Investigating the Impact of Using a CAD Simulation Tool on Students’ Learning of Design Thinking

Engineering design thinking is hard to teach and still harder to learn by novices primarily due to the undetermined nature of engineering problems that often results in multiple solutions. In this paper, we investigate the effect of teaching engineering design thinking to freshmen students by using a computer-aided Design (CAD) simulation software. We present a framework for characterizing different levels of engineering design thinking displayed by students who interacted with the CAD simulation software in the context of a collaborative assignment. This framework describes the presence of four levels of engineering design thinking—beginning designer, adept beginning designer, informed designer, adept informed designer. We present the characteristics associated with each of these four levels as they pertain to four engineering design strategies that students pursued in this study—understanding the design challenge, building knowledge, weighing options and making tradeoffs, and reflecting on the process. Students demonstrated significant improvements in two strategies—understanding the design challenge and building knowledge. We discuss the affordances of the CAD simulation tool along with the learning environment that potentially helped students move towards Adept informed designers while pursuing these design strategies.     

Evaluation of serum mucoproteins in patients suffering from liver cancers

Mucoproteins are normal and essential constituents of different types of cells, tissues, and organs in our body. Interestingly, an increase in the serum mucoprotein has been described in several malignant disorders in various studies. To study this in the cases of hepatocellular carcinoma thirty five patients suffering from histologically or cytologically confirmed hepatocellular carcinoma were tested for serum mucoprotein in the Department of Biochemistry and the Department of Pathology of North Bengal Medical College for a period of one and a half years against matched healthy controls. The serum mucoprotein was found to be increased significantly in the cases suffering from hepatocellular carcinoma (p<0.001). So, the present study suggests a strong correlation between the mucoprotein level and carcinomatous changes in the hepatocellular tissues.     

Effect of Copper on <Emphasis Type="SmallCaps">l</Emphasis>-Cysteine/<Emphasis Type="SmallCaps">l</Emphasis>-Cystine Influx in Normal Human Erythrocytes and Erythrocytes of Wilson’s Disease

Wilson’s disease is a disease of abnormal copper metabolism in which free serum copper level is raised. The objective of the study was to determine, whether in Wilson disease, l-cysteine/l-cystine influx into RBC was decreased or not and the specific amino acid transporter affected by copper in normal human RBC. For l-cysteine/l-cystine influx, ten untreated cases, ten treated cases and ten age and sex matched healthy controls were recruited. To study the effect of copper on l-cysteine/l-cystine influx in RBC, 15 healthy subjects were selected. RBC GSH and l-cysteine/l-cystine influx were estimated by Beautler’s and Yildiz’s method respectively. In untreated cases, l-cysteine/l-cystine influx and erythrocyte GSH level were decreased showing that elevated level of free copper in serum or media decreased l-cysteine/l-cystine influx in human RBC. Copper treatment inhibited L amino acid transporter in normal RBC specifically.     

Alteration of Micronutrient Status in Compensated and Decompensated Liver Cirrhosis

Decompensation followed by death is the most serious outcome in patients suffering from cirrhosis of the liver. Alteration of trace elements may play a vital role in the process of decompensation. To examine the change in status of trace elements during the decompensation process, we analysed the zinc, copper, iron, magnesium, bilirubin and albumin levels in the serum of compensated (n = 34) and decompensated (n = 31) liver cirrhosis patients and compared them with healthy control group (n = 36) by post hoc ANOVA. We observed significant alteration in the selected micronutrients in the diseased group relative to healthy controls (P < 0.05). Moreover, mean serum zinc and iron levels were significantly lower with a higher level of serum copper in decompensated cirrhosis group than in compensated group (P < 0.05). However, no significant decrease of serum magnesium was found between the two diseased groups. Our findings imply that the trace elements like zinc, copper and iron might exert important contributory roles in decompensation process in liver cirrhosis and hence, may be utilized as important biomarkers for these patients. Furthermore, we propose that replacements of those micronutrients at an early stage can delay or prevent the severe outcomes like hepatic encephalopathy, gastrointestinal bleeding, severe jaundice or ascites in these patients.     

Evaluation of serum zinc level and plasma SOD activity in senile cataract patients under oxidative stress

An imbalance in the systemic redox status leading to oxidative stress has been an important factor in development of senile cataracts, which is reflected by an increase in serum TBARS and a decrease in plasma SOD activity. Zinc has been an important cofactor required for structural stability of SOD. In the present study the role of serum zinc level and plasma SOD activity was analyzed in senile cataract patients showing significant oxidative stress. Serum TBARS, plasma SOD and serum zinc level was measured in thirty randomly selected senile cataract patients against properly matched controls. Although, the analysis of means showed a significant increase in serum TBARS and decrease in plasma SOD and serum zinc level in cases, but plasma SOD was found to be just significantly correlated (p=0.05) with the serum zinc only in the cases. The results of partial correlation studies and multiple regression analysis, also, showed only a significant correlation and predictable dependence between serum TBARS and plasma SOD, excluding any role of serum zinc level. The present study concludes that it is chiefly the plasma SOD activity, but not the serum zinc level, that determines the proneness of the patients for development of senile cataract.     

A new set of orthogonal functions and its application to the analysis of dynamic systems

The present work proposes a complementary pair of orthogonal triangular function (TF) sets derived from the well-known block pulse function (BPF) set. The operational matrices for integration in TF domain have been computed and their relation with the BPF domain integral operational matrix is shown. It has been established with illustration that the TF domain technique is more accurate than the BPF domain technique as far as integration is concerned, and it provides with a piecewise linear solution.As a further study, the newly proposed sets have been applied to the analysis of dynamic systems to prove the fact that it introduces less mean integral squared error (MISE) than the staircase solution obtained from BPF domain analysis, without any extra computational burden. Finally, a detailed study of the representational error has been made to estimate the upper bound of the MISE for the TF approximation of a function f(t) of Lebesgue measure.     

LTSA conformance testing to architectural design of LMS using ontology

This paper proposes a new methodology for checking conformance of the software architectural design of Learning Management System (LMS) to Learning Technology System Architecture (LTSA). In our approach, the architectural designing of LMS follows the formal modeling style of Acme. An ontology is built to represent the LTSA rules and the software architecture in Acme style. Conformity of the design with LTSA rules is tested by reasoning the ontology with the query language SPARQL. A Java-based plug-in system is introduced to implement functionalities like loading the elements of the architectural design into the ontology, mapping the architectural elements with LTSA elements, and performing the conformance test. The advantage of the proposed methodology is two-folded. First, it verifies an important software quality attribute – conformance to technical standard – at an early stage of development, like high-level design phase. Secondly, instead of the conventional manual checklist based approach of conformance testing, this methodology focuses on an automated way to finding the conformance level of the system under check.     

Diagnostic Role of Tumour Markers CEA, CA15-3, CA19-9 and CA125 in Lung Cancer

The aim of this study was to assess the diagnostic yield of the tumour markers carcinoembryonic antigen, carbohydrate antigen 15-3, carbohydrate antigen 19-9 and carbohydrate antigen 125, in serum and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid in a group of patients with bronchogenic carcinoma. Serum and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid samples were collected in a group of 90 patients with benign or malignant pulmonary diseases. After appropriate processing, tumour markers were determined by enzyme immunoassay. The diagnostic yields (sensitivity, specificity and predictive values) in each environment (serum and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid) were obtained by using "Receivers operating characteristic" curve. Determined individually, carcinoembryonic antigen, carbohydrate antigen 19-9 and carbohydrate antigen 125, showed the greatest diagnostic accuracy in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. Carbohydrate antigen 15-3 did so in serum. Carcinoembryonic antigen was the most relevant marker in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. For the factors evaluated in this study, determination of carcinoembryonic antigen, carbohydrate antigen 19-9 and carbohydrate antigen 125 in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid were clinically more useful markers in comparison with serum, although the latter may also be helpful in certain situations. Although there is no specific tumour marker for lung cancer, the combination of several can be used to diagnose most patients with lung cancer and also to rule out false positive and negative cases.