Effects of corpus-based instruction on phraseology in learner English

This study analyses the effects of data-driven learning (DDL) on the phraseology used by 223 English students at an Italian university. The students studied the genre of opinion survey reports through paper-based and hands-on exploration of a reference corpus. They then wrote their own report and a learner corpus of these texts was compiled. A contrastive interlanguage analysis approach (Granger, 2002) was adopted to compare the phraseology of key items in the learner corpus with that found in the reference corpus. Comparison is also made with a learner corpus of reports produced by a previous cohort of students who had not used the reference corpus. Students who had done DDL tasks used a wider range of genre-appropriate phraseology and produced a lower number of stock phrases than those who had not. The study also finds evidence that students use more phrases encountered in paper-based concordancing tasks than in hands-on tasks.Unlike in previous DDL studies, observations of the learning of a specific text-type through DDL in the present study are based on the comparison with both a control learner corpus and an expert corpus.The study also considers the use of DDL with a large class size

Benefits of Implementing Environmental Education in Low-Income Elementary Schools

This senior capstone research analyzes and discusses the benefits of environmental education on low-income elementary schools. As environmental sustainability has become an important topic in today’s society, it is vital that students have the knowledge and resources to become activists in their community. Through the use of literature review on the history of environmental education, the state standards, and interview with teachers and survey with students in the Monterey County, incorporating environmental education programs will benefit low-income elementary school students

The Knowledge and Attitudes Possessed by Parents of Elementary School Children

This study applies a method of determining the content of a curriculum for a group composed of mothers and fathers of elementary school children. The needs of the group are determined by a comparison of what specially selected judges consider important in the care and the guidance of children, and the knowledge and attitudes possessed by the parents

Characterization, metagenomic screening and engineering of bacterial nitroreductases for biomedical research applications

Bacterial nitroreductases are NAD(P)H-dependent oxidoreductases (generally homodimeric and FMN-binding) that can catalyse the 4- or 6-electron reduction of nitro groups on aromatic rings. This results in a profound electronic shift that can dramatically alter the properties of the molecule as a whole, e.g. activating latent cytotoxins, or detoxifying certain pollutants or antibiotics. We have exploited these properties and the characteristic promiscuity of these enzymes to develop useful tools for biomedical research and therapy, in particular the anticancer strategy gene-directed enzyme prodrug therapy, and targeted cellular ablation in zebrafish models of degenerative disease. We have used directed evolution to improve desirable activities and are also investigating the use of dual positive and negative selection strategies to tailor reaction specificity and to better understand how the evolution of promiscuous enzymes is modulated by in vivo constraints. A further application of our positive selection capabilities has been the recovery of novel nitroreductases from libraries of uncharacterised environmental DNA

Effects of corpus-based instruction on phraseology in learner English

This study analyses the effects of data-driven learning (DDL) on the phraseology used by 223 English students at an Italian university. The students studied the genre of opinion survey reports through paper-based and hands-on exploration of a reference corpus. They then wrote their own report and a learner corpus of these texts was compiled. A contrastive interlanguage analysis approach (Granger, 2002) was adopted to compare the phraseology of key items in the learner corpus with that found in the reference corpus. Comparison is also made with a learner corpus of reports produced by a previous cohort of students who had not used the reference corpus. Students who had done DDL tasks used a wider range of genre-appropriate phraseology and produced a lower number of stock phrases than those who had not. The study also finds evidence that students use more phrases encountered in paper-based concordancing tasks than in hands-on tasks. Unlike in previous DDL studies, observations of the learning of a specific text-type through DDL in the present study are based on the comparison with both a control learner corpus and an expert corpus. The study also considers the use of DDL with a large class size

Public Event: David Barsamian on Corporate Media, Alternative media, and Democracy

(Post on behalf of Prof. Robert Hackett) There will be a public seminar by David Barsamian, the founder and director of Alternative Radio. The seminar will take place on November 4, 2015, starting at 1.30 p.m. in the CMNS Conference Room K8652 at Burnaby Campus. Please see the attached poster for details

MA Defence: Treading the Line: Seeking balance in information sharing and privacy in ActionADE by Serena Small

Our dear colleague, Serena Small will defend her MA thesis on Thursday, July 13, 2017 at Harbour Centre, Room 2200 (10:00-12:00). Here is the abstract of her thesis "Treading the Line: Seeking balance in information sharing and privacy in ActionADE.

Still Policing the Crisis: A Seminar and Panel Discussion on Stuart Hall’s Relevance in the Current Conjuncture

There will be a public seminar with on Stuart Hall's relevance in the current conjuncture of political crisis. The seminar will take place on Oct. 9th, 2015 between 4:00 and 6:00 pm at room 2270, Harbour Centre. Please see the attached poster for details

High-level expression, high-throughput screening and direct recovery of nitroreductase enzymes from metagenome libraries

We have developed generally applicable library generation methods to maximize expression of cloned environmental genes, enabling screening for weak phenotypes in metagenome libraries. Our method also permits direct recovery of the encoded enzymes, providing rapid access to an almost unlimited diversity of previously unexplored biocatalysts. We have exemplified this for nitroreductases, members of a diverse family of oxidoreductase enzymes that can catalyze the bioreductive activation of nitroaromatic prodrugs such as metronidazole. These capabilities have diverse applications in medicine and research, including anti-cancer gene therapy and targeted ablation of nitroreductase-expressing tissues in transgenic animal models. However, research in these fields has largely been focused on the canonical nitroreductase NfsB from Escherichia coli, which exhibits sub-optimal levels of metronidazole activity. In previous work we have investigated alternative nitroreductase enzymes, sourced from genome-sequenced bacteria. To complement this work we have now turned to the discovery of novel nitroreductases from metagenomic DNA fragments, derived from the uncultivable bacteria present in New Zealand soil and lichen species