scholarly journals Chromium speciation in leather samples: an experiment using digital images, mobile phone and environmental concepts

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vinícius Costa ◽  
Ariane Neiva ◽  
Edenir Pereira-Filho

This study proposes a new and simple method for Cr speciation and Cr(VI) determination in leather samples using digital images. The experiments were performed using a mobile phone and a free app called PhotoMetrix that was used to obtain and process data. The results obtained from PhotoMetrix were compared to reference methods using UV−Vis spectroscopy. A statistical evaluation between both proposed and the reference methods using two-sample t-test did not show a significant difference at a 95% confidence level. Bovine leather samples (4 samples) tanned with Cr salts and ovine leather samples (3 samples) tanned with vegetable tannin were analyzed. The proposed method presented limits of detection (LOD) and quantification (LOQ) of 0.6 and 2 mg/kg, respectively. In addition, the proposed method using PhotoMetrix and digital images can provide undergraduate students an opportunity to learn topics such as quantitative analyses, environmental chemistry, speciation chemistry, image processing and treatment of statistical data. The results demonstrated that the proposed method can be applied to routine analyses and in experimental analytical chemistry courses.

2007 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-35
Author(s):  
Carlos Rios-Velazquez ◽  
Lilliam Casillas-Martinez ◽  
Pieter T. Visscher

Microbial mats are one of the best suited laminar organo-sedimentary ecosystems for students from different educational backgrounds to visualize the direct relationship between microbes and minerals. We have used tropical hypersaline microbial mats from Puerto Rico as educational tools to promote active learning of geomicrobiology introductory concepts for undergraduate students organized in multidisciplinary teams with biological and geological backgrounds. Besides field trips and independent research projects focused on microbial mats, four intensive workshops and one capstone activity were designed to expose students to the different geomicrobiology subdisciplines (microbiology, molecular biology, geology, and geochemistry). The teaching-learning process was assessed using pre- and posttests, group discussions, activities including Gallery Walks and exquisite cadaver’s, case studies, and focal interviews. While the posttest showed a significant difference in conceptual understanding, the Gallery Walk and the capstone activities demonstrated increase in the depth, coherence, and thoughtfulness in answering questions, including a clear integration of the different subdisciplines during their presentations. Finally, the main themes described by the students as important outcomes of their participation in the Research at Undergraduate Institutions: Microbial Observatory (RUI-MO) program were: (i) the opportunity to study and learn new and different science disciplines, (ii) the microbial mats were excellent tools to learn from and integrate different science disciplines, and (iii) working in multidisciplinary teams gave them the opportunity to learn from their peers’ discipline backgrounds. To our knowledge this is the first educational initiative that uses tropical hypersaline microbial mats to teach geomicrobiology in a multidisciplinary fashion.


2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Oyedeji.T. Yekinni ◽  
Temitope. A. Ladigbolu ◽  
Rhoda. T. Adeniyi ◽  
Sola. J. Oluwasusi

The study examined information and communication technologies usage among agricultural students of tertiary institution in Southwest of Nigeria. Multistage sampling procedure was used to select 300 agricultural students from tertiary institutions. Structured questionnaire was employed to elicit information on students’ socioeconomic characteristics, availability of ICTs, accessibility and purposes of ICTs usage. Data were subjected to percentage, chi-square, the Pearson Product Moment Correlation and the Analysis of variance at p=0.05. Findings revealed that the most available ICTs among students were internet and mobile phone (95.0%) respectivelywhile they had access to mobile phone (Weighted Mean (WM)=0.58) and radio (WM=0.51), they used ICTs for information (WM=0.77), academics (WM=0.70) and entertainment (WM=0.70) purposes; with high level of availability (71.0%), access (56.7%) and ICTs usage purpose (51.3%) respectively. There were significant relationships between respondents’ monthly stipend (r=0.200), state of institution (χ2=8.000), religion (χ2=222.660), marital status (χ2=211.680), category of students’ programme (χ2= 320.4608), type of institution (χ2=56.000) and their purposes for using ICTs but with a significant difference across the states (F=23.821; p=0.00). Students used ICTs for information, academic and entertainment purposes based on their age and type of their institutions. Since ICTs are used for beneficial purposes, it is recommended that ICTs should be adapted, applied and incorporated into tertiary institutions’ curricula across the nation. Keywords: ICTs usage, undergraduate students, entertainment purposes, mobile phone, tertiary institutions.


2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-16
Author(s):  
Jade H. Coston ◽  
Corine Myers-Jennings

To better prepare the professionals and scholars of tomorrow in the field of communication sciences and disorders (CSD), a research project in which undergraduate students collected and analyzed language samples of child-parent dyads is presented. Student researchers gained broad and discipline-specific inquiry skills related to the ethical conduct of research, the literature review process, data collection using language assessment techniques, language sample analysis, and research dissemination. Undergraduate students majoring in CSD developed clinical research knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary for future graduate level study and professional employment. In addition to the benefits of student growth and development, language samples collected through this project are helping to answer research questions regarding communicative turn-taking opportunities within the everyday routines of young children, the effects of turn-taking interactions on language development, and the construct validity of language sampling analysis techniques.


1979 ◽  
Author(s):  
M Drummond ◽  
G Lowe ◽  
J Belch ◽  
C Forbes ◽  
J Barbenel

We investigated the reproducibility and validity of a simple method of measuring red cell deformability (filtration of whole blood through 5 µ sieves) and its relationship to haematocrit, blood viscosity, fibrinogen, white cell count, sex and smoking. The mean coefficient of variation in normals was 3. 7%. Tanned red cells showed marked loss of deformability. Blood filtration rate correlated with haematocrit (r = 0. 99 on dilution of samples, r = 0. 7 in 120 normals and patients). After correction for haematocrit, deformability correlated with high shear viscosity, but not low shear viscosity, fibrinogen or white cell count. In 60 normals there was no significant difference between males and females, or smokers and non-smokers, but in 11 smokers there was an acute fall in deformability after smoking 3 cigarettes (p<0. 05). Reduced deformability was found in acute myocardial infarction (n = 15, p<0. 01) and chronic peripheral arterial disease (n = 15, p<0. 01). The technique is reproducible, detects rigid cells and appears useful in the study of vascular disease.


1966 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Lund-Johansen ◽  
T. Thorsen ◽  
K. F. Støa

ABSTRACT A comparison has been made between (A), a relatively simple method for the measurement of aldosterone secretion rate, based on paper chromatography and direct densitometry of the aldosterone spot and (B) a more elaborate isotope derivative method. The mean secretion rate in 9 normal subjects was 112 ± 26 μg per 24 hours (method A) and 135 ± 35 μg per 24 hours (method B). The »secretion rate« in one adrenalectomized subject after the intravenous injection of 250 μg of aldosterone was 230 μg per 24 hours (method A) and 294 μg per 24 hours (method B). There was no significant difference in the mean values, and correlation between the two methods was good (r = 0.80). It is concluded that the densitometric method is suitable for clinical purposes as well as research, being more rapid and less expensive than the isotope derivative method. Method A also measures the urinary excretion of the aldosterone 3-oxo-conjugate, which is of interest in many pathological conditions. The densitometric method is obviously the less sensitive and a prerequisite for its use is an aldosterone secretion of 20—30 μg per 24 hours. Lower values are, however, rare in adults.


2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (10) ◽  
pp. 1431-1439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Selcuk Karaman

The effects of audience response systems (ARS) on students' academic success and their perceptions of ARS were examined in this study. Participants, comprising 44 undergraduate students, were randomly assigned to a control or treatment group. The course design was the same for both groups and the instructor prepared the multiple-choice questions in advance; students in the control group responded to these questions verbally whereas the treatment group used ARS. Two paper-based examinations were used to measure the learning of concepts and skills that were taught. Students' perceptions of ARS were collected via a questionnaire. Results showed that ARS usage has a significant learning achievement effect in the first 4 weeks but not at the end of the second 4 weeks. There was no significant difference in retention between either group. Students perceived the ARS tool positively, finding it very enjoyable and useful.


2021 ◽  
pp. 030573562098729
Author(s):  
Rebecca R Johnston ◽  
Gina M Childers

The purpose of this research was to examine the effects of musical pantophagy, classical music consumption, and initial receptivity to select musical examples on changes in preference rating resulting from a program of repeated exposure. Participants included undergraduate students enrolled in a section of music appreciation at a large Southeastern university ( n = 67). Data were collected using a research designed preference rating measure (PRM) administered during a 5-week period within which there were eight test measures. Participants were divided into quartiles. Pre- to post-test measures resulted in a general positive trend for all participants. Comparisons of Q1 (lowest pantophagy) and Q3 (highest pantophagy) on PRMs 1–8 yielded no differences between groups, and PRM 8 was significantly different from PRM 1 for both groups. The same comparisons for Q1 (non-Classical music consumption) indicated significant difference with large effect size and for Q1 (lowest initial receptivity) indicated significant difference. Results suggest that regardless of musical pantophagy, repetition is an effective means by which to increase affective response to music, and that students who do not currently consume formal art music and who have low initial receptivity may report greater increases in affective response to music over time.


2021 ◽  
pp. 136216882110204
Author(s):  
Seyede Faezeh Hosseini Alast ◽  
Sasan Baleghizadeh

The aim of this experiment was to investigate how glossing influences second language (L2)reading comprehension in relation to text difficulty and the two local and global meaning representations. Fifty-eight undergraduate students were asked to read three easy, moderate, and difficult texts and, following each passage, answer twenty comprehension questions targeting local and global concepts in one of the two first-language-glossed and unglossed conditions. Half of the participants in each group were supposed to think aloud while reading. The results revealed a significant difference between the performance of glossed and unglossed groups on comprehension of local concepts in all three difficulty levels. However, the impact of glossing on comprehension of global concepts was significantly influenced by text difficulty. The qualitative analysis of think-aloud protocols suggested a substantial difference in glossing functionality on fluency between the easy and the difficult texts. Furthermore, it is suggested that revisiting the glossing effect in combination with text difficulty on the reading product and underlying processes might reconcile some divergent hypotheses on glossing impact on fluency.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003329412098809
Author(s):  
Paul K. Miller ◽  
Sophie Van Der Zee ◽  
David Elliott

In recent years a considerable body of psychological research has explored the relationship between membership of socio-cultural groups and personal pain perception. Rather less systematic attention has, however, been accorded to how such group membership(s) might influence individual attitudes towards the pain of others. In this paper, immersion in the culture of competitive sport, widely regarded as being exaggeratedly tolerant of risky behaviours around pain, is taken as a case-in-point with students of Physical Education (PE) in tertiary education as the key focus. PE students are highly-immersed in competitive sporting culture both academically and (typically) practically, and also represent a key nexus of cross-generational transmission regarding the norms of sport itself. Their attitudes towards the pain that others should reasonably tolerate during a range of activities, sporting and otherwise, were evaluated through a direct comparison with those of peers much less immersed in competitive sporting culture. In total, N=301 (144 PE, 157 non-PE) undergraduate students in the UK responded to a vignette-based survey. Therein, all participants were required to rate the pain (on a standard 0-10 scale) at which a standardised “other” should desist engagement with a set of five defined sporting and non-sporting tasks, each with weak and strong task severities. Results indicated that PE students were significantly more likely to expect others to persevere through higher levels of pain than their non-PE peers, but only during the sport-related tasks – an effect further magnified when task severity was high. In other tasks, there was no significant difference between groups, or valence of the effect was actually reversed. It is argued that the findings underscore some extant knowledge about the relationship between acculturated attitudes to pain, while also having practical implications for understanding sport-based pedagogy, and its potentially problematic role in the ongoing reproduction of a “culture of risk.”


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