Rapid response petrology for the opening eruptive phase of the 2021 Cumbre Vieja eruption, La Palma, Canary Islands

How and why magmatic systems reactivate and evolve is a critical question for monitoring and hazard mitigation efforts during initial response and ongoing volcanic crisis management. Here we report the first integrated petrological results and interpretation provided to monitoring authorities during the ongoing eruption of Cumbre Vieja, La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain. The first eruptive products comprised simultaneous Strombolian fountain-fed lava flows and tephra fall from near-continuous eruption plumes. From combined field, petrographic and geochemical analyses conducted in the 10 days following sample collection, we infer low percentage mantle melts with a variably equilibrated multimineralic crystal-cargo and compositional fractionation by winnowing during eruptive processes. Hence ‘rapid response’ petrology can untangle complex magmatic and volcanic processes for this eruption, which combined with further study and methodological improvement can increasingly assist in active decision making.

Poverty, Development Project and Methodology-Need to Change the Approach

The institutes working to eradicate global poverty by supporting development projects should question their methodological approach. Global poverty figures are worrisome and International institutes are struggling to arrange funds for their activities. It is time to reevaluate the term “sustainable growth”, and more focus should be given to “comparable growth”, under it project outcomes are measured against the provincial values, than after best national figures and lastly with international best. The approach is to find measurable standards to establish the existing gap between the best benefits and project outcomes. Sustainable and poverty eradicating growth is only possible if outcomes are competitive locally, regionally, nationally and at international level. The paper studies Chhattisgarh Irrigation Development Project (CIDP) and evaluates its results for methodological improvement, the emphasis is to devise a practical approach and focus on comparable growth and address shortcomings of development projects in general.

Prevalence and time trend of congenital heart defects: a registry-based study in Iran

Introduction: Conclusion Congenital heart defects (CHD) are one of the most common types of congenital anomalies affecting one percent of births every year. The aim of this study was to report the prevalence and time trend of CHD in the northwest of Iran between 2000 and 2019. Methods: Since 2000, infants born with birth defects have been registered in Tabriz Registry of Congenital Anomalies (TRoCA). For this study, the information and data of newborns with CHD (1084) were collected using the TRoCA registry system. Results: Over two decades the prevalence rate of CHD in the northwest of Iran was 3.7 per 1000 live births (95 percent CI: 34.9 to 39.4). The prevalence rate of CHD during the first decade (2000-09) and the second (2010-19) were estimated 2.8 (95 percent CI: 2.5 to 2.9) and 5.9 (95 percent CI: 5.4 to 6.4) per 1000 live births, respectively. Conclusion: The prevalence rate of CHD in Iran showed an increasing trend indicating methodological improvement in the facilities and diagnosis techniques. It would therefore seem essential to concentrate on the primary prevention activities to reduce the burden of these defects. Keywords: Congenital heart defects, Prevalence, Congenital heart anomalies, Epidemiology

Why US Democracy Trumps Populism: Comparative Lessons Reconsidered

ABSTRACT Matias López and Juan Luna (2021) challenged my comparative analysis of populism’s threat to democracy, its reliance on institutional factors (coupled with conjunctural opportunities), and especially the inference about US democracy’s immunity to populist suffocation. However, their emphasis on structuralist and culturalist factors, which would suggest the vulnerability of the United States, is strikingly selective, theoretically unconvincing, and empirically problematic. López and Luna’s methodological improvement of my analysis does not alter the substantive findings or overturn my sanguine inference about US democracy’s likely resilience. Only their further modifications yield more pessimistic scenarios, but those adjustments stand on shaky theoretical and empirical ground. Indeed, the experiences of 2020–2021 corroborate my theory and its comparative lessons. The US institutional framework held firm and foiled the insistent attempts of President Trump and his most fervent followers to perpetuate the US populist in power. Consequently, US democracy continues to appear quite safe from populist strangulation.

EpicPCR 2.0: Technical and Methodological Improvement of a Cutting-Edge Single-Cell Genomic Approach

EpicPCR (Emulsion, Paired Isolation and Concatenation PCR) is a recent single-cell genomic method based on a fusion-PCR allowing us to link a functional sequence of interest to a 16S rRNA gene fragment and use the mass sequencing of the resulting amplicons for taxonomic assignment of the functional sequence-carrying bacteria. Although it is interesting because it presents the highest efficiency for assigning a bacterial host to a marker, epicPCR remains a complex multistage procedure with technical difficulties that may easily impair the approach depth and quality. Here, we described how to adapt epicPCR to new gene targets and environmental matrices while identifying the natural host range of SXT/R391 integrative and conjugative elements in water microbial communities from the Meurthe River (France). We notably show that adding a supplementary PCR step allowed us to increase the amplicon yield and thus the number of reads obtained after sequencing. A comparison of operational taxonomic unit (OTU) identification approaches when using biological and technical replicates demonstrated that, although OTUs can be validated when obtained from three out of three technical replicates, up to now, results obtained from two or three biological replicates give a similar and even a better confidence level in OTU identification, while allowing us to detect poorly represented SXT/R391 hosts in microbial communities.

L’insegnamento della lingua italiana in Giappone Uno studio di caso sul Kansai

This research stems from the need of the Italian Cultural Institute to map the institutions involved in teaching Italian in the area considered and to analyse the quality of the teaching and learning process of the Italian language. The objectives are multiple and linked to the importance of finding the causes that slow the growth of the study of Italian in Japanese Kansai. Therefore, the first part of this action research will outline the cultural and linguistic education coordinates that characterize the Japanese context; in the second part, the research data will be interpreted in order to trace new methodological development trajectories to increase the quality of the Italian teaching process in Kansai.Part 1 This part focuses on the situation of foreign language teaching in Japan. It also describes the strategies to promote the teaching of the Italian language in Japan from 1980 to now. 1 Modern Language Policy in Japan Between Past and Present This first chapter describes linguistic policy for the promotion of foreign languages in Japan by the Ministry of Education (MEXT). 2 Japanese Educational System Focus of this chapter are the cultural, pedagogical and linguistic education characteristics of the context under investigation. 3 Teaching Italian Language in Japan The purpose of this chapter is to outline the general frame of the spreading of the Italian cultural model in a traditional Japanese context. Part 2In the second part the action research and the training project design are described. 4 The Action-Research Project This chapter describes the overall design of the research and the research questions that inspired an investigation in the context under study. The aim is to understand whether there is a link between the methodological choices of the teachers and the difficulties in learning Italian for Japanese students. Part 3 In this third part, the situation of teaching Italian in relation to different learning contexts in Japanese Kansai will be examined. 5 A Case Study at Italian Culture Institute in Osaka The goals of this chapter are to analyse the problems of teaching Italian at the IIC and suggest methodological improvement paths for teachers of Italian language at IIC. 6 A Case Study at Osaka University The data obtained by the informants will be used to analyse the situation of the teaching of Italian at Department of Italian language of this university and suggest curricular and methodological improvements to increase the quality of teaching and learning Italian. 7 A Case Study at Kyoto Sangyo University The chapter outlines the methodological and technical characteristics used to teach Italian at Kyoto Sangyo University and suggests strategies aimed at enhancing students’ language learning.

REFLECTION OF THE PROBLEM OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF GENETIC KNOWLEDGE OF STUDENTS IN THE ORGANIZATION OF INDEPENDENT WORK

Currently, the problem of teaching genetics through students’ independent work is one of the most important areas of higher education. In this article, we offer several methods and techniques for organizing students’ independent work on the subject of genetics in a multilingual education. The methodological improvement course of the biology subject is comprehensively studied from year to year and the results are being published. From this point of view, analyses were conducted on the biology teaching at the university and the independent work of foreign and domestic scientific works in recent years. The article presents the experience of teaching genetics based on the independent work organization of future biology teachers in the conditions of multilingual education at Abai University. The results of experimental studies aimed at testing the effectiveness of independent work have been presented. The analysis of the studies made it possible to conclude that the methodological training of biology students as an object of pedagogical research should include various professional training system aspects. The teaching genetics process in English through independent work encourages students to further in-depth subject and language study.