Executive functions and components of oral reading fluency through the lens of text complexity

Reading and Writing - As readers struggle to coordinate various reading- and language-related skills during oral reading fluency (ORF), miscues can emerge, especially when processing complex texts....     

Mycorrhiza

The symbiotic association between plant and fungi (mycorrhizal association) is an amazing phenomenon observed in nature. The mycorrhizal association is one of nature’s boons for sustainable agriculture. In today’s changing environment, indiscriminate use of pesticides and chemicals pose a great threat to the existence of mycorrhizal species. There is a need to spread awareness in order to save mycorrhizal fungi from extinction.     

International networks and flows of academic talent: Overseas recruitment in Australian universities

Flows of academic talent among nations are an important factor in the transmission of values and knowledge throughout the world. As a point of entry for a study of international networks through which these flows occur, appointments to all universities in a single society, Australia, are examined for the years 1961–1974.During this period approximately 40 percent of appointees to academic positions in Australian universities came from overseas. Although there were fluctuations around this mean value, no major overall trends were discerned. The proportion of overseas appointments, however, was inversely related to university size, but unrelated to institutional age or total appointments.There has been a decrease in the proportion of appointees coming from British universities, and an increase from American universities. However over half of the appointees from the latter in 1970 were returning Australians.Some implications of these academic flow patterns are suggested, as are directions for future research.Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Sixth Annual Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education, Adelaide, November 1975, and at the Institute for International Education, University of Stockholm, 1976.We would like to express our appreciation to the Department of Sociology (Arts), Australian National University (A.N.U.), for the initial grant that made it possible to begin this project, and to the A.N.U. Advisory Commitee on Science and Technology Policy Research for funds allowing us to continue it.     

PAI-1 Study in Thalassemia Major Patients Receiving Multiple Blood Transfusion

Thalassemia is a congenital hemolytic disease which is treated by repeated blood transfusion. Chronic iron overload is currently considered to be the primary cause of mortality in β-thalassemia, mainly due to the induction of left-sided cardiac failure. Iron overload results from a number of mechanisms associated with the disease itself. In addition to chronic iron overload thalassemic patients are more prone for procoagulant status which in turn lead to clinical thrombotic events. The hypercoagulable state in thalassemia is due to multiple elements, a combination of which is often the drive behind a clinical thromboembolic events. PAI-1 study was done in thalassemia major patients receiving multiple blood transfusion as a marker for procoagulant status. Total of 30 thalassemic patients on repeated blood transfusion was included in the study and total of 30 healthy age and sex matched controls were included in the study. It was also found that there was significant differences between cases and controls. The mean level of PAI 1 in controls was 3047 ± 414 pg/ml, the value in cases was 3683 ± 358 pg/ml. The level was significantly increased (p < 0.05) in the cases compared to controls. PAI-1 levels were also compared with the total number of blood transfusion which correlates well.     

Fractional sampling and robust equalization

The performance of a transversal filter as an equalizer varies widely depending on the sampling rate of the received signal. A conventional linear synchronous equalizer suffers from aliasing effects;its performance is very sensitive to receiver sampler phase. It is pointed out that a fractionally spaced equalizer is superior in performance with respect to both the problems. It can also synthesize the optimum linear receiver structure in one transversal filter.Two other problems common with all high data rate transmission schemes are channel fluctuation and sampler phase jittering (SPJ) at the receiver. It is shown that fractionally spaced (FS) equalizers can be more robust in the system performance with respect to SPJ than conventional synchronous equalizers. It can also be guided to achieve some kind of inverse filtering of the channel which gives robustness with respect to channel fluctuations;two different types of anti-Nyquist distortions are considered in this context in order to demonstrate such robustness.     

Screening ion-channel ligand interactions with passive pumping in a microfluidic bilayer lipid membrane chip

We describe a scalable artificial bilayer lipid membrane platform for rapid electrophysiological screening of ion channels and transporters. A passive pumping method is used to flow microliter volumes of ligand solution across a suspended bilayer within a microfluidic chip. Bilayers are stable at flow rates up to ∼0.5 μl/min. Phospholipid bilayers are formed across a photolithographically defined aperture made in a dry film resist within the microfluidic chip. Bilayers are stable for many days and the low shunt capacitance of the thin film support gives low-noise high-quality single ion channel recording. Dose-dependent transient blocking of α-hemolysin with β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) and polyethylene glycol is demonstrated and dose-dependent blocking studies of the KcsA potassium channel with tetraethylammonium show the potential for determining IC₅₀ values. The assays are fast (30 min for a complete IC₅₀ curve) and simple and require very small amounts of compounds (100 μg in 15 μl). The technology can be scaled so that multiple bilayers can be addressed, providing a screening platform for ion channels, transporters, and nanopores.