•The work extends prior educational data mining (EDM) reviews and updates its history.•A data mining (DM) profile is set to depict the DM ground that supports EDM works.•An EDM approach profile is ...set to provide key traits for depicting EDM approaches.•A trait-value pattern is set to depict most of descriptive and predictive EDM models.•Three disciplines, tasks, methods, algorithms are the most used for building EDM works.
This review pursues a twofold goal, the first is to preserve and enhance the chronicles of recent educational data mining (EDM) advances development; the second is to organize, analyze, and discuss the content of the review based on the outcomes produced by a data mining (DM) approach. Thus, as result of the selection and analysis of 240 EDM works, an EDM work profile was compiled to describe 222 EDM approaches and 18 tools. A profile of the EDM works was organized as a raw data base, which was transformed into an ad-hoc data base suitable to be mined. As result of the execution of statistical and clustering processes, a set of educational functionalities was found, a realistic pattern of EDM approaches was discovered, and two patterns of value-instances to depict EDM approaches based on descriptive and predictive models were identified. One key finding is: most of the EDM approaches are ground on a basic set composed by three kinds of educational systems, disciplines, tasks, methods, and algorithms each. The review concludes with a snapshot of the surveyed EDM works, and provides an analysis of the EDM strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats, whose factors represent, in a sense, future work to be fulfilled.
Both single and multicellular organisms depend on anti-stress mechanisms that enable them to deal with sudden changes in the environment, including exposure to heat and oxidants. Central to the ...stress response are dynamic changes in metabolism, such as the transition from the glycolysis to the pentose phosphate pathway-a conserved first-line response to oxidative insults
. Here we report a second metabolic adaptation that protects microbial cells in stress situations. The role of the yeast polyamine transporter Tpo1p
in maintaining oxidant resistance is unknown
. However, a proteomic time-course experiment suggests a link to lysine metabolism. We reveal a connection between polyamine and lysine metabolism during stress situations, in the form of a promiscuous enzymatic reaction in which the first enzyme of the polyamine pathway, Spe1p, decarboxylates lysine and forms an alternative polyamine, cadaverine. The reaction proceeds in the presence of extracellular lysine, which is taken up by cells to reach concentrations up to one hundred times higher than those required for growth. Such extensive harvest is not observed for the other amino acids, is dependent on the polyamine pathway and triggers a reprogramming of redox metabolism. As a result, NADPH-which would otherwise be required for lysine biosynthesis-is channelled into glutathione metabolism, leading to a large increase in glutathione concentrations, lower levels of reactive oxygen species and increased oxidant tolerance. Our results show that nutrient uptake occurs not only to enable cell growth, but when the nutrient availability is favourable it also enables cells to reconfigure their metabolism to preventatively mount stress protection.
Bacterial conjugation is one of the main mechanisms for horizontal gene transfer. It constitutes a key element in the dissemination of antibiotic resistance and virulence genes to human pathogenic ...bacteria. DNA transfer is mediated by a membrane-associated macromolecular machinery called Type IV secretion system (T4SS). T4SSs are involved not only in bacterial conjugation but also in the transport of virulence factors by pathogenic bacteria. Thus, the search for specific inhibitors of different T4SS components opens a novel approach to restrict plasmid dissemination. This review highlights recent biochemical and structural findings that shed new light on the molecular mechanisms of DNA and protein transport by T4SS. Based on these data, a model for pilus biogenesis and substrate transfer in conjugative systems is proposed. This model provides a renewed view of the mechanism that might help to envisage new strategies to curb the threating expansion of antibiotic resistance.
Bacterial conjugation is one of the main mechanisms for the dissemination of antibiotic resistance genes. Here, we suggest a model that integrates the mechanism of conjugation with Type IV secretions systems biogenesis and substrate transport across the secretion channel and we propose alternative approaches to use this knowledge in the fight against the spread of antibiotic resistance.
Before the emergence of computer‐based educational systems (CBES) whose aims of providing teaching and learning experiences to hundreds even thousands of users, an explosion of information (e.g., ...students' log data) demands sophisticated methods to gather, analyze, and interpret learners' traces to regulate and enhance education. Thus, learning analytics (LA) arises as a knowledge discovery paradigm that provides valuable findings and facilitates stakeholders to understand the learning process and its implications. Therefore, a landscape of the LA nature, its underlying factors, and applications achieved is outlined in this paper according to a suggested LA Taxonomy that classifies the LA duty from a functional perspective. The aim is to provide an idea of the LA toil, its research lines, and trends to inspire the development of novel approaches for improving teaching and learning practices. Furthermore, the scope of this review covers recently published papers in prestigious journals and conferences, where the works dated from 2016 are summarized and those corresponding to 2014–2015 are cited according to the proposed LA taxonomy. A glimpse is sketched of LA, where underlying elements frame the field foundations to ground the approaches. Moreover, LA strengths, weaknesses, challenges, and risks are highlighted to advice how the LA arena could be enhanced and empowered. In addition, this review offers an insight of the recent LA labor, as well as motivates readers to enrich the LA achievements. This work promotes the LA practice giving an account of the job being achieved and reported in literature, as well as a reflection of the state‐of‐the‐art and an acumens vision to inspire future labor.
This article is categorized under:
Application Areas > Education and Learning
Application Areas > Science and Technology
Fundamental Concepts of Data and Knowledge > Human Centricity and User Interaction
A Proposed Learning Analytics Taxonomy.
In this article we theorize a new organizational face of political parties that we term the 'party-on-the-net', defined as a set of digital partisan activist roles enabled by the affordances of ...digital technologies. We first explain the conceptual advantages of understanding parties' media hybridization as an organizational face rather than as a specific party subtype. Then, we provide a taxonomy of digital partisan roles comprising the party-on-the-net and its links with traditional party bureaucracies and functions. We define and discuss ten roles on the basis of two general organizational variables, namely functional alignment with party structures and influence over core party decisions. Finally, after illustrating each of these roles through examples across different geographical regions, we consider how our framework can help scholars to develop hypotheses for further empirical scrutiny. We focus on the relative prevalence of the party-on-the-net within subtypes of digital parties, its relation to other organizational faces, and its development under different institutional scope conditions.
The introduction of Luhmann’s System Theory to International Relations has been long overdue. In the last few years, articles by Donnelly (2012) and Buzan and Albert (2010) have started to discuss ...the application of the concept of differentiation to International Relations theory, and an edited book by Albert et al. (2010) has examined how systemic thought can reinvigorate the study of world politics. This article welcomes and continues these developments by proposing a Luhmannian reinterpretation of the evolution and functioning of governance via standards. The article argues that standardisation — involving the proliferation of standards but also of standardised instruments such as rankings, indicators and benchmarks — can be understood as a mechanism of political steering in a growingly differentiated (world) society. By considering standardisation as a systemic adaptation of the political system to a multifunctional environment, this article contests conventional economistic and power-based explanations where the ‘standardisation turn’ in global governance is a mere consequence of neoliberal globalisation, power struggles among states or some type of hegemonic logic. In this manner, the article suggests that Luhmann’s Systems Theory can provide a more encompassing framework to understand the operation of standards as an extension of politics beyond territory, and to frame the challenges of governing an increasingly complex world.
The immune system plays a critical role in cancer, including lung cancer, which is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Immunotherapy, particularly immune checkpoint blockade, has ...revolutionized the treatment of lung cancer, but a large subset of patients either do not respond or develop resistance. Exosomes, essential mediators of cell-to-cell communication, exert a profound influence on the tumor microenvironment and the interplay between cancer and the immune system. This review focuses on the role of tumor-derived exosomes and immune cells-derived exosomes in the crosstalk between these cell types, influencing the initiation and progression of lung cancer. Depending on their cell of origin and microenvironment, exosomes can contain immunosuppressive or immunostimulatory molecules that can either promote or inhibit tumor growth, thus playing a dual role in the disease. Furthermore, the use of exosomes in lung cancer immunotherapy is discussed. Their potential applications as cell-free vaccines and drug delivery systems make them an attractive option for lung cancer treatment. Additionally, exosomal proteins and RNAs emerge as promising biomarkers that could be employed for the prediction, diagnosis, prognosis and monitoring of the disease. In summary, this review assesses the relationship between exosomes, lung cancer, and the immune system, shedding light on their potential clinical applications and future perspectives.
Integrating insights from party politics, social movement and political communication literatures, with a qualitative discussion of hybrid party behaviours observable in different contexts and ...regions, the article offers an original typology of four models of partisan mobilisation and focuses on a novel possibility, the activist party. Referring to parties that combine a professionalised organisation with the deployment of movement-like tactics to achieve electoral goals, the article points to current resources reducing the organisational trade-offs previously assumed to restrict the combination of electoral appeal with partisan militancy. Through this argument, the article challenges the thesis that under democratic conditions political parties should be expected to abandon outsider strategies for insider ones, while providing an analytical account of emerging patterns of organisational innovation and partisan behaviour being witnessed in contemporary party politics.
Abstract
Scholarship drawing from a wide array of perspectives including field theoretical and functional differentiation approaches has shed increasing light on the sectoral dimensions of world ...politics. In contrast to dominant approaches emphasizing hierarchy and power in relations between global fields, this article offers a novel interpretive framework for understanding how diverse fields, systems, or sectors may interact and facilitate change in world politics beyond the operation of established hierarchies and power dynamics. Taking forward the previously underutilized concept of symbolically generalized media of communication, this article elucidates two processes of international political change by which different fields, systems, or sectors may transform world politics. The first process, lateral retreat, is illustrated with reference to the case study of the Protestant Reformation, in which internal changes in the religious field facilitated the development of an increasingly autonomous political domain. The second process, lateral penetration, is illustrated with reference to the international political response to the climate change and Covid-19 crises, in which the scientific sector contributed toward transformed political priorities and associated hierarchies, at least in the short term. These diverse cases are used to indicate the broad potential scope of application of the concept of symbolically generalized media of communication to enrich relational theorizing in the study of international relations, and to improve understanding of diverse dynamics of international political change missed in traditional power- (and anarchy-) centric accounts.