Abstract: The effectiveness of teaching strategies that are generically labelled as cooperative learning (CL) is mainly analyzed in terms of motor, motivational or social benefits, measured at the end of CL units. However, few studies have quantitatively examined the processes that are inherent to the cooperative relationships between pupils. The aim of this exploratory study was to characterize the processes of construction of trust judgements by pupils in dyadic cooperative interactions during climbing lessons. The building of mutual trust is indeed a fundamental aspect of human cooperation. This study was carried out referring to the ?course of action? theoretical and methodological framework. Two middle school pupils in eighth grade participated in this study. They formed fixed dyads based on personal affinities. In every climbing task they cooperated alternately as a climber and insurer. Their behaviours and communications were recorded on video. After each session they participated in self-confrontation interviews. The elements involved in the construction of trust judgements of the climber toward the insurer were identified, and the evolutions of this judgement were characterized in relation to the modes of cooperation between pupils. The results show that the climbers trust judgement focused on two dimensions of the insurers activity: reliability of the belay and of his advice to succeed in the task. The building of these trust judgements combined the climbers knowledge about his insurer and event interpretation occurring in the context of the class during the insurer-climber cooperation. Results show the existence of a relationship between the development of each students trust judgements toward his partner, and the positive and negative dynamics of cooperation between students.

Abstract: Bridges which were built before 1 970s, either in the US or Japan or Europe, had been designed with little or no consideration for seismic demand. Majority of these bridges are supported by reinforced concrete bents and pier walls that lack the ductility and strength to resist earthquakes. Meanwhile strong motion earthquakes have revealed all vulnerable places on each of those bridges if built in seismically active region. After the 1 971 San Fernando earthquake the US started several seismic retrofit programs. Retrofit programs in the 1 980s included the first use of isolators on bridges and a program to retrofit single-column bents. These programs were greatly accelerated after the 1 989 Santa Cruz (Loma Prieta) and 1 994 Northridge earthquakes. After the 1 994 Northridge earthquake it was observed that no serious damage would have occurred if the previous retrofit program had already been implemented. Japan also started similar programs, especially after the 1 995 Kobe earthquake. Europe may not be out of this global problem and must have own retrofit program not only for buildings (Eurocode 8, Part 3 : Assessment and retrofitting of buildings, EN 1 998-3:2005) but for bridges as well. Some solutions for retrofitting the abutment, bent and column of concrete bridges recommended in these programs as well as some recommendations and comments made by the author will be presented in this paper.

Abstract: DASH SK, CHANDY MJAbstract--Alzheimers disease is the most common cause of dementia. The increasing prevalence of the disease presents a challenge to the treating neurologist. Presently the drugs used for Alzheimers disease produce only symptomatic improvement. Currently various therapeutic strategies are under development for the treatment and prevention of Alzheimers disease, like ? secretase inhibitors, immunotherapy with anti A? antibodies,A? immunization, metal protein attenuation compounds, and peroxysomal proliferators activated receptors ? agonist,NSAIDS. Alzheimers disease has a marked inflammatory component. It is proposed that anti inflammatory therapies may be of value in Alzheimers disease. PPARS are members of nuclear hormone receptor super families that are activated by lipids in regulating inflammatory responses. PPAR? has been investigated in animal model for its role due to its anti inflammatory action in various C.N.S. diseases, having an inflammatory component. PPAR ? agonists have been demonstrated to suppress amyloid ? mediated activation of microglia in vitro and to prevent cortical and hippocampal neuronal death. Various studies have shown that PPAR ? agonists may be of value in treatment of Alzheimers disease in animal models. The details of PPAR? agonists as a therapeutic target for the treatment of Alzheimers disease will be discussed.

Abstract: Electronic textbooks (e-textbooks) are digitized form of textbooks which are able to substitute existing paper based textbooks. They are textbooks adapted to the national school curriculum. Despite available ICT technologies, traditional educational media such as textbooks has been largely unchanged. It is crucial for the relevant National Body or schools to address their IT Readiness and identify the technological challenges they might face, as well as identifying the decisions and the projects they need to launch in order to provide an educational advantage for students that may be applied nation-wide. In this paper we will demonstrate comprehensive assessment methodology to measure IT Readiness by self assessments which involve objective scoring. These assessments includes IT components necessary for the success of the widespread application of e-textbooks such as technology infrastructure, standardization, training of teachers and educational content. The assessment is followed by a framework that offers advice solutions for the preparation and usage of e-textbooks in the national curriculum of a developing country. The assessment method consists of three stages: The Developing Stage in which computers are supplied to schools and computer networks are built at the basic level. Basic evaluation for the application of electronic textbooks is conducted; The Takeoff Stage is reached when the construction of infrastructures required for the usage of e-textbooks in schools is completed. At this stage, prototypes of electronic textbooks are developed; pilot-testing is conducted at school. This is followed by the Expansion Stage, where the technical stability of the electrical textbook is enhanced and the existing infrastructure can be upgraded with new educational content and the distribution of e-textbook will be conducted.

Abstract: About 80% of people in the developing world, particularly those from rural communities where modern drugs are unaffordable, inaccessible or, unavailable, depend on phytomedicine for primary healthcare. However, most medical and veterinary professionals distrust herbal medicines due to lack of scientific evidence of efficacy and safety. Hence, there is need for their validation, before herbal medicines gain wider acceptance and use. Traditional healers, pastoralists and rural farmers use extracts of Peltophorum africanum (a medicinal plant widely spread in southern Africa and other tropical regions), to treat diarrhea, dysentery, pain, infertility, HIV-AIDS and to promote well-being and resistance to disease. The extracts of the plant inhibit HIV-type 1 reverse transcriptase and protease. Methodology. Dried leaves bark and root from mature P. africanum trees were extracted with acetone. Chromatograms were made on silica gel plates. Minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) were determined for five bacteria (Gram positive and Gram negative), and five fungal pathogens. Qualitative screening for antioxidants was done by spraying chromatograms with 0.2% 2, 2-diphenyl-1-picryl hydrazyl (DPPH) , and quantification done in comparison with L-ascorbic acid and Trolox (6-hydroxy-2, 5, 7, 8-tetranethylchromane-2-carboxylic acid). Anthelmintic activity was evaluated by effects of extracts on the egg hatching and larval development of parasitic nematodes Haemonchus contortus and Trichostrongylus colubriformis. Results. The extracts showed substantial activity against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, with Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) values of 0.08 mg ml-1 for Staphylococcus aureus and 0.16 mg ml-1 for Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The extracts showed higher antifungal activity than amphoterin B. The acetone extracts of the bark, and root of P. africanum showed higher antioxidant activity than L-ascorbic acid (Vitamin-C) and Trolox (6-hydroxy-2, 5, 7, 8-tetramethylchromane-2-carboxylic acid), a synthetic vitamin-E analogue, and much higher than Ginkgo biloba extract (EGb 761). The respective EC50 for the P. africanum root and bark extracts, L-ascorbic acid, and EGb761 were 3.82?g/ml, 4.37?g/ml, 5.04?g/ml, and 40.72 ?g/mL. The standardised extract of Ginkgo biloba (EGb 761) is widely employed for its significant benefit in neurological disorders. The extracts inhibited egg hatchability and larval development (from L1 to infective stage L3) of both Haemoncus contortus and Trichostrongylus colubriformis (both parasitic nematodes of ruminants) at concentrations of 0.1-1.0 mg ml-1. The plant extracts, at the concentration of 5-25 mg ml-1 completely lysed larval forms (L1) and eggs of the nematodes. Conclusion. P. africanum extracts have therefore, potential for treatment of inf7ction-related diseases by either directly inhibiting bacterial growth or by stimulating the immune system of the host. The traditional use of P. africanum concoctions against diarrhea, dysentery and unthriftness, may be also due to anthelmintic activity as these signs are consistent with parasitic gastroenteritis. Gastrointestinal nematodes exasperate diarrhea in HIV-AIDS patients, as well as disease-related production losses arising from stock mortality, severe weight loss and poor production in ruminants. Antioxidants are also important in boosting the immunity, critical in the management of helminthosis. There is ample scientific and empirical evidence supporting the use of plant-derived antioxidants in the control of neurological diseases, as antioxidants have neuro-protective (preventing apoptosis), as well as neuro-regenerative roles. Due to the high antioxidant activity of its extracts, P. africanum has prospects in the management or control of neurodegenerative diseases. Thus there is great potential of P. africanum extracts in disease control.

Abstract: Conventional cytogenetics (CC) and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) are widely used for detection of chromosomal abnormalities implicated in malignant hematological diseases. The detected abnormalities represent independent predictors of disease progression and survival. We report here the experience of our laboratory in this area. 298 cases of acute lymphobastic leukemia (ALL), 70 patients with multiple myeloma (MM) and 224 cases of myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) are studied by conventional and molecular cytogenetics. Although the well-described cytogenetic abnormalities associated with particular FAB subtypes in the West were observed, important local differences were noted. In ALL, the majority of reported recurent abnormalities are found with lower incidence to that reported in Europe and in America. In MDS, we found that the majority of chromosomal abnormalities are less frequent than in the other populations, whereas, rare or new abnormalities are found in our series, in particular: i(14)(q10), t(6;14) (q23;q32), monosomy 19, and a ring of the chromosome 12. In MM, the study using locus specific probes of Rb gene located in 13q14, IGH gene in 14q32 and P53 gene in 17p13, shows a high implication of these genes in the development of MM.

Abstract: Language models are widely used in different applications including speech recognition, machine translation, handwritten recognition, stenographic codes conversion, and information retrieval. In such applications, language models are meant for constraining the search space by delivering a priori probabilities of possible word sequences. Language is a robust and necessarily redundant communication mechanism. Its redundancies commonly manifest themselves as predictable patterns in word sequences, and it is largely these patterns that enable language modelling. Several methods for statistical language modelling were originally developed for English and declared as language independent. Although they do not incorporate linguistic knowledge of the English language, the results for other languages are only modestly successful. Our general goal is the treatment of inflective languages. The idea of the paper is to adjust language modelling methods to make them more powerful when modeling inflective languages. High inflection in a language is correlated with some degree of word-order flexibility. Morphological features either directly identify or help disambiguate the syntactic participants of a sentence. Modelling morphological features in a language not only provides an additional source of information but also alleviate data sparsity problems. In this research Slovenian language is taken as an example of highly inflective languages. The results of comparative analysis of four language model types are presented: word-based, lemma-based, POS (Part-Of-Speech)-based and MSD (Morpho-Syntactic-Description)-based language models. Some combinations of them in terms of linear interpolation are investigated. Experiments are performed using the largest Slovenian corpus FidaPLUS. It is lemmatized and tagged with POS and MSD tags. Constructed language models are evaluated by perplexity values. Our experiments prove that interpolated models outperform a classical language model. The use of language models is demonstrated in two prototype systems: speech recognition and machine translation.

Abstract: Barber-Say syndrome is a rare entity described in less than 10 patients in the literature. In 1982, Barber and colleagues reported the first case with a new syndrome characterized by ectropion, macrostomia, abnormal skin, severe hypertrichosis and growth retardation. We report the case of a 12-months old female Libyan child who is the fourth child of healthy non-consanguineous parents and has three healthy siblings with no relevant family history. The case was presented to us with striking dysmorphic features: sparse eye brows and lashes, hypertelorism, telecanthus, bilateral ectropion, broad nasal bridge, bulbous nose, low set ears and absent tragus, bilateral symmetrical temporal depressed atrophied areas, bilateral nipple hypoplasia, generalized hypertrichosis mainly of the back, hyper laxity and redundancy of the skin all over the body giving rise to aged appearance of the patient. Physical and mental growth are both mildly delayed. Laboratory tests were within normal limits. The banded karyotype was 46,XX. In conclusion, we add to the literature a rare case and to the best of our knowledge this is the first case of the Barber-Say syndrome be reported from Libya and Africa.

Abstract: The groundwater system of the Benesov and Usti nad Labem area in the Bohemian Cretaceous Basin (Czech Republic), taking up around 2000 square kilometers, is more or less a closed hydrogeological unit with a relatively easily definable boundary. The largest thermal water accumulation known so far in the Czech Republic with temperatures often exceeding 30 degrees centigrade and in some spots approaching 40 degrees centigrade can be found in the voluminous and spacious Cretaceous aquifers (Hercik et al., 1999). Exploitation of these thermal waters has thus far been concentrated in the Usti nad Labem and Decin regions (Datel, Krasny, 2005). Thermal water of Usti nad Labem and Decin areas had not been known in the past. Therefore, before deep boreholes have helped discover the thermal water resources, the whole area of thermal waters known now represented a hydrogeological structure with very slowly flowing, almost stagnating groundwater. Exploiting the resources has made the groundwater flow significantly faster. Even though the area of interest belongs to zones of increased heat flux in the deeper parts of the earths crust, the question arises whether sufficient heating of these waters will occur with the current accelerated groundwater flow and whether in the future the temperature of the thermal water resources will not fall. It is important to bear in mind that the thermal waters have been exploited for a relatively short period of time ? for approximately one century. This period is too short considering the pace of the hydrogeological processes, so no substantial negative consequences of the exploitation can be expected. With continuing or even increasing exploitation of the resources, however, falling temperature and possible quality changes cannot be excluded in the future. The conceptual model, as the first step necessary for a numerical model (groundwater and heat flow), was based on all the available information that could be collected (Datel et al., 2009; Hercik et al., 1999). Limiting factors for the use of thermal waters consist both in the balance of the amount of water in the structure and also the balance of the amount of heat flowing into the structure.

Abstract: Using the framework of Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Governments (TMACOG) Student Watershed Watch (SWW), supported by the University of Toledos National Science Foundation GK-12 program, Northview High School Environmental Science students work through all levels of Blooms Taxonomy (knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation). Students test the water quality of Ten-mile Creek, a small tributary that feeds into Lake Erie. Each student is given the opportunity to touch on all levels of Blooms Taxonomy in the concepts and testing procedures of water quality. In-depth participation in the final two levels of Blooms, synthesis and evaluation, is offered to all students involved -- a small percent of motivated students take on the challenge of evaluation by combining all the data, culminating in a presentation for TMACOGs SWW Summit. The students then proceed by designing a presentation that explains and analyzes the data, while incorporating the use of technology. As an added goal, the Northview students are directed to make the presentation entertaining as well as informative. Included information will consist of total number of participants, as well as presentation formats. Project details will be outlined to demonstrate the project goals and how they are achieved.