The participation of the Armenian community in ottoman public life in Eastern Anatolia and Syria, 1860-1908

Not availabl

Plant cell technologies in space: Background, strategies and prospects

An attempt is made to summarize work in plant cell technologies in space. The evolution of concepts and the general principles of plant tissue culture are discussed. The potential for production of high value secondary products by plant cells and differentiated tissue in automated, precisely controlled bioreactors is discussed. The general course of the development of the literature on plant tissue culture is highlighted

The impact of background television on parent-child interaction.

Thesis (M.S.

Investigations of a Colonial New England Roadway

No abstract is available at this time

When Seeing Is Better than Doing: Preschoolers’ Transfer of STEM Skills Using Touchscreen Games

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which character familiarity and game interactivity moderate preschoolers’ learning and transfer from digital games. The games were based on a popular television show and designed to test skills related to STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics): numerical cognition (quantity of different sets) and knowledge of a biological concept (growth). Preschoolers (3.0-5.5 years, N = 44) were assigned to play one game and watch a recording of an experimenter playing the other game. Learning was assessed during pretest and posttest using screenshots from the game. Transfer was assessed using modified screenshots (near) and real-life objects (far). Familiarity was assessed by asking children to identify the television characters and program. Findings indicate that the effectiveness of the games varied by age and condition: Younger children learned from the quantity game, but only when they watched (rather than played) the game. They did not transfer this information in either condition. Conversely, older children learned from the growth game regardless of whether they played or watched. However, older children only demonstrated far transfer if they watched (rather than played) the growth game. Thus preschoolers may benefit more by watching a video than by playing a game if the game is cognitively demanding, perhaps because making decisions while playing the game increases cognitive load. Character familiarity did not predict learning, perhaps because there was little overlap between the lessons presented in the television program and game. Findings from the current study highlight the need for more research into educational games and applications designed for preschoolers in order to establish whether, how, and for whom screen media can be educationally valuable

Toddlers’ Word Learning from Contingent and Non-Contingent Video on Touchscreens

Researchers examined whether contingent experience using a touchscreen increased toddlers’ ability to learn a word from video. One-hundred-sixteen children (24-36 mos) watched an on-screen actress label an object: (1) without interacting, (2) with instructions to touch anywhere on the screen, or (3) with instructions to touch a specific spot (location of labeled object). The youngest children learned from contingent video in the absence of reciprocal interactions with a live social partner, but only when contingent video required specific responses that emphasized important information on the screen. Conversely, this condition appeared to disrupt learning by slightly older children who were otherwise able to learn words by passively viewing non-interactive video. Results are interpreted with respect to selective attention and encoding

Visual motherese? Signal-to-noise ratios in toddler-directed television

Younger brains are noisier information processing systems; this means that information for younger individuals has to allow clearer differentiation between those aspects that are required for the processing task in hand (the ‘signal’) and those that are not (the ‘noise’). We compared toddler-directed and adult-directed TV programmes (TotTV/ATV). We examined how low-level visual features (that previous research has suggested influence gaze allocation) relate to semantic information, namely the location of the character speaking in each frame. We show that this relationship differs between TotTV and ATV. First, we conducted Receiver Operator Characteristics analyses and found that feature congestion predicted speaking character location in TotTV but not ATV. Second, we used multiple analytical strategies to show that luminance differentials (flicker) predict face location more strongly in TotTV than ATV. Our results suggest that TotTV designers have intuited techniques for controlling toddler attention using low-level visual cues. The implications of these findings for structuring childhood learning experiences away from a screen are discussed

Children’s Learning From Interactive eBooks: Simple Irrelevant Features Are Not Necessarily Worse Than Relevant Ones

The purpose of this study was to investigate experimentally the extent to which children’s novel word learning and story comprehension differs for non-interactive eBooks and interactive eBooks with simple relevant or irrelevant interactive features that advance the narrative. An original story with novel word-object pairs was read to preschoolers (3–5 years old, N = 103) using one of the three eBook formats: non-interactive control, interactive-relevant, interactive-irrelevant. The book formats differed only in the manner in which the story advanced from one page to the next: children observed the experimenter turn the page (non-interactive), children touched a relevant image on the screen (relevant-interactive), or children touched an irrelevant image on the screen (irrelevant-interactive). Novel word learning and story comprehension were assessed with post-tests in which children picked target objects from an array and sorted story events into their original sequence, respectively. Findings indicate that word learning and story comprehension were similar across all three books, suggesting that simple interactive features – whether relevant or irrelevant to the story – had little impact on preschoolers’ learning in this controlled experiment. Thus, simple interactivity that does not disrupt the story also does not hinder ongoing story comprehension

Gated blood-pool SPECT evaluation of changes after radiofrequency catheter ablation of accessory pathways Evidence for persistent ventricular preexcitation despite successful therapy

AbstractOBJECTIVESThis study was designed to prospectively evaluate the effects of radiofrequency ablation in Wolff-Parkinson-White (WPW) syndrome by scintigraphic analysis.BACKGROUNDThe functional changes triggered by radiofrequency current ablation of atrioventricular accessory pathways are not fully known.METHODSForty-four patients with WPW syndrome were consecutively investigated before and 48 h after radiofrequency therapy. Fourteen patients had right sided atrioventricular pathways and 30 patients had left sided bypass-tracts. Planar gated imaging and gated blood pool tomography were performed in all of these patients.RESULTSA significant increase in the left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) was demonstrated in patients with left preexcitation (62.2 ± 7.9% before ablation against 64.4 ± 6.3% after ablation, p = 0.02) but not for those with right sided anomalous pathway. Phase analysis only gave significant differences following ablation of right sided pathways (left-to-right phase difference = 14.4 ± 13.8° before ablation versus 7.5 ± 7.2° after ablation, p < 0.05). Early abnormal ventricular contraction persisted in 12 patients with right accessory pathways and in 8 patients with left accessory pathways despite the complete disappearance of any abnormal conduction as proven electrophysiologically.CONCLUSIONSFollowing catheter ablation of atrioventricular accessory pathways: 1) an improvement of left ventricular function may be seen, particularly in patients with left sided accessory pathways, and 2) unexpected persistence of local ventricular preexcitation at the site of successful ablation may be detected

Towards a Theoretical Framework for Understanding the Development of Media Related Needs

The question of why people select and prefer particular media activities has led to the development of a number of ‘needs’ approaches to media use. Whilst some frameworks have been developed within the context of media use (e.g. uses and gratifications), others (e.g. Tamborini et al, 2011) look to combine general theories of basic human needs, such as Self-Determination Theory (Deci &Ryan, 1985) with hedonic gratifications. Drawing on these approaches, a framework is proposed that maps findings from children’s and adolescents’ media use to four basic human needs: competence, autonomy, relatedness and hedonic needs. The current paper argues that a basic needs approach is useful for understanding how media-related needs emerge and are expressed through development