An Exploration of School Staff Experiences Working with Children Who Display Test Anxiety

Test anxiety is relevant to many schools and local authorities. Schools are evaluated in terms of performance by test/exam outcomes and their position in league tables. This has resulted in an increased focus on test results and data. This research examines school staff experiences supporting children with test anxiety and strategies they find useful; how competent they feel in supporting them; what would help build their confidence and understanding of test anxiety; and how EPs can help them to support children with test anxiety. Current literature acknowledges the detrimental impact that test anxiety can have on children, however most of the research has been conducted with secondary school and university students. Furthermore, limited research explores the views of school staff. Much of the aforementioned research employed quantitative techniques and thus school staff experiences of test anxiety has not been explored. A social constructionist paradigm was adopted. To enable a deeper perspective of the phenomena, a qualitative research design was used. Fifteen school staff were selected from three primary schools within the same LA. Semi-structured interviews were used and the recordings were analysed using Thematic Analysis. The findings highlighted the detrimental impact test anxiety has on school staff and children and the high levels of pressure they experience. Barriers and strategies to identify and support children with test anxiety were recognised. There were mixed views on how competent school staff feel supporting children with test anxiety; it was highlighted that teacher training courses do not adequately prepare teachers to deal with mental health issues and test anxiety. School staff would like to see greater collaboration, and further support from the local authority, particularly in terms of funding and changing the narrative around testing. School staff had positive experiences working with EPs to support children with test anxiety although at times key adults were not included in meetings due to school demands. It was argued that school staff prioritise cognitive difficulties and statutory assessments over test anxiety for EP involvement. Areas were identified in terms of support school staff would like from EPs in order to support children with test anxiety

EnzyNet: enzyme classification using 3D convolutional neural networks on spatial representation

During the past decade, with the significant progress of computational power as well as ever-rising data availability, deep learning techniques became increasingly popular due to their excellent performance on computer vision problems. The size of the Protein Data Bank has increased more than 15 fold since 1999, which enabled the expansion of models that aim at predicting enzymatic function via their amino acid composition. Amino acid sequence however is less conserved in nature than protein structure and therefore considered a less reliable predictor of protein function. This paper presents EnzyNet, a novel 3D-convolutional neural networks classifier that predicts the Enzyme Commission number of enzymes based only on their voxel-based spatial structure. The spatial distribution of biochemical properties was also examined as complementary information. The 2-layer architecture was investigated on a large dataset of 63,558 enzymes from the Protein Data Bank and achieved an accuracy of 78.4% by exploiting only the binary representation of the protein shape. Code and datasets are available at https://github.com/shervinea/enzynet.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure

Women's Cooperatives and their Contribution to the Local Development of the North Aegean Region, Greece

In the last twenty years Greece has witnessed the emergence and establishment of women’s cooperatives, a form of productive agricultural cooperatives. This paper explores their importance and their contribution to local development. Evidence is presented for an island region, the North Aegean. Personal interviews, using structured questionnaires, were conducted with the chairwomen of all the region’s cooperatives in order to obtain an insight into their structure and dynamics. According to the findings of this study, women’s cooperatives are characterized by substantial potential on the one hand and by serious drawbacks on the other. The economic performance of the cooperatives is satisfactory, while the use of local resources and ‘know how’ contribute to the development of the region. Interpersonal problems, the inability of the cooperatives’ members to fully understand their new role as businesswomen and the small participation of rural women are the cooperatives’ major problems. The future of the women’s cooperatives is still unclear despite their 20 years of existence.women’s cooperatives, North Aegean, local development, Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Ocular Symptomatology, Management, and Clinical Outcome of a Giant Intracranial Aneurysm

Giant aneurysms of the anterior intracranial circulation are rare, slowly progressive vascular abnormalities, often presenting with neuro-ophthalmological symptoms before they rupture. This is a case of a 55-year-old woman with a double aneurysm of the anterior intracranial circulation, part of which was giant, diagnosed exclusively on the basis of ocular manifestations. We also describe successful management of the case throughout a long follow-up period

Intravitreal Bevacizumab for Photodynamic Therapy-Induced Massive Macular Detachment in Acute Central Serous Chorioretinopathy

We present a long followed up case of acute central serous chorioretinopathy (CSC) complicated by a severe visual loss due to massive pigment epithelium detachment of the macula after a full-dose photodynamic therapy (PDT). Rapid anatomical and functional improvement was observed after a single intravitreal injection of bevacizumab. To our knowledge, we report the first case of PDT-treated CSC complicated by severe visual loss. We can only speculate that the serous detachment of the posterior pole might have been caused by PDT-induced VEGF overexpression, explaining such an impressive response to Avastin treatment

Understanding sustainable tourism policy : conceptual framework and cognitive mapping

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Dental Composites with Calcium / Strontium Phosphates and Polylysine

PURPOSE: This study developed light cured dental composites with added monocalcium phosphate monohydrate (MCPM), tristrontium phosphate (TSrP) and antimicrobial polylysine (PLS). The aim was to produce composites that have enhanced water sorption induced expansion, can promote apatite precipitation and release polylysine. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Experimental composite formulations consisted of light activated dimethacrylate monomers combined with 80 wt% powder. The powder phase contained a dental glass with and without PLS (2.5 wt%) and/or reactive phosphate fillers (15 wt% TSrP and 10 wt% MCPM). The commercial composite, Z250, was used as a control. Monomer conversion and calculated polymerization shrinkage were assessed using FTIR. Subsequent mass or volume changes in water versus simulated body fluid (SBF) were quantified using gravimetric studies. These were used, along with Raman and SEM, to assess apatite precipitation on the composite surface. PLS release was determined using UV spectroscopy. Furthermore, biaxial flexural strengths after 24 hours of SBF immersion were obtained. RESULTS: Monomer conversion of the composites decreased upon the addition of phosphate fillers (from 76 to 64%) but was always higher than that of Z250 (54%). Phosphate addition increased water sorption induced expansion from 2 to 4% helping to balance the calculated polymerization shrinkage of ~ 3.4%. Phosphate addition promoted apatite precipitation from SBF. Polylysine increased the apatite layer thickness from ~ 10 to 20 μm after 4 weeks. The novel composites showed a burst release of PLS (3.7%) followed by diffusion-controlled release irrespective of phosphate addition. PLS and phosphates decreased strength from 154 MPa on average by 17% and 18%, respectively. All formulations, however, had greater strength than the ISO 4049 requirement of > 80 MPa. CONCLUSION: The addition of MCPM with TSrP promoted hygroscopic expansion, and apatite formation. These properties are expected to help compensate polymerization shrinkage and help remineralize demineralized dentin. Polylysine can be released from the composites at early time. This may kill residual bacteria

THE LOCUS OF HABITUATION IN THE GIANT FIBER CIRCUIT OF DROSOPHILA

Ο μηχανισμός της εξοικείωσης είναι μια μορφή μη-συνειρμικής μάθησης, συντηρημένη εξελικτικά. Με τη χρήση τεχνικών ηλεκτροφυσιολογίας σε οργανισμούς όπως η Δροσόφιλα έχουν βρεθεί διάφορα γονίδια που φαίνεται να εμπλέκονται στην εξοικείωση. Το σύστημα γιγαντιαίων αξόνων (ΣΓΑ) στη Δροσόφιλα, το οποίο είναι ένα καλά χαρακτηρισμένο, αισθητικοκινητικό κύκλωμα είναι υπεύθυνο για την διαφυγή της μύγας. Αυτή η απόκριση της μύγας μπορεί να υποστεί εξοικείωση, και το ΣΓΑ έχει χρησιμοποιηθέι εκτενώς για τη διερεύνηση διάφορων γονιδίων στο μηχανισμό της εξοικείωσης. Ωστόσο, η τοποθεσία της εξοικείωσης παραμένει άγνωστη. Στη συγκεκριμένη έρευνα αξιοποιήσαμε σύγχρονες γενετικές τεχνικές και μεθόδους ηλεκτροφυσιολογίας με σκοπό να ανακλύψουμε το κυτταρικό υπόστρωμα της εξοικείωσης του ΣΓΑ. Υποεκφράσαμε το γονίδιο που κωδικοποιεί τους Shaker A-type διαύλους, χρησιμοποιώντας RNAi και αξιοποιώντας το σύστημα UAS-GAL4. Ακολούθως στοχεύσαμε στους προσυναπτικούς των γιγαντιαίων νευρώνων πληθυσμούς νευρώνων οι οποίοι είναι οι LPLC2 (lobula plate/lobula columnar, type 2) και οι LC4 (lobula columnar, type 4). Η ανάλυση που προέκυψε από τις ηλεκτροφυσιολογικές μελέτες κατέδειξε ότι η υποέκφραση των shaker διαύλων στους LC4 αλλά όχι στους LPLC2 νευρώνες, εξαλείφει την εξοικείωση που υφίσταται ο ΣΓΑ. Αυτό δείχνει ότι ο πληθυσμός των 55 LC4 νευρώνων που δημιουργεί περίπου 2500 συνάψεις πάνω στους γιγαντιαίους νευρώνες αποτελεί το κυτταρικό υπόστρωμα στο οποίο υφίσταται ο μηχανισμός της εξοικείωσης του ΣΓΑ. Η έρευνά μας αποτελεί το υπόβαθρο για περαιτέρω διερεύνηση των μοριακών μηχανισμών σε συναπτικό επίπεδο συγεκριμένων νευρώνων.Habituation, the response decrement after repeated stimulation, is the most primitive non-associative form of learning, conserved across species. Electrophysiological studies in model organisms such as Drosophila melanogaster have revealed various genes and mechanisms implicated in habituation. The giant fiber system (GFS) of Drosophila, a well-defined, electrophysiologically amenable, sensory-motor circuit underlies the fly’s escape response. The response can be habituated, and the GFS has been extensively used as a model to study the contribution of several genes in habituation. However, the locus of habituation has been elusive. In the current study we employed a combination of recently available genetic tools in Drosophila and electrophysiology to unravel the cellular substrate of GFS habituation. We downregulated the expression of Shaker A-type channel (homologous to vertebrate Kv1) with RNAi using the binary GAL4-UAS system. We targeted the presynaptic neurons to the giant fiber LPLC2 (lobula plate/lobula columnar, type 2) and LC4 (lobula columnar, type 4). The electrophysiological analysis revealed that shaker downregulation in LC4, but not in LPLC2, neurons eliminates habituation of the giant fiber circuit. This suggests that the group of the 55 LC4 neurons that make ~2500 synaptic contacts with the giant fiber dendrites is the cellular locus of GFS habituation. Our study lays the ground for in depth analysis of the molecular mechanisms underlying habituation at the synaptic level in identified neurons

A Comparative Study of Biomechanical Simulators in Deformable Registration of Brain Tumor Images

Simulating the brain tissue deformation caused by tumor growth has been found to aid the deformable registration of brain tumor images. In this paper, we evaluate the impact that different biomechanical simulators have on the accuracy of deformable registration. We use two alternative frameworks for biomechanical simulations of mass effect in 3-D magnetic resonance (MR) brain images. The first one is based on a finite-element model of nonlinear elasticity and unstructured meshes using the commercial software package ABAQUS. The second one employs incremental linear elasticity and regular grids in a fictitious domain method. In practice, biomechanical simulations via the second approach may be at least ten times faster. Landmarks error and visual examination of the coregistered images indicate that the two alternative frameworks for biomechanical simulations lead to comparable results of deformable registration. Thus, the computationally less expensive biomechanical simulator offers a practical alternative for registration purposes