratios for each insecticide were calculated for the selected and unselected strains. The frequency of kdr alleles in the Cayman strains was determined using TaqMan assays. A comparative gene expression analysis among Recife strains was conducted using qPCR in larvae (CCae3A, CYP6N12, CYP6F3, CYP9M9) and adults (CCae3A, CYP6N12, CYP6BB2, CYP9J28a). Results: In the selected strain of Cayman, mortality against permethrin reduced almost to 0% and kdr became fixated by 5 generations. A similar phenotype was seen in the unselected homozygous resistant colony, whilst mortality in the susceptible homozygous colony rose to 82.9%. The Recife strains showed different responses between exposure to adulticide and larvicide, with detoxification genes in the temephos selected strain staying similar to the baseline, but a reduction in detoxification genes displayed in the other strains. Conclusions: These selected strains, with a range of insecticide resistance phenotypes and genotypes, will support further research on the effects of target-site and/or metabolic resistance mechanisms on various life-history traits, behaviours and vector competence of this important arbovirus vector

Evolutionary Models for Formation of Network Motifs and Modularity in the Saccharomyces Transcription Factor Network

Many natural and artificial networks contain overrepresented subgraphs, which have been termed network motifs. In this article, we investigate the processes that led to the formation of the two most common network motifs in eukaryote transcription factor networks: the bi-fan motif and the feed-forward loop. Around 100 million y ago, the common ancestor of the Saccharomyces clade underwent a whole-genome duplication event. The simultaneous duplication of the genes created by this event enabled the origin of many network motifs to be established. The data suggest that there are two primary mechanisms that are involved in motif formation. The first mechanism, enabled by the substantial plasticity in promoter regions, is rewiring of connections as a result of positive environmental selection. The second is duplication of transcription factors, which is also shown to be involved in the formation of intermediate-scale network modularity. These two evolutionary processes are complementary, with the pre-existence of network motifs enabling duplicated transcription factors to bind different targets despite structural constraints on their DNA-binding specificities. This process may facilitate the creation of novel expression states and the increases in regulatory complexity associated with higher eukaryotes

Using structural motifs to identify proteins with DNA binding function

This work describes a method for predicting DNA binding function from structure using 3-dimensional templates. Proteins that bind DNA using small contiguous helix¿turn¿helix (HTH) motifs comprise a significant number of all DNA-binding proteins. A structural template library of seven HTH motifs has been created from non-homologous DNA-binding proteins in the Protein Data Bank. The templates were used to scan complete protein structures using an algorithm that calculated the root mean squared deviation (rmsd) for the optimal superposition of each template on each structure, based on Ca backbone coordinates. Distributions of rmsd values for known HTH-containing proteins (true hits) and non-HTH proteins (false hits) were calculated. A threshold value of 1.6 Å rmsd was selected that gave a true hit rate of 88.4% and a false positive rate of 0.7%. The false positive rate was further reduced to 0.5% by introducing an accessible surface area threshold value of 990 Å2 per HTH motif. The template library and the validated thresholds were used to make predictions for target proteins from a structural genomics project

Dissecting Trait Heterogeneity: a Comparison of Three Clustering Methods Applied to Genotypic Data

Background: Trait heterogeneity, which exists when a trait has been defined with insufficient specificity such that it is actually two or more distinct traits, has been implicated as a confounding factor in traditional statistical genetics of complex hu man disease. In the absence of de tailed phenotypic data collected consistently in combination with genetic data, unsupervised computational methodologies offer the potential for discovering underlying trait heteroge neity. The performance of three such methods – Bayesian Classification, Hyperg raph-Based Clustering, and Fuzzy k -Modes Clustering – appropriate for categorical data were comp ared. Also tested was the ability of these methods to detect trait heterogeneity in the presence of locus heteroge neity and/or gene-gene interaction , which are two other complicating factors in discovering genetic models of complex human disease. To dete rmine the efficacy of applying the Bayesian Classification method to re al data, the reliability of its intern al clustering metr ics at finding good clusterings was evaluated using permutation testing. Results: Bayesian Classifica tion outperformed the other two method s, with the exception that the Fuzzy k -Modes Clustering performed best on the most comp lex genetic model. Bayesian Classificati on achieved excellent recovery for 75% of the da tasets simulated under the simplest genetic model, while it achieved moderate recovery for 56% of datase ts with a sample size of 500 or more (across all simulated models) and for 86% of datasets with 10 or fewer nonfuncti onal loci (across all si mulated models). Neither Hypergraph Clustering nor Fuzzy k -Modes Clustering achieved good or excellent cluster recovery for a majority of datasets even under a re stricted set of conditions. When usin g the average log of class strength as the internal clustering metric, th e false positive rate was controlled very well, at three percent or less for all three significance levels (0. 01, 0.05, 0.10), and the false negative rate was acceptably low (18 percent) for the least stringent sign ificance level of 0.10. Conclusion: Bayesian Classificati on shows promise as an unsuper vised computational method for dissecting trait hetero geneity in genotypic data. Its control of fa lse positive and false negative rates lends confidence to the validity of its results. Further investigation of how differ ent parameter settings may improve the performance of Bayesian Classification, especi ally under more comp lex genetic models, is ongoing

From Rab to Raab: the construction of the office of first secretary of state

Through information gained from interviews with key political actors, archival research and close examination of biographical material, this article aims to provide the first detailed account of what it means to be the British First Secretary of State. Sometimes regarded simply as a synonym for Deputy Prime Minister, it will be demonstrated that the reality is far more complicated. Not all First Secretaries have been regarded as the Prime Minister’s second-in-command, indeed there have been many years where the post has ceased to exist. Yet, at other times, First Secretaries have led the country, albeit briefly. The main argument to be made is that the office of First Secretary of State is only as important as the person holding that office is perceived to be important, but there is potential for that to change

Socio-economic patterning of food and drink advertising at public transport stops in Edinburgh, UK

No abstract available