ECNU Review of Education Special Issue: Ethical codes for kindergarten teachers from different countries

Researchers discuss the significance of ethical codes for kindergarten teachers to improve children's everyday lives and strengthen their learning abilities

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CACTUS COMMUNICATIONS

 

VIDEO: EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION AND KINDERGARTEN TEACHERS HAVE A CRUCIAL ROLE TO PLAY IN THE HEALTHY DEVELOPMENT OF A CHILD. THEREFORE, IT IS NECESSARY TO ENSURE ETHICAL AND PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT BY KINDERGARTEN TEACHERS TOWARDS THEIR STUDENTS. HOWEVER, CURRENT DISCUSSIONS REGARDING PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS FOR KINDERGARTEN TEACHERS OVERLOOK ETHICS. THEREFORE, THIS SPECIAL ISSUE OF THE ECNU REVIEW OF EDUCATION DISCUSSES THE IMPORTANCE OF ETHICAL CODES IN EARLY EDUCATION, WHILE EXAMINING THEIR CHARACTERISTICS AND THEORETICAL BASES. view more 

CREDIT: ECNU REVIEW OF EDUCATION

Early childhood education is a critical stage in a child’s intellectual and overall development. Similarly, early childhood education is an ethical task pivoted on the values, motivation, and responsibility of teachers. Therefore, it is important that the professional standards for early education also include ethical codes. These act as an often unsaid contract between society and teachers. They guide the professional conduct of teachers and prevent misconduct, while strengthening the teachers’ professional identity.

However, despite the need for such ethical codes in early childhood education, their development and implementation still have a long way to go. With the aim of advancing the discussions and research surrounding ethical codes for teachers, this special issue of the ECNU Review of Education expounds on the key characteristics of such codes, their underlying values, and the challenges of putting these codes into practice. “This special issue focusses on ethical codes and values used by early childhood teachers across different countries in the hope that it contributes to the widespread awareness and application of such codes,” said Prof. Ruth Ingrid Skoglund, the leading Guest Editor of this issue.

Several countries have designed and adopted their own ethical codes for teachers. While these codes, embedded in their national culture, are unique in their own way, they also share many similarities. Most of these ethical codes are built on the values of trust, honesty, justice, fairness, human rights, protection, and respect of and care for children. This is reflected in the comparative study of the ethical guidelines in 13 countries conducted by Drs. Arve Gunnestad, Sissel Mørreaunet, Sobh Chahboun, and Jolene Pearson. They found that most teaching codes are founded on children’s rights and personal freedom. Likewise, in their study of the Finnish early childhood education curriculum documents, Drs. Anitta Melasalmi, Tarja-Riitta Hurme, and Inkeri Ruokonen found that ethical codes also align with democracy and autonomy. Early childhood teachers have the duty to inculcate democratic agency in their students, while protecting and caring for them. But at the same time, they also have the freedom in deciding their pedagogy for doing so.

Subsequently, Dr. Jan Jaap Rothuizen’s article explores the relationship between ethics and pedagogy in early childhood education in Denmark. Based on narratives collected from 200 early childhood teachers, Dr. Rothuizen found that if early childhood learning is rooted in teachers’ understanding and practice of value-based human science pedagogy, then separate ethical codes become unnecessary. Just by engaging children in meaningful activities, teachers can actually promote and support their students’ agency and development.

In addition to support, another important aspect of these ethical codes is love and care. According to Dr. Gunnar Magnus Eidsvåg, collective support and care between teachers is the basic premise for their ability to care for students. At the same time, caring for students also requires collective judgement and action from teachers.

Due to the longstanding neglect of codes of ethics in teaching during the early learning stages of children, there is now an international consensus on the importance of guidelines in this crucial profession.

CREDIT

"Dr Seuss Literacy Night" by Wesley Fryer from Creative Commons.

Additionally, this care should be tailored differently to be relevant to each child rather than being uniform. Adding another perspective to the ethics of love, researchers Jie Zhang, Mollie R. Clark, and Yeh Hsueh explore how free play for children is important in the evolution of care ethics. Observing children in free play, teachers in China found that children are highly receptive and have their own unique personalities. Instead of trying to mold children a certain way, teachers should nurture their individual uniqueness and guide them according to their personalities for their wellbeing and development.

These studies highlight that despite cultural differences, the main ethical values for early education remain common across countries. And while teachers are expected to follow these codes, they should also have the autonomy in developing them. Only then can we ensure the acceptance of such codes, for improving children’s holistic development while strengthening the teaching profession.

This soon-to-be published special issue of the ECNU Review of Education brings new intercultural insights for the enhancement of early childhood education and to push the conversation forward for the worldwide adoption of professional ethical standards in teaching.

For more information on this special issue, watch this video.

Reference

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/20965311221127322

Authors:

1. Ruth Ingrid Skoglund

2. Juyan Ye

3. Yong Jiang

Affiliations:

1. Western Norway University of Applied Sciences

2. Beijing Normal University

3. East China Normal University

 

About ECNU Review of Education 

The ECNU Review of Education (ROE) is peer-reviewed journal, established by the East China Normal University (ECNU), which prioritizes the publishing of research in education in China and abroad. It is an open-access journal that provides primacy to interdisciplinary perspectives and contextual sensitivity in approaching research in education. It seeks to provide a platform where the pedagogical community, both scholars and practitioners, can network towards advancing knowledge, synthesizing ideas, and contributing to meaningful change.

 

About Professor Ruth Ingrid Skoglund

Professor Skoglund is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pedagogy, Religion, and Social Studies in the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. She is a core researcher at KINDknow-Kindergarten Knowledge Centre for Systemic Research on Diversity and Sustainable Futures. She is also a co-leader of the research group Kindergarten as formative educational arena. Her research areas include children’s play and exploration, professional ethics for kindergarten teachers, and collaboration with parents to prevent bullying in kindergarten. She has several publications to her name in these fields.

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JOURNAL

ECNU Review of Education

DOI

10.1177/20965311221127322 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Commentary/editorial

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Ethical Codes for Early Childhood Teachers: How and Why Should We Use Them

An important step towards strong and durable biobased plastics

Overcoming the low reactivity of biobased secondary diols in polyester synthesis

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM

 

IMAGE: TENSILE TESTING OF THE DEVELOPED BIO-BASED POLYMER (LEFT) AND A SAMPLE OF POLYMER FILM (RIGHT) view more 

CREDIT: UVA, HIMS

In a recent paper in Nature Communications, researchers at the Industrial Sustainable Chemistry group led by Prof. Gert-Jan Gruter take an important step towards the production of fully biobased, rigid polyesters. They present a simple, yet innovative, synthesis strategy to overcome the inherently low reactivity of biobased secondary diols and arrive at polyesters that have very good mechanical- and thermal properties, and at the same time high molecular weights. It enables the production of very strong and durable biobased plastics from building blocks that are already commercially available.

The research described in the Nature Communications paper was carried out within the RIBIPOL project funded by the Dutch Research Council NWO with contributions from industry, notably LEGO and Avantium. The toy company supported the project as part of the search for non-fossil alternatives for its plastic bricks. Avantium is interested in bottle- and film applications. First author of the paper is PhD student Daniel Weinland, who graduated on 27 October. In total, 5 PhD students are involved in the RIBIPOL project, of which 2 have defended their thesis recently.

In general, polyester plastics are synthesized from small dialcohol and diacid molecules. These monomers are coupled in a condensation reaction, resulting in a long polymer chain of molecular building blocks in an alternating fashion. The macroscopic material properties result both from the number of building blocks that make up the polymer chain, and from the inherent properties of the monomers. In particular their rigidity is key to a firm, strong and durable plastic. In this regard, the glucose-derived dialcohol isosorbide is unique among potential biobased monomers. It has a very rigid molecular structure and is already industrially available.

However, isosorbide is rather unreactive, and in the past two decades it has proven quite challenging to obtain useful isosorbide-based polyesters. It was nearly impossible to arrive at sufficiently long polymer chains (to achieve a certain ductility) while incorporating sufficiently high amounts of isosorbide (to arrive at a strong and durable material).

Incorporating an aryl alcohol

Weinland and his RIBIPOL colleagues have overcome this impasse by incorporating an aryl alcohol in the polymerization process. This leads to in situ formation of reactive aryl esters and a significant enhancement of the end group reactivity during polycondensation, the last stage of polyester synthesis when isosorbides low reactivity inhibits chain growth in traditional melt polyesterification. As a result, high molecular weight materials could be produced with incorporation of high fractions of the biobased, rigid secondary diol, even up to 100 mol%. For the first time high molecular weight poly(isosorbide succinate) could be produced, the polyester obtained from isosorbide and succinic acid. The resulting strong plastics outperform existing plastics like PET in terms of heat resistance, which is for instance relevant for re-use - think of washing bottles that takes place at 85 °C. The isosorbide-based polymers also show promising barrier and mechanical properties that can outperform common fossil-based materials.

The novel polymerisation approach described in the paper is characterized by operational simplicity and the use of standard polyester synthesis equipment. It suits both existing and novel polyester compositions; the researchers foresee exploration of previously inaccessible polyester compositions based on monomers with a low reactivity but also the application of similar methods in other classes of polymers such as polyamides and polycarbonates.

Synthesis of high molecular weight poly(isosorbide succinate) with an aryl alcohol. a: Monomer synthesis from glucose, obtainable from either first or second generation biomass. b: Synthesis of poly(isosorbide succinate) from succinic acid, isosorbide and p-cresol. c: Poly(isosorbide succinate) molecular weights obtained with a reactive solvent (p-cresol), no solvent and an unreactive solvent (1,4-dimethoxybenzene) under comparable reaction conditions

JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-022-34840-2 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Overcoming the low reactivity of biobased, secondary diols in polyester synthesis

Biopolymers Towards Green and Sustainable Development

Book Announcement

BENTHAM SCIENCE PUBLISHERS

Recently natural biodegradable excipients gained significant attention due to their sustainability and engineered applications. Innovative technologies to transform these materials into value-added chemicals via novel graft-polymerization or co-processing techniques for the production of high-performance multifunctional and low-cost polymers with tunable structures are key parts of its sustainable development.

                In the book “Biopolymers Towards Green and Sustainable Development“ we have elaborated various important issues that relates with topic such as overview of bio-based polymers, impact of non-biodegradable polymers on the environment and health, emerging new sources of biodegradable polymers, structural and morphological characterization techniques, thermomechanical properties, biodegradable plastics from biopolymers, pharmaceutical, biomedical, and textile applications, and pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics with a brief on bibliometric meta-analysis on bio-based pharmaceutical excipients. The chapters are beneficial for the graduate and researcher who are working in the similar field. Moreover, the bibliometric analysis provides an update to researcher about potential scientist involve in the exploitation of polymeric research. In addition, meta-analysis provides details on active country, organization, and funding agencies embroil in research based on development and assessment of multifarious biodegradable polymers.

                The key features of books “Biopolymers Towards Green and Sustainable Development” are as up-dated summary on recently discovered natural polymeric materials, a thorough breakdown of the vast range of application areas including fabrication of conventional and novel drug delivery, polymeric scaffolds, composites, microneedles, and green synthesis of metallic nanoparticles, summary of pharmacology and pharmacokinetics on the inactive pharmaceutical ingredient, and bibliometric meta-analysis indicating potential collaboration between country, organization, institution, and authors with a view on recent ongoing trends with biopolymers.

About the editor:

Dr. Sudarshan Singh presently working as a University Reinventing Postdoctoral research scholar at Chiang Mai University, Thailand.  He has authored several technical books and books chapters for pharmacy graduate students of Savitribai Phule Pune University, India. He has published more than hundreds of research papers in reputed peer-reviewed journals. He has presented many papers and participated as a resource person in International and National conferences. He is ratified and approved by Pacific University, Rajasthan, India as a Ph.D. guide. He has registered three patents on his credit. He is an editorial member of Science Domain International (India, UK, and the USA). He is a reviewer of various international journals. He has ten years of teaching experience in undergraduate and postgraduate courses of pharmacy with more than five years of research experience. He has guided several undergraduate and postgraduate students in their project work. Moreover, during his postdoctoral research at Prince of Songkhla University and Walailak University, Thailand, he co-supervised doctorate students. He is a life member of professional bodies such as the Society of Pharmacovigilance India and a registered pharmacist at the State Pharmacy Council of Chhattisgarh, India. He has received several grants from the government of Gujarat and Savitribai Phule Pune University Maharashtra, India. He has received travel grants from the Indian Council of Medical Research, Delhi, India, and the Centre for International Co-operation in Science, Tamil Nadu, India.

Dr. Warangkana Chunglok presently working as Associate Professor at the School of Allied Health Sciences, Walailak University, Thailand. She received Royal Golden Jubilee Scholarship from Thailand Research Fund, Thailand, and Deutscher Academischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD), Germany for perusing her Ph.D. Furthermore, she has received several awards from Walailak University, Thailand. She has sixteen years of teaching and research experience. She is one of the expert scientists in molecular biology of cancer, natural product-based drug discovery for cancers and inflammatory-related diseases, and therapeutic agents from medicinal plants for muscle wasting following stroke. Her research works are conducted both in national collaboration with other universities in Thailand and international collaboration with European Union research institutes. Her background experience includes experiments in molecular biology, in vitro and in vivo study, natural products drug discovery, evaluation of natural compounds and their synthetic analogues from medicinal plants as potential drug leads for the treatment of various types of cancers, inflammatory diseases, and stroke.

Keywords:

Biopolymer, Thermoplastic, Bio-based polymer, Fibers, Biodegradable polymers, Cellulose, Natural polymer, Polymer pharmacokinetics, Polymer structural characterization, Plant mucilage, Polymer thermomechanical characterization, Bibliometric analysis, Additive manufacturing, Drug delivery,  Electrospinning, Modified drug delivery, Marine polymers, Novel drug delivery,  Bioplastic, Sustained or controlled release drug delivery.

 

For more information please visit: https://bit.ly/3rusN2O

 Therapeutic Use of Plant Secondary Metabolites

Book Announcement

BENTHAM SCIENCE PUBLISHERS

Indeed, medicinal plants, unlike conventional drugs, commonly have bioactive constituents working together catalytically and synergistically to produce a combined effect that may surpass the total activity of the individual constituents.

The combined actions of these metabolites tend to increase the activity of the main constituent by speeding up or slowing down its metabolism in the body. Also, the secondary metabolites might minimize the rate of undesired adverse effects, and have an additive, potentiating, or antagonistic effect.

The book “Therapeutic Use of Plant Secondary Metabolites” offers evidence-based mechanistic views on complementary and alternative medicine with a focus on biological mechanisms of action of plant secondary metabolites in degenerative and microbial diseases such as diabetes, cancer, neurodegenerative disorders, antimicrobial resistance, etc., while reporting health benefits.

The chapters are written by enviable scholars, lecturers, and experts in indigenous knowledge systems (IKS), industrial and medicinal plants, phytotherapeutics, and phytoinformatics. Therapeutic Uses of Plant Secondary Metabolites is timely and highly valuable for both undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as researchers and professionals in IKS, phytomedicine, ethno pharmacology, phytopharmacology, plant biotechnology, drug discovery and development, and phytotherapeutics.

 

About the editor:

• Saheed Sabiu

 

Keywords:

Phyto-omics, Phenolic compounds, Essential oils in health promotion, Antibiotic resistance, Nanoparticles in cancer therapy, Nanoparticles, Nanoparticles in diabetes therapy, Ethnopharmacology, Antimicrobials from plants, Plant biotechnology, Oxidative stress and antimicrobial therapy, Computational drug discovery, Medicinal plants, Computer-aided drug design, Phytomedicine, Drug discovery and development, Phytochemicals, Complementary and alternative medicine 10 Diabetes mellitus, Indigenous knowledge systems.

 

For more information please visit: https://bit.ly/3DEhSef

Terpenoids: Recent Advances in Extraction, Biochemistry and Biotechnology

Book Announcement

BENTHAM SCIENCE PUBLISHERS

The knowledge of the production of countless chemical compounds by plants generates great expectations and concrete possibilities so that in the not too distant future, science can make available new technological processes compatible with current needs. Among the numerous chemically diverse compounds, there are the apolar ones, including hydrocarbons, and those of high polarity represented by polyphenols. Terpenoids are of great importance in this context, especially those found in essential oils, which represent an auspicious expectation for use in combating different endemic diseases that affect agricultural production.

The present book is entitled “TERPENOIDS: RECENT ADVANCES IN EXTRACTION, BIOCHEMISTRY AND BIOTECHNOLOGY”, and it will approach the most varied possibilities of using terpenoids in the control of pests such as insects, diseases caused by microorganisms, ticks, and weeds. Priority will be given to terpenoids produced by plants, endophytic fungi, propolis, and geopropolis. It will also focus on the functions of terpenoids in plants, as well as their biosynthetic pathways of production.

In general, the book will provide its readers with a broad and diverse mirror of the importance that terpenoids have for plant safety, and the possibilities for innovative biotechnological approaches that will make all the difference to agricultural production, resulting in more functional areas and higher-value products.

 

About the editors:

Mozaniel Santana de Oliveira, Ph.D.

Mozaniel Santana de Oliveira graduated in Chemistry from the Federal University of Pará, Brazil. He obtained both a master’s and Ph.D. in Food Science and Technology from the same university. He has 12 years of professional experience. From 2010 to 2014, he worked on the chemistry of natural products at the Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária (Embrapa), and from 2014 to 2018, he worked in the Postgraduate Program in Food Science and Technology at the Federal University of Pará, specifically with essential oils. Since 2020, he has been a researcher for the Institutional Training Program - PCI, at the institution Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi, linked to the Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovações of Brazil (MCTI), with studies focused on extraction, characterization chemistry, and applications of essential oils in several industrial segments, among them the food industry. Specifically, Dr. Oliveira has experience in engineering, food science and technology, pharmacology and drug discovery, medicinal chemistry, ethnopharmacology and ethnobotany, phytochemistry, methods of extraction of bioactive compounds, biotechnology of natural products, and allelopathy to find new natural herbicides to control invasive plants. He also has experience in the area of essential oil extraction using supercritical technology and conventional methods. Since 2020, he has supervised and co-supervised master’s and Ph.D. students in several graduate programs. Dr. Oliveira serves as a reviewer for thirty-one international scientific journals and is the academic editor of the journals Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Journal of Food Quality, Molecules, and Open Chemistry.

 

Antônio Pedro da Silva Souza Filho, Ph.D.

Antonio Pedro da Silva Souza Filho is a Brazilian, graduated in Agronomic Engineering from the Universidade Federal Rural da Amazônia (UFRA-1977), with a Ph.D. in Animal Science from the Universidade do Estado de São Paulo (Unesp-1995) and Post-doctoral internship at the Institute of Chemistry of the Universidade de São Paulo (2001). He began his professional activities in 1978, at Embrapa, having worked over the years on several research projects, both as a research coordinator and project member, in the area of natural products, specifically in the line of prospecting chemical molecules with potential for use. in weed management, focusing on the bioactivity of essential oils. He also worked as a collaborating professor in the postgraduate courses in Chemistry of Natural Products and Animal Science, at the Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA), having supervised several Master and Doctoral students. He also participated as co-advisor of masters and doctoral students from the Universidade do Estado de Paraná and Federal de Viçosa. He contributed to the development of doctoral thesis works at the Universidade Federal do Amazonas and the Universidade Federal do Maranhão. Currently, he is linked to Embrapa and throughout his scientific career, he has published numerous scientific articles in different specialized journals and has published several books and book chapters in the area of natural products with an emphasis on the chemical composition and bioactivity of essential oils. He was the President of the Brazilian Society for the Science of Weeds (SBCPD).

He has several article publications to his name as well as books.

 

Keywords:

Natural products, Allelopathy, Essential oils, Antimicrobials, Extraction, Bees, Supercritical Fluid,  Bioactive compounds, Isolation, Terpenes, Biochemistry,  Terpenoids, Biotechnology, Pharmacology, Entophytic fungi, Agriculture, Allelochemicals

For more information please visit: https://bit.ly/3STsGtm

 

World's simplest animals get their place in the tree of life

Study on blob-like placozoans, first described more than 100 years ago, receive first phylogenomic analysis and complete classification based on molecular, rather than physical, characteristics

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

 

IMAGE: THE PLACOZOAN TRICHOPLAX ADHERENTS view more 

CREDIT: © B. SCHIERWATER, ET AL.

The group with the world’s simplest animals—tiny blob-like life forms with no organs and just a few cell types—finally has a fleshed-out family tree built by a research group led by the American Museum of Natural History, St. Francis College, and the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover. The study comes more than 100 years after the discovery of these ameboid animals called placozoans and represents the first—and potentially only—time in the 21st century that a backbone Linnaean taxonomy is constructed for an entire animal phylum. Published today in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, the research is based on genetic makeup—the presence and absence of genes—rather than outward physical appearance, which is traditionally used to classify organisms.

“Placozoans look like miniscule, shape-shifting disks—basically, they are the pancake of the animal world,” said the study’s co-lead author Michael Tessler, a research associate at the Museum and an assistant professor at St. Francis College. “For a taxonomist looking through a microscope, even a powerful one, there are almost no characters to compare and differentiate them. Yet, despite most of them looking almost exactly the same, we know that on the genetic level, there are very distinct lineages.”

The first placozoan species was described in 1883, and Placozoa remained a “phylum of one” until DNA-based research in the last 20 years revealed that it contains multiple lineages.  Most placozoans, which generally live in tropical and subtropical waters across the globe, are about the size of a grain of sand, with hair-like structures that allow them to move. “After decades of turmoil, this most exciting phylum has finally gotten the attention it deserves,“ said senior author Bernd Schierwater, a professor at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover.

“We wanted to know the relationships within this ancient group of animals and where it sits in the tree of life,” said co-lead author Johannes Neumann, a recent doctoral graduate from the Museum’s Richard Gilder Graduate School. “People have been speculating about that for decades, but now, by looking at differences among placozoans on the molecular level, we’re able to paint a clear picture of how these animals are related to one another.”

The researchers used a method called molecular morphology—using differences in DNA sequences and other molecular characters—to make classifications. In doing so, they established a backbone taxonomy: two new classes, four orders, three families, one genus, and one species. Their research also suggests that placozoans are most closely related to cnidarians (a group of aquatic animals including jellyfish, corals, and sea anemones) and bilaterians (animals that have a left and right side, like insects and humans).

“I personally collected placozoans on six continents for almost 10 years, did lab work and bioinformatic work on them, but it took decades of effort from a great number of colleagues to finally get to this exciting first classification for this cryptic phylum,” Neumann said. “This is why we call our newly described species Cladtertia collaboinventa, which means ‘discovered in collaboration.’”

The authors suggest that this study could serve as a template to revisit systematics of other organisms that look very similar, such as bacteria, fungi, protists, and parasites. Tessler also is the lead author of a second paper out now in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution that makes the case for molecular morphology in other groups of organisms that have few distinguishable visual features but are genetically diverse.

“Taxonomic blank slates are problematic. Without names, communication is hampered, and other scientific progress is slowed,” said Tessler. “We suggest that the morphology of molecules, such as proteins—which have distinctive structures—should not be considered as anything less than traditional morphology.”

Other authors include Kai Kamm and Hans-Jürgen Osigus, University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover; Gil Eshel, New York University; Apurva Narechania and Rob DeSalle, American Museum of Natural History; Spencer Galen, University of Scranton; and John Burns, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences.

Support for this work was provided in part by the U.S. Department of Energy, Biological and Environmental Research grant # DE-SC0014377; the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD); the U.S. National Science Foundation grant number OIA-1826734; and Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes.

  

The placozoan Hoilungia hongkongensis

CREDIT

© M. Tessler, J. Neumann, K. Kamm, et al.

ABOUT THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY (AMNH)

The American Museum of Natural History, founded in 1869, is one of the world’s preeminent scientific, educational, and cultural institutions. The Museum encompasses more than 40 permanent exhibition halls and galleries for temporary exhibitions, the Rose Center for Earth and Space and the Hayden Planetarium, and the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation, which opens February 2023. The Museum’s scientists draw on a world-class permanent collection of more than 34 million specimens and artifacts, some of which are billions of years old, and on one of the largest natural history libraries in the world. Through its Richard Gilder Graduate School, the Museum grants the Ph.D. degree in Comparative Biology and the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) degree, the only such freestanding, degree-granting programs at any museum in the United States. The Museum’s website, digital videos, and apps for mobile devices bring its collections, exhibitions, and educational programs to millions around the world. Visit amnh.org for more information.

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution

DOI

10.3389/fevo.2022.1016357 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Meta-analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Phylogenomics and the first higher taxonomy of Placozoa, an ancient and enigmatic animal phylum

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Dec-2022

Could a nasal spray treat sleep apnea?

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FLINDERS UNIVERSITY

A drug in development for obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) has shown promising results, after researchers from Flinders University tested the treatment in people for the first time.

Designed to prevent the narrowing or collapse of the upper airways during sleep, a key factor in OSA, the treatment could prove to be a potential alternative for certain people with OSA to continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines, which can only be tolerated by about half of all OSA sufferers.

“While further rigorous clinical evaluation and testing is required, this is a great first step and should offer some hope to the many people worldwide who suffer from sleep apnoea,” says study senior author Professor Danny Eckeart, Director of Flinders’ sleep lab FHMRI: Sleep Health. 

“OSA is one of the most common sleep-related breathing disorders, with an estimated one billion sufferers, and when untreated is associated with major health and safety consequences. While CPAP machines are effective, tolerance remains a major issue for many and other treatments such as dental splints and upper airway surgery don’t always work. This is why we need new treatment options for OSA.

“At the moment, there are no approved drug treatments for OSA. However, with advances in our understanding of the different reasons people get OSA, the potential for effective new medications is growing stronger each year.”

Published in the journal Chest, the study tested the drug on 12 people with OSA using either nasal drops, a nasal spray or via direct application using an endoscope, versus a placebo.

Monitoring for sleep and airway activity across several sessions, the team found consistent and sustained improvements in the patients’ airways staying open throughout sleep, compared to the placebo treatment, regardless of the delivery method used. 

“Although a small study, our findings represent the first detailed investigation of this new treatment in people with OSA, with promising results,” says study lead author Dr Amal Osman from FHMRI: Sleep Health.

“The drug we tested is designed to target specific receptors that are expressed on the surface of the upper airways, triggering them more easily to activate the surrounding muscles to keep the airway open during sleep. While there’s still a long way to go in terms of clinical testing and development, our study shows targeting these receptors may be a promising avenue for future treatments.”

The paper – ‘Topical K+ channel blockage improves pharyngeal collapsibility: A translational, placebo-controlled trial’ by Amal M. Osman, Sutapa Mukherjee, Thomas J. Altree, Martina Delbeck, Doris Gehring, Michael Hahn, Tina Lang, Charles Xing, Thomas Muller, Gerrit Weimann and Danny J. Eckert – is published in the journal Chest. DOI: 10.1016/j.chest.2022.11.024.

Funding support:  The study was sponsored by Bayer, manufacturer of the drug tested. Professor Eckert is funded by a National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia Leadership Fellowship.

Potential conflict of interest: DJE reports grants from Bayer, Apnimed, Invicta Medical, Takeda, serves as an advisor for Bayer, Invicta Medical, Mosanna, and Apnimed. TJA serves on a scientific advisory board for Jazz Pharmaceuticals. MD, DG, MH, TL, CX, TM and GW are employees (including stock options) of the study sponsor. AMO and SM do not have any potential conflicts to declare.

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JOURNAL

CHEST Journal

DOI

10.1016/j.chest.2022.11.024 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Randomized controlled/clinical trial

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Topical K+ channel blockage improves pharyngeal collapsibility: A translational, placebo-controlled trial

COI STATEMENT

DJE reports grants from Bayer, Apnimed, Invicta Medical, Takeda, serves as an advisor for Bayer, Invicta Medical, Mosanna, and Apnimed. TJA serves on a scientific advisory board for Jazz Pharmaceuticals. MD, DG, MH, TL, CX, TM and GW are employees (including stock options) of the study sponsor. AMO and SM do not have any potential conflicts to declare.

Emerging Technologies and Applications for a Smart and Sustainable World

Book Announcement

BENTHAM SCIENCE PUBLISHERS

The reference “Emerging Technologies and Applications for a Smart and Sustainable World” extracts information about emerging technologies and applications for smart city design and sustainable urban planning. Chapters present technology use-cases that have radical novelty and high scalability with a prominent impact on community living standards. These technologies prepare urban and rural dwellings for the transformation to the smart world. It is suitable for learning and understanding various technologies used in making smart applications for living smart and transforming communities into smart communities. Authors from different geographical locations contributed the various chapters to this Edited Book. Emerging technologies will have radical novelty, relatively fast growth, and coherence, prominent impact on community and in the transformation to smart world.

Applications and techniques highlighted in the book “Emerging Technologies and Applications for a Smart and Sustainable World“ use a combination of artificial intelligence and IoT technologies in areas like transportation, energy, healthcare, education, governance, and manufacturing, to name a few. The book serves as a learning resource for smart city design and sustainable infrastructure planning. Scholars and professionals who are interested in understanding ways for transforming communities into smart communities can also benefit from the cases presented in the book.

 

About the editor:

Dr. M.A. JABBAR is a Professor and Head of the Department CSE(AI&ML), Vardhaman College of Engineering, Hyderabad, and Telangana, India. He obtained Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) from JNTUH, Hyderabad, and Telangana, India. He has been teaching for more than 20 years. His research interests include Artificial Intelligence, Big Data Analytics, Bio-Informatics, Cyber Security, Machine Learning, Attack Graphs, and Intrusion Detection Systems. He has published more than 60 papers in various journals and conferences. He served as a technical committee member for more than 70 international conferences. He has edited 7 books with various leading publishers like Elsevier, Springer, and Taylor and Francis.  He is a senior Member of IEEE and Senior member of ACM, Governing body member of Internet Society India Hyderabad Chapter. Dr M.A.Jabbar Received best faculty researcher award from CSI Mumbai and Fossee Labs, IIT Bombay. He has been awarded with the prestigious title of IEEE CS Distinguished contributor.

Mamun Bin Ibne Reaz received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Applied Physics and Electronics, both from University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh, in 1985 and 1986, respectively. He received his D.Eng. degree in 2007 from Ibaraki University, Japan. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Systems Engineering, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia. He is involved in teaching, research and industrial consultation. He is a Senior Associate of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Italy since 2008. He is also a Senior Member of IEEE. He has published extensively in the area of IC Design, Biomedical application IC and Smart Home. He is author and coauthor of more than 300 research articles in design automation, IC design for biomedical applications and Smart Home. He is also the recipient of more than 50 research grants (national and international).

Ana Madureira received her BSc degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering, in 1996, from the University of Porto, and the PhD degree in Production and Systems, in 2003, from University of Minho, Portugal. Currently, she is a Professor at the Institute of Engineering – Polytechnic of Porto (ISEP/IPP). In the last few years, she was author of fifty scientific papers in scientific conference proceedings, journals and books. She is a Ph.D. researcher of the GECAD - Knowledge Engineering and Decision Support Research Group where she is the supervisor of the Special Interest Group in Manufacturing Systems. Her main areas of interest are Industrial Management, Planning and Scheduling, Dynamic and Reactive Scheduling, Meta-Heuristics, Genetic Algorithms, Evolutionary Computation, Decision Support Systems and Intelligent systems.

 

Keywords:

Smart transportation and parking, Block chain Technology for smart cities, AI in smart Cities,  Federation of Services (IaaS, PaaS and SaaS) aimed at Public Administrations, Cyber security infrastructure Development, Software engineering methodology for the design of Smart Cities Systems, Smart Energy & Power infra 14 Cyber Physical Systems in Smart city, Environmental monitoring and waste management, Green Computing, Health sector in Smart Cities, Big Data, Smart infrastructure for Education, Analytics, Smart Infra for Construction and logistics 18 Smart Manufacturing for the Oil and Gas industries, IoT applications and communications networks for enabling the Smarter City, Wireless sensor networks in smart cities , Smart Economy and Transformation 20 Health care and education in smart cities.

 

For more information please visit: https://bit.ly/3qzDC38

Efficient synthesis of (-)-quinine paves the way for malarial drug development and more

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TOHOKU UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: (-)-QUININE AND THE CHINCHONA PLANT FROM WHICH IT IS DERIVED FROM. view more 

CREDIT: TOHOKU UNIVERSITY

Malaria is one of the world's "big-three" infectious diseases. In 2020 alone, it infected roughly 240,000 million people and caused 630,000 deaths worldwide.

Quinine, an alkaloid derived from the cinchona plant, has been used to treat malaria for centuries. Artificial antimalarial drugs with relatively few side effects, such as chloroquine and mefloquine, have been developed based on the chemical structure of quinine. However, Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes the deadliest form of malaria, has started to become resistant to such drugs.

Now, a research team from Tohoku University has achieved an efficient synthesis of quinine and its derivatives that can serve as a building block for further medication development and innovations in organocatalyst chemistry.

"We accomplished an efficient enantioselective total synthesis of (-)-quinine by using an organocatalyst-mediated reaction," said Professor Yujiro Hayashi. "It is the shortest-pot synthesis."

Synthetic efficiency aids scientists in developing new chemical compounds by cutting the steps it takes to achieve bonds and generate complex molecules. One-pot reactions are one way to do this. They circumvent several purification steps via in situ quenching, thereby minimizing chemical waste and saving time.

The team's discovery is not limited to innovations in medicine. In recent years, quinine and its derivatives have attracted attention for their use as ligands for metal catalysts and as organocatalysts. Whilst many organocatalysts derived from quinine exist and have been applied to a wide range of reactions and syntheses, structure diversity remains limited because of the complexity involved in synthesizing from quinine.

To realize what the team conceptually dub "pot economy," they used an organocatalyst and constructed a six-membered ring from three compounds by controlling two stereocenters in one-pot. This reaction could be conducted over a 10 g scale.

After two one-pot reactions, a heteroaromatic ring, which is capable of being applied to the syntheses of quinine analogs, was introduced. The synthesis requires a total of five separate one-pot operations and five purifications by column chromatography and resulted in a quinine yield of 14%.

Details of the research were published in the journal Nature Communications on December 7, 2022.

One-pot reaction can improve the yield, reduce waste generation, and saving time.

Five-pot synthesis of (-)-quinine have been achieved using organocatalyst.

CREDIT

Yujiro Hayashi et al.

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JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-022-34916-z 

ARTICLE TITLE

Organocatalyst-mediated five-pot synthesis of (-)-quinine

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

7-Dec-2022