Singapore Colloquial English and Standard English

Singapore English can be described as diglossic, that is, most of the proficient adult users of English in Singapore use two grammatically distinct varieties of English: (1) Singapore Colloquial English, which is used with close friends, to children, and informally in general and (2) Standard English, which is used in writing, in formal situations, and is associated with education. Singapore Colloquial English is informally learnt, while the teaching of Standard English is a primary responsibility of the school.

Students at the National University of Singapore, and especially those taking courses in the Department of English Language and Literature, can be expected to show the highest attainment levels in Standard English of those coming from the education system. The oral skills of these students are generally very good, both in comprehension and production. Their control of vocabulary is outstanding. While some students still have problems producing Standard English (especially in the area of tenses) most students make few grammatical errors. However, they do have problems with the organisation of material, report writing, and techniques of argumentation. Students also tend to write in a uniformly journalistic style, having little control over the use of different styles for different types of writing. Awareness of the functions of English in Singapore may help teachers to understand the importance of stylistic appropriacy.     

The Case for Dynamic Models of Learners' Ontologies in Physics

We cannot really understand how to create computer support for collaborative learning without first becoming clearer about what we mean by communication, collaboration, and learning. After distinguishing several conceptions of communication, and highlighting transformative communications for learning, I consider how, via broadband telepresence, distributed multimedia learning environments may establish such communications by adequately acknowledging the social and material embeddedness of everyday communication. I then describe high-priority areas for advancing this agenda: in sociocultural theory, in examining conceptual change by means of conversational analysis, and in technically establishing affordances of tools to sustain and potentially enhance joint activity beyond the here-and-now and the face-to-face.     

Validating a teaching survey which drives increased response rates in a unit survey

At Curtin University, student perceptions of teaching and learning are gathered and reported online through eVALUate, a system that includes separate unit and teaching surveys. This article reports the development and validation of one of those surveys, the eVALUate teaching survey, which was developed based on the research literature on excellent teaching and evaluation. Since its development in 2006, repeated statistical testing using progressively larger samples has shown that the survey is valid and reliable. Moreover, the way in which the teaching survey is deployed within eVALUate, appended to the unit survey, which provides crucial institutional data, has significantly increased university response rates. This validated instrument is used for self-reflection, professional development, and rewarding staff.     

The usage and adoption of cloud computing by small and medium businesses

Cloud computing has become the buzzword in the industry today. Though, it is not an entirely new concept but in today's digital age, it has become ubiquitous due to the proliferation of Internet, broadband, mobile devices, better bandwidth and mobility requirements for end-users (be it consumers, SMEs or enterprises). In this paper, the focus is on the perceived inclination of micro and small businesses (SMEs or SMBs) toward cloud computing and the benefits reaped by them. This paper presents five factors influencing the cloud usage by this business community, whose needs and business requirements are very different from large enterprises. Firstly, ease of use and convenience is the biggest favorable factor followed by security and privacy and then comes the cost reduction. The fourth factor reliability is ignored as SMEs do not consider cloud as reliable. Lastly but not the least, SMEs do not want to use cloud for sharing and collaboration and prefer their old conventional methods for sharing and collaborating with their stakeholders.     

Estimation of plasma haemoglobin by a modified kinetic method using o-tolidine

Measurement of plasma hemoglobin is useful in variety of clinical conditions. In the present study we have developed a kinetic method to estimate plasma haemoglobin by using o-tolidine. This method is sensitive, rapid, economical, simple and less influenced by interfering substances. It measures plasma haemoglobin in the range of 6 to 400 mg/L (normal range < 50 mg/L) in less than two minutes and can be easily automated.     

Renal Cell Carcinoma: Molecular Aspects

Renal cell carcinoma is the most common form of the kidney cancer accounting for more than 85% of the cases of which clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is the major histological subtype. The central molecular signature for ccRCC pathogenesis is the biallelic inactivation of VHL gene due to the presence of mutations/hyper-methylation/complete gene loss, which results in the downstream HIF activation. These events lead to increased tyrosine kinase receptor signalling pathways (RAS/MEK/ERK pathway, PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway and NF-κB pathway), which through their downstream effector proteins causes the cell to proliferate and migrate. Recent studies have shown that VHL inactivation alone is not sufficient to induce the tumor. Mutations in numerous other genes that codes for chromatin modifiers (PBRM1, SETD2 and BAP1) and signalling proteins (PTEN and mTOR) have been identified along with activation of alternate signalling pathways like STAT and Sonic Hedgehog (SHH) pathway. It has also been shown that STAT pathway also works cooperatively with HIF to enhance the tumor progression. However, SHH pathway reactivation resulted in tumor regardless of the VHL status, indicating the complex nature of the tumor at the molecular level. Therefore, understanding the complete aetiology of ccRCC is important for future therapeutics.