864,693 research outputs found
'Now you know what you’re doing right and wrong!' Peer feedback quality in synchronous peer assessment in secondary education
This study explores the effects of peer assessment (PA) practice on peer feedback
(PF) quality of 11th grade secondary education students (N= 36). The PA setting was
synchronous: anonymous assessors gave immediate PF using mobile response technology
during 10 feedback occasions. The design was quasi-experimental (experimental vs. control
condition) in which students in one condition received a scaffold to filter out relevant
information they received. It was expected that this filter-out scaffold would influence PF
quality in subsequent tasks in which they were assessors. PF content analysis showed that
offering multiple PF occasions improved PF quality: messages contained more negative
verifications and informative and suggestive elaborations after the intervention. However, no
effects were found of filtering out relevant information on PF quality. Moreover, students’
perceived peer feedback skills improved which was in correspondence with their actual quality
improvement over time. Additionally, the perceived usefulness of the received feedback was
rated high by all participants
Dendritic spike induction of postsynaptic cerebellar LTP
The architecture of parallel fiber (PF) axons contacting cerebellar Purkinje neurons (PNs) retains spatial information over long distances. PF synapses can trigger local dendritic calcium spikes, but whether and how this calcium signal leads to plastic changes that decode the PF input organization is unknown. By combining voltage and calcium imaging, we show that PF-elicited calcium signals, mediated by voltage-gated calcium channels, increase non-linearly during high-frequency bursts of electrically constant calcium spikes because they locally and transiently saturate the endogenous buffer. We demonstrate that these non-linear calcium signals, independently of NMDA or metabotropic glutamate receptor activation, can induce PF long-term potentiation (LTP). Two-photon imaging in coronal slices revealed that calcium signals inducing LTP can be observed by stimulating either the PF or the ascending fiber pathway. We propose that local dendritic calcium spikes, evoked by synaptic potentials, provide a unique mechanism to spatially decode PF signals into cerebellar circuitry changes
Regulation of the formation and water permeability of endosomes from toad bladder granular cells.
Osmotic water permeability (Pf) in toad bladder is regulated by the vasopressin (VP)-dependent movement of vesicles containing water channels between the cytoplasm and apical membrane of granular cells. Apical endosomes formed in the presence of serosal VP have the highest Pf of any biological or artificial membrane (Shi and Verkman. 1989. J. Gen. Physiol. 94:1101-1115). We examine here: (a) the influence of protein kinase A and C effectors on transepithelial Pf (Pfte) in intact bladders and on the number and Pf of labeled endosomes, and (b) whether endosome Pf can be modified physically or biochemically. In paired hemibladder studies, Pfte induced by maximal serosal VP (50 mU/ml, 0.03 cm/s) was not different than that induced by 8-Br-cAMP (1 mM), forskolin (50 microM), VP + 8-Br-cAMP, or VP + forskolin. Pf was measured in endosomes labeled in intact bladders with carboxyfluorescein by a stopped-flow, fluorescence-quenching assay using an isolated microsomal suspension; the number and Pf (0.08-0.11 cm/s, 18 degrees C) of labeled endosomes was not different in bladders treated with VP, forskolin, and 8-Br-cAMP. Protein kinase C activation by 1 microM mucosal phorbol myristate acetate (PMA) induced submaximal bladder Pfte (0.015 cm/s) and endosome Pf (0.022 cm/s) in the absence of VP, but had little effect on maximal Pfte and endosome Pf induced by VP. However, PMA increased by threefold the number of apical endosomes with high Pf formed in response to serosal VP. Pf of endosomes containing the VP-sensitive water channel decreased fourfold by increasing membrane fluidity with hexanol or chloroform (0-75 mM); Pf of phosphatidylcholine liposomes (0.002 cm/s) increased 2.5-fold under the same conditions. Endosome Pf was mildly pH dependent, strongly inhibited by HgCl2, but not significantly altered by GTP gamma S, Ca, ATP + protein kinase A, and phosphatase action. We conclude that: (a) water channels cycled in endocytic vesicles are functional and not subject to physiological regulation, (b) VP and forskolin do not have cAMP-independent cellular actions, (c) activation of protein kinase C stimulates trafficking of water channels, but does not increase the number of apical membrane water channels induced by maximal VP, and (d) water channel function is sensitive to membrane fluidity. By using VP and PMA together, large quantities of endosomes containing the VP-sensitive water channel are labeled with fluid-phase endocytic markers
Enhanced Andreev reflection in gapped graphene
We theoretically demonstrate unusual features of superconducting proximity
effect in gapped graphene which presents a pseudospin symmetry-broken
ferromagnet with a net pseudomagnetization. We find that the presence of a band
gap makes the Andreev conductance of graphene superconductor/pseudoferromagnet
(S/PF) junction to behave similar to that of a graphene
ferromagnet-superconductor junction. The energy gap enhance the
pseudospin inverted Andreev conductance of S/PF junction to reach a limiting
maximum value for , which depending on the bias voltage can be
larger than the value for the corresponding junction with no energy gap. We
further demonstrate a damped-oscillatory behavior for the local density of
states of the PF region of S/PF junction and a long-range crossed Andreev
reflection process in PF/S/PF structure with antiparallel alignment of
pseudomagnetizations of PFs, which confirm that, in this respect, the gapped
normal graphene behaves like a ferromagnetic graphene.Comment: 7.2 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Recommended from our members
Information acquisition using eye-gaze tracking for person-following with mobile robots
In the effort of developing natural means for human-robot interaction (HRI), signifcant amount of research has been focusing on Person-Following (PF) for mobile robots. PF, which generally consists of detecting, recognizing and following people, is believed to be one of the required functionalities for most future robots that share their environments with their human companions. Research in this field is mostly directed towards fully automating this functionality, which makes the challenge even more tedious. Focusing on this challenge leads research to divert from other challenges that coexist in any PF system. A natural PF functionality consists of a number of tasks that are required to be implemented in the system. However, in more realistic life scenarios, not all the tasks required for PF need to be automated. Instead, some of these tasks can be operated by human operators and therefore require natural means of interaction and information acquisition. In order to highlight all the tasks that are believed to exist in any PF system, this paper introduces a novel taxonomy for PF. Also, in order to provide a natural means for HRI, TeleGaze is used for information acquisition in the implementation of the taxonomy. TeleGaze was previously developed by the authors as a means of natural HRI for teleoperation through eye-gaze tracking. Using TeleGaze in the aid of developing PF systems is believed to show the feasibility of achieving a realistic information acquisition in a natural way
Functional Integral Representation of the Pauli-Fierz Model with Spin 1/2
A Feynman-Kac-type formula for a L\'evy and an infinite dimensional Gaussian
random process associated with a quantized radiation field is derived. In
particular, a functional integral representation of e^{-t\PF} generated by
the Pauli-Fierz Hamiltonian with spin \han in non-relativistic quantum
electrodynamics is constructed. When no external potential is applied \PF
turns translation invariant and it is decomposed as a direct integral \PF =
\int_\BR^\oplus \PF(P) dP. The functional integral representation of
e^{-t\PF(P)} is also given. Although all these Hamiltonians include spin,
nevertheless the kernels obtained for the path measures are scalar rather than
matrix expressions. As an application of the functional integral
representations energy comparison inequalities are derived.Comment: This is a revised version. This paper will be published from J.
Funct. Ana
Low temperature structural effects in the (TMTSF)PF and AsF Bechgaard salts
We present a detailed low-temperature investigation of the statics and
dynamics of the anions and methyl groups in the organic conductors
(TMTSF)PF and (TMTSF)AsF (TMTSF :
tetramethyl-tetraselenafulvalene). The 4 K neutron scattering structure
refinement of the fully deuterated (TMTSF)PF-D12 salt allows locating
precisely the methyl groups at 4 K. This structure is compared to the one of
the fully hydrogenated (TMTSF)PF-H12 salt previously determined at the
same temperature. Surprisingly it is found that deuteration corresponds to the
application of a negative pressure of 5 x 10 MPa to the H12 salt. Accurate
measurements of the Bragg intensity show anomalous thermal variations at low
temperature both in the deuterated PF and AsF salts. Two different
thermal behaviors have been distinguished. Low-Bragg-angle measurements reflect
the presence of low-frequency modes at characteristic energies {\theta} =
8.3 K and {\theta} = 6.7 K for the PF-D12 and AsF-D12 salts,
respectively. These modes correspond to the low-temperature methyl group
motion. Large-Bragg-angle measurements evidence an unexpected structural change
around 55 K which probably corresponds to the linkage of the anions to the
methyl groups via the formation of F...D-CD2 bonds observed in the 4 K
structural refinement. Finally we show that the thermal expansion coefficient
of (TMTSF)PF is dominated by the librational motion of the PF
units. We quantitatively analyze the low-temperature variation of the lattice
expansion via the contribution of Einstein oscillators, which allows us to
determine for the first time the characteristic frequency of the PF6
librations: {\theta} = 50 K and {\theta} = 76 K for the PF-D12 and
PF-H12 salts, respectively
- …