Dehydrins (group 2 late embryogenesis abundant proteins) are intrinsically-disordered proteins that are expressed in plants experiencing extreme environmental conditions such as drought or low temperature. Their roles include stabilizing cellular proteins and membranes, and sequestering metal ions. Here, we investigate the membrane interactions of the acidic dehydrin TsDHN-1 and the basic dehydrin TsDHN-2 derived from the crucifer Thellungiella salsuginea that thrives in the Canadian sub-Arctic. We show using compression studies with a Langmuir-Blodgett trough that both dehydrins can stabilize lipid monolayers with a lipid composition mimicking the composition of the plant outer mitochondrial membrane, which had previously been shown to induce ordered secondary structures (disorder-to-order transitions) in the proteins. Ellipsometry of the monolayers during compression showed an increase in monolayer thickness upon introducing TsDHN-1 (acidic) at 4°C and TsDHN-2 (basic) at room temperature. Atomic force microscopy of supported lipid bilayers showed temperature-dependent phase transitions and domain formation induced by the proteins. These results support the conjecture that acidic dehydrins interact with and potentially stabilize plant outer mitochondrial membranes in conditions of cold stress. Single-molecule force spectroscopy of both proteins pulled from supported lipid bilayers indicated the induced formation of tertiary conformations in both proteins, and potentially a dimeric association for TsDHN-2.

The past few years has seen a proliferation of novice programming tools. The availability of a large number of systems has made it difficult for many users to choose among them. Even for education researchers, comparing the relative quality of these tools, or judging their respective suitability for a given context, is hard in many instances. For designers of such systems, assessing the respective quality of competing design decisions can be equally difficult.Heuristic evaluation provides a practical method of assessing the quality of alternatives in these situations and of identifying potential problems with existing systems for a given target group or context. Existing sets of heuristics, however, are not specific to the domain of novice programming and thus do not evaluate all aspects of interest to us in this specialised application domain.In this article, we propose a set of heuristics to be used in heuristic evaluations of novice programming systems. These heuristics have the potential to allow a useful assessment of the quality of a given system with lower cost than full formal user studies and greater precision than the use of existing sets of heuristics. The heuristics are described and discussed in detail. We present an evaluation of the effectiveness of the heuristics that suggests that the new set of heuristics provides additional useful information to designers not obtained with existing heuristics sets.

Survey evidence has revealed large differences in beliefs held by different cultures and ethnicities which may affect their economic prosperity. We study how the beliefs of New Zealand’s indigenous M?ori about the causes of wealth or poverty and the extent to which people are responsible for their own fate differ from non-M?ori using World Values Survey data from 1995 to 2011. M?ori are more likely to believe that (1) the poor have been unfairly treated and are not lazy; (2) a better life is due to luck and not hard work; (3) the Government is doing too little for those in need; and (4) business should not be run solely by the owners, compared to non-M?ori. We control for income, education and employment status, inter alia. The paper also compares differences between M?ori and non-M?ori within NZ to those between (non-indigenous) blacks and non-blacks within the US, as a benchmark. Stark results hold with respect to non-economic beliefs: whereas M?ori are 8.6% more likely to believe that the environment should be given priority over economic growth compared to non-M?ori, blacks are 20.5% less likely to hold this view compared to other Americans. Hence the evidence suggests that being indigenous plays a role in belief formation.

This paper presents work in progress on a prototype programming editor that combines the flexibility of keyboard-driven text entry with a structured visual representation, and drag-and-drop blocks. Many beginners learn with Java, a traditional text-based language. While text entry is ideal for experts desiring speed and efficiency, there is evidence in the literature that a significant portion of novice errors are related to syntax. Some beginners learn with Scratch, Alice and Star Logo, all of which have drag-and-drop, "block"-based interfaces. Validation makes them less prone to syntax errors, but they are very "viscous"there is resistance to changing or rearranging statements once they have been entered. The new system combines keyboard input with statements that can still be manipulated with the mouse as whole blocks. Standard text idioms can be usedhighlighting code by dragging the mouse, copying & pasting (as text), etc. With CogTool cognitive/keystroke models, we show that the new system effectively overcomes the viscosity found in block-based languages, but it retains much of the error-proofing. Work is ongoing, but there are implications for the design of a new novice programming system.