130,464 research outputs found
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT IN THE UNIVERSITY TEACHING: THE TEM MODEL
No full textThe aim of the work is the constant searching for "quality of education" that is inextricably linked to the careful and responsive listening to the needs "of the customer," according to his satisfaction. In this regard, the Deming Cycle (PDCA), represented one significant methodological choice. In particular, TEM, retraces the cycle Plan, Do, Check, Act of Deming, through a system of schemes of design/ management, didactical evaluation/self-evaluation, aimed at analyzing and improving every single lesson. The teacher after having planned his own educational intervention (Plan) realizes the lesson (Do) and at the end of the same administered to learners an evaluation questionnaire (objective test - Check 1).
The obtained results allow the teacher to identify possible problems, seek the causes which generate them through a teacher self-assessment questionnaire (Check 2) and define the corrective actions to be implemented already in the next lesson (Act). The cycle is repeated in all the lessons of the course offering to the teacher the opportunity to assess the level of learning of each student and the class as a whole (homogeneity - heterogeneity) - acting consequently in order to improve the educational activity. The TEM model, in this sense, allows the teacher to standardize "the good practices" to constantly improve all processes and try the path of innovation, building and maintaining a wealth of formalized experiences which, therefore, can be estimated, compared and improved. The work is divided into multiple phases, the first aspect analyzed concerns the analysis of the international literature, with reference to issues related to the evaluation of the teacher as a function of didactical self-evaluation and in view of the quality of teaching. The following is a presentation of the model and of its peculiarities. An analysis of the TEM model qualifying aspects is also provided, its main strengths and weaknesses. Finally, we propose an application example of the model to a university (undergraduate) course in Accounting.
Teaching Quality, Deming Cycle, Self-evaluation, Continuous Improvement, Accountin
Subtractive hybridization cloning of novel genes differentially expressed during intestinal development
No full textIntestinal genes whose expression is regulated during development and differentiation were identified and cloned from a rat villi cDNA library using a subtracted cDNA probe. The isolated clones are transcribed in the fully differentiated intestinal epithelium 21 days after birth and absent or poorly expressed in the fetal gut at 15 days of gestation. Two of the DRI (differentially-expressed in rat intestine) genes are novel, while the others encode the microvillar protein ezrin and intracellular carrier proteins for retinol and fatty acids. Expression of the newly isolated DRI27 and DRI42 clones parallels epithelial differentiation during development and it is more pronounced in the distal portions of the small intestine. In situ hybridization experiments indicate that the DRI mRNAs are expressed in the differentiated cell types of the gut epithelium. Moreover, the expression of DRI27 and DRI42 is strongly related to the stage of epithelial differentiation during gut development. This relationship holds true also for the expression of DRI42 in other tissues. These clones will be a valuable tool to identify regulatory sequences and factors responsible for confining gene expression to the differentiated epithelial cell types in mammalian small intestine
Transcriptional regulation of the ezrin gene during rat intestinal development and epithelial differentiation
No full textPolarized intestinal epithelial cells are characterized by the presence of a brush border at their apical surface. The brush border cytoskeleton is assembled during cell differentiation and is composed of parallel actin bundles, held together by specific actin-binding proteins. Using specific cDNA probes we have studied the expression of the mRNAs encoding ezrin and moesin, two members of a class of proteins that connect the microvillar cytoskeleton to the plasma membrane, during the process of enterocyte maturation that occurs both in the embryonic and in the adult small intestine, along the crypt-villus axis. The steady state levels of ezrin mRNA were found to increase in the fetal gut epithelium between day 15 and day 20 of gestation and during the first week after birth, in parallel with the morphogenetic process that leads to cell polarization and brush border assembly. On the contrary, moesin mRNA is expressed at very low levels in the mature small intestine, with a sudden drop in transcription occurring at birth. In the continuously renewing epithelium of adult animals, ezrin mRNA levels are higher in the differentiated villus cells of the distal portions of the gastrointestinal tract and very low in undifferentiated crypt cells. These data demonstrate that the expression of the ezrin gene is regulated at the level of mRNA abundance during development and differentiation of the intestinal epithelium
Monitoring of the tractor working parameters from the Can-Bus.
No full textThe analysis of the tractor mission profile is one of the main objectives for tractor manufacturers. The mission profile has usually been estimated through the use of questionnaires submitted to consumers. This procedure is time-consuming and not totally reliable due to the trustworthiness in the questionnaire compilation. In all the high power tractors numerous transducers are fitted to monitor some parameters to optimise the operation of the machines. All of these transducers are connected to an electronic central unit or with the tractor CAN-Bus. In this context, a system able to monitor the working parameters of the machines capitalising the existing transducers could represent the optimal solution for monitoring tractors distributed in different regions. The high number of signals are in any case difficult to memorise without a high quantity of memory. The goal of the paper is to define a methodology to memorise the operation parameters useful to define the mission profile of a tractor using a small memory. A tractor of a nominal power of 230 kW was selected and a system able to measure the signals acquired by the transducers fitted on the tractor was connected to the CAN Bus of the tractor. After a detailed analysis of the parameters measured on the tractor, the useful parameters were defined and acquired in different working conditions. The analysis of the parameters stored in the memory has allowed a detailed analysis of the operational parameters of the tractor in different applications. These parameters could be used by engineers to design tractors with a higher quality and reliability and also to define predictive maintenance criteria and reduce unexpected tractor failures
The Dri 42 gene, whose expression is up-regulated during epithelial differentiation, encodes a novel endoplasmic reticulum resident transmembrane protein
No full textA search for novel genes that are up-regulated during development and differentiation of the epithelial cells of the intestinal mucosa led us to the isolation of the Dri 42 cDNA clone (Dri, differentially expressed in rat intestine). The nucleotide sequence of the full-length cDNA has shown that it encodes a 35.5-kDa protein with one consensus sequence for N-linked glycosylation and alternating hydrophilic and hydrophobic domains. To determine the intracellular localization of Dri 42 we have raised polyclonal antibodies in hens against a bacterially produced Dri 42-glutathione S-transferase fusion protein. Immunofluorescence detection with these antibodies has shown specific staining of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) in the relatively undifferentiated fetal rat intestinal cell line FRIC B and in sections of rat small intestine. ER membrane localization of Dri 42 was confirmed by laser confocal microscopy of polarized Madin-Darby canine kidney cells overexpressing a Dri 42-chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) fusion protein by transfection. Pulse labeling experiments on transiently transfected cells demonstrated that the protein does not acquire Golgi modifications up to 4 h after synthesis, thus indicating that Dri 42 is an ER resident protein. The transmembrane disposition of Dri 42 was studied using in vitro insertion of Dri 42-CAT fusion proteins into microsomal membranes. The fusion proteins consisted of several different lengths of truncated Dri 42 and a reporter protein, CAT, that was linked in-frame after each hydrophobic segment. We found that hydrophobic segments H1, H3, and H5 had a signal/anchor function, and that membrane insertion of Dri 42 was achieved co-translationally by the action of a series of alternating insertion signals and halt transfer signals, resulting in the exposure of both termini of the protein to the cytosolic side. The functional implications of the structure and localization of Dri 42, whose primary sequence does not share significant homology to any previously described protein, are discussed
MeSH term explosion and author rank improve expert recommendations
No full textInformation overload is an often-cited phenomenon that reduces the productivity, efficiency and efficacy of scientists. One challenge for scientists is to find appropriate collaborators in their research. The literature describes various solutions to the problem of expertise location, but most current approaches do not appear to be very suitable for expert recommendations in biomedical research. In this study, we present the development and initial evaluation of a vector space model-based algorithm to calculate researcher similarity using four inputs: 1) MeSH terms of publications; 2) MeSH terms and author rank; 3) exploded MeSH terms; and 4) exploded MeSH terms and author rank. We developed and evaluated the algorithm using a data set of 17,525 authors and their 22,542 papers. On average, our algorithms correctly predicted 2.5 of the top 5/10 coauthors of individual scientists. Exploded MeSH and author rank outperformed all other algorithms in accuracy, followed closely by MeSH and author rank. Our results show that the accuracy of MeSH term-based matching can be enhanced with other metadata such as author rank
523676 (2013 UL10): The first active red centaur
No full textAims. We present observations of 523676 (2013 UL10), a centaur orbiting between Jupiter and Uranus that is dynamically similar to the few tens of active centaurs that are currently known. Methods. We analysed visible BVR images of the centaur obtained at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain) to investigate the weak comet-like activity and to derive information on the nucleus surface colours and size. Results. Centaur 523676 (2013 UL10) is the only centaur known so far that has both comet-like activity and red surface colours: its nucleus has a colour index [BR] = 1.88 0.11. The nucleus R magnitude (R = 20.93 0.09) allowed us to derive an upper limit for its nucleus size of D 10 km. We estimated its dust production rate to be Qd 10 kg s1 at 6.2 au (just after its perihelion passage), resulting in a timescale for the surface blanketing process of approximately tens of years, which is very short with respect to typical dynamical lifetime inside the group. Future monitoring of 523676 (2013 UL10) is needed to further constrain the blanketing model for active centaurs and its timescale
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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