TED Talks in EFL Context: An Alternative Way for Teaching and Improving Student’s Speaking Skills

The technological advancement has made the media rapidly grow, particularly as a learning media. Teachers and educators today are required to be creative, innovative and updated in finding and using media as a learning tool in class. It can't be avoided anymore the use of technology in millennium era has become a necessity for teachers in EFL teaching. This study aims to discuss how a video-based conference video channel known as TED Talks can be useful in improving students’ speaking skills. The methodology used qualitative research and data collection obtained from relevant paper-based articles that have studied TED Talks as a learning medium to improve speaking skills. The results of this discussion paper showed that TED Talks has an effect on improving speaking among the EFL and also as a motivation for teachers and students to always keep spirit, inspirational and insightful. A novelty finding is that TED Talks also changes the students’ perspectives for the better, as they see that people from any country and ethnicity can speak English confidently in public.

BET 2: Is there an association between iodine, shellfish and contrast agent allergies?

A shortcut review was carried out to establish whether having a shellfish or iodine allergy changed the risk of allergic reaction in patients receiving radiocontrast medium more than other concomitant allergies. One relevant paper (a systematic review) was identified for inclusion using the reported search strategy. The author, date and country of publication; group studied; study type; relevant outcomes; results and study weaknesses of this paper are tabulated. It is concluded that there is no evidence that allergy to shellfish or iodine alters the risk of reaction to intravenous contrast more than any other allergies.

Privacy Prevention in Healthcare Data Using Big Data

The use of the patient’s information in biomedical research or healthcare research is increasing rapidly. We are using big data to generate and collect a large amount of personal information of patients. The security of patients individual data have turned into an extraordinary threat as it might prompt spillage of delicate data which can put the patient’s protection in danger. There are various measures which have been taken to protect the data from attack. The relevant paper reviews relevant topics in the context of healthcare research. We will discuss the consequences of big data privacy in healthcare research and a better way to improve the data privacy in healthcare research or biomedical research.

Preserving cultural heritage: Analyzing the antifungal potential of ionic liquids tested in paper restoration

Early industrialization and the development of cheap production processes for paper have led to an exponential accumulation of paper-based documents during the last two centuries. Archives and libraries harbor vast amounts of ancient and modern documents and have to undertake extensive endeavors to protect them from abiotic and biotic deterioration. While services for mechanical preservation such as ex post de-acidification of historic documents are already commercially available, the possibilities for long-term protection of paper-based documents against fungal attack (apart from temperature and humidity control) are very limited. Novel processes for mechanical enhancement of damaged cellulosic documents use Ionic Liquids (IL) as essential process components. With some of these ILs having azole-functionalities similar to well-known fungicides such as Clotrimazole, the possibility of antifungal activities of these ILs was proposed but has not yet been experimentally confirmed.We evaluated the potency of four ILs with potential application in paper restoration for suppression of fungal growth on five relevant paper-infesting molds. The results revealed a general antifungal activity of all ILs, which increased with the size of the non-polar group. Physiological experiments and ultimate elemental analysis allowed to determine the minimal inhibitory concentration of each IL as well as the residual IL concentration in process-treated paper. These results provide valuable guidelines for IL-applications in paper restoration processes with antifungal activity as an added benefit. With azoles remaining in the paper after the process, simultaneous repair and biotic protection in treated documents could be facilitated.