A cross-cultural investigation of teachers’ and reporting officers’ self-ratings on teaching and leadership skills across Singapore and Bahrain

Self-rating bias is particularly likely in organizational behavior research as individuals tend to inflate their expertise, skills and character. This study aims to examine how two culturally diverse groups of teachers and their reporting officers respond to self-ratings of their own teaching skills and leadership skills respectively. It is posited that such response may be culturally based. To ensure validity of comparisons, analyses were done using linear Rasch measures in logits rather than the non-linear raw scores. No significant differences were found between the perceptions of Singaporean teachers and their reporting officers on teaching and leadership skills. The Bahraini data however revealed teachers’ perceptions of own teaching skills were significantly higher than that of their reporting officers. The opposite is true for the Reporting officers’ perceptions of our leadership skills. Bahraini teachers’ perceptions of their own teaching skills were also found to be significantly higher than that of their Singaporean counterparts. The findings support the notion that individuals’ thinking and behavior is influenced by how they process social and cultural information.     

Lotka's law: A testing procedure

Instead of the commonly accepted inverse square law, Lotka's original formulation was based on a more general inverse power law: xⁿ·y = c. The exponent and the constant must be estimated from the given set of author productivity data. A step-by-step outline is presented for testing the applicability of Lotka's law. Steps include the computation of the values of the exponent and the constant based on Lotka's method, and the test for significance of the observed frequency distribution against the estimated theoretical distribution derived from Lotka's formula.     

Predicting Parent-Child Differences in Perceptions of How Children Use the Internet for Help With Homework,Identity Development,and Health Information

Bioecological systems theory provides a framework to understand how factors in the child's environment contribute to parent-child differences in estimations of how often children are helped by their Internet use. A national sample survey of 456 matched parent-child pairs investigated how parents-child relational factors, parental attitudes toward the Internet, and the bio-ecology of the child, are related to differing perceptions of the frequency of using the Internet to seek help with homework assignments, to aid in identity development, and to find health information. While previous research shows that parents underestimate risky online behaviors, we investigate whether parent-child differences will emerge in regards to how often the child engages in the behaviors under investigation here. The findings show that parents overestimate these online activities, suggesting they are biased in their estimations. Parent-child relational factors emerged as predictors of parental overestimation for each of these online activities, with trust perceptions as the most consistent predictor. Parental attitudes toward the Internet predicted parent-child differences in perceptions of how frequently the child used the Internet for help with homework and identity development, while the bioecology of the child was only predictive in the case of using the Internet for help with homework.     

Effects of hydraulic pressure on cardiomyoblasts in a microfluidic device

We employed a microfluidic device to study the effects of hydraulic pressure on cardiomyoblast H9c2. The 170 mm Hg pressure increased the cellular area and the expression of atrial natriuretic peptide. With the same device, we demonstrated that the effects of hydraulic pressure on the cardiomyoblast could be reduced by the inhibitor of focal adhesion kinase. This mechanical–chemical antagonism could lead to a potential therapeutic strategy of hypertension-induced cardiac hypertrophy.     

An integrated microfluidic system for screening of phage-displayed peptides specific to colon cancer cells and colon cancer stem cells

Affinity reagents recognizing biomarkers specifically are essential components of clinical diagnostics and target therapeutics. However, conventional methods for screening of these reagents often have drawbacks such as large reagent consumption, the labor-intensive or time-consuming procedures, and the involvement of bulky or expensive equipment. Alternatively, microfluidic platforms could potentially automate the screening process within a shorter period of time and reduce reagent and sample consumption dramatically. It has been demonstrated recently that a subpopulation of tumor cells known as cancer stem cells possess high drug resistance and proliferation potential and are regarded as the main cause of metastasis. Therefore, a peptide that recognizes cancer stem cells and differentiates them from other cancer cells will be extremely useful in early diagnosis and target therapy. This study utilized M13 phage display technology to identify peptides that bind, respectively, to colon cancer cells and colon cancer stem cells using an integrated microfluidic system. In addition to positive selection, a negative selection process was integrated on the chip to achieve the selection of peptides of high affinity and specificity. We successfully screened three peptides specific to colon cancer cells and colon cancer stem cells, namely, HOLC-1, HOLC-2, and COLC-1, respectively, and their specificity was measured by the capture rate between target, control, and other cell lines. The capture rates are 43.40 ± 7.23%, 45.16 ± 7.12%, and 49.79 ± 5.34% for colon cancer cells and colon cancer stem cells, respectively, showing a higher specificity on target cells than on control and other cell lines. The developed technique may be promising for early diagnosis of cancer cells and target therapeutics.     

“What would you like me to do? Lie to you?” Teacher education responsibilities to LGBTI students

The experiences of lesbian, gay, trans (The use of trans with an asterisk avoids the use of transsexual or transgender and promotes recognition of the inadequacy of such labels), bisexual and intersex (LGBTI) student teachers were recently investigated at a New Zealand faculty of education. Student teachers studying in early childhood education and care, primary and secondary initial teacher education (ITE) were asked about their perceptions of LGBTI visibility and inclusion. Methods used were online questionnaires, focus groups and individual interviews. While the study encompassed all aspects of the ITE programme, this work uses one specific question about practicum from the questionnaire, and findings related to practicum and teaching from the focus groups and individual interviews. In this article, the experiences of LGBTI (those who identified as non-heterosexual) student teachers and “straight” (those who identified as heterosexual) are discussed. Findings suggest that both faculty and practicum settings are heteronormative and indicate that LGBTI student teachers felt uncertain about their safety. Both LGBTI and straight students felt they had not been given adequate preparation to manage the complexities of diverse sexualities on practicum or in their future teaching. We argue that addressing heteronormativity in ITE will better prepare student teachers for the rich diversity of students and families they will encounter in their teaching.     

DISTRIBUTIVE PARTITIONING OPERATION IN MATHEMATICAL SITUATIONS INVOLVING FRACTIONAL QUANTITIES

In the present study, we describe a participating student’s (Carol’s) distributive partitioning scheme and operations along with Steffe’s and his colleagues’ studies about children’s constructions of fraction knowledge as a particular model of mathematical learning. Analysis of Carol’s mathematical behaviors indicates that an operationally common mathematical behavior (distributive partitioning operation) was revealed in various mathematical problem situations such as fraction multiplication, fraction division, and multiplicative transformation between fractional quantities. It both provides a rationale for why becoming versed in one mathematical subject could facilitate working with another mathematical subject and also implies the necessity of describing and defining students’ mathematical behaviors from an operational view of knowledge, which might lead to building foundations of a substantial cognitive map for students’ mathematical development.