The Development of a SMS-based Teaching and Learning System

The short message service (SMS) technology is one of the most stable mobile technologies around. Most of our tertiary students carry mobile phones with SMS facilities and can be used for teaching and learning. There are many projects of using SMS technologies in education as outlined in the literature review, but many publications do not provide the possible underlying technologies to implement such the teaching and learning systems. In this paper, the development of a SMS-based teaching and learning system is presented. The underlying technology of using GSM modems to build the SMS-based teaching and learning system is revealed. The system is capable of supporting administrative, teaching and learning activities via the SMS technology. Examples of various activities such as brainstorming, voting, and assessment activities supported by the system are illustrated

A Study on the Acceptance of Mobile Phones for Teaching and Learning with a Group of Pre-service Teachers in Hong Kong

Ubiquitous devices offer new teaching and learning opportunities from K-12 to higher education settings. The integration of mobile facilities and Web technologies allows researchers and educators to explore different possibilities in m-Learning. In this study, a group of pre-service IT teachers in Hong Kong were introduced to the field of m-Learning by participating in a series of m-Learning activities. Three applications were designed and programmed with XTHML-MP/ WAP 2.0 technologies and supported by server-side Web technologies of PHP and MySQL. The research aimed at providing the opportunities for the teachers to explore this new trend in teaching and learning and to find out their acceptance of this approach

QR Codes in Education

QR codes, developed by a Japanese company, have been around for over fifteen years. With the advent of smart and Web capable mobile devices, we witness a steady growth of interesting commercial applications using QR codes. As the movement of using QR codes in education is still in its infancy, this paper serves to be one of the first comprehensive papers in journal publication to fully delineate (a) the user characteristics of QR codes, (b) the processes of making and reading QR codes, (c) the survey of commercial applications using QR codes, (d) the literature review of educational applications using QR codes, and (e) offer suggestions and implementations of QR codes in school education

Australia\u27s current and future Southern Ocean routine marine observations

第2回極域科学シンポジウム/第33回極域生物シンポジウム 11月17日（木） 統計数理研究所 3階セミナー室

Design and Implementation of Calculated Readout by Spectral Parallelism (CRISP) in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

CRISP is a data acquisition and image reconstruction technique that offers theoretical increases in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and dynamic range over traditional methods in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The incoming broadband MRI signal is de-multiplexed into multiple narrow frequency bands using analog filters. Signal from each narrowband channel is then individually captured and digitized. The original signal is recovered by recombining all the channels via weighted addition, where the weights correspond to the frequency responses of each narrowband filter. With ideal bandpasses and bandwidth dependent noise after filtering, SNR increase is proportional to sqrt(N), where N is the number of bandpasses. In addition to SNR improvement, free induction decay (FID) echoes in CRISP experience a slower decay rate. In situations where resolution is limited by digitization noise, CRISP is able to capture data further out into the higher frequency regions of k-space, which leads to a relative increase in resolution. The conversion from one broadband MR signal into multiple narrowband channels is realized using a comb or bank of active analog bandpass filters. A custom CRISP RF receiver chain is implemented to downconvert and demodulate the raw MR signal prior to narrowband filtering, and to digitize the signals from each filter channel simultaneously. Results are presented demonstrating that the CRISP receiver chain can acquire 2D MR images (without narrowband filters) with SNR similar to SNR of images obtained with a clinical system. Acquiring 2D CRISP images (with narrowband filters) was not possible due to the lack of phase lock between rows in k-space. RMS noise of narrowband, broadband and unfiltered 1D echoes are compared

The Mediating Effects of Tolerance on Residents’ Support Toward Tourism Events

The classic social exchange theory associates residents’ level of support toward tourism events with their perceived positive and negative tourism impacts directly. However, the contradictory results reported in the literature suggest that such conceptualization may not fully capture the dynamics of the underlying relationships because the linkages between perceived costs and support are often vague. The purpose of this study is to introduce and investigate the role of tolerance in the formation of residents’ support toward tourism events. Results based on data collected from 296 residents at 6 different tourism events in a southeast capital city indicated that tolerance significantly mediated the relationship between perceived benefits and support, as well as perceived costs and support. Our study provides strong theoretical support and empirical findings for the inclusion of tolerance in evaluating residents’ support toward tourism events

Comparison of Mid- to Long-term follow-up of Patient-Reported Outcomes Measures after Single-level Lumbar Total Disc Arthroplasty, Multi-level Lumbar Total Disc Arthroplasty, and the Lumbar Hybrid Procedure for the Treatment of Degenerative Disc Disease

Prospective cohort study. OBJECTIVE. The aim of this article is to compare the mid- to long-term patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) between single-level total disc arthroplasty (TDA), multi-level TDA, and hybrid constructs (combination of TDA and anterior lumbar interbody fusion [ALIF] across multiple levels) for symptomatic degenerative disc disease (DDD). SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA. The treatment of single-level DDD is well documented using TDA. However, there is still a paucity of published evidence regarding long-term outcomes on multi-level TDA and hybrid constructs for the treatment of multi-level DDD, as well as lack of long-term comparisons regarding treatment of single-level DDD and multi-level DDD. METHODS. A total of 950 patients underwent surgery for single-level or multi-level DDD between July 1998 and February 2012 with single-level TDA (n = 211), multi-level TDA (n = 122), or hybrid construct (n = 617). Visual Analog Score for the back (VAS-B) and leg (VAS-L) were recorded, along with the Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) and Roland Morris Disability Questionnaire (RMDQ). RESULTS. All PROMs in all groups showed statistically and clinically significant improvements (P < 0.005) in pain and function that is well above the corresponding minimum clinically important difference (MCID) and exceeds literature thresholds for substantial clinical benefit (SCB). Unadjusted analyses show that there were no statistically significant differences in the change scores between the surgery groups for VAS back and leg pain, and RMDQ up to 8 years’ follow-up. Adjusted analyses showed the ODI improvement score for the single group was 2.2 points better (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.6–3.9, P = 0.009) than in the hybrid group. The RMDQ change score was better in the hybrid group than in the multi-level group by 1.1 points (95% CI: 0.4–1.9, P = 0.003) at 6 months and a further 0.4 point at 2 years (95% CI: 0.1–0.8, P = 0.011). CONCLUSION. In the setting of meticulous preoperative evaluation in establishing a precision diagnosis, clinically and statistically equivalent results can be achieved when treating symptomatic DDD through single-level TDA, multi-level TDA, and hybrid constructs. These results are sustained at mid- to long-term follow-up. Level of Evidence:

Xanthine oxidoreductase regulates macrophage IL1β secretion upon NLRP3 inflammasome activation.

Activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome by microbial ligands or tissue damage requires intracellular generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). We present evidence that macrophage secretion of IL1β upon stimulation with ATP, crystals or LPS is mediated by a rapid increase in the activity of xanthine oxidase (XO), the oxidized form of xanthine dehydrogenase, resulting in the formation of uric acid as well as ROS. We show that XO-derived ROS, but not uric acid, is the trigger for IL1β release and that XO blockade results in impaired IL1β and caspase1 secretion. XO is localized to both cytoplasmic and mitochondrial compartments and acts upstream to the PI3K-AKT signalling pathway that results in mitochondrial ROS generation. This pathway represents a mechanism for regulating NLRP3 inflammasome activation that may have therapeutic implications in inflammatory diseases

Krill biomass estimation : sampling and measurement variability

FB is funded by an EPSRC studentship (grant code: EP/R513337/1).Krill are the subject of growing commercial fisheries and therefore fisheries management is necessary to ensure long-term sustainability. Krill catch limits, set by Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, are based on absolute krill biomass, estimated from acoustic-trawl surveys. In this work, we develop a method for determining an error budget for acoustic-trawl surveys of krill which includes sampling and measurement variability. We use our error budget method to examine the sensitivity of biomass estimates to parameters in acoustic target strength (TS) models, length frequency distribution and length to wetmass relationships derived from net data. We determined that the average coefficient of variation (CV) of estimated biomass was 17.7% and the average CV due from scaling acoustic observations to biomass density was 5.3%. We found that a large proportion of the variability of biomass estimates is due to the krill orientation distribution, a parameter in the TS model. Orientation distributions with narrow standard deviations were found to emphasise the results of nulls in the TS to length relationship, which has to potential to lead to biologically implausible results.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe