Teacher and student intrinsic motivation in project-based learning

In this study we examined the relationship between teacher and student intrinsic motivation in project-based learning. The participants were 126 Hong Kong secondary school teachers and their 631 students who completed evaluation questionnaires after a semester-long project-based learning program. Both teachers and students were asked to indicate their motivation in the program, and students were also asked to report the instructional support they received from their teachers. The results of hierarchical linear modeling analyses showed that teacher intrinsic motivation predicted student intrinsic motivation directly as well as indirectly through the mediation of instructional support. When teachers reported higher intrinsic motivation in the program, their students tended to perceive receiving more support from them and to report higher intrinsic motivation in the learning experience. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008.postprin

Drivers for renewal and reform of contemporary nursing curricula: A blueprint for change

The creation of a curriculum blueprint appropriate to the development of a professional nurse who is practice-ready for the current and future context of health service delivery must take account of the extant context as well as an unpredictable and sometimes ambiguous future. The curriculum renewal process itself ought to challenge existing long held ideals, practices, and sacred cows within the health and higher education sectors. There is much to consider and importantly curriculum developers need to be mindful of reform within the health sector and health workforce education, as well as the concomitant vision and requirements of the nursing profession. Curriculum must develop more than discipline knowledge and skills: it must provide an infrastructure for generic abilities both social and intellectual in order to better prepare students for the registered nurse role. This paper discusses a number of forces that are essential to consider in curriculum development in undergraduate nursing education. © eContent Management Pty Ltd

Secondary school teachers’ experiences of teaching pregnant learners in Limpopo province, South Africa

This paper presents the findings of a study on the experiences of secondary school teachers on teaching pregnant learners in Limpopo Province. A qualitative, exploratory, descriptive and contextual design was used. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten purposively selected secondary school teachers. Data analysis yielded six themes, which are: (1) identification of pregnant learners; (2) continuation of pregnant learners' school career; (3) dilemmas related to school-attending pregnant learners; (4) support of school-attending pregnant learners; (5) gender in pregnancy caretaking; and (6) communication and cooperation between teachers and parents. Teachers experienced challenges in identifying pregnant learners, and to meet their health needs as they lacked health related skills. Parents were not always cooperative towards teachers. It can be concluded that teachers face many dilemmas related to pregnant learners, and this requires a health facilitation model to enable teachers to assist pregnant learners such that they might better benefit from their schooling, and experience a positive health outcome.Key words: high risk pregnancy; learner pregnancy; school health services; teacher experiences; teenage pregnanc

Trimaximal neutrino mixing from vacuum alignment in A4 and S4 models

Recent T2K results indicate a sizeable reactor angle theta_13 which would rule out exact tri-bimaximal lepton mixing. We study the vacuum alignment of the Altarelli-Feruglio A4 family symmetry model including additional flavons in the 1' and 1" representations and show that it leads to trimaximal mixing in which the second column of the lepton mixing matrix consists of the column vector (1,1,1)^T/sqrt{3}, with a potentially large reactor angle. In order to limit the reactor angle and control the higher order corrections, we propose a renormalisable S4 model in which the 1' and 1" flavons of A4 are unified into a doublet of S4 which is spontaneously broken to A4 by a flavon which enters the neutrino sector at higher order. We study the vacuum alignment in the S4 model and show that it predicts accurate trimaximal mixing with approximate tri-bimaximal mixing, leading to a new mixing sum rule testable in future neutrino experiments. Both A4 and S4 models preserve form dominance and hence predict zero leptogenesis, up to renormalisation group corrections.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figures, version to be published in JHE

Antioxidant Activity of the Bulb and Aerial Parts of Ornithogalum sintenisii L (Liliaceae) at Flowering Stage

Purpose: Ornithogalum sintenisii is an Iranian species with little known about its pharmacological effects. The purpose of the present study was to investigate some antioxidant properties of the plant.                    Methods: The antioxidant potency of the freeze-dried methanol extract of O. sintenisii bulbs and aerial parts were investigated by evaluating the following parameters: linoleic acid peroxidation, 1,1-diphenyl-2-picryl hydrazyl radical (DPPH), scavenging of nitric oxide and hydrogen peroxide as well as reducing power and Fe2+ chelating activity, using standard methods. Phenol and flavonoid contents were determined as gallic acid and quercetin equivalents, respectively.Results: The aerial parts contained higher phenol and flavonoid contents than the bulbs. IC50 for DPPH radical-scavenging activity was 368 ± 15 and 669 ± 25 μg ml-1 for aerial parts and bulbs, respectively. The reducing power of the extracts was less than that of vitamin C (p < 0.01) with the aerial parts showing stronger activity than the bulbs (p < 0.01). The extracts did not show any activity in the peroxidation test but displayed good H2O2 radical scavenging activity compared with quercetin (IC50= 52.0± 3.1 μg ml-1) which was used as positive control.Conclusion: The bulb and aerial parts of O. sintenisii aerial parts (at flowering stage) exhibited good but varying levels of antioxidant activities in nearly all the models studied.Keywords: Ornithogalum sintenisii ; Bulbs; Aerial parts; Antioxidant activity; Flavoniods; Phenol

Nitric oxide radical scavenging potential of some Elburz medicinal plants

Some plants scavenge nitric oxide (NO) with high affinity. For this purpose, forty extracts from 26 medicinal plants, growing extensively in Elburz mountains, were evaluated for their NO scavenging activity. Total phenolic and flavonoid contents of these extracts were also measured by Folin Ciocalteu and AlCl3 colorimetric assays, respectively. Sambucus ebulus fruit aqueous extract and Pterocarya fraxinifolia leaf methanol extract showed better activity than others with IC50 equal to 29 and 65 g ml-1, respectively. NO is also implicated in inflammation and other pathological conditions, therefore very powerful scavenging activity of S. ebulus fruit extract may explain its very good anti-inflammatory activity. Phenolic and flavonoids contents of the extracts varied between 10.2 - 200.4 and 2.1 - 90.9 mg g-1 of extract, respectively. Good correlations could be found between total phenolic contents and NO scavenging activity through linear regression analysis (R2 = 0.63). There was also a better correlation between total flavonoids and NO scavenging activity (R2 = 0.73). High NO scavenging activity in plants can candidate them for testing their anti-inflammatory property.Key words: Antiinflammatory, flavonoid contents, medicinal plants, nitric oxide scavenging activity, phenolic contents, Sambucus ebulus, Pterocarya fraxinifolia

Newspapers' agricultural agenda setting and extension agents' views on agricultural issues in Ogun State, Nigeria

The study was carried out to examine how newspapers' agricultural agenda setting influences the importance agricultural extension agents place on agricultural issues. A survey questionnaire was used to collect data from extension agents. All zonal extension agents (4) and 50% of block extension agents (10) were included in the population for the study. However, the village extension agents (60) were selected using random sampling technique. Newspapers content were analyzed from January to June 2002 for agricultural issues raised in them. Data were analyzed using frequencies, percentages, and Spearman rho correlation coefficient. The results revealed that extension agents ranked storage problems as most important (4.24) and investment in agriculture second (4.27). In the content analysis of newspapers, investment in agriculture ranked highest (740.2 in column inches and 121 times of occurrence in the newspapers). The results showed that there was a positive relationship between the ranking of agricultural extension agents and that of newspapers about what they considered important agricultural issues (r = 0.61 for column inches and 0.58 for number of times issues occur in the news papers, p = 0.05). The relationship though positive was moderate. The results also revealed that newspapers did not allocate much space to agricultural news and hence may not be efficient in creating awareness about current agricultural information. Most of the respondents preferred research institutes and agricultural agencies to newspapers as sources of agricultural information.Keywords: newspapers', agricultural, extension agents' agenda setting South African Journal of Agricultural Extension Vol. 34(2) 2005: 221-23

Expression of human adenosine deaminase in nonhuman primates after retrovirus-mediated gene transfer.

Primate bone marrow cells were infected with a retroviral vector carrying the genes for human adenosine deaminase (h-ADA) and bacterial neomycin resistance (neor). The infected cells were infused back into the lethally irradiated donor animals. Several monkeys fully reconstituted and were shown to express the h-ADA and neor genes at low levels in their recirculating hematopoietic cells for short periods of time

Automated data pre-processing via meta-learning

The final publication is available at link.springer.comA data mining algorithm may perform differently on datasets with different characteristics, e.g., it might perform better on a dataset with continuous attributes rather than with categorical attributes, or the other way around. As a matter of fact, a dataset usually needs to be pre-processed. Taking into account all the possible pre-processing operators, there exists a staggeringly large number of alternatives and nonexperienced users become overwhelmed. We show that this problem can be addressed by an automated approach, leveraging ideas from metalearning. Specifically, we consider a wide range of data pre-processing techniques and a set of data mining algorithms. For each data mining algorithm and selected dataset, we are able to predict the transformations that improve the result of the algorithm on the respective dataset. Our approach will help non-expert users to more effectively identify the transformations appropriate to their applications, and hence to achieve improved results.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version