Understanding divergent domestication traits from the whole-genome sequencing of swamp- and river-buffalo populations     

Xier Luo  Yu Zhou  Bing Zhang  Yi Zhang  Xiaobo Wang  Tong Feng  Zhipeng Li  Kuiqing Cui  Zhiqiang Wang  Chan Luo  Hui Li  Yanfei Deng  Fenghua Lu  Jianlin Han  Yongwang Miao  Huaming Mao  Xiaoyan Yi  Cheng Ai  Shigang Wu  Alun Li  Zhichao Wu  Zijun Zhuo  Do Da Giang  Bikash Mitra  Mohammad Farhad Vahidi  Shahid Mansoor  Sahar Ahmed Al-Bayatti  Eka Meutia Sari  Neena Amatya Gorkhali  Sigit Prastowo  Laiba Shafique  Guoyou Ye  Qian Qian  Baoshan Chen  Deshun Shi  Jue Ruan  Qingyou Liu 《国家科学评论(英文版)》2020,7(3):686

Domesticated buffaloes have been integral to rice-paddy agro-ecosystems for millennia, yet relatively little is known about the buffalo genomics. Here, we sequenced and assembled reference genomes for both swamp and river buffaloes and we re-sequenced 230 individuals (132 swamp buffaloes and 98 river buffaloes) sampled from across Asia and Europe. Beyond the many actionable insights that our study revealed about the domestication, basic physiology and breeding of buffalo, we made the striking discovery that the divergent domestication traits between swamp and river buffaloes can be explained with recent selections of genes on social behavior, digestion metabolism, strengths and milk production.  相似文献   

Theodore Arabatzis: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Representing Electrons: A Biographical Approach to Theoretical Entities</Emphasis>     

Mansoor Niaz 《Science & Education》2011,20(9):921-925

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What ‘ideas-about-science’ should be taught in school science? A chemistry teachers’ perspective     

Mansoor Niaz 《Instructional Science》2008,36(3):233-249

The objective of this study is to facilitate in-service chemistry teachers’ understanding of nature of science and what ‘ideas-about-science’ can be included in the classroom. The study is based on 17 in-service teachers who had registered for a 11-week course on ‘Epistemology of Science Teaching’ as part of their Master’s degree program. The course is based on 17 readings drawing on nature of science and its critical evaluation. Course activities included written reports, classroom discussions based on participants’ presentations and written exams. Based on the results obtained this study has the following educational implications: (a) Experimental data need to be interpreted carefully due to underdetermination of theories by data; (b) Kuhn’s normal science manifests itself in the science curriculum through the scientific method and wields considerable influence; (c) Trilemma posed by Collins (Stud Sci Educ 35:169–173, 2000), viz., creation of new knowledge ⇔ Kuhn’s normal science ⇔ teaching nature of science, provided a big challenge and was thought provoking; (d) Of the different aspects of nature of science suggested by experts, these teachers endorsed the following as most important: Creativity, Historical development of scientific knowledge, Diversity of scientific thinking and Scientific method and critical testing; (e) With respect to the contradiction between the positions of Lederman et al. (J Res Sci Teach 39:497–521, 2002) and Osborne et al. (J Res Sci Teach 40:692–720, 2003), few supported the position of latter, viz., inclusion of scientific method in the classroom and a majority supported the former, viz., scientific method as a myth; and (f) Participants were critical of the present stage of research with respect to the scientific method and suggested the introduction of history, philosophy and epistemology of science to counteract its influence.  相似文献   

Baroque Tower on a Gothic Base: A Lakatosian Reconstruction of Students' and Teachers' Understanding of Structure of the Atom     

Blanco  Rafael  Niaz  Mansoor 《Science & Education》1998,7(4):327-360

The main objective of this study is a reconstruction of students' and teachers' understanding of structure of the atom based on the following framework: a) history of science can be conceived as that of competing rival research programs; b) some of the greatest scientific research programs progressed on inconsistent foundations; c) in actual scientific practice, counter-examples would be considered as mere anomalies; d) work of Thomson, Rutherford and Bohr led to the postulation of atomic models based on competing frameworks of understanding. This study is based on 171 freshman students enrolled in General Chemistry I and 7 chemistry teachers at the Instituto Universitario de Tecnología, El Tigre, Venezuela. All the students and teachers were asked to respond to a 11 item questionnaire and explain their responses. The questionnaire was administered about a month after the students/teachers had finished the topic of atomic structure. Students' and teachers' responses were classified in the following categories: Positivist/inductivist, Transitional and Lakatosian. Results obtained show that students and teachers: a) have a very similar positivist understanding of the progress of science; b) are inconsistent in their responses by switching from a positivist response on one item to a Lakatosian on an another; c) also showed some consistent response patterns by resisting changes in some of their core beliefs by invoking "auxiliary hypotheses"; and d) consider that observable hard experimental facts give science its objective status, whereas the interpretations being subjective perhaps go beyond the fold of science.  相似文献   

Contents of Volume 28 2000     

Mansoor Niaz 《Instructional Science》2000,28(5):535-536

Volume Contents

Contents of Volume 28 2000  相似文献   

Disability and Popular Common Sense in India: Noun versus Adjective     

Mohd Shahid  Md. Shahid Raza  Md. Aftab Alam 《International Journal of Disability, Development & Education》2016,63(2):151-162

Reflecting through the Indian experiences, a brief attempt is made to explore how disability as a noun takes shape in popular common sense “call names” (adjectives) and how does the popular common sense legitimise and normalise the oppressive language and the oppressed reality of the persons with disabilities? In the Indian context, the contempt for persons with disabilities is writ large in the language used to address them. However, to be conscious of this contempt, one needs to be conscious of the hegemonic nature of the popular common sense which normalises an oppressive reality as a natural social reality. The discussion on disability and popular common sense in India through the framework of “noun vs. adjective” might be helpful in gauging the challenges to the disability rights movement and the socio-cultural specificities to be reckon with for any meaningful intervention in the field of disability.  相似文献   

Translation of algebraic equations and its relation to formal operational reasoning     

Mansoor Niaz 《科学教学研究杂志》1989,26(9):785-793

A large proportion of science major college students are unable to translate even simple sentences into algebraic equations. Given the following sentence: There are six times as many students (S) as professors (P) at this university, most students write the following equation: 6S = P, referred to as the reversal error. In order to overcome the reversal error students need to operate in a hypothetico-deductive manner, i.e., performing a hypothetical operation that makes the group of professors six times larger than it really is (S = 6P). The objective of this study is to investigate the relation between student ability to translate sentences into equations, equations into sentences, and student performance in the following variables: formal operational reasoning, proportional reasoning, and introductory freshmen-level chemistry course. The results obtained show that as the student ability to translate sentences into equations and equations into sentences increases, their mean scores in Chemistry I, formal operational, and proportional reasoning increases. This study has found support for the hypothesis that students who lack formal operational reasoning skills (hypothetico-deductive reasoning) may experience more problems in the translation of algebraic equations.  相似文献   

A Conceptual Change Teaching Strategy to Facilitate High School Students' Understanding of Electrochemistry   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Niaz  Mansoor  Chacón  Eleazar 《Journal of Science Education and Technology》2003,12(2):129-134

Recent research in chemistry education has shown an increasing interest in the facilitation of conceptual change in student understanding of chemical concepts. Most of the studies have tried to show the difference in student performance on algorithmic and conceptual problems. The objective of this study is to go beyond and design a teaching strategy based on two teaching experiments that could facilitate students' conceptual understanding of electrochemistry. The study is based on two sections (control, n = 29; experimental, n = 28) of 10th grade high school students at a public school in Venezuela. Experimental group participated in two teaching experiments designed to generate situations/experiences in which students are forced to grapple with alternative responses leading to cognitive conflicts/contradictions. Results obtained show that learning electrochemistry involves both algorithmic and conceptual problems. On Posttest 1, 93% of the experimental group students responded correctly, in contrast to 39% of the control group. On Posttest 2, 39% of the experimental group responded correctly, in contrast to 0% of the Control group. The difference in performance on both posttests is statistically significant (p < 0.001). It is concluded that the teaching experiments facilitated students' understanding (progressive transitions) of electrochemistry.  相似文献   

Manipulation of logical structure of chemistry problems and its effect on student performance     

Mansoor Niaz  William R. Robinson 《科学教学研究杂志》1992,29(3):211-226

It has been shown previously that manipulation of the M demand (amount of information needed for processing) of chemistry problems affects student performance, which suggests that manipulation of logical structure of chemistry problems could also lead to significant changes in performance. The objective of this study is to investigate the following: Given the opportunity for training, what is the effect of increasing (manipulation) the complexity of logical structure of chemistry problems on student performance, and to what extent can cognitive variables explain changes in performance. Results obtained show that (a) even a small increase in the logical structure of a problem can change the role of cognitive variables (mental capacity and formal reasoning) to the extent that increase in logical complexity outweighs the advantage students may have gained through training on a similar problem; (b) the use of algorithms and training on particular types of chemistry problems could lead to a situation in which formal reasoning is the only cognitive variable that explains variance in performance significantly; and (c) after having solved very similar problems on two different occasions with improving performance, the improvement is not retained if the logical structure of a third problem increases considerably. It is concluded that when dealing with significant changes in logical complexity of chemistry problems, developmental level of students is the most consistent predictor of success. A model for the qualitative analysis of logical complexity of chemistry problems is presented.  相似文献   

Florida public hurricane loss model: Research in multi-disciplinary system integration assisting government policy making     

Shu-Ching Chen  Min Chen  Na Zhao  Shahid Hamid  Kasturi Chatterjee  Michael Armella 《Government Information Quarterly》2009

Homeowner insurance rate making is an important public policy issue in the State of Florida. The State of Florida has over 2 trillion dollars of residential properties exposed to hurricane risk. The State has declared that it shall adopt public policy to encourage the use of sophisticated actuarial methods to assure that consumers are charged lawful insurance rates (Section 627.0628(1)(a)). To that effect, the State's insurance regulatory agency, the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR), sponsored the development of a Florida Public Hurricane Loss Model (FPHLM) to assess the risk and project insured residential losses. The FPHLM is an open and public model that has been developed primarily by university experts without influence from either the insurance industry or the state regulators. It is open to public scrutiny and provides an understandable baseline to check the assumptions as well as the outputs of the proprietary models. The FPHLM thus makes the rate evaluation process more objective and less political. It enables the state to justify rejecting or accepting rate increases based on an independent and transparent model, rather than a process that can be influenced politically. As a multi-disciplinary large scale research project with an iterative and incremental development cycle, the FPHLM system development and integration faced numerous challenges varying from technical factors to project management aspects. This paper will discuss the research experiences accumulated during the development of the FPHLM and the impact it has had on the homeowner insurance rate filing process in the State of Florida.  相似文献