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This paper is based on a long-term ethnography of an adult creative writing class situated in a major urban art gallery in the United Kingdom. It takes the claims of one group of older adults--that creative writing made them "feel younger"--as the starting point for exploring this connection further. It places these claims broadly within theories of learning in later life that advocate creative expression and reminiscence as important practices for educators of older adults. However, the main analysis employs anthropological theories of creativity and ageing in order to question the cultural assumptions about creativity and the period of older age informing theory and practice. The paper argues that the value of creative writing for the individuals studied lies both in the fact that it is a relational (rather than individual) process and a means of being in the present. These findings contradict traditional conceptions about creativity as future-oriented and older people as retrospective; they also raise questions about narratives of empowerment, individual agency and the importance of "reminiscence" in some of the literature on older adult learning.

This article examines two comic book adaptations of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" produced for teenage readers and used in school classrooms. It seeks to understand the ways in which particular kinds of literacy are being implied and constructed through the textual practice of multimodal adaptation. It presents a close reading of sections of the texts and places them within the framework of multimodal theory and adaptation studies. The paper is part of a larger study of comic book adaptations of Shakespeare's plays based on a series of semi-structured interviews with the producers (publishers, artists, textual editors) involved in the adaptation process. The data are analysed in order to raise questions concerning the assumptions about literacy inherent in educational texts, and to outline the importance of further qualitative research in the area.

This paper explores the possibilities for pedagogy inherent in the reading practices which emerged from an extra-curricular graphic novel reading group set up in a Scottish secondary school. The research is presented within the framework of the new literacy studies and its focus on "practices" and "events" but, more specifically, it uses the framework developed by researchers working on the Literacies for Learning in Further Education Project conducted recently in the United Kingdom. This framework allows a more detailed exploration of "events" by unpacking the fine-grained aspects that compose a literacy practice. This paper aims to identify, trace and analyse the aspects of the emerging new practice of this reading group. While the framework it employs is based on an opposition between curricular and non-curricular practices, the data presented in this paper derives from an extra-curricular activity uniquely positioned inside the school but outside of the official curriculum. By focusing on notions of identity and process in particular, the paper presents a critique of the ways in which literacy practices which take place outside of the classroom have been undervalued or ignored by educational policy and practice.

This paper uses the example of an extra-curricular Graphic Novel Reading Group in order to explore the institutional critical reading practices that take place in English classrooms in the senior years of secondary school. Drawing on Stanley Fish's theory of interpretive communities, it questions the restrictive interpretive strategies applied to literary texts in curriculum English. By looking closely at the interpretive strategies pupils apply to a different kind of text (graphic novels) in an alternative context (an extra-curricular space), the paper suggests that there may be other ways of engaging with text that pupils find less alienating, more pleasurable and less reminiscent of "work".

The aim of this study was to identify when and how the interactive whiteboard (IWB) functioned as a productive tool that impacted student learning in mathematics. Using video data, field notes, and interview transcripts from 1 school year in two optimal case study classrooms, we were able to examine the unique opportunities afforded by the size of the IWB screen, the manipulation of virtual objects onscreen, and related communication using gestures. We: (i) established criteria for defining "significant learning moments"; (ii) assessed these significant learning moments to determine how the interactive whiteboard was supporting the learning; and (iii) isolated the use of gesture during IWB use to magnify the grain size of our analysis and understanding. The data fell into three types of IWB use: productive (89%), reproductive (2%), and problematic (9%). The study recommends that in order to best support student learning, professional development for teachers should emphasize direct and active "student" use of the IWB to engage students in inquiry of mathematics. (Contains 4 tables.)

• Medical imaging plays an important role in the diagnosis of COVID-19, and intelligent methods, including image processing algorithms, have shown success in diagnosing pneumonia. • Multi-task learning simultaneously addresses multiple related tasks, utilizing shared representations to overcome the limitations of labeled data in medical image analysis. • Spatial attention mechanisms, like the Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM), enhance feature extraction in multi-task models, improving the precision of diagnosis and treatment decisions. • Conditional Random Fields (CRF) post-processing refines segmentation outcomes by accounting for spatial dependencies, enhancing the precise delineation of COVID-19-affected regions in CT scans. • The LungXpertAI model integrates multi-task learning, advanced image processing techniques, attention mechanisms, and post-processing using CRF, delivering a robust and optimized solution for accurate and efficient COVID-19 analysis from chest CT scans. Addressing the urgent need for accurate COVID-19 identification and lung infection segmentation in CT scans, our study introduces LungXpertAI, a novel Multi-Task Learning architecture. Previous studies on multi-task structures have been limited in providing detailed insights into their architectures. Addressing these details is crucial for enhancing the performance of multi-task structures. Our proposed multi-task structure, based on the U-Net architecture, incorporates a shared encoder, a specialized segmentation decoder, and a multi-layer perceptron for classification. In the proposed approach, image processing algorithms, including histogram equalization, median filtering, and morphological operations have been employed in the pre-processing stage of input images. Also, by combining these algorithms in pairs, an attempt has been made to enhance the performance of tasks. Initial preprocessing and the integration of the Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) contribute to effective feature extraction. Post-processing with Conditional Random Field (CRF) further refines segmentation outputs. CRF considers spatial dependencies within the segmentation results, contributing to more precise delineation of COVID-19-affected areas in CT scans. Evaluation on using dataset demonstrates the effectiveness of pairwise combinations of image processing algorithms, achieving superior results with a segmentation accuracy of 95.66 % and a classification accuracy of 95.62 %. The incorporation of the CBAM module improves classification accuracy to 96.22 %. Moreover, Integrating CBAM and CRF significantly improves segmentation accuracy to 96.51 %. The application of our proposed method steps to U-Net++ and ResUnet showcases their potential for enhancing multi-task structures. This study establishes new COVID-19 detection standards, promising progress in medical image analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Museum education literature has paid surprisingly little attention to the distinctiveness of portrait galleries or portraits as a genre, despite the fact that they provide 'powerful spaces for pedagogy' (Hooper-Greenhill 2020: 24). Taking an ethnographic approach, this article offers a detailed analysis of such pedagogies at work in one creative writing class based at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. It describes two pedagogical regimes -- the institution's and the guide's -- and explores how they compete to frame the portraits in different ways. Focusing on two specific portraits, and the creative writing produced in response to them, it argues that while the portrait gallery's implied pedagogy insists on the subject in the portrait, the class tutor focuses on the portrait as object. Employing Hans Belting's theory of images (2011), the article concludes that there is a distinctive pedagogical dynamism inherent in the portrait genre, which can be mined for different educational purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Morphine is a narcotic pain reliever that is prescribed to reduce postoperative pain and can produce reactive oxygen species (ROS). Therefore, it can have negative effects on spermatogenesis and male fertility. Vitamin E is an effective antioxidant which plays an important role in membrane lipid peroxidation due to increased ROS. The present study aimed to evaluate the effects of vitamin E and morphine on sperm parameters, level of malondialdehyde (MDA), and diameter of seminiferous tubules in morphine-treated mice., Methods: In this experimental study, 80 mice were divided into ten groups (n=8) including control, normal saline, vehicle, morphine, various doses of vitamin E (100, 200, 300 mg/kg), and morphine plus vitamin E (100, 200, 300 mg/kg) groups. The groups were followed up for 30 consecutive days. Sperm parameters, testis weight, the diameter of seminiferous tubules, and the level of MDA were analyzed and compared., Findings: Data analysis showed seminal parameters decreased significantly (excluding sperm count) and there was an increase in the level of MDA in morphine-treated mice compared with the normal saline group ( P <0.05). Administration of E100 to morphinetreated mice did not show a significant difference in the evaluated parameters compared with the morphine group. However, E200 and E300 significantly reduced MDA and improved sperm parameters ( P ≤0.05)., Conclusion: The results showed co-administration of vitamin E in high doses (200 & 300) could prevent the deleterious effects of morphine on some reproductive parameters and decrease the level of MDA in morphine-treated mice., Competing Interests: Competing Interests The authors declared no conflict of interest., (© 2023 Kerman University of Medical Sciences.)