University Expectations and Preparations at the Upper-Secondary School Level: A Case Study at the Experimental High School of Hanoi and Hanoi University

The Vietnamese education system has shifted drastically in recent history. From the influence of the French colonial period, to Ho Chi Minh’s literacy campaigns, to recent changes in the higher education system, Vietnam’s development has largely impacted students and educators. Even as the education system begins to modernize, many of the original Confucian values still dominate the field. With this dynamic in mind, this project aims to discover students’ expectations and preparations for university. By conducting a case study at the Experimental High School of Hanoi, I was able to hold class discussions about university plans with nearly 400 students and conduct interviews with eight students and one teacher. This enabled me to learn the type of work the students and the school value when researching, preparing, studying, and applying to university, but also the student’s thoughts, feelings, and expectations for university. Additionally, two focus groups with current university students allowed me to obtain both a retrospective and prospective point of view on the university process. From these data, I was able to examine how factors such as parental influence, stress over choosing a future job, and immense focus on the university entrance examination drive students’ university process. Students, especially students who plan on studying abroad, must put ample time and effort into attending university. Overall, they aim to gain strong academic growth in areas about which they are passionate, applicable job skills that will make them strong candidates after graduation, and also important life skills

Community uses of maritime heritage in Bermuda: a heritage ethnography with museum implications

PDF of thesis revised on 18th August 2012 to correct an error in the BibliographyThis research contributes to the fields of heritage and museum studies with a threefold objective: conceptualise heritage as a process, using an appropriate research method, with implications for museums. The work correspondingly helps to redress the undertheorisation of heritage, the inadequacy of methods for grasping heritage as an ethnographic object of study, and the disconnection between communities and their museums – and, underlying and linking these issues, the widespread incorrect and damaging presumption that individuals, or the communities they constitute, are heritage deficient. In doing so, the presumption of public heritage deficiency underlying and linking these theoretical, methodological and museological ‘problems’ is challenged and countered. Drawing on my heritage ethnography of maritime Bermuda, I examine how and why people of this mid-Atlantic island use maritimity to formulate identity and community, and thereby generate maritime heritage. This contextualised case study engages with current thinking and key debates about heritage and museums to conceptualise heritage cross-culturally. Introductory chapters review heritage and museums across the relevant scholarly, maritime, and Bermuda scales and reflect upon my methodological choices during the research design, fieldwork and analysis. Five chapters of ethnographic analysis subsequently interpret community uses of heritage in terms of Bermudian relationships with the sea. Specifically, this analysis identifies and explores maritime heritage as: relationships with past and present maritimes; negotiations of ‘race’ and its legacies; beliefs in authenticity; curatorial practices of community museology; and aspirational remedies to social crisis. With this rich ethnographic yet analytic account of maritime heritage in Bermuda, I expand the framework for understanding heritage as a phenomena and concept, offer a heritage model to museums – and maritime and Bermuda’s museums specifically – so they may better connect with their communities, and utilise and innovate heritage ethnography as a specialised method for heritage research, museum curation and wider community use

A case study of Hispanic middle school students in an ESL classroom: Discourses in academic reading instruction

This case study examined student teacher interaction that took place in one ESL middle school classroom with 29 Latino/a students learning to read in English. Observations in classrooms and interviews with teachers were conducted over a ten month period, one complete school year. Students were also tested in their reading comprehension in Spanish at the beginning of the school year. These results were compared with results on English entrance exams and with the results on English reading tests at the end of the school year. The important and main themes were those of the ESL teachers’ preparation of the students in reading and writing throughout the school year for the spring term project and a juried poster presentation, and the students’ self-reflection contained in responses to teacher initiated prompts. The principal artifact mediating learning was the interactive computer software programs provided by the school. The qualitative results suggest that students’ strong identification with family and the immigrant circumstances may provide discourse dissonances that interfere with motivation and the development of self-directed learning. The results of testing showed that a student’s year-end results in English reading were predicted by the beginning level of English reading skills. A lesser, but still significant finding, was that L1 Spanish reading performance was a predictor of L2 English reading performance

The di-iron RIC protein (YtfE) of Escherichia coli interacts with the DNA-binding protein from starved cells (Dps) to diminish RIC-protein-mediated redox stress

The RIC (Repair of Iron Clusters) protein of Escherichia coli is a di-iron hemerythrin-like protein that has a proposed function in repairing stress-damaged iron-sulphur clusters. In this work, we performed a Bacterial Two Hybrid screening to search for RIC-protein interaction partners in E. coli. As a result, the DNA-binding protein from starved cells (Dps) was identified and its potential interaction with RIC was tested by BACTH, Bimolecular-Fluorescence-Complementation and pull-down assays. Using the activity of two Fe-S-containing enzyme as indicators of cellular Fe-S cluster damage, we observed that strains with single deletions of ric or dps have significantly lower aconitase and fumarase activities. In contrast, the double ric dps mutant strain displayed no loss of aconitase and fumarase activity with respect to the wild type. Additionally, while complementation of the ric dps double mutant with ric led to a severe loss of aconitase activity, this effect was no longer observed when a gene encoding a di-iron site variant of the RIC protein was employed. The dps mutant exhibited a large increase in ROS levels, but this increase was eliminated when ric was also inactivated. Absence of other iron storage proteins, or of peroxidase and catalases, had no impact on RIC-mediated redox stress induction. Hence, we show that RIC interacts with Dps in a manner that serves to protect E. coli from RIC-protein-induced ROS

Histone modifications form a cell-type-specific chromosomal bar code that persists through the cell cycle.

Chromatin configuration influences gene expression in eukaryotes at multiple levels, from individual nucleosomes to chromatin domains several Mb long. Post-translational modifications (PTM) of core histones seem to be involved in chromatin structural transitions, but how remains unclear. To explore this, we used ChIP-seq and two cell types, HeLa and lymphoblastoid (LCL), to define how changes in chromatin packaging through the cell cycle influence the distributions of three transcription-associated histone modifications, H3K9ac, H3K4me3 and H3K27me3. We show that chromosome regions (bands) of 10-50 Mb, detectable by immunofluorescence microscopy of metaphase (M) chromosomes, are also present in G1 and G2. They comprise 1-5 Mb sub-bands that differ between HeLa and LCL but remain consistent through the cell cycle. The same sub-bands are defined by H3K9ac and H3K4me3, while H3K27me3 spreads more widely. We found little change between cell cycle phases, whether compared by 5 Kb rolling windows or when analysis was restricted to functional elements such as transcription start sites and topologically associating domains. Only a small number of genes showed cell-cycle related changes: at genes encoding proteins involved in mitosis, H3K9 became highly acetylated in G2M, possibly because of ongoing transcription. In conclusion, modified histone isoforms H3K9ac, H3K4me3 and H3K27me3 exhibit a characteristic genomic distribution at resolutions of 1 Mb and below that differs between HeLa and lymphoblastoid cells but remains remarkably consistent through the cell cycle. We suggest that this cell-type-specific chromosomal bar-code is part of a homeostatic mechanism by which cells retain their characteristic gene expression patterns, and hence their identity, through multiple mitoses

Gastric Alimetry® test interpretation in gastroduodenal disorders : review and recommendations

Chronic gastroduodenal symptoms are prevalent worldwide, and there is a need for new diagnostic and treatment approaches. Several overlapping processes may contribute to these symptoms, including gastric dysmotility, hypersensitivity, gut–brain axis disorders, gastric outflow resistance, and duodenal inflammation. Gastric Alimetry® (Alimetry, New Zealand) is a non-invasive test for evaluating gastric function that combines body surface gastric mapping (high-resolution electrophysiology) with validated symptom profiling. Together, these complementary data streams enable important new clinical insights into gastric disorders and their symptom correlations, with emerging therapeutic implications. A comprehensive database has been established, currently comprising > 2000 Gastric Alimetry tests, including both controls and patients with various gastroduodenal disorders. From studies employing this database, this paper presents a systematic methodology for Gastric Alimetry test interpretation, together with an extensive supporting literature review. Reporting is grouped into four sections: Test Quality, Spectral Analysis, Symptoms, and Conclusions. This review compiles, assesses, and evaluates each of these aspects of test assessment, with discussion of relevant evidence, example cases, limitations, and areas for future work. The resultant interpretation methodology is recommended for use in clinical practice and research to assist clinicians in their use of Gastric Alimetry as a diagnostic aid and is expected to continue to evolve with further development

Food insecurity increases energetic efficiency, not food consumption: an exploratory study in European starlings

Food insecurity—defined as limited or unpredictable access to nutritionally adequate food—is associated with higher body mass in humans and birds. It is widely assumed that food insecurity-induced fattening is caused by increased food consumption, but there is little evidence supporting this in any species. We developed a novel technology for measuring foraging, food intake and body mass in small groups of aviary-housed European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris). Across four exploratory experiments, we demonstrate that birds responded to 1–2 weeks of food insecurity by increasing their body mass despite eating less. Food-insecure birds therefore increased their energetic efficiency, calculated as the body mass maintained per unit of food consumed. Mass gain was greater in birds that were lighter at baseline and in birds that faced greater competition for access to food. Whilst there was variation between experiments in mass gain and food consumption under food insecurity, energetic efficiency always increased. Bomb calorimetry of guano showed reduced energy density under food insecurity, suggesting that the energy assimilated from food increased. Behavioural observations of roosting showed inconsistent evidence for reduced physical activity under food insecurity. Increased energetic efficiency continued for 1–2 weeks after food security was reinstated, indicating an asymmetry in the speed of the response to food insecurity and the recovery from it. Future work to understand the mechanisms underlying food insecurity-induced mass gain should focus on the biological changes mediating increased energetic efficiency rather than increased energy consumption