Fiber optic biosensor of immobilized firefly luciferase

Luciferase from firefly lantern extract was immobilized on CNBr-activated Sepharose 4B. The kinetic properties of immobilized luciferase were extensively studied. TheK _m′ for D-luciferin is 11.9 μmol/L, the optimum pH and temperature for Sepharose-bound enzyme were 7.8 and 25°C respectively. A luminescence fiber optic biosensor, making use of immobilized crude luciferase, was developed for assay of ATP. The peak light intensity was linear with respect to ATP concentration in range of 10⁻⁹–10⁻⁵ mol/L. A biological application was also demonstrated with the determination of serum ATP from rats bred in low versus normal oxygen environments.     

Formative Assessment in Higher Education:Its Significance for Employability,and Steps Towards Its Enhancement

Research shows that formative assessment can exert a powerful effect on student learning, yet the complexity of formative assessment is not well understood and some curricular structures and practices do not fully exploit its potential. This article outlines the background to the political promotion of employability and shows that institutional responses are influenced by multiple considerations. It discusses formative assessment and models it as a complex signalling system before considering the implications, for students’ employability, of accentuating the attention given to formative assessment. The potential for action is discussed with reference to three levels: those of the institution, the department, and the individual academic.     

“Innovation Studies”: The Invention of a Specialty

Innovation has become a very popular concept over the twentieth century. However, few have stopped to study the origins of the category and to critically examine the studies produced on innovation. This paper conducts such an analysis on one type of innovation, namely technological innovation. The study of technological innovation is over one hundred years old. From the early 1900s onward, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and economists began theorizing about technological innovation, each from his own respective disciplinary framework. However, in the last forty years an economic and ??dominant?? understanding of technological innovation has developed: technological innovation defined as commercialized invention. This paper documents the origins of this representation and the tradition of research to which it gave rise: ??innovation studies.?? More specifically, it analyzes what distinguishes this tradition from that concerned with technological change as the use of inventions in industrial production, and looks at why such a tradition originated in Europe.     

Epochē, Entertainment and Ethics: On the Hyperreality of Everyday Life

In this essay, I argue that popular entertainment can be understood in terms of Husserl’s concepts of epochē, reduction and constitution, and, conversely, that epochē, reduction and constitution can be explicated in terms of popular entertainment. To this end I use Husserl’s concepts to explicate and reflect upon the psychological and ethical effects of an exemplary instance of entertainment, the renowned Star Trek episode entitled “The Measure of a Man.” The importance of such an exercise is twofold: (1) to demonstrate, once again, the fecundity of the methodological procedures Husserl bequeathed to us; more than any other philosopher, he tapped into the fundamental manners in which we lose, make and remake the meanings of our lives; and (2) to demonstrate how popular entertainment, similarly, plays a central role in the making and remaking of the meanings of our lives. If my zig-zag procedure between Husserl’s philosophy and popular entertainment is productive and cogent, in addition to elucidating Husserl’s philosophy, it will demonstrate the reality-generating potency and the constitutive power of entertainment in the contemporary world. Entertainment, via ourselves, has become the primary producer of the meanings via which consciousness constitutes the world.     

Dynamic properties of composite cemented clay

In this work,the dynamic properties of composite cemented clay under a wide range of strains were studied considering the effect of different mixing ratio and the change of confining pressures through dynamic triaxial test. A simple and practical method to estimate the dynamic elastic modulus and damping ratio is proposed in this paper and a related empirical normalized formula is also presented. The results provide useful guidelines for preliminary estimation of cement requirements to improve the dynamic properties of clays.     

Improving the precision of the keyword-matching pornographic text filtering method using a hybrid model

With the flooding of pornographic information on the Internet, how to keep people away from that offensive information is becoming one of the most important research areas in network information security. Some applications which can block or filter such information are used. Approaches in those systems can be roughly classified into two kinds:metadata based and content based. With the development of distributed technologies, content based filtering technologies will play a more and more important role in filtering systems. Keyword matching is a content based method used widely in harmful text filtering. Experiments to evaluate the recall and precision of the method showed that the precision of the method is not satisfactory, though the recall of the method is rather high. According to the results, a new pornographic text filtering model based on reconfirming is put forward. Experiments showed that the model is practical, has less loss of recall than the single keyword matching method, and has higher precision.     

ADAPT<Superscript>IT</Superscript>: Tools for training design and evaluation

This article describes a set of computerized tools that support the design and evaluation of competency-based training programs. The training of complex skills such as air traffic control and process control requires a competency-based approach that focuses on the integration and coordination of constituent skills and transfer of learning. At the heart of the training are authentic whole-task practice situations. The instructional design tools are based on van Merriënboer's 4C/ID^* methodology (1997). The article describes a training design tool (Core) that supports the analysis and design for competency-based training programs and an evaluation tool (Eval) that supports the subsequent revision of this training design.     

Effect of conceptual change approach accompanied with concept mapping on understanding of solution concepts

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of conceptual change texts accompanied with concept mapping instruction, compared to traditional instruction (TI), on 8th grade students understanding of solution concepts and their attitudes toward science as a school subject. Solution Concept Test was developed as a result of examination of related literature and interviews with teachers regarding their observations of students difficulties. The test was administered to a total of 64 eighth grade students from two classes of a general science course, taught by the same teacher. The experimental group received the conceptual change texts accompanied with concept mapping in a lecture by the teacher. This instruction explicitly dealt with students misconceptions. It was designed to suggest conditions in which misconceptions could be replaced by scientific conceptions and new conceptions could be integrated with existing conceptions. The control group received TI in which the teacher provided instruction through lecture and discussion methods. The results showed that conceptual change text accompanied with concept mapping instruction caused a significantly better acquisition of scientific conceptions related to solution concept and produced significantly higher positive attitudes toward science as a school subject than the TI. In addition, logical thinking ability and prior learning were strong predictors for the concept learning related to solution.     

Erscheinungsbasierte statistische Objekterkennung

Zusammenfassung.   Die automatische Erkennung und Lokalisation von Objekten in digitalen Bildern ist ein wesentlicher Bestandteil vieler praktisch relevanter Anwendungen. In diesem Artikel wird ein erscheinungsbasiertes Verfahren zur Erkennung starrer zwei- oder dreidimensionaler Objekte vorgestellt, dem eine statistische Modellierung zugrundeliegt. Im Gegensatz zu segmentierungsbasierten Verfahren, wie sie vor allem im Bereich der 3D-Objekterkennung eingesetzt werden, erm?glicht der erscheinungsbasierte Ansatz aufgrund der Modellierung der Intensit?tswerte oder davon abgeleiteter lokaler Merkmale eines Bildes die Erkennung komplexer Objekte. Die statistische Formulierung der Problemstellung bildet den mathematischen Kontext zur Bestimmung optimaler L?sungen. Die Form der Modellierung erlaubt neben der Einzelobjekterkennung auch die Berücksichtigung von heterogenem Bildhintergrund und Mehrobjektszenen. Die dazu ben?tigten lokalen Merkmale entstehen durch r?umlich begrenzte Transformationen des Bildes, wie beispielsweise Gabor- oder Wavelet-Transformationen. Die statistische Modellierung beschreibt die Verteilung dieser lokalen Merkmale anhand einer Dichtefunktion, die sich bei der Hintergrund- und Mehrobjektmodellierung als Mischungsverteilung der Einzelobjektverteilungen ergibt. Die Aufgabenstellungen des Erlernens und Erkennens von Objekten sind damit als Parametersch?tzprobleme formal darstellbar. Dabei werden im einen Fall die Modellparameter und im anderen Fall die Lageparameter beziehungsweise die Klassen von Objekten gesch?tzt. Die experimentelle überprüfung des Ansatzes anhand realer Objektaufnahmen durch CCD-Kameras zeigt seine Brauchbarkeit zur Erkennung von 2D- und 3D-Objekten bei homogenem und heterogenem Hintergrund. Eingegangen am 5. April 2000 / Angenommen am 20. Juli 2001