Effect of CO2 enrichment on the glucosinolate contents under different nitrogen levels in bolting stem of Chinese kale (Brassica alboglabra L.)

The effects of CO2 enrichment on the growth and glucosinolate (GS) concentrations in the bolting stem of Chinese kale (Brassioa alboglabra L.) treated with three nitrogen (N) concentrations (5, 10, and 20 mmol/L) were investigated. Height,stem thickness, and dry weights of the total aerial parts, bolting stems, and roots, as well as the root to shoot ratio, significantly increased as CO2 concentration was elevated from 350 to 800 μl/L at each N concentration. In the edible part of the bolting stem,11 individual GSs were identified, including 7 aliphatic and 4 indolyl GSs. GS concentration was affected by the elevated CO2 concentration, N concentration, and CO2×N interaction. At 5 and 10 mmol N/L, the concentrations of aliphatic GSs and total GSs significantly increased, whereas those of indolyl GSs were not affected, by elevated atmospheric CO2. However, at 20 mmol N/L,elevated CO2 had no significant effects on the concentrations of total GSs and total indolyl GSs, but the concentrations of total aliphatic GSs significantly increased. Moreover, the bolting stem carbon (C) content increased, whereas the N and sulfur (S) contents decreased under elevated CO2 concentration in the three N treatments, resulting in changes in the C/N and N/S ratios.Also the C/N ratio is not a reliable predictor of change of GS concentration, while the changes in N and S contents and the N/S ratio at the elevated CO2 concentration may influence the GS concentration in Chinese kale bolting stems. The results demonstrate that high nitrogen supply is beneficial for the growth of Chinese kale, but not for the GS concentration in bolting stems, under elevated CO2 condition.     

Report on the CSEET '99 Workshop: “Establishing a Distance Education Program”

The objectives of the workshop were to examine five particular aspects relevant to software engineering distance education: how to turn existing courses into distance mode, the implications of cultural issues in establishing the program and in the delivery of material, how to ensure the quality of courses, how to ensure comparability of experience for students, and the range of delivery mechanisms which have been tried and assessed. The two-staged operation and results of the workshop are reported. Initial position statements are detailed and the analysis from five separate subgroups that addressed a case study as stage one of the process is presented. The second stage, of different subgroups addressing the four operational scenarios, is described and the feedback obtained from these groups is then presented. Finally a summary of the major work-shop findings is given, along with some overall conclusions.     

Cultural and institutional restrictions on dying styles in a technological society

The starting medical advances of this century have created unparalleled opportunities for ill and suffering people, but these same forces have combined to make the experience of dying a terrifying, fearful, lonely vigil for many. Devoid of traditional myths, rituals, and family support, many patients now die in sterile institutional settings often appearing as mere appendages to life-supporting machines. This shift from the moral to the technical order manifests itself in doctors' fascination with gadgets, the emphasis upon parts of the body, and a concomitant blurring of distinctions concerning death, personhood, and individual rights. The patient is reduced to a secondary role in his or her own death, thus engendering a widespread desire for a sudden death. In light of these circumstances, health care personnel need to create circumstances that would give people more opportunities to die in styles commensurate with their life styles. Society must seriously study the implications of the unthinking treatment of people; and routines, policies, and procedures based on matters of mere efficiency and technological convenience must be replaced by those human and humane ceremonies, attitudes, and policies that must assure that technology's magnificent achievements do not obscure the human need for individuality and spiritual growth even during the dying process.     

Improving Opportunities for Bridging Social Capital: The Story of a Full-Service Community School Initiative at an Alternative High School

Abstract

This article describes the collective efforts educators and multiple community partners are taking to transform one alternative urban high school into a full-service community school. The article presents preliminary findings on the opportunities for bridging social capital that the full-service initiative has created and the impacts such opportunities have for students in urban alternative settings with multiple risk factors stacked against them.     

The effect of phonics instruction on the reading comprehension of beginning readers

This study investigated whether two groups of6-year-old beginning readers taught to read by aphonics and by a ``book experience' non-phonicsapproach would differ in reading comprehension as wellas the processes of word recognition. The two groupswere matched for word recognition but despite this, thephonics taught children had higher readingcomprehension. Phonics taught children produced morecontextually appropriate errors, and in both singleword and text reading made more spoken attempts atreading unknown words. The non-phonics taught childrenhad much faster reading reaction times to familiarwords but they scored less in phoneme segmentation andnonword reading tasks. Compared with the nonphonicsgroup, the phonics group spent more time in attemptsat identifying unknown words and this included usingcontextual information, which apparently resulted inmore rehearsal of the meaning of the story text andhence better reading comprehension performance.     

“Nice things get said”: corpus evidence and the National Literacy Strategy

The article compares evidence from an electronic corpus of texts written for a child audience with specifications in the National Literacy Strategy. The concepts and terminology associated with corpus linguistics are introduced and explained, and the research study from which the findings derive is summarised. Results of the analysis are presented in sections on word frequencies, contractions, word forms and synonyms. The article concludes with an indication of the implications of the findings for education policy and classroom practice.     

Did the Recession Impact Student Success? Relationships of Finances,Staffing and Institutional Type on Retention

Economic recessions impact higher education institutions in complex ways. Several analyses have examined the influence of the 2007–2009 recession on tuition, enrollments, revenues, and expenditures, but the connection of these resource allocation patterns to a student success outcome—namely, retention—is limited. This study examined relationships among institutional expenditures, tuition, and staffing patterns on first-year retention rates at private and public institutions in 2007, 2009 and 2011: before, during, and after the economic recession. Private and public institutions increased tuition during this time period and increased expenditures. Expenditures most directly educating students (i.e. instruction) and institutional selectivity were positively associated with retention. However, public and private institutions differed in how they allocated their expenditures. That the findings correspond with past research investigating relationships between resource allocation and retention illustrate principles of the resource dependency theory (Pfeffer and Salancik 1978): institutions impacted by external economic changes, adjust revenues, staffing, and expenditures during economic changes.     

Is life living? Defining death in a technological age

Historically, humanity has assigned death to evil spirits, malevolent gods, and other supernatural agents; but by the eighteenth century, the scientific spirit began to manifest itself through more precise biologic definitions of death. Thanks to modern medical technology, these early scientific views, with their considerable margin for error, gave way in the twentieth century to criteria based on such diverse factors as total lack of response to external stimuli, absence of spontaneous muscular movements, absence of all reflexes, total collapse of the arterial blood pressure, flat electrocardiogram, and flat electroencephalograph tracings. Undoubtedly such difficult matters as organ transplants, wills, homicide, euthanasia, and abortion demand precise definitions of death; but modern medical advances have engendered visions of physical immortality with doctors as the arbiters who often define and determine death. Even so, such one-dimensional, scientific views fail to capture those nebulous social, religious, or spiritual definitions that pervade humanity's definition of death. Humanistic views of death resist the movement of death from the moral realm to a technological order that places people in a system, theory, or chart, where they are thus absolved from fear of freedom. Rather, humanistic definitions demand that humanity step beyond mechanistic definitions of death into a transcendent world of moral choices that guarantee human dignity and worth by ascribing meaning to life and death. These meanings counter the desiccating fear that something like biologic human might, through something called medical technology, defeat something called fate.