Seagrass Community Change at Three High Risk Ports in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area from 2005 to 2014

Seagrass meadows are extremely valuable and dynamic ecosystems currently facing pressure from anthropogenic disturbances. Seagrass ecosystems are declining globally because of direct and indirect threats that shift environmental conditions controlling seagrass distribution. Seagrass species responses to disturbances vary based on a number of factors including life history strategy. The goal of this study was to map and analyze patterns of dominant seagrass species change at Cairns and Gladstone from 2005-2014 and Townsville from 2007-2014. This compilation data set was symbolized according to the life history strategy of the species. The major disturbances during this time period were physical damage from cyclones and the associated above average rainfall and river flow, which caused large losses in the percent of sites surveyed where seagrass was found. These disturbances shaped the successional patterns observed. Most of the enduring meadows in these ports were composed of the colonizing/opportunistic species, Z. capricorni and H. uninervis. Opportunistic and persistent species, such as C. serrulata and T. hemprichii, were both seen less frequently in these ports. The colonizing species, H. ovalis and H. decipiens, were frequently observed colonizing spaced cleared during disturbance. The patterns of succession observed around Cairns, Townsville, and Gladstone support the life-history classifications of the species

Understanding Changes in Seagrass Communities

Seagrass is an incredibly valuable habitat in the Chesapeake Bay. Students will use mock seagrass patches, modeled after a research transect along Goodwin Island, Virginia, to analyze change in seagrass percent cover during, and following, a major die-off event in 2010. Students also analyze water quality graphs from the same time period to help them determine why the die-off may have occurred

INCREASING STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY ACQUISITION BY MASTER AND MASTERY CARDS GAME

The objective of this research is to explain how the Master and Mastery cards game improves students’ vocabulary acquisition and participation learning process of applying Master and Mastery cards game in teaching vocabulary for tenth-grade students of a vocational school. This research was carried out with a classroom action research design. Field notes were the instruments to collect the qualitative data. While the vocabulary test and gained the quantitative data that strengthen the quantitative data. The increasing of the test 1 and test 2 was 22.83 point. Responding to that result the teacher-researcher decided to stop the cycle at cycle two. According to the researcher and co-observer’s observation students participated actively while playing Master and Mastery vocabulary cards game. This research significantly increased students’ vocabulary acquisition as well as participation. Keywords: Master and Mastery Cards Game, Vocabulary Acquisition, Participatio

INCREASING STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY ACQUISITION BY MASTER AND MASTERY CARDS GAME

The objective of this research is to explain how the Master and Mastery cards game improves students’ vocabulary acquisition and participation learning process of applying Master and Mastery cards game in teaching vocabulary for tenth-grade students of a vocational school. This research was carried out with a classroom action research design. Field notes were the instruments to collect the qualitative data. While the vocabulary test and gained the quantitative data that strengthen the quantitative data. The increasing of the test 1 and test 2 was 22.83 point. Responding to that result the teacher-researcher decided to stop the cycle at cycle two. According to the researcher and co-observer’s observation students participated actively while playing Master and Mastery vocabulary cards game. This research significantly increased students’ vocabulary acquisition as well as participation.Keywords: Master and Mastery Cards Game, Vocabulary Acquisition, Participatio

Brainstorming under constraints: why software developers brainstorm in groups

Group brainstorming is widely adopted as a design method in the domain of software development. However, existing brainstorming literature has consistently proven group brainstorming to be ineffective under the controlled laboratory settings. Yet, electronic brainstorming systems informed by the results of these prior laboratory studies have failed to gain adoption in the field because of the lack of support for group well-being and member support. Therefore, there is a need to better understand brainstorming in the field. In this work, we seek to understand why and how brainstorming is actually practiced, rather than how brainstorming practices deviate from formal brainstorming rules, by observing brainstorming meetings at Microsoft. The results of this work show that, contrary to the conventional brainstorming practices, software teams at Microsoft engage heavily in the constraint discovery process in their brainstorming meetings. We identified two types of constraints that occur in brainstorming meetings. Functional constraints are requirements and criteria that define the idea space, whereas practical constraints are limitations that prioritize the proposed solutions

Gender differences and programming environments: Across programming populations

ABSTRACT Although there has been significant research into gender regarding educational and workplace practices, there has been little investigation of gender differences pertaining to problem solving with programming tools and environments. As a result, there is little evidence as to what role gender plays in programming tools-and what little evidence there is has involved mainly novice and enduser programmers in academic studies. This paper therefore investigates how widespread such phenomena are in industrial programming situations, considering three disparate programming populations involving almost 3000 people and three different programming platforms in industry. To accomplish this, we analyzed four industry "legacy" studies from a gender perspective, triangulating results against each other and against a new fifth study, also in industry. We investigated gender differences in software feature usage and in tinkering/exploring software features. Furthermore, we examined how such differences tied to confidence. Our results showed significant gender differences in all three factors-across all populations and platforms

Myosin Assembly, Maintenance and Degradation in Muscle: Role of the Chaperone UNC-45 in Myosin Thick Filament Dynamics

Myofibrillogenesis in striated muscle cells requires a precise ordered pathway to assemble different proteins into a linear array of sarcomeres. The sarcomere relies on interdigitated thick and thin filaments to ensure muscle contraction, as well as properly folded and catalytically active myosin head. Achieving this organization requires a series of protein folding and assembly steps. The folding of the myosin head domain requires chaperone activity to attain its functional conformation. Folded or unfolded myosin can spontaneously assemble into short myosin filaments, but further assembly requires the short and incomplete myosin filaments to assemble into the developing thick filament. These longer filaments are then incorporated into the developing sarcomere of the muscle. Both myosin folding and assembly require factors to coordinate the formation of the thick filament in the sarcomere and these factors include chaperone molecules. Myosin folding and sarcomeric assembly requires association of classical chaperones as well as folding cofactors such as UNC-45. Recent research has suggested that UNC-45 is required beyond initial myosin head folding and may be directly or indirectly involved in different stages of myosin thick filament assembly, maintenance and degradation

Ca2+-dependent Muscle Dysfunction Caused by Mutation of the Caenorhabditis elegans Troponin T-1 Gene

We have investigated the functions of troponin T (CeTnT-1) in Caenorhabditis elegans embryonic body wall muscle. TnT tethers troponin I (TnI) and troponin C (TnC) to the thin filament via tropomyosin (Tm), and TnT/Tm regulates the activation and inhibition of myosin-actin interaction in response to changes in intracellular [Ca2+]. Loss of CeTnT-1 function causes aberrant muscle trembling and tearing of muscle cells from their exoskeletal attachment sites (Myers, C.D., P.-Y. Goh, T. StC. Allen, E.A. Bucher, and T. Bogaert. 1996. J. Cell Biol. 132:1061–1077). We hypothesized that muscle tearing is a consequence of excessive force generation resulting from defective tethering of Tn complex proteins. Biochemical studies suggest that such defective tethering would result in either (a) Ca2+-independent activation, due to lack of Tn complex binding and consequent lack of inhibition, or (b) delayed reestablishment of TnI/TnC binding to the thin filament after Ca2+ activation and consequent abnormal duration of force. Analyses of animals doubly mutant for CeTnT-1 and for genes required for Ca2+ signaling support that CeTnT-1 phenotypes are dependent on Ca2+ signaling, thus supporting the second model and providing new in vivo evidence that full inhibition of thin filaments in low [Ca2+] does not require TnT